Leave a comment

I have just found out that the company had previously purchased some beast corpses for research. They have now been turned into skeletal specimens for sale, but this is still good news for me.

They should have just approached me from the start – I can get those corpses up and running as if they were alive. The deep hibernation of their souls could prove problematic, though. The amount of sacrifices required might be excessive.

However, I’m confident the company will still agree. After all, I’ve earned them so much profit already. We’re practically partners.

—– From: Karlston’s Diaries

On the holographic screen, a group of ten or so skeletal beasts raced across the deliberately ancient streets of Southern Plains. Their bodies were as large as hover cars, and their heads seemed to contain a strange mote of green flame that danced about with the wind.

From a cursory glance, these skeletal beasts had the body of a wolf, forward-curving horns of a ram and the curved tail of a scorpion. However, unlike a normal scorpion, these monsters’ tail ends seemed more like a spear than a sting. From the way they nimbly waved their tails about, one could only imagine the fearsome speed they could bring to bear in an attack.

One of the exosuit-clad policemen immediately took up a stance at the monster charging at him.

Armed with dual two-meter long blades, he first sliced clean the field in front of him, then activated the laser cannons in his wrists. Target locked, he fired off two blue beams right at the monster’s head!

The powerful attack instantly melted a hole in the monster’s skull, piercing right into the soul flame within and extinguishing it. Without the energy of that soul flame, the skeletal construct crumbled to ground.

Successful, that policeman heaved a sigh of relief.

He honestly thought the monster would be a tough foe, based solely on its appearance. Yet here it was, dead from just a single laser blast. Morale restored, even his limbs seemed lighter now.

These elite forces of the police force often worked in teams of five. However, today’s exceptional circumstances had meant they could only spare three to a team.

These combat exosuits were nothing like the toys Mo Ke and the girls used in their games. These exosuits had the strength equivalent to a five-star fighter in the Western Human Realms. Depending on the pilot’s skills, they might even exhibit the power of a six-star. However, if one were to take into account the sturdiness of the exosuits, such a fighter might not even be able to penetrate the armor of the suits, even if they were at the same star level.

(TL: The author used Nicole instead of girls. I’m assuming it’s typo, but girls should be general enough to cover that either way.)

With practised ease, this team of three exosuit-wearing policemen quickly destroyed four of the skeletal beasts.

Yet just when it looked like the tides were in their favour, the remaining skeletal beasts suddenly sped up. Winds roaring behind them and ram horns glistening in the sunlight that seemed oddly cold right now, they charged fearlessly at the policemen!

Each exosuit came with its own assisted targeting system that would handle the actual firing, as long as the pilot was able to lock onto the target first. However, while these beasts might have been massive, their speeds were anything but slow. With a leap, they even managed to jump onto some of the lower roofs nearby and enact an instant encirclement around the policemen, all the while nimbly dodging the targeting system of the policemen.

Faced with such speedy foes, three of them simply weren’t enough. Thankfully, their exosuits weren’t slouches either. The moment one of the skeletal beasts lunged at them, the seasoned veterans that they were swiftly and in an orderly fashion dodged to the side.

Unfortunately, the skeletal beasts had the advantage of numbers on their side. It wasn’t long before these three were suddenly set upon by another bunch of skeletal beasts.

The monsters lunged at the unsuspecting policemen, toppling them to the floor, claw and fang savagely tearing at the metallic exosuit, leaving a horrific gash behind.

Yet that wasn’t the end of the policemen’s woes either. Lest one forgot, these monsters still had a spearlike tailend, and these tails were not only swift, they easily punctured the armor of the exosuits!

With that, the curtains were lowered on the battle of these brave policemen, at the same time signalling the advent of new enemies…

“What are these monsters…” Shentu muttered aloud, unable to recognise their beastly nature due to their stunning skeletal appearance.

“They should be the skeletons of… Primal beasts. Scorpids, who specialise in frontal assaults and tail attacks. These beasts are stronger than their arachnid cousins…

Nalan had once spent time on the Primal planet. Back then, he had to slay countless Primal beasts just to stay alive everyday. There was no one more familiar with the shape of a scorpid than him.

“A scorpid? Primal beasts?” Shentu turned in shock to look at the colonel. “How did those b̲a̲s̲t̲a̲r̲d̲s̲ at Life Unbound even get such a monster’s skeleton to move…”

Unthinkable! Was what he wanted to say. The ability to animate bones was practically in the realm of magic. Which it actually was. Unfortunately, the majority of Gaia’s denizens had no way of knowing that.

