Mutation

"Ah! Save me, sa... save me! Ah—"

The girl at the very back was knocked to the ground by the dead. At least seven or eight of them piled onto her and began tearing into her! Her clothes were ripped into scraps, exposing the blue underwear beneath, looking especially **.

Blondie had no desire to see such a scene right now! Even delinquents made a point of working out. He had recovered quite a bit after Miyamoto Rei's blow, but the heavy breathing from running made his abdomen ache faintly!

It was all that brat's fault! He'd sworn that cutting through the mall would be faster. Damn it, why the hell had he believed him back then?! Now they'd attracted a whole horde of the dead. It was one thing if you wanted to die, but why drag all of us into the fire with you?!

"Huff, huff—"

He gasped for breath like a bellows, his throat full of the taste of rust. Even though he had lived in this city for over a decade, he was still unfamiliar with the area they were running through. But that pack of the dead would never get tired!

Of the classmates who had gotten off the bus with him, they were either dead or running ahead of him. He had fallen to the very back!

Feeling bursts of cold wind at his back, he knew he couldn't go on like this. He would definitely be finished! If he weren't carrying this pig on his back, would he have been forced into such a state? His gaze sharpened as his heart hardened.

Without caring whether the unconscious Koichi Shidou could hear him, he said, "Shi... Shidou-sensei, you can't blame me for this. I brought you this far... I've done all I could! If... if this keeps up, we're both done for. Don't you usually love taking care of your students?"

"Then... then I'll have to trouble you this time too!" With that, he released the hands supporting Koichi Shidou and let him fall backward.

"Bang! I... I'll make sure you all die horribly!!! Ah—!"

For some reason, Koichi Shidou woke up while Blondie was speaking. He was frantic, but with three of his four limbs broken, he had no ability to resist. All he could do was be abandoned by Blondie and thrown onto the ground!

The dead behind them surged forward and began savagely biting Koichi Shidou. In the final moment of his life, he uttered his most vicious curse!

The moment Blondie threw away Koichi Shidou, his body became much lighter, and he nearly stumbled to the ground. Fortunately, Teacher Shidou had used his body to hold back the dead for him. Blondie was deeply moved. Now that was a truly good teacher, wasn't it?

But when he heard that heart-rending roar, he still couldn't help shuddering.

With no burden weighing him down, Blondie's speed quickly picked up. He soon caught up to the classmates ahead. Everyone had heard that sound just now, but nobody said anything. At a time like this, they just had to keep running. If they got a cramp, they'd be finished!

Only after they had run more than ten miles did the horde of the dead slowly vanish from sight. Blondie and the others were exhausted and dropped straight onto the ground, looking up at the starry sky... This place could already be considered the suburbs.

"Ugh!..."

"What's wrong?" A girl sitting on the ground asked with difficulty, opening her mouth. "Huh?..."

Blondie staggered over to the girl who had let out the muffled groan. Her eyes were wide open, but her once clean, beautiful eyes had lost all color. Trembling slightly, he placed his fingers beneath her nose...

"She's dead..."

"How is that possible?! She was fine just now!" Another person seemed unwilling to accept the truth. "She wasn't bitten by the dead... so how did she die?"

Blondie lay down on the grass. "Overexertion. Her heart couldn't take it... Then she sat down right after we stopped, and her heart stopped... We didn't have time to perform CPR on her just now..."...

"Sniff... sniff... sob..."

The naturally timid girl began to cry. One of them had been eaten by the dead during their escape, and now another had died right before her eyes. She was the only one left from her entire group.

Including Blondie, this group now had five people... four boys and one girl. They fell silent. No one wanted to speak. What would happen next? Where were they supposed to go from here?

Ever since Koichi Shidou had been abandoned, a group of the dead surrounded him, continuously tearing and biting at his body. Such pain should have easily knocked a person unconscious long ago, yet he felt every bit of it with perfect clarity!

That feeling of being unable to live or die! His nerves were hypersensitive, his thoughts abnormally clear. He swore that if he ever got another chance, he would torture every last one of them to death! Especially Kurumi Tokisaki! And that delinquent Blondie! His eyes were bloodshot as the pain continuously assaulted his senses.

What did it feel like to watch yourself get eaten alive? Koichi Shidou found out. Until darkness filled his vision, his eyeballs were dug out and eaten!

He could clearly feel the flesh separating from his bones. Even his skull had been punched open! The sound of his brain matter leaking out filled him with terror! Why could I still feel all this? I should have died long ago, shouldn't I?

Why was I still being tortured? Hadn't I suffered enough since childhood? Even after death, I couldn't find peace! Harboring hatred for everything—his father, everyone else—his thoughts gradually blurred, until his consciousness became completely empty...

"Huh? What happened to me?" Koichi Shidou rubbed his aching head in confusion. "Wasn't I teaching at school? How did I end up in a place like this?"

"Ah! Aaaah—!" The sudden pain made him feel as though his body were being torn in two! He rolled about nonstop on the ground, the pain driving him mad! His right hand clenched into a fist and smashed viciously into the ground again and again, as though that could lessen the pain somewhat.

But he failed to notice that every patch of concrete struck by his fist... had cracked open in spiderweb patterns, and the centers... had sunk down considerably!

"Kurumi Tokisaki! I'll make sure you die horribly!!!" Remembering everything, he roared toward the sky. Looking at his completely mutated arm, greenish-blue in color and covered in barbs, it was hideous beyond belief. Compared to the buildings beside him...

He was roughly three meters tall, and several heads of the dead were faintly visible around his waist. He could feel the power in this body. Though he had become neither human nor ghost, as long as he could make that bitch pay the price, it was all worth it!

"Boom! Bang—"

With a casual strike, he snapped a tall pillar by the roadside in half, sending it crashing onto the ground on the other side. It seemed that he had fused with that group of the dead?

His clothes had long since burst apart. Even the fifth limb between his legs had become abnormally thick, covered in barbs, with bluish-black veins winding over it. An unknown fluid faintly dripped from its tip...

"That bitch Kurumi has definitely run far away, but Blondie and the others should still be nearby. Once I find them, heh heh heh..." His ugly collapsed nose twitched slightly, and he caught the scent of humans dozens of miles away. That fragrance made saliva pour from his mouth!

"There are hardly any people nearby. Over there, there are at least five or six! Hahaha, my lovely students, your teacher is coming to find you! When the time comes, I'll give you a hu~ge surprise!"

He spread his massive feet and sprinted away. Every step he took shook the ground. The thick thing between his legs swung back and forth, making him rather uncomfortable. Only after he tore down a curtain and wrapped it around himself did it feel much better...

"Achoo!"

Kurumi stood atop the car roof and rubbed her slightly reddened little nose. The predawn wind was even stronger than it had been at night. They were almost at Choujyu Bridge...