Chapter 95 – Overwhelmed

They woke up early the next morning, ready to survive for another day. The ones who slept in the bed managed to get somewhat better while the other ones had a small debuff due to sleeping on the floor. Their goal for the day was to have more beds and get more food. The game was set in the early days of the zombie apocalypse with water and electricity still running. For now, at least. Now that they got used a little to the game, they found out that they needed different tools to survive. They needed an axe to cut trees and get access to wood, a saw to help in constructing things, weapons to defend themselves better, etc. They added finding these to the list of things to do.

Another thing was that the game had skills and a skill leveling system. There was a wide range of skills, from cooking to make better meals to first aid to patch someone who got hurt and all the way to combat skills to help handle specific weapons better. They could do a task to get proficient at the corresponding skill or find books and read them to increase the related skill level. They divided the work, everyone being assigned to focus on specific skills for efficiency purposes and Benjamin obviously got assigned to the cooking part, even though it was a game. That made him smile and he didn't complain about their decision.

While the others were preparing themselves or reinforcing the house, he went straight into it and used some of the ingredients they had found the previous day to cook a simple breakfast, with his still low-level cooking skill. This made him feel nostalgic, remembering the first time he cooked for his family after being sent to this world.

Now that everyone was full and ready, they all went out to explore more of the surroundings and try to scavenge what they needed, to have a better chance at surviving. They encountered zombies several times but didn't get any injuries now that they got used to the combat system in the game. They managed to go further than on the first day and discovered a few shops, from which they were able to get a lot of supplies and food. Chloe also found a map of the town and they realized that their house was located in the town center and that this was why they could find stores so quickly. They returned to their base full of their looting and used those to improve the condition of the house, built some beds for those who didn't have one, and installed curtains on the windows to prevent the zombies from spotting them from outside of the house.

The game went like this, with them going on expeditions every day, finding more and more loot, and improving their situation. On day four, they found some seeds and started a small vegetable garden that would help them have a constant food supply in the long term. Everything was going well, except for the fact that there were more and more zombies spawning around the house every day.

On day five, they got completely surrounded by them and it took a long time to clear them before they could go on an expedition. Two of them even got injured, reducing the number of crew members who could safely leave the house. On day six, the situation got even worse, and finally, Grace got bitten by a zombie. After doing a quick check on the Internet, it seemed that the game was very unforgiving. Being bitten meant that one would become a zombie in the next few hours. What's more, if someone died, they had to create a new character and lose all the skills and items they had acquired. As expected, a few hours later, Grace's character became a zombie and attacked the rest of the team. They had to kill her and put her to rest. Grace sadly created a new character, complaining about losing all her blunt weapons skill levels. Fortunately, she spawned in their house and was able to get her items back from the corpse of her previous incarnation.

On day seven, the zombies were so numerous that they started attacking their house by themselves. It was only a few at first but the noise of them banging on the doors of the house attracted more and more of them until a whole horde was at their door. They had no choice but to fight bravely to avoid being killed. However several of them got injured and two more got bitten, transforming into zombies soon after. The situation was getting dire and on day eight, they got attacked by so many zombies that they got completely overwhelmed and everyone in the team eventually died a gruesome death, their corpses eaten by a crowd of zombies.

Their first game was a total failure and the girls all complained about the game's difficulty, sad about their defeat. They didn't know what they did wrong and wanted to try again but Benjamin called for a break because it was time for him to cook dinner.

"Cook something quick, Ben, I want to try again."

"Yep, make anything simple, I can't allow ending this game in defeat like this."

"Sure, just wait a bit."

He chose to make some simple chicken curry and while he prepared the dish, the rest of the family members sat in the living room and discussed what they did wrong during the first game. Nova, who had been reluctant to play at first, was now fully part of the discussion while their mother and grandmother, who had mostly agreed to participate to please the children, also enjoyed the game a lot and offered their opinions.

"I think our house didn't have enough barricades and that's why it was so hard to defend."

"No, we should be stealthy. If the zombies never detect us, they won't come to attack our base."

"We should probably build a wall to give us more time to react and a high vantage point to defend ourselves from in case of an attack."

"What about giving up on our base when it gets too hard to defend?"

"Wait, let me check on the Internet."

Olivia was too curious and frustrated about their failure and couldn't help checking what other people recommended to do on the web.