Apocalypse: I Can See Health Bars

The middle-aged officer stared at the stern old regimental commander, dumbfounded and clearly astonished by his words.

He then abruptly stood up and gave his shoulder an audacious pound.

"I've served under you for over ten years..."

As he spoke, he jabbed a finger at him repeatedly.

"This is the first time I've ever heard you crack a joke. See? You can be funny!

If the radios weren't down, I'd have to record this for Qingzhou!"

"Alright, that's enough. Why'd you ask about the ammo?"

"The autocannon. I've never touched one. How about you let me have some fun with it?"

SCREECH... GRIND...

The heavy grinding of steel from outside filtered into the cabin, bringing their joking to a sudden stop.

Zhou Chaoxian peered through a small viewing port, looking out from beside the driver's seat. He saw several thick, vine-like appendages wrapped around the armored vehicle's windows—they were dense, and their numbers were growing.

"Go on..."

Knowing time was short, he stood up, left his seat, and bent down to approach his old comrade. He patted the man's shoulder, then turned to the young man in the gunner's seat.

"Xiaowu, get down. Let him have a go for a while..."

"HAHAHA! My beautiful cannon... Pfft, never mind that, this baby's homegrown! Hahaha, come to papa!"

The new "gunner" took his post. Zhou Chaoxian sat in his former seat, drew the pistol from his waist, and began meticulously wiping it with a cloth as he calmly issued orders:

"All firing ports, on station! Aim toward the vines! Full magazines, controlled bursts—open fire!"

In the next second, brutal, muffled blasts of fire erupted from the armored vehicle's turret, spewing out in the direction of the encroaching vine-like limbs!

Zombies and mutated monsters in the line of fire were torn to shreds by the maelstrom!

The other three men also fired their rifles through the vehicle's firing ports. They didn't even need to aim; the dense mass of zombies had completely covered their entire field of fire.

The armored vehicle instantly transformed into a fire-spitting "iron hedgehog." A few hundred meters away, amidst the flames and thick smoke, innumerable twisted, grotesque limbs thrashed even more frantically.

The vines binding the vehicle were shredded, but they were immediately replaced by more, an endless, writhing mass...

...

Lin Fan hid behind a tree at the side of the road, letting the speeding convoy pass him by.

The machine gun atop the lead assault vehicle, manned by a nervous-looking young soldier with a health bar of just over seventy, was enough to dissuade him from revealing himself.

'Yeah, getting hit by that thing would probably hurt.'

'They aren't moving very fast,' Lin Fan observed. 'If they're looking for a place to stop for the night, they'll probably head for the gas station. Traveling after dark... who knows what kind of monsters you might run into.'

'Their equipment confirms they're a standard military unit, not just some gang of survivors who stumbled upon weapons.'

'Plus, there's a bus in their convoy. Even though the windows are boarded up, I can see plenty of health bars through the cracks. Most are in the fifty-to-sixty range. Unhealthy, but not about to starve to death.'

The fact that their convoy had a busload of civilians in okay-ish condition meant that the worst-case scenario—them being a hostile group—was unlikely. Lin Fan no longer felt it was necessary to immediately turn around and follow them.

What struck him as strangest was that as the vehicles drove off toward the gas station, not a single zombie followed them.

He recalled how he had once kited a hundred or two zombies for over ten kilometers with just a single van. Yet this massive convoy had roared through without attracting a single one.

Just as he was puzzling over this, a rhythmic sound echoed from the distance! THUD. THUD. THUD.

'A gun? No, that's an autocannon!'

Lin Fan had never been a soldier, but he'd played enough video games. Combined with the armored vehicle that had just passed, he was certain: 'That deep, heavy sound has to be from that big gun on its roof!'

'There are other people!'

'No wonder no zombies followed them. The noise drew them all over there!'

And in that same direction lay something Lin Fan had been obsessing over—the ten-thousand HP zombie!

He didn't know where the squad came from, but they had clearly bitten off more than they could chew when they passed by that park!

Watching the convoy disappear into the darkness, Lin Fan turned around, equipped his Stealth Crystal, and ran toward the sound of gunfire, sticking to the shadows.

After running for another three kilometers or so, Lin Fan finally stopped.

