Chapter 46: Zombies versus Chimeras

The first indication that something was amiss was the wailing sirens.

Mikhail was still reminiscing in the afterglow of his lovemaking with Miranda last night. he could still recall the feel of her body against his, how her inner muscles clenched so tightly around him…how he ejaculated into her so many times, and how he brought her to climax just as frequently. Miranda had assured him that she wouldn't get pregnant and encouraged him to fill her womb with her semen, and he had obliged.

However, he clenched his fists unconsciously when a memory rose to the surface of his mind, unbidden.

Miranda had wrapped her hands around his neck, kissing him fervently and moaning. And then, at one moment, she had whispered, "I love you, Herman."

Mikhail had frozen there and then, but Miranda continued to writhe against him, pumping her hips up and down as she rode him wildly.

This wasn't the first time, nor was it the last, but every time Miranda did it, Mikhail felt hurt.

"I'm not Herman. I'm not a substitute for that damned Hero!"

He was already married to the Supreme Priestess. No matter how much Miranda longed for him, he would never be hers. Why couldn't she understand that?

"Unlike the Hero, I'll always be there for her! My love for her is genuine! I will do anything for her!"

Gritting his teeth in frustration, Mikhail slammed his fist against the console. Taking a deep breath, he calmed himself down…only for the sirens to rudely jolt him out of his reverie. Blinking, he consulted the screen with disbelieving eyes. For a moment, he wondered if he was mistaken and he rubbed his eyes.

The information on the screen didn't change at all.

"Intruders are coming from the disposal chamber?" he blurted out in disbelief. His comrades turned to him, puzzled.

"What's the matter?" the second guy asked. "What's wrong with the disposal chamber?"

"I…I don't know! There's a bunch of corpses crawling out of the disposal chamber?! How?!"

"What do you mean?" the third guy demanded, bewildered. "The corpses are moving on their own? Did the dead come back to life or something?"

"That has to be the only explanation." Mikhail scratched his head in frustration before turning the screen around to show his comrades. "Look!"

"Zombies?!" the fourth guy's jaw dropped. "They have been…reanimated as zombies?! When did the chairwoman start experimenting with necromancy?"

"Are you sure Chairwoman Miranda is the one who did this?"

"Who else would be capable of performing necromancy?"

"That's true, but…why would she do it without telling any of us about it?"

"Did you know about this, Mikhail?"

"No…" While his comrades were arguing amongst themselves, Mikhail was watching the screen, cold fear gripping him. "No, I didn't. And something's not right. Even if Chairwoman Miranda was the one doing this, she would be trying out the necromancy spells in the lab. Why would she ever go down to the disposal chamber?"

The handsome mages exchanged glances, and then nodded.

"Best to execute security measures then."

"Yeah, look! More of them are coming out from the chute! Hurry up and activate the defensive arrays! And release the chimera squadrons!"

"There must be hundreds of them!"

It was only natural. Miranda had all but emptied out the surrounding villages and abducted over a thousand residents for her nefarious experiments. A good fraction of them had succumbed to her experimental surgeries and were then disposed of.

And now the dead was rising to claim their vengeance on the bitch who had tormented and condemned them to such an agonizing death.

Mikhail hurriedly pushed the buttons. Near the disposal chamber, the pens for the chimeras opened and the abominations rushed out, screeching wildly.

"All of them, Mikhail!" one of his companions urged and the Hero lookalike nodded, flicking more switches. He emptied out every single pen, releasing all the squadrons into the open.

The chimeras bellowed as they bounded across vast corridors and converged upon the approaching tide of undead. The zombies clashed with the surgical abominations, flesh striking flesh, muscle colliding against muscle, and claws and fangs tearing into each other.

It became a bloodbath. The undead was a lot more fragile. They were ripped apart almost immediately by the monstrous creations. These were specimens that had survived Miranda's relentless experiments. The strongest, most tenacious and most adaptable. Therefore they had little trouble tearing the weak zombies – comprising of those specimens who had been weeded out because they lacked the endurance or compatibility – into ribbons.

However, what the zombies lacked in power, they more than made up in sheer numbers. They buried struggling chimeras under their combined weight, scratching, biting and bludgeoning with broken limbs. No matter how much damage their bodies suffered, as long as it wasn't a crippling blow to their heads – or to be more precise, their brains – they would relentlessly assail their foes.

And in the wake of the zombies came a small group of the living.

"Fuck!" one of the mages growled. "Those must be the ones responsible for raising the dead!"

"Let's go! We'll teach them a lesson!"

Mikhail and the fourth guy watched their comrades rush out of the room. Any objection they might have went unheard.

"…be careful," Mikhail managed before his friends were gone. Shaking his head, he returned his attention to the screen and clasped his hands in prayer.

*

While the legion of zombies took care of the small army of chimeras, Chris led me and the others through the corridors.

"Which way?" I had asked earlier the moment we emerged from the disposal chamber and into the barracks proper. Chris had motioned for me to follow.

"The bitch's lab should be this way!" he growled. "She's definitely in there! I know it!"

"If the chairwoman isn't in there, then she should be in her room," Wilson offered. "But her room is next to her lab anyway. She's so obsessed with her research and experiments that she cannot bear to be far from her work."

"That sounds like her, all right." I nodded, remembering the times I had spent in the Hero's party. Miranda was sort of a workaholic, often keeping to herself if she wasn't flirting with Herman. Whenever we stayed at an inn, she would lock herself up in her own room to conduct experiments…assuming Herman was spending the night with another girl, of course.

