Zombie Domination-Chapter 314- Dig
Julian and Clarissa touched down at the edge of the central plaza, the ground trembling beneath their feet. The air was thick with a palpable, psychic dread. Before them was the source a massive, pulsing mound of fused flesh and corroded machinery, like a grotesque heart. From its base, thick, root-like tendrils of dark matter burrowed deep into the shattered earth, glowing with the same sickly purple energy that powered the barrier dome high above.
"The core is underground," Julian stated, his voice cutting through the low hum of the hive-mind. "Clarissa, dig. Expose it. I’ll hold them off."
Clarissa didn’t hesitate. She planted her feet, her eyes glowing with telekinetic power. "Understood." She thrust her hands toward the ground near the base of the mound. The earth and rubble didn’t just move, it atomized under the focused force of her will, forming a swirling, drill-like vortex that bored into the soil with a deafening roar.
The hive reacted with instant, unified fury. From every shadow, every broken window, a tide of mutants and corrupted zombies poured into the plaza, their eyes fixed on the two intruders. The screeching was deafening.
"Come on then," Julian muttered, a feral grin touching his lips. He didn’t create clones. Instead, he embraced the shadows around him. "[Shadow]"
The shadows at his feet erupted into dozens of whipping and stabbing tendrils from the darkness.
They shot out, impaling the first wave of zombies, pinning them to walls and the ground like grotesque insects. He moved among them, a blur of motion. "[Boost + Lightning Charge]."
Crackling with electricity and enhanced speed, he became a living storm. He didn’t just cut through the horde, he obliterated them. A swing of his blade, amplified by Critical Chance, would occasionally flash with devastating light, causing a zombie to not just die but explode, clearing a small area.
But for every ten he felled, twenty more shambled forward. A claw scraped across his back, another gashed his thigh. The Indomitable Body skill hardened his flesh, turning lethal blows into shallow cuts, but the cumulative damage was draining. His breathing grew labored.
He saw Clarissa, focused entirely on her excavation, a tunnel now yawning several meters deep into the earth, revealing more of the glowing purple roots.
’Too many. She needs more time.’
A calculated risk flashed in his mind. A massive gamble.
He stopped his whirlwind assault and stood his ground as the circle of mutants closed in. Taking a deep, centering breath, he raised a hand, not with a weapon, but with his will. His eyes glowed with an oppressive, violet light far darker than the hive’s energy.
"[Domination]."
The wave of psychic force wasn’t aimed at one creature. It was a wide-area command, a brutal, overwhelming imperative that crashed into the minds of the nearest hundred zombies.
<<<OBEY>>>
<<<TURN>>>
<<<KILL>>>
The effect was instantaneous and chaotic. The forward rush of zombies ground to a halt. Their blank white eyes flickered with confusion, then with a new, implanted hatred. With guttural snarls, they turned on the zombies behind them, the ones not yet under Julian’s control. The plaza descended into a chaotic melee of monster fighting monster.
But the cost was immense. Julian gritted his teeth, veins standing out on his forehead. A searing headache, like a hot poker driven into his brain, lanced through his skull. Controlling so many was like trying to hold back the ocean with his bare hands. He could feel their feral minds, their hunger, their rage, scraping against his own consciousness.
’Focus... just a little longer...’ he thought, blood trickling from his nose.
It was then the hive-mind, the queen, struck. Seeing his vulnerability, it launched its own psychic attack. Not a whisper this time, but a scream a torrent of thoughts, images of despair, and pure, annihilating madness aimed directly at Julian’s strained mind.
"Gah!" Julian staggered, the double assault maintaining the Domination while weathering the mental onslaught threatening to shatter him. The controlled zombies faltered.
’No. Not yet.’
With a roar of sheer defiance, he pushed back. He couldn’t drop the Domination. Not until the core was exposed. Instead, he poured his remaining physical energy into another skill.
"[Gravity]!"
In a wide circle around himself and Clarissa’s digging site, the gravity intensified tenfold. Zombies, both controlled and wild, were slammed into the ground, their bodies cracking under their own weight. It wasn’t lethal to all, but it immobilized the immediate threat, buying precious seconds.
He stood within the zone, his body screaming in protest, his mind a battleground. He relied purely on Indomitable Body to keep him upright as the psychic war raged within him and the physical one raged around him.
"Julian!" Clarissa’s voice, filled with alarm, cut through the haze.
"IGNORE ME!" he shouted back, his voice raw. "DIG! FIND ITS HEART!"
He was a bulwark. A trembling, bleeding, straining bulwark, holding back the tide through sheer, uncompromising will. Every second was agony, but he would not fall. Not while she still worked.
