UGH!
Now that she was so close, the stench of zombie flesh and blood could no longer mask the savory scent of living human flesh. Fortunately, Luffy’s stomach was already full, or he would have absolutely taken a bite out of her.
Plump and juicy...
Aside from the scent of human flesh, there was also a distinct odor coming from the woman’s nether regions...
It smelled like she hadn’t bathed in days.
"FUCK!" Luffy cursed inwardly. Had the woman not pinned down the hand holding his screwdriver when she sat down, he would have immediately stabbed her with a backhand strike.
He thought indignantly, "I’m a mild germaphobe, okay?"
However, zombies didn’t breathe. The various smells acted like a virus, infecting every air molecule around him before drifting into his nose and being absorbed by his cranial nerves.
Recalling the woman’s agile movements from earlier, Luffy knew he wouldn’t be able to kill her in one blow. He had no choice but to desperately endure it.
The woman continued to cry for a while. Perhaps because she had pinched a nerve in her leg and it went numb, she shifted her position and moved to another spot. Only then was Luffy finally freed.
"This is my chance!"
The woman’s back was completely exposed to him. Luffy sat up silently and raised the screwdriver in his hand.
Suddenly feeling a palpitation of terror, the woman whipped her head around!
What met her eyes was a relatively clean face, yet it was covered in dark red, bloodshot veins and bore dull, ashen pupils.
"A zombie!" she thought.
That was the very last thought to cross her mind. Due to her sudden turn, the screwdriver that was originally aimed at her temple plunged straight into her right eye instead. It pierced through the socket and scrambled her brain.
A zombie’s fatal weak point was the brain, and the same went for living humans. With her brain instantly destroyed, the woman couldn’t even let out a single sound.
Having killed the woman, Luffy went back to laying low among the pile of corpses.
There were still two men who might return. What if he went out now and ran into them head-on?
Speed was not his strong suit, nor was hand-to-hand combat! Right now, his only advantage lay in the element of surprise. Nobody would ever expect a zombie to hide among a pile of corpses when facing living humans, only to suddenly deliver a fatal strike.
He waited for about ten minutes. Just as Luffy was about to lose his patience, the voice of the man called Liu rang out.
"Ma’am, we’ve searched the entire supermarket and didn’t find anything unusual!"
"Ma’am... Ma’am..."
Luffy maintained his previous dead-body posture, his ashen pupils staring blankly as Liu and the other man looked at each other in dismay.
"Brother Liu, this..."
The man next to Liu stared at the dead woman, his mouth hanging open, entirely at a loss for words.
After a long while, Liu shook his head and scanned their surroundings again. "This place is too weird," he said sternly. "We need to get out of here right now!"
The man beside him nodded. "Exactly. Besides, we already know the secret to evolution. As long as we gather ten Corpse Pouches and swallow them, we’ll get infected with the zombie virus and have a ninety percent chance of becoming an Evolver."
Liu nodded. "That’s right. Let’s move!"
The two men scrambled away, disappearing from sight in the blink of an eye. Luffy finally breathed a sigh of relief.
The apocalypse was far too dangerous. If he hadn’t laid low and struck by surprise, he would have been the one dead.
He didn’t get up immediately. That encounter was too close for comfort; it was better to lie there and recover from the shock first.
After lying there for a while, Luffy suddenly sat up. He picked up the iron box that had fallen beside the man’s corpse and poured out the Corpse Pouch inside.
The Corpse Pouch was about the size of a thumb tip and semi-transparent. Its outer layer was a flexible, thin membrane, while the inside was filled with a liquid of the exact same color.
Ten Corpse Pouches provided a ninety percent chance of becoming an Evolver.
Recalling what the man had just said, Luffy couldn’t help but marvel. The world truly never lacked geniuses. How did they figure out that piece of information?
Yet, he also felt a wave of dejection. Before the apocalypse, he had been a highly successful golden boy. But after the apocalypse?
Right now, he was nothing more than a walking corpse—no heartbeat, no breath, unable to smile, unable to cry, and unable to speak.
