Chapter 85 - 84: Impact Crystal
"WHOOSH—"
A massive jet of flame erupted, spewing a scorching heatwave. Even from their position across from the building, they could feel the astonishing heat.
The massive blaze was blinding, but after just a few seconds, it stopped abruptly. Lin Fan’s vision went dark for a moment as the pillar of fire vanished.
"It’s the shut-off valve!"
Just as Liu Bin emerged from his hiding spot, several people who had been behind him followed.
One of them said,
"They upgraded the gas lines before. The pipes and flow valves are all new. If there’s a leak, the main valve should shut off automatically..."
"So you’re saying it won’t keep exploding?"
Liu Bin quickly asked upon hearing this.
"It shouldn’t. But now, the gas for these few buildings, maybe even the whole complex, is probably cut off..."
the man continued.
"That’s good..."
Liu Bin breathed a sigh of relief, hearing that there wouldn’t be any more explosions.
Standing to the side, Lin Fan also wiped the sweat from his forehead. He had been just as nervous; he just didn’t show it in front of the others.
’After all, it wasn’t like I knew anything about gas pipelines...’
If the explosions had traveled all the way down the gas line, these few buildings and the storefronts below would have all been blown to bits.
He also felt relieved to hear there would be no more explosions.
’Damn that Giant-Armed Zombie. Now I’ll have to cook on an induction stove.’
"All of you, get away from this building. Don’t want anything else to catch fire..."
Lin Fan, his mind on the Giant-Armed Zombie, turned to give Liu Bin and the others a heads-up. He then picked up his spear and jogged over, finishing off a few zombies on the way that had been knocked down to about thirty health.
Sure enough, once his Life Value exceeded six hundred—twice that of a normal zombie—killing more of them no longer increased his maximum Life Value.
[630/630]...
His maximum Life Value had only increased by 30 points. Lin Fan hadn’t noticed before. It was probably 20 points from the two-thousand-health Giant-Armed Zombie and 10 from the one-thousand-health Banshee zombie.
But even though they didn’t increase his Life Value, the normal zombies still dropped supplies. He had just killed five zombies, and they had dropped seven or eight units of canned food and water alone.
He jogged all the way to the Giant-Armed Zombie’s corpse and looked up. Flames were still roaring out from the fourth floor.
The building’s exterior tiles and the balcony floors looked ready to collapse. Lin Fan quickly stabbed his iron spear between the zombie’s bones and dragged it to the other side, away from the burning building...
Liu Bin and the others stood guard with their weapons, watching to prevent any zombies from running out of the lower floors.
They had already seen Lin Fan examining the corpse of that Banshee zombie earlier. Now, seeing him run beneath the fire to retrieve this other corpse, they grew even more curious.
Liu Bin cautiously approached, prodding the corpse on the ground with his steel pipe. "Brother Lin," he asked,
"is this corpse useful?"
Lin Fan crouched on the ground without answering. He just prodded at the mangled flesh with the tip of his spear and said,
"Go find me a knife. Any kind will do..."
"Alright, on it..."
With that, Liu Bin turned and ran toward the small supermarket.
The people behind him were all carrying long steel pipes; not a single one had a bladed weapon.
Lin Fan had no intention of materializing a Blade out of thin air in front of so many people, nor did he plan to drag the nearly two-meter-tall corpse home. Who knew what kind of ideas that would give them.
’Based on my understanding of how rumors spread, a story might be going around by tomorrow that I gain my strength by eating the flesh of Mutated Zombies. If some idiot actually believed it, who knows what kind of trouble that would stir up...’
While Liu Bin was off getting a knife, Lin Fan reached into the wound that his Blade had blown open and started feeling around.
After a moment, he felt a hard object similar to the one inside the Banshee’s body—a hard shell, like a sealed skull, with an irregularly curved surface.
The power unleashed by his Blade had shattered part of the shell, and most of the viscous pulp inside had already leaked out.
Reaching into the thick, congee-like pulp, he pulled out a polygonal crystal covered in a grayish-white slime.
[Impact Crystal]
[Energy Level: 1]
[Quality: Excellent (Fuseable, 20% Effective Channel Structure)]
[Equippable]
[Impact: Equipping grants attacks the Impact ability. Attacks made while equipped consume the user’s own energy. (The intensity of the impact is based on the crystal’s Energy Level.)]
"Impact?"
’So the monster’s ability wasn’t multiple attacks like I’d guessed, but Impact.’
With a thought, he equipped the crystal. Lin Fan immediately felt a sensation, as if a hand gripper had appeared in his palm. By squeezing, he could accumulate energy within it.
Following the sensation, Lin Fan made a fist, and a strange, vibrating energy appeared in his palm.
At the same time, the blue bar below his Life Value began to drop steadily...
"One, two, three, four, five, six..."
By the time it had dropped by ten points, the energy in his hand had become so intense he could barely contain it. It vibrated in his palm, threatening to erupt at any moment.
Seeing this, Lin Fan slammed his right hand down, driving the ball of energy into the ground!
BANG!
The people standing behind Lin Fan felt a tremor underfoot. Immediately after, cracks began to spread out from his feet, reaching a radius of about one meter.
"Brother Lin, what happened? Was it the zombie?"
Liu Bin ran over in a panic, a kitchen knife in one hand, shouting as he came.
"It’s nothing. The zombie twitched again. I’ve handled it, don’t panic..."
Lin Fan didn’t explain in detail, just giving him a casual excuse.
But inwardly, he was far from calm.
Although this punch didn’t look as impressive as the Giant-Armed Zombie’s, Lin Fan, as the one who’d unleashed it, knew with certainty that its power was even greater than the zombie’s...
When the zombie punched, its impact energy could spread four meters, but it didn’t leave a crater like this under its fist...
That’s right. The punch he had just charged with ten points of energy had smashed a bowl-sized crater into the concrete. And not only that, the energy had also spread out, creating a web of cracks a meter in diameter.
’The destructive power is astonishing...’
If the power of Blade inflicted cutting damage by injecting energy, then this Impact power used energy vibrations to pulverize tissue directly.
He stood up and stomped his foot, grinding the hard shell that had flaked off the zombie into the crater he had just made with his punch.
’I’ve already shown enough ’miracles’.’ Lin Fan wanted to maintain his authority, not give people any reason to start making logical deductions.
The ability of the Mutated Zombie he had just killed had transferred to him in the blink of an eye.
That fact alone was enough to make any observant person question his identity and allegiances. And once suspicion took root, it was nearly impossible to erase—that would be the beginning of the end for his authority.