Chapter 8: Why Hit My Zombies?

*If I were stronger in the beginning, even stronger, strong enough to compare to gods with a mortal body, could the Empire have continued? Would the legions have been destroyed by the calamity?*

The blue-pink eyes of the silver-haired girl seem to reflect that terrible, cruel, and desperate war.

The resistance of conventional cosmic civilizations in the face of true calamity is so futile and powerless.

Concept gods perish, and the divided vassal groups lose control completely.

Whether organic or inorganic, even a piece of scrap iron, a piece of soil, a grain of sand, or a drop of water is distorted and twisted by the calamity bathing in the glory of the evil god, becoming a hotbed for the calamity to split and replicate endlessly.

In just a few hundred years, it swept through two-thirds of the explored universe; the number of civilizations that perished is countless, and the number of lives lost is incalculable.

From the moment she received her "number," her short life was full of blood and war, fighting on the front line of resisting the calamity with the slogan "For the Empire."

The comrades-in-arms were gone, the legions were gone, the Empire was gone, and life thus lost its meaning.

The appearance of the "Evolution Paradise" perhaps brought a new turning point.

Meng Yi's sentence, "Weakness is the original sin," gave this "weapon" that was close to being scrapped new vitality.

"Commander, I... can I follow you?"

"Although I am weak, I will work hard!"

Commander?

An extremely strange address, making Meng Yi, who was waiting for Luo Ji's answer, slightly stunned for a moment.

Meng Yi turns his head, and unlike the rough sizing up before, he looks at the girl who crawled up from the window with a scrutinizing attitude, seriously, for a long while.

In the mental detection field, the remnant flame of the target, which was originally so weak it was almost extinguished, grows a bit stronger.

Meng Yi can see that she is squeezing out the last bit of "lamp oil," and is in a state of returning to the light.

This point can be seen from the glowing patterns spreading on the girl's neck and cheeks.

Her delicate appearance is like a piece of porcelain covered in cracks, only a line away from being scrapped.

*Strange, she has already burned out; what is the source of her power? It can actually disobey the conservation of mass and energy to a certain extent.*

*Could it be from a worldview of the "idealistic" system? Or polluted by some kind of conceptual high-level lifeform?*

The girl, with fluorescent green cracks like spider webs manifesting on her body, brings Meng Yi's threat level up exponentially, as if she were a high-intensity explosive barrel about to explode.

*A double-edged sword that hurts both the enemy and herself.*

Meng Yi remains calm on the surface; with his life experience, it is not difficult to find that this child is in a stage of confusion due to a lack of belief, and soldiers need orders to point out the direction forward.

"I am not your commander, but of course you can come with me."

"Just call me 'White Devil.' Can you tell me your name?"

Hearing this, the girl, who is like a weapon, is energized, reacting instinctively with a salute Meng Yi has never seen before, answering loudly: "Yes! Commander!"

"Empire Number AR-26710 reporting to you!"

Not having a name of her own, representing her is only a string of cold numbers, which happens to match Meng Yi's speculation about "weapons."

Seeing this, Luo Ji on the side smiles bitterly, scratching his undried hair hard, his mature face turning slightly distorted with ruthlessness.

"It seems I have no other choice."

"Well, little brother White is right; either move forward or die! I'm not afraid of anything!"

Meng Yi doesn't care about the "commander" address of the "weapon" girl, nor does he delve into Luo Ji's complex psychological changes, spreading his arms and laughing: "Good, welcome."

……

The three "newbies" in the selection dungeon reach a consensus.

The three come to the main door blocked by heavy furniture.

The girl numbered AR-26710 takes the lead, moving the blocking furniture with agility.

The power exploding from her thin and slender body makes Meng Yi and Luo Ji, the two big men, sweat, and they can only look at each other and smile awkwardly.

Not long after, the girl clears the obstacles and opens the solid wood door covered in blood and cracks, standing obediently to the side, waiting for Meng Yi and Luo Ji to go first, while vigilantly paying attention to the surrounding situation.

*Genetic modification body? AR-26710……*

Meng Yi secretly ponders the strange number the girl just introduced herself with.

