Deep breath in... deep breath out...
Li Ke did his best to regulate his breathing, desperate to eliminate any extra noise and muffle his footsteps.
His efforts paid off. As he crept up on the sleeping zombie, the creature didn't stir. It remained slumped over, leaving its fragile cervical spine completely exposed.
Lungs filling with the stench of rot, Li Ke brought his fire axe down with everything he had. The heavy blade slammed into the decaying neck, fracturing the spine and sending the zombie crashing face-first to the floor.
But Li Ke didn't freeze. Ignoring the axe now wedged deep in the corpse's neck, he let it fall with the body. In one fluid motion, he ripped a second axe from his back and swung viciously at the creature's head. However, the zombie snarled and tried to scramble back up, throwing off his angle. The axe bit hard into its forehead, getting stuck without delivering a fatal blow.
Expecting this, Li Ke didn't panic. He let go of the handle, stepped back to dodge a wild swipe, and pulled a hammer from his belt. Swinging it in a wide arc, he brought it down like a sledgehammer onto the back of the embedded axe.
He had wrapped the back of the axe head in cloth beforehand, so the impact made a dull, muffled thud. Under the force of the blow, the axe split the skull entirely. The zombie wobbled for a second, then collapsed into a heap.
Still keeping his distance, Li Ke walked over to the first zombie, which was still twitching on the floor. He wrenched his first axe out of its neck and chopped its head clean off before it could crawl up.
Only then did Li Ke finally let out a ragged sigh. He slumped against the wall of the abandoned house, waiting for his stamina to recover.
He couldn't help but curse under his breath.
"What a godforsaken world."
He had dropped into this hellhole just yesterday morning. The moment he opened his eyes, two scantily-clad blonde women had rushed him, looking like they wanted to throw themselves into his arms.
If half of their necks hadn't been rotted away, and their exposed intestines weren't trailing behind them as they walked, he might have actually enjoyed it.
Factor in the legless torso crawling toward him from the corner, and he instantly realized he was either on a zombie movie set, or he had been dumped straight into horror reality.
Most people freeze and scream in a crisis. It's a survival instinct gone wrong—just like when someone stares blankly at an oncoming car instead of jumping out of the way.
But Li Ke was different.
His reflex wasn't to freeze—it was to throw a punch.
Back on Earth, a situation that should have left him with a mere scratch ended up breaking his right hand and putting him in the hospital for a month because of that exact reflex.
And yesterday, when those two blonde zombies lunged at him, he had instinctively tried to shove them away. His hand brushed against their jagged nails.
Naturally, he got scratched.
Looking down at the scabbed-over wound on the back of his hand, Li Ke sighed and shook his head. Talk about embarrassing. Other web novel protagonists dropped into worlds like this and immediately pulled off flawless counter-kills. Meanwhile, he had practically signed his own death warrant on day one out of sheer muscle memory.
He probably wouldn't rank as the single most pathetic transmigrator in history—Lord knows there were plenty of predecessors who had it worse these days—but he was definitely making the headlines.
Then again, if he hadn't thrown that instinctive punch, those rotting teeth would have ripped his throat out. He never would have had the time to grab a crowbar and smash their fragile skulls open.
The moment he realized he was injured yesterday, he had frantically torn through that RV looking for anything to clean the wound. He had even briefly considered hacking his own arm off. But he knew better; without proper medical equipment or a sterile environment, doing that would just kill him faster.
After spending the entire night agonizing over it, Li Ke finally resolved that whether he was infected or not, he was going to make his final days count.
He refused to let his story end with him starving or dying of thirst.
So, after a brief rest, he went right back to scavenging.
Most of the food in this derelict house had gone bad. All he managed to salvage were five cans of spam, two jars of jam, and a single unopened bottle of water. Everything else was either rotted through or completely dried up.
Li Ke kept his noise to an absolute minimum as he searched for resources. He was dying of thirst, but water was scarce. Instead, while rummaging through a storage cabinet on the top floor, he stumbled upon two perfectly preserved jars of honey.
"Well, look at that..."
Li Ke licked his dry lips. Since he was living like there was no tomorrow, he didn't hesitate. He popped a jar open and took a massive gulp.
The rich sweetness of the honey instantly lifted his spirits. Normally, he would never eat honey like this, but things were different now. Who cares about cavities or sugar crashes when you might turn into a corpse by tomorrow?
Gulping down the honey and scarfing down the scavenged spam, Li Ke only allowed himself to relax like this after confirming the house was completely clear of threats. Still, he planned to head back to the RV before nightfall. The houses around here were mostly made of wood and already showed severe signs of rot. If a massive wandering horde decided to tear through, a wooden frame wouldn't hold.
It wasn't that the area lacked reinforced concrete buildings. But Li Ke had taken one look at them, spotted at least twenty zombies milling around the entrances, and immediately nixed that idea.
