Chapter 45: Marrow

Chapter 45: Chapter 45: Marrow Keep the corpses intact. That was Blaze’s instruction to the undead. He didn’t expect the humans to foil his plan. Before the remaining human could do something stupid, Blaze rushed towards him and snapped his neck. Breaker and Raven followed suit, killing Hana and Arby. They didn’t need to do that, as they had lost too much blood and would have died either way. Barry let out a groan before collapsing next to his squad. However, killing him didn’t lessen Blaze’s frustration. Even kicking the corpse did nothing in that regard. That’s what I get for prioritizing fun over work. He rubbed his temple. Deep down, he knew this was his fault. If he had killed them quickly, then he could still use their bodies. But no, he had to turn it into a show. Then again, he didn’t expect that rifle to explode and kill everyone. He looked around, and it was quite a mess. Not only humans, but some sprinters were also caught in the blast. Blaze wasn’t worried about them. He could create them through auto assembly like he did before. But the human corpses were a different story. He walked over to Hailey’s body first. The rifle barrel was still buried in his head. He didn’t have to perform an autopsy to know Hailey was beyond saying. At best, Blaze could harvest his corpse as repair material, or use it for corpse unification. It was the same with Arby. Perhaps he could use them to heal Breaker’s lost arm. Compared to them, Barry was in the best condition and could be infected without any problems. However, it was Hana’s corpse that put Blaze in a better mood. I’ve been looking for someone like you. Blaze opened the corpse vault, retrieving Amanda’s corpse. Only to be taken aback by how fresh she looked... and smelled. Now he understood why the vault didn’t let him eat the ones stored inside. Just looking at the hole-riddled corpse made him drool. With a wave of his hand, he put Amanda’s corpse next to Hana’s. Thankfully, Hana had all the organs that Amanda was missing. Besides, the system showed high compatibility between the two corpses. The zombies kept watching their leader, waiting for the signal to feast on the humans. But the awaited signal never came. Instead, Blaze began fusing the corpses. After having used [Manual Assembly] before, Blaze had little difficulty in putting her body together. Soon, a maiden stood before him. Even as a dead, she looked quite beautiful. Either that, or my standards in women have changed. Even though he said that, Blaze was quite surprised by her appearance. All the undead he had raised before had turned into monstrous creatures. He expected the same this time around, but that wasn’t the case. The lady before him appeared even more human than he did. He didn’t know what to think about that. Her pale skin shone like wax. Much like him, black veins were spread all over her body. It made her skin look like cracked marble. Between the cracks, one could see a hint of gold leaking out. Her face remained almost untouched by decay, eerily beautiful and emotionless. Unlike her ember eyes, which stared right at Blaze. But perhaps the most interesting thing about her was her jet-black tendrils. They wrapped around her body like a shawl. +++ Subject: Lady Marrow (Subject Code: S#026) Race: Undead Status: Coordinated Class: Blight Matron Sub-Classification: Error! #eal3r! Error! $ummon3r [Attributes:] — Strength: Moderate — Agility: Moderate — Durability: Moderate — Intelligence: High [Evolution Potential: Detected (48%)] [Hunger Level: !!!Error!!!] [Regeneration Rate:] Moderate [Decay Rate:] Halted [Special Traits:] — Raise Skeletons: Can raise skeletons from corpses. The skeletons retain 70% of their stats. Simple, yet effective mob that wouldn’t take a step without its summoner’s permission. — Necrotic Aura: Being around undead helps them restore 1% HP per second and reduces their hunger by 0.1% per second for all allied units within 15 meters. — Repair: Can heal any injury of a horde member once every six hours. [Other Information:] Error! The subject has deleted this section of its own will. +++ Blaze went silent upon seeing the information. It was the weirdest sequence he had ever seen in his undead life. The woman before him not only named herself, but also deleted any usable information Blaze could access. Hunger, gone. Sub-classification, gone. Other information, gone. It was a surprise she showed him anything at all! Then again, what she showed him baffled him even more. She even named herself? "I did." Absolute silence. Blaze looked around. He was surrounded by undead. Yet he swore he heard a woman’s voice. At last, his eyes fell on Marrow. You can speak? "Yes." An undead... who can talk. Yet, he couldn’t. "Grr.... Gr..." Blaze tried to speak, but only horrible groans came out of his mouth. Yet Marrow could speak complete sentences without any trouble. Other than her intelligence, her stats were mediocre. But that couldn’t be the reason for it, as he surpassed her in that department. Then how...? "I don’t know." Of course you don’t... It wasn’t all that bad. At least he now had someone to talk with. Like a human, and not Fester’s screeches. Blaze shook the thought out of his head. There were more important things he had to do. Like testing Marrow’s skills. He pointed at Breaker’s severed arm. Breaker looked quite scary, with an arm missing. The light beam from before had obliterated its arm entirely. If Marrow could fix a missing arm, then Blaze wouldn’t have to worry about his horde members being reckless. Marrow walked up to Breaker and kicked the back of its knee. The giant brute buckled by the sudden force and fell to its knees. Blaze raised an eyebrow, wondering what she was doing as she climbed on top of Breaker. Suddenly, a blackish liquid flowed out of her fingertips, crawling towards Breaker’s shoulder stump. The same thing happened from her other arm, only this time, it was a golden liquid. The golden liquid flowed towards the sprinters. The next second, they were turned into pulp as if they were crushed by an invisible hydraulic press. The liquid absorbed everything from them. At the same time, the black liquid began solidifying. Slowly, a new arm was created in place of the old. The entire process took less than thirty seconds, and Breaker had a stronger arm. But that wasn’t all. "I expect you wanted me to do this next?" she said, raising an arm towards a frogkin. The frogkin was also crushed, this time, by the black liquid. But the next second, its corpse split open and its skeletal frame jumped out. A skeleton soldier had been raised.