Chapter 44: Were You Bitten?
Standing alone in the center of the ruined street, Felicity was a vision of defiance. Her blades were drawn, their edges slick with blood, and around her lay a circle of butchered corpses, zombies, twisted and mangled, their bodies broken where they’d fallen.
Her white mask, the Bridal Mask, the one with the etched-on smirk and curled moustache, covered her face while her baseball cap was long gone in the heat of the fight.
Her chest rose and fell with ragged breaths. Blood dripped from torn cloth and gashed skin, her once pristine attire now tattered and smeared. Deep wounds lined her arms and side, some still weeping red, others beginning to dry. Bent slightly at the waist, her posture was tense but steady.
Her eyes, sharp and fierce, burned with a clarity that defied her exhaustion, like a sword honed sharper and sharper against the whetstone of death.
That intensity wasn’t natural. It was an ability granted by Reinforced Fortitude, the Stage-1 passive skill she had claimed from the Stage-1 Type Two.
With it, she could ignore pain, fatigue, and even the creeping venom from the zombie’s claws. Her body seemed as if it was failing, but her spirit refused to yield.
Two meters in front of her stood the source of this mayhem, a female Stage-1 Type Two zombie.
She looked disturbingly human. Pale, gaunt, her long black hair cascading in greasy waves down her shoulders, brushing against a filthy white nightgown that fluttered faintly in the breeze. But what followed past her elbows marked her as something inhuman.
Where forearms should be, there were insectoid limbs, elongated, jointed with unnatural angles, and ending in wicked, blade-like scythes.
One clicked shut, producing a sharp, metallic sound like a bear trap snapping closed. The serrated edge shimmered faintly in sunlight, already stained with Felicity’s blood.
A soft, guttural growl rose from the zombie’s ruined throat, her lips barely there, chewed away or torn. The sound wasn’t one of hunger, it was predatory.