Chapter 553: Zombification?
Translator: bingeants Editor: bingeants
Dean pushed the Zombie aside, immediately rolled over, and checked the wound on his left shoulder. His armor was cracked open and his shoulder had been bitten badly. If it were someone else, it would have been too painful to say a word. But his left hand was numb. It made him feel weird, like looking at someone else's wound.
His left hand could only hurt others, and he himself would not feel any pain. However, this was only an illusion.
Dean turned his head, pulled out the dagger from the Zombie's eye, and returned to the subway. He wiped the blood off the dagger with a towel, washed it with clean water, and then burned it with the torch. When the dagger turned red, he took off his armor and used the hot dagger to scrape the wound on his shoulder. There were hissing sounds coming from the wound.
After the mangled flesh was scraped, Dean suddenly discovered that there was no blood flowing from the wound.
He was stunned and suddenly thought of a terrible thing. He looked at the wound carefully, and the blood seemed to be stagnant, flowing slowly. He touched it with his right hand and felt a cold sting.
He knew this familiar cold sting came from the Ice Blood Disease, but seeing this scene at the moment, it gave him a ridiculous idea. His left hand... seemed to be no different to a Zombie's body!
The only difference was that although his skin color was pale, it was not lifeless like the Zombie's stone-gray skin.
"Is the Ice Blood Disease the zombification precursor?" Dean could not help but think, but then he felt that it was a little different. According to the information he knew from other people, the zombification process usually finished within a few hours. Even with strong resistance, the infected would be completely zombified by the virus within seven or eight hours. But he already had the Ice Blood Disease for several years. If it were the zombification precursor, he should have become a Zombie already.
However, now his left hand's appearance and symptom were no different from the Zombie — it would not bleed, and the blood's temperature was extremely low.
This made him somewhat confused. Could there be a deeper connection between the two?
His eyes flashed slightly and stopped his train of thought after quite a while. He cut along the bite wound with the dagger and saw the flesh color near the teeth mark was dull. He used the dagger to trace the wound and create a four to five centimeters mark. Looking at it carefully, he found that the flesh color outside two centimeters of the teeth mark was more vivid. The closer it was to the teeth mark, the darker the flesh color was.
Dean was relieved that his guess had been correct. Sure enough, his Ice Blood Disease suppressed the virus from spreading. The virus did not spread as fast as it did in the ordinary human body. The spreading speed was as slow as a turtle, enough for him to prevent.
"This strange disease also has a merit..." Dean said in his heart. He did not hesitate and gouged out the flesh near the teeth mark with the dagger, then washed the wound with clean water that was mixed with disinfectant powder and wrapped it with gauze. The flesh would grow back eventually.
If such an injury were to happen to an ordinary person, there had to be some big scars left on the arm. But they, the magic mark wielders whose physiques were beyond the ordinary people, only needed to recuperate and take some nutrients, and this kind of injury would recover sooner or later just like a skin scratch. After all, their physiques were enhanced, and their automatically repaired cells were far more than ordinary people.
After the wound was treated, Dean sat down and rested. After he recovered some strength, he got up and came to the Zombie's corpse. He examined the corpse and noticed that the Zombie's fingernails were stained with dried blood. It smelled like human blood. Obviously, in addition to him, this Zombie had also attacked others.
Dean lightly sniffed the blood and felt that the smell was a bit familiar. He thought about it a little and suddenly remembered the Dragon Guard corpse that was cut in half when his team first came to the Wasteland. The smell was exactly the same.
"So, that person was killed by this Zombie." Dean's eyes flashed. He didn't expect this Zombie to wander back to the depths of the Orange Wasteland after killing that man, and then meet him. It was fate.
"Martin said that the Zombie's mutation speed is faster than the monster's. To some extent, the Zombie retains the characteristics of the human's rapid evolution. As long as there are energy sources, the Zombie can rapidly upgrade and mutate. Human is different from the Zombie. Human can only take the God's Blessing, but the Zombie can eat anything, taking the nutrients from the monster corpses and even the Zombie corpses. The Zombie's mutation speed is far faster than human's."
"This youth's team was most likely attacked by the Zombie King. After being infected with the Zombie virus, he should have eaten many times. His strength and speed are better than the high-level Frontiersmen like Eugene and Martin. It should be comparable to the Pioneer level."
Dean looked at the corpse, and his eyes flashed. His feet stomped on the corpse's head, and the skull cracked.
After stomping several times, Dean finally crushed the Zombie's head. Even the brain inside had been stomped into paste. His feet felt like stepping on mud.
He squatted down, picked up a stone from the side, and poked around the brain. Soon, he found a hard object in it, the Cold Crystal.
However, what surprised him was that although the Cold Crystal's color was blue, the shape was different. It was not round, but oval, and the surface was covered with spikes.
Dean pried the Cold Crystal off the brain, and it rolled onto the ground. After pondering for a while, he extended his left index finger and gently touch the Cold Crystal. It was cold like the usual Cold Crystal.
He felt relieved. He picked up the towel he used previously and wiped clean the Cold Crystal. After the Cold Crystal was cleaned, he looked at it again and found a small shadow inside.
He quickly returned to the subway and lifted the Cold Crystal in front of the torch. He could see the shadow clearly in front of the fire. It was a small twisted worm.
He was surprised. He suddenly thought that this Zombie was originally a Dragon Guard, and there was a magic mark in his body. Could it be that his magic mark was now in this Cold Crystal? Why was this happening?
Bang!
As Dean was pondering, he heard a loud sound outside the subway.
His face changed slightly, and he hurriedly looked outside. He saw a huge, blazing heat source jumping into the collapsed ruins outside the subway.