Zombies. There were zombies everywhere.

The dense cluster of red health bars looked like a tangled ball of yarn, completely blocking the east side of the road. Besides the normal zombies with [300] HP, the horde was also mixed with a large number of zombies with [500] HP.

Their appearance was almost identical to that of the normal zombies, making Lin Fan wonder if his eyes were playing tricks on him.

'Since when did zombies level up? Five hundred HP?'

But for some reason, there wasn't a single Mutated Zombie in the horde.

The ceaseless, low growls of the dense horde filled his ears, yet it gave him a strange feeling of silence.

Recalling the prickling, needle-like sensation on his back from the last time he'd passed this way with the Stealth Crystal equipped, Lin Fan rummaged through his backpack and found a potion he had never used: [Stealth Potion (Medium)].

The Stealth Crystal, even a basic one, was usually enough for Lin Fan's needs. Besides, the crystal didn't just hide him from zombies; it worked on humans, too.

It was much more reliable than the simple Stealth Potion, whose effect—"lowers zombie perception of you"—was clearly limited to just zombies.

Besides, while the potion's effects were miraculous, they worked directly on the body, which made him suspicious.

That was why Lin Fan had never used this potion.

But now that he was about to face the ten-thousand-HP monster, he couldn't be too careful.

He still couldn't see the ten-thousand-HP monster's health bar from this distance.

Lin Fan strongly suspected that the moment he could see its health bar, it could sense him in return, right through his Stealth Crystal. After all, that strange sensation last time had begun the very instant he saw its health bar.

While he was still far away, he activated the potion with a thought. 'One medium Stealth Potion, coming up!'

The instant the potion took effect, an icy, deathly stillness emanated from his chest and spread throughout his body.

This feeling...

It was as if he had become a zombie himself!

Not only that, but as the coldness spread, his vision gradually yellowed. The entire world became a bleak, monotonous gray-yellow; only the health bars remained vividly colored.

But the good news was that as the yellow tint replaced the darkness, distant objects became clearer. He could see!

His range of vision, originally only a few dozen meters, suddenly expanded to hundreds of meters, as if it were daytime!

"This..."

Lin Fan raised his hand, looking at his fingers.

'Is this... a zombie's vision?'

But he had no way of proving it, and it wasn't like a zombie could give him the answer.

The potion was active. He had to make every second count. Ten minutes sounded like a lot, but six hundred seconds was actually very short.

With a thought, the "Unnamed" spear appeared in his hand. Facing this many zombies, the potion and crystal felt illusory. Only this weighty weapon could give him a weighty sense of security.

Under the combined effects of his upgraded, Rare-grade Stealth Crystal and the medium Stealth Potion, Lin Fan slowly approached a zombie until he was standing right in front of it. The zombie had no reaction whatsoever.

Still, he fought back the impulse to poke it with his spear. 'This is no time for itchy fingers,' he thought. 'Control yourself!'

He held the spear close to his body, carefully observing the surrounding zombies as he slowly threaded his way through the gaps in the horde.

It was like wading through a river of zombies in the dark, and he was heading straight for its center—its deepest point.

The world in his eyes had become a faded old movie. Even the bloodstains on the zombies and their mangled, bloody wounds looked as if they'd been covered by a gray-black mosaic, making them less nauseating.

Even the smells of blood, rot, and other indescribable stenches coming from the walking corpses around him gradually grew milder.

He calmed his mind, as if he had truly become a zombie himself, one taking part in some collective activity. Like someone going to a crowded fair or a circus, he went with the flow of the undead tide, heading deeper inside...

CRACK!

The sharp crack of a gunshot suddenly echoed from the center of the zombie river. The zombies around Lin Fan jolted, growing agitated and pushing toward the center of the horde.

The sudden gunshot also startled Lin Fan, who was still in the middle of the zombie pile. He almost lost his composure and broke the Stealth Crystal's effect.

Seeing that the timer for the Stealth Potion under his health bar still had plenty of time left, he forced himself to calm down.

Unfortunately, the gunshot had agitated the horde. The zombies in front squeezed desperately together, leaving no gaps, while the zombies behind them kept pressing forward, packing them in as tight as a bag of enoki mushrooms.