Even now, the Federation still believed that it was the Life Unbound company who had engineered this disaster…

When the crisis first started, the Federation tried multiple times to contact the board of directors of Life Unbound. Unfortunately, the other party did not respond to them at all.

Even when they approached the family members of the directors, none of them seemed to know anything. In fact, they could not contact them either, as if they had been abandoned as well.

It was only now that some in the Federation were beginning to wonder if Life Unbound was simply an unfortunate victim themselves…

Yet just as the Chief of Police was lost in his shock, the entire police headquarters started to shake. So violent were the tremors that their otherwise sturdy headquarters seemed more like a house of cards, and that house was about to be smashed by a brat…

“What’s going on?”

The ground below them continued to quake. The 231 meter tall, over fifty stories high skyscraper began to sway like a slender palm tree…

Within the command center, a number of staff members had already fallen off their seats and were now on the ground.

A second later, a giant skeleton clawed its way out of the ground near the police headquarters….

The giant skeleton was eighteen meters tall and had the appearance similar to a snake. There was that same signature green flames in its head, while its mouth sported a deadly rack of fangs. Its hands were clawed, and even its wrists had a swordlike weapon with serrated edges sticking out!

This was the equivalent of a seven-star, a Primal beast of the Disaster class, the Giant Sirenidae!

The skeletal giant sirenidae punched its head into the police headquarters, drilling through its sturdy exterior like soft soil, devastating its support infrastructure in seconds. Barely two minutes later, the entire building collapsed. There were no survivors in this tragedy. The Chief of Police, Shentu Congyang, was… killed in the line of duty…

Leave a comment

The zombie horde was unable to hurt the police for now, but that did not mean everything was smooth sailing for them either. On the contrary, the situation was a right mess.

They had an equally massive number of civilians that needed protecting from the zombies. In this city alone, there were four million helpless civilians, a number which the police force could not even compare to.

During the initial phases in particular, the administration did not consider the possibility of the virus being so widespread amongst the asymptomatic civilians. By the time the civilians had evacuated into the underground shelters, it was too late.

Often, it only took one zombie to appear amongst the civilians and it was certain doom for that entire shelter.

As a shelter, it was naturally well-defended from the outside world. On the flip side, that also meant that trying to get out of such a fortified position wasn’t easy. A weakness that was further compounded by the panic amongst the fleeing masses. Even if the outside world had no way of hearing the horrific screams echoing within the chambers of the shelter, the surveillance cameras captured every gruesome second of human flesh being torn asunder, or simply stampeded by a frantic mob.

“The 14th Shelter of the 12th District has an infected, please dispatch aid immediately… The 11th Shelter of the 5th District has…”

Calls for help flooded in one by one to the police headquarters, headed by the Chief of Police, Shentu Congyang. Around him were his trustworthy subordinates, all retired veterans from the military. Every one a fierce warrior ready for combat. Unfortunately, this was no riot they were dealing with, neither was it a dangerous criminal. Instead, they were dealing with the helpless masses.

If there was one sliver of light in this darkness, it was that while Karlston might have disabled the communications going in and out of Southern Plains, the military and police weren’t affected at all – they had their own specialised channels and equipment.

“We don’t have enough police to save all the shelters at once… contact the military at once. Get Colonel Nalan to send his troops to the 6th District, 7th District, 8th District and the 11th District…”

Every city on Gaia had such a standardised grid system. From the 1st to 12th District, the city would be sectioned up to allow for easy disaster response. Each district would at least hold a hundred shelters of varying sizes. These shelters would be situated between every two streets.

However, the sheer scale and chaos of the outbreak had engulfed all twelve districts at once.

Faced with such odds, even the police, with their invincible exosuits, found themselves lacking…

Yet the threat of zombies paled in comparison to the true terror of this outbreak: no one knew if the person standing next to them would suddenly turn out to be infected.

The suddenness of the outbreak meant that any equipment that could possibly detect the serum hadn’t been dispatched over yet. A number of the infected, despite knowing that they were most likely infected, refused to admit that they had taken the serum. Perhaps it was just defective versions of the serum that caused the zombification? With that faint but misplaced hope in their hearts, they ducked into the fleeing crowd, a ticking time bomb whose detonation wasn’t far off.

That was the true reason for the police force’s inability to respond.

Despite doing their utmost to evacuate the civilians, they were only rewarded with graphic images of zombies tearing into the civilians in the very same shelter they had just evacuated them to. Even a seasoned veteran would be demoralised by such a failure… the whole outbreak was like a curse no one could escape from… one that was only going to get even darker.

