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Chapter 63: An Experiment? Or Mastering a New Ability
"Suyan, um…"
Unable to bear looking at the horrifying scene playing out before them, Saeko turned her head away and tugged gently on Suyan's sleeve. "Is this also part of your experiment?"
As her words fell, the surrounding thugs finally snapped out of their daze.
Death was one thing, but utter humiliation was another. They were willing to die, or even turn into those instinct-driven monsters, rather than suffer such an unspeakable indignity.
A french kiss with a zombie…
Just the thought of it made the thugs' stomachs churn with acidic bile. Several of them gagged, their faces turning green as they fought down the overwhelming urge to vomit. Yet, they forced themselves to endure it, shifting their fearful gazes to Suyan.
If Suyan answered 'yes' to Saeko's question, they would absolutely risk death to run away.
"No." Suyan's mouth twitched. "He's just purely unlucky."
Even he couldn't help but marvel at the sheer absurdity of it. Just how abysmal did someone's luck have to be for a sequence of events like this to unfold?
He showed up right when Suyan needed a zombie for an experiment. He decided to launch a sneak attack the exact second Suyan finished pulling out the zombie's teeth. His attack was dodged, he couldn't hit the brakes, and he plowed face-first into the toothless zombie's embrace.
For such an impeccable chain of coincidences to unfold in such a short amount of time… it was the kind of miraculous slapstick you usually only saw in 2D anime worlds where characters miraculously managed to trip on perfectly flat ground.
As for the green-haired leader, Janine? His brain had completely short-circuited. His mind was an absolute blank void, save for a single, echoing thought:
My first kiss didn't go to the senpai I admired… it went to a zombie? I-I'm unclean!!
Snapping back to reality, Janine violently shoved the zombie away. Because the creature was securely bound by Suyan's Conjured chains, it couldn't resist the push and was easily thrown back.
However, as their lips parted, a thick, viscous string of saliva stretched between their mouths.
The sight made everyone's scalps go numb.
Janine collapsed onto the floor, his mouth hanging wide open. He shoved his fingers down his throat, desperate to violently purge his breakfast along with whatever vile fluids had just entered his mouth.
But… the evil man standing over him refused to let that happen.
"Don't you dare throw up!" Suyan commanded coldly.
While Suyan felt a brief pang of sympathy for the green-haired punk's traumatic experience, the deed was already done. It would be a waste not to capitalize on it. This was the perfect opportunity to observe whether the zombie's saliva entering the human digestive tract could trigger the infection.
Suyan stepped forward and kicked Janine squarely in the head, sending him sprawling to the ground. He held back, of course—accidentally killing the man would compromise the experiment's results.
"What are you all staring at? Get over there and cover his mouth!" Suyan barked at the paralyzed thugs. "If you let him spit any of that out, I'll force-feed it to every single one of you. Try me."
Suyan didn't have a shred of pity for these scumbags who were gleefully taking advantage of the apocalypse to terrorize civilians. As for doing it himself or Conjuring another chain to bind him? Suyan found the guy far too disgusting. He even felt repulsed that the shoe he used to kick Janine's face was now contaminated.
"R-Right!" The surrounding thugs jolted out of their stupor, hastily acknowledging the order.
Having witnessed Suyan force-feed and inject zombie blood into their half-dead comrade moments earlier, they didn't doubt his dedication to his viral experiments for a second. If their boss really did vomit out the zombie saliva, this demon of a man would absolutely make them eat it.
The thought sent a wave of bone-deep terror through them. It was a classic case of 'better you than me.' Besides, they were street trash with zero moral compass to begin with.
Without a second thought, the crowd of thugs swarmed forward, united in their chaotic, frantic effort to pin Janine to the floor. Half a dozen hands slapped over Janine's mouth in a desperate bid to keep it shut. They were so terrified that they completely forgot how dangerous it would be to keep their hands near his mouth if he suddenly turned into a zombie.
Janine's head was still ringing from Suyan's kick. By the time his vision cleared, he realized he was pinned to the concrete by his own lackeys, his mouth clamped completely shut.
Muffled, desperate whimpers tore from his throat as his eyes darted wildly, glaring at the men holding him down in a silent threat of brutal retribution.
The thugs unanimously looked away, pretending not to see it.
Seeing their betrayal, Janine finally broke. The madness in his eyes melted into frantic begging, which rapidly devolved into hollow, absolute despair.
A single tear slipped down his cheek.
It was a tear shed for his lost youth.
"Saeko-senpai, why don't you go ahead and pump the gas for the motorcycle?" Suyan suggested, noticing the uncomfortable look on Saeko's face.
"Alright." Saeko nodded, accepting the out.
She knew exactly why Suyan was doing this, and she appreciated that he was only using the scum who had attacked them rather than innocent people. While the sheer grotesqueness of the scene made her wince, she had no intention of stopping him. The purple-haired girl decisively grabbed the motorcycle and pushed it toward the nearest pump.
With Saeko gone, Suyan turned his attention back to the green-haired punk pinned to the floor.
Aside from mapping the extreme limits of the virus to protect his own allies, Suyan had another, hidden motive for these experiments.
Could the zombie virus be harnessed for my own use?
He didn't mean simply extracting it into vials to use as crude biological weapons. He wanted to transmute it into a power he could control at will. By utilizing the properties of Transmutation Type Nen, he wanted to mimic the infectious nature of the zombie virus and change his aura to carry its exact properties.
If he could develop a Nen ability that infected organisms and turned them into zombies, and then fuse it with Manipulation Type aura to command them...
The potential was staggering. He would essentially become a necromancer, capable of limitless mob-spawning.
Of course, the prerequisite was mastering it safely. If he screwed up the development process and accidentally infected himself with the virus, he would become the biggest joke in history.
Yet, for some inexplicable reason, Suyan had a strong premonition. If he could master this ability, there would absolutely come a day when he would need it.
The seconds ticked by in agonizing silence.
However, aside from Janine's despair compounding by the minute, his body showed absolutely zero signs of zombification.
Suyan thought back to the classic movie trope where the heroine was bitten by a venomous snake, and the hero sucked the venom out without dying. Did the zombie virus lack the ability to infect through the digestive tract? Did it have to enter through an open wound? Or was the infection trigger entirely localized in the teeth?
Suyan glanced down at the bloody pile of zombie teeth he had extracted earlier, then shifted his gaze back to the weeping green-haired thug.
He let out a helpless sigh.
It seemed his good friend thug was going to have to suffer just a little bit longer.
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