Chapter 80 Progression

As the night went on, my Minions were able to slowly push back the line of zombies.

Eventually, I was able to tell that the main battle was over.

"Let's go back now," I told Chloe.

"Alright~"

We made our way back to the hut and got as much sleep as we could.

*

I was awoken naturally, by nothing in particular.

I decided to check on my Minions, after that night.

-

<Advanced System Controls>

~

[Resource Division] (115 Minions)

- 3x Woodcutter Minion

- 11x Miner Minion

- 35x Scout Minion (Farming)

- 26x Scout Minion (Mining)

- 34x Scout Minion (Woodcutting)

- 6x Scout Minion (Hunting)

~

[Combat Division - Standard] (114 Minions)

- 1x Advanced Warrior Minion

- 1x Warrior Minion

- 33x Scout Minions (Swordplay)

- 47x Scout Minions (Archery)

- 32x Scout Minion (Combat)

~

[Combat Divison - Magic] (29 Minions)

- 2x Scout Minion (Fire Magic - Residential Heater)

- 1x Scout Minion (Water Magic - Ice Warrior)

- 1x Scout Minion (Water Magic - Arctic Wind)

- 2x Scout Minion (Wind Magic - Defensive Wind)

- 2x Scout Minion (Earth Magic - Brute)

- 21x Scout Minion (Magic)

~

[Utility Division] (26 Minions)

- 13x Builder Minion

- 10x Scout Minion (Utility)

- 2x Basic Scout Minion

- 1x Minion Manager

!

~

I lost a few Minions but it didn't have that much effect on me.

Overall, my army was still getting stronger.

I had 32 new combat Scout Minions to assign; I thought about it for a little before deciding on how I'd differentiate them. In the end, I put 10 in swordplay, 10 in archery and 12 in magic.

I also had to distribute the 21 Magic Scout Minions into different categories as well. I decided to just split them pretty evenly between the categories, I wanted to see what every different magic type did. This was when I found out that there was a fifth stage for magic learning as well.

-

<Learning (Stage 5)>

(Magic Further-Specialisation - only one can learn at a time, training time is one month)

- [Flame Manipulator]

- [Fire Controller]

~

For the ice Minions:

-

<Learning (Stage 5)>

(Magic Further-Specialisation - only one can learn at a time, training time is one month)

- [Water Manipulator]

- [Ice Controller]

~

There were similar specialisations for each of the different magic Minions.

It was a pretty long investment, requiring a training and education time of an entire month, but I might as well start now since I'd want to get some eventually. I didn't know which one to pick so I just decided on [Water Manipualtor] since I wanted to keep the fire Minions around to keep me warm.

With that, it began the learning process.

"Hey, William..."

"Morning."

Chloe was slowly pulling herself up as she came to terms with the early morning.

"Chloe, we're going to do some exploring today."

"Ooh, exploring?"

I wanted to look around the general area and see what was so dangerous around the place. If I was able to see what the issue was, I might be able to make countermeasures and allow my Minions to go back to collecting resources in the forest.

I decided to take a small elite army with me as I walked around. I called over my 3 Elite Minions, 5 Scout Minions (Swordplay), the two Residential Heater Minions and the earth magic Minions. I didn't want to have to walk around with too many Minions but I also didn't want to get killed by some unknown entities in the forest.

Chloe stretched her arms and the two of us made our way outside. We immediately felt the cold air crash upon our bodies, causing us to start shivering.

Ah, it's still as cold as always.

However, I had my Residential Heaters now. As the two fire magic Minions made their way to me, the entire area was warmed up. Eventually, one could hardly even feel the cold anymore. With my Minions by my side, Chloe and I made our way to the entrance of the wall.

For the first time in quite a while, we were leaving the settlement, and walking into the dark, mysterious forest. My feet instantly sank into the dirt, as the ground was mushy and wet. There was dew sitting atop all the grass and other vegetation which layered the floor. We slowly made our way further from the settlement, walking around in a big circle as we explored the area.

In the distance, there was a zombie that was seemingly lying dead on the ground, covered in grass and dirt. However, as we went closer, it suddenly jumped up and charged at us.

Holy shit.

As it darted toward me, Rook quickly cut it down with its sword. The corpse of the zombie finally fell to the ground, lifeless.

"This is what's likely killing my resource-gathering Minions."

The main problem was that these zombies were hard to spot. It was very likely that as my Minions were gathering resources, they would get ambushed and killed by these zombies. There wasn't really a good way to stop this either.

Even if I gave escorts to each of my resource-gathering Minions, they could still get ambushed and killed before my escorts could act. They were incredibly fast, just as fast as the crawling zombies. These were probably not the only dangers in the forest either.

I kept a tighter formation, with me and Chloe in the middle. All of my Minions were surrounding me so it was unlikely that I could get ambushed.

Slowly, we continued through the forest. There were a few more of these camouflaged zombies which tried to attack us, however, they were stopped pretty easily by my combat Minions. After killing a few more of them, we were finally able to catch a slight break.

However, in the distance, I caught a short glimpse of a tall lanky zombie before it disappeared between the trees.

It seemed that zombies inhabited the forest, even during day time, meaning there was now no time when it was completely safe. I stayed on alert for the tall lanky zombie, I had seen them the previous night and I remember them because of their uncomfortable amount of intelligence. I noticed that they hid and snuck up on you, as well as the fact that they seem to try to get out of the way of arrows and projectiles.

They were uncannily human-like.