My Undead System

Ch. 02 - Jin the Undead

Flashes of torn flesh and dripping blood popped into Jin’s head. He felt as if he had slumbered or floated through the air. He opened his eyes and realized his body wandered around on its own. “What happened…?”

Memories of his teammates locking the door and leaving him outside to fend for himself left a foul taste in his mouth. He replayed it over and over in his mind, and most of the time, he tried to reason with what they did and why they did it, but he still felt bitter in his heart. “Those assholes…!”

Just as he gritted his teeth in anger, a growl echoed in his ears. It startled him. He tried to look around, but his head wouldn’t turn. With much effort, he succeeded to the point he heard a crack. There wasn't any pain, so he ignored it.

A black membrane obscured his vision. He could only see bits and pieces in the middle with a crimson hue. Behind him, there was nothing. “I can’t see very well… Was I hurt that bad…?”

Jin squinted his eyes as he tried to get a better look, but it remained the same. The black membrane formed something like a vignette, leaving little space for light to sip through.

A vibration shook his consciousness. He pondered what happened when everything went dark in a matter of seconds. A while later, he noticed that his body fell on the ground, face down. A growl once again crept in his ears, startling him. “Was that… Me? Or rather, my body? W-What happened to me…!”

Pretty quick, he understood what became of him. Of course, there were various memories that flooded his brain. His family, whom he hadn’t seen or spent time with, was the one thing he thought about the most. Regret surfaced in his heart and malice grew.

Jin exploded in anger, but he couldn't vent his frustration with a body he had no control over. Mixed emotions overwhelmed him, as he didn't know what will happen to him. He pondered whether he would simply rot away without getting the chance to say goodbye. Or that they would never know what happened to him.

As he lay face down in the dirt, Jin growled. He refused to let things end like this. Once he decided to not give up, he regained his scattered consciousness and focused. "No! It won't end like this..."

“Argh! I can’t see anything like this!”

He growled and groaned until he rolled on his back. The blinding light of the sun, sipped through the membrane. The eyes of his body remained open, as it didn’t affect it, but Jin flinched inside.

“Earlier I turned my neck around, so it should be possible to get the entire thing moving…”

Jin groaned internally whilst the undead growled. He attempted several times before he could move a finger. Overjoyed, Jin grinned. Meanwhile, the undead body of his opened its mouth and let out growls in succession.

Several hours passed, and Jin moved an entire arm. He was thrilled. Jin waved it around like a flag. He even did poses with it. From afar, one could see an undead on the ground waving its hand around and doing the victory sign among others.

A weight of depression rested on his young shoulders. Frightened and alone, with no one to talk to, Jin gritted his teeth and cursed his bad luck. He rolled around on the ground shouting profanities to those who locked him outside, then gave them the finger with his working hand.

Night came and went, and Jin was still at it. The following morning, he stood up on his own. He regained control over his body. Jin then looked around, but nothing seemed familiar. As an undead, Jin could barely distinguish anything besides hues of red.

That first step he took frustrated him to the point of making him give up. He regretted ever getting up or even trying to move. His movement was so slow; it bored him. Jin was used to being on the move. During his games as a batter, and the time he spent in the other world. He was always on the move.

One thing, though, got his attention. Within those hues, something stood out. A living human. The bright colors emitted off that person’s body, appeared before him like a wondrous symphony. Never in his life, Jin saw something like this.

He growled towards the living human. He could see the veins spreading in the body in colors of blue, a pumping heart with a bright yellow core left an impression and the most invigorating of all were the sudden bursts of light shooting towards and out of the brain. It drew Jin to the human like a moth to a source of light.

Jin tried to talk to the human from inside the undead body, but the only thing coming out of its mouth were growls that drove the human further away. “Hey, wait up. I need some help here…”

The person saw the growling undead headed towards them and ran away. Jin’s slow pace couldn’t match those speeds. "No! Damn it!"

Eventually, Jin reached the place where he saw the human, but they were already gone. He sighed internally and looked around. “Where am I anyway?”

Surrounding him were tall trees and an endless valley. He couldn’t tell, but a breeze rustled the leaves. Birds chirped their favorite melodies and animals chased one another.

With the human gone, Jin stood idly, sulking. "It's not like I can catch anything like this, anyway."

Without warning, an undead passed right next to him, then another and another, but Jin didn’t hear them, let alone sense them. They appeared out of nowhere and startled him. Out of curiosity, he growled, and it echoed in his ears, but he couldn’t hear anything else.

He carefully looked at their mouths and tried to listen to them, but to no avail. He panicked and grabbed his ears. Jin couldn’t feel them, but he could tell there was a lump there. “They didn’t go anywhere… That’s something…”

When he realized he had no sensation in his hands, he stared at them for several minutes. Quite fast, he understood why when he made the comparison between his hands and the living person he saw earlier. Hues of red surrounded the two lumps of dead meat he called hands, unlike the colorful blue veins that filled that person with life. He couldn’t hear or feel anything. His neurons died and his senses vanished. Despite all that, he could barely see anything.

Moments before depression struck, a high-pitched ring dinged in his ears. Mere seconds later, a translucent window of an ocean-like blue color appeared before him. It had some strange markings on it.

Upon closer look, he recognised them, or at least he thought they were similar to those he saw before in the other world.

“That’s… Familiar…”

As if it came from a church, a bell with a deep crystal sound warmed his consciousness. Moments later, strange letters appeared on the window that soon turned into words he understood.

[Do you want to start the Undead System?]

[Accept!] [Refuse!]

[Rewards: Undead Level 1]

Jin thought about it for a while. "It's not like I have many options... If I refuse, will my consciousness perish...?"

As he contemplated on that, he decided, and reluctantly answered the question before him. "Accept!"

[Activation sequence requires a core. Eat the brain of another undead!]

[Accept!] [Refuse!]

[Rewards: Upgrade]