Tyrant

The scene was utterly bizarre.

The stark white surgical lamp illuminated every detail of the operating table, while the pungent stench of rotting blood filled the air.

On that custom metal table, large enough to hold a giant, lay a tier-4 Tyrant zombie-a creature that should have been rampaging across the wasteland at the top of the food chain-now seemingly a surgical patient.

Its chest had been cut completely open, exposing the enormous blackish-purple heart inside.

And the one responsible for this gruesome scene was a silver-haired girl who looked delicate and frail.

Hearing the silver-haired girl ask, "You're actually fine?" with that unsettling hint of excitement, Lin Hui did not lower his guard. Instead, he tightened his grip on the Axe Gun.

In this apocalypse, the more harmless something appeared, the deadlier it often was.

"Are you a Mutant or a player?"

Lin Hui's voice echoed through the spacious operating room, carrying undisguised killing intent.

After all, he understood less than one percent of this world.

If some higher-tier Mutants possessed exceptional intelligence and could use mimicry to infiltrate groups of human players, he would not have been surprised at all.

This girl could easily subdue and dissect a tier-4 Tyrant. Nothing about her seemed human.

The silver-haired girl did not answer.

She merely tilted her head, her long silver hair cascading down with the movement. His question did not stop her hands. Instead, she turned back and continued digging around inside the tier-4 Zombie Tyrant's open chest.

Crrrk-

The sound of a scalpel cutting through bone was especially grating in the silent room.

"This nerve plexus is still active... how fascinating..."

She murmured to herself, her scalpel fluttering like a butterfly among flowers as she precisely severed a blood vessel beside the Tyrant's heart.

Black blood spurted out, splattering her transparent raincoat.

She was ignoring him?

Lin Hui's gaze turned cold.

He glanced at Liu Xi, unconscious in the corner, then stopped hesitating. He raised his Axe Gun, ready to shoot the eerie girl dead!

But then.

Just as he was about to pull the trigger.

Whoosh-!

An extremely faint rush of air, carrying a foul stench, suddenly came from the corridor behind him to one side.

Lin Hui's hearing was exceptionally keen. Almost instinctively, he sidestepped, his body tensing like a fully drawn bow.

Swish!

A razor-sharp claw swept past his ear on a gust of fetid air and slammed into the floor where he had just been standing.

Sparks flew!

The hard terrazzo floor was gouged as easily as tofu, leaving a deep furrow.

Lin Hui turned to look.

More than a dozen figures had appeared in the previously empty corridor and on its walls.

Their bodies were pitch-black, their limbs unusually long, their joints twisted. They clung to the walls and ceiling on all fours like enormous humanoid spiders.

Their claws were over thirty centimeters long. Black markings covered their exposed skin, their eyes glowed crimson, and nauseating drool dripped from the corners of their mouths.

"Predators?"

Lin Hui recognized the Mutants.

Roar!

More than a dozen Predators attacked at once.

They were incredibly fast, leaving afterimages in the cramped operating room as they lunged at Lin Hui from every direction. Their claws cut off every escape route with practiced coordination.

An ordinary player facing this multidirectional assault would probably have been torn apart in an instant.

Unfortunately for them.

Their opponent was Lin Hui.

"Noisy."

Lin Hui's eyes hardened, but he did not panic in the slightest.

He did not even use the Axe Gun's firing mechanism. With a twist of his wrist, he swung it directly as a massive melee axe.

In the past, being surrounded by so many agility-type Mutants might have given him trouble.

But now...

"Perfect. Let's use you to test the limits of 150 constitution."

Bam!

Lin Hui did not dodge the Predator lunging straight at him. Instead, he drove a front kick into it!

With an explosive crack, the Predator's chest instantly caved in. Its entire body shot backward like a cannonball, smashing into the wall and turning into a pulp.

At the same moment, a rush of air came from behind.

Without even looking, Lin Hui swept his weapon backward.

The Axe Gun carved a silver crescent through the air with a shrill whistle.

Crack-

The two Predators attempting to ambush him did not even have time to scream before they were cut in half at the waist in midair.

Severed spines and organs scattered across the floor.

The remaining Predators visibly froze for a moment.

Their simple brains could not comprehend why this human, who showed no signs of mutation, possessed strength more terrifying than theirs.

But Lin Hui gave them no chance to think.

He moved.

Unleashing the full force of his 150 constitution, he moved even faster than these monsters renowned for their speed.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Flames spat from the Axe Gun.

At close range, every shotgun blast precisely shattered a Predator's head or spine.

The magazine ran dry.

Lin Hui suddenly sensed something. He darted backward, bringing his Axe Gun down in one fluid motion.

Swish!

Cold steel flashed.

The last Predator attempting to ambush him from behind was neatly sliced in two before it could even scream.

This was the art of combat.

No flashy skills, only absolute speed and strength.

In less than two minutes.

More than a dozen Predators, enough to slaughter a standard player squad, had become corpses strewn across the floor.

Lin Hui flicked the blood off his Axe Gun. His breathing remained steady, and even his heartbeat had barely quickened.

The combat techniques he had learned before, amplified by his 150 constitution, had allowed him to handle this fight with ease.

But just then, his brow furrowed slightly.

A faint wave of dizziness washed over him.

It was like drinking a small glass of beer. Not enough to make him drunk, but the lightheaded sensation was unmistakable.

Was he poisoned?

No, it was something in the air.

Lin Hui immediately recalled what the silver-haired girl had said earlier: "You're actually fine?"

So that was it.

There had to be some potent, colorless, odorless neurotoxin or anesthetic gas in this space!

An ordinary player, even someone at the human limit of 50 constitution, would probably have collapsed by now, helpless and at another's mercy.

But with his superhuman 150 constitution, his bodily functions had forcibly withstood the toxin, leaving him only slightly "tipsy."

Lin Hui shook his head, dispelling the faint dizziness.

He turned around, his gaze passing over the scattered corpses and locking onto the operating room doors once more.

"Your 'bodyguards' are all dead."

Lin Hui raised his Axe Gun, ready to break through the doors, and said coldly, "Now it's your turn!"

But just then.

Boom-

An immense force blasted the operating room doors open.

A suffocating, terrifying pressure surged out of the darkness, almost tangible.

Lin Hui's pupils contracted slightly.

Heavy footsteps shook the floor.

A monster over four meters tall, its body knotted with muscle and its skin a deathly iron-gray, emerged from the operating room.

It was the tier-4 Zombie Tyrant!

Compared to when it had lain on the operating table, the tier-4 Zombie Tyrant now looked even larger. The bony battering ram on its right arm glowed eerily, and its entire body radiated an aura of destruction.

And clutched in its enormous left hand was an unconscious woman.

Liu Xi.

She hung in the Tyrant's grip like a rag doll. The slightest squeeze of that enormous hand would kill her.

The Tyrant lowered its head, its murky, savage eyes fixed on Lin Hui.