Chapter 198 Abberant

‘Was it really efficient?’ Mathew asked himself while entering a contest of stares with his beloved. Yet, as he kept on looking at the brightly shining Nadia’s eyes mixed with the amused look on her smiling lips, he failed to keep up his resentment.

“I would argue about that,” Mathew mentioned, only to then shake his head. “But let’s drop this topic. Whatever happened, we are now on the right side of the fence,” he said, bringing his hands down to dust off his knees. “And that’s all that’s matter.”

‘And with that said,’ Mathew thought, raising back to a more natural position as he turned his eyes towards the ruined wing of the compound that has long turned into the second entrance to the campus. ‘I guess finding out where Carol is should be our next goal.’

Mathew was someone who would waste a lot of time and effort overthinking stuff due to his worry that he would miss something. Yet, once he operated within the bounds of the realm that he could understand, he disliked the very idea of wasting time over nothing.

And so, while Nadia continued to silently chuckle while both Norbert and the two remaining girls struggled to figure out how they were supposed to react to the situation, Mathew took his first proper step towards the ruined entrance to the campus.

“Huh?” Norbert suddenly uttered a small cry of surprise.

‘What now?’ Mathew thought, rolling his eyes in annoyance as he glanced over his shoulder at the man.

Norbert’s face was perfectly still, his eyes widened. He slowly breathed in and out, only to slowly move his eyes around as if to check if others were seeing the same thing that he did.

“Do you guys see it?” he then asked, even though his gestures were more than enough to convey the question already.

“See what?” Mathew asked, doing a poor job at hiding his annoyance when he finally looked in the direction of whatever took Norbert by such a surprise.

And then, he froze as well.

The horde of zombies was just a few meters away from them. Only the poorly made fence and the barrier of the fortress were there to keep the zombies away from the safe zone of the fortress.

And just a few meters away, the zombies were currently clashing with each other!

‘What the hell is going on?’ Mathew thought, weirded out by the unexpected event. ‘Some kind of event? Or is it…?’

The zombies didn’t fight each other for no reason at all. In fact, upon closer inspection, they weren’t really fighting with the intent of defeating their fellow zombies.

All that the horde did, right before everyone’s eyes, was claw its way forward with its rotting flesh, broken bones, and deformed limbs towards the one zombie that Mathew half-fried against the barrier.

Or rather, towards the small, shiny core that was halfway stuck in the middle of the unlucky zombie’s head.

“REEEE!” one of the zombies finally reached the prize. It pushed its broken fingers right into the brain matter of the fallen zombie, making use of the fact that half of its head was gone to the barrier.

And with a single move, the zombie plucked the core out of its fellow zombie’s head only to throw it right into its mouth!

“REEEE!” an even louder cry emerged from the zombie’s bowels. Its rotting body tensed up in a weird position.

And then, the color of its eyes changed a little to a more vibrant one.

‘What the hell just happened?’ Mathew asked himself, staring wide-eyed at how the commotion died out in the instant only for all the zombies to disperse back to whatever they were busy with before.

“What the hell was that?” Daria muttered, unable to tear her eyes away from the gruesome scene.

“Zombies eating each other,” Leila replied in a calm voice only to follow it up with a shrug of her shoulders. “With everything, we saw in the last two days, do we really have any right to be surprised by something like this?”

“Guys, the zombie that ate the core…” Norbert spoke out, ignoring the whole exchange between the girls. “Isn’t he quite different now?” he suggested, turning his eyes from one person to another.

“Now that you mention it,” Daria muttered as she turned her eyes to the zombie that won the race and consumed the core. “Is it just me or does it have some sort of aura around itself?” she suggested.

‘Does it?’ Mathew shrugged as he turned his eyes towards the zombie, only to squint them as he attempted to see something beyond normal vision.

The one zombie, in particular, was also the only one that didn’t return to its usual task of pointlessly slamming itself against the barrier, only to be continuously repelled by it.

Instead, it stood motionless in place, still stuck in its weird, twisted pose.

‘No, it’s moving,’ Mathew noticed.

The movement was so slow and tiny that he would never be able to see it with just a glance. Only by starting at it for a long while was the young man able to spot how its twisted limbs slowly fell down by the zombie’s sides.

‘Wait, what?’ Mathew tensed up when the next ridiculous thing happened. Because while he could easily accept the zombie struggling to return to a neutral pose… It was impossible for its broken limbs to apparently heal up!

‘I’m sure its left arm was broken… so why does it appear to be fine right now?’ Mathew asked in his thoughts, an uneasy feeling welling up at the bottom of his stomach.

The zombie finally returned to a fully neutral pose. If it were to raise its hands to the level of its shoulders, it would execute the legendary t-pose.

And yet, instead of trolling Mathew and making it even harder for the young man to understand what the fuck was going on, the zombie suddenly woke up.

It didn’t rush at the barrier, contrary to what all its compatriots all around did.

Instead, it simply stared right back at Mathew. And then, it slowly raised its hand to its gouged eyes.

“Guys…” Daria muttered in an uneasy voice. “I can sense its aura concentrating on its hand…” she reported.

“How about we kill it, just in case?” Leila suggested, brandishing her weapon.

The zombie, though, didn’t give Mathew’s group any leeway to discuss their options. And before they could decide what to do about it… It slammed its aura-covered hand right into the barrier!

Only for the barrier to flash up, block the attack…

And then send the zombie flying along with a wisk energy that burned it to a crisp before it could even fall to the ground!