The five zombies advanced at the same time.
The closest was less than six meters away. The Mind Eyes still burned in my optic nerves, but I could keep the technique active without losing focus, and the status screens floated above each gray head like sentence plates.
Strength 14. Agility 8. Health 20.
Stronger and tougher than me, but slower. I had 11 Agility against their 8, not a huge advantage, but enough to avoid getting caught if I didn't screw up.
The first reached me dragging its feet, jaw gaping and hands outstretched. I'd already killed five of these in the classroom, I already knew where to hit. I dodged to the left and struck its temple with the metal leg, the impact reverberated through my arm and the zombie staggered, but didn't fall. Health 20 was no joke.
Before it could recover, I stepped forward and drove the irregular tip of the metal into the base of its skull, where the nape meets the spine, and pushed with both hands until I felt the resistance give way. The body collapsed.
\[You have eliminated a Mana Zombie (Gray). +1 Strength.]
The second was already on top of me, closer than I wanted. Its jaw snapped shut in the air centimeters from my shoulder when I stepped back and tripped on a body on the floor.
'Shit!'
I fell on my ass, the zombie lunged and I kicked its knee with the sole of my boot. The leg bent sideways and it collapsed, but was already dragging itself toward me with its arms. I rolled to the side, got up, and brought the metal down on the back of its head. Once. Twice. On the third hit the skull gave in and it stopped moving.
\[You have eliminated a Mana Zombie (Gray). +2 Stamina.]
Two dead, three left.
My breathing was heavy and my arms already felt the weight of every blow. Nathan Salt's body had 11 Strength and 16 Stamina, it wasn't a fighter's body, it was the body of a college student who'd probably never lifted anything heavier than a backpack.
The three remaining zombies had split up, two were advancing toward me and the third had turned and gone after the girl cornered against the wall. I could kill the two in front of me with the metal leg, but it would cost time and stamina, and the third would kill the girl before I finished.
Not that the girl was my responsibility, but the third zombie was still worth stats.
I shifted the metal leg to my left hand and raised the right.
'Come on, my memories won't betray me. Now or never.'
I pulled the mana toward my right arm, the frigid current moved slowly, resisting. Forcing it to my eyes had already been hard, now that felt like child's play. The mana reached my hand and I tried to compress it, and it hurt, a cold burn that climbed from my wrist to my elbow, making my fingers tremble to the point of nearly losing control.
But I could SEE. With the Mind Eyes active, the mana accumulated in my palm like an unstable bluish bubble, and I could see exactly where it was leaking, fissures in the compression where the mana escaped into the air.
'Close it. Don't let it leak.'
Something responded. The fissures closed, not all of them, but enough. The bubble compressed into a sphere the size of a marble and the zombie was four meters from the girl.
I aimed my palm. And released.
The bluish sphere crossed the corridor with a sharp hum and struck the zombie's nape. The impact burst like a small explosion, tearing off chunks of skull and throwing the body forward. It hit the floor less than a meter from the girl and didn't move again.
\[You have eliminated a Mana Zombie (Gray). +1 Health.]
I looked at my hand, still tingling, the palm slightly reddened from the cold of the compression. But my mana...
"Holy shit!..." I gasped, genuinely surprised. "It barely dropped..."
I felt the reservoir before and after the shot and the difference was minimal, ridiculously minimal, like I'd taken a sip from a full cup instead of downing the whole thing.
'Why?'
The cold current in my stomach had barely diminished, that shot cost an insignificant fraction of mana.
Active skills listed in the Genesis System charged a fixed and steep toll per use, but I wasn't using a ready-made system skill. Manipulation was purely manual work, I only spent the raw material of the sphere, and with my 15 Control points sealing the leaks, the final cost was practically zero.
'This is free. This is practically free.'
The two remaining zombies in front of me had paused for a second when the shot passed between them, but now they were advancing again.
I raised my right hand again, pulled mana and compressed. Faster this time, the path was already open, I fired at the first one's chest and the impact threw it against the wall, it slid to the floor, motionless.
\[You have eliminated a Mana Zombie (Gray). +2 Mana.]
I turned my hand to the second, compressed again and released.
\[You have eliminated a Mana Zombie (Gray). +1 Agility.]
And my mana was still high.
I looked down the corridor. Beyond the five I'd killed, I could see more movement in the shadows, feet dragging and silhouettes stumbling between the flickering lights.
I raised my hand and started walking.
The first appeared coming out of a room on the left, I fired before it saw me and the sphere hit the side of its head. It fell back into the room it had come from.
\[You have eliminated a Mana Zombie (Gray). +3 Strength.]
Two more ahead, feeding on something on the floor. I fired at the first, hit it. The second raised its head and came toward me, I fired again, hit it.
\[You have eliminated a Mana Zombie (Gray). +1 Stamina.]
\[You have eliminated a Mana Zombie (Gray). +2 Health.]
Each shot cost almost nothing and each shot came faster, more stable, more precise. I wasn't learning to aim better, the Control was adapting, each shot closed more fissures, reduced more waste, and compressed with less effort.
A zombie stumbled out of a bathroom on the right, I fired without stopping. It fell.
\[You have eliminated a Mana Zombie (Gray). +1 Mana.]
Another appeared at the end of the corridor dragging a backpack caught on its foot. I fired. It fell.
\[You have eliminated a Mana Zombie (Gray). +4 Agility.]
The corridor went silent, at least this part of it.
I turned around. The girl was still pressed against the wall in the same spot, her wide eyes locked on me. The guy who'd been sitting on the floor with his eyes closed now had them open, staring at me with his mouth hanging.
I was going to keep moving, but I stopped. This wasn't my world.
