Chapter 58 - Chapter 57 : Zombie

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"Selene, what do you think of zombies?" asked Luke with a sly smile, his tone far too casual for the ruined city around them.

Well, since he couldn't stop the apocalypse anyway, he figured he might as well take advantage of it. Why waste time worrying about something he couldn't control?

To him, zombies weren't the end of the world—they were nothing but walking EXP bags. If anything, this nightmare was practically a golden hunting ground. 

The thought made him grin. If Selene could grind here too, maybe she'd finally reach level 10 and unlock her class selection. That alone made this world worth exploring.

Selene tilted her head slightly, "Zombies? What are those?" she asked, genuine confusion flickering across her usually composed face.

Luke chuckled, taking a step over a cracked sidewalk slab. "Well, you know how a vampire virus turns a human into a vampire…"

Selene gave a faint nod.

"…zombies are also a type of race," Luke continued, amusement sparking in his eyes. "But unlike vampires, they're not elegant, immortal predators. No, zombies can be called the most unkillable cockroach-type race in the universe."

He spread his hands dramatically, as though presenting the idea like a bad sales pitch. "They don't think. They don't plan. They're just mindless corpses that walk and bite anything alive. Burn them, shoot them, break their bones—it doesn't matter. As long as the virus lingers in their flesh, they'll crawl until nothing's left to eat."

"So the only way to kill them is to shoot them in the brain, and avoid getting bitten by them. If you get bitten, you will turn into them," Luke finished. He raised his arms stiffly and made a comical chomp motion with his teeth, pretending to bite the air like a cartoon zombie.

Selene gave him a flat look, though her lips twitched faintly at his ridiculous demonstration. "So. A virus that can turn human beings into some mindless monsters… who crave flesh, and they can infect other people by biting them?" she asked, her tone sharpening as she processed it.

Luke lowered his arms, the grin still lingering. "Yep. You summed it up pretty well. Welcome to Zombie 101."

But Selene wasn't amused. Her brows drew together in thought, her mind racing. That was outrageous. Even the vampire virus didn't work on corpses. 

Vampirism transformed the living—warping their body, enhancing it, granting both strength and curse—but it didn't reanimate the dead.

"What kind of virus defies death itself?" she muttered, more to herself than to him. "To strip away thought, to rot the body from within, and still force it to move? To spread itself with nothing more than a bite?"

Her voice carried a note of disgust now, almost offense, as if the very idea violated some unspoken natural order—even for creatures like her.

Luke shrugged, unfazed. "That's the beauty of it. Or the horror, depending on how you look at it. Zombies don't care about laws of nature, they just… keep going. Relentless. The ultimate swarm." He gestured at the silent, ruined street around them. 

"One bite, and the infection snowballs until the whole city looks like this. And trust me, it doesn't take long."

Selene's eyes narrowed. She understood predators, hunters, plagues. But this… this was something else. 

"…Disgusting," she said flatly.

Well, no woman would find zombies cute, right?

Then—as if on cue—slow, uneven thuds echoed through the dead city streets. The sound of dragging feet and shuffling bodies bounced off the hollow shells of abandoned buildings, a grim announcement of what was coming.

Luke and Selene both turned their heads. From the shadow of a narrow alleyway, a horde spilled into the street. Dozens of them. Their clothes were torn and caked in blood, skin pale and rotting, eyes cloudy with decay. Jaws hung slack, strings of dark saliva dripping as they let out low, guttural groans.

Some limped forward, bones jutting at odd angles. Others crawled on the asphalt, fingers clawing against the cracked pavement. 

But one thing unified them—every single pair of dead, milky eyes locked instantly onto Luke and Selene the moment they stumbled into the open. 

Selene looked at them closely. Well… they didn't look human, that was for sure. The shapes were there—arms, legs, faces—but whatever spark made a person alive was long gone.

Luke cracked his neck, a faint grin tugging at his lips. "Now Selene, remember—headshots only." He tapped his temple twice with a finger for emphasis.

"Headshots," she repeated flatly, leveling her guns.

"Then it's a competition. We'll see who kills the most, and you can't use your outrageous magic—you can only use basic magic," said Selene, her lips curving into the faintest hint of a challenge.

Before Luke could argue, her twin pistols thundered in perfect unison.

BANG! BANG!

Two zombies in the lead staggered back, their skulls bursting open before they dropped into the mob.

Luke clicked his tongue. "Tch… that's cheating."

He wanted to protest further, but decided against it. If he used his bigger spells, the collateral damage could be worse than the zombies themselves. 

Who knew where gas pipelines or broken fuel lines were hidden in this ruined city? One wrong move, and the whole block could go up in flames—he and Selene would be caught in that.

Instead, he raised his hands, crimson light gathering around his fingers. Crackle-crackle… fwooom. Small spheres of fire shimmered into existence, floating lazily over his palms like miniature suns, their glow reflecting off the cracked asphalt. Alright then, he thought, no big spells. Time to grind for some levels.

The zombies moaned louder as they closed the distance, their guttural growls bouncing off the hollow streets. 

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Every shot was a headshot, each target dropping without hesitation—skulls popping open, bodies hitting the pavement in wet thuds.

Luke smirked, launching his first fireball. Whoosh—FWOOOSH! The sphere streaked forward, trailing sparks, and smashed into a zombie's head. 

The impact burst it into flames, fire spreading across its face before the corpse collapsed twitching and smoking.

"That's one for me," Luke muttered.

BANG-BANG! Two more fell instantly. Selene didn't even glance at him as her next bullets punched through skulls, spraying brain matter across the cracked street. Her movements were fluid, mechanical perfection.

"Ten already," she said coolly, ejecting her magazine with a sharp click-clack and sliding in a fresh one in seconds, her arms steady and eyes unblinking.