When Marcus woke up, his head was filled with information. His head hurt so much that it felt like he had drunk several gallons of vodka.
Images appeared in his head involuntarily, constantly entering and leaving his mind, constantly changing places.
He sat up in bed and held his head with his hands.
It wasn't hot, and he shouldn't have been sweating given his physical condition, but he was soaked through.
He squinted and made his way to the bathroom, where he washed his face.
He looked at himself in the mirror. He had to admit it: his body was more muscular and larger, and his movements felt more flexible. He felt that even his face was more handsome and his hair was stiffer.
After washing his face a little, Marcus went down to the hotel restaurant.
Here, he carefully took a few canned foods and the French fries that Mick had gotten up early to prepare, still afraid of damaging something.
In a short time, the restaurant began to fill with people, and everyone sat down around him. He could hear everyone's voices, understand what they were saying, and worst of all, it was involuntarily filling his brain.
After a while, he couldn't take it anymore.
He decided to leave the beginning hotel and go for a walk. William and Eliza didn't follow him. They looked back and talked.
"Don't you think he's acting strange?" Eliza frowned. She had known Marcus for a long time and had never seen him so quiet and pensive.
"Very strange." William looked thoughtfully after Marcus.
"Could it be related to his new abilities?"
Eliza turned her head and looked at William. She shook her head silently.
"William, could you please go after Marcus? I'm worried he might hurt himself."
William shook his head. "Marcus thinks too highly of himself. He'd rather charge into an army of a hundred thousand zombies than hurt himself."
William chuckled and followed Marcus. It didn't take long before he caught up with him.
He had been moving stealthily, and despite using all his abilities, Marcus had caught him fifty meters away.
"This class is better than I thought." William grinned.
"I'm not in the mood for jokes, William." Marcus's face was serious.
"My head feels like it's going to split open."
Marcus focused his eyes and looked at the system screen.
[Marcus Steel – Level 11]
[Class: War Master]
[EXP: 0/160000]
[STRENGTH: 12.6 (+++)]
[SPEED: 2 (+++)]
[PERCEPTION: 1.1 (+++)]
[SPELL: 1 (+++)]
Marcus looked at his sub-statistics. They were truly amazing, but that didn't solve his current problem.
He asked the system several times, but couldn't get an answer regarding his situation.
He turned his head and looked at William. "What should I do?"
William frowned at this question. "What do you mean?"
"My head feels like it's going to split open... Even though this class gives me a lot of power, it's like a curse. I can feel everything that's happening everywhere at any moment, and it's filling my brain."
William understood the problem immediately, but he wasn't sure of the solution. "Could it be that you're low on Ley?"
Marcus shook his head.
"I don't know." Then he sat down among the ruins of a dilapidated building.
"Have you tried meditation?" William was looking for a solution, and this was the quickest one that came to mind.
"Meditation?" Marcus looked at William in bewilderment. He had never thought such a thing could be real. Shortly after, when William told him what had happened, he understood.
There was a training guide for this on the system, so he immediately bought it with a few sc and started using it.
During this time, William protected him.
Marcus didn't understand how to do it for the first few minutes, and he struggled a little, but minutes turned into hours, and he learned the Power of Breath. He felt a sense of relief.
However, it was not enough.
"You should try looking at the Marketplace. There may be better meditation techniques there."
William gave him some advice, and Marcus followed it.
When he opened the Marketplace, he typed "meditation" in the search bar and felt like he had entered a world he had never known before. The number of products in the Marketplace was measured in quadrillions, so it was difficult to find what you wanted if you didn't know what you were looking for.
[Balance Point
Requirements: Level 5
Pros: Emotional Stability +14%, Exp Gain +10/min, +25% EXP bonus in absolute silence.
Cons: Inactivity, meditation breaks if posture is disrupted.
Price: 300,000 SC]
Marcus furrowed his brows. "That's expensive!"
He checked his own coins… It wasn't even enough to buy the introductory part of this technique.
Despite this, he succumbed to his curiosity and continued to explore other meditation techniques.