At this thought, he couldn’t help but clench his fists.
Suddenly, a bizarre, inexplicable fragrance wafted from his palm. It radiated an extreme temptation, stirring a fierce urge to feed within Luffy.
He opened his hand. He had crushed the Corpse Pouch, leaving his entire hand covered in its liquid.
"UGH!"
Luffy didn’t understand. At some point without him even realizing it, he had brought his liquid-coated hand to his mouth and was licking it clean.
An intensely euphoric sensation surged from his brain, spreading through his nerves and rushing to every corner of his body.
Luffy could confirm that subtle changes were occurring in his body. Because they were so miniscule, he couldn’t perceive them accurately, but he knew they were beneficial.
Thinking of this, Luffy picked up the file and went to work on the head of the zombie lying beneath him.
He wasn’t as skilled as the dead man had been, but it was just prying open a skull, wasn’t it? It merely took a bit more effort.
"I see. Not every zombie has a Corpse Pouch in its head. Perhaps they only form once a zombie has evolved to a certain level!"
His luck was quite poor. After prying open four zombie skulls in a row without finding a single Corpse Pouch, Luffy arrived at this conclusion.
It wasn’t until he pried open the tenth zombie’s head that he finally found another Corpse Pouch. He then cracked open all the remaining zombies behind the bar counter, but found no others.
"It seems zombies with Corpse Pouches are rare. The probability is probably only one in ten, maybe even lower!" Luffy concluded. "Oh, right! She said they were only three short of evolving! That means that woman and her group already had seven of them. Gah, how could I forget?"
Realizing this, Luffy crouched down and began searching the woman’s body. After a brief pat-down, he found an iron box in her jacket pocket. Opening it, he saw seven Corpse Pouches resting quietly inside.
"Haha!" Luffy laughed internally. Robbery really was the fastest way to get rich!
He picked one up and tossed it into his mouth. The pouch’s membrane melted instantly, and the liquid flowed smoothly over his tongue. That euphoric sensation washed over him once again—a feeling that could only be experienced, not described...
"If I eat all of them, there should be more changes besides just feeling good, right?"
With that thought, Luffy tipped the iron box back, pouring the rest of the Corpse Pouches into his mouth and swallowing them whole.
"So good! UGH!"
At first, it was an extreme rush of pleasure, but Luffy instantly sensed that something was wrong. His head suddenly began to swell, feeling as if it were going to explode.
"Ugh, did I just overdose?" he thought, clutching his head in agony.
He suddenly recalled scenes from television shows where taking too much of a drug could be fatal. His current situation was probably about the same!
Gradually, the swelling pain in his head subsided. He breathed a sigh of relief. Thankfully, he hadn’t died.
As he stretched his limbs, another bizarre sight made his scalp tingle with dread.
He noticed that his exposed skin had cracked into fingernail-sized squares, much like earth splintering during a severe drought. Between the cracked squares, he could even see dark red muscle tissue.
"Why is this happening?" he wondered.
Luffy was starting to lose his cool.
He pulled open his shirt, revealing that his chest was in the exact same state. As he moved his arms, the skin on them began peeling off in flakes. He clenched his fists; his hands were the same.
With his skin shedding, his entire muscular system was exposed, looking as if he had been skinned alive.
Luffy cursed internally, "Motherfucker." Was this pushing him further and further away from ever being human again?
Sighing, he climbed out of the pile of corpses. The moment his body moved, the skin all over him began shedding in droves.
Everyone had a bit of OCD to some extent. Driven by his compulsion, Luffy had no choice but to strip off his clothes entirely, allowing the dead skin to fall completely away from his body.
He looked down at himself. Right now, he probably looked just like one of those human muscular anatomy charts hanging in a clinic.
Even the skin down there was gone!
"ARGH, FUCK!"
Luffy howled in his mind!
Dwelling on it, he habitually brushed his forehead with his hand. "What the actual hell!"
UGH!
His scalp, along with his hair, peeled right off, leaving him clutching a handful of hair!
The urge to just end it all and die suddenly welled up inside him once again.