Summer had noticed one crucial detail over the past few hours: as time passed, more and more feral zombies were beginning to appear across the city streets.
Initially, she had been worried that the rarity of ferals would severely hinder her growth. Now that she was traveling with four human awakeners, they also needed to kill zombies to grow stronger and master their newly unlocked talents.
Luckily, humans did not need to consume the glowing orange cores to gain power, or Summer would have been genuinely mad.
Still, she could only gain experience points when she personally delivered the final blow to an infected creature.
With the sudden spike in the feral population, there were now more than enough mutated zombies to go around.
Another full day had passed since the human family had unlocked their talents.
In that short span of time, Jacob, Ella, and Ilas had learned to use their abilities with impressive efficiency, reaching a point where each of them could comfortably solo an ordinary feral zombie with slight help from Summer.
Each of them, with the sole exception of Mary, had successfully slain a dozen ferals and over a hundred ordinary zombies during their coordinated sweeps.
Summer stopped on top of a low concrete wall and summoned her interface to review her growth.
[Status]
Name: Summer
Evolution: Zombie Girl - Feral (70/100)
Racial Trait: Undead Body
Class Skill: Puppeteer
Level: 9 (100/900)
HP: 130
Mana: 90
STR: 13 | AGI: 18 | CONST: 13 | INT: 9
Free Attributes: 16
Skill(s): None
Equipped Gear:
Iron Brawler Gauntlets (Common)
Swift Strider Boots (Common)
She was only one level away from reaching Level 10 and unlocking her Elite Evolution, but she still needed thirty more feral zombie cores to satisfy her Feral evolution progress requirement.
She was about to close the screen when a thunderous, cannon-like bang echoed from several miles away.
The force of the distant explosion was so immense that the concrete wall beneath her boots faintly trembled.
A split second later, a massive, collective roar from tens of thousands of infected creatures echoed through the urban canyons, filling the air with sheer chaos.
"What’s going on?" Jacob asked in a grave tone, his hand instantly going to his aluminum bat as he stared toward the distant plume of white smoke rising in the sky.
"It... it seems like every zombie in the district was attracted by that noise," Ella said, her dark brows furrowing deeply. "Should we check it out?"
"No!" Mary cut in instantly, reaching out and grabbing Ella’s sleeve to pull her back. "There are thousands of them rushing toward that sound! Going there is absolute foolishness!"
She looked at Jacob, her eyes wide with frantic worry. Among their small group, Mary remained the only true deadweight.
She refused to fight, complained constantly, and panicked at every shadow. Even Summer, with her simple and straightforward mind, found Mary mildly annoying at times.
She even considered throwing her as zombie food.
While Mary only wanted to protect her family from harm, Jacob secretly felt her excessive anxiety was hindering their daughters’ growth.
But this time, Jacob silently agreed with his wife. Mary was right. Whatever had caused that thunderous explosion, rushing straight into the heart of a massive zombie migration with their current numbers was suicidal.
"Let’s stop hunting for today and retreat," Jacob decided firmly.
He turned around to call the group back, but noticed that Summer had not moved a single inch from her perch.
"Chubby, ahem, Summer?" Ella called out, nearly slipping up on her secret nickname.
Summer tore her glowing red gaze away from the smoke in the distance and turned to look at the four humans.
"I am going there," she said plainly in her quiet, raspy voice.
Ella opened her mouth to offer her support, but Jacob quickly reached out and caught his daughter’s arm, shaking his head.
"If that is your decision, then we will be waiting for you back at our old camp," Jacob said, keeping his tone respectful and calm. "Take care, Summer."
He gently pulled the obviously dissatisfied Ella and Ilas along, leading them and Mary back toward the safety of the three-story residential building.
With their newly awakened talents, reinforced gear, and combat experience, the family was more than capable of handling any scattered stragglers on their way back, so Summer was not worried about their safety in the slightest.
Instead, she focused her mind and summoned her horde. With her Intelligence attribute now raised to 9, her Puppeteer capacity had expanded to forty-five controlled zombies.