[Trembling Harmony
Requirements: Level 10, Perception 4.
Pros: Emotional Stability +5%, EXP gain +8/min, chance to learn the [Mental Echo] ability.
Cons: Constant murmuring and grumbling. Internal resonance is required.
Price: 500,000 SC
(Mental Echo: Emotional Stability +15%, Insight +5%)
"This is better than I expected." After looking at several high-priced meditation techniques, Marcus gave up and sorted them from lowest to highest price. Otherwise, he kept coming across meditation techniques worth billions of SC.
Although these meditation techniques provided great benefits, Marcus had neither the time nor the level to meet the requirements.
After a long investigation, he finally decided on a meditation technique.
[Memory Reflection
Requirements: None
Pros: Emotional Stability +5%-+20%, Exp Gain +2/min-+10/min
Cons: Risk of Mental Breakdown 5%, Risk of Berserk 5%
Price: 1000 SC
Warnings: This meditation technique was developed by Lao Zhi. While using this technique, the person relives memories from their past, regrets, and all the negative emotions they have experienced.
The amount of emotional stability and experience gained increases according to the rate at which negative emotions are dealt with. If negative emotions cannot be dealt with, there is a risk of mental deterioration and insanity. Careful use is recommended.]
Marcus had no other choice. When he thought about his past, he didn't think he had many bad memories.
So he didn't care about the risk of mental breakdown and insanity. He knew what berserk was, after all; Min-Jun was constantly going in and out of it.
Mental breakdown was almost the same as classic insanity.
After paying and purchasing it, the meditation technique appeared in his hand.
He read it quickly and understood how to do it.
It was like the power of breath, but he had to adjust his breathing rhythm and focus by thinking about a few memories from the past.
It didn't take long for him to go back in time, see his memories, and live as if it were the present day.
He suddenly found himself in a tiny body.
He looked at his hands and feet, which were much smaller than he had expected. How old was he?
Maybe two? Maybe three? But he could tell he was very young because he wasn't wearing any clothes.
He was sitting on the kitchen counter. Opposite him was a woman who looked like a giant compared to him. She was wearing only a T-shirt and underwear, and he could tell she was happy from the song she was humming.
The woman was cooking something on the stove.
Marcus understood immediately. "Mom..." he called out, but only a sound like "mamama" came out of his mouth.
Hearing this, the woman turned around and looked at her only son with her sparkling blue eyes.
At that moment, Marcus froze. The area around the woman's eyes was black and blue. Her hair looked neat from behind, but when viewed from the front, it was so tangled and dirty that it was unpresentable.
Not only the area around her eyes, but also her entire body, from her neck to her calves, was covered in bruises and small scrapes. The woman's nose must have been broken because it was crooked.
The woman hugged him with all her love, and they started cooking together.
The woman was frying a few potatoes and some chicken.
Marcus helped her by playing with the spices on the side.
The food wasn't ready yet when the doorbell rang.
Marcus was left alone at the counter, and the woman went to answer the door.
"Welcome home, honey..." The woman had clearly said this sentence with all her heart, but the only response she got was a short grunt.
As soon as the man entered, Marcus saw him. He was tall, black-haired, and heavily built.
He didn't seem like a good match for his mother at all.
"What is he doing here?" He spoke to Marcus as soon as he entered the kitchen.
"Okay... okay, I'll take him right away."
The woman picked Marcus up and took him to one of the rooms inside. The room was damp and musty. Marcus was lying on a mattress on the floor, not a child's bed. "This isn't suitable for a child," he thought.
The woman then went back to the kitchen.
At first, everything seemed normal, and Marcus was about to drift off into unconscious sleep.
Then he heard shouting coming from behind the closed doors.
These were terrifying sounds he couldn't make sense of, and soon he began crying uncontrollably.
Then the door opened. The same tall man entered.
He was holding a large kitchen knife. It was covered in blood, and not just the knife, but his clothes, his forehead, his eyes... he was covered in blood.
