Chapter 4 - I’m A What? (1)

Ashton woke up with a start. He could hear the howling sound of the winds as thick raindrops knocked on the window. He was a sweating mess, all of his clothes were drenched as if he had been outside in the rain and not sleeping in his bed. He looked around only to realise he was back in his bed.

"How am I in my room?" Ashton mumbled, "Was it a nightmare?"

As soon as he recalled what happened, and his heart started pumping crazily. He could feel the blood rushing through his veins. Strangely, he wasn't in pain anymore. This made him think that maybe he really had a nightmare.

But then again, he vividly remembered how he escaped from the enclosure only to run into an undead who bit him. The pain he felt back then, there was no way in hell it was just a nightmare. There was only one way to prove whether it was a nightmare or not.

Ashton threw the blanket off of himself to check himself for wounds. But there were none. Not a single scratch was on his body. His legs were fine, there were no signs of any harm done by the trap to him. He then touched his shoulder where the undead had bitten him, and sure enough, there was nothing there either.

"I... was it really a nightmare?" Ashton mumbled and jumped out of his bed and looked underneath it, the supplies he had been saving for weeks, were gone, "There is no way in hell I hallucinated about gathering those things."

The absence of the sack full of items seemed to make him believe that what happened was indeed true and not a nightmare. He could feel something was off but he couldn't point out what. Everything contradicted itself. His missing supplies pointed at him leaving the enclosure as he had planned and remembered, but the lack of wounds on his body said otherwise.

Ashton couldn't think of anything that could possibly explain what had happened there. All of a sudden, he remembered someone saved him from the clutches of the undead. Maybe it was that person who brought him back there. But even if that was true, it wouldn't explain the disappearance of his wounds.

He went back to his bed. His Head had begun hurting because of all the thinking he had been doing. But in his panicked state, he hadn't noticed something blinking in front of his eyes. No, it wasn't like he hadn't noticed it, he thought his eyes were playing tricks on him because he got up too quickly. But now that he was back in bed and the thing keep blinking in front of his eyes, he could no longer ignore it.

"What is it?" Ashton tried to touch whatever the yellow blinking thing was, but his hand phased right through it, "So annoying! Just get out of my sight already!"

[Calibration in progress...]

All of a sudden, his head started pounding like crazy. He was fine just now but not anymore. He tightly wrapped his arms around the head trying to stop the pain. The pain soon spread from his head to his entire body. It left as if his body was being torn apart and put back together simultaneously.

The endless cycle of pain continued. He could feel his bones break and then be joined together again. This kept going on until the yellow shining thing turned red and then turned black. As soon as it turned black, the pain he was going through stopped. He wasn't sweating anymore. Nor were his bones out of place. Even his heart wasn't pounding anymore.

While taking irregular breaths, Ashton placed the palm of his hand on his chest, to calm himself. But as soon as he did that he realised something. It wasn't that his heart had stopped pounding... it had stopped beating altogether.

He immediately jumped to check his pulse and he felt nothing there either. He started panicking again and as he did, some black letters appeared in front of him. He had never seen those symbols before in his life but somehow he knew exactly what those symbols meant.

[Transformation successful!]

[You have been turned into <Error!!! The requested class doesn't exist.>]

[Sending a petition to the administrator to resolve the issue...]

[Petition rejected... initiating protocol.]

[The system can resolve the issue itself...]

[Issue resolved!]

[You have inherited the genes from a <Class C Zombie> and a <Class A Vampire>]

[You have been turned into a Zompire Hybrid.]

[Due to the complexity of your new DNA, it would take 7 days for your powers to manifest. Till then, you are free to live as a <Class E Human Being>]

"What the hell is going on here!?"

Ashton didn't know what was going on as his heart started beating again and the black icon hovering before his face turned yellow again. The day kept getting weirder and weirder with every passing second.. However, before Ashton could question anything else, a wave of drowsiness consumed him and he fell asleep.