Chapter 614: Her Experience
Chapter 614: Chapter 614: Her Experience
While hunting for Puppet Zombies, Nina Jacobs noticed fresh waves of the undead surging toward the South Riven Base.
"Is the zombie horde making too much noise?" she wondered.
However, she had anticipated this scenario from the very beginning. Unlike the desolate surroundings of the Tomorrow Base in Keldorn, there were simply too many roads leading to South Riven.
Several Little Zombie Rats observed the area from high vantage points. Through their eyes, she could see the current situation with perfect clarity. It wasn’t just human zombies; the number of zombified animals was also multiplying.
The presence of zombified animals caught her attention. Nina directed a rat’s gaze toward a particularly large specimen. Since its fur had completely rotted away, she could only vaguely identify it as a zombie bear. The creature’s sharp claws glinted coldly in the dark. Every so often, it would rear up on its hind legs. When a massive boulder blocked its path, it swung its metallic claws, instantly smashing the rock to pieces.
It was actually a Gold Element Mutated Zombie.
"This is the one," she decided.
Nina started to Control a Little Zombie Rat to approach the beast. The zombie bear was standing alone by the side of the road, seemingly sniffing the air to determine which direction to take. Suddenly, a Little Zombie Rat leaped onto its back and viciously tore off a chunk of rotting flesh, sending the giant creature into an instant frenzy. The bear thrashed its deadly claws, trying to swat the rat, but the tiny undead creature quickly scurried away in a specific direction.
Watching the zombie bear give chase, Nina prepared herself. At that moment, she was positioned behind an abandoned building far at the rear of the zombie horde. To mask her scent, she had been hiding inside her safe house. This spot was quite a distance from the abandoned dam. There were no drones patrolling at night, ensuring no one would discover her.
The Little Zombie Rat soon vanished from sight. Just as the enraged bear darted around frantically, a human silhouette appeared right in front of it.
ROAR!
Before the zombie bear could pounce, rows of rock-solid Stone Spikes erupted from the frozen earth. Seeing the beast trapped within the stone cage, Nina swiftly summoned her Divine Wood.
The bear was massive, and since she was already controlling four Puppet Zombies, Nina thought subjugating it might be a stretch. To her surprise, the bear in the cage abruptly stopped roaring.
By now, a significant number of ordinary zombies had been drawn to the commotion.
"Go kill them!"
Nina wanted to test the combat prowess of her new zombie bear. By the time she retreated into her wasteland-style safe house, the bear had already shredded several nearby zombies with its razor-sharp claws.
Nina checked the time. It was about time she headed back. She issued the same command to the bear as she had to her other four Puppet Zombies, then activated her Speed Element Superpower and dashed back toward the exterior of the abandoned dam.
The effects of the Stone Smoke Bomb were still lingering, though they had faded considerably. Many zombies were swarming the area, only to tumble into the deep trenches the team had dug in advance.
Upon her return, Nina saw Adrian Paige leading a group of people to slaughter the zombies attempting to scale the dam. The biting cold of the night had left a layer of white frost on their brows. Meanwhile, Nina moved so fast that she was practically invisible to the naked eye.
Only after she slipped back into her small partitioned room did she finally breathe a sigh of relief. Opening the system interface, she checked the status of each puppet. She found that the four Puppet Zombies she had controlled earlier had already slaughtered over four hundred zombies, all of which had been converted into her System Experience. What pleasantly surprised her was the newest addition—the puppet zombie bear. In such a short span of time, it had already taken out nearly two hundred zombies, and the kill count was still rapidly rising.
"Looks like I’ll be raking in a ton of experience this time," she murmured.
Nina had already added the people around her who had killed the most zombies to her system’s teammate function. Every zombie these individuals killed during the horde invasion would also contribute to her System Experience. However, she was still a long way from upgrading to a Level 8 System.
Listening to the sounds of combat outside, Nina assessed her remaining Superpower Energy. Her reserves were still plentiful. When she had fought the horde that afternoon, she had only exerted the strength of an Intermediate Superpower User. But since most people were currently recovering their Superpowers and stamina, she had to pretend to rest.
After resting a little longer, Nina stepped out of the private partitioned room Shirley Lucas had prepared for her.
"We can handle things out here for now. You should go back to sleep," Adrian said when he saw her emerge.
"I can’t sleep," Nina replied. With so much free experience up for grabs outside, she wouldn’t be able to rest easy even if she tried to sleep.
"The zombies are practically delivering themselves to our doorstep," Julian Wells remarked as he walked out with a few others, followed closely by Tyson Hughes.
High-intensity floodlights illuminated the perimeter of the dam. The areas beyond the light’s reach resembled a pool of pitch-black abyss, hiding who knew how many monstrous horrors. Suddenly, a blinding flash of lightning shot out from the abyss toward the group. It came from a roaring Thunder Element Mutated Zombie with a gaping maw. It charged out from the undead masses, shrieking from below.
BANG!
A Diamond Shield easily blocked the lightning strike. Immediately after, a Fireball hurled straight toward the creature’s face!
ROAR!
The Thunder Zombie was clearly an Intermediate-level threat. A Thunder Ball collided with the Fireball, erupting in blinding flashes of blue and red light. In a fraction of a second, the Thunder Ball was completely swallowed by the Fireball. Moving at incredible speed, the Fireball slammed into the Thunder Zombie, sending it flying several meters away before incinerating it in an instant.
"So fast!" Sylvia Shawn exclaimed.
Julian was equally shaken, realizing her power was truly unfathomable. She had dispatched an Intermediate Zombie in less than a minute. Even though they were also Intermediate Superpower Users, the gap in their strengths seemed worlds apart.
"Yeah, it’s terrifyingly unpredictable," Tyson agreed after killing a Mutated Zombie that had tried to launch a sneak attack.
In just the few months they hadn’t seen her, Nina’s abilities had advanced by leaps and bounds. It was no wonder the base thought so highly of her. Looking across the entirety of Drakonia, they would likely be hard-pressed to find a single person who could match her.
Despite being the dead of night, the sky above the abandoned dam was unusually bright. Looking out from the high walls of the South Riven Base, the distant glow seemed to burn unceasingly throughout the night.
It wasn’t until the following morning that the South Riven Base command center compiled the latest statistics on the zombie horde. From yesterday afternoon to the present, the number of zombies swarming the base had astonishingly decreased by nearly eighty thousand!
"Really? That many?!" someone exclaimed joyfully.
"But based on our base’s combat logs, we’ve only eliminated thirty thousand at most..." Felix Vaughn pointed out.
This meant that of those eighty thousand dead zombies, fifty thousand had been killed by the group from City D.
"More than that. There were new zombies joining the horde overnight," Kevin Lewis added. "The number they killed is definitely higher than fifty thousand."
"Thanks to them, the base should be able to survive this," Akira Gallagher said. He had been awake almost all night, and his heart was now brimming with gratitude.
Although the crisis brought by the zombie horde was far from over, that group had given the people of South Riven Base a beacon of hope.
"Everyone, perk up! Today, our base is going on the offensive!" Kevin declared. If yesterday was marked by panic and despair, then today was the time for them to strike back.
By the fourth day of the zombie horde at South Riven Base, the number of enemies had plummeted to just over fifty thousand. The base had deployed its aerial forces, luring the surrounding zombies away in different directions while barricading all roads leading to the stronghold.
Though it came at a significant cost, they had at least managed to cut off the source of the horde. Of course, this success was partly due to Adrian’s advice. The Red Lotus Boxes they had delivered via drones, in particular, played a crucial role in diverting the zombies.