Miranda was quite the obsessive girl. If she wasn't obsessed with Herman, then she was obsessed with her research. It got to quite scary levels. I recalled once that Bradley learned it the hard way when he tried to barge into her room, only to have a combustible compound flung into his face. Irene had to rush over to heal him while Herman paid for the damages to the inn. Both Herman and Irene were irritated at having their romantic time interrupted.

…now that I thought about it, Miranda was delighted with the result. She might quite possibly had planned to ruin the time that Herman and Irene spent together.

The garrison was quite the confusing labyrinth and I nearly got lost through the endless corridors. Here and there, zombies clashed against chimeras, the latter howling as they tried to slice through the endless hordes. The four mages and I would tip the balance in the zombies' favor by firing spells into the tightly packed hordes of chimeras. Unlike the undead, the chimeras couldn't shrug off grievous wounds and they felt pain.

All it took was a few injuries and they found themselves overwhelmed by the relentless and tenacious undead.

Stella stayed close to us, her sword out. Any chimera that dared close in on us was quickly dispatched by her superb swordsmanship. Her crimson blade streaked out, lancing into the weak points of the chimeras and slaying them immediately. Lindley would then stop to reanimate them, to set them upon their former brethren.

"It's more efficient this way," he explained when the humans glared at him. I waved them on impatiently, not wanting them to get drawn into an argument of morality and ethics.

I was here to take my revenge on Miranda. Any question of justice and morality, I had discarded to the wind long ago.

"Her lab should be just ahead!" Chris assured us when rounding around a corner. We had just climbed a flight of stairs, pasting a group of wrestling undead and chimeras, and the red-haired fire mage pulled us toward a new direction.

"Stop, you fucking intruders!"

"Do you not know where you are? This is Chairwoman Miranda's laboratory!"

We skidded to a stop when two mages appeared right at the end of the corridor. Mana swirled around their hands and they immediately flung their lethal spells in our direction.

"Down!" I snapped and my companions immediately dropped to a crouch. As for me, I stepped forward and cast a spell of my own. The fireball and wind blade that surged toward us were immediately frozen solid.

"You…!"

"How?!"

The two mages gaped at us. Then they caught sight of Chris and the others, and their scowls deepened.

"Traitors!"

"Deserters! How dare you show your face here again?!"

"No…have they come to accept their punishment?!"

"Fuck you!" Chris yelled. "You are the ones who deserve punishment!"

"Inhuman bastards," Lance hissed. "Don't you feel guilty experimenting on live humans? You treated them like…like livestock! Tools!"

"And when you were upset, you killed the specimens." Wilson glanced down the stairs, solemnly acknowledging the undead. Beside him, Rose shivered and clasped his hand.

"Shut up, you traitors! Death awaits you deserters!"

"If we offer you up as specimens for Chairwoman Miranda, I wonder if she would finally favor us over Mikhail?"

"Ha ha! That's a great idea! But first we have to subdue them!"

Another fireball and wind blade streaked from their hands, blasting toward us. However, I merely pointed a finger, allowing an azure arc of mana to lance forward and strike the projectiles, freezing them solid.

"Again?!"

"This guy…who the hell is he?!"

I pushed my glasses up my nose and smirked. "You don't have to know."

"Hah! You're right! We don't need to know!"

"After all, you'll end up as another lab specimen for Chairwoman Miranda!"

"Have you no shame?!" Chris growled. "Do you feel no guilt for what you've done?! For tormenting all those townsfolk…conducting such cruel experiments on them?! How can you still behave so cavalierly?!"

"What?" the two loyalist mages exchanged amused glances.

"Why should we care about such nonsense? Why should we feel guilt over mere experimental subjects?"

"Rather, for them to have the honor of becoming the foundation for our magical research, for the purpose of progress, they should be proud of themselves!"

"They should be grateful to us!"

The two mages continued to laugh and cast more spells. Wind howled and fire roared, the elemental projectiles smashing through the corridor to cut me apart or incinerate me.

None of them reached me. They turned into ice and crashed onto the ground.

"No…no way!"

"Impossible!"

"Shall I teach you how to use magic?" I asked. Raising a hand, I flung a colossal icicle at the both of them. They desperately responded with fireballs and wind blades, the latter of which only chipped away at the gigantic projectile. As for the flames, they dissipated harmlessly into clouds of scalding steam.

"How is this possible!?"

"Our levels are too different," I replied. Those were the last words the fire mage heard before he was pulverized, his body obliterated by the gigantic icicle. He vanished into a spray of blood and tatters of torn flesh.

"HIIIIIIII!"

The wind mage screamed and fell, scrambling away from the remnants of his dead comrade. He looked up at me, tears streaming from his eyes.

"No…please…! Please spare me!"

I merely raised a finger and pointed at him.

"Omae wa mou shindeiru."

"…huh?"

Stella beheaded him with a single stroke of her sword. The poor guy didn't even know how he had died, never noticing that my comrade had snuck behind him. His disembodied head flew across the air for a few moments, leaving a trail of blood, then crashed onto the ground. His eyes stared blankly at the ceiling for a few moments before Stella stomped and crushed his head into pulp.

"Disgusting piece of scum," she spat before flicking the blood off her sword.

"My goodness, my lord and lady…you could have at least leave their heads intact so that I could reanimate them." Lindley threw up his hands, annoyed. "What a waste of perfectly good material!"

"…"

Chris and the others stared at us, still stunned. I sighed and waved a hand in front of the red-haired fire mage's face.

"Our mission isn't over yet," I reminded him. "We need to get to Miranda."

"R…right."

Snapping out of his stupor, Chris swallowed and then continued to lead the way.