Chapter 64: Asura

Chapter 64: Chapter 64: Asura Crash! Dust, debris, and everything in between were flung into the air. The zombie literally fell flat like a pancake. Blood and a mush of rotten organs oozed out of its orifices. Meanwhile, Blaze finally stopped after sliding for several meters. His feet hit the ground as he brushed the dust off his suit. However, he wasn’t unscathed either. One of his arms was bent at an odd angle, and so was his left foot. He looked at his out-of-shape foot and realized the claws were unaffected. The problem was that his muscles weren’t reinforced enough to pull such stunts. I’ll have to do something about it later. Perhaps a mutation from Breaker or Raven can help. Blaze strove for perfection. Any limitations on his body hindered him from achieving that goal. It instead fueled his desire for more. Ignoring his injuries, Blaze turned to the undead. Now, under the starry light, he could see more clearly, and what he saw took him by surprise. The undead... had been stitched together. It was just a patchwork of skin and muscles. Only the face and a few inches of skin belonged to Martin. The rest were from different people. It solved the mystery of how Martin got so much muscle after turning. Someone had created an undead monster from various corpses. And here I thought only I could do that. Blaze could only relate the skill to his own Corpse Unification skill. Well, at least a downgraded version of it. Questions swirled in his mind. Was another undead controlling the amalgamated zombie, or was it a chosen one? Neither case was good for him. Even stranger thing was... he could still feel the pull. It wasn’t coming from the zombie before, but from somewhere else, somewhere close. But the signal wasn’t as clear as before. It almost felt like whatever the thing was, it didn’t want Blaze to find it. While he looked around, the zombie’s body twitched. Blaze turned towards it with raised eyebrows. The zombie pushed itself off the ground, ready for another round. Unfortunately, Blaze had lost interest in it. Deal with this. With that, Blaze turned around once his leg healed, opting to trace the source behind the pull instead. The zombie didn’t take kindly to being ignored and roared. When Blaze ignored him again, it tried to lunge at him, but couldn’t even take a step. It tried again before turning its gaze below. Only then did it realize its legs were missing. "Grrr...?" It let out a confused groan, staring below. Next to its severed feet, something white was poking out of the ground. Curious, the undead leaned in to inspect the strange thing. The moment it did, something shot out of the ground, straight towards its face. The zombie jerked sideways, barely dodging Fester’s tail. The tail whizzed past its head, leaving a gash across its cheek. Fester missed, but the rat was far from done. It jumped out of the hole and curled into a ball mid-air. Its spiky spine was pointed outward as it slammed against the zombie’s chest. The impact threw the creature off balance, and without its legs, it fell over. The creature tried to rip it off, but just then a bunch of undead ants emerged from the ground, burying their mandibles into the zombie’s flesh. Fester’s digging crew has arrived. Fester uncurled, ripping apart the creature’s chest as it did. While the ants held the undead in place, Fester shot its tail at the zombie’s neck. Before the undead knew it, the tail was wrapped around its neck like a deadly vine. Fester used its tail like an anchor and then curled into a ball again. Only this time, the zombie couldn’t dodge or stop it. Like a rotating saw blade, Fester’s spike buried deep into the creature’s neck before severing it off. The zombie’s head flew free from its shoulders, landing several feet away. "Skree!" Fester let out a screech of victory, standing on top of the beheaded undead. The ants followed their leader, clicking their mandibles before returning to their digging duties. *** Meanwhile, Blaze was wandering around the research site. It seemed the one behind the pull had realized someone was tracking them and fled. Blaze clicked his tongue in frustration as the force disappeared entirely. It would’ve been faster to let Fester find the source, since the rat excelled at those tasks. However, it had to be Blaze, because Fester couldn’t feel the pull, let alone locate it. No point crying over spilled milk. As much as Blaze wanted to know what the pull was, he needed to focus on his actual goal. He needed to find the guy from before and infect him with Mind Plague. That and find the cordyceps stored in the facility. However, that didn’t mean his fight with the undead didn’t yield any results. Isn’t that right, Fester? The rat broke through the ground and handed him the nucleus belonging to the undead. Blaze was surprised the zombie had a nucleus at all. The undead he creates using corpse unification don’t have those, at least those he made with auto assembly. Maybe I should perform an autopsy on Raven and check just in case. Nah, he’s too precious to sacrifice... for now. Either way, Blaze threw the disgusting-looking stone into his mouth. It had a salty taste that he hadn’t encountered before, but other than that, the nucleus was just bland. That said, it wasn’t useless. A forgotten, yet familiar pain took hold of Blaze’s torso. His body seemed to have found another mutation strain from the nucleus. The pain wasn’t as intense as before when he formed the Onyx Claws. However, for someone who had forgotten how to feel pain, it was still difficult to hold. Meanwhile, Fester stood there, tilting its head. It didn’t understand what its master was doing and, almost comically, tried replicating Blaze’s pain-fueled actions in a misguided attempt to understand him. As the pain subsided, something churned inside him. Before Blaze could understand what was happening, something burst through his back, tearing through his suit. [Mutation Unlocked: Asura]