Bai Li stood there for a second after the last zombie fell, looking down at the three bodies scattered on the stairs. Their heads were already separated cleanly, the dark blood spreading slowly across the concrete in ugly wet patches. The smell was still hanging in the air too, that rotten, sour, mixed with iron kind of stench that made the stairwell feel even tighter than before. She stared at them with a calm expression, but her mind was already moving ahead. Level one zombies were already enough to make ordinary people collapse into panic like paper in water. They were slow, yes, but that did not make them harmless at all. In fact, in the early stage, that was probably the worst part. People would see them moving badly, think there was still time, then freeze the moment they got too close. And once fear took over, it became over. Bai Li could already picture how the next few days would go. Streets full of people running in the wrong direction, apartments locked from the inside, screams spreading from one building to another, and then the city slowly losing control piece by piece. If these weak first stage zombies could already cause this much trouble, then the higher level ones later on would probably be a whole different kind of nightmare. Level two, level three, maybe even higher than that. She didn’t even want to imagine what kind of mess they would become once they started evolving properly. The phrase survival of the fittest suddenly felt less like a phrase and more like a rule carved straight into this world. Bai Li let that thought settle in her mind for a moment, then exhaled softly and kept going down without lingering. There was no point standing around. She needed movement, kills, experience, crystal cores, and a real feel for how this body fought in actual combat. Thinking about it was useless now. Doing it was the only thing that mattered.

By the time she reached the fourth floor, the corridor opened up in front of her and she immediately saw movement ahead. Five zombies were wandering around in the long hallway, each one in a different state of decay, each one moving with the same broken, half dead kind of rhythm that made them look more like damaged machines than living people. One had part of its face torn off, leaving teeth and bone visible underneath. Another had a huge dark bite mark across the side of its neck. A third dragged one foot behind it and kept bumping into the wall while turning in slow circles like it had forgotten what it was supposed to be doing. The other two were no better, their clothes soaked with old blood, their arms hanging in weird positions, their heads jerking toward any small sound that moved through the air. Bai Li looked at them and felt something strange and sharp rise inside her chest. It was not fear. It was not pity either. It was more like excitement, the kind that came when someone finally got to test something they had been preparing for. She had already killed a few, but now there were more targets, more chances to get used to the weapon, more chances to see how far her reaction speed and strength could actually go in a real fight. She gripped Whisperfang a little more firmly and started walking toward them with complete calm on her face, almost like she was just taking a stroll instead of walking toward five bloodthirsty corpses that wanted to tear her apart.

The zombies noticed her almost immediately. Their heads turned in that jerky way that looked worse the closer she got, and then all at once they began limping toward her with low animalistic growls, their mouths opening and closing in weird uneven motions. Their steps were not fast, not even close, but the combined sound of five bodies dragging forward together with that rough, broken moaning made the hallway feel more dangerous than their actual speed suggested. Bai Li didn’t stop walking. She kept moving straight toward them, one hand resting on the dagger, her body loose and balanced, her expression so casual that if someone saw her from behind they might have thought she was just going for a late afternoon walk. The first zombie in front of her raised its arms, swaying as it stumbled forward, and the second one followed slightly behind, opening its mouth wide like it already knew where it wanted to bite. But Bai Li was already close enough now that the distance between them had become almost nothing. Her eyes shifted slightly, her body leaned forward, and then she moved.

For a second, it looked like she simply vanished from where she had been standing. A sudden blur, like a gust of wind cutting through the corridor. The zombie in front of her did not even have time to react properly before Bai Li appeared behind it, her body already turned, her blade already moving. Whisperfang slid through the air with a clean, sharp line and the zombie’s head dropped off its neck almost instantly. There was no messy resistance, no jerking struggle, no need for a second strike. The cut was so smooth it almost looked artificial. The head slipped off, hit the floor, and rolled slightly to one side while the body remained standing for a half beat before collapsing forward. Bai Li didn’t even look back at it. She was already shifting toward the next target because the second zombie had already reached her, arms stretched out as if it was trying to grab her shoulders and force her head down for a bite. It was coming in clumsily, mouth wide, teeth stained with dark dried blood, fingers clawing at the air. Bai Li saw it, pivoted on one foot, and gave it a back kick right across the face.

