Chapter 1797: Journey of a Madman (Part 10)

Spider-Man and Helen's landing spot was very bad. They had fallen from high altitude onto the roof of a commercial building in Manhattan. Geographically speaking, Manhattan couldn't be considered the center of New York, but there was no doubt that this had once been one of the most prosperous places in New York.

When the disaster broke out, the vast majority of office workers here had no ability to resist at all. A terrifying tide of corpses flooded all the streets.

When Spider-Man swung down from mid-air of the building, watching the dense mass of zombies beneath his feet staring at him with hollow eyes, he couldn't help but feel a chill down his spine. He held Helen and swung to the roof of a building opposite, then gently set her down.

"Sorry for the trouble." Helen scratched her head and said, "My physical strength is a bit out of sync, and I can't connect to the World Tree of our universe. The divine power that can provide protection is used up a little bit every time, so it's better to save as much as possible."

"It's okay." Spider-Man waved his hand and said, "Children shouldn't be involved in fighting in the first place. No matter how strong you are, this entire universe is restricted for you right now. If I end up fighting the zombies later, you must close your eyes."

"Are you crazy?" Helen looked at him in disbelief and said, "Haven't you realized how strong this group of monsters is? Look at them: immense strength, jumping several meters high, and many of them haven't completely lost their sanity. It's equivalent to having Spider-Men everywhere!"

"Then you underestimate Spider-Man too much." Spider-Man said firmly, "I admit the zombies are very strong; otherwise, they wouldn't have left the human military with no ability to fight back overnight. But Spider-Man's strength has never been just physical force. I will protect both of us, and then find a way to leave here."

Helen blinked and looked at Spider-Man's mask, saying, "I feel like you've changed a bit, but I don't know how to describe it."

Spider-Man stood at the edge of the building, looking down at the group of distorted zombies, and said, "I can tell they are very hungry, hungry to the point of madness. Not long ago, I deeply experienced the pain brought by hunger."

"It's a burning sensation that spreads from the stomach to the whole body. You feel like a hole has been dug in the center of your body, all your physical strength and spirit are flowing out of the hole, and you witness all this but have no way to stop it."

Spider-Man sighed softly and said in a low tone, "But that's different from this group of zombies. They are hungry, they eat, then they continue to be hungry, continue to eat. They only devour, but they can't create anything."

"The deepest despair I felt before starving to death was that if only there were a bite of food to let me live, I could use my hands to create many things. As long as there was a little heat to let my brain work, I would definitely be able to think of many ways to get out of the current predicament."

"People eat to live until tomorrow, and tomorrow will definitely have hope. So, even if you have to use all your strength to eat that little bit of food, you have to endure another day and strive to create a turning point. This is an extremely powerful driving force that can make people accept many things they could never accept before."

"But the zombies are just driven by primitive appetite. They don't accumulate strength to change anything; they just want to eat. They don't have such a driving force; they just simply succumb to desire."

Spider-Man recalled that incomparably deep and dark figure he saw above that dark city, and said, "Batman made me understand that the greatest thing about a hero is not indulging in desire just because one is already trapped in tragedy."

"Being a superhero who influences the world during peaceful times, and then saying that one is no different from ordinary people when disaster strikes, so one should succumb to instinctive desire—that is just a shameful deserter."

Helen felt the change in the wind by her ear. Just as she instinctively turned her head, a strand of her hair was cut off by the wind blade brought by the spinning shield. She only had time to shout, "Spider-Man, watch out!!!"

"Bang!"

Spider-Man caught the shield with one hand, taking a few steps back due to the immense impact. The muscles and veins on his forearm were clearly visible.

Looking at the familiar Stars and Stripes pattern, those spider compound eyes, which always seemed to be making funny expressions, finally revealed the evil deterrent power from a non-human entity for the first time due to the raging anger.

He gripped the edge of the shield and slowly applied force. That incomparably sturdy vibranium shield with the Stars and Stripes pattern was slowly crushed in his hands; Spider-Man's fingers almost pierced through the shield.

The breath Spider-Man took while preparing to throw almost exhausted all the oxygen in the surroundings.

Fuel poured in like a floodgate opening, anger ignited the flames, the boiler screamed as it boiled, the engine vibrated and roared, gears spun into afterimages, and the lever arm was pressurized to the maximum in an instant.

Spider-Man had never unleashed his full power with such an angry posture. As his arm swung out, the vibranium shield was completely crushed because it couldn't withstand the air resistance brought by the extreme speed. The intense firelight produced by the ignition of oxygen illuminated Helen's dumbfounded face.

A fireball with a speed almost invisible to the naked eye flew past Helen's hair, speeding away along the trajectory of the throw.

And its original owner accepted this "gift" thrown back in a special way—the head of the zombie Captain America, who had just jumped onto the building, was vaporized in an instant by the ultra-high-speed shield within the atmosphere.

Before Helen could even be shocked, a mushroom cloud rose up on the New York skyline.

After the dust settled, the iconic building, Stark Tower, no longer had its icon; the skull above the 60th floor had completely disappeared.

