Strength Maxed Out

New chapter is live.

Settle in, take your time, and let's see what waits in the dark 🖤

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Looking at Daryl's cold-looking back, Evan smiled.

He found a corner that would not be noticed immediately and lay down.

Then he removed the splint from his right arm.

The splint's timer had ended long ago, and his arm had already recovered.

He clenched and opened his fingers several times.

There was no stiffness. No pain.

It felt exactly as it had before the injury.

'System-made goods really are quality.'

Even the simplest splint could restore his arm in such a short time.

That effect was terrifying.

With the injury healed and time passing, the last debuff in the lower-left corner - Weakness - disappeared as well.

His stamina bar returned to full.

Right now, Evan wanted to throw his head back and shout.

"Fuck, I could take on a hundred of them."

He glanced at the two brothers, already asleep, and forced the impulse down.

Opening the skill panel, Evan returned to the Strength attribute.

He opened the base Strength stat.

Seeing row after row marked as already invested was deeply satisfying.

And now, he was about to spend points on the final two ranks of the core attribute.

Excitement stirred in him.

"Just raising Strength to Lv. 8 made me more than five times stronger."

"What will the last two ranks do?"

Evan rubbed his hands together.

Then he spent the points for both ranks at once.

Six skill points vanished.

At the same time, Evan felt a molten current surge through his body.

If the brothers had still been awake, they would have seen steam rising from every part of him.

The state looked very similar to the second Blood Moon not long ago.

Evan breathed low and hard.

His body trembled violently as tremendous power poured into him.

In places no human eye could see, muscle fibers wove together and rebuilt themselves, rising like twisted vines.

The muscles that had once looked balanced and defined were reshaped into hard, mountainlike lines.

The Athletic Outfit stretched tight over his frame.

Only after a long while did Evan slowly lift his lowered head.

Several faint cracks rang through his body like metal settling.

He had controlled himself as much as possible.

Otherwise, he would have woken both Dixon brothers.

The system prompt arrived in his ears at the right time.

[Rank 9/10: Beast Mode]

[Strength and headshot damage greatly increased.]

[Body, strength, muscle - your physique is nearly perfect.]

[Attribute: Strength Lv. 9/10]

[Rank 10/10: Champion]

[Strength and headshot damage greatly increased.]

[If the apocalypse had not come, your strength could have made you a champion. Now it can crush walkers.]

[Attribute: Strength Lv. 10/10 (Max)]

[Strength receives a full attribute boost.]

Evan felt reborn.

As his strength exploded upward, his consciousness seemed to lift with it, touched by a faint sense of transcendence.

"With the cigar on top of this, my strength has multiplied again."

"The boost from the first eight ranks together isn't as strong as the last two."

"Even without a weapon, I feel like I could punch through any walker's skull."

"If I went back to that Blood Moon now, I wouldn't end up in that state. No... I could crush them all barehanded."

Evan's eyes sharpened.

Absolute confidence came with absolute strength.

Just as the system's flavor text suggested, a maxed core attribute was enough to make a man a warlord in a collapsed world.

In this apocalypse, it meant walkers could be handled almost at will.

Add the one and a half boxes of antibiotics still in his inventory, and Evan was fully confident about taking the Prison.

By this time tomorrow, they might be living inside its walls.

The thought filled him with security.

"Good. Very good. Sleep."

Evan pushed every stray thought aside, settled on the floor, and gradually fell asleep.

It was not the most comfortable sleep he had ever had.

But since waking in the apocalypse, it was the steadiest.

In the morning, Merle shook Evan awake.

Daryl had brought back two squirrels, and the three of them made a rough breakfast before returning to the road.

They followed the tire tracks forward.

When the RV had broken down in the storm, they had only been around sixty miles from the Prison.

Now the convoy was reduced to Evan and the Dixon brothers.

Three motorcycles did not need to match the speed of the larger vehicles.

Even with stops along the way, traveling at eighty miles an hour let them reach the forest marked on the map before nightfall.

The bikes slowed.

Both brothers looked at Evan.

The ground no longer showed traces of passing vehicles.

Evan had once said that once they reached this area, finding the Prison would not be difficult.

So when they entered the road by the woods, both brothers naturally looked to him.

Under their stares, Evan felt a little awkward.

He scratched his cheek.

A fifty-mile stretch of forest was not impossibly large.

But it was not small either.

More importantly, this was his first time here.

He was not actually sure where the Prison was.

After thinking for a moment, Evan opened the Map, which he had not used in a long time.

The Map unfolded in front of him.

What appeared first was a wide green zone, representing the forest ahead.

Through it ran a dark gray road, the one they had followed here.

Everything else was covered in pale gray.

Unexplored territory.

As Evan explored, the fog would slowly lift.

But he had not opened the Map just to look at the road behind them.

The system's Map was more than a road map.

Strictly speaking, it was closer to a topographical map.

That meant Evan could look down from above and observe the terrain of the explored area, whether the land rose into hills, how the nearby ground was shaped, and where open spaces might be.

The Prison should be somewhere in a clearing inside this forest.

With the Map, finding it before dark should not be too difficult.

"Stay close."

Evan dropped the words and twisted the throttle, riding straight along the forest road.

"There should be a fully equipped small town not far from the Prison."

"Other than that, the main road is still our best bet."

"Vehicles from the Prison would have come and gone. There has to be a branch off this main road."

Evan kept checking the Map as he rode.

Every time he reached an area covered by fog, the fog lifted in a block, saving him a great deal of search time.

Daryl and Merle followed close behind.

Together, the three of them began sweeping the forest from the southern edge upward.

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