Chapter 461 - 396: The 2 People Risen from the Dead
Chapter 461: Chapter 396: The 2 People Risen from the Dead
While Morhaven and Orinburg were growing safer and more prosperous, bases all across the world—large and small alike—were in turmoil.
First among them was Azuregard City Base. Under Milton Adler’s leadership, they had defeated wave after wave of zombies, but the base had been severely weakened in the process.
He used a satellite communicator to call his older brother, Titan Adler, only to hear that the situation at the Argent base was even more dire.
At that moment, he was immensely grateful that he had once met Flora Bloom, and that she had given him a school of Japanese halfbeaks.
The school of halfbeaks in his care had now multiplied to a number he could no longer count. They guarded the waters outside Azuregard City with an iron grip, and no marine creature dared to invade the city’s coast.
Six months into the apocalypse, food and resources outside Azuregard City were scarce. It was thanks to this school of halfbeaks, which hunted other sea creatures to provide food for the superpower users in the base.
Meanwhile, in every corner of the world, wherever there were humans, there were zombies. The more populous a base, the more zombies it attracted.
It wasn’t just Azuregard City and the Argent base. Mirefall, Janton, Vespera, Wucheng, Serephos City, and the Tibetan Plateau were all enduring the apocalypse’s baptism.
Janton, a city that had been bustling and prosperous six months ago, was now crawling with zombies. Desiccated corpses littered the streets.
Strangely, however, the mountainous area around the equestrian club where Flora Bloom and her group had once stayed remained full of life, with lush grass and trees. If Flora Bloom were here, she would have seen that the horse king, Shadow—the one she had once wanted to take into her pocket dimension—was now leading a herd where every horse was sleek and strong. Moreover, a pair of enormous, fleshy wings were folded against Shadow’s back. When unfurled, they were large enough to let him soar through the sky.
It wasn’t just him. Six months ago, only he and the other horse that Flora Bloom had ridden had gained sentience and become evolved creatures.
Now, six months later, every horse in the herd had a sleek, glossy coat and eyes filled with intelligence.
More than half of the horses had also grown fleshy wings.
This was all thanks to Flora Bloom, who had left behind a considerable amount of spiritual water in the cave where they rested, allowing them to follow a unique evolutionary path.
In downtown Janton, a handsome man dressed entirely in white appeared. The white clothes seemed custom-tailored, perfectly fitting his body and complementing his aura.
Arriving in Janton, he took a deep breath of the city’s air.
"Such dense Spiritual Energy from the flora. Ah! What damned good luck I have! How did I stumble upon something like this again?"
The image of the woman he’d met in Argent flashed through his mind. She was stunningly beautiful and full of life, brimming with Spiritual Energy. But the sight of her swollen belly had greatly displeased him.
’Such a lovely and amusing woman... how did she end up with a killer like Lex Cross? It’s such a waste.’
’But, as long as I have this, we’ll meet again sooner or later!’
He took another deep breath, the excitement on his face even more pronounced this time.
’The zombies here seem far fewer than in other places. That simply won’t do.’
So, the man in white began to wander through the streets and alleys of Janton, which were filled with zombies and corpses, as if he were out for a stroll. With a casual point of his finger, a long-desiccated corpse on the ground—its head shattered—suddenly stood up as if reanimated.
"Tsk, tsk, tsk. This one’s potential is too poor."
And so, after wandering through all of Janton, he finally found a corpse with excellent potential in a residential apartment.
"This body isn’t bad. It hasn’t even decayed after six months. I imagine it would have awakened on its own even without me. I suppose this is a lucky find for me."
This corpse, dead for six months, had long since lost all signs of life. Its skin was aged and shriveled, yet it showed no signs of decay or desiccation.
An aura of Death Energy seemed to surround it as it slowly rose from the ground. In the next second, its skin began to swell and fill out.
But the moment it stood up, before its eyes had even opened, it launched an attack on the man in white.
Black Death Energy clawed at the man’s arm, but the energy from the four scratch marks was instantly absorbed into his body.
"Not bad. This Death Energy is very dense. It will be quite beneficial to my cultivation!"
The corpse, however, seemed not to hear him. Its opened eyes were filled with crimson.
"Why?"
The words came out dry and raspy from its mouth.
"Why did you kill me?"
As it spoke, it continued its sharp, agile assault on the man in white.
The man in white frowned, then broke into a smile. "To be able to speak the moment you awaken... If I let you cultivate slowly, you might one day reach my level."
"Alas! What a pity. This world doesn’t need too many things with such great talent."
With that, a drop of inky black liquid materialized on his fingertip.
A closer look would reveal that the drop wasn’t liquid at all, but a concentration of gas that only appeared to be liquid.
The moment this black ink-drop appeared, the zombies of Janton let out excited roars.
This included the newly awakened male corpse before him.
He quickly pressed the black ink into the corpse’s forehead, imprinting it between its eyebrows. The crimson in the man’s eyes began to recede, replaced by clarity as his gaze slowly came into focus.
Except for a face that remained as pale as a corpse’s, he was now, like the man in white, a truly handsome human.
"What should I call you?" the man in white wondered, frowning. "How about Undead Number One? No, no, no. Only those guys from *that place* would come up with such a childish name. Let me think!"
After the black ink was imprinted on him, the man’s eyes gleamed with a melancholic light. Besides the white-clothed man before him, whom he now regarded as his master, the figure of a girl he both loved and hated inexplicably appeared in his mind.
"My name is... Shelton Underwood."
The man in white paused, then his smile widened. "Very good. Then I’ll call you Timothy from now on."
Janton wasn’t a particularly large place; one could walk across the entire city in a single day.
After awakening, Shelton Underwood followed the man in white to the familiar equestrian club. He saw a place where he used to bring a girl—whose face was now hazy in his memory—to talk and have fun with others.
Suddenly, he spotted the corpse of a woman lying on the floor in one of the rooms.
A few scattered memories coalesced in his mind, but they were incomplete.
"Master."
"What is it?" The man in white, who had been walking ahead, stopped when Shelton Underwood called out to him. He looked over to where Shelton was pointing at the woman’s corpse.
"Heh, Timothy, my luck really is amazing! First I get you, and now I find another corpse with talent nearly equal to yours."
"Unfortunately, my ’little ant’ isn’t here, so I don’t have enough energy to make her acknowledge a master."
"I... want her... alive!"
The man in white thought for a moment. "Alright, let’s wake her up first. Sigh... I really do miss that woman who took my ’little ant.’ I wonder if she misses me? HA HA HA..."
As the woman’s corpse slowly rose from the ground, chunks of burnt, stinking flesh fell from Belle Bloom’s body.
Like Shelton Underwood, she was dazed at first, but gradually, crimson began to fill her eyes.
She looked at the familiar face of Shelton Underwood. "Timothy... What’s...?"