And Stark and Schiller, who were standing in the stairwell on the 59th floor, looked up in unison, blankly looking at the blue sky that had suddenly appeared above their heads.

Stark swallowed and said, "I guess that was some kind of self-destruct device of Stark Tower just now. Maybe our actions just now caught Iron Man's attention. We'd better leave here quickly."

After speaking, he turned to continue walking down, but Schiller hesitated and stopped in his tracks.

Stark turned back and asked him, "... What's wrong with you?"

"You might not believe it, but just now I think I saw Captain America's shield."

"You must be hallucinating from eating too much." Stark grabbed Schiller's arm and pulled him to continue walking downstairs, saying, "If Captain America also turned into a zombie, then he must be in cahoots with Iron Man. Why would he blow up Stark Tower?"

"Or there's another possibility." Schiller said while being dragged downstairs by Stark, looking out the window, "Someone is angry."

Helen looked with slight terror at Spider-Man, who had just delivered a fatal blow but wasn't even panting.

Actually, for Doomsday, Spider-Man's strength wasn't considered strong, but what terrified Helen was that Spider-Man had unleashed such powerful strength in human form; this was simply unscientific.

The body structure of vertebrates determines their way of exerting force, and the way of exerting force determines their upper limit of strength. How on earth was this done?

So, Spider-Man, who had just vented his inner anger and started to think rationally about countermeasures, saw Helen looking at him with an eager and expectant gaze, saying, "Can you let me take a bite of you?"

Spider-Man was almost scared into jumping up. Helen immediately waved her hands to explain, "That, I didn't mean it that way. I wasn't infected by the zombie virus, but, well, I know it might be hard for you to imagine, but my greatest talent is evolution, and the best way to obtain evolutionary material is to swallow the opponent."

"Of course I didn't mean I want to swallow you. As long as I stay near you, I can gradually analyze your abilities, but if you let me take a bite..."

"Absolutely not." Spider-Man backed away in terror, squinting his spider compound eyes, and said, "Your eyes are telling me you'll bite off my arm in one go. This is absolutely not allowed!"

Helen made a "tsk" sound, with an expression of "you actually saw through me," but her rolling eyeballs showed she clearly didn't intend to give up.

But at this moment, Spider-Man started to regret it a little. He sighed and said, "I shouldn't have been so impulsive just now. I was really a bit angry. If there is a Captain America in this world, then there must be an Iron Man. I blew up his old home; perhaps it won't be long before he comes to deal with us."

"That's perfect." Helen said with her hands on her hips, "As long as you use the strength you just had and give his head a hard hit, the problem will be solved."

"It's not that simple." Spider-Man said while adjusting his web-shooters, walking toward the edge of the building, "We have to find a way to save this universe. The best way is to develop an antidote for the zombie virus. I'm not proficient in chemistry and pharmacology; we have to borrow Iron Man's wisdom."

Helen thought for a while and said, "Where do you think Iron Man's wisdom comes from? His brain? If so, maybe I can try to swallow his brain, analyze his wisdom, and then we can make the antidote ourselves."

Spider-Man opened his mouth to say something, but his previous experience in Gotham had worn away some of his unrealistic naivety.

In the past, he definitely would have said that they must try to save the superheroes, but now the situation made him understand that saving superheroes by conventional methods was meaningless.

In the early stages of infection, there must have been intelligent heroes like Iron Man who tried to save their infected companions, but the current worse state of the world showed that this virus was much more powerful than anyone imagined. It was likely not something that could be saved by persuasion.

Moreover, superheroes infected by the zombie virus still had intelligence. If they disguised themselves as having woken up but caused trouble at a critical moment, it was very likely that the entire plan would fall short.

Spider-Man wasn't confident he could subdue an evil Iron Man, which was why he said he would borrow Iron Man's wisdom, not save Iron Man. There were many ways to borrow wisdom; if he could just use the brain, that wasn't impossible.

Spider-Man felt that his past self definitely wouldn't have made such a cruel decision, but now he even started thinking about how to turn zombie Iron Man into a brain-in-a-jar in less than a second.

Helen looked at him with an inquiring gaze. Spider-Man shook his head and rejected her proposal, saying, "This is too risky. The zombie virus is unknown to us. You say your race is special and won't be infected, but what if?"

Helen thought about it. Although reason told her this thing shouldn't cause her harm, her instincts were a bit chaotic now, and it was hard to say whether the resistance mechanism in her body would work normally. So, she could understand Spider-Man's worry and decided to give up this risky idea.

And the biggest trouble she was facing now was the files in her brain that had been turned into a mess, as well as the mapping relationships that were even more chaotic.

Rather than insisting on interfering with Spider-Man's plan, it was better to adjust her state quickly. Once she recovered to her peak, at worst, she would swallow the Earth and physically exterminate the zombie virus.

Thinking of this, Helen sank into her own alien world and started the boring and tedious work of cleaning up. But as she cleaned, Helen dug out a pile of unusual files from her memory.

Those memories were both familiar and strange to her. The moment her gaze fell on them, Helen's pupils shrank. ===== CHAPTER 1798 =====