Chapter 10: Dormant Infection
Looking down from a distance, Ethan let out a long, deep breath in relief.
He had watched it all unfold from the start, how the two humans came in with a vial of poison and were taken aback by the sudden change in the ravine.
’I may be wrong, but it looked like they were trying to poison the blood itself. But upon seeing that the blood had already disappeared, the pair was taken aback. Only to grow greedy over the exposed bloodstones.’ Ethan guessed correctly.
However, what bothered him more was what had happened to them.
"Those crimson ants... I need to deal with them to take the blood stones... But how?" He mumbled beneath his breath, bringing his hand closer to his chin.
Then suddenly, the scene of an ant melting by poison played itself within Ethan’s mind.
’That’s it!’ A speculation arose in his thoughts, easing his expression.
’If I can just touch the melted remains of that corpse, I can extract some useful information from the system!’
"But..." Staring at the ravine, his eyes captured several ants patrolling the walls. They were coordinating with each other, making sure no one could harm their home any longer.
"With them around, I probably won’t be able to do that either..."
At last, letting out a sharp sigh, Ethan’s brows tensed. "I guess I’ll just have to go with that now!"
"System, show me my status!" His voice came out low but clear with resolution.
For a brief moment, the system didn’t respond. Thinking it did not hear him, Ethan repeated his words.
Immediately, a familiar sound rang in his ears, and a system window appeared.
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[#/Status/#]
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Name - [Ethan Graves]
Race - [Zombie]
Class - [Zombie Overlord (SSS)]
Rank - [E-Rank]
Level - [9]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Vitality - [19]
Strength - [25]
Agility - [11]
Endurance - [22]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Unallocated Attribute Points:]
└ ■ 16
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Racial Traits]
■ Undead Physiology (D)
■ Temperature Resistance (D)
■ Regeneration (C)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Class Traits]
■ Zombie Sovereignty (SSS)
■ Infinite Evolution (SSS)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Class Skills]
■ Undead Command (SSS)
■ Flesh Assimilation (SSS)
■ Dormant Infection (F)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Evolution Progress - [41%]
Zombies Under Command - [0]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[System Functions]
└ ■ Information
└ ■ Undead Registry
---
Staring at the screen, Ethan dozed off for a second before confidently tapping on the screen several times.
[Your stats have been updated!]
└ Vitality - [25] (↑6)
└ Strength - [30] (↑5)
└ Endurance - [27] (↑5)
[Unallocated Attribute Points:]
└ ■ 0
As he was tapping the screen, Ethan could feel his strength gradually rising within his body. As soon as he was done, he didn’t waste any time and quickly started approaching the ravine with caution.
On his way, he picked up a small rock and held it in his hand gently.
"There are at least ten of them... It should be bearable!" Calmly sweeping his gaze across the ravine, he finally chose his target.
Aiming for the ant standing closest to him on his left side, he threw the rock as hard as he could.
*Bang!*
[You have successfully killed an F-Rank Blood Ant.]
[Experience Gained.]
└ ■ +50 EXP
A loud crunch echoed in the ravine, successfully catching the attention of the other ants. Their eyes darted towards the sound.
Immediately, loud shrieks came through, sharp and enraged.
Ethan’s attack had landed perfectly. In an instant, the ant’s exoskeleton was pierced as the rock completely crushed its head and embedded itself into the wall.
Its dark crimson blood splattered across the wall, slowly dripping down. A few remains of its head remained stuck on the wall, while the latter half of its body fell to the ground with a sickening thud.
Witnessing this, Ethan was finally able to roughly gauge the extent of his strength. After killing the ant, he intentionally stepped forward, exposing himself.
The ants noticed him instantly and launched an attack in rage.
For a moment, Ethan let the ants close the distance with him before running away himself.
Crisscrossing through the maze of trees, he deliberately formed distance between each ant. Then, when the time was ripe, he approached a tree and acted as if he were cornered.
Seeing the killer panic, the blood ant charged in furiously. Opening its claw-like mandibles wide, it ferociously bit at the zombie’s leg.
A small chunk of his green flesh was instantly devoured by the ant.
Backing up, the ant charged to attack again. Just like before, it opened its mandibles and clasped onto his flesh.
It couldn’t bite.
No matter how hard it tried, the ant couldn’t come to close its mouth. It was almost as if a part of its mind refused to attack the zombie.
Confused, the ant raised its head and looked at the zombie. Surprisingly, the zombie wasn’t panicking.
Instead, he smiled. His green eyes stared down at the ant pathetically.
Before it could even realize anything, it had fallen into Ethan’s trap.
The black in its eyes gradually began to change, inhabiting a bright jade-green hue.
Upon seeing the zombie again, the ant quickly bowed its head in fear.
At the same time, two system windows hovered before Ethan’s eyes.
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[#/System Notification/#]
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[Your class skill—Dormant Infection (F)—has been activated.]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Target Successfully Infected.]
└ ■ F-Rank Blood Ant
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Status:]
└ ■ The target is now hosting the Dormant Infection Virus.
└ ■ The virus will remain inactive until manually activated by the user.
---
...
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[#/System Notification/#]
———————————————————
[Dormant Infection Activated.]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Infection Successful.]
└ ■ The target has been successfully zombified.
└ ■ The target’s body is now under the influence of the zombie virus.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Class Trait Activated.]
└ ■ Zombie Sovereignty (SSS)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[The Zombie Blood Ant has submitted to your authority.]
---
On the other hand, his jade green flesh began to multiply. The injury that had just been inflicted on his leg was soon filled.
---
[Damage to the user’s body has been detected.]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Racial Trait Activated.]
└ ■ Regeneration (C)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Beginning tissue regeneration...]
[Estimated recovery time:]
└ ■ Negligible
---
Staring at the rest of the charging blood ants, Ethan smiled coldly.
He could not do anything against the D-rank territory lord except run away pathetically. However, with his new skills, he could easily handle these ants.
And quite frankly, he was looking forward to it.