Chapter 36: Midnight

Jane, for her part, also managed to kill a Windwalker with her bow. At which point, to everyone's relief, the Breeder decided it wasn't worth losing his progeny any longer and called them back with a whistle.

Miguel breathed a sigh of relief, but again it was too soon. From one of the buildings in front of block 2, a group of zombies emerged again. They were closely followed by an evolved zombie covered in thick darkness that made it look like a ten-foot giant, which reminded Miguel of Ivy's spells.

"Ivy, behind you, to the left!"

Ivy, who was in the middle of the group and leading the survivors towards block 4, turned and looked at the new zombie.

[Midnight zombie]

The zombie launched a globe of darkness toward a group of survivors. Ivy, knowing what would happen if she missed, almost panicked, so she took longer than usual to raise a barrier of darkness in front of the victims. Luckily, even though darkness normally had a hard time stopping physical attacks, the wall was able to block the globe of darkness without much trouble, as they were the same substance.

The zombie turned his gaze towards Ivy with some curiosity; his instincts told him that it would be very beneficial for him to devour that human. It tried to get closer, but Leonard's ball impacted against its body. The zombie didn't feel the impact and the ball sank significantly into the mass of darkness. Moments later, however, the sonic blast was released and blew up the area where it was, causing the rest of the darkness to vibrate like jelly. The zombie fell to the ground with a hole in its abdomen, which soon closed.

The zombie opened its mouth, but no sound came out; which caused Leonard to shiver. Moments later, out of the zombie's mouth came a bubble of darkness. Before Miguel could scream and alert everyone, the bubble expanded at an absurd speed and covered the entire group and several buildings.

Inside, Leonard found himself looking up at a starry sky and everything around him was completely dark. But the worst was yet to come. All the Stalkers in the area immediately changed and became more powerful, plus the zombie responsible for everything was nowhere to be seen.

Tarin, who until that moment was paying more attention to the Berserker, almost fell to the ground with the sudden night. All around him he could see no one and soon everything was filled with the screams of terror of the survivors and the howls of the Stalkers.

Jane, who up to that point had managed to remain calm, found herself nearly blind in the dark night and practically useless. She began shooting at the nearest zombies while desperately trying to find someone in her group.

"We have to find that thing now or we're dead!"

Miguel's voice managed to penetrate the darkness and reach Tarin and Jane, who backed away as they tried to suppress their panic and find the military man.

The Berserker, meanwhile, was having trouble inside the blizzard, he had a hard time moving and could see absolutely nothing. After the darkness covered him, the blizzard began to dissipate, soon he would be free again.

Adam, meanwhile, was in front of the group of survivors when the darkness covered them all. As he listened to the voices and screams, he decided to take a chance. He raised the flamethrower again and fired a burst. The flame illuminated the entire area and interrupted the screams of the survivors. Even the zombies, stopped to watch for a moment.

"Come to me!" he shouted loudly.

Ivy was the only one who hadn't panicked. The spell had not blinded her, thanks to her possession of [Night Vision].

However, even for her, she was having trouble making out the mass of darkness that was the Midnight zombie. It had completely ignored Leonard and had continued on its way towards Ivy.

The mage backed away, aware that her globes of darkness would be useless against the zombie's mass of darkness. As she backed away, she realized that everything around her was spiraling out of control. The flames Adam had thrown had helped, but by now the fire was gone and now both the survivors and the Stalkers were heading in the same direction.

Ivy tripped over a zombie corpse on the ground and fell, scraping her hands on the asphalt. Cursing her clumsiness, Ivy tried to get up, but the zombie caught up with her at that moment and stretched a thick arm in her direction.

Ivy tried to crawl away, but the thick hand grabbed her around the waist and lifted her up, causing her to panic and start screaming. Leonard, who was nearby but couldn't see anything, cursed when he heard the woman's screams and tried to move closer.

Ivy felt her body being consumed and degraded by the darkness little by little as the zombie lifted her up. In a desperate attempt to escape, she began punching and kicking.

In desperation, she tried to summon a wall of darkness between her and the zombie, but to her horror, she found her energy being drained by the zombie's darkness. She had no time to think about it, for when she was in front of the zombie's face, she watched as the darkness opened up to reveal the face of a black-skinned, red-eyed zombie watching her from that spot.

Desperate, she tried one last thing: she summoned the spell again and when she felt the zombie draining her energy, Ivy grabbed hold of that connection and reversed it. Energy began to flow in her direction and the zombie realized it had lost control of its arm.

The zombie's energy coursed through Ivy's body and plunged her into a great pain that made her scream again. The zombie had been taken by surprise, but was now resisting, so the fight became a tense game of tug-of-war. Unfortunately, Ivy noticed that she was losing. However, at that moment she realized that the hand holding her now felt the same as her own spells. She concentrated for a moment and thought about moving the index finger and to her surprise it worked. The zombie took that opportunity to gain even more leverage, so Ivy turned pale from the effort. Then, she decided to try to open her hand all the way.

Ivy fell to the ground and let out another scream as she hit the asphalt. The zombie, surprised that its prey managed to escape, screamed in rage and tried to regain control of what was his.

Wasting no time, Leonard took aim and kicked, hoping the shot was accurate. It wasn't, but it was just enough.

The ball hit the zombie in the arm and the resulting sonic blast pulverized it. The zombie lost all its concentration and Ivy found herself the complete victor in the desperate contest for energy, much to its misfortune. As the zombie's resistance suddenly disappeared, a huge amount of energy was quickly absorbed by her, so that her arms and part of her body turned black as night and a horrible pain invaded her body.

Moments later, it was all over and Ivy found herself lying on the floor. She felt terrible and was sweating and panting uncontrollably, but her attention was on her hands, now completely black. The zombie, meanwhile, had also recovered, but the loss of energy weakened him. His armor could barely keep up and he was now moving awkwardly in Ivy's direction. It knew that if it wanted to survive, it had to devour her immediately.

Ivy watched the zombie, still too stunned by the pain to truly realize what had happened to it. To her surprise, she felt a deep connection to the darkness that formed the zombie's armor and, on instinct, she sent out some energy and gained complete control over it.

The zombie, terrified by the total loss of control, tried to release more darkness from its body, but Ivy simply began to compress the armor, more and more until it crushed the zombie's head. Immediately, the night disappeared and everything returned to normal. Luckily, all the Stalkers fell to the ground as they found themselves weak so suddenly.

For a second, they all stood still, looking at each other. Until the Berserker, who had been trapped in the darkness, after the blizzard dissipated, began to strike everything around him driven by a rage he could no longer control.

Tarin and Miguel had no time to worry about Ivy, as the Berserker closed in on them. The damage had accumulated in his body to such an extent that he was on the verge of death, but at the same time, he had never been more powerful.

He pushed aside a car in his path and sent it flying into the wall of a building, as if it were a toy.

Tarin hurled icicles at the approaching mass. One went straight into his stomach, into one of his numerous wounds, and another bounced off the skin of his face with such force that it twisted his neck.