Chapter Forty-Nine: Caught Between Advance and Retreat

A violent crash echoed as the wall shattered, mingled with the sharp sound of something slicing through the air. The moment the grotesque zombie was slammed into the wall, Fan Li lunged forward and brought his blade down upon its neck in a single, decisive stroke.

In the apocalypse, survival demanded absolute commitment—like a lion hunting a hare, one must use every ounce of strength. If a problem could be ended in one blow, there was no reason to strike a second time.

Though the creature had already been knocked to the ground by Ellie’s pounce, Fan Li dared not let down his guard even for an instant, especially as this was his first encounter with such a being. Veins bulged beneath the padding of his winter coat, and his arms were taut with tension. With the blade raised, he looked every bit the headsman of ancient times, grimly carrying out an execution.

With a sickening crunch, blade met bone. The zombie’s head, encased in a membranous shroud, was severed cleanly from its body.

[Killing Value +3]

[62/100]

The sound of fabric being torn filled the air. Fan Li’s eyes were bloodshot, veins threading through crimson irises, as he decapitated the strange zombie in a single motion.

The round head rolled aside. He stepped over and used the tip of his blade to prod it, revealing that the membrane clung so tightly to the face it was as if a thick layer of quick-drying glue had been slathered across it. The features beneath had been eroded, and even if the membrane were peeled away, only a bloody, featureless expanse of flesh remained.

Fan Li wiped the blood from his blade on the corpse’s body. Only then did he murmur to himself, “So, this really is a higher-level entity than an ordinary zombie? Three points for this kill!”

After several days of slaughter, Fan Li had begun to discern the differences in the killing value yielded by various foes. An ordinary zombie granted one point, a zombie hound two. This strange, membrane-bound creature—let’s call it a Binder—gave three. A zombie in its advanced stage yielded ten, and wild beasts fifteen. As for monsters of the Titan class, he had yet to fell one, so they remained uncharted.

The stronger the enemy, the greater—or sometimes lesser—the killing value received.

Thus, the Binder before him, though not quite an advanced zombie, was certainly stronger than the average.

“So zombies don’t just come in one form?” Standing over the remains of the Binder, Fan Li fell briefly into a daze. The person this had once been couldn’t possibly have lived like this in peacetime. Had they truly existed in such a state, they would have suffocated and been buried long before the virus swept through the world and raised them again to kill.

This was a mutation born of the apocalypse. But what did that mean? It meant that after turning into zombies, humans not only retained some of their original form but, in certain environments, might mutate into entirely new shapes.

A state even more hideous and twisted, these aberrant forms existed somewhere between the ordinary zombies and the advanced types.

No.

Fan Li shook off the thought. If zombies could mutate into monsters by special means, then surely these aberrations had their own evolutionary paths as well. From the outset, they were stronger and stranger than common zombies. Once they advanced, transformed into true monsters, their forms might change again, and their strength would increase yet further.

This was an important discovery.

He hadn’t brought much with him on this outing, but the existence of the Binder and his theory about aberrant forms would be recorded in his notebook once he returned.

Layer upon layer, a fog had descended over the world, shrouding all in mystery. Those who had once lived peacefully here could not see what lay beyond the mist. But as people summoned courage, venturing forth and peeling back the fog, they found the horrors beyond were far worse than they had ever imagined.

These tangled emotions lasted only a few seconds before a surge of curiosity for the unknown filled Fan Li's mind.

Undeniably, for ordinary people, the apocalypse was terrifying—monsters were hideous. But for Fan Li, ever since he acquired the Monster Manual, his life had taken a different turn.

He could not only accumulate killing value through slaughter and summon new monsters to his side. By slaying advanced forms and true monsters, he gained the right to enslave them and even use their powers.

This was a thrill that could never be experienced in peaceful times.

In the old world, Fan Li would never have witnessed such a variety of monsters. Now, he hungered for more killing—not only to encounter creatures he could never have imagined, but also to grow stronger himself, to undergo a profound transformation.

What kind of beings could truly be called monsters?

The Weeper and the Vomiter were one thing; Titan and Ellie were the most striking examples of monstrosity.

One possessed a swollen body, capable of tearing down a building in a berserk rage. Ellie, too, could stand unscathed after being struck like a battering ram, and then summon a ghastly monster’s shadow to utterly devour the Titan.

To survive, he would summon every kind of monster, and hunt ever stronger foes in the apocalypse. This thought filled Fan Li with a sudden, electric excitement.

His eyes began to glow with a red light, his aura turning cold and forbidding, and an air of menace coiled about him, warning all to keep their distance.

“Wait…”

Fan Li suddenly spoke to himself. The blood-lust faded from his eyes, replaced by a look of confusion.

“How could I have such extreme thoughts?

“Are games no longer enjoyable? Is shopping no longer fun? Are the girls… no longer attractive? Why have I suddenly grown to like the apocalypse, and why does this thirst for slaughter gnaw at my heart?”

“Is this… a side effect of the Monster Manual?”

“Or has the act of killing, and the accumulation of killing value, begun to change my very mind?”

No one could answer him. In this apocalypse, only he possessed the Monster Manual—a living, breathing book, steeped in forbidden power. It felt like an abyss; a single misstep and he would fall, flesh, bone, and soul devoured whole.

Stare too long into the abyss, and the abyss gazes back into you.

It was like opium—corrosive to soul and body, and yet, how many of the “infected” could ever truly break free?

So it was with the Monster Manual. Fan Li could, in theory, give up slaughter and stop accumulating killing value. But if he did, and new monsters ceased to join him, how could he ever hope to contend with the apocalypse?

Doom before him, the abyss behind.

Fan Li would have to choose.

A cold wind swept through. A corpse lay at his feet. Fan Li’s lips curled into a strange, unreadable smile. No one knew what he was thinking. Ellie, nearby, understood nothing either. She cocked her head, sensing only that her master’s presence had subtly changed.