The bat-winged zombie watched Fang Chang approach. All four of its eyes turned at once as it sniffed hard at the scents spreading through the air.

At last, after confirming Fang Chang’s identity, it stood proudly on its own. The energy produced by the mutation of the virus inside it poured out, and its immense power resonated with the surrounding environment. Larger chunks of concrete shattered under the force, while tiny stones leapt into the air along with clouds of dust, defying gravity.

The sheer force of its presence made every hair on Fang Chang’s body stand on end. The various energies within her began circulating of their own accord, making her body burn and giving her the false impression that she had a fever.

“What a powerful monster! How could it possibly be a baby? Aaaah! Li Zirong, you have to save me when I’m in danger!”

With her life on the line, she no longer cared about using honorifics.

The bat-winged zombie threw back its head and roared. Its tail, which extended from its tailbone, swept lightly through the air, whipping up a gale. The stones that hadn’t yet landed were blown to the other side, where they chimed out a pleasing melody.

Fang Chang swallowed nervously. Her clenched fists trembled despite herself.

At last, the bat-winged zombie moved. Muscles bulged in its powerful legs, and each step shook the ground and sent up great clouds of dust. It was only one zombie advancing, yet it sounded like a whole army was on the march.

It was incredibly fast. Its bat wings beat lightly as it ran, and a pale green glow rippled across its body. It was the blessing of wind—it had evolved wind-based powers.

Even so, Fang Chang could still track its speed with her eyes. She knew exactly how fast it was, but when it charged straight at her, she somehow even had time to observe its nimble running form.

But being able to watch was one thing. Daring to watch was another.

Faced with the bat-winged zombie’s terrifying presence, she screamed. Panic pushed the scream past its limits, sending it straight to a frequency of one million hertz. The siren’s gift, her Sound-Binding ability, then compressed the high frequency down to just ten thousand. Her scream could still be picked up by human ears, but it had become something else entirely.

Li Zirong’s expression changed. Her mecha deployed a shield, forcibly stabilizing the surrounding air and keeping it rigid to block the transmission of sound waves.

Only she had the reaction speed and means to do that: solidify the air around her to stop the vibrations, and thus stop the sound.

The bat-winged zombie wasn’t so lucky. It had no way to stop the ultrasonic waves, and was struck at once. Its eyes, which it used to observe the outside world, were the first to fail. Its vision blurred, as if it had returned to the moment it first became a zombie. But this didn’t affect it much. It relied on smell, thermal sensing, and the instinctive craving it felt as a fellow virus-host to pinpoint Verris’s location.

Then its consciousness was struck, as if by a massive hammer. Its vaunted senses fell into chaos, leaving it unable to tell where Fang Chang was.

It lost its sense of direction, but kept moving forward, staggering from side to side as it ran.

Fang Chang was so frightened that she had squeezed her eyes shut. She missed the sight that would have sent anyone’s confidence soaring. The name bestowed on her by the Shadow-Devouring Lord had given her the ability to sense Shadow. Even with her eyes closed, she knew the bat-winged zombie was drawing near.

Seething Demonflame rose from her flat little shoes and swept upward, covering her whole body, but she didn’t feel uncomfortable at all. Demonflame didn’t hurt its wielder, and the Demon’s Foot had given her an extremely high resistance to heat. Her body could take a dip in lava now.

Her scream turned into a terrified roar. It sounded fierce, but hollow. However…

Fang Chang raised her long leg high. The moment the bat-winged zombie drew near, she fearfully did the splits. In an instant, Demonflame swept out in every direction, bringing not only scorching heat but explosions as well. She had awakened another property of Demonflame—its explosive power.

Li Zirong cried out in alarm, retracted her shield, and shot straight into the sky on blue flames that burst from beneath her feet.

The moment she left the ground, the shock wave from the explosive Demonflame swept across the earth like a landslide. Hot wind blew for over a hundred meters in every direction. The nearby chunks of concrete were ground to powder, then the heat in the wind burned them into a sky full of sparks.

At the heart of the Demonflame, the bat-winged zombie flew backward even faster than before. Its dark green skin had turned charcoal black, and its bat wings were scorched and curled. It flew a full thirty meters before hitting the ground. The impact cracked its brittle skin, and countless blood-red fissures appeared across the charred surface, with bright red blood pouring from them.

Up in the sky, Li Zirong lightly tapped her fist into her palm. The Demonflame faded, revealing an irregular crater in front of Fang Chang, ten meters across and three meters deep. Viscous lava flowed along its inner walls. For thirty meters in every direction from Fang Chang, the rugged ruins had been smoothed flat by the hot wind, forming an inward-sloping ramp.

The dust settled.

One Demon’s Foot, and Fang Chang already felt a faint weariness. She had used up more than half the energy in her body, especially her Demonic Power.

But the hostility around her had vanished, and the bat-winged zombie didn’t seem to be coming any closer. She cautiously opened one eye—and was stunned by what she saw.

She backed away two steps, still unable to believe she was the one who’d caused all this destruction.

Just then, the bat-winged zombie struggled twice, then its head lolled to one side as it breathed its last.

The system’s notification rang out.

[Player 0972 has killed a special evolved zombie and received 2,000 reward points.]

Fang Chang’s eyes widened. She instinctively clutched her chest, only to realize that her breasts were so large she could barely feel her heartbeat.

“Is this real?”

She instinctively squeezed her breasts. Their full softness and the strange sensation reminded her that this was real.

Li Zirong landed beside her and patted her shoulder, about to reassure her. But after Verris’s great battle (well, sort of), Fang Chang was still on edge. She reflexively kicked backward, and Demonflame flared up with an explosive crack. Li Zirong went flying in a trail of sparks and lightning.

By the time Fang Chang came to her senses and ran over to help her, Li Zirong wore a grave expression, her little face covered in soot.

Fortunately, Fang Chang had only acted on instinct, and the Demonflame had been a reflex. Without any Demonic Power fueling it, it was much weaker. Otherwise, Li Zirong wouldn’t have just ended up with a blackened face.

Fang Chang’s heart pounded. A woman’s face was obviously important, after all. Would Li Zirong get angry at her for causing that kind of damage?

She apologized at once. “I’m sorry, Senior!”

As a life mentor, Li Zirong couldn’t be harsh. She casually wiped her face and kept patiently guiding Fang Chang, giving her all the confidence she needed. “See? You’re actually really strong. You don’t need to worry. In this world, there are only a handful of enemies you can’t just charge straight through.”

Seeing that Li Zirong wasn’t going to hold it against her, Fang Chang relaxed. Then, hearing her encouragement, she clenched her fist. After that fight, she finally understood her own strength. “Got it, Senior! I’m peerless! There’s nothing in this world that can stand against me!”

The moment she finished speaking, the ground suddenly began to shake. The Corpse-Spawn Flower at the center of the ruins rose up, revealing beneath it a head more than ten meters tall, with nothing but a single mouth.

Fang Chang glanced at the crater she’d made by spending half her Demonic Power, then looked at the enormous head. She could barely get the words out.

“S-S-S-S-Senior… w-w-w-what kind of monster is that?!”