Rise of the Strongest War God

Chapter 13: First passive skill

"What about him?" Alice asked, pointing at the boy.

Luke glanced at him and asked, "What do you plan to do now?"

The boy raised his head, looking crestfallen. "I don't know. If the world is in chaos, like you said, what can I really do? I'm not like you guys who can fight the zombies."

Luke didn't respond immediately. After a moment, he said, "I can take you with us, but you've to follow my orders without question while you are with us. You take your time to decide. We'll come back in a while."

Saying this, he turned around to walk away when the boy suddenly said, "I agree. I'll go with you guys. But can you please put my father to rest too? He has become like my mother after she bit him."

"He is already taken care of." Alice said, pointing toward the male zombie's corpse on the other side of the room before walking behind Luke.

The boy turned his head around and when he saw his father's corpse, his eyes couldn't help but turn red.

"Cover them up or something while you wait for us. Just don't go out of the house as you'll die as soon as you do." Ben warned him before running after Luke and Alice.

…

After leaving the house, the trio went and cleared 8 more houses, one after another, and killed over 30 zombies. Unfortunately, in these houses, they didn't find any survivors.

Out of these 30, Luke killed over ten zombies and levelled up to the level 3. He immediately put his two free status points into stamina.

Alice killed a couple more zombies than him and she also levelled up to the level three. Ben killed the rest with their help and he was now level 2 and could level up any time now.

After killing all these zombies, they got 10 red treasure boxes and three spell books. Unfortunately, their luck wasn't good when they opened the boxes as 6 of them were empty.

From the remaining 4, these got a pair of level 3 velocity boots, two level three protection vests and a level 5 Rake's sword replica.

Since Ben was the slowest among them, he took the velocity boots. Alice took the Rake's sword replica and one of the vests. Luke took the remaining vest.

Out of 3 skill books, Luke only got one while Alice and Ben got one each. But immediately after they picked them, they handed them over to him.

Luke knew they were indirectly saying that they accepted him as their leader. Luke didn't act polite and accepted the skill books with a slight but firm nod. As long as they didn't betray him, he was willing to be responsible for them.

After distributing the equipment, he checked the skill books one by one.

[Rapid steps level 3 (first order passive skill): Increases the user's agility by 3 points permanently.]

[Whirlwind level 1 (first order active skill): Creates a small tornado to engulf the enemy. Consumes 5 mana point per second.]

[Incinerate level 1 (first order active skill): Enshrouds the enemy in the fire elemental mana and sets them ablaze. Skill's destructive power depends on the skill's level and order. Consumes 5 mana points per activation.]

'Nice. We got a passive agility enhancing skill.' Luke became excited when he saw the agility type passive skill.

Passive skills don't have any limit. One can learn as many as they can. As the name suggests, the passive skills are passive in nature. They don't require the user to operate them consciously, nor they require mana or anything else to work. This is why they are very popular among the evolvers.

He even heard someone say in his last life, more times than not, it is not an active skill that determines who will live or die in a fight to death, but the number and quality of the passive skills. This was why Luke didn't hesitate and immediately learned it.

The skill book shone brightly before vanishing into thin air. At the same time, a small white rune appeared beside the black rune of the Berserk skill and his agility shot up by 3 points.

Seeing that he learnt a skill without telling them, Alice raised her brows slightly, but remembering that she had already accepted him as the leader, she didn't say anything.

As for Ben, he didn't show any dissatisfaction at all and just waited to see if he would get any of the remaining skills or not.

Seeing that neither of them objected, Luke nodded in satisfaction. He then asked, "Ben, how much is your mana count?"

"It's 15, no it's 17 now." Ben replied.

Luke nodded before throwing the [Whirlwind] skill to Ben and the Incinerate skill to Alice.

"It's for me? How do I learn it?" Ben excitedly asked.

"Don't you want to read its summery first?" Luke asked.

"No, since you think it's a good skill for me, then it must be." Ben straightforwardly said.

Luke smiled. "Alright. Learning it isn't difficult. You just need to think in your mind that you want to learn it and you'll learn it automatically."

Ben followed the instructions and learned the skill. After that, his face became red with excitement and he almost started dancing.

Alice saw this scene and smile lightly, her smile like a blooming flower, too beautiful. Unfortunately, neither Luke nor Ben was looking at her at this time and missed it.

She then closed her eyes and when she saw the information of the skill, her eyes glinted with excitement and thought, 'With my fire manipulation, this will become even more terrifying.' She then glanced at Luke gratefully before learning it.

As for Luke, he had opened his status window to check how much he had improved.

[Luke Greyson

Level: 3

Race: Human

Class: None

Title: None

Strength: 15 (12 +3) / Agility: 18 (16+2) / Health: 11 / Stamina: 10 (14) / Mana: 28 (31) / INT: 100

External active skills: Berserk Level 5 (First order skill)

Passive skills: Rapid steps level 3 (First order skill)]

'Hm? I'm not getting any additional points after killing these low levelled zombies.' He thought. He had killed over 10 zombies but he only got 6 additional attribute points from them.

After resting for a while to recover their stamina, just as they were about to walk out of the house they were in, they heard some disturbance outside.

When Luke peeked out to see what was happening, his expression changed completely.