Chapter 24: Chapter 24: Zombie Beasts
The group immediately got into battle stances.
Clara’s hands frosted over, ice crystals already forming at her fingertips. Rose raised her palms, a green glow flickering to life. Ryan dropped into a crouch, ice lances materializing behind him. Dean simply shifted his weight, his posture relaxed but his eyes sharp.
The shadows behind the oak tree shifted.
A figure stepped out — silver hair catching the faint light filtering through the canopy, crimson eyes gleaming in the darkness, with a sword hanging at his hip.
Clara’s ice dissolved.
"Lucian!"
She crossed the distance burying his face in her chest. Lucian’s arms hung at his sides for a moment before he sighed and patted her back awkwardly.
"You know," he mumbled into her collarbone, "this is becoming a habit."
She pulled back, cheeks slightly pink, and punched his shoulder. "Don’t ever do that again."
Ryan appeared beside them and thrust out his hand. Lucian met it with his own as their hands clapped.
"Welcome back."
"Wouldn’t miss it."
Dean watched the exchange with a raised eyebrow. "You guys know him?"
"Yeah."
All of them stood in a loose circle, the tension easing slightly.
"Even with my strength," Dean said, crossing his arms, "getting through that horde outside is almost impossible. They’ve got the entire perimeter surrounded. I counted at least three hundred signatures before we entered."
Lucian closed his eyes and expanded his Blood Sense.
The web of life — and unlife — spread out around him like a dark canvas. Hundreds of grey pulses ringed the forest edge, dense and unmoving. But it was what lay deeper that caught his attention.
"It seems they’ve surrounded the whole forest," he confirmed. "And I’m seeing a lot of bones in the eastern part. Fresh ones. Whatever lives in here has been—"
CRASH.
A shape burst from the undergrowth to their left — massive, tusked, a boar the size of a small car with razored spines running down its back and milky eyes burning with mindless hunger. A razor boar. Early E-rank. And very, very dead.
Dean moved.
His fist connected with the boar’s skull with a boom that shook the trees, and the creature went flying — thirty meters, crashing through two trees before skidding to a halt in a shower of splinters.
But it got up.
Even with its skull caved in, even with black blood streaming down its face, the zombie razor boar charged again. Its legs pumped, spines rattling, and then—
It slowed instantly. Like something had grabbed it from the inside and tried to anchor it to the ground. Its massive legs strained, muscles bulging, but its speed dropped from a charge to a jog to a heavy, laboring walk.
Dean stepped forward and punched it again.
This time, his fist was different. Lucian saw it — the air around Dean’s knuckles distorted, like reality itself was bending under an invisible weight. The blow landed with a sound like a boulder dropping from a cliff.
CRUNCH.
The boar’s head shattered. Skull fragments sprayed outward, and the massive body crashed to the forest floor, dead.
Lucian’s eyes shifted to gold.
╔═══════════════════════╗
║ ◀ EYES OF THE ETERNALS ▶ ║
║ Name: Dean Moreau ║
║ Age: 22 ║
║ Race: Human ║
║ Bloodline: Nil ║
║ Cultivation: Early Core Realm ║
║ Mana: 8,700 / 9,500 MPU ║
║ Ability: ║
║ └─ Density Manipulation — S-Rank ║
║ Can increase or decrease the density of any object or living being he touches, including himself. ║ ║ Increasing density adds mass and durability. Decreasing reduces weight and increases speed. No known upper limit on density increase detected. ║
║ Physical Stats: ║
║ Strength: 450 (Base) ║
║ Agility: 35 (Base) ║
║ Durability: 500 (Base) ║
║ Note: Stats fluctuate wildly based on active density changes. ║ ╚═════════════════════╝
S-Rank. No wonder. This dude is packed.
Lucian understood now. When Dean had punched the boar the first time, he’d increased the density of the boar’s body — made it heavier, slower, easier to hit. The second punch, he’d increased the density of his own fist, multiplying the mass behind the blow to absurd levels.
How much physical training did this guy do to handle that kind of weight on his body?
"Come on," Rose said, staring at the boar’s corpse with distaste. "As if humans weren’t enough. There are even zombie beasts now. You’ve got to be kidding me."
As if on cue, the forest came rustled.
Screech! Screech! Screech!
From the trees, from the undergrowth, from every direction — razor boars and giant spiders poured toward them. F-rank beasts mostly, early to peak, their mutated forms grey and rotting. But scattered among them were larger shapes — E-rank beasts, early stage, their bodies radiating the same residual mana as the humanoid zombies.
