Chapter 59: Combination Skill |
After listening to that lengthy explanation, Great Northern Wilderness opened and closed his mouth, wanting to say something but ultimately remaining silent.
Holding it in for a few seconds, he finally gave Bai Mu a thumbs-up and expressed his thoughts with two simple words.
"Fucking awesome."
He genuinely thought Bai Mu was an absolute badass. To piece together the truth behind the Script in such a short amount of time was nothing short of incredible. After all, a mere eighteen minutes had passed from the moment they arrived at the farm to when they boarded the transport ship.
For those eighteen minutes, they hadn't been sitting on a plush sofa, sipping tea and playing a casual game of deduction. They had spent every agonizing second fending off sudden attacks from Mutants. Yet, even under such extreme tension, Bai Mu had managed to multitask perfectly, as if his emotions were completely impervious to the chaotic environment around him.
"Leave the Mutants on the ship to me! Work together and push the boarding ramp away!" Bai Mu continued to issue commands. "The Infected can't enter the water. As long as we push the ramp down, we're safe!"
"I got it!"
Great Northern Wilderness tossed his gun aside. A can of spinach suddenly materialized in his right hand. He cracked it open and aggressively gulped down the contents. In the next heartbeat, the muscles in his right arm bulged out grotesquely, stretching the fabric of his heavy-duty gray suit to its absolute limits.
This was an enhancement skill he had learned from a certain sailor. It had only one strict activation requirement: the user had to consume a can of spinach. It specifically had to be canned spinach; nothing else would suffice.
This was his ultimate trump card. For the duration of the skill, his physical strength would rival that of a grizzly bear.
The only drawback was its painfully short duration—merely a few dozen seconds. He had been waiting for the perfect opportunity to use it, and that moment was now.
Relying on his raw, enhanced strength, Great Northern Wilderness hefted the heavy steel boarding ramp all by himself. But just as he did, a furious roar shattered the air. A new type of Mutant came barreling out from the horde of Zombies.
A Charger. It was a strength-enhanced Mutant with one arm swollen into a terrifying, pillar-like mass of hyper-developed muscle, practically as large as the rest of its body.
The Charger slammed violently into the boarding ramp. A deafening, metallic crash rang out as the steel bent and twisted under the impact. Taking advantage of the breach, the Zombies swarmed forward, their collective weight pressing down on the ramp.
Yan Yu knew she couldn't hold back her skills any longer. She pulled two throwing knives from her pouch and hurled them at the Charger in rapid succession. The crimson blades sank into the creature's head and right shoulder. Over a dozen flashes of light trailed behind the blades, and once they accumulated to a critical threshold, the Charger's wounds violently erupted in a geyser of gore.
This was the secondary effect of her Bloody Throwing Knives—Blood Burst. The catastrophic explosive damage instantly killed the Charger. As the deformed corpse crumpled to the deck, Great Northern Wilderness regained his footing. Nancheng Port rushed over, joining his older brother to heave the boarding ramp up once more.
But another bloated Mutant suddenly materialized out of nowhere like a ghost.
From its outward appearance, it looked like a morbidly obese man weighing several hundred kilograms. Its belly was swollen into a massive, taut sphere, shredding whatever clothing it had once worn. Its skin had cracked from the extreme distension, stretched so thin that it was nearly transparent, resembling an overfilled water balloon ready to burst.
A Boomer. Yet another new Mutant!
Yan Yu raised her throwing knives, but before she could even initiate a throw, the Boomer abruptly detonated on its own.
Its bloated belly acted as a literal bomb, erupting with a deafening blast. A torrential shower of foul, green fluid rained down upon them, splattering everything in its vicinity.
The vile fluid lacked the corrosive properties of a Spitter's acid, leaving the trio momentarily confused as to why the creature had simply blown itself up. Their confusion vanished a second later when the surrounding Zombies suddenly flew into a rabid frenzy, sprinting frantically toward the epicenter of the blast. Only then did they realize that the Boomer's fluid was some sort of undead stimulant. Wherever it detonated, every Zombie in the vicinity would abandon all reason and stampede toward that exact spot.
Meanwhile, Bai Mu had just finished clearing the Mutants on the ship. The creature that had ambushed him from the shadows was swiftly executed with a precise headshot. While the other three Players had already exhausted their ammunition breaking through the horde, Bai Mu still had plenty of bullets left from the supply crates he had looted.
