**Chapter 1: A Blocky Apocalypse**
The last thing I remembered was the blinding white light of my computer screen, the triumphant music of defeating the Ender Dragon echoing in my headphones, and a sudden, searing pain in my chest. Then, nothing. A void.
I awoke not to the familiar, pixelated sunrise of my Minecraft world, but to the acrid smell of smoke, the distant, panicked screams of a city in chaos, and the low, guttural groans of something… inhuman. I was lying in an alley, my head throbbing. Pushing myself up, I looked down. I wasn't wearing my usual hoodie and jeans. Instead, I was clad in a simple, dark green tunic and tough, brown trousers that felt oddly… durable. On my wrist was a sleek, futuristic watch that glowed with a soft blue light, displaying a familiar interface: a health bar, a hunger bar, and a 3x3 crafting grid.
"What the…?"
A notification, composed of blocky, pixelated text, materialized in the center of my vision.
**[System Initialization Complete]**
**[Welcome, User, to the World of 'High School of the Dead'. Primary Objective: Survival. Secondary Objective: Secure and Protect Designated 'Key Assets' (Female Cast). Reward for Full Asset Acquisition: Customizable Harem Domain. Failure: Permanent Deletion.]**
I blinked, the words burning into my retinas. High School of the Dead? The zombie anime? The harem reward was absurd, laughable even, but the "Permanent Deletion" part had a chilling, final ring to it. A crash from the street snapped me out of my shock. Peering around the corner of the alley, my blood ran cold.
It was just like the anime. The world had ended during a normal school day. "Them"—the dead, shambling, hungry—were everywhere, chasing down the living with single-minded ferocity. Students in tattered uniforms, salarymen with their ties flapping, all were being run down and torn apart. The sound was a symphony of terror.
Another notification blinked.
**[New Quest: Survival Tutorial]**
**[Objective: Craft a basic weapon. Resources available: Scrap Wood (Fence Post), Scrap Iron (Pipe).]**
**[Reward: 10 XP, System Familiarity Increased.]**
My Minecraft instincts, honed by thousands of hours, kicked in before my rational mind could fully process the horror. I ducked back into the alley. There was a broken wooden fence. I grabbed a splintered post. *Scrap Wood x4*. A rusted metal pipe lay in a puddle. *Scrap Iron x2*. I focused on my wrist device, dragging the pixelated icons into the crafting grid in the pattern I knew by heart: two sticks vertically, then three planks across the top. But the grid shimmered, accepting the scrap instead of refined materials.
**[Crafting Successful!]**
**[Acquired: Crude Wooden Sword (Durability: 30/30)]**
It materialized in my hand with a soft *pop*. It wasn't the clean, pixelated sword from the game. It was a nasty-looking club, a thick piece of wood studded with rusty nails and wrapped in cord, but it had weight and a lethal heft. Just in time. One of *them*, a former office worker missing an arm and most of its jaw, stumbled into the alley entrance, its milky eyes locking onto me with a hungry moan.
Fear threatened to paralyze me. This wasn't a game on a screen. The stench of decay was real. But the system's HUD was there, a familiar anchor in the madness. My health bar was full—ten hearts. I gripped my crude sword. As the zombie lurched forward, I sidestepped, a movement that felt smoother than it should have, and swung with all my might.
*Thwack.*
The sound was sickening, a wet crunch. The zombie's skull caved in, and it crumpled to the ground, motionless.
**[+5 XP]**
**[Zombie Flesh x1 added to Inventory.]**
I stared at the body, then at my club, nausea rising. I had just killed something. Or re-killed it. The clinical system message was a stark contrast to the visceral reality. But I didn't have time for a moral crisis. More groans echoed from the street. I needed a plan. The system said "Secure and Protect" the female cast. That meant finding them before the chaos consumed them.
I remembered the story. It started at Fujimi Academy. That was ground zero. Pushing down my revulsion, I looted the zombie corpse out of sheer, ingrained habit, finding a tattered leather wallet (useless) and a strangely intact **Iron Ingot** that shimmered before vanishing into my inventory. The world operated on Minecraft logic, but with a brutal, real-world skin.
Using back alleys and fire escapes, I moved with a caution I'd learned from navigating caves full of Creepers. The system's mini-map, a faint topographic outline on my wrist, helped me avoid red dots that signified clusters of the dead. My goal was the school. As I neared the district, the screams became more concentrated.
I climbed onto a low rooftop overlooking Fujimi Academy's gates. It was a scene of pandemonium. Hundreds of students were trying to flee, a seething mass of panic pressed against the locked main gate. And among them, I saw them.
There was **Takashi Komuro**, fiercely trying to pull his friend to safety. And with him, the first "Key Asset."
**Rei Miyamoto**, her long black hair flying, was using a wooden kendo practice sword with shocking efficiency, smashing zombies back with precise, powerful strikes. But she was being overwhelmed, her back against the gate.
**[Key Asset Identified: Rei Miyamoto. Status: Endangered.]**
**[New Quest: The Fence at the Gate.]**
**[Objective: Assist Rei Miyamoto and create a safe perimeter. Suggested Craft: Fence Wall.]**
**[Reward: 50 XP, Rei Miyamoto Favor +15.]**
A fence? In the middle of this? I looked at my inventory: *Scrap Wood x12, Scrap Iron x3, String x2* (from a looted backpack). The crafting recipe for a wooden fence was simple: sticks and planks. But how would it work here?
I had no time to debate. I focused, pulling the resources into the grid. Instead of creating an item, my wrist device glowed brightly. I aimed at the ground in front of the struggling Rei, a few feet from the pressing horde of zombies.
"Place!" I grunted, not knowing what else to do.
From the concrete, with a sound like growing timber, a section of a rugged, chest-high wooden barricade erupted. It was made of sharpened logs lashed together with thick rope—crude, strong, and very real. Then another section appeared next to it as I used more resources, creating a ten-foot-long barrier that forced the zombies to funnel into a narrow approach.
Rei's eyes went wide with shock, but she was a fighter. She instantly recognized the tactical advantage. "Komuro! Here!" she yelled, falling back to the new fence line.
I didn't wait. I jumped down from the low roof, my crude sword ready. A zombie reached for me through the gaps in the logs. I stabbed it through the eye socket.
**[+5 XP]**
**[Level Up! You are now Level 2. Health Increased. New Crafting Recipe Unlocked: Stone Hammer.]**
"Who are you?" Rei panted, her kendo sword slick with dark fluid, as she stood back-to-back with me behind the makeshift wall.
"Someone who wants to help," I said, my voice steadier than I felt. I glanced over her shoulder, scanning the chaotic crowd. I needed to find the others: the fierce, busty **Saeko Busujima**, the gentle nurse **Shizuka Marikawa**, the determined **Saya Takagi**, and the young **Alice Maresato**. They were out here, somewhere in this hell.
My blocky system had given me my first tool. My first quest. My first ally. The path to saving them—and the insane, promised reward—was now my only purpose. The high school of the dead was my new world, and I would conquer it, one craft, one fight, one rescued life at a time. The game was on, and the stakes were everything.