Surviving the Game as a Zombie - Chapter 87

Tang Yu wasn’t sure how much help she could be. She could predict The Leader’s attacks, but prediction was one thing, and dodging them was another. Compared to an ordinary person, The Leader’s attacks were as if they were on fast-forward; even if she anticipated the moves, they were difficult to defend against.

Holding her breath, she ran to Song Lengzhu’s side in a matter of seconds, knife in hand, pushing her physical stamina to its absolute limit, ready to join the battle.

Song Lengzhu was injured, and it was obvious. The ugly, rubber-like clothes had been slashed open by a sharp weapon, revealing the black assault jacket she wore underneath. It was impossible to tell where she was wounded.

Dressed in all black, she was the type where you wouldn’t even see the color of the bl00d if she was bleeding.

But Tang Yu was a little puzzled. Song Lengzhu seemed to be holding her own. Her movements and speed were fluid, even possessing a certain grace. It didn’t look like she was in a life-or-death struggle.

In a gap while turning to block, Song Lengzhu glanced back and saw Tang Yu standing behind her. She inexplicably breathed a sigh of relief. Not seeing the little zombie earlier, she had thought Tang Yu had taken her people and fled. They had clearly agreed to act together; abandoning an ally wasn’t a good look.

But Song Lengzhu was about seventy to eighty percent certain that Tang Yu wouldn’t just up and leave. Although she didn’t know Tang Yu very well, she was confident that the little zombie would come to help.

They had cooperated in the ancient tomb, so she knew Tang Yu was loyal, reasonable, and had a basic moral compass. Such traits weren’t rare in the interstellar age, but in the game, they made her stand out from the crowd, as if her moral standards were a bit too high—like a novice who had just entered the game.

Novice. The word flashed through Song Lengzhu’s mind, and a playful smile touched her lips.

Seeing Tang Yu eagerly brandishing her knife, Song Lengzhu’s tone was steady. “Help me. Infect her.”

Huh?

Tang Yu didn’t react for a moment. So it wasn’t that she couldn’t win and was asking for my help?

Turns out I’m just here to contribute my virus?

Tang Yu turned her gaze to The Leader. The Leader was human, her brain was extremely active, and her offense and defense were exceptionally well-coordinated. If she were turned into a zombie, even a self-aware one like the A-Class Zombie, it would still diminish her combat effectiveness.

It was worth a try.

Of course, The Leader had also heard Song Lengzhu’s instruction, but she didn’t spare Tang Yu a single glance, seemingly completely unconcerned by this tactic.

How arrogant. Does she think I can’t hurt her?

The Leader’s movements were extremely fast. She could dodge the attacks of Song Lengzhu and the other players with almost no running. Perhaps even bullets seemed like slow-motion footage to her, utterly non-threatening.

Ugh… it really is hard to hurt her.

Tang Yu put away her knife, held her breath, and fixed her gaze on The Leader’s every move. Seizing an opportunity, she flashed into the fray.

Watching from the outside was a completely different experience from actually joining the battle. Tang Yu suddenly understood why the few players who were helping had been such a hindrance. Faced with The Leader’s fierce attacks, one could truly lose control of their limbs. Forget about coordinating attacks; it was hard enough just to make your own hands and feet obey.

She had truly misjudged those helpful fellows.

The moment Tang Yu joined the battle, she was outmaneuvered by The Leader. A long, thin needle was thrust straight at her arm. It was like a skipped frame; one second the needle was far away, and the next it had pierced Tang Yu’s skin.

Tang Yu stumbled back three steps, finally breaking free from the needle. Someone steadied her bare arm; the touch of a thick glove was there and gone in an instant.

Looking closer, she saw The Leader holding a syringe in her left hand, maintaining the posture of an injection. Was this her weapon?

No, it wasn’t. Before Tang Yu had joined the battle, she had clearly seen The Leader holding a long, thin shard of metal. She hadn’t had a syringe in her hand at that time.

This syringe, filled with an unknown liquid, was meant specifically for her.

Song Lengzhu was also startled and suspicious. She changed her tactics, holstered her gun, and launched a close-quarters attack on The Leader, reaching for the syringe in her left hand.

A good opportunity. Tang Yu narrowed her focus, staring only at The Leader’s exposed skin. The second Song Lengzhu moved, she followed.

The Leader sidestepped in a flash, reappearing several meters away.