Every single one of them had been handpicked from the strongest zombies she had encountered.
The horde was currently led by Two in his dusty business suit, while One managed to gain her favor and become a deputy leader.
"Two," Summer spoke aloud, even though she could issue mental commands directly through her class skill. "You and squad... clear any zombies wandering into our base."
She turned her eyes toward the tall, charred male zombie standing beside him. "One... you will come with me."
She preferred speaking her orders out loud. It made her feel like a true queen commanding her loyal vanguard.
[Why are you bringing One with us? In a massive chaotic battle like that, he is as useless as dirt.]
Summer did not answer the voice in her mind, leaping off the wall and sprinting down the ruined street.
[Don’t tell me you are taking him along just for the experience? Pfft... he is literally a mindless corpse.]
"One is not mindless," Summer corrected out loud, her small feet blurring with high speed as she bounded across the hood of an abandoned car. "He is cute. And also tall."
[Cute? Little girl, you seriously need to check your rotting eyes. And tall? You are just extremely short.]
"Shut up!" Summer ground her teeth in annoyance.
She was moving far too fast to notice that the tall male zombie running behind her, struggling with all his physical might to keep up with her high Agility speed, had caught every single word she said.
For a fleeting microsecond, a faint, unreadable glimmer crossed One’s dull eyes, and the corner of his pale, decayed lips twitched upward into a tiny, fleeting smile.
Though his face immediately returned to its expressionless, mindless state, a subtle and remarkable change was quietly stirring deep within his zombie core, completely unnoticed by both Summer and the system.
Within a few minutes, Summer and One reached the edge of the intersection where the thunderous gunshot had taken place.
Summer crouched low on a second-story fire escape, her red eyes widening in surprise as she peered down at the scene below.
A small group of surviving humans clad in tactical military gear was currently surrounded on all sides, fighting for their lives against a wave of infected.
The group consisted of five heavily armed male soldiers and a young high school girl. The girl was hysterically crying and screaming in fear, yet her footwork was surprisingly sharp, allowing her to efficiently evade every claw that lunged at her.
Meanwhile, the five soldiers fought bravely back to back, using their rifles and blunt weapons to hold the perimeter, even though their chances of survival were practically zero.
Because surrounding them was not just an ordinary horde: there were at least a hundred glowing-eyed feral zombies circling the perimeter like hungry wolves.
"Yummy..." Summer mouthed softly, her dark eyelashes fluttering in pure delight.
It seemed her luck was truly extraordinary today. A grand feast of thirty-plus feral cores had practically walked onto a silver platter right in front of her.
Down in the dusty intersection, despair gripped Angela and the surviving soldiers as the circle of infected grew tighter by the second.
The ferals were not even rushing in all at once. True to their twisted nature, they were slowly circling the tired humans, enjoying the sight of their prey wearing themselves out in sheer terror.
The survivors called these specific mutated monsters ’Sadist Zombies.’ Unlike ordinary zombies that bit blindly out of simple hunger, these ferals possessed just enough cruel cunning to enjoy torturing their victims before tearing them apart.
Robin and his men knew that even if they managed to expend every last drop of their mana to clear the ordinary zombies, the agonizing fate awaiting them at the hands of the ferals would be far worse than a quick death.
Two of the soldiers were already contemplating pulling their own triggers or stepping into a claw strike just to avoid being captured alive.
Angela was on the verge of giving up as well, her eyes streaming with tears, until the deafening roar of a heavy diesel engine shattered the heavy atmosphere.
A massive, armored transport truck tore straight through the back wall of a ruined storefront, slamming into the rear of the zombie horde and crushing dozens of infected beneath its massive tires.
Through the cracked, blood-splattered windshield, Angela caught sight of a familiar, icy face behind the wheel.
"That’s Boss!" Captain Robin screamed in overwhelming joy, wiping blood and dirt from his eyes. "She didn’t abandon us!"
Even Angela felt a wave of relief wash over her, tears of hope springing to her eyes, until a gentle, unexpected tap landed on her padded shoulder from behind followed by a sweet female voice.
"Hi, I am Summer. And you?"