Little Marcus cried even harder, and the man came closer to Marcus as he cried.
He opened his eyes wide and looked at Marcus, gradually bringing his head closer to Marcus's small body.
"It's all yours... It's all your fault." The man raised the knife and tried to stab him, but at that moment, the door opened and several normal men ran in and held Marcus's so-called father. They took the knife from his hand and laid him on the floor.
"Call the police, John!" The man called John was panicked and frantic. Two people were struggling to hold Marcus's father.
He immediately grabbed Marcus with one hand and ran out of the building.
With his other hand, he called the police, and within minutes, hundreds of police officers gathered around the building.
Marcus was still in John's arms.
Shortly after, he saw a man covered in blood being led away by several police officers with his head bowed.
Then a stretcher came out of the building. No matter how hard he tried, Marcus could tell from the blood around him that the woman being carried out on the stretcher in a black bag was his mother.
At that moment, he felt a pain in his heart. It was a pain so intense that his throat tightened. He had trouble breathing. He wanted to die instead of that woman.
But he knew he couldn't. He knew he couldn't change the past, that he was trapped in the future.
Then John took him, along with his wife. They brought him to a building surrounded by greenery.
"I'm sorry, little Marcus. I already have three children; I can't take care of you."
"Don't worry; Marcus is in good hands." A woman took Marcus from John's hands.
Marcus recognized the place immediately.
"Green Hands Orphanage." He had stayed here until he became an adult.
His memories ended here, and he opened his eyes. He hadn't noticed, but his eyes were filled with tears. Still, he felt an indescribable emotion in his heart. Peace.
Calmness and silence.
He saw that William had just killed a few zombies and was cleaning his katana.
He had already forgotten the fight they had earlier and the scolding he had received from Joseph.
Marcus checked the notifications.
"You gained +5 Exp!"
"You gained +5 Exp!"
"You gained +5 Exp!"
"You gained +5 Exp!"
"You gained +5 EXP!"
…
Marcus looked at his watch. He realized he had been meditating for exactly one hour. He checked the amount of EXP he had earned.
It was equivalent to killing dozens of zombies, and he also felt more relaxed. The constant images appearing in his mind had diminished, or rather, they had been filtered, with only important information flowing into his brain.
Marcus understood what the key was.
He had to improve his passive ability. He could learn this by meditating in the place where war and information were most intense.
Marcus knew where that place was. The shelter.
Hundreds of people were working nonstop in the shelter; everything and everyone was in motion at the same time, so hundreds of pieces of information would flow into his head instantly.
Marcus stood up. "I'm going," he said.
"Did you solve the problem?" William asked curiously.
"Yes, and there's been a big improvement," Marcus shook his head. "A very big one."
He then explained how these meditation techniques worked and how it was possible to level up without killing zombies.
The meditation techniques came in many varieties, and if they could obtain a good one—such as those that earned over +100 EXP per minute and sold for a billion SC—they wouldn't have to worry about zombies anymore.
But for now, there was nothing they could do because the system didn't yet allow SC sharing between people.
Led by Saleem, everyone was thinking about the possibilities of the new systems that the system would bring, and since the system had an MMORPG-style approach, they thought that such features would be added soon.
When William heard this, he frowned.
"The number of zombies outside is limited," he thought.
"We are currently experiencing a golden age of power. Although future generations will be more systematic, they will grow stronger more slowly. They won't be able to level up easily by killing millions of zombies like us. The only ways to level up will be in places like open dungeons. They won't have to risk their lives here, which will again result in slower development."
William shook his head.
"I have to take this opportunity."
Then they returned to the beginning hotel with Marcus. Marcus didn't stay long, he said he was leaving after arranging his belongings and left alone.
No one here, including William, had the power to stop him, and he knew that William didn't need to stop him either.
William's mind was at ease after Marcus's actions.
Now there was someone who would protect the shelter, which meant William could live a freer life.
That evening, William chose the abilities he wanted to learn and began his training. Then he entered the open dungeon... never to leave for a long time.