Neither Tang Yu nor Song Lengzhu stopped. They predicted The Leader’s landing spot at almost the same instant, changing direction to pursue her relentlessly.

Tang Yu relied on her precognitive ability; Song Lengzhu relied on her superior judgment.

Once a person entered a state of high mental concentration, their eyes would automatically filter out their surroundings, focusing only on the center of their vision, entering a state of flow. The high-intensity fight quickly triggered Tang Yu’s physical instincts. She discovered that she could actually see The Leader’s movement trajectory clearly. The more she focused, the clearer it became. This wasn’t her precognitive ability; it was an instinct from the depths of her consciousness.

In a daze, she had the strange feeling that she had encountered such a fast creature before.

A sudden, sharp pain shot through her mind, causing a flash of white light to explode in her vision, like a camera flash. When her sight returned to normal, the figure of a giant, shelled monster overlapped with The Leader’s for a single second before vanishing.

Tang Yu thought there was something wrong with her mind.

She ignored the anomaly and retreated hastily, because The Leader’s face had flashed right in front of her. The needle in her hand was aimed straight for the inside of Tang Yu’s outstretched elbow. Tang Yu quickly bent her arm, and The Leader immediately changed course, stabbing toward her neck.

Being able to see the movements was one thing, but whether this body could dodge them was another matter entirely.

Tang Yu only felt a numbness in her neck. Before she could even react, her opponent’s fingers tightened, her thumb pressed down on the plunger, and the rubber stopper was pushed to the end, forcing the entire contents of the syringe into Tang Yu’s body.

Wait, how is this person so skilled at giving injections?

Tang Yu steeled herself, no longer caring what the liquid was. Seizing the opportunity of The Leader’s proximity, she grabbed her wrist, opened her mouth, and bit down hard. Her canines and incisors sank deep into her opponent’s skin before she was sent flying by a kick from The Leader.

Success. For both of them, it was a success.

Tang Yu fell to the ground. Song Lengzhu quickly bent down and pressed her fingers below Tang Yu’s jugular vein, but it was a futile gesture. The deadly substance had already entered her bloodstream, and there was no telling what it was.

A dazed look crossed Song Lengzhu’s face. Was the little zombie going to be eliminated? Her origins were so unique; would she be able to withstand this death?

For a fleeting moment, Song Lengzhu felt she had made the wrong decision. A strange emotion welled up in her heart. She couldn’t identify what it was—it felt like regret. In her decades of life, she had rarely felt regret.

Tang Yu, on the other hand, was much calmer. The moment she was injected, she had already foreseen that she would not drop dead in the next minute.

She had no idea what that transparent, yellowish substance in the syringe was. After entering her body, there was no reaction at all.

The Leader also had no reaction.

The expected scene of The Leader being assimilated into a zombie never came. She stood there perfectly fine, with nothing more than a puzzled expression on her face and not the slightest sign of anything unusual.

The sounds of battle between the bl00d zombies and players were deafening, but in front of Tang Yu, there was a deathly silence.

“What’s going on?” It was The Leader who spoke, her somewhat stern face creased in a frown. Only at this moment were the traces of age on her face clearly visible.

Tang Yu scrambled to her feet. She wanted to ask what was going on, too.

The Leader hadn’t been infected by her; she didn’t even spare a glance at the bite marks. This was something that should have been impossible in the game. So far, players, NPCs, and even animals were all susceptible to infection, without exception.

Unless the other party had antibodies.

The Leader’s expression shifted. “You’re not a zombie?” She phrased it as a question but used the tone of a statement.

But I am, Tang Yu thought. I am a zombie, just a little different from the ordinary ones, with a player’s core wrapped inside.

It was laughable. Both of them had thought they could succeed with a single strike, yet neither had prevailed.

During the ten-second stalemate, Song Lengzhu had already removed her hand from Tang Yu’s neck. Seizing the moment of The Leader’s emotional fluctuation, she suddenly drew her gun and attacked.

The Leader didn’t dodge, instead catching the bullet as she charged forward.

Just then, two cheers erupted from the crowd. A glance revealed that the twins and Zhou Zhou had worked together to finish off the B-Class Zombie.

The B-Class Zombie collapsed to the ground, and the A-Class Zombie was also becoming increasingly passive, showing signs of being overwhelmed. In the crowd, Tang Yu saw Li Luo, the woman who had borrowed oil from her. She and her teammates were handling the A-Class Zombie with ease, revealing themselves to be another team of formidable players.

