Apocalypse Healer - Path of Death

He accepted the dead silence around him with a shrug. It wasn't like he expected the system to respond to his complaint in the first place.

[Holy Touch]… you'd better be worth it.

There were no detailed descriptions for the Skill Runes, but the information etched into his mind was enough to gain a rough understanding of his new power.

A Skill Rune to augment holy energy, pushing it to another level.

Maybe it could remove infections with a touch, but David would need to test it first. And that would take time. Unraveling the secrets of his Skill Rune required time, practice, and effort: a lot of it. David could tell at first glance that [Holy Touch] would be far more difficult to study than [Cleanse] and [Cure Wounds]. It would be a challenge, albeit a welcome one.

He didn't have enough holy power to activate [Holy Touch] and wasn't about to damage his Holy Sea for no reason.

His new ability didn't appear bad, but [Draining Touch] would have been better. A heavy sigh escaped his lips, and his eyes drifted back to the battlefield.

David's gaze landed on Sebastian's corpse. The warrior's body lay still, his head crushed. Blood and other corpses surrounded him, forming a pitiful scene.

David winced as he strode through the bloody pool covering the floor. His shoes squished, and the sound reverberated throughout the third floor, but nothing responded. A sea of corpses. The shopping center was now a graveyard—a resting place for the unfortunate.

A shiver ran down his spine, and his eyes shifted between the bodies.

At last, he reached Sebastian and picked up his sword. He looked at the flawless double-edged longsword and sighed again.

"It's lighter than expected," he muttered, his expression souring before he forced a smile to his lips.

He thought of the last few hours. Most had been exciting, his heart pounding with the thrill of survival—a reminder of what it felt like to be alive. But not everything could be great. No matter how exhilarating it was to feel alive, to grow stronger, people were still dying all around him. The world had turned upside down. Death was everywhere.

David had to get used to it.

He turned to a nearby kobold and shoved its body aside, revealing one of their short swords. Ignoring the blood, he retrieved it. A few swings later, he snorted. The kobold short sword's balance was horrendous compared to the warrior longsword.

Still, David kept it with him.

A spare won't hurt.

He considered using both weapons simultaneously, but his experience with cold steel was lackluster, to put it simply. Although it may have looked like it worked against the kobolds, he'd sustained too many wounds to call himself a professional fighter.

Once David was done on the battlefield, he checked the situation on the third floor. He cast a few glances to the first and second floors, but all he saw were corpses. They were everywhere.

The scene could have been pulled from a horror film, the kind that would have terrified David a day ago. But now, after everything, it barely registered.

He inspected several shops to replace his tracksuit with a clean set and grabbed another backpack to store more goods, only to realize that most of the cans in his old backpack were dented; their contents spilled everywhere. Some water bottles had survived, but even the snack bags had burst open. The backpack was covered in claw marks. It was already a miracle it had made it this far.

He spent a few minutes rummaging through the damaged backpack to salvage undamaged goods and stored them in his new backpack. The final result was not as pleasant as David had hoped; his new backpack was barely half full, and he had yet to start squeezing stuff. David cursed softly and turned back to the bloody battlefield.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

He frowned, realizing Sebastian's backpack wasn't there earlier.

Did he forget it?

David shrugged and removed his old clothes, another burdensome task. It took a frustrating amount of time to peel off the blood-soaked garments, most of which were saturated with his own blood.

After thinking about it for a moment, David grabbed more clean clothes to dry his body. He'd prefer a shower or a warm bath over this, but he couldn't even find a towel—forget about a shower.

Once he was dry, David put on his new clothes. He found a pair of running shoes that fit him, alongside some comfortable socks and continued searching for clothes to store in the backpack. Since there was enough space left, he decided to pack a second set of clothes, underwear, and shoes. Who was going to stop him?

David hesitated when found several belts. He wasn't a craftsman and had never worked with leather, but his creativity got the better of him. Connecting the belts proved far more difficult than he'd expected, and David didn't want to know how much precious time he'd wasted putting them together.

In the end, he wore the finished product with a sense of grim satisfaction.

The belt might not look particularly special to others. But to David, the two parts he had added were essential. Several strips of leather hung awkwardly from his left hip. At first glance, it looked like a tangled mess of leather straps, but everything made sense once he sheathed the longsword in the makeshift sheath.

The weight of the sword hilt pulled the leather downward, creating an odd angle. The sword swayed with each step but didn't cut through the leather straps. It wasn't loose and wouldn't fall, and most importantly, it didn't restrain David's movement.

It was a makeshift sheath—ugly, but efficient.

A smaller version hung at his right hip, designed to hold the kobold's shortsword. Like the other sheath, it wasn't perfect, but it was good enough. The shortsword was tightly secured but could be drawn swiftly if needed. Just like the longsword. Sure, the sheaths would wear out quickly, but David was satisfied with his handiwork.

How about some rest?

His feet led him back to the furniture store they had visited earlier. Even though his body was healed and the Holy Sea refilled with holy power more quickly than before, David still needed to rest.

Unfortunately, the roars of monsters reverberating through the streets reminded him where he was and what was happening.

That didn't sound like a kobold. It sounded like something far more feral.

His hair stood on end as he approached a collapsed wall in the shop and peered outside. They had seen kobolds in this same spot earlier, but a lot had changed since then. Not even a full hour had passed, yet everything felt different.

The sky remained blue and cloudless, the sun shining as if mocking the chaos below. Infected roamed the streets while strange, magical creatures flickered in and out of sight like living nightmares.

David hadn't noticed them earlier, too focused on survival. But now, as he took in the whole picture, the reality hit him: the world wasn't just chaotic—it was spiraling into something unnatural.

Bolts of lightning crackled somewhere to his left. An explosion followed, punctuated by a bestial roar. A large creature dashed across the street, disappearing into a smaller alley. Other creatures—David only caught blurs—pursued it, leaving crackling trails of electricity behind.

Further back, buildings crumbled. David thought he saw something humongous towering over a nearby structure—its shadow, or maybe its outline—but it vanished when he blinked. His stomach churned as he wondered what kind of monster could do that.

"The world is fucked, isn't it?" David murmured.

He turned, spotting something in the corner of the furniture shop: a large wardrobe with an inbuilt mirror.

David leaned closer, frowning at his reflection. He removed the upper part of his tracksuit and swallowed hard as the scars covering his face, arms, and shoulders came into view.

His dark-brown hair was still streaked with blood, though less than before, and his features looked sharp and grim. Only his emerald eyes glowed as vividly as ever. But, other than that, David's appearance had undeniably changed.

Not much could have changed in just a few hours. After all, it had been a day since the transformation began.

But as he stared at his reflection, David couldn't deny it—he looked different. More dangerous. Something about him had shifted, even if it was just the scars, the ice in his expression, or the way his hands hovered near his weapons.

His posture had shifted; his hands hovered near the weapon hilts, poised for the next fight.

"The scars will only get worse. Looks like I'll have to live with them," David chuckled.

Even if he didn't like the scars, they gave him a raw, untamed look. Savage, maybe—but fitting for this new world.

He might only be a Cleric, but with this appearance, no one would take him lightly.

Probably.