The Reborn Otaku’s Code of Practice for the Apocalypse – CH218

Chapter 218 — Skirmish

“What’s happening? What’s going on?”

The group crowded back toward the entrance, peering out through the narrow viewing slit. They didn’t have to wait long before a fleet of vehicles came roaring down the street, weaving wildly from side to side, tires screeching as they slammed on their brakes. They bolted past the building, heading back in the direction Luo Xun and his team had just come from.

A few zombies were actually clinging to the roofs of some of the cars. Unable to see the road properly, two of the vehicles scraped heavily against Luo Xun’s parked trucks, and one crashed head-on into one of their “cars”!

While a cold sweat broke out among the group, they simultaneously let out a sigh of relief. The vehicle that took the direct hit was the solid-metal dummy car Yan Fei had intentionally placed on the outermost edge for safety. The dummy car sustained nothing more than a few superficial scrapes, without even a dent to show for it. In contrast, the front end of the colliding vehicle was completely crumpled.

A massive zombie pursuing hot on their heels caught up in a few strides. With its bare claws, it ripped the car chassis wide open, yanked a survivor out, and bit down instantly.

The people inside the room hadn’t faced such a bloody spectacle in quite some time, and several couldn’t help but gasp at the sight. The massive zombie tore away half the man’s shoulder, and a few more zombies caught up from behind, lunging into the vehicle. Desperate screams erupted from the car, only to be abruptly cut short.

As if hearing or catching the scent of human presence, the massive lead zombie straightened its posture. It ignored the prey its companions had swarmed to snatch from its grasp, turning its gaze instead toward the storefront where Luo Xun and his team were holed up.

“It’s going to attack. Everyone prepare for battle,” Luo Xun said, evaluating the situation on the street. The number of zombies trailing those cars wasn’t exceptionally large, but almost every single one had undergone a secondary mutation. Their lethality and combat prowess were far superior to the zombies of the past.

So, although only about fifty or sixty zombies had been trailing that squad—and barely twenty or so were currently left here—not a single one would be easy to kill.

At his words, everyone raised their ranged weapons, ready to launch a counterattack at a moment’s notice. As for charging out to rescue anyone… encountering this kind of situation late in the apocalypse, once a survivor’s vehicle was swarmed by zombies, it was practically impossible for anyone to be left alive. Judging by the sounds outside, everyone knew the people inside were past saving.

And facts proved exactly that. While humans bitten by zombies early in the apocalypse might have turned into zombies themselves, these current zombies would immediately dismember and devour their prey the moment they swarmed them, leaving absolutely no time for the corpses to turn.

However, before Luo Xun and the team could even open fire, the towering zombie casually grabbed the pure-metal dummy car with one hand, crumpled it effortlessly, and hurled it straight toward the storefront!

“Holy crap! Talk about freakish strength!” Li Tie cursed. The vehicle was so massive that when it was thrown over, it completely blocked their field of vision.

“No, that’s not a strength-type zombie—it’s a metal-user!” Yan Fei’s voice had barely fallen when everyone watched the flying vehicle begin to deform in mid-air! Countless steel-like spikes erupted from the chassis, slamming down directly toward them!

If that hit them, even with the metal perimeter wall shielding their front, a substantial number of spikes would inevitably spear straight through the narrow viewing slit. A split second’s delay in reaction meant they wouldn’t survive!

Yan Fei’s reaction was incredibly instantaneous. The steel spikes suddenly twisted into a tight braid, and the moment the metal vehicle collided with the perimeter wall, it wrapped over it like a sheet of fabric, “blanketing” the structure while handily adding a massive layer of thickness to their defense.

By now, the pack of zombies had thoroughly finished off the living humans inside the car. Due to their long history of cooperative hunting, although the intelligence of these zombies wasn’t exceptionally high, they had already developed a certain degree of coordination.

It seemed this metal-type zombie deployed this specific tactic frequently. The moment the spiked metal plate was hurled, the entire pack of zombies lunged forward right behind it, eager to secure the first bite of fresh human flesh.

To the zombies’ surprise, the steel plate hadn’t pulverized the prey into a bloody pulp; instead, it had transformed into a solid barrier blocking their advance.

Before the zombies could react—and before the metal-type zombie could “peel away” the metal wall—torrents of vibrant crimson juice sprayed over them, dousing them from head to toe!

At the same time, a barrage of metal-jacketed crossbow bolts shot into the smaller zombies. Only the two largest streams of red juice were whipped into a swirling vortex by a freakish gale, tightly trapping the metal-type zombie and wrapping it so completely that it had no hope of escaping.

In barely ten minutes, the commotion outside ceased entirely, leaving only a blanket of white vapor rising slowly before gradually dissipating.

Luo Xun conducted a meticulous scan before letting his guard down. “It’s taken care of. Xinran, harvest those crystals, and then sandify a pit to bury their remains along with the mushroom juice.”

On this run, the little girl didn’t even need to attack, and even Xu Mei had only operated a water gun. It was Song Lingling and Zhang Su’s seamless coordination with the mushroom juice that had won the day.