The loss of her subordinate caused The Leader’s expression to shift, her eyes filling with a piercing, cold light. In a flash, she moved to a dead player’s body, picked up a gun, and charged toward the twins and Zhou Zhou.

Tang Yu and Song Lengzhu hurried after her to regroup with their own teammates.

The number of players surrounding The Leader had now reached ten. Li Luo recognized Zhou Zhou, disengaged from her own fight, and joined the battle against The Leader.

Tang Yu stood far back. She could clearly feel the hostile gazes from the unfamiliar players, including Li Luo.

From a player’s perspective, getting rid of Tang Yu amidst the chaos of the fight would also be a favorable outcome.

Of course, for Tang Yu, it would be a tragic one.

At this point, The Leader started using a gun—and an automatic submachine gun, no less. Her emotions were extremely volatile, as if the death of the B-Class Zombie had dealt her a significant blow.

So The Leader did care about her subordinates after all.

The players in close quarters were forced to retreat, and two were riddled with bullets. Song Lengzhu, who was taking the brunt of the fire, couldn’t possibly dodge every bullet, no matter how swift her movements. The twins and Xiao Qi rushed forward to shield her.

But it was useless. In The Leader’s eyes, such a defense was riddled with openings.

Song Lengzhu’s gun hand was hit with pinpoint accuracy. The ugly suit and thick gloves could block a zombie’s claws and teeth, but they couldn’t stop a bullet.

Song Lengzhu’s sidearm fell to the ground.

The situation once again descended into chaos and tension. Seeing Song Lengzhu retreat several meters, Tang Yu sprinted toward the fallen gun, snatched it up, and fired twenty rounds in The Leader’s direction.

A high-grade weapon was truly in a class of its own. The feel of it in her hand was completely different from ordinary firearms. It could even fire five bullets in quick succession, one right after the other, flying toward the enemy without the slightest delay.

But to others, it just looked like Tang Yu was firing wildly. The twenty bullets covered an enormous area, like glass beads scattered haphazardly, with no apparent aim.

Not a single bullet was aimed directly at The Leader’s figure.

The Leader dodged the first five bullets by moving to her left, but she could barely dodge any further. She quickly discovered that her path forward seemed to have been anticipated, completely sealed off.

Meanwhile, Song Lengzhu, who had withdrawn from the main fight, hadn’t been idle. She charged toward the A-Class Zombie at the side, dagger in her left hand, and with a single, precise strike, put the barely-surviving zombie out of its misery.

“Damn it, she stole my points,” a player grumbled, indignant at Song Lengzhu’s interference but helpless to do anything but fume.

The death of the A-Class Zombie made The Leader’s emotions even more unstable. Coincidentally, the submachine gun needed to be reloaded. The moment the stream of fire stopped, the other players surrounding her seized the opportunity to attack.

First, the last bullet Tang Yu had fired struck The Leader’s calf—not a vital spot. Immediately after, a bullet from Li Luo hit the body of the submachine gun. Having just been reloaded, the gun instantly exploded. The blast of fire engulfed the players standing nearby, scorching the skin on their faces.

The Leader’s hand was mangled in the explosion. Suffering one heavy blow after another, the arrogant expression on her face vanished, replaced by endless fury.

“You parasites!”

The enraged Leader roared incessantly, her voice becoming sharp and piercing, grating on the ears.

As she roared, The Leader charged into the crowd and began a massacre, indiscriminately attacking players while repeating the word “parasites.”

Xiao Qi retreated several steps, annoyed by the shouting, and retorted, “That’s enough! What parasites? We’re human!”

The Leader’s roaring stopped abruptly. Xiao Qi’s words seemed to have hit a nerve. For some reason, her entire demeanor changed. If her previous state was mere rage, her current state was like madness. “Wrong! You are not human!”

The hot-tempered middle-aged player couldn’t help but retort, “What the hell, if we’re not human, then what are we? Look at this skin, this flesh! We’ve got two eyes and a mouth, just like you. So you’re the only human here, and we’re not?” He slapped his own bicep, making a loud smacking sound as the muscle jiggled, looking rather greasy.

It was unclear what had triggered The Leader, but she completely broke down. “Get away! You’re not human, you’re parasites! Parasites!”

