Chapter 450 - 389: Simple Trial (3)
Flora Bloom knew they had found the highest-level zombie leader in the area.
"Lex, be careful."
Lex Cross said nothing. As he sprinted forward, he glanced back at Flora Bloom, the corner of his mouth curling into a smile he couldn’t suppress.
The sight stung Rita’s eyes, and she instantly clenched her fists.
Shawn Hale thought Rita was scared by the number of zombies, so he tried to comfort her. "Rita, if you’re scared, just hide behind me. I’ll protect you!"
Rita gritted her teeth. A flash of disgust flickered through her eyes, but she quickly replaced it with a sweet, innocent smile.
"Shawn, I’m fine. I just think they’re incredible!" she said, pointing at the retreating figures of Lex and his team.
Shawn Hale’s brow furrowed almost imperceptibly. ’Ever since Rita woke up, she seems unusually interested in everything happening at Villa No. 3,’ he thought. She had asked about everyone, one by one—Flora Bloom, Cynthia Grant, Sherman Lynch, Lex Cross, Five, all of them.
He had asked her about it, and she just said that if she was going to make a life for herself in Morhaven, she needed to get to know the people there.
A piercing roar erupted from the nearby terminal building, followed by frequent flashes of various superpowers. Then, just as quickly, everything fell silent.
A moment later, Lex Cross and his group strolled out of the terminal’s main entrance, without a single speck of dirt on them or looking the least bit ruffled.
In full view of everyone, he placed a dazzling, diamond-like Crystal Core in Flora Bloom’s hand. "Here. Absorb it."
Flora Bloom held the Zombie Crystal Core and used her water superpower to wash off the residual brain matter. As she felt the energy within, she realized this was the highest quality Crystal Core she had ever seen.
This meant the zombie that grew this Crystal Core was at least a Second Level Middle-level zombie, and not far from being a High-level one.
’The leader zombie in the airport alone was this high-level? What about in downtown Orinburg, where there are even more of them? Could there be other High-level zombies like Isla Preston?’
Flora Bloom didn’t waste any time. She clutched the Crystal Core and began to absorb it.
She felt the energy travel from her palm into the vortex in her sea of consciousness. Her deep blue and red Crystal Stones showed signs of expanding, but hadn’t actually grown. Still, Flora Bloom wasn’t discouraged.
Filling the energy bar for a Middle Level superpower required a huge number of Crystal Cores. Advancing from First Level to Second Level at the Middle Level took far more Crystal Cores than it did to make the same jump at the low-level.
Besides, for someone like Flora Bloom, low-level Crystal Cores contained too little energy and too many impurities. Absorbing them was practically useless.
Soon, Flora Bloom’s team had harvested all the Crystal Cores from the zombies they’d killed. The remaining corpses were quickly swarmed by members of other teams, who pried open their skulls to retrieve the Crystal Cores inside.
They took the Crystal Cores and immediately began to absorb them, replenishing their spent spiritual power and accumulating energy.
The waves of zombies just now had numbered at least two or three thousand, if not five thousand.
Flora Bloom’s team took the lion’s share, while the smaller shares went to the other teams. Her team, including the members of Sepherdine, consisted of about two hundred people. Aside from fifty ordinary people who hadn’t fought, everyone else had contributed to the battle in some way.
So, Flora Bloom didn’t play favorites, distributing the cores evenly among her people. This way, everyone would have a Crystal Core on hand to prevent them from losing their combat effectiveness due to excessive spiritual power consumption in the battles to come.
Quinn, Seth Warren, Shawn Hale, and the teams from other small factions imitated Flora Bloom’s method.
However, they had killed fewer zombies than Flora’s team had, despite having more than twice the number of people. As a result, each person only ended up with two or three Crystal Cores.
For those who had not yet reached the Middle Level, however, two or three Crystal Cores were enough to restore their spiritual power in a critical moment.
Now that Lex Cross and his group had killed the leader zombie, the remaining few thousand zombies in the airport posed little threat.
So, everyone put their heads together. In order to get more Zombie Crystal Cores, the teams led by Quinn, Seth Warren, and the others began to vie for the chance to fight.
Flora Bloom’s goal was also to let these Adepts find their footing and improve through live combat.
But she had one condition: the fifty ordinary people had to participate in the remaining battles with them.
Quinn, Seth Warren, Shawn Hale, and Rick led their assigned teams forward. Trailing behind them were the fifty ordinary people, armed with a strange assortment of weapons—swords, axes, daggers, and clubs. Together, they slowly advanced on the terminal building.
The terminal building was constructed with floor-to-ceiling glass, so the light from outside streamed in, making the inside very bright.
Flora Bloom didn’t follow them in to join the fray. Instead, she had Neal Wallace and his people go with them as a precaution. Given the Superpower Level of Neal’s "firepower group," the formidable hand-to-hand combat prowess of the Locke siblings alone—both Beast-type Adepts—was more than enough to handle a typical zombie horde.
Besides, it wasn’t as if Flora Bloom was leaving them to fend for themselves. She remained at the terminal entrance, mounted on her Behemoth, keeping a close eye on their movements.