Chapter 39 - Offense of the Infected

Fast forward a week later, Adam would assume he had time to rest after he just finished all the governing work with Agent. However, fate has another plan for him.

"Why…" Adam mutters absentmindedly as his dazed eyes flashed dangerously with a glint as he caught an incoming Zombified Beowolf by its head and squeezed his hand before crushing its skull.

*Roar!*

"Fuck you! Fuck all of you! Your mother! Your father! Your ancestors! Your creator! Everyone of them!" Adam raged from his exhaustion and punched a Zombified Deathstalker that dared appear in his sight to vent his stress. It's body burst into pieces of flesh from the force and let loose his shotgun to kill a dozen more Zombified Grimms.

"Damn, I didn't know the President was this bad ass!" A soldier paused and admired the carnage Adam carved out in his path. "I, Thomas, admire you as my idol!"

"Shut yer trap, boy and keep shootin' before I shot mine up yer ass!" The grumpy leader yelled at the soldier that stopped shooting before he sighed tiredly.

It's been five continuous hours since the battle started. It's already a miracle that the morale is still this high despite the exhaustion, all thanks to their glorious leader inspiring the soldiers on the frontline.

*Boom* x5

The leader ignored the explosion from the Artillery Strike. It's a novelty the first few times, seeing how their leader can seemingly call an Artillery Strike out of nowhere when they definitely have no artillery unit. But it gets old very quickly after seeing it a couple dozen times.

"When will the reinforcement and the supplies arrive?"

"Reinforcement is half an hour away, sir. They encountered another detachment of enemies. As for supplies, it will be here in a few more minutes."

"That's a relief to hear." The leader said and wondered why they were out here in the middle of nowhere. Defending a plot of land with weird facilities and buildings. Well, not that it matters. What matters is to do their job and hold they shall.

The wave of Zombified Grimms never seems to end. Each one killed, ten more took its place. Ten killed, hundred more took its place. You understand what's happening. An endless horde of enemies that look nigh inexhaustible.

Adam continued to fight despite his exhaustion and numerous requests for him to take a rest. His arms and legs feel like burning on fire and numbing, his fist and sole ached and his lungs burned as the following breath felt more laborious. But, he can't stop. Not before the reinforcement arrived to lighten the load on the current soldiers.

"Get your ass over here, you oversized ape!" Adam saw another Zombified Beringal trying to slip over to the defensive line behind him.

*Roar!*

The Zombified Beringal were shocked when it felt something stabbed into its back. Adam grabbed its spine and ripped it out with a tired howl before using it as a makeshift spear and threw it with all his strength to plough a straight line of destruction as a few Zombified Grimms were nailed down to a tree.

"Master, another wave of Zombified Grimms arrived." Agent's worried voice appeared on his comms and informed him of the bad news. "We should just abandon the manufacturing plant. The soldiers are too exhausted and our logistics unable to keep up with the battle."

Adam was met with a dilemma. The manufacturing plant is very important, it's a massive project that they highly depended on to finish the First Phase. If he abandoned it, he would have to start everything from scratch again.

"Grr Rah!" *Bite* A Beowolf slips through his attention and bites hard on his left leg.

Another one slips through and bites his arm and another one, another, another…

"President! Everyone focuses on Mr President!" The commander ordered in a hurry as few tried to save him, thinking he was in danger of being infected or killed.

"Fine, order everyone to retreat." Swallowing bitterly, Adam realized there is no chance of victory against this endless tide of Zombified Grimms.

After the transmission ends, Adam turns his attention to himself. Gripping on his last bit of energy and pried the two Zombified Beowolves from his body and smashed them to the ground with loud crunching noise from the bones breaking.

"Retreat! Everyone retreat immediately!" The leaders shouting orders once they received the order from Agent.

"Mr President, let's go. Everyone is leaving right now." A few soldiers approached Adam to escort him back on the Bullhead but he instead acted like he couldn't hear their voice and pulled out a jet black casket with silver coloured rims on the side.