The impact was loud.

Her boot slammed straight into the zombie’s head with enough force to snap its upper body backward and send it flying down the corridor. It crashed hard into one of the other zombies behind it, the two bodies collapsing together in a heavy pile that hit the floor with a thud. The zombie she kicked had a huge visible dent on its skull now, and bits of rotten flesh had splattered across the wall and even across Bai Li’s boot. She glanced down at the smear and frowned slightly, annoyed more by the dirt than by the fight itself. "Tch," she muttered, like she had just stepped into mud. The zombie that had been knocked back was still twitching, trying to get up, and the one it had collided with was crawling underneath it, one arm reaching awkwardly toward her while its jaw kept opening and closing like a broken puppet. The remaining two zombies were still coming from behind, but they were not fast enough to matter yet. Bai Li turned her head just a little, watching all of them at once, her face still calm, her posture still relaxed. It was almost insulting how little strain there was on her body. This was not even hard enough to count as a warm up.

One of the zombies tried to rush her again, so Bai Li stepped forward instead of back, closing the distance before it could settle into a proper attack. The blade moved once, clean and direct, and the zombie’s neck opened immediately under the cut. The dark blood that came out was thick and ugly, splashing across the floor in a dark arc. Another zombie lunged at her from the left side, reaching with both arms, and Bai Li twisted her upper body just enough to avoid the grab before bringing her dagger back in a diagonal slash. The arm that was reaching for her dropped away first, then the body followed a second later when the blade finished the movement across the neck. She didn’t even bother to look at the result. Her body already knew where the next threat was. The fourth zombie, the one crawling out from under the other fallen body, had finally managed to drag itself upright, though it was still wobbling badly and barely stable enough to stand. Bai Li simply stepped in, leaned slightly, and brought Whisperfang down in one quick motion. The blade cut through the neck so neatly that the zombie’s head separated before it even had time to fully raise its arms again. The last one was still moving forward, slightly slower than the others, perhaps because it had been delayed by the pileup. Bai Li looked at it for half a second, almost as if deciding whether it was worth a second more of effort, then just stepped to the side and slashed across its neck from the opposite angle. The head came free and dropped to the floor before the body had fully completed its lunging motion.

For a brief moment, the corridor was only filled with the sound of blood dripping and her own steady breathing. Bai Li stood still in the middle of the hallway, one foot near a fallen body, Whisperfang held loosely in her hand, her expression almost bored now that the first real group had been cleared. The five zombies were down so quickly that it honestly felt more like she had been testing a new tool than fighting for survival. She rolled her wrist once and looked down at the blade, then at the blood on the floor, and then at the bodies around her. The whole thing had been messy, sure, but not in a way that made her uneasy. If anything, she was more interested in how effortlessly this body handled speed and force, and how Whisperfang reacted so naturally in her hand. The dagger did not fight her grip. It did not shake, slip, or drag. It moved exactly how she wanted it to, like it already understood what kind of use she planned for it. Bai Li’s lips curled slightly. "Pretty good," she said to herself under her breath, almost casually, like she was talking about a kitchen knife that cut tomatoes well. The blood on the floor looked ugly, the smell was still bad, and the zombie bodies looked disgusting enough to make normal people feel sick, but she didn’t care about any of that. The only thing in her mind right now was that her first real fight downstairs had gone better than expected. Her body was stronger than she had fully tested before, Whisperfang was sharper than she had imagined, and these zombies were still only level one. That meant she could keep going. That meant the world outside was already breaking apart fast enough for her to move now without waiting any longer. With that thought in mind, she lifted her head, looked further down the corridor, and prepared to continue descending.

At that moment, the system’s voice rang in her mind, "Ding... congratulations host for killing five more level one zombies! You have obtained 5 level one crystal cores! The total number of level one crystal cores in your possession is : 8."

Bai Li paused for a moment as she heard the announcement before walking towards the stairs again. As she reached the stairs, she paused as her eyes were drawn to a few drops of blood on her hands.

She immediately took out a few tissues from her bag and a bottle of sanitizer. She wet the tissue paper with sanitizer and wiped the few drops of blood from her hands and her jacket.

Only then did she feel a little better and continued descending down the stairs to the third floor.

. 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

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To be continued.

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