Clarissa, her face streaked with tears of frustration and fear for him, redoubled her efforts. The telekinetic drill screamed deeper, following the thickest root.
And then, her voice echoed up from the pit, triumphant and horrified: "JULIAN! I FOUND IT!"
The exposed heart of the hive pulsed with violent, panicked energy—a grotesque, fleshy orb veined with glowing purple filaments, buried deep but now laid bare. Clarissa’s telekinetic drill had torn away the earth and corrupt matter protecting it.
"Now, Clarissa! Everything you have!" Julian’s voice was a ragged command, his body trembling from maintaining the Gravity Field and fending off the hive-mind’s assault.
Clarissa didn’t need to be told twice. She dropped her digging focus and redirected all her power. Her hands shook as she concentrated, her eyes glowing with silver light. "[Telekinesis]!"
A massive, invisible force focused into a single, needle-fine point of unimaginable pressure, spearheading toward the exposed core. At the same moment, Julian released his hold on the controlled zombies and redirected his remaining energy. "[Lightning Conduit)! Channel through her spike!"
A torrent of crimson lightning erupted from his hands, not aiming for the core directly, but merging with Clarissa’s telekinetic attack. The lightning coiled around her focused force, creating a devastating, combined lance of psychic pressure and raw electrical annihilation.
It struck the heart.
The world turned white and silent for a split second.
Then, a shockwave of purple and crimson energy exploded outwards. The Gravity Field shattered. The red barrier dome high above flickered violently like a dying neon sign. The psychic scream of the hive-mind cut off into a silent, final wail that echoed in their souls.
But it wasn’t enough.
As the light and dust cleared, they saw it. The heart was cracked and oozing black ichor, its light dimmed, but it was still intact. Dozens of the remaining, fanatical mutant guardians had thrown themselves in the path of the attack at the last millisecond, their bodies vaporized but absorbing enough of the blow to save their "queen." The sacrifice had been instinctual, automatic.
Julian’s eyes widened, a flash of pure, unadulterated fury crossing his exhausted face. "You have got to be kidding me."
There was no time for another combined attack. The enraged remnants of the horde, along with the mangled but still-living tentacles of flesh and metal from the central mound, were already surging toward them. The heart began to beat again, weakly, trying to regenerate.
"Plan C," Julian spat out, his voice cold and decisive. He yanked open his Inventory with a mental snarl. Dozens of high-yield explosive orbs and grenades materialized in the air around him. He didn’t throw them. He shoved them outward with a final burst of gravity-assisted force, scattering the entire arsenal into the excavation pit, around the base of the mound, and into the swarm of approaching mutants.
Then Julian also ordered his shadow to leave the city with Dori so as not to be hit by the explosion.
"[Gravity + Boost]!" He grabbed Clarissa, who was swaying on her feet from mana depletion. A bubble of reversed gravity enveloped them, and he shot skyward like a bullet.
They weren’t fast enough to escape entirely. A massive, primary tentacle of fused bone and wiring, the hive’s last-ditch weapon, shot up after them, moving with terrifying speed.
"Julian, it’s catching up!" Clarissa cried, looking down.
"It won’t matter in five seconds!" he growled, clutching her tighter. He risked a glance downward. The tentacle was meters away, its jagged tip reaching for them.
Clarissa, even drained, acted. With a gasp of effort, she flung out a hand. "[Telekinesis]!" It wasn’t a strong push, but it was enough to knock the tentacle’s trajectory off by a few critical degrees. It whistled past Julian’s leg, tearing his pants but missing flesh.
Below them, the city convulsed. The ground around the central mound heaved upwards as if breathing, and the true, immense scale of the buried monster was revealed, a gargantuan, spherical body of pulsating disease, with the heart they had attacked merely a node on its surface. Dozens more tentacles began to writhe free.
They were high above the city now, near the apex of the flickering red barrier. Julian looked down at the apocalyptic sight, his face illuminated by the hellish glow below. In his hand was a small, black detonator.
"Take this damn monster," he murmured, his thumb hovering over the button. 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎
He pressed it.
There was no sound at first. Then, a light brighter than the sun erupted from the city’s heart. The shockwave hit them even through the gravity bubble, rattling their bones.
The gargantuan monster’s form was consumed, silhouetted and then disintegrated by the chain reaction of over fifty high-grade explosives detonating in its core.
The last thing they saw before the rising fireball and dust cloud engulfed the entire city center was the total, utter annihilation of the hive. The psychic weight that had pressed on the region for miles simply vanished.