"You all brace for impact." Adam mutters as the casket suddenly transformed into a portable Jupiter Cannon, obviously modified very heavily from the look of it. The cannon, after transforming, mounted on Adam's body and automatically loaded a special type of ammunition, Ultra Dense Dust Infused Hyper Velocity Projectiles, working on the same principle of Nuclear warhead, using high energy fuel and discharging it violently via supercritical reaction to produce devastating explosions

"I'm not leaving without making you pay the price for it!" Adam roared as the cannon fired its first shot.

The bullet shot out and hit the Mutated Grimms leading the horde. However, the effects were very lackluster. It's just like a normal cannon albeit much stronger and that's it. The Mutated Grimm were at first fearful, thinking Adam was pulling all stops and using a dangerous weapon from his display so far. But nothing happened. Adam was in fact fleeing while dragging the three soldiers with him. The Mutated Grimms think he fled in fear because his weapon malfunctioned. Or so it thinks.

*Tink*

A sound like a firing pin hitting a fuse comes from the projectile Adam shot with his cannon. But the limited intelligence of the Mutated Grimm does not understand what it was and ignores it until it suddenly dies. The Mutated Grimm didn't even realize how or when it died but the pain from its body being disintegrated was very much real although fleeting as it disintegrated almost in an instant. The brain barely has any time to translate what has happened.

Meanwhile back with Adam, they boarded a Bullhead which was barely able to lift off the ground before a powerful shockwave hit the Bullhead and caused great turbulence. What they manage to see from the was a giant ball of light blinding their eyes and thunderous boom before a powerful surge of shock wave hit them and threw them like a ragdoll inside the Bullhead. Because of their close proximity to ground zero, the resulting vacuum pulled them in with another turbulence but thankfully isn't strong enough to pull them off the air as the fleet of Bullheads retreated along with its weary passengers.

"What the hell was that!"

"Yeah! Did everyone see what just happened!"

Everyone became rowdy as they discussed the explosion.

"I saw it's the President that shot the thing before it exploded."

"I heard there were many projects being created by the R&D, I never thought they would create that! What even is that? It's too strong!"

"Yeah, just look at the crater. I still can see it even this far away."

The soldiers all stared out the window and looked at the giant black charred crater. Majority of the Zombified Grimms was decimated but more simply poured out from the forest and again filled the entire field as they ravaged the giant manufacturing plant. They all look grimly at the seemingly endless number of enemies no matter how they tried to exterminate them. It was like trying to drain an ocean with buckets. A futile endeavor.

———

"Hmn… there is still room for improvement." Scarecrow said while reviewing the footage of the experimental weapon being used. "The Fire Dust destructiveness was amplified with Lightning Dust. But it seems there ratio of Lightning Dust here is too high resulting most of the energy being released as light instead of heat energy. Result in lower firepower due to insufficient expansion of gasses and resulting in lower yield."

"Hmn. So, can you produce a stronger warhead?" Agent listen through the explanations without much care as it's better to leave the details to Scarecrow herself.

"I would require a dedicated facility, equipment and resources to work on it. Does our Master request this research project?"

Agent fell silent and turned her eyes away from the screen and stared at Scarecrow.

"He gave me sufficient authorisation and autonomy to handle matters on his behalf without his input and I had decided this would be beneficial for him." Agent gave Scarecrow a side eye stare before asking, "Do you have any objections?"

"No." Scarecrow rolled her eyes as the question isn't even a question as her option is only yes or else she will be declared as rebellious.

Scarecrow was never loyal to the Mastermind when serving as SF ringleader. After being captured by Adam, she was also never loyal to him and simply worked out of necessity to preserve her life, especially with Agent breathing down her neck at every moment as the Anti-Parapluie Virus allowed Agent to cripple her Neural Cloud the moment she showed any sign of betrayal.