Song Lingling’s control over her water ability was growing increasingly proficient, and Zhang Su’s wind ability could accelerate the velocity of the liquid, while twisting the streams to strike targets from highly unorthodox angles. What made the battle exceptionally easy for the team was—they had brought a massive stockpile of mushroom juice on this excursion.

The yield of this substance at home would only increase over time. Even if they used it entirely to irrigate the mutated plants, they worried about triggering secondary mutations. Therefore, on a rare trip into the city center, they had no intention of letting such an excellent proving ground slip through their fingers. On this trip, they had filled nearly half of one truck container bed with the substance, meaning they didn’t have to worry even if they encountered a pack of zombies like this every single day.

What left Luo Xun and the team even more gratified was—because Song Lingling was present, almost every single drop of mushroom juice she manipulated landed precisely onto the zombies. If a stream hadn’t touched a zombie before it dropped dead, she could pull the clean liquid right back into the storage containers, completely wasting a grand total of zero drops!

Little Xinran used her sand manipulation to retrieve several crystals through the viewing slit, while burying the zombie remains. Yan Fei froze for a split second after receiving the metal-type crystal, turning to look at the group. “This one is actually a level-five crystal!”

Following the retreat of the zombie tide, they had visited the neighboring mutated fields where zombies had been ensnared. Although they had unearthed a level-five water-type crystal back then—which had significantly boosted Song Lingling’s strength—they hadn’t encountered another level-five crystal since. Yet on a single trip out, they had actually run into a level-five zombie? And a specialized, metal-type level-five zombie at that?! Talk about absolute golden luck!

Everyone inside the room froze, before letting out amused chuckles and sighs. “This luck is unbelievable…”

“To be fair, this zombie was quite pathetic. Before it could even unleash its level-five ability properly, it was completely choked to death by our mushroom juice.”

True. If this zombie had been granted more reaction time to mount a proper offense, this battle absolutely wouldn’t have concluded so easily. But looking at it from another angle, elemental counters truly existed between superpowers; swapping to an alternative method could easily choke out an enemy that should have been overwhelmingly formidable.

After confirming that no other zombies were loitering outside, Luo Xun and the team cautiously opened the metal door, approaching the heavily mangled vehicle that had crashed.

Not a single living human remained inside, nor were there any turning into zombies. Every single individual had been directly dispatched—or rather, dismembered—by the zombies.

The interior of the car was an absolute charnel house. Luo Xun and the team could only conduct a brief check before moving the vehicle onto an open lot by the roadside. However, they refrained from directly burying the vehicle and the corpses inside—it wasn’t that they didn’t want to, but this squad was clearly traveling together with the survivors who had fled ahead. Although zombies were pursuing them, a few cars were bound to escape. If those people returned to search for their companions’ bodies and belongings, they would definitely come back to this spot. Burying the car and the corpses right now would only complicate matters.

Returning to their temporary shelter, Luo Xun looked toward the direction of the main base with a touch of lingering regret. “There were definitely level-five zombies hidden within that earlier zombie tide. If the base hadn’t enacted those extreme policies, we might have been able to go back and trade for them with other survivors.” Although they were perfectly secure now, they had correspondingly lost their avenue to barter for goods with the base population.

“Even if we were still inside the base, items of that tier would definitely be locked down in the hands of the military. Even if we wanted to trade for them, we wouldn’t necessarily be able to,” Yan Fei comforted him.

And that was exactly the case. Ever since the New Year, whenever they wanted to trade for something inside the base, for one thing, they lacked the proper channels since their original connections were no longer useful. For another, the base’s official exchange counters simply didn’t stock high-tier crystals for trade. If one truly wanted to trade for them, they had to search the marketplace for survivors who possessed alternative elements and wanted to swap high-tier crystals.

Furthermore, with the base currently in such a chaotic state, even if they went back, they likely wouldn’t find a place to complete these trades safely. If they unluckily ran into the military executing their new regulations—forcibly allocating everyone’s labor lines and confiscating private assets—the very items they prepared for trade might not even be preserved.

Once Luo Xun dropped the topic, everyone began chatting about the zombies and the fleeing convoy from just now. Someone with exceptional eyesight turned to the group. “Among the cars that bolted past earlier, one vehicle was missing half its chassis! I saw several zombies clinging to the roof; I’m afraid the people inside that car won’t escape very far.”

A member with sharp hearing immediately added, “While we were fighting these few zombies, I think I faintly caught the sound of an explosion in the distance. It might have been those cars that had zombies clinging to them running into disaster.”

“Boss, where do you think they managed to provoke a pack of zombies like that?”

Faced with the question, Luo Xun expressed his total helplessness. He didn’t possess long-range clairvoyance or prophetic vision, after all. “They probably just stumbled into them by pure coincidence. Maybe the destination they were heading to happened to have an active zombie presence, and they ended up targeted by the pack.”

Although the route they had selected appeared relatively secure, it was only relatively secure. From the satellite photos, they could only verify the condition of the streets; heaven only knew what kind of zombies were nesting inside the flanking buildings? Luo Xun and his team could never guarantee that their journey would be absolutely secure. This was especially true now that they had encountered a situation like this.

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