However, just as he finished packing up his loot and prepared to head back to the RV, a sharp feminine scream pierced the air.
The next second, Li Ke saw the door to a house across the street burst open. A blonde girl wearing a Japanese school uniform came sprinting out.
Right on her heels were three snarling zombies.
Her screams instantly woke up every sleeping zombie on the block. From his vantage point, Li Ke watched the chaos unfold in real time. The moment she burst through the door, the surrounding houses erupted with the sound of crashing furniture and shattering glass. Shuffling, rotting silhouettes packed the windows.
Worse still, one of the creatures was moving like a massive frog. It looked ordinary while crouching on all fours, but it suddenly launched itself forward in a massive, supernatural leap. It was closing the distance to the girl fast.
"Stupid woman..."
Li Ke glanced down at the scratch on his arm. If he weren't already infected, he wouldn't have bothered sticking his neck out for a stranger.
But he was already a walking dead man. What did he have to lose?
Besides, these standard zombies weren't particularly fast. Even the quickest among them only moved at a brisk walking pace.
Throwing the front door open, Li Ke charged out with an axe in one hand and a hammer in the other. He locked eyes with the terrified girl and roared, "Get down!"
His booming voice cut through her panic, and she instinctively dropped to the pavement. In a split second, Li Ke dropped his axe, gripped his hammer with both hands, and swung it like a baseball bat. He aimed straight for a zombie in a yellow shirt—the frog-like creature mid-leap, flying directly toward the girl.
Crack!
The hammer smashed squarely into its face, the sickening sound of fracturing bone echoing in the air. Pivoting on his heel, Li Ke let go of the hammer, ripped his spare axe from his back, and buried it deep into the face of another rushing zombie. The blade split its forehead wide open, sending it twitching to the ground.
Zombies were already hammering against doors and crashing through windows all around them. Without sparing a glance at the stumbling undead, Li Ke scooped up his dropped weapons, grabbed the girl's soft, pale hand, and bolted in the direction he had come from.
"Move!"
Nodding in pure terror, the girl kept pace with him as they sprinted straight into the woods. Within moments, they outpaced the lumbering zombies, breaking their line of sight and leaving them wandering aimlessly.
Deep in the forest, Li Ke finally glanced over his shoulder. Seeing no pursuit, he pulled the girl behind a thick tree to hide. Her curvaceous figure pressed tightly against him in the cramped space, but he had no time to enjoy it. His eyes scanned the brush, on high alert for any hidden threats. Only when he was absolutely certain they were safe did he finally let out a ragged breath and turn to look at the only other living person he had seen.
Up close, the girl was far more stunning than he had realized. She had flawless, porcelain skin, striking purplish-red eyes, and a fragile, tear-stained expression that made her look incredibly beautiful.
There was just one problem. Her clothes were pristine—so clean they felt entirely out of place in a zombie apocalypse.
Look at him, for instance. He had only been here for a day, yet he was already caked in dust and dried blood.
"What were you thinking, screaming like that?" he asked bluntly.
The girl's eyes welled with tears, and her voice carried a hint of helpless grievance. "I... I was just so hungry. I wanted to find something to eat, but..."
Li Ke instantly understood. He nodded, keeping his mouth shut as he handed her one of his cans of spam.
But as the girl took the can, she bit her lower lip, hesitating before murmuring sheepishly, "Um... do you have anything... tastier? I can't really stomach this. I actually threw up earlier trying to eat canned food, and that's how... that's how the zombies found me."
Even she seemed to realize how unreasonable her request sounded, and she quickly hung her head in embarrassment.
Huh?
Li Ke blinked, staring at her in disbelief. He took another long look at her.
"How exactly have you been surviving out here? Were you some pampered high-society lady before this? Did you get kicked out of a safe zone?"
He couldn't wrap his head around it. But after thinking through tropes from the novels he used to read, a possibility began to form.
"N-no, that's not it! I just got here yesterday morning. I opened my bedroom door, and suddenly, I was just... here!"
As she spoke, tears threatened to spill over again. The near-death experience had clearly left her traumatized, and finding Li Ke was the only thing keeping her from a complete meltdown.
Noticing his bizarre expression, she suddenly snapped out of her panic. She scrambled to bow deeply to him, trying to regain some semblance of her usual composure.
"Ah, I'm so sorry! I forgot to properly thank you! Thank you so much for saving my life. My name is Erina Nakiri. It's a pleasure to meet you!"
Erina Nakiri?
Li Ke's face contorted with a mixture of shock and recognition.
If his memory served him right, Erina Nakiri was a character from a famous anime.
And she had also arrived just yesterday?
Li Ke carefully scrutinized the blonde girl claiming to be Erina, his gaze dropping down to her legs.
He wasn't staring out of curiosity. He was looking at something much more urgent.
There, stark against her skin, was a bloody, jagged scratch.