January 13
As for the drone's battery problem—Kyoko had already solved that during her earlier search of the apartment complex, when she found power banks, batteries, and other still-charged electrical supplies.
After destroying every staircase in the three connected apartment buildings where her home was located, Kyoko finally had time to investigate those strange infected.
The remaining infected outside had already been mostly burned away. Kyoko sent the drone circling above the bizarre cluster, but after a careful search, she failed to find any especially protected infected hidden among them. Though they had formed a small group, they were not gathered around any obvious center. Their positions were somewhat scattered.
That made it difficult to tell what set them apart.
The infected in that group looked like NPCs that had not received a command. At present, they were simply standing by.
To get a better look, Kyoko lowered the drone as far as it would go, hovering at an altitude of only four or five meters. She even switched on its light to attract their attention. Even then, those infected did not move in the slightest.
"How weird. What are these things, all a bunch of stone-faced weirdos?"
Though puzzled, Kyoko decided not to bother with them any further. The drone was about to run out of power, and in all likelihood, those infected were not going to make it up here anyway.
After retrieving the drone, Kyoko began gearing up.
The injuries she had suffered earlier were rapidly healing under the influence of her current special state.
She was stronger now than before, though she had no idea what kind of side effects would strike once this state ended.
There were probably still several hundred wandering infected left upstairs. It was still a large number.
But the current Kyoko no longer felt fear.
Or rather, fear itself had vanished from her.
After checking the straps on her anti-stab vest, confirming the steel chest plate and its connecting fixtures were secure, Kyoko pulled down her face mask, locked the buckles in place, switched on the headlamp attached to her helmet, and cracked a glow stick.
With a Miao saber in hand, the last MON-50 anti-personnel directional mine in her backpack, and several daggers strapped around her waist, she was fully armed.
Before heading out, she tucked the blanket over Huaxiu properly. Huaxiu looked deeply uneasy in her sleep, her brows drawn together as if she sensed Kyoko was about to leave.
Kyoko quietly kissed Huaxiu on the cheek, then charged out into the hallway, now transformed into an oven.
The heat had still not fully dissipated. After suffering two fires in less than a week, the floor had been scorched until it cracked, the walls were lined with fine fractures and warping, and the swollen floor slabs gave the whole place a distorted feel. Smoke still lingering in the air interfered with the beam of her flashlight.
Most of the corpses on the ground had already been completely carbonized. Their skin, flesh, and bones had blackened under the heat, their hair had burned away entirely, and their skin had turned scorched brown.
Some that had not burned quite as badly were covered in split-like wounds, their full-thickness skin charred into yellow-brown or black leathery scabs.
Kyoko's knee-high boots crushed them underfoot with a crisp snapping sound.
She stepped over several corpses that were still relatively intact. Their muscles had contracted under the heat, their flexors stronger than their extensors, leaving their hands frozen in poses like boxers guarding their faces. Shreds of clothing remained fused to the skin.
The fire in the corridor had already wiped out the infected that failed to escape in time. At this point, each square meter of floor was piled with seven or eight bodies in grotesque, miserable poses.
Without feeling even the slightest discomfort, she gripped her steel blade and advanced upstairs.
Her peaceful routine had been ruined like this. She had every reason to be furious.
No sooner had she reached the eighteenth floor than several infected appeared in the stairwell. They tried to flank her at once, rushing in from both sides.
Kyoko did not bother with any fancy technique. She simply swung.
It was as easy as cutting tofu. Four heads rolled across the floor, and the bodies collapsed limply onto the still-hot ground.
These weak infected were not even worthy of making her use her full strength.
She continued up the stairs, harvesting heads as she went, leaving a long trail of corpses behind her.
What if they were special infected? So what? So long as they were not the highly defensive or highly agile kind, the current Kyoko could still kill them with a single strike.
At last she reached the rooftop.
Through the ruined doorway, she saw that the central dividing wall on the roof had collapsed. On the rooftop of the adjacent building stood more than a hundred infected.
And at the center of them all stood one with an abnormally oversized head.
Kyoko had no intention of hiding. She stepped out openly from the doorway, her headlamp shining directly into the eyes of that special infected.
It let out a furious roar, as if to declare: One hundred against one. The advantage is mine.
At its command, the infected charged at her.
"Come, restless dead! Witness my skill! Take this slash!"
Power seemed to overflow endlessly from within her body as Kyoko swung her Miao saber with reckless abandon.
The long blade once again displayed its terrifying performance. The weapon was roughly 1.6 meters in total length, with a blade measuring 1.1 meters, a handle of 0.4 meters, a width of four centimeters, and a thickness of one centimeter, with a fuller carved into the steel.
"Die, you pirates!"
Well, that probably included her current self too, if one really thought about it. Whatever. She did not care.
Demon Slayer mode, activate.
Holding the advantageous choke point at the doorway, the infected rushed her in a fan-shaped assault, tripping over one another to force their way through the narrow passage.
Kyoko gripped the rear of the handle with both hands, driving the blade with the twist of her hips and waist. The saber swept in a broad horizontal arc, bisecting several infected at the waist in one blow. Their severed torsos became stepping stones for those behind them.
The speed of her blade was beyond what the eye could follow. Its pale edge left afterimages in the air, slick with foul blood.
At this point, there was barely any place left to stand.
Including the corpses left behind when she had fled here with Huaxiu earlier, as well as the infected burned in the recent fire, there were now no fewer than three to four hundred bodies piled across the rooftop. Corpses lay stacked in layers upon layers.
This was no battle.
It was slaughter.
And it was utterly one-sided.
[Kyoko: I'm exterminating every last one of you that dared attack Huaxiu.]
She swept her blade through the infected ahead once again, controlling the distance and maintaining a safe striking range. Then she leapt forward and drove her blade down through the infected blocking her way, breaking through their wall of flesh.
"You filthy bastard—die!"
With every stroke, Kyoko combined a rear-leg push, a forward sliding step, and a thrusting slash, creating a flowing advance-and-retreat rhythm that kept her from being surrounded.
The infected around her were visibly thinning now.
The time had come to strike at the heart of the enemy.
The cannon fodder no longer posed any threat.
Now it was the special infected's turn.
Kyoko stepped forward with her right foot into a bow stance, body leaning in, her right arm turning inward and her left arm outward, the blade angled upward to the right in a powerful thrust.
The giant-headed infected, hearing the tearing whistle of the blade through the air, raised one arm behind its back in sudden caution.
Taking advantage of its momentary stillness, Kyoko surged forward, adjusting her steps and driving the blade from left to right into a rapid thrust.
She had assumed she would simply plunge her long blade straight through this creature, which looked frail and harmless, and finally bring this nightmare of a night to an end.
But in the next instant, the impossible happened.
That thing pulled out the very katana Kyoko had dropped earlier—and used it to block her strike.
"What—?!"
The two blades collided with a sharp metallic clang.
Join here to read ahead.
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TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter110)
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I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter144)
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Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
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Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 65
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From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass 80
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Uma Musume: The Horse Girl Who 47
Uma Musume: From Beginner 42
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