Zombie

Taylor looked at the zombie not far away and instinctively recognized an entirely new species—at least one he had never encountered before. He immediately pulled a brand-new notebook from his canvas bag and wrote New Species Record on the title page.

"Urrgh..."

The zombie in the distance seemed to sense Taylor's presence and limped toward him. As it walked, the rotten flesh on its body stirred slightly in the breeze, and the maggots crawling over it continuously released the foul gases trapped within the decaying meat.

Once he sensed that reeking stench, Taylor frowned and raised a hand, summoning a wisp of wind that formed into a rope and bound the limping zombie.

He had already manipulated the Flame Medal to form a thin layer of pale red Flame Shield over his body, preventing infection from imperceptibly tiny creatures or certain viruses.

Taylor walked over to the bound zombie and silently observed its every movement. He found that it truly had no reason at all, only an intense urge to attack creatures of flesh and blood—or Taylor himself. Even while tied up and lying on the ground, it kept inching forward, trying to take a bite out of him.

After taking out a small knife and cutting off a piece of rotten flesh, Taylor saw that the zombie had no reaction. It continued stretching out its head, trying to bite off a piece of his flesh. A pale blue Wind Element held the rotten meat aloft. After observing it carefully and probing it with spiritual power and magic power, Taylor discovered that it was merely an ordinary piece of rotten meat, completely devoid of vitality and long stripped of life force.

Next, he severed and removed the zombie's hands, feet, nails, bones, and more for study. The zombie displayed no abnormal reaction throughout the process and remained fixated on its original goal.

Through dissection, preliminary spiritual-power analysis, and simulated probing, Taylor concluded that the zombie relied almost entirely on its bones to conduct magic power through its body and maintain its basic functions. Within its brain was a transparent hexagonal Crystal.

This hexagonal Crystal was fundamentally similar to a mixture of life force and spiritual power, and it also absorbed the boiling magical elements in its surroundings to control the body's movements.

As for why it possessed such a powerful urge to devour Taylor, according to Taylor's own conjecture, the zombie was essentially a dead creature. Its life force and spiritual power had condensed into a transparent Crystal. Because of that, the instinct born from this transparent Crystal—the instinct to strengthen itself—controlled the body's actions, causing the zombie to "crave" flesh and blood.

To further verify his hypothesis, Taylor did not remove the transparent Crystal from the zombie's head. Instead, he caught two rabbits in the forest and fed them to it. Afterward, he discovered that once the flesh devoured by the zombie entered its stomach and intestines, then was removed through dissection, the rabbit meat had become withered and decayed. The transparent hexagonal Crystal in the zombie's head had grown by an almost imperceptible amount.

The bound zombie had practically become Taylor's experimental material. Fortunately, it had no sense of pain, touch, or any other sensations.

Given the conditions currently available, Taylor had already performed every experiment he could. The notebook he carried now contained five or six full pages of conjectures, hypotheses, analysis, and preliminary information concerning zombies.

Fire Elements surged in his palm and condensed into a Fireball. After burning the zombie to ashes, Taylor retrieved the transparent Crystal from the pile of ash, placed it in a bottle, and stepped into the small wooden cabin.

After entering the cabin, the first things that met his eyes were peculiar objects resembling furniture, yet covered in all kinds of magic arrays.

In another room that looked very much like a kitchen, he noticed magical runes beneath two iron pots, along with magical energy channels surrounding them. The runes between them belonged to an entirely different system from the sorcery runes commonly used by wizards, but judging from the heat radiating from them, their meaning—or rather, what they represented—should have been related to burning.

Taylor then noticed a refrigerator inscribed with freezing runes, softening runes on the sofa, brightening runes everywhere, and cleaning runes on the floor. Though the cabin was small, traces of magical runes could be found everywhere.

Many of the magical runes and magic-conducting channels remained active. Clearly, the owner of this cabin had been the zombie from earlier.

Although the accident had occurred suddenly, the sturdy quality of the cabin, the stability of its magical energy channels, and the highly active magical elements in the area had prevented any mishap. It had not frozen into a block of ice or burned into ashes, and remained intact.

Even Taylor, a wizard apprentice, could not help but marvel at how closely the people of this world had integrated daily life with magic, and how skilled they were at it.

"Sure enough, every world has something worth learning from. The civilizations and wisdom they develop are what wizards yearn for and pursue most."

Now, Taylor felt that this little wooden cabin itself had become a treasure trove of knowledge. He immediately picked up a brand-new notebook and wrote Knowledge Records and Analysis of the First Plane on its title page.

He intended to record everything he had discovered, everything he had seen, and every magic rune still in operation. He had a feeling that if he could fully master this world's entirely new magic system, it would benefit both himself and his future path as a wizard immensely.

Within a vast, desolate city saturated with magical elements, zombies of all sizes wandered through the streets. Some looked bloated beyond measure, while others were exceptionally thin. They drifted about aimlessly, not knowing what they needed or what they wanted to do.

In the deepest part of the city, Construct Puppets with energy Crystals installed inside them, bodies covered in magical patterns, and magical power as their driving force continuously circled a barrel-shaped chamber.

Beneath this barrel-shaped chamber lay countless energy Crystals. Through one energy circuit after another and natural-element magic arrays, they were converted into magical power rich in life force and transmitted into the chamber.

Inside the enormous chamber was a fleshy egg-like tumor. From the outside, it resembled a twisted thing formed from flesh and blood vessels, yet it slowly rose and fell as it continuously absorbed the natural power converted by the magic arrays.

Beside this twisted thing, a skeleton lay in the corner against the wall. Next to the skeleton was a sheet of paper written in this world's language.

In the end, I was right. This world could never restrain me. Only the clash between endless death and endless nature could give rise to a "god" capable of leading the entire world forward...