Hearing the explosion, he whipped his head around, only to see the ravenous Zombies pressing their overwhelming weight against the boarding ramp. Thump, thump, thump. The very ground began to tremble as a colossal shadow loomed in the distance.
It was a towering behemoth that moved in a terrifyingly straight line. Bai Mu watched in awe as it simply bulldozed through a solid brick house on the corn farm, shattering it like glass.
It bore a name that perfectly matched its apocalyptic strength: Tank.
The Tank propelled itself forward using both its legs and its massive, hulking arms, moving with the gait of an enraged gorilla.
This was a boss-level Mutant. The likes of Jockeys and Hunters couldn't even begin to compare. Its mere presence instantly suffocated the three Players with an overwhelming, oppressive aura of dread.
"Get the hell down!" Great Northern Wilderness roared in desperation.
The trio pushed frantically, desperate to dislodge the boarding ramp. Bai Mu hurled a grenade, hoping to scatter the dense cluster of Zombies blocking their escape.
However, the sheer volume of the horde was simply too great. The military-grade grenade lacked the devastating blast radius needed to counteract the frightening speed at which the undead tide was congregating.
"Time to use the Cherry Bomb," Bai Mu muttered without a second thought. He had specifically chosen the Cherry Bomb for a desperate moment exactly like this.
A Garden Plant Card materialized in his palm. Upon activating the card, a massive Cherry Bomb appeared in his hand, with each individual cherry being the size of a coconut.
The bright red face of the Cherry Bomb was contorted in deep, burning rage. It looked furiously eager to detonate, but it was absolutely bound to obey Bai Mu, the Player who had summoned it. As long as Bai Mu didn't give the command, it couldn't explode.
Holding the Cherry Bomb by its stem, Bai Mu suddenly noticed that this single item consisted of two conjoined cherries. An audacious new idea popped into his head. He immediately retrieved the flower pot he had won from the roulette draw out of his inventory.
This was Dave's flower pot. Even the soil inside it was uniquely formulated for the sole purpose of cultivating Garden Plants.
The moment Bai Mu placed the Cherry Bomb into the flower pot, the two previously independent items fused seamlessly together, forming a completely new, singular tool.
[Item Name: Potted Cherry Bomb]
[Grade: Rare]
[Description: The Cherry Bomb feels the comforting warmth of home, causing its explosive temper to cool slightly. Perhaps it wishes to take a nap before detonating.]
Normally, once the Garden Plant Card was used, the Cherry Bomb would be classified as consumed. Regardless of whether it actually exploded or not, it could never be brought out of the Script. But by combining it with the flower pot, it had fundamentally transformed from a single-use consumable into a permanent item.
At first glance, this combination seemed utterly pointless. After all, once the Cherry Bomb exploded, it would still be gone forever.
But one crucial detail remained: Bai Mu had also won a seemingly ordinary active skill from the roulette draw called "Plant Care".
When he realized the Cherry Bomb possessed two distinct cherries, and with these three elements converging in his hands, Bai Mu formulated an insane theory that he just had to test.
He first plucked one of the cherries off the shared stem and hurled it directly into the heart of the undead horde.
The severed cherry's brow furrowed aggressively before it erupted in the middle of the Zombie horde with an earth-shattering boom!
A massive shockwave of blistering fire flared upward, the sheer concussive force violently rippling the surface of the nearby river.
Then, something truly astonishing occurred. Every Zombie caught within the Cherry Bomb's blast radius was instantly incinerated, turning to ash within the roaring flames in the blink of an eye.
It seemingly harbored a hidden bonus modifier against Zombies. Under normal circumstances, it would take hours of continuous burning to reduce a fleshy corpse to ash, yet this simple explosion achieved the same result instantaneously.
But the most shocking revelation was yet to come. Right before his eyes, a brand-new Cherry Bomb sprouted from the jagged, torn edge of the residual stem.
A gentle green glow radiated from Bai Mu's palm, fully restoring the Cherry Bomb to its original, perfect state.
Bai Mu had expended thirty percent of his Stamina to cast "Plant Care" directly on the flower pot.
The flower pot, the Garden Plant Card, and "Plant Care"—these three isolated elements had perfectly synergized into a devastating combination skill, granting him a potted plant that could supply him with an infinite arsenal of Cherry Bombs.
A faint smile crept across his lips. Paradise truly was filled with endless surprises.
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