After pondering for a while and zoning out for a bit, Luffy was jolted from his daze by a commotion outside the door.
Looking through the windows, he saw the zombies that had been wandering outside the clinic all turn around and sprint forward. Although their speed was merely that of a normal human jogging, for zombies, it was undeniably a full sprint.
Inexplicably, he stood up as well. He pulled open the clinic’s doors one by one and stepped out onto the street.
Not far away—about fifty or sixty meters down the street—the agonizing screams of a human rang out.
"Delicious!"
Luffy unconsciously broke into a sprint down the street for a few steps before coming to an abrupt halt. His brain bombarded him with a relentless command—there was delicious food ahead. Luffy even felt his heart skip a beat.
He forcefully stopped himself from taking another step. He understood that although he retained human thoughts, his physical body was undeniably that of a zombie. Upon hearing a human voice, his brain’s neural network would hyper-sensitively issue a single, overriding command.
To eat, at all costs.
Aside from feeling his own heartbeat, his nose twitched. The living human in the distance—already pinned to the ground and being torn apart by over twenty zombies—emitted an incredibly seductive scent. It continuously compelled him to pounce and feast.
Luffy’s feet began to shuffle forward slowly. Despite his desperate attempts to maintain control, it felt as though two entities resided within his brain—one righteous and one evil—locked in a fierce battle.
The side of him that refused to eat humans represented righteousness. The other, continuously issuing commands to consume flesh, represented evil. As the two sides clashed, the evil half seemed to be gaining the upper hand. Luffy slowly began to walk forward.
"No! I can’t eat humans!"
"Eat! You’re a zombie now. It is only natural for zombies to eat humans!"
"Right, I’m already a zombie now. Let’s eat!"
"Yes, eat! The flesh and blood of the living is the most delicious thing in the world!"
"No, I can’t! I still have my human mind. I cannot eat people!"
...
Due to this intense internal conflict, Luffy’s pace was agonizingly slow. By the time he reached the outer edge of the zombie horde, all the zombies had already stood back up.
Within the center of the circle lay a skeleton with only a few scraps of dark brown flesh clinging to it. Not a single piece of intact meat remained on its body; it had been completely devoured by the zombies. Because the brain was protected by the skull, only the scalp and facial tissue had been torn away, leaving the brain tissue completely intact. At this moment, the remains had clearly zombified. Since all of its muscles and tendons had been eaten, the skeletal frame could no longer move. The only parts still capable of motion were its upper and lower jawbones, which snapped open and shut incessantly.
Staring at this zombie, Luffy felt a lingering sense of dread, yet he also felt a wave of relief. He knew for a fact that if a living human were standing in front of him right now, he would have undoubtedly lunged at them. His brain was currently flooded with an intense feeling of disappointment. It was exactly like the feeling he used to get in school—starving and barely making it to the end of classes, only to get delayed, arrive late to the cafeteria, and find all the food gone.
Even though he was now a zombie, he rejected the idea of eating humans from the bottom of his heart. He didn’t consider himself a good person, and he could even stomach the idea of killing someone, but cannibalism was a line he absolutely could not cross.
With these thoughts, he quickly left the devastated street. He guessed that the recent victim was a survivor who had been hiding in their car for the past half-month. Because Luffy had previously lured a massive horde of zombies to the front of the clinic, clearing the immediate vicinity, the desperate survivor had likely chosen that exact moment to abandon their vehicle and make a run for it. But after half a month of enduring extreme hunger and thirst, their stamina must have been completely depleted. In the end, they hadn’t even made it off the street before being swarmed and devoured by the zombies.
He wasn’t sure if there were any other living humans left on this street, but what if there were? Until he could figure out a way to curb his craving for human flesh, he decided it was best to stay as far away from the living as possible.
He silently slipped back into the clinic and shut the doors. Retreating to a patient room in the deepest part of the building, he wanted to ensure he wouldn’t be triggered by the commotion of the zombies outside again.
Despite becoming a zombie, he still enjoyed sitting down and thinking things through. Judging from his own reactions and those of the zombies on the street, Luffy theorized that ordinary zombies did not experience constant hunger. Once the commotion had died down, his own feelings of starvation and bloodlust vanished.
However, the moment a noise or the scent of a living human appeared, their brains would issue commands of hunger, turning the zombies incomparably bloodthirsty. Even he, an intelligent zombie, had been completely unable to maintain control. When there were no disturbances or living humans around, zombies seemed to enter a hibernation-like state. They would simply wander aimlessly, most likely to minimize their energy consumption. Alternatively, it was possible that zombies didn’t burn any energy at all—Luffy wasn’t entirely sure yet.
He decided to conduct an experiment. He would stay in this room for a day or two to see if he naturally grew hungry.
He then realized something else. Over the past half-month of observation, he had noticed that zombies only ate; they never excreted. He had yet to see a single zombie squat by the side of the street to take a shit. Perhaps their bodies completely digested the human flesh they consumed. As for the exact biological process behind that digestion, it remained to be verified.
Although they digested food relatively quickly, Luffy had a faint feeling that there had to be a limit. If he could find an alternative food source for zombies to substitute for human flesh, getting full on that might allow him to resist the temptation of living humans. After all, a zombie couldn’t just eat until it exploded, right? In the past half-month, he had never seen a zombie’s stomach burst from overeating.
It was true that a zombie’s primary instinct was bloodlust, but he reasoned that this instinct had to be rooted in a fundamental drive for survival. If they ate until their stomachs ruptured, spilling whatever they consumed out onto the ground, it would defeat the purpose of surviving altogether.
A renowned biology professor had once visited his university for a lecture. The professor had stated, "For all things in this world, even organisms too microscopic for the naked eye to see, their most primal instinct is the instinct to survive!" The professor had even provided a vivid example: "You are human. It’s true that you want to live. But even if I were a tiny bacterium, I would still want to survive!"
This kind of survival was a concept that transcended the survival of a single individual. A person might die, but if they have descendants, their bloodline survives. When a cell undergoes mitosis, it appears that its original body ceases to exist. However, because it splits into two new cells carrying its genetic material, it is still considered to be surviving. When a virus releases its genetic material into a host, it guarantees that its species will not perish. Therefore, the most fundamental instinct of every species is the drive to survive.
This was Luffy’s theory. As to whether it was actually true, he would begin experimenting on it just as soon as he verified whether or not zombies could feel starvation.
The sky gradually darkened. Unlike the nights of the past, when the city would be brightly lit and bustling with traffic, the post-apocalyptic city was filled with a deathly silence. The only disruptions were occasional, inexplicable noises echoing through the night air.
He buried his head between his knees. He wanted to cry, but no tears came. He missed his parents.
But ever since the apocalypse first broke out, back before the communication networks had gone down, he had been entirely unable to reach his family. Two days prior to the initial outbreak, right after waiting for him to estimate his college entrance exam scores, his parents had confidently flown off to Country M for a business trip.
The city they were visiting had an incredibly high population density. Deep down, he knew the chances of his parents surviving were dismally low. Furthermore, even with his new zombie body, trying to travel to Country M was nothing more than a pipe dream. The entire Pacific Ocean stood between him and that distant shore.
If he ever wanted to search for his parents, his absolute first priority was to survive. After that, he needed to slowly grow stronger.
At this thought, another possibility struck Luffy...