The Appearance of a Mutated Zombie

As time passed, it soon reached midnight. Liu Xiaoyu was still keeping watch on the balcony, while Xue Qingyu, wrapped in a blanket, slept soundly on the balcony sofa. The two had agreed that Liu Xiaoyu would take the first half of the night and Xue Qingyu the second.

Yawning and stretching, causing her body to ripple, Liu Xiaoyu suddenly noticed a figure standing at the community gate's railing. Under the streetlight's illumination, she could see what it was. 

It was a gigantic obese figure, over two meters tall, with bloated, dark flesh bursting through its clothes, oozing black liquid from its mouth, resembling a huge, waterlogged corpse, thoroughly unnerving.

Shivering, Liu Xiaoyu instinctively grabbed a baseball bat, certain the figure was a zombie. She had thought of going downstairs to smash its head in directly, but hesitated upon considering its enormous size, easily weighing over four to five hundred pounds and clearly tough to take down. What if she couldn't beat it?

After some thought, Liu Xiaoyu decided to wake Xue Qingyu, given her ability for ranged attacks.

The two girls quietly descended the stairs, tiptoeing towards the community gate and taking off their shoes to avoid making noise. When they were less than twenty meters from the obese zombie, Xue Qingyu summoned electricity to her palm and controlled the fruit knife to shoot towards the zombie.

The knife, gleaming coldly, flew back and forth, decapitating the obese zombie, which then fell straight down. 

However, before the two could celebrate their victory, the obese zombie's body suddenly began to swell, like a massive balloon.

With a muffled explosion, the obese zombie's body burst open, scattering putrid flesh everywhere under the force of the blast, and completely destroying several sections of the community fence.

The shockwave from the explosion set off alarms in several cars parked at the entrance, their blaring sirens piercing the silent night and quickly spreading through the nearby streets. One after another, zombies surged towards the source of the noise, howling as they charged.

Realizing the situation was bad as car alarms sounded, Liu Xiaoyu cursed under her breath and rushed out with her baseball bat. Noah had mentioned that zombies' hearing significantly improved at night, and such loud alarms would surely attract a horde of them. The only option was to try and turn off the car alarms.

But before Liu Xiaoyu could get there, she saw masses of zombies flooding towards the community like a tidal wave, easily numbering in the hundreds at first glance.

Liu Xiaoyu spun around and ran back, yelling to Xue Qingyu, "Run, Qingyu!"

There were too many zombies for her to handle. Without hesitation, Xue Qingyu also turned and ran towards the villa, with a dense mass of zombies furiously pursuing them.

Some zombies, particularly fast, with desiccated legs of a grayish hue but surprisingly strong, were rapidly gaining on the two women.

Just then, with a 'whoosh,' a watermelon knife, gleaming coldly, flew through the air, decapitating the two leading zombies, whose bodies rolled several meters before stopping due to inertia.

Noah leaped down from the third-floor balcony, catching the watermelon knife as it returned to him after slicing off several zombies' heads.

"Guard the entrance. Don't let the zombies get in and ruin the supplies," Noah instructed the two women, then, with his watermelon knife in hand, charged towards the horde of zombies.

In the midst of swiftly moving, Noah decapitated several zombies with his knife. After drawing the zombies' attention with a few rounds of slashing, he retreated towards the gate, tapping the ground with his watermelon knife to keep their focus on him. Hundreds of zombies followed him towards the community entrance.

However, due to the continuous alarms from a few cars, an endless stream of zombies kept approaching the community from outside.

With a wave of his hand, Noah used magnetism to lift sections of the railing, forming a triangular barrier in front of him, then charged fearlessly into the horde of zombies. The barrier effectively kept the zombies at bay, preventing them from reaching him.

Noah quickly broke through the crowd to reach the blaring cars, releasing electricity from his hand to disable the alarm systems, immediately silencing the alarms. The zombies in the distant streets, having lost their source of sound, stopped in their tracks, standing still, except for about two hundred zombies still howling and chasing after Noah.

While slashing with his watermelon knife, Noah used his magnetic control to send metal objects flying back and forth, reaping dozens of zombies in moments. Despite his efforts, the bloodthirsty zombies kept coming relentlessly. Among them, a few zombies had grayish-white skin covered in a bone-like shell, showing high defense as Noah's strikes failed to decapitate them.

Noah frowned at this development. Then, focusing on one of the grayish-white zombies, a line of text appeared above its head: [Zombie, Hardened Type LV2].

Just as he suspected, the zombies were beginning to evolve. In just half a day, LV2 Hardened types had already emerged.

These hardened types possess speed and strength several times greater than that of ordinary zombies, and their defense has improved by several grades. While an ordinary person could stand a chance against a few regular zombies with the right technique and cold weapons, facing a hardened type would be certain death unless they possessed heavy firepower or at least something on the level of a shotgun.

The strange odor lingering in the air also indicated that the zombies had not only evolved into LV2 Hardened types but also into LV3 Exploder types.

Commonly referred to as "fatties," Exploders have low attack power but are extremely dangerous. If injured, they detonate violently, killing anyone too close instantly. Moreover, the explosion leaves behind a pungent, unpleasant smell in the air.

This smell attracts zombies from hundreds of meters around, converging on the location, and anyone contaminated with this odor becomes a primary target for zombies. Even if they don't die in the explosion, they would likely be torn apart by the converging horde.

It seems that Xue Qingyu and Liu Xiaoyu accidentally killed an Exploder type, causing it to explode and attract a swarm of zombies.

Noah didn't dwell on this further, dragging the horde of zombies around the streets in a tactical retreat, killing as he moved back. After about twenty minutes of fighting, the zombie horde was halved.

"Noah, we're here to help you!"

Liu Xiaoyu, wielding her baseball bat, dashed out from the community, smashing a zombie's head with each swing. Xue Qingyu followed, her palms crackling with electricity, fiercely attacking the zombies.

With the help of the two women, the zombie horde was nearly eradicated in less than ten minutes. The ground was littered with corpses, easily numbering over a hundred.

Swinging her baseball bat, Liu Xiaoyu decapitated the last zombie, signifying the complete eradication of the horde. Xue Qingyu approached Noah, biting her lip in guilt and lowering her head.

"I'm... I'm so sorry. It's all my fault."