Well, compared to Mastermind. Her new Master is quite lenniant. He allows her to do what she likes the most, thinkering stuff and researching. She isn't even sent into the frontline and instead allowed to work as a researcher.

But her recent project had slowed down and lacked progress which upset Agent. The project is a production line to manufacture more robots. But that would require her to recreating the entire and complete blueprint. That is what she's been working on these past few weeks. But to little progress. Mainly due to the lack of manufacturing power unlike her original world which has cutting edge manufacturing technology which Remnant is falling behind a lot. Even Atlas that managed to create Robots and Mechs has technology she can only consider crude.

Of course, there are solutions to this problem. They simply need to return to their world and loot all the necessary things they need. But it's easier said than done. To break into SF controlled territory and steal these technologies and equipment is not easy at all.

Well, this isn't her job. She just needs to write down the suggestion and forward it to her boss. Let them decide. She is just a researcher, not a frontline fighter.

———

The recent defeat already spread like wildfire among the population. Adam never bother to be subtle and suppressing news.

The people are worried. Their best soldiers and war machines were sent to battle yet returned defeated. Many that look down on the threat of the Zombies Outbreak finally paying close attention with bated breath.

In fact, the most worrying news isn't the defeat. But the President was bitten and injured. Many soldiers saw what happened and the news spread. It would be devastating if they lost their brilliant leader in such dire moments. People even criticized the leadership that allowed their leader into the frontline. However, news of relief soon spread by the Presidential Office that Adam is fine and even made public appearances that he is healthy as ever and only feeling exhausted. He decisively revealed that he is immune to the Virus.

During the public appearances, Adam addressed the new information he decided to release to the public regarding the Infected Grimms. This information no longer needs to be hidden as sooner or later, someone will figure it out.

Adam talked about the difference between Mutated Grimms and Zombified Grimms. The former are not infected through bodily fluids transfer. Instead, it was incubated in a high concentration virus area. They have intelligence and could become several times stronger and bigger than its normal counterparts. The latter were infected through bodily fluids transfer using bites or scratches. They are no different than their normal counterparts in term of strength but lacked self-preservation as they are essentially dead and also have no limiter which often resulting them to do suicidal stunt in order to land an attack.

This information was explained further and in more detail by Professor Port from Beacon who is formerly an expert on Grimms and now Infected Grimms.

The thought of Mutated Grimms having intelligence and being able to engineer such tactics to strike a heavy blow to Vale were normally unthinkable as many still rooted to the same idea that Grimms are mindless. But with it now being a reality, the population becomes restless.

Many doubted the capability of Vale to defend if the Mutated Grimms launched an attack on Vale. Many also understood why the wall around Vale is being heavily fortified. The height is being increased to 50 meters tall, especially those facing inland. Cannons, machine gun nests, artillery pieces, etc filled the top of the wall and uncountable ammunition being stockpiled in warehouses below the walls.

It was all for the sake of providing safety to the people knowing they have heavily fortified walls to protect them. The approval rate of Adam is at an all time high as people praised him as a wise leader when in reality, most of it was Agent's suggestion.

———

(Bonus)

After a hard and exhausting day of work, Adam finally returned home.

"Welcome back, onii-san." Tina greeted Adam when he returned to the base.

"Tina? Where's Agent?" Adam asked unconsciously as usual- No, it's always the Agent who receives him when he returns home.

"A-Ah… She said she was busy… The workload is too much. She has to call all her Dummies to help." Tina replied with stutters and swearing hard while trying to come up with an explanation.

"Anyway, let me help." Tina helped Adam free his hands and told him to take a bath before dinner.

Adam was too tired that he wanted to get his dinner fast and hit the bed as soon as possible to make a fuss about anything. So, he just agreed and took off his suit that he wore for the public event earlier.

Then he went to his wardrobe to pick a towel after stripping himself down to his boxer while Tina stared intently with reddened cheeks and audible gulp. Until she realized Adam was about to open the wardrobe.

