RE:BORN Zombie

“Quick, report this to Lord Cassias, I’ll send some people over now.” Someone said to another before the figure of the one standing before him ran off. ‘This kind of report is too… Whatever, those humans haven’t gained that much strength to confront us yet, I wonder who’s so confident.’ The one who was left standing in an office thought to himself before heading towards his door.

After some time passed, after the man had received a rather strange report from one of his underlings, Victor could be seen swallowing the last of the flesh he tore off from a vampire, who happened to be the last body he ate. He had a feeling that the system was going to take quite some time to analyze the material he had just ingested, so he opened his system interface to check how much vampire material he now had.

…

Evolution Material:

-Poison Sandworm – 15,000

-Dreamling – 10,000

-Jade Creeper – 30,000

-Dragon – 400,000

-Vampire – 12,000

…

Victor’s eyes went across the dragon above the vampire before he closed the tab. He had been holding off from integrating the dragon into himself because he wanted to develop it more, but ever since he killed Ramok and his master, there had been no dragon. All he could find were wyverns and lindworms, not even a drake was available. Though the wyverns and lindworms were related to dragons just like the drakes when Victor ate them and got the evolution material, it always appeared separate from the one he already had, so he stopped eating them altogether and just killed them for the experience points.

With Victor’s enhanced senses, he could smell some humans from where he was at the edge of the city, but the interesting thing for him was that he couldn’t pick up any scent on the vampires, not even a little. Even he himself had a particular smell, but the vampires didn’t. This made Victor want to get more materials even faster.

He had thought of exploring the city himself, but that would make it harder for the vampires to find him. Last he checked, vampires weren’t wolves, so their sense of smell is nothing special when experts are around. He chose to remain where he currently was to make it easy for the vampires to know his location.

Time went by as Victor sat and waited for the vampires to show up, and only after a while of waiting did they appear. This time they were four of them that came. It looked like two must have been of some kind of higher rank than the ones he had been killing since, and the other two that stood a little behind the first two were also dressed in different clothes.

Victor immediately tried to check their levels before he engaged them in anything, but the weirdest thing happened. When he asked the system to identify them, instead of having their levels displayed to him, an error message was what came up. He was unable to view their levels. Immediately, Victor began thinking of what the problem was, and what it meant for the system to be unable to identify their levels and race. Of course, he tried to ask the system about it, but unfortunately, his system wasn’t sentient, so there was nothing he could do really. Even now, the system had no good explanation.

‘Does this mean they are over the level cap? They are that strong..’ Victor thought to himself. But then he thought, he wasn’t getting any sign or vibe that they were that powerful. Victor could curse his zombie attributes of total mental resistance at that moment, but that was not the time.

The vampires moved a bit closer, a couple of steps forward from where they stood originally. Victor just stood still, looking at them and observing every movement they made.

“You say this is a human?” The vampire with gelled back hair and a receding hairline said.

“I’m not sure either, but he doesn’t smell like one.” The other by his side said.

“It is strange. Zane, do you know anything about this?” The one with gelled hair said to the vampires behind.

They seemed not to care much about Victor, and even acted as though he wasn’t there. “Yes, lord. There was such a report about a facility which the humans had, where they carried out experiments on their kind in hopes of creating something extraordinary. Perhaps this is one of the fruits of that experiment.” The vampire said.

“I see. They keep getting more and more advanced with their technology and science.”

“It’s really like you said Cassias, we need to do something about this world fast. If not, we might be in danger soon.” The other vampire that stood beside the one with receding hairline said.

“Indeed, my friend. This is a chance to test out their champion. They might have even gone too far with their experiments, doesn’t he speak?” The one called Cassias said as he took a step forward. Before he took the next step, however, he was held back by the other vampire beside him, the one he called his friend.

“What is it, Luther?” Cassias asked his friend.

“Let me take care of him. I oversee a team of Hunters, so it would be good if I had good information on the capabilities of these creatures.” Luther said. Cassias agreed with a nod, and so Luther stepped forward.

Victor had just been observing all this while and was yet to make even the slightest movement. The only difference now was that his hands were not in his pockets. Rather than that, he was still very relaxed, even in mind. His undead mind wouldn’t let him panic even though he wanted to.

There was a space of at least 10m between Victor and the vampires originally. The more Luther closed that space, his expression seemed to change bit by bit, and it was changing into a slight frown. He couldn’t tell what his opponent was thinking, and the way Victor stood, there was no normal person who would attack. ‘It’s like attacking master when he looks like he is totally defenseless with countless openings… I always lose.’ Luther thought to himself. He was taking this fight very seriously because of a few things. To top everything off, Victor didn’t look like the type of person he preferred fighting, but that is why it’s called real-life situations isn’t it?

When Luther was within 4 metres, he disappeared from where he was and the next second, his swung hand passed through Victor tearing him apart.

‘An after image.’ Luther said in his mind. He sharply turned his head to his right side, and there Victor stood unharmed.

‘Was I wrong?’ Victor said in his mind, as he had to actually put in the effort to dodge the vampire’s attack, only for him to see the vampire moving towards him in a slower motion than himself before swinging his hands. There also seemed to be claws, as the vampire’s fingers had elongated to about an inch or two.

Luther was a bit shocked after the after image faded away. He knew how fast he was, and his master also commends him on it. Amongst his peers, only so many could match his speed, and he could count those faster than him on one hand. To think that he would find someone fast enough to not only dodge him but leave an afterimage…

‘There’s only one who can do that…’

Victor himself was starting to reevaluate the vampires, and soon came to another conclusion. Maybe his system was just glitching or was malfunctioning.

Luther hesitated a bit after seeing the after image disappears. Instead of waiting to see if Victor would make another move, he leapt back and stood beside Cassias who also had a raised brow. Cassias was aware of Luther’s strength, and so were the two behind him. To see someone evade Luther in such close range, really was something.

“Seems like we might have underestimated our foe,” Cassias said.

“We did.”

Seeing that the two weren’t making an attempt to run away or escape, Victor also held off to see what they would do next.