Chapter 241: Taking to the Skies |
"Has the main Zombie horde arrived?"
Bai Mu and Mighty Dave hid in the garden of an empty house. He hoped the massive shadow would move away quickly, but sometimes, the more you dread something, the more likely it is to happen.
Instead of fading into the fog, the shadow grew larger and larger as it approached the empty house where Bai Mu and Mighty Dave were hiding.
In the thick white mist, it looked as huge as a monster. The ground trembled with its every step. At the same time, Bai Mu heard the grunts of Giant Zombies. The shadows of the Giant Zombies also emerged from the fog, encircling the house.
"Friend, things aren't looking too good," Mighty Dave remarked.
Bai Mu did not need to be told; he already knew something was very wrong.
He and Mighty Dave had cleared out all the Zombies they encountered along the way. Logically, in such dense fog, neither side should have been able to spot the other.
He did not think he had exposed their trail, yet the Zombie horde seemed to know exactly where they were and was closing in. 'Could the problem be the fog?' Bai Mu wondered.
The fog had rolled in abruptly, clearly unnatural. It was highly likely a smokescreen created by the Zombies. He had no time to ponder the details; before he knew it, dark silhouettes surrounded them. Staying in the house meant waiting to be slaughtered like lambs.
The only useful items in his arsenal were the Cherry Bomb and the Shotgun. The problem was that there was more than one Giant Zombie in the mist. Worst of all was the towering shadow, standing over a dozen stories high—it looked almost as massive as the final boss he had faced in the Corrupted Forest Blood Hunt. "We better run!" Bai Mu declared, pulling Mighty Dave along as they evacuated.
Although the Giant Zombies possessed formidable combat power, their massive silhouettes were incredibly obvious in the fog. There was no need to fight them head-on. The Main Quest simply required him to bring the Sunflower back to Crazy Dave's house. Once they returned to Crazy Dave, he would be safe.
He no longer cared about hiding his tracks. In truth, they were already quite close to Dave's Backyard. He had been here two hours ago, and he had an excellent sense of direction. Once he walked a path, he rarely forgot it. After all, someone prone to getting lost would never survive in a city overrun by Zombies. 'At this distance, we should reach the finish line within ten minutes,' Bai Mu calculated inwardly. 'Any delay invites disaster. Time to charge!' Raising his rifle, Bai Mu opened fire on the Zombies blocking their path. Common Zombies, Conehead Zombies, and Buckethead Zombies went down with a single bullet. Football Zombies were slightly more troublesome; armed to the teeth and clad in armor-like sports gear, they required consecutive headshots to put down.
Furthermore, they were astonishingly fast, capable of matching Bai Mu and Mighty Dave's running speed.
Fortunately, Mighty Dave lived up to his name. Swinging his water pipe, he knocked the blocking Football Zombies to the ground, allowing Bai Mu to seamlessly follow up with two bullets to send them to their graves.
Working together, the two broke through the Zombie encirclement.
Everything seemed to be going smoothly. However, with just five minutes of travel left to reach Dave's Backyard, they stepped out of the thickest fog and rounded a street corner, only to find an entire row of towering silhouettes blocking their path in the lingering mist. Five or six Giant Zombies strode out of the street side by side. It appeared they had been waiting there all along.
More Giant Zombies closed in from behind. A shrill, piercing laugh echoed from the fog.
It was a laugh amplified by a broadcast system, accompanied by the crackle of static and a microphone hum, as if someone were shouting through a megaphone.
"I knew we were spotted..." Bai Mu murmured. He had a strong premonition that they were being deliberately herded down this exact route.
Initially, he hadn't believed Zombies possessed this level of intelligence. But the facts proved there was a highly intelligent mastermind among their ranks. It made sense; if they were all brainless idiots, the Zombies could never have organized an invasion against a human town.
The moment he saw the Giant Zombies forming a blockade, Bai Mu finally understood how his trail had been exposed.
It was the Zombie corpses he had left behind. The streets of this town were not overly complex. By locating the bodies of the Zombies he had slaughtered, anyone could easily deduce his trajectory.
That towering shadow... the Zombie commander was likely sitting inside it. Judging by the sounds it made, it was a mechanical construct akin to a giant mecha. The Zombie commander piloting that robot probably had a way to peer through the fog. Using those breadcrumbs, it deduced the house where he and Mighty Dave had been hiding.
