Hope Town

Chen Changsheng woke to find that it was still early. Looking at the completely empty carriage, he wasn't sure whether he should go back to the supermarket and buy some things.

Fortunately, Chen Changsheng had now completely fused with the Original Virus, so he could more or less sense some of the virus's thoughts.

Clearly, the virus didn't seem hungry at all. It was as if it had fallen into a deep sleep after eating its fill.

But what about all those amazing traits of the Original Virus in the game?

Why couldn't he feel anything at all? Even when he jumped with all his might, he still couldn't leap over a four- or five-meter-high wire fence with a single light jump, like Alex had when he first awakened in the game.

Fine. Since he didn't have any superpowers, Chen Changsheng decided to go back to school and continue attending classes. As for how to escape Happiness Town, it would be better to think it through carefully.

This small town had only a few hundred people. Presumably, every movement the townspeople made within the town was being monitored.

Since the townspeople had just been injected with the virus, the surveillance was probably even tighter. As a high school student, his surveillance level should be lower, which meant he would have more opportunities.

He drove the battered pickup truck home with a clattering rattle. Without even having time to change clothes, Chen Changsheng jogged toward Happiness High School on the other side of town.

While running, Chen Changsheng realized that he hadn't remained completely unchanged. He seemed to have been strengthened to some extent.

He crossed the entire town in one breath without getting winded at all. In fact, after all that exercise, Chen Changsheng felt even more relaxed.

The town had only one high school class. Theoretically, a town of only four or five hundred people shouldn't have a high school, but this was a military project, after all.

For the handful of townspeople, the military had still hired teachers and built a school.

The school was actually for all the primary and middle school students in the town to study together. This showed that the military had no intention of running the project for long. Although everything had been made as complete as possible, it was all filled with perfunctory touches.

The teachers at the school also had their own jobs in ordinary times. They were the researchers from the town hospital, responsible for studying and recording the effects of injecting the Original Virus into the townspeople.

Of course, they were merely the lowest-ranking members of Black Watch. The characters who had appeared in the game hadn't appeared in Chen Changsheng's memories yet. Then again, it was also possible that Chen Changsheng simply hadn't noticed them before.

After greeting his high school classmates, Chen Changsheng obediently sat in his seat. As he watched his classmates enter the classroom one by one, he quietly observed them.

It was a strange feeling. A life that originally hadn't belonged to him, and people he shouldn't have known, all existed clearly in his memories. It was as though someone had forcibly stuffed a chunk of memory into him, and it was incredibly vivid...

Just as Chen Changsheng carefully matched the people in his memories to those in reality, a pretty young girl with a golden ponytail walked into the classroom.

It was Elizabeth Green, the host of the Original Virus in Prototype.

Chen Changsheng felt the virus inside him stirring. This was caused by the large amounts of Original Virus in both their bodies.

Unlike Chen Changsheng, however, Elizabeth didn't sense the stirring inside her. At that moment, she merely felt that it was another ordinary day.

Sitting not far away, Chen Changsheng's eyes, which had been staring blankly, suddenly changed because of the agitation in his body.

The ordinary world in Chen Changsheng's eyes was gone. It had become a world woven from countless colors, like a thermal imaging device. The only difference was that what Chen Changsheng saw was an image of the virus.

When he looked at his classmates one after another, Chen Changsheng was surprised to discover that their red bodies contained traces of other colors. Those dark-red hues slowly flowed through their bodies like liquid.

Before long, they completed a circuit along the blood vessels. At the same time, the virus seemed to have grown slightly larger.

Chen Changsheng knew that the virus was growing on its own. He also examined his own body.

His body was even more exaggerated than those of the other students. It was filled with red and black, with faint red-black glimmers flickering through it. It looked almost as though he had turned on lighting effects.

When he looked at Elizabeth, Chen Changsheng found that the amount of virus in her body was also far greater than in the other students' bodies, though it was still slightly less than in his own.

Unlike the others, Elizabeth's abdomen contained a child glowing red, slowly taking shape at a visible speed.

Looking at this unexpected sight, the smug expression Chen Changsheng had worn after obtaining his special ability instantly froze on his face.

It seemed that he had miscalculated the timing. Looking at the date on the podium, he saw that it was currently 1968.

Chen Changsheng suddenly regretted not studying the game's plot more carefully. He only knew that the Original Virus outbreak occurred in Hope Town in 1968, but he wasn't clear about the exact time.

The only thing he knew for certain was that Elizabeth was the sole survivor in the end, because she possessed a special quality—the special quality of being the host.

Although Chen Changsheng felt that he was special too, he didn't want to be treated as research material!

Gone was his earlier carefree confidence. Chen Changsheng had a realistic understanding of his own abilities. Not only did he lack all the special abilities of the newly awakened Original Virus, but even the extraordinarily powerful regeneration that was common in the plot seemed to be greatly weakened.