The mental detection field is activated, and along the path drawn in his mind, he takes the two "teammates" toward the underground train tracks.

Raccoon City has gone through the biochemical crisis + Blackwatch cleaning up dangerous infected, so water and power outages are an inevitable result.

So don't even think about taking the elevator; honestly climb the stairs.

……

There are not many infected remaining in this building, and the route Meng Yi chooses is very safe. Along the way, there are more corpses that have rotted halfway due to the high temperature and become a hotbed for mosquitoes and insects.

Don't even mention that smell; it's refreshing and brain-clearing. Meng Yi misses the "Under-Hive District" where he lived for more than ten years, where the folk are simple and talent abounds.

It's great; it's the feeling of a second hometown!

Meng Yi is accustomed to this, the girl who has seen life and death is calm, but Luo Ji kneels on the ground and vomits three times along the way.

"Little brother White, little girl, aren't you two disgusted?"

Luo Ji vomits until his face is pale, and with the repeated torment of fever + vomiting, this corporate slave who is over thirty years old looks wilted.

"This is just the beginning? Old brother Luo, have you ever seen a corpse eroded into pits and craters by high-pollution acid, and then snatched back by a group of people to be eaten?"

"Corpses in areas with high resource scarcity are treasures. Processed into 'corpse starch' with crudely made implements, wrapped in a few pieces of rotten meat with high radiation and high pollution, and fried in gutter oil—even the kids next door are crying from greed."

"Ugh~ Ugh~!!!"

Meng Yi's vivid example makes Luo Ji vomit until he is empty, tears and snot flowing, and the stomach acid is vomited clean.

"Don't! Don't say it! I'm afraid of you!"

Luo Ji tremblingly supports the wall and stands up, biting his teeth tightly and holding the table leg weapon he picked up.

After the shocking sights and sounds, and Meng Yi's vivid examples, Luo Ji roughly understands what the "mindset shift" mentioned by the "Evolution Paradise" is.

*Damn it, what kind of world can produce a 'talent' like little brother White Devil!*

……

Walking up more than thirty flights of stairs like "sightseeing," Meng Yi comments on the strange deaths of the unlucky ones with interest.

Luo Ji, who is weak, has no more points to vomit.

Until they walk to the lobby area on the first floor, where they have no choice but to encounter seven or eight infected.

Sensing the breath of the living, the infected wandering aimlessly turn their heads at the same time.

There is even a heavyweight player who is missing three of his four legs, his head hanging on his shoulder, his fingernails broken, his hand joints severely distorted, crawling on the floor to "have a taste."

"Amazing, good determination! Good perseverance!"

Meng Yi, whose playfulness is aroused, pays tribute and gives a thumbs up to the zombie crawling forward.

Once interrupted, the tension Luo Ji just raised inexplicably lessens, and then he shakes his head repeatedly, cursing: "Stop acting! They are surrounding us! Shall we retreat to the stairs and solve them one by one?"

"No need for such trouble."

Meng Yi's thumb drops, his index finger lifts lightly, and the mental network controlling the logic of thinking spreads quietly.

*Bang!*

*Bang!*

*Bang!*

The little girl who didn't say a word along the way rushes into the zombie group with the table leg she removed, nimbly and accurately blowing heads one by one; the exploding brains don't stain her at all, her movements are elegant and graceful to the extreme, leaving only zombies with "brains blooming everywhere" on the ground.

Luo Ji is amazed, his mouth opening blankly, holding back for a long time before saying the most simple and unadorned praise in the East: "Awesome!"

Meng Yi's face is gloomy, his heart is bleeding; his zombie tool people died before they could succeed, actually killed by friendly forces!

"Commander, did I... did I do something wrong?"

The girl, who is ruthless and speaks little, holds the table leg stained with red and white, shrinking her neck and saying weakly.

The blood pressure of the cultured person Meng Yi goes up instantly.

"……You did well, don't take action without my order next time."

"Yes! Guarantee to complete the mission!"

The girl instinctively wants to raise her hand to salute, but finds her right hand holding the "involved murder weapon," and can only let it go. ===== CHAPTER 9 =====