The Cafeteria

"That bastard... He won't even give me a chance to negotiate. What the hell did he come into this world for?!"

The resurrected Wesker clenched his fists with gritted teeth and slammed one into the ground, leaving a dent in the marble floor. His cloned body was just as powerful.

Being killed by that man without a word had filled him with immense humiliation, as if he were nothing more than a piece of bread to the other man, existing solely to become his food. After all, no one talked to their food before eating it.

And although he could be resurrected, the pain of being killed was transferred along with his memories into his new clone body. It was more than an ordinary person could bear.

Just then, a translucent red projection of a girl suddenly appeared in front of him out of thin air, her expression as cold as a robot's.

It was the Red Queen, the Umbrella Corporation's supercomputer. She controlled all the company's core secrets, important facilities, and biological threat alerts. It could be said that she was the embodiment of this enormous base.

The Red Queen possessed extraordinary logical capabilities and could calculate the likelihood of various risks. She even had a degree of self-awareness.

However, under her programming, she had to obey Wesker and the boss.

"You finally decided to show up. Have you identified that guy yet?" Wesker asked coldly as he put on the black trench coat handed to him by a mechanical arm, then pulled his trademark sunglasses from his pocket and slipped them on.

The Red Queen replied in the same emotionless tone, "No. That man's identity cannot be found in any of the old-world databases. If he was born after the apocalypse began, he couldn't have grown into the twenty-year-old he appears to be now in just ten years."

"You don't have any information on him?"

Wesker froze at that. Then he remembered what he had learned from the satellite surveillance: the man had fallen from the sky straight into the zombie horde, with no trace of him having existed before.

Could the guy really have been sent by God? Or was he a humanoid weapon dropped here by aliens...

After all, the abilities this man had displayed were beyond the capabilities of any carbon-based life-form on Earth.

"Have you analyzed the virus inside him?" Wesker continued.

"Not yet. There is indeed a virus inside him, but it does not match any virus known to our company. It is highly invasive and proliferates rapidly, consuming all matter that comes near it, including inorganic substances. It even dissolved a glass rod. Its characteristics are somewhat similar to the G-Virus, but it may be even stronger." The Red Queen honestly reported all the results of the research she had conducted on Xia Tianming's remains in the short time available.

At the same time, she projected a holographic recording of the zombie outbreak in the laboratory next to the Safe House, so he could see what had happened.

Wesker had not finished watching the footage when the Red Queen abruptly switched the display to Xia Tianming's current location. He was standing in front of a metal door.

Looking at the scene on the surveillance feed, Wesker had the nagging feeling that he recognized the place.

Wait...

Wasn't that right outside the Cloning Hall he was in?!

How did he know about this place?!

BANG!!!

Suddenly, the metal door was struck hard from the outside!

A huge fist-shaped dent appeared in it!

On the surveillance feed, Xia Tianming had transformed his arm into a Hammer Fist Form and was pounding the door with a thunderous roar!

He really was outside the Cloning Hall!

"Why didn't you warn me he was coming?!" Wesker roared at the Red Queen, shocked and furious. The metal door was swaying precariously; it would probably take only a few more blows for the monster outside to smash it down.

The Red Queen replied in the same emotionless synthesized voice, "After killing and eating you, he destroyed the concealed surveillance lines and security alert devices along his route at regular intervals, making it impossible for me to pinpoint his location. It was as if he knew every procedure in this base."

Wesker found the Red Queen's explanation hard to believe.

He himself, the head of the Security Department, had personally deployed and inspected every security system and surveillance device in the base. No one but him could know the base's security measures so thoroughly.

And that man hadn't seemed to know his way around the base before. Not until after he had eaten him...

Could it be...

Did everyone he ate have their memories taken and absorbed by him? Was that how he had been able to destroy all the hidden surveillance lines along the way and find Wesker's extremely well-hidden Cloning Hall...

Just as Wesker was finally beginning to piece it all together—

BOOM!!

With a deafening crash—

The door to the Cloning Hall was blown completely off its hinges. The heavy metal door flew into the hall like a cannonball, smashing and toppling numerous Cloning Chambers. Lifeless Wesker clones spilled out onto the floor with a flood of pale green nutrient fluid.

Wesker stood rooted to the spot, the corner of his eye twitching as he watched the man's silhouette gradually emerge from the swirling dust.

He was like a ghost clinging relentlessly to you, always appearing right in front of you in a way that made your scalp crawl. There was no shaking him off.

"Can you get our memories by killing us? What exactly do you want...?"

Wesker swallowed, stood up from the ground, and demanded through gritted teeth. He took off his sunglasses first.

Sunglasses were for when you were absolutely stronger than your opponent and wanted to look cool.

If you couldn't beat someone and still wore sunglasses that obstructed your vision, you'd only end up getting beaten even worse...

Xia Tianming still said nothing, as laconic as ever. His cold gaze swept over the Cloning Hall.

There were nearly a hundred of Wesker's bodies here, each one worth 2,800 points of Blacklight energy.

If he devoured them all, he would gain 280,000 points of viral energy. Who knew how many times he could break through the Blacklight Threshold with that!

As he looked at the roomful of "Weskers," the Blacklight Virus inside him was already churning with ravenous anticipation.

"Red Queen, activate the special self-defense protocol. Turn that bastard into dust!" Wesker growled, his face twisted with rage.

As soon as he finished speaking, the Red Queen's holographic projection raised her right hand. Ten fully automatic Gatling guns immediately unfolded from a concealed wall near the entrance. Each had twelve pitch-black barrels and could fire 36,000 rounds per minute!

If all ten Gatling guns opened fire at once, they could instantly reduce any living creature to bits of minced flesh.

The special self-defense protocol was a backdoor program Wesker had set up to protect himself. It would identify every living thing in the room except him as an enemy, even the shareholders!

The ten Gatling guns locked onto Xia Tianming. Their motors whirred as the barrels spun faster, warming up. In a second, they would unleash a storm of bullets.

At such close range, no one could dodge them!

Wesker's bloodshot eyes widened as he grinned viciously. "This time, there's no way you can escape! Let's see if you can come back to life after you've been blown to bits!!"