This frenzied state stunned everyone. Tang Yu unconsciously took a step back, moving away from the crowd to stand behind Zhou Zhou. She lowered her voice and asked, “Has she gone mad?”

The Leader’s mental state was indeed abnormal. She was so immersed in her rage and frenzy that she stopped attacking and began to scrub at her own arms, as if she wanted to rub the very skin and flesh off.

Then, under everyone’s watchful eyes, The Leader’s face visibly aged, as if she had grown ten years older in an instant.

Zhou Zhou frowned. “Could it be a side effect of the mutation?”

An overactive brain requires a powerful mind and robust physical functions to support it; otherwise, the host body can easily be overwhelmed. The enhancement of physical abilities also consumes a great deal of energy from all parts of the body. This state can easily disrupt the body’s metabolic rate and can even lead to hormonal imbalances or organ damage from being unable to withstand the pressure.

This was precisely what was happening to The Leader. As her sanity crumbled, broken capillaries and spider nevi visibly appeared beneath the skin of her face—an external manifestation of dilated or even ruptured bl00d vessels.

Xiao Qi couldn’t help but remark, “…As an experimental subject, it’s quite pitiful for her to end up like this.”

A player beside her raised his knife. “What’s pitiful about it? She’s killed so many people.”

That was true. In the chaotic battle with the bl00d zombies, the player casualty rate was not low. What was even more horrifying was when a player would fight for a long time only to realize that a highly decomposed bl00d zombie was their former companion.

It was impossible for all these bl00d zombies to have been converted from players. Where did the others come from? Was it possible that NPCs had been forcibly converted into bl00d zombies? These were things the players didn’t know, and didn’t want to know.

Some players took advantage of The Leader’s frenzied state and closed in.

The injured Song Lengzhu returned, observing the battle as she came to stand beside Tang Yu. She extended her uninjured left hand, palm open, in front of Tang Yu.

The meaning was clear: Give me back my gun.

Her thick gloves had been removed at some point and were now stuffed into a pocket of her protective suit. Her clean palm was free of dust and bl00d, her fingers were long and slender with well-defined knuckles. Tang Yu glanced at it and made a mental note: A very nice-looking hand.

But this gun… she was truly reluctant to return it. Even though she knew nothing about firearms, the weapon had performed at one hundred and twenty percent of its capacity in her hands. It was truly a rare treasure.

Tang Yu lifted her hand and looked at the gun. It had the shape of an ordinary pistol, black and unadorned. Only on the grip was an “S” symbol inlaid with a gold border. Tang Yu couldn’t resist rubbing it with her thumb for a moment; the surface felt uneven and bumpy.

“What? You don’t want to return it?” Song Lengzhu’s tone had returned to its usual placid state, with no hint of pressure.

Of course not, Tang Yu shook her head in denial. I was just checking to see if any of my bl00d got on it.

Tang Yu reluctantly placed the clean gun into Song Lengzhu’s palm. Can’t snatch it, she thought. Oh well.

Song Lengzhu withdrew her hand, inspected the gun’s body carefully for a moment, and seeing nothing amiss, gripped it tightly.

The two of them looked up to check on The Leader’s situation.

The players who had swarmed her still couldn’t even touch the hem of her clothes; instead, they were sent flying by her wild punches.

Soon, someone noticed something was wrong. Although The Leader seemed to have lost her mind, her strength was growing. Her small frame sent two large men flying with her bare hands without the slightest effort, as if she were merely flicking away two balls of cotton.

Just then, a rustling sound came from the laboratory’s blasted-open ventilation duct, interspersed with a few strange squeals. A small figure leaped down to the floor.

Before the players could recognize what it was, more figures dropped to the laboratory floor like dumplings into a pot. Upon landing, they let out a squeak, righted themselves, and charged toward the crowd on all fours.

Tang Yu saw them clearly. They were the mutated rats they had fought before, mixed with other mutated creatures, pouring down from various cracks in a dense swarm.

At the same time, The Leader let out a sudden roar. The sound that came from her throat was not one a human could make; it was, however, similar to a zombie’s.

No way, Tang Yu thought in terror. Could my virus be taking effect only now?

But it didn’t seem like it at all. The Leader’s physical condition hadn’t changed; her bl00d vessels hadn’t turned black, and her pupils were normal. She had just seemingly lost her sanity and become abnormally bloodthirsty.

“Ding.” A crisp sound suddenly rang out in her mind.

Tang Yu saw all the players freeze in place.