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Chapter 20: The Hive Mind I
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Everything was going smoothly, way too smoothly for as usual, Silver was carrying the world on his shoulders yet treating it like air, 'Blizzard.' Indeed, a blizzard, they were unaware of the silver blizzard around them.
Silver wouldn't do something so stupid without being confident, and to him, being confident means a certainty without a shadow of a doubt, so without them realizing it, he summoned a silent blizzard.
If there was a downside to the Silver Effect, it would be its astonishing energy requirements which were growing by the day, starting from an already ridiculous 250 and then reaching an even more ridiculous value of 5000.
And why was its energy requirement growing? Well, because the Silver Effect is growing stronger, becoming several times faster than sound. Its energy production speed is even increasing rapidly.
[Energy: 11100/11100] (1110*10) That's basically half his energy which meant that he went from being able to create several Silver Effects to only being able to create two before fully draining his energy.
Moreover, he can not stop this progress. He even stopped injecting his energy into the Silver Effect to slow down its progress but that certainly didn't do much.
It seems that the Silver Effect does have some sort of restriction after all, and if you can not keep up, you will be left behind... Maybe some other ridiculous powers also have similar problems.
That, however, wasn't a problem for Silver. He saw the problem long ago and also made countermeasures, always keeping as many Silver Effects as possible around him as theoretically, they can always exist as long as he keeps his Silver Domain open, something that's been putting a lot of pressure on his mind as of late.
The second countermeasure was the most important though... Not far from New York, just about a dozen miles, there was a farm, near the farm was a facility, Silver's old research facility.
The entire area was covered by what appeared to be webs, or more like, numerous threads that formed something akin to a cobweb... What was it hiding? Well, a heinous scene.
The facility was seemingly replaced with flesh, numerous clumps of flesh that were constantly growing... It was disgusting, a disgusting experiment of a flawed infected cell multiplying infinitely, creating this abomination.
Of course, that was only possible because of the Silver Effect's capacity to produce energy, and the T virus happened to be capable of replicating the Silver Effect, albeit a very weakened version of it.
That worked to compensate for the Silver Effect's weakness. Furthermore, those Silver Effects can exist outside of his domain, but he can only control them if they're within, so when he passed by the area, he summoned a swarm of Silver Effects, micro Silver Effects which then fused together to form a swarm of more than a hundred Silver Effects.
That naturally came with the side effect of eradicating a significant portion of the flesh, or the Silver Effect breeding ground as Silver would like to call it.
The swarm of Silver Effects never left his side, hidden by the fog, and it's his reliance for coming here today as the swarm orbited around the ground, only allowing some controlled portions of zombies to approach.
The group slowly walked ahead with Silver, stumbling their steps on top of the numerous corps of zombies, but they never stopped their shotting, slowly grinding for awakening points.
Natalia had to join them soon. The radiation got too heavy as they got closer to the radiation source, and having already measured how much she can resist, she knew when to stop.
They couldn't see, but Silver could, the destruction all about, rubbles everywhere, broken buildings and glass scattered throughout, the signs of the explosion he had heard before.
It took them hours before they got near the radiation source, mostly due to the ridiculous amount of zombies around, and due to having to take samples of some of the special ones, abominations.
The area near the source was even more devastated, only rubbles, and not a single building intact, but it's the most special... As far as the eyes can see, there was nothing but abominations.
Only mutated zombies, some more special than the others, all were mostly absent-minded, basking in the embrace of nuclear radiation only to be awakened by the sound of gunshots.
Growls, and howls reverberated throughout, howls of what seemed to be anger more than desire, as if they were awakened from a lovely dream, so they all did the same, leaping towards the group.
Silver's group was simply unaware that before them was a scene that would frighten the majority of awakeners to death, and Silver acting as if nothing happened wasn't helping.
"I think I understand," Silver suddenly murmured as he stroked his chin, "The past forty days were a 'gift' to us... The game wants us to prepare for what's to come, and I assume that the second fog will or is currently changing something to start a second outbreak."
"Huh?" Natalia narrowed her eyes as she pointed out, "I could swear reading something similar in your predictions."
"Well, it's very predictable... Also," Silver narrowed his eyes as he smirked, "It seems that singular cells can not directly absorb the radiation to multiply, thus, the zombies' ability to rely on radiation is kind of limited."
"But?" Natalia noticed the peculiar look in his eyes, thus she said expectantly.
"Zombies evolved, or one of the zombies evolved, creating what we'll call from now on, Zombie Queen, and they seem to have the same responsibilities as Ant Queens," Silver continued.
"Hm?" Natalia's mouth couldn't help but twitch, "Isn't that something you predicted as well?"
"It's too predictable though, no?" Silver shrugged.
"No," Natalia shook her head, taking his rhetorical question seriously, "The existence of the zombie queen means that we should completely reevaluate the T virus' capacity for evolution or mutation."
"We do," Silver agreed as he nodded, "I almost underestimated the virus... And it seems that the Queen has guards."
'Almost?' Natalia was speechless. Wouldn't that mean that he somehow expected this, but she didn't have time to question him, not as something vastly different than any other zombie appeared before them.
No, it was largely different even from mutated zombies, such as Abominations and Lickers. The monster was blood red, and it wasn't because of flesh but bones as the monster was armored with red bones.
Such a thick armor should in theory slow the monster down, so it was no wonder that Silver found himself surprised at its speed, nearly reaching the speed of sound, so far ahead of every other zombie that it was ridiculous... Silver confirmed a theory of his there and then.
The path of zombie evolution doesn't seem to be so random anymore. Silver suspects that it's instinctive, maybe even planned, or maybe the T virus is only repeating an evolution path that it once walked.
'The Queen's guard, huh?' That thought brought a genuine smile to Silver, having ample time to think about several things as everything around him seemingly slowed down.
No, it was more like, his soul and mind entered the hyper-awareness mode, a nice side-effect of the Silver Effect. It comes, however, at a cost... A headache and unimaginable pain for the amount of information he needs to process in the Silver Domain multiplies by several times.
Silver already has a hard time keeping up with his already ridiculously large domain as the amount of information he receives from it is absurd, hyper awareness takes that to another level.
In fact, the only reason he can barely handle it is because of his strong soul which seems to work together with his brain to process things.
Yet he never showed any signs of pain for he was used to it. Despite taking tons of painkillers over the years due to his condition, they really didn't do much to calm the pain, so he was very much used to it.
The Queen's guard only has one mission, and that's to protect the Zombie Queen, a mission they, unfortunately, failed to do as the monster somehow felt their head spin about before perfectly landing on Silver's hand.
"The Hive Mind is real," Silver murmured, a bright flash passing by his eyes as he glanced in a certain direction...