It wasn't my Earth, it wasn't my country, it wasn't my city. I was in a body that wasn't mine, in a university I'd never set foot in, in a place I only knew from drawn panels. In the manhwa, the campus was shown from specific angles, always focused on the characters, I'd never paid attention to the map. Never needed to.
Now I needed to.
I knew the queen bee was in the parking lot, near a mana tree. I knew the gymnasium was on the way. But I had no idea which direction the parking lot was.
I walked back to the girl and she shrank when she saw me approach, pressing her back against the wall as if trying to phase through it.
"The gymnasium. Which way?"
She blinked. The question was so out of context with what had just happened that it took her a few seconds to process.
"W-what?"
"The university gymnasium. Which way?"
"Y-you just..." She looked at the bodies on the floor, then at me, then at the bodies again. "You killed all of them!"
"Gymnasium."
She opened her mouth and closed it, then opened it again.
"G-going out of the building, turn left. Pass the science block and go straight on the concrete path. The parking lot is halfway there, the gymnasium is the big building at the end."
Parking lot halfway there. Perfect.
"Thanks."
I turned and started walking toward the emergency door.
"W-wait! You're going to leave me here!?"
I didn't stop, didn't answer. I pushed the door open and the sunlight hit my face.
The campus opened up in front of me, and the chaos was total. The university campus was much bigger than the manhwa panels showed.
In the drawings, everything seemed compact, two or three buildings, a straight path, and the gymnasium in the background. In reality, it was a small city.
Three-story buildings spread in every direction, separated by gardens the mana was already deforming, the grass was growing too fast and some trees had doubled in size, with roots cracking the asphalt.
I turned left like the girl said and ran straight into the first problem. A group of six zombies had surrounded three students who'd climbed on top of a car parked on the sidewalk. One of the students held a fire extinguisher as a weapon, the other two were clinging to each other doing nothing.
The zombies hadn't even noticed me, they were focused on the smell of living flesh on top of the car. I raised my hand and fired three missiles in quick succession, hitting three heads.
The other three turned in my direction and I fired three more before they got within five meters.
\[You have eliminated a Mana Zombie (Gray). +1 Stamina.]
\[You have eliminated a Mana Zombie (Gray). +2 Strength.]
\[You have eliminated a Mana Zombie (Gray). +1 Health.]
\[You have eliminated a Mana Zombie (Gray). +1 Agility.]
\[You have eliminated a Mana Zombie (Gray). +3 Mana.]
\[You have eliminated a Mana Zombie (Gray). +1 Stamina.]
"H-hey! Thanks! Dude, thank y..."
The student with the extinguisher started yelling from the car roof, but I'd already passed without looking back. No time for gratitude, and I killed them for the points.
I continued along the concrete path between the buildings. The science block was on my right, with the second-floor windows blown out and blood streaks running down the facade. From inside, I could hear growls and something being dragged across the floor.
A dog appeared at the corner of the next block, it wasn't a normal dog.
It was twice the size of a German shepherd, with bristling fur and bright yellow eyes. The Mind Eyes showed its status before I needed to stop.
\[Mutant Dog (Gray)]
\[Strength: 18 | Agility: 22 | Health: 15]
Agility twenty-two, double what I had, it was way faster than me.
The dog growled low, its hind leg muscles coiling like springs, I didn't hesitate, I pulled the mana, formed a mana missile and fired at its skull.
The dog leapt to the right the exact second the sphere crossed the air, the blue shot exploded against the brick wall behind it.
"Too fast," I muttered, stepping back.
It charged. The ten-meter distance was devoured in three bounds and its claws scraped the concrete sending sparks.
I aimed the second shot, but the dog zigzagged, changing trajectory at an impossible angle, dodging my line of fire.
The jaw full of sharp teeth opened less than a meter from my neck.
I threw my body to the left, pushing my Agility points to the limit.
The teeth tore the sleeve of my uniform and scratched my shoulder, the impact of its body threw me to the ground.
The dog landed heavy and was already twisting its neck to come back and bite my face.
I punched my empty right hand straight into its open mouth. The teeth pierced my palm and fingers in the same fraction of a second that I pulled the frigid current from my stomach and released all the compression.
BOOM!
The mana missile formed and exploded directly in the back of the beast's throat.
The top of the mutant dog's head was launched upward and the lifeless body collapsed limp on top of me, bathing me in dark, warm blood.
\[You have eliminated a Mutant Dog (Gray). +4 Agility. +2 Strength.]
I pushed the dog's body off me and stood up, wiping the blood from my face with the sleeve that was still intact. My right hand burned, the puncture wounds from the teeth were bleeding and my fingers trembled, but I could still move all of them.
'Could've been worse.'
I went back to running along the concrete path, the adrenaline numbing the pain in my hand. The parking lot was already in sight, abandoned cars with open doors, backpacks and shoes scattered across the asphalt, shattered glass glinting in the sun.
And in the middle of all that, where before there should have been nothing but concrete and painted parking spaces, a tree stood.
I stopped running.
It was enormous. At least ten meters tall, with a thick, dark trunk that had cracked the asphalt around it as if it had exploded from beneath the earth. The branches twisted toward the sky at angles no normal tree would make, and the leaves were such an intense green they looked like they were lit, pulsing with their own light even under the sun.
The buzzing arrived before I could see what produced it. Deep, constant, vibrating in the air and in my chest at the same time. It was the same sound I'd heard through the corridor window inside the building, only now it was loud enough to make my teeth rattle.
Shadows moved between the highest branches. Four dark-yellow shapes patrolling in circles, each the size of a human arm, with stingers that glowed in a greenish light.
And at the center, between the thickest branches, partially hidden by the glowing leaves, something much larger moved slowly. The size of a person. Translucent wings vibrating in a heavy, slow rhythm. Its abdomen swollen, curved downward, pressed against the branches.
The Queen Bee.