"Welcome aboard commander" a robotic female voice sounded the moment he walked in.

"Gideon? Is that you?" Leo was surprised hearing a familiar voice.

"Yes, commander" Gideon replied.

"How come...you're here too?" Leo inquired as he was curious of why the A.I of the Stronghold is here.

"Anything related to commander like the Pelican and the Stronghold would have the same A.I that would a.s.sist you commander and that is me" Gideon's reply to his question.

"Whoa~! Does that mean if I buy a Frigate in the future, you would also be there?" Leo asked with an amazed look.

"Yes commander" Gideon just replied with the same flat robotic tone.

"Alrighty then, let's fly this baby!"

"Yes commander, if you have any questions on how to fly the Pelican, then I would be happy to a.s.sist you"

"No worries, I just learned a pretty neat trick earlier but thanks"

"It seems Gideon is pretty reliable like the 'system'" Leo muttered to himself.

"What "system" commander?" It seems Gideon hear his mutterings.

"Uhh..nothing"

After lunch, Leo hastily left the Stronghold towards a nearby plains two miles away from the camp just to test drive the Pelican alone.

Leo sat on the pilot seat and started fiddling around like an expert as the aircraft's engine started.

"Alright!" Leo said as he grasped the vehicle's steering wheel that looks like a F1's steering wheel.

The Pelican took off in the air with its thruster engines without a hitch as it turned around and sped off towards the direction of the Stronghold.

"Woohoo! Now this… is awesome~!" Leo was yelling in the c.o.c.kpit full of joy like a kid that just got a new toy for himself.

And only over a minute later did Leo and the Pelican arrived above the skies of the Stronghold which gave quite the scare to residents below that the men even prepared for battle as they thought they are being attack by the military or some other survivor groups like them that has state of the art weapons which spread quite a bit of panic around as they knew Leo wasn't around.

Of course, the chaos was immediately disperse when Alex stepped out to calm the crowd and just told them it was just Leo coming back from a short trip which made them immediately sighed in relief as their nerves calmed down and they also felt curious at the same time as they didn't expect that Leo would bring another weird aircraft vehicle and started crowding around the aircraft.

Leo just smiled at them especially the kids looking at it with s.h.i.+ning faces that even Jess came over to Leo if he could let them ride it once at which he promised that he would when he's not totally busy, making him even pinky swear at it which made the little girl so happy that she immediately ran off to her friends to share the good news.

Leo then took the Level 3 Upgrade Blueprint as he immediately upgraded the Stronghold with the same process happened again which the people just glance at what's happening one time and just totally ignored it after that as they just started gossiping around about the new aircraft, about Leo and about the three guys still sleeping at the guard's quarters.

*****

At another location.

"Are all of them finally cleaned up?" a burly man in shades holding a spike bat and wearing a biker gang jacket asked the person who just came down from the second floor of the motel.

"Ye- Urggh~" the man didn't finish what he said when an arrow shot his head.

"Mike!" the man yelled in shock as he just saw the person in front of him falling to his death.

The other 14 men around the burly man who are clearly a part of a biker gang as they are also wearing biker gang jackets with the same on their backs.

Suddenly, another arrow flew and killed another person and then another, then another which dumbfounded them in fear.

Four Arrows, Four Deaths.

"Hide!" the burly man who's clearly the leader shouted as he ran towards a nearby room with his lackey's following behind as they shut the door behind them.

On a huge tree over one fifty hundred meters away from location of the motel was a man with huge beard, wearing a camouflage clothes and on his hand was a bow and quiver of arrows on his back while standing at a st.u.r.dy tree branch, smiling arrogantly looking at the people scampering to hide in fear that they are the next to die.

Unfortunately for him, he didn't notice the odd looking zombie climbing the tree just a couple meters away from where he is.

The bald and weird looking zombie creature look at the man's direction and opened its mouth when suddenly a long weird grey intestine looking tube as thick as toddler's arms came out from its mouth as it sped towards towards the direction of the man holding the bow.

By the time, the man noticed the incoming danger, it was already too late as it pierced through his heart and started coughing blood.

"*Cough* Cough* I..was..too care..less" the man said as he smiled and the light in his eyes dimmed as he pa.s.sed away.

The long grey intestine like thing started wrapping around the man's body and the zombie at the tree started dragging the dead body towards it.

Back at the motel.

A few minutes later, still nothing unusual happened and their leader started getting impatient as he ordered someone to get out of there to see scout if its eyes, more like he's trying to sacrifice someone.

"You!" the man pointed at a random guy and said "Go see, if it's safe outside now!"

"Boss! No! I'll die if I go out if the man that's trying to kill us still there!" the man shouted in panic.

"That's why I'm telling you to go, to see if he's still there! Drag him out!" the burly man barked and on his orders, two dudes bigger than the guy being sacrificed forcefully dragged him while the man started yelling for mercy but when he finally realized that it's not working, he started cursing at them with a face full of hate before he was thrown outside.

The person was laid flat on the ground as he cautiously looked around and when over thirty seconds had pa.s.sed by and still nothing happened to him, he sighed in relief as he slowly stood up from the ground and started dusting himself and yelled at the people inside "It's safe you f*ckers!"

The people inside sighed in relief and they slowly came out of the room looking at the man jumping around full of hostility.

The man in question just smiled at them and said "F*ck you all!" as he started running, trying to escape from them.

"Get him!" their leader barked at his remaining lackeys and just as they are about to give chase, all of their widened in shock and fear when they saw their domineering boss coughing out blood as a weird tentacle like thing punctured his chest.

"Run!" someone shouted as they started running away in fear, not even caring what or who the culprit is.

Sadly, for all of them, they didn't even manage to run far away before they died one by one when something started jumping at them, killing them one by one.

A very pale zombie with putroding small horns on its bald head certainly made of hair and with a huge finger like claws, the length of two inches started gnawing on one of the corpses why the others are being dragged by a tentacle like thing that killed the bow user before and the culprit is standing on the roof of the motel.

If Leo was here and saw this scene, he would probably be shock at first that the zombies are actually capable of mutation and gaining weird abilities but in the other hand, excitement.

Excitement at the fact that he could kill more powerful zombies and faster levelling speed and more defender coins too.

While all of this are happening…

*****

The light covering the buildings finally stopped.

[Congratulations to host for successfully upgrading the Stronghold to Level 3]

[You can now build another 3 Residence Buildings that can house 50 people along with the original 2 Residences]

[You have completed the first threshold of building your Stronghold]

[Main Quest Updated...]

[Main Quest (3)

Eliminate all hostiles, capture London and relocate your Stronghold to your former countries capital, establis.h.i.+ng your authority and stepping foot to the real world.

Rewards: t.i.tle: City Conqueror, t.i.tle: Marshal, 1,000,000 pieces of each resources, 10 Exoskeleton Kinetic Armor, 1,000,000 Defender Coins and 100 Armed-Battle Ready Human Troops.

Time Limit: None]

[Side Quest

Reach one thousand population in your Stronghold and train 100 indigenous population as soldiers, that have basic military training.

Rewards: 100 AK-47, 500 39mm bullet rounds and 10,000 Defender Coins]

[Good luck and G.o.dspeed]

Leo's mouth was opening and closing, looking at the hologram screen in front of him in shock not expecting something like this to happen after the upgrade.

"Oh~G.o.d! Things just got more serious now!"

*****

~ End of Book One ~