It didn’t take long before the first zombie suddenly appeared amongst the ranks of the police. Still clad in his exosuit, the zombie indiscriminately attacked their former comrades.

Thankfully, the zombie wasn’t able to accomplish much. While everyone was still shocked by their new enemy, the system within the zombified exosuit had determined that its pilot was exhibiting an unusual behavior, thus it forcefully shut down the exosuit.

Even so, it had appeared -the first policeman zombie who had taken the serum!

At this point, everyone was at their wits’ end. The police had suffered their first casualty, and this wasn’t going to be their last either.

“Who else has taken that damned serum? I want you all to stand out and allow the Special Forces to escort you to the nearest medical post!”

The so-called Special Forces was a unit that was newly formed to tackle this zombie serum.

For the Chief of Police, the appearance of the first zombified police was like a death grip on his already flagging psyche. Had it not been for his mental fortitude and sense of duty, he would have already given into the despair…

It was at that point that a red-uniformed, middle-aged military man suddenly appeared on his holographic screen.

“Chief Shentu, my troops are ready and can be deployed right away.”

“Colonel Nalan, just in time as well. The city is overrun by these monsters. My men are skilled, but their numbers aren’t enough to cope with the sheer scale…”

To the police chief, this man was like a ray of hope. Seeing the haggard look on his colleague’s face, Nalan couldn’t help but sigh lightly. “I know you’ve done your best…”

“Colonel, we need to gather up the survivors quickly. I need your troops to bring those survivors out of the city.” Shentu Congyang started laying out his plan…

“Shentu… I’m sorry but… I can’t do that.” Nalan averted his gaze at that point. “The brass has already given the command. Until the testing kits arrive, no one is leaving Southern Plains, including us…”

“As proud servicemembers of the Federation, it is our duty to hold the line no matter the cost. But those refugees…”

“There’s no way we can guarantee that the infected aren’t amongst them.”

“Then what about our families? Even if it’s just them…” Shentu tried one last time.

“I’m sorry…” Nalan lowered his head and said no more.

Based on his expression, it was obvious the colonel did not approve of this command either. But as a military man, it was his duty to follow orders.

“Who gave the order?”

“General Rodenas.”

“The Raging Bear… that brutish b̲a̲s̲t̲a̲r̲d̲… ”

Shentu’s exasperation, his gritted teeth and clenched fists, all of that could be felt through the screen. For the colonel, his family members weren’t in Southern Plains, so that was one less thing he needed to worry about. However, his own situation was truly dire.

“Chief! We’ve spotted a strange monster on the battlefield.” One of the men monitoring the 2nd District forwarded a video feed to Shentu. “We’ve never seen this strain of monster before…”

Shameless Self-promotion

Announcement: I’ve re-opened my Patreon in case anyone wants to sponsor more chapters. Every end of the month, those chapters in early access will be released for free for all to read. If you sponsored a chapter, you will gain permanent early access to these chapters. Essentially, everyone gets more chapters to read, but those who donated get to read earlier. More chapters will then be translated at the start of the month. Explanation on the Patreon itself.

LINK HERE

Leave a comment

Your lives… they are meaningless except to serve as fertiliser for us…

—-Karlston

Life had, and always would be, complicated. In a person’s entire life, who could guarantee that they had never erred, not even once…

Sometimes, that once was enough to cause a catastrophe.

It was so for the city of Southern Plains as well. Had the officials of this city known earlier that the serum would cause such an apocalyptic result, they would have never allowed for the sale of the serum, no matter how corrupt they were.

Naturally, this was so for the board of directors of Life Unbound Biotech Private Limited.

Unfortunately, there was no turning back the hands of time.

Gaia was a technologically advanced planet. Its police officers were all equipped with mechanical exosuits, while their soldiers would all undergo superhuman training during their basic training. Those who performed the best would ultimately be selected to become superhumans.

The exosuits used by the police wouldn’t be as strong as the military, but their job was mostly to catch ordinary criminals anyway. Military-grade ones were meant for war, thus equipped more heavily.

However, in the hands of a skilled pilot, who would win was still up for grabs.

Police exosuits, in general, were colored white to represent their mostly peacekeeping role. In contrast, the military ones were colored black to represent their more forceful use.

The first level of a zombie could be described as brutishly strong, but that was all it had going for it. A slightly stronger human being could still vanquish it with a decent weapon, let alone military men armed with exosuits.