"Hold on, nii-san. I already prepared a towel for you. Tina quickly hands him a towel and ushers Adam to the bathroom.

*Knock*

"Hmn? Did you hear that?" Adam heard something knocking his wardrobe while Tina was sweating even harder than before.

"W-What sound, Nii-san? I heard nothing." Tina quickly diverted his attention away and pushed him towards the bathroom.

Adam was tired indeed and thinking it must be his usual hallucinations again.

Meanwhile, Agent was tied up, gagged, stuffed in a sack and locked in the wardrobe by the plotting of Tina and Winter.

When Adam enters the bathroom, he can already hear the sound of running water and the heat.

"Oh, did you prepare the bath in advance? Thanks, Tina." Adam said and took off his remaining clothing and went for a quick shower first before dipping in the bath.

Inside the bath was foggy for some reason. He hummed as he wet his body with the showerhead and applied soap. Excited to dip in the hot bath and melt away all of his exhaustion.

"Hum~ hm~ hmn~" Adam finishes applying soap and about to wash away the soap as he is trying to feel where the knob of the showerhead was when the shower head turned itself on.

"Let me help, Nii-san." Tina's voice suddenly appeared as she helped aim the shower head at his body and helped him wash away the soap.

"Thanks, Ti- Hold on a goddamn second." All the tiredness immediately washed away like being doused by a bucket of freezing water. "Why are you here? With me."

"What do you mean why? I am helping Nii-san. You look very tired like you would doze off the moment I turn my eyes away from you." Tina has the audacity to reply with an angered tone, chastising him like he is the one that wronged her. "Besides, isn't this a perfect moment for us brother and sister bonding together? Nii-san~ Fuhh." She whispers with that devilish playful tone of her before leaning on his back and blowing at his ear.

Adam immediately freezes as he can feel, there is nothing separating their skin that touched each other. He can feel it very clearly her-

"Oh, it's true. They can grow bigger." Tina mutters filled with curiosity and intrigue which made Adam open his eyes wide and turn his head to the right to see Tina staring at his lil bro in its full glory. "I wonder if it would fit my- Mph!" Adam gagged her mouth before she could finish that sentence and quickly ran to the door and tossed her out before slamming the door shut and locking it as he hyperventilated.

Adam can already see the flashing blue and red light accompanied by the sound of a siren despite not being raided by the VPD and simply seeing flashing images produced by his mind.

"What are you doing, Nii-san? Open the door before I rip it open." Tina shouted from the other side of the door.

"No! I swear it's not my fault, officer!" Agitated, Adam starts to mutter incoherently while slowly turning delirious. Being awake for resting less than an hour a day for ten whole days starts to chipping on his mind.

"This is my last warning, Nii-san. Open the door or I'll rip it open."

"1… 2… 3…"

*Rip*

Tina did and ripped the door out from its frame but when she looked inside, Adam vanished. The possibility of him escaping through the ventilation shaft is not possible because it was untouched. The only thing left behind is a towel dropped on the floor.

"Tsk! Did he run away to another world again?" Tina groaned that her plan failed, again!

"Hmph, you will not escape next time." Tina declared as she reminded herself that she must not let the others steal her Nii-san heart before herself, especially with a big competition. She must get ahead of everyone or she will be left to bite the dust.

Tina felt she cannot compete much against the likes of Agent and Winter. They had rooted themselves deep in Adam's life, especially Agent who is basically around Adam 90% of his time awake. If she doesn't claim him early, she will be left behind especially with her lack of feminine assets which she resented and wish she was a few years older instead.

Although, the person that advised Tina should be the one held responsible. When Tina seeks Willow for advice on how to win Adam's affection, Willow teaches her the 'Cook the Rice' method, a method often used by the women of high class like Willow to claim a man they liked.

—————

(Police I swear to God, I'm not simping for a child.)

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