"Shit!" Ryan shouted.
"FORM UP!" Dean roared.
Clara moved first. Her hands slammed together, and ice exploded outward in a wave of killing frost.
"Frost Domain!"
A sphere of sub-zero cold expanded around her, twenty meters in diameter, and every F-rank beast that entered its range slowed to a crawl. Ice crept across their legs, their bodies, their joints — not killing them, but immobilizing them. An E-rank spider lunged at her from above, fangs dripping with venom, and Clara caught it with a lance of ice through the thorax.
Schlick.
The spider twitched and hung limp.
Rose raised her hands, and a green halo materialized above the group, spreading outward to envelop all five of them in a shimmering shield.
"Aegis Reinforcement," she said through gritted teeth. "Second layer of defense. Don’t let anything break my focus."
Ryan engaged the F-rank beasts — the ones Clara hadn’t frozen. He wasn’t the strongest here, not by a long shot, but he was far from weak. Ice lances materialized around him in rapid succession, launching at the smaller boars and spiders with pinpoint accuracy.
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
Each lance found its mark — eye sockets, joints, gaps in the chitin — dropping F-rank beasts with mechanical efficiency.
Dean charged the E-ranks.
He was a battering ram. His fists connected with boar skulls and spider carapaces, each impact accompanied by that reality-distorting shimmer as he cycled density changes mid-combat. A boar charged him — he increased its density, grabbed its tusk, and swung it into two spiders like a club.
BOOM. CRUNCH.
Bodies flew.
Lucian drew the Sword of Aikis.
Dean glanced at the blade mid-swing. "Nice sword."
"Thanks."
An early E-rank razor boar lowered its head and charged at Lucian, spines bristling. The F-rank spiders flanked it, fangs bared.
"Flash Burst."
Light erupted from Lucian’s body — blinding, intense, concentrated in a tight sphere around him. The F-rank spiders recoiled, their dead eyes searing, their chitinous legs scrambling. Two of them burst into flame. A third simply collapsed, its nervous system fried.
The E-rank boar charged through the light without slowing.
Lucian raised his left arm and hardened the blood beneath his skin. The boar’s tusk connected with his forearm — CLANG — and the impact jarred him to the bone, but the hardened blood held. His feet skidded back half a meter in the dirt.
He pushed the boar back with a kick — vampiric strength plus his zombie slayer title sending it stumbling — and rushed forward. The remaining F-rank spiders lunged from the sides, fangs wide.
They bit down on Rose’s shield. The green barrier flickered but held.
Lucian didn’t slow. Thin lines of blood shot from his fingertips — hair-thin, diamond-hard — and pierced through spider brains with surgical precision.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
Three spiders dropped, their heads exploding in showers of black ichor.
Lucian closed the distance on the boar and punched it across the jaw. The beast’s head snapped sideways, and before it could recover, Lucian raised his fingertip.
"Light Bolt."
A concentrated beam of pure light erupted from his finger — thin as a needle, bright as a star — and punched through the boar’s skull. Entry wound the size of a coin. Exit wound the size of a fist.
The boar dropped.
Nearby, Rose had trapped three F-rank spiders in individual forcefields — small green bubbles that held them immobile. With no offensive ability, she’d pulled a bow from she got from the academy’s supply room — and was opening tiny holes in each shield just long enough to loose an arrow through the gap.
Twang. Thwack.
Twang. Thwack.
Twang. Thwack.
Three arrows. Three spider brains. Three dead beasts.
Rose exhaled and lowered the bow. "I really need an offensive ability."
The fighting died down. Bodies littered the clearing — boars, spiders, puddles of black blood seeping into the forest floor. Clara dismissed her Frost Domain with a wave of her hand, and Rose’s green halo flickered and faded.
Dean wiped his knuckles on his pants. "We better kill whatever is controlling these things before we exhaust ourselves."
Ryan nodded, pushing his glasses up his nose. "That thing is at least Mid Core Realm or higher. The coordination, the range, the way it herded us all into this forest — that level of control requires serious power. But Dean’s right. We aren’t getting out of here without killing that motherfucker."
Lucian and Clara spoke simultaneously: "Alright."
Rose stared at them.
"This has got to be the craziest plan I’ve heard," she said, shaking her head. "Five people against a Mid Core Realm zombie controller in its own territory. But what choice do I have?"
