The outbreak of the zombie virus dealt a devastating blow to human society, bringing sweeping changes to both technology and the way people lived. People built cities around survival bases, but each city became independent of its own accord. Like the city-states of ancient Greece, each city was its own state, and each state its own country.
Humanity struggled to survive the zombie hordes, yet friction and conflict between the city-states were constant. The lands below were scarred and ruined, but the skies had found peace. There were no exhaust fumes, no smog. Nature roared back to life. With human civilization on the brink of extinction, people no longer had the strength to hold nature at bay. A single gale or downpour could wash away every trace of humanity’s past.
Just then, two figures streaked across the azure sky.
Both were women. One wore a suit of powered armor, blue flames jetting from the soles of her feet and giving her a powerful boost. The other gripped a rope tied to the first woman’s armor, trailing behind her like a kite.
The one in front was Li Zirong. The one behind her was Fang Chang.
Fang Chang controlled the Bone-Stripping Wind, shaping it into a pointed cone of air in front of her to part the wind rushing toward them. But holding the rope for so long had left her tender, fair hands feeling painfully uncomfortable. Thinking of that, she complained again. “Why didn’t you give me the ability to fly? What’s the point of putting all these extra limbs on my back? A pair of wings would’ve been so much better!”
Li Zirong’s mechanical voice came from ahead, matter-of-fact as ever. “You don’t like the feeling of flying, do you? That’s why I didn’t install wings you could use to fly.”
Fang Chang gritted her teeth. “I don’t like being dragged through the air like this! If I had wings of my own, would I be afraid of flying? I’d soar straight into the sky and stand shoulder to shoulder with the sun!”
“Technically, even with a pair of wings, you couldn’t do that.” Li Zirong launched into an explanation. “Wings fly by using the air, and the sun is outside Earth, about eight light-minutes away. You can’t even break through the atmosphere, so how do you expect to stand shoulder to shoulder with the sun?”
Fang Chang snapped, “I was exaggerating! Exaggeration is a figure of speech that helps emphasize what I mean. You know that, right?”
Li Zirong shot back without a shred of courtesy. “All I know is that if you could get a handle on the power inside you, you’d have several ways to fly. You could make wind wings out of the demon’s Bone-Stripping Wind, use Demonflame’s compressed blasts, control a gravity field, and more. You’re just too weak. Even if I gave you powerful abilities, you wouldn’t know how to draw out their potential.”
Fang Chang puffed out her cheeks in a sulk.
Li Zirong remembered Fang Chang’s abilities and jolted. Even her mechanical voice took on a hint of panic. “Don’t do anything reckless! With the equipment boost and the enhancement from a deity’s naming, I haven’t even activated my strongest shield. If you hit me with a blast of that freezing venom, my body won’t be able to take it. If my power supply freezes, we’re a full three hundred meters above the ground. Even with your strong body, you’ll fall and turn into a total baka!”
“…” Fang Chang felt terribly wronged. “You made me upset. Am I not even allowed to puff out my cheeks?”
“Oh, you should’ve said so earlier.” Li Zirong immediately relaxed. “I thought you’d gotten sensitive after turning into a girl and were about to spit freezing venom at me! You can’t control your own power yet. A joke could easily turn into a full-power blast. It wouldn’t matter if you fell and turned into a baka, but what if I died?”
Fang Chang took a deep breath. A stream of cold, white vapor escaped between her lips.
At the critical moment, Li Zirong stopped. Inertia swung Fang Chang around and sent her flying past. She swallowed the mouthful of freezing venom she’d been about to unleash. Her attack failed.
Even as Fang Chang swung helplessly from the rope and let out a series of delightful shrieks, Li Zirong remained unmoved. She stared solemnly at the ruins left behind by a collapsed skyscraper. Atop the highest mound stood a flower more than three meters across. Its color and markings were exactly like the flower-bud pattern on Verris’s forehead.
Her mechanical voice carried a deadly edge. A tough fight was coming. “We’re here!”
“Aaaaaah! It’s so high! I don’t want to fall and turn into a baka! Hurry up and get me down!”
And then Fang Chang’s scream ruined the moment.
Li Zirong felt a little helpless. It seemed that after accepting her identity as a girl, Fang Chang had started acting more flirtatious and unruly. Even her behavior had genuinely taken on a more feminine streak.
Puffing out her cheeks when she was upset…
Li Zirong wanted to understand Verris’s thought process, so as they descended, she puffed out her cheeks too. She sometimes let herself go, but she’d never deliberately acted cute. She couldn’t understand how this gesture had come to mean someone was upset. Puffed-out cheeks only made her think of frogs, then the Toad Style, then Huoyun Evil God, then the Great Sun Tathagata—the sun shining down on all things—and finally, Fang Chang’s modifications.
Perhaps she should install a pair of wings on Fang Chang and let her stand shoulder to shoulder with the sun.
Perhaps it was the scent of strangers drawing near, or perhaps Fang Chang’s siren voice had unusual penetrating power. Even though the skyscraper ruins were a full two hundred meters from their landing point, the blooming Corpse-Spawn Flower suddenly stirred.
A shower of rubble burst from the ruins. A three-meter-tall, dark green humanoid monster with bat wings on its back appeared. It was anything but friendly toward the newcomers. Even Fang Chang, who hadn’t yet mastered her power, could feel the brutality radiating from it.
Fang Chang instinctively assumed a fighting stance. Her little skirt turned into shorts, and her safety shorts became black stockings. That gave her more room to move while increasing the area protected—and, most importantly, she wouldn’t have to worry about flashing anyone.
Even if you used to be a boy and had turned into a girl, flashing someone under your skirt was still a very embarrassing problem!
“This is a high-level evolved zombie. The virus has changed it so much that it’s practically a different species.” Li Zirong explained it all to Verris like a kindly old man. “But it’s no match for you. Even in your original form, you’d have completely outclassed it. And you’re stronger now. Go on! Use it to get some practice and get used to the way players fight.”
Fang Chang shivered. She gestured at the monster’s tall, powerful frame, then at her own. It was huge and packed with muscle. Even the embarrassingly prominent ones on her own chest couldn’t compare to its pectorals.
“I’m supposed to fight that? It’s so big, and I’m so small.”
Li Zirong said earnestly, “You have to get used to fighting sooner or later. There’s no such thing as a mission where nobody gets hurt. Even your current survival mission comes with plenty of dangers.”
Fang Chang was still a little scared.
And you couldn’t really blame her. She might have been a boy before, but Fang Chang had always been a quiet child. Her greatest feat, as far as she could remember, was chasing a neighbor’s dog away with a stick at her grandmother’s house in the countryside. She’d been twelve at the time. The dog had been two.
“I…”
Li Zirong gave her a pep talk. “What are you afraid of? It looks scary, but you used to be even scarier than it is. To you, it’s just a baby. Use your power and beat it down!”
Fang Chang clenched her fist and gave a spirited shout. At last, she gathered her courage and strode toward her target on long legs, walking with a bold, confident step.
