Chapter 35 35: The Flesh Plant and its Blood Moss

— — — — — — Raccoon City, outskirts — at the mansion that used as a hidden entrance to Umbrella Corporation's bioweapons research facility. In the sky, with little assistant Merlin sitting on his left shoulder, was Veyron. Just as he expected. Ever since Takagi Yuriko provided precise coordinates for Raccoon City, it didn't matter whether this world's Resident Evil setting leaned more toward the movie version or the game version. Once he locked onto Umbrella, finding them was never going to be a problem. But what did catch him off guard... was that things here were just a bit off from what he anticipated. Beneath the mansion on the outskirts lay a Hive research facility. That was already hidden deep— but below that? An even bigger, completely concealed base was buried underground. That pretty much confirmed it: this world's Umbrella Corporation followed the movie canon. The one where the third film kicked off a global zombie apocalypse, and by the sixth, it was revealed the T-virus was part of a grand plan to "cleanse" the Earth. But someone explain this to him—what the hell is up with this base? No living people. No undead either. Instead, over 90% of both bases were covered in dark red, pulsing flesh that coated nearly every inch. It's like a big piece of meat that was alive. And right in the center, nestled like some treasure, was a plant that also looked disturbingly like flesh. Oh—and that blood-red flesh wasn't just in Umbrella's bases. After actually arriving in Raccoon City, Veyron and Merlin realized that the entire city was slowly being taken over by this stuff. The city's outbreak wasn't nearly as intense as the one in the base, but it was still spreading. And whether it was basic zombies, mutated Lickers, or fully-armed Nemesis units— What used to be humanity's doom in the outside world had all become... pawns of this disgusting flesh. The difference? Nemesis units were fused into the moss of the flesh plant. Lickers were sealed inside meat cocoons. And the average zombie? They were like gross, humanoid mushrooms growing straight out of the blood moss. Veyron took a deep breath and cast a long, hard look at little Merlin sitting on his shoulder. Merlin: "???" "Gotta restore my sanity points..." Not gonna lie, for someone who's never seen this kind of nightmare before, the mental impact of this whole scene was no joke. Especially since he'd been scanning the area the whole way here using Observation Haki. If he didn't already know this mess was caused by Umbrella, he'd honestly suspect someone had hosted a full-on "summon an evil god" ritual in the middle of town. "Sanity?" Merlin fluttered off his shoulder, twirling her umbrella as she floated in front of him. "Want me to change into a cuter outfit?" "Nah, you're perfect like this." Veyron shook his head with a smile. ...Which didn't stop her from changing outfits anyway. The one she'd been wearing before was more casual, like something for a day out. The new one? Elegant and clearly party-ready. Not one to let good fanservice go to waste, Veyron burned the image into the back of his mind before getting back to business. "Did your Clairvoyance pick up anything down there that looks like a T-virus or its cure?" He gestured at the dual-layered underground base beneath their feet. Observation Haki was great—it could detect attacks, sense power levels, emotions, thoughts, even predict opponents' next moves.An all-purpose battlefield tool. But it wasn't perfect. When it came to lifeless stuff, it was way less effective than with living beings. Especially here. The entire base was filled with that red flesh, which not only ignored his "voice of all things" but actively interfered with it. So finding a T-virus cure in that mess with Observation Haki alone? Yeah, no. Merlin's Clairvoyance, though—that was on a whole different level. Top-tier, even in the Type-Moon world. "To find the cure, we'd have to know what it even looks like first..."Merlin shrugged, raising her tiny hands. "But I did find something that might have been dragged here by the World Will from the outside." "You mean those twelve spiral test tubes the Chat Group notes mentioned?" Veyron immediately caught on to what she meant as he looked at the mission details again. [Mission Brief: The █████ world's Will tried to evolve its world by introducing a variable to change its destined path. But unexpectedly, the very act of pulling something in from outside reality has now thrown the world into an even bigger crisis—one that was already on track to destroy human civilization...] [Objective: Rescue the remaining uninfected fate-bearers and ensure they can survive even after the mission ends and the group leaves the █████ world.] [System Note 2: The variable pulled in from the Void is a locked case bearing a red-and-white umbrella logo. Inside are 12 spiral glass vials—six blue, six green—containing unknown substances.] ... But that raised another question—why "might've been"? "The notes said there were twelve tubes in the case, right?" Merlin lifted her wand and brought up a 3D projection of the base below, zooming in on the center of the Ark base—right where that freaky flesh plant was growing. "Well, I found the blue ones—2 plus 10. The green ones—2 plus 30." She said "2 plus 10" and "2 plus 30" instead of just 12 and 32 because they were split into separate boxes. "So those two blue and two green ones that are packaged separately... they're probably the original samples from outside this world. The other forty might just be copies Umbrella tried to recreate?" Veyron eyed the storage containers trapped within the core of that flesh plant. "Trying to grab those things without damaging them is gonna be tricky..." From what he could sense with Haki, that plant was the only actual body in the whole of Raccoon City. Which meant—All the Nemesis units, Lickers, and undead "grown" on the moss covering the city were basically just its tendrils or avatars. If it weren't so completely messed up, he wouldn't have needed Merlin to help him recover his sanity in the first place. "I can use illusion magic to 'trick' the blood flesh moss into thinking you're one of them. That would let you move freely through the base without having to fight." Merlin explained, "But if that plant becomes alert—like if you try to steal the containers it's guarding as treasures—then I won't be able to get you back out the same way. Not in this world, where it's already super unfriendly to magi." "And at its size, if it gets aggressive, you'll be in way more danger than if you just fought your way in normally. Still wanna try?" "...Yeah, let's do it." Veyron hesitated a moment, then nodded slowly. First of all, they had to get that cure. It was key to giving the survivors a better shot at staying alive after they left. Second—This disgusting flesh Plant needed to die. If it had just stayed hidden, fine. But now that he knew about it? No way he was leaving it be. The zombie outbreak here hadn't even been going for a month, and this thing had already absorbed a million undead and blanketed an entire city in blood moss. If they didn't deal with it now, what—wait ten, fifty, a hundred years for it to turn the whole planet into a giant lump of flesh and then say, "We could've done something back then... but now it's too late"? Not on his watch. . . .