"Shuya-kouhai… that…"
Saeko turned her head slightly, unable to watch the scene unfolding in front of her. She tugged gently at the hem of Shuya's shirt and asked, "Is this… part of your experiment too?"
The other thugs snapped back to reality at her words.
They'd rather die than turn into one of those mindless zombie monsters.
But this? This was too much.
Tongue-kissing a zombie…
Just thinking about it made a couple of the punks' stomachs churn. One guy actually opened his mouth like he was about to puke right there.
Still, they forced it down and stared at Shuya. If he said "yes," they were bolting—no matter the risk.
"Nope," Shuya answered, the corner of his mouth twitching. "He just got insanely unlucky."
Even he had to admit it was ridiculous. How cursed did you have to be for this exact chain of events?
Show up right when Shuya needed test subjects.
Attack right after he'd pulled every tooth from the zombie.
Miss the swing, fail to brake, and crash mouth-first into the toothless zombie.
A perfect storm of coincidences in record time. Only in a 2D world where people could trip on flat ground on a regular basis could something this insane happen.
As for the green-haired punk Xiao Jiang Nan?
His brain had completely blue-screened.
One single thought looped in his head on repeat:
My first kiss… wasn't with the senpai I adored. It was with a fucking zombie?
I… I'm ruined!!
The second he regained any sense of self, Xiao Jiang Nan shoved the zombie away with all his strength. Since it was still bound by Shuya's conjured chains, it couldn't resist and went flying easily.
But as their mouths separated, a long, glistening strand of saliva stretched between them like some kind of horror-movie special effect.
The surrounding thugs felt their scalps go numb.
Xiao Jiang Nan collapsed to the ground, mouth wide open, already reaching two fingers toward his throat to force everything up—breakfast and that disgusting zombie spit included.
But the evil bastard stopped him.
"Don't you dare vomit," Shuya said coldly.
He actually felt a twinge of sympathy for the guy's misfortune… but since it had already happened, no point wasting the data. This was the perfect chance to test whether zombie saliva could infect through the mouth.
Shuya stepped forward and kicked the punk in the head, flipping him onto his back. He didn't use much force—killing the test subject would ruin the results.
"What are you idiots waiting for?" he snapped at the rest of the gang. "Get over here and clamp his mouth shut! If he pukes any of that stuff out, I'll make you swallow it instead."
He had zero mercy for these scumbags who were running wild and hurting people the second the zombie crisis started.
As for doing it himself? Or conjuring another chain?
No thanks. He already felt gross just from kicking the guy's face earlier—his shoe probably needed a full decontamination.
"Oh—okay!"
The thugs finally caught on. After watching their buddy get force-fed and injected with zombie blood, they had zero doubt about Shuya's "infection experiment." If their boss actually puked, there was a real chance Shuya would make them eat it.
A chill ran down every spine.
Better him than us.
They were thugs with no morals anyway. A dozen of them swarmed Xiao Jiang Nan at once, pinning him down in a chaotic pile. Five or six hands clamped over his mouth alone.
In their panic they completely forgot how dangerous it was to shove their hands over a potentially infected person's mouth.
Xiao Jiang Nan's head was still ringing from that kick. When he came to, he realized his own former underlings were holding him down, mouths covered.
He made desperate "mmph-mmph" sounds through their hands, eyes wild as he glared at each of them like he was cursing their entire bloodlines.
The thugs just looked away, pretending they saw nothing.
Xiao Jiang Nan's rage finally cracked. The madness in his eyes melted into begging… then pure despair.
A single tear rolled down his cheek.
It was the last drop of his wasted youth.
"Saeko-senpai, why don't you go ahead and fuel the bike for me?" Shuya said when he noticed the reluctant look on her face. He didn't want her watching this part.
"Okay," Saeko nodded without argument.
She understood exactly why he was doing all this. Plus, he wasn't dragging innocent civilians into it—he was only using these trash who had attacked them first. She might feel a little bad about the scene, but she wasn't going to stop him.
The purple-haired girl quietly pushed the motorcycle over to the pump and started refueling.
Once she was far enough away, Shuya turned his full attention back to the pinned-down green-haired punk.
Truth was, testing the limits of the zombie virus to keep his own people safe was only half the reason.
The other half?
He wanted to know if he could weaponize the virus.
Not just bottle it up as some kind of reagent. No—he wanted to use Transmutation to turn his own Nen into something that carried the zombie virus's properties. Create an ability that could infect living things and turn them into zombies.
If he could layer a little Manipulation on top…
That would basically be an undead army skill straight out of some strategy game.
Of course, he had to master it safely first. Accidentally infecting himself would be the most pathetic way to die in history.
For some reason, Shuya had a gut feeling: if he could pull this off, there'd come a day in the future when he'd really need it.
Time ticked by.
The only thing that changed was how deeply Xiao Jiang Nan's despair grew.
His body showed zero signs of turning.
Shuya's mind drifted to all those movie scenes where the heroine gets bitten by a snake and the hero sucks the venom out with his mouth.
So… was zombie saliva actually harmless when swallowed?
Or did infection only happen through open wounds?
Or maybe the teeth were the real vector?
He glanced at the pile of yanked-out zombie teeth, then down at the green-haired punk still quietly crying in humiliation.
Shuya let out a helpless sigh.
Looked like poor Xiao Jiang Nan was about to suffer a little more.