System Awakening! (Part 2)

"Damn it!"

A little angry, Gray shouted a few words, but no one listened to him. In a couple of minutes, there were almost no people left in the room.

Only the groans of a panting boy and the trembling leg of the hostess made it clear that there were still people in the room.

The moment Gray threw the knife, he distinctly heard his hand crunch slightly. This was followed by the expected weakness.

"Kha-ha!" Slightly accustomed to the scalding air in this bloody fog. He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself.

The long-familiar, sour, metallic taste in his mouth and the burning in his lungs. His body was fighting the unknown virus with all its might.

Cursing unhappily to himself, he suddenly stopped. Slowly reaching for his big knife, Gray shouted loudly. "Anybody else out there?"

The red fog and dark room made for terrible visibility.

A shadow flashed behind the young lad's back.

With a sweeping blow, the young man slashed the knife behind his back.

But there was no one there.

Muffled footsteps echoed somewhere on the far side of the store.

The dense fog made it impossible to determine the distance to the target.

"Aah!" At that moment, a woman screamed.

Gray sprinted toward the scream, but his speed was still slow.

The visibility at arm's length didn't give him that much leeway.

Gray slowly approached the counter behind which the shopkeeper was hiding.

"Shit!" The young man could hardly suppress a gag reflex.

The woman's face was completely disfigured. Half of her face was gone.

There were teeth scattered all around and blood trails that led toward the warehouse.

Hearing the faint, muffled sounds of falling and screaming, Gray rushed to the warehouse.

In the dark room, only the beams of flashlights from the phones lying around illuminated the warehouse.

Opening the door, Gray was slightly surprised.

Several guys were lying crouched on the warehouse floor.

A lot of shelves were overturned, forming a sort of protective barrier, with many silhouettes standing in it.

"Where's that thing? Was that all that survived?" The first thing Grey did was to ask the frightened people where the infected girl was.

"Stop! Don't come over here! She's hiding around here somewhere!"

Ignoring the girl's warning, Gray continued to move slowly forward.

*Slap*

Until he stepped in something liquid.

When he looked down, he noticed someone's lunch mixed with blood dripping from his soles.

Pointing the light from the raised phone to the side, he noticed a corpse that had recently had its chest cut open.

'This guy…'

"Above!"

Gray jumped back sharply.

"Haa!" A mutilated girl fell from above.

She was missing her jaw and half of her head. And her fingers and toes were all broken and mangled beyond recognition.

Torn clothing exposed her desiccated muscles.

'Enhanced zombie type?' Upon noticing her injuries, Grey immediately dismissed his doubts.

'No, it can't be an enhanced type of zombie. Her body is still too fragile.' As he tried to assess the situation, a mangled limb flew into his face.

Ducking to the side, something crunched again in Gray's body.

Completely ignoring the internal injuries, he tried to dodge the attacking creature.

With timing, he slashed his knife in the direction of that creature.

A pitiful scream resounded in that cramped room.

'Is it half infected?!' Slightly shocked, he watched as the girl squirmed and flinched in pain, but it didn't last long.

As he accelerated, he toppled the stand over her slender body, but even that wasn't enough.

Her frail body forcefully resisted and lifted the whole stand tipped over her with ease.

One by one, he pelted her with whatever first came to hand.

After the guy made sure she was completely immobilized, Gray finally walked over to her and plunged his big knife right into one of her bloody eye sockets.

After twisting his knife several times, he suddenly jumped up frightened, and on instinct got into a fighting stance.

[You killed: A common zombie. Level 1!]

"What?! Who's there?!" Surveying his surroundings, Grey's senses sharpened.

"Uncle! Over here, quick! Uncle's not well!"

Looking at the barricaded side of the store. Gray remembered he wasn't here alone.

'Is it just me?' Looking at the corpse, the young man headed toward the rubble.

Pulling apart the artificial barriers. He saw the old man pierced with rebar surrounded by two girls.

'They're the ones who came in last, aren't they?' Looking around, Gray confirmed his hunch.

Corpses and squirming in pain. The silhouettes were mostly the ones who came in the very last.

"Kha-ha!"

"Uncle!"

"Uncle, hold on!"

The old man only smiled in response. Blood slowly dripped from his mouth and stomach.

The girls' cries only intensified; they did not notice at all how another pair of eyes were watching them.

"Hold his bleeding, maybe I can save him."

"Please save him! I will do anything to save him!"

After looking at the crying girl, Grey turned around and walked over to the zombie corpse.

Crouching down and pulling the knife from the corpse's head. He turned it over and plunged it into the back of the head.

Then, with a sharp movement, he made a slit and slipped his fingers into it.

Fumbling for a small ball, he pulled it out and looked at it.

'Small… It's too small…' When Gray returned, the girls worked hard to keep the older man from bleeding out.

"I have a way to save you, do you want it?" Looking into the gray-haired man's eyes, Grey ignored the girls' hysterical pleas to save him.

"… How much?" Profuse bleeding accompanied the hoarse voice.

"Fifty percent that you will survive. And ten percent that you won't die of pain shock." Gray looked strangely at the gray-haired man's body. The scars were all over his body.

"But I think you can handle it, your body has seen better, hasn't it?"

"Come on! I must... live!"

Gray's smile bloomed on his dusty face.

Holding out a small black pebble to him, he warned him.

"After you accept this thing, your life will belong entirely to me. Do you agree?"

'Is this…the devil himself appearing to me on the threshold of death? ' The man accepted the gift of this smiling young man without a shred of doubt. He still had unfinished business of his own in this life.

'I must get to my daughters! I must…'

"Fine, take it right now and try not to pass out. Otherwise, you'll die." Grabbing a tube sticking out of his belly, Grey waited for the old man to swallow this zombie core.

"Hold him tight!" Looking at the girls, he pulled out the steel rod with a sharp movement.

"Aaah!"

Blood gushed from the hole in his stomach.

Pressing his hand tightly against the wound, he tried to keep it steady.

The intense pain attacked the man's entire nervous system.

The veins in his pale face swelled and appeared one by one.

With bloodshot eyes and clenched teeth, the gray-haired old man looked at the young man as if he wanted to strangle him. Strangle him for giving him something that brought such unbearable pain to his whole body.

But Grey still watched indifferently for the condition of the wound on the man's stomach.

'Slowly. It won't have time to heal, it needs more!'

"Hold him tight!" Dropping the two girls. Gray rushed off in search of more supplies.

Back in the main hall of the store. Gray noticed that the hostess's corpse was missing somewhere.

'Damn!' After following the bloody trail, the guy struggled to make his way through the red mist.

His lungs were burning again. But Gray didn't care.

*Slurp* *Slurp*

As he pulled the knife he'd thrown at that thing not long ago out of the wall. Squelching and slurping sounds were heard in the distance.

Slowly, heading in the direction of those sounds, a shadow suddenly jumped out at him.

Unable to dodge it, the young man quickly blocked it with his knife.

But the intense pain in his left arm didn't allow him to resist for long, the dark silhouette dropped him to the floor.

A middle-aged woman with no eyes and a disfigured face stared down at him.

Pushing the young man to the floor, she hissed and splattered flecks of blood right on Gray's face.

You could tell from her that she was struggling to resist the urge to ram into the young lad's throat.

Finally, fumbling for his second knife, he plunged it right into his former mistress' temporal area.

[You killed: A common zombie. Level 1!]

Twitching a few times, her body collapsed exhausted right on top of Gray's.