For the most part, every other city hadn’t reached a crisis point yet. The scattered zombie outbreaks were quickly snuffed out, resulting in General Rodenas devoting all his attention to Southern Plains.

However, he still had no way of knowing what else was in stall for him, nor what these forces in the dark represented…

“Pass on this message to Naran in Southern Plains: I want a name list of all those who had taken that serum… Now, if only those damned researchers could get a testing kit rolled out quicker…” Rodenas grumbled to no one in particular before turning to his second-in-command. “Actually, send him a second message: even if a name list isn’t possible, I don’t want anyone stepping out of Southern Plains… Before that testing kit gets sent over, kill anyone who tries to escape… Don’t lose sight of the bigger picture because of the now… the last thing we all want is for Southern Plains to be forever wiped off the map…”

From that statement alone, the general’s determination couldn’t be any clearer: at all costs.

——-Karlston——-

Dressed in black robes, but still in his human form, Karlston was currently at the lowest level of the company, enacting a gruesome ritual.

Life Unbound Biotech had over a thousand employees, all of them pickling in a giant pool of blood that Karlston had dug out beforehand. Of those pickles, there were also board members who could be said to be his savior of sorts.

Almost everyone were brutally murdered by Karlston, only a scant few employees managed to escape the massacre. Naturally, these escapees weren’t even on his mind at all. The only reason the other employees had to die was because he needed sacrifices, and they so happened to be the most readily available.

This ritual was crafted to restore some of his power. The more sacrifices he could gather, the better the result would be.

The blood pool was circular in shape and at least fifty meters in diameter. Its bloody surface bubbled with the countless screams of the souls trapped within. These weren’t metaphorical souls either. They were actually chained to the ritual site by translucent chains. Twisted with pain and despair from their futile struggling, they had long since lost any semblance of their former appearance.

In the center of this blood pool was an altar with a candelabra formed of human bones, its candle formed out of some grotesque amalgamation of human fluids.

The human candle burned like any candle would, yet in its center was a wraithlike face that screamed soundlessly in agony.

A nearby skeleton, summoned by necromantic magics, worked tirelessly to drag more corpses from the outside world to toss into the blood pool, in the process stirring up a sickly splash of red blood and gore.

Peering at the soon to be full pool, a human-looking Karlston couldn’t help but reveal a chilling smile. Voice hollow and deep, not at all like a human’s, he muttered to himself. “Soon… Soon I will be born again… But… what is my purpose for being here… “

Due to the damage to his soul when he travelled to Gaia, he could only remember snippets of his mission, nothing more.

He gave the matter some thought, but came up with nothing in the end. He decided not to dwell on that for the time being and proceeded to enter the pool, and a whole new life.

Yet before he could take that last step, a grey bat flew up to Karlston’s ear, as if passing on a message.

“Verni… I will leave command of the army to you… before I return, the Undead are yours to command…” Karlston said to no one in particular then stepped into the pool. “I will return soon…”

In a dark corner of the basement, a wraith dressed in a typical office lady’s white uniform stared blankly at Karlston entering the pool. Having received some sort of command, she respectfully but expressionlessly bowed. “Understood, master…”

——-Southern Plains——-

As of right now, Southern Plains was a bonafide hell-on-earth thanks to the aggressive sales tactics of Life Unbound – fifty percent off; local citizens get priority; whatever you could think of, they employed it.

Because the serum was so unbelievably effective, and their marketing efforts were so spirited, over thirty percent of the city’s population had bought the serum in just over a week’s time. A feat that was helped by the serum’s shockingly low price.

In order to ensure that the plan would work properly, Karlston had even tinkered with the serum so that different batches of the drug would take effect quicker. That way, the infected would all appear at roughly the same time. This bit of foresight was what caused the entire city’s administration to be paralyzed.

Over a thousand elite police forces, equipped in their signature white exosuits, stood tall against an almost endless wave of zombies.

The zombies were all created from ordinary humans, so they weren’t all that strong to begin with. However, when they gathered in such numbers, even the well-armed police would feel a sense of pressure.

For the most part however, each individual zombie did not pose a threat to the armored policemen.

Shameless Self-promotion

Announcement: I’ve re-opened my Patreon in case anyone wants to sponsor more chapters. Every end of the month, those chapters in early access will be released for free for all to read. If you sponsored a chapter, you will gain permanent early access to these chapters. Essentially, everyone gets more chapters to read, but those who donated get to read earlier. More chapters will then be translated at the start of the month. Explanation on the Patreon itself.

LINK HERE