Taking it a step further, even if the Original Virus inside Chen Changsheng could withstand soldiers' bullets, it probably couldn't withstand a nuclear blast!

Even if the Original Virus could survive a nuclear blast, the one left alive afterward probably wouldn't be Chen Changsheng himself.

What Chen Changsheng felt he needed most now was an ability: absorbing another person's body, obtaining their memories, and then imitating their appearance.

He didn't know how Alex had awakened, but in the game, Alex seemed to have been born knowing how. As soon as Alex escaped the research center, he began absorbing people to recover his health and imitating their forms.

Logically speaking, Chen Changsheng felt that he should have this ability too. Alex's had been passive because his will had been replaced by the virus, so he had known how to use it instinctively.

The difference was that Chen Changsheng's was an active skill that required him to activate it himself. The awkward part was that he had no idea how to trigger it.

With no interest in studying, Chen Changsheng slipped away and went home early. What was the point of studying when he was about to lose his life?

Chen Changsheng wanted to go back and properly research how to quickly awaken the Original Virus's potential and how to escape Hope Town cleverly.

Chen Changsheng's strength was currently weak, but fortunately, the Watcher forces weren't as elite as they were in the game. In many aspects, they were even less rigorous than he had imagined.

Perhaps it was a limitation of the era. There wasn't as much advanced technology as in the game, and virus detection still relied on reagents.

If the virus detector from the game already existed, Chen Changsheng probably wouldn't even need to run. He would likely be discovered the moment he left the town and then shot dead.

Chen Changsheng didn't know how to develop his abilities, but he still put his fairly imaginative little brain to work. In the end, he really did come up with a few ideas.

Chen Changsheng decided to find a small animal and try absorbing it to see whether he could do it. Absorbing a living creature to recover his health was a major skill. If he could master it, his chances of survival would increase greatly.

In the game, Alex could absorb an entire adult and turn it into nourishment. Although Chen Changsheng had never seen Alex absorb a small animal, there probably wouldn't be any difference. After all, humans were animals too.

There were no small animals in Chen Changsheng's home, so he extended his evil hand toward the little rabbit in his neighbor's house.

The rabbit had been caught by the neighbor in the forest beside the town as a gift for his daughter. Chen Changsheng was eager to explore his ability and obviously didn't have time to find another animal, so the rabbit would simply have to suffer a little.

"You'll do, Little White." After apologizing, Chen Changsheng carried the white rabbit back to his room by its ears.

The awkward part was that Chen Changsheng didn't know how to absorb it. In the game, he only had to press the right mouse button, but reality was clearly different from the game.

He pinched it with his left hand, then with his right. He lifted the little white rabbit and looked it over from every angle, but there was no sign that he could absorb it.

Chen Changsheng was speechless. He had no idea how Alex had evolved so many strange and bizarre abilities.

Could it be the result of Elizabeth's research? After all, she was the host, so there should have been something different about her.

But why was he, another host, so useless? He didn't have a single ability.

If he had known, he wouldn't have left so early. Sneaking close to Elizabeth at school and obtaining some of her blood would surely have produced excellent results.

Chen Changsheng casually tossed the rabbit aside and lay down on the bed in frustration, beginning to think about how to escape.

The best method was definitely to absorb a soldier, then blend into the army and escape. Still, he needed an ordinary escape plan as well.

It was always better to be prepared. But trying to outrun the range of a nuclear explosion on two legs would truly be hopeless.

First, he would buy some gasoline and find a good vehicle. Once the zombie outbreak began, he would escape amid the chaos.

As for where the vehicle would come from, that was simple. Once there was a zombie crisis, who would still care about their car?

He should find a pickup truck. He knew how to drive one, was familiar with its performance, and it was adaptable enough to the terrain.

With that thought, Chen Changsheng carefully recalled the households in town, trying to remember who owned a suitable vehicle.

Unfortunately, his memories told him that only Elizabeth's family had a suitable car. That was rather troublesome.

Actually, Chen Changsheng didn't want to stay too close to Elizabeth. In the future, she would be far too likely to attract attention.

Besides, Elizabeth was the host. What if she absorbed him? Wouldn't that be the end of him?

But Chen Changsheng had no other choice. To survive, he could only go out and take the risk.

In Chen Changsheng's plan, he would first find a way to obtain a sample of Elizabeth's blood. Then he would find a way to send Elizabeth home and get the key.

With a sigh, Chen Changsheng began making plans. He was only an ordinary person, after all. How could he possibly come up with such a comprehensive plan?

The future had never been swayed by one person. The inertia of history was immense. Even a reincarnator like Chen Changsheng couldn't change that.

The rumbling wheels rolled onward. Still clinging to the mindset of playing a game, where would Chen Changsheng go from here?

Would he defy fate and gain a new life, or would he be blasted into scraps by a nuclear explosion...?