From there, it implemented a two-layered failsafe. The first was directing the surrounding Zombies to encircle them.
If the pair's combat strength was lacking, or if they foolishly chose to fight the Giant Zombies head-on, that initial Zombie force would have easily eliminated them.
Beyond that first layer, the commander had intentionally left a thinly defended escape route as bait. If Bai Mu and Mighty Dave broke through that initial defense, they would be lured exactly to this spot, facing a pincer attack with nowhere left to run. For a Zombie, this creature's strategic foresight was absolutely top-tier.
"Friend, it looks like I won't be able to see my brother. That works out fine, I never liked those weird plants anyway."
As the two stepped into this trapped scenario, Mighty Dave suddenly delivered a scripted line.
"Say hello to my brother for me. Tell him to stop putting Butter on his tacos. I hate Butter!"
"Come on, I remember where his house is. I'll send you over!"
With that, Mighty Dave suddenly hoisted Bai Mu onto his shoulder.
This felt like a predetermined cutscene. If Players managed to escort Mighty Dave to this specific location, they were granted a free ticket to clear the stage. It appeared Mighty Dave could bypass the final stretch by throwing the Player directly into Dave's Backyard. However, whether the Player could survive the resulting freefall was an entirely different matter.
The drawback to this completion method was that Mighty Dave would sacrifice himself.
Although Mighty Dave seemed more like a programmed video game character, Bai Mu had killed countless Zombies alongside him and did not want to see him die here. Furthermore, keeping him alive until the end would undoubtedly result in a higher rating.
Bai Mu immediately flashed his Medal of Honor and declared, "Friend, trust me. The finish line is right in front of us, isn't it?"
The medal worked perfectly. Mighty Dave hesitated for a moment before setting Bai Mu back down.
The Giant Zombies, however, were entirely unswayed by their camaraderie. Wielding massive utility poles and streetlamps, they continued to close in. Bai Mu had no time to discuss a plan with Mighty Dave; he simply ordered the giant man to follow his lead.
He pulled out a Cherry Bomb and hurled it. The explosive detonated right above the Giant Zombies' heads. One Cherry Bomb was not enough to kill a Giant Zombie, and Bai Mu's Stamina was only sufficient to cast Plant Care one last time.
Without hesitation, he activated Berserk, restored another bomb, and tossed it into the fray.
The explosion briefly scattered the fog above him, revealing a swarm of Balloon Zombies in his line of sight.
"So it was these things," he murmured.
The moment he saw the Balloon Zombies, he wondered what their purpose actually was. Hovering at roof-level obviously didn't help them snatch human brains.
Furthermore, he had not seen a single trace of these Balloon Zombies before the dense fog rolled in. Judging from this, the thick fog seemed specifically created to conceal them. A visibility range of four or five meters was perfectly calibrated to prevent anyone on the ground from seeing the Balloon Zombies drifting overhead.
These creatures weren't air force combatants; they were reconnaissance units, acting much like modern drones. For the era and setting of this Script, it was an incredibly advanced troop type.
Being surrounded meant he was already exposed to these 'scouts'. Naturally, there would be a massive flock of Balloon Zombies directly above his head. After all, everyone else in the town had been wiped out by the Zombies; he and Mighty Dave were the only targets left to monitor. Having confirmed his theory, a new path of survival revealed itself.
Bai Mu raised his gun and fired at the Balloon Zombies. Instead of popping the balloons, his bullets severed the ropes holding them.
The Balloon Zombies plummeted to the earth one by one, like a localized shower of raining Zombies, while their unburdened balloons drifted into the sky. The balloons should have simply floated away, but an invisible shadow—unseen by the Zombies—darted above Bai Mu's head. It grabbed the trailing ropes and hauled the balloons right down to him.
It was Lucy, whom Bai Mu had summoned two hours prior. Because he had only accepted her supplies without assigning her a task, she had never despawned.
For the past two hours, she had merely been playfully tagging along by his side.
Now, she proved her true worth, snagging over a dozen balloons in one swoop.
If these balloons could lift Zombies into the air, they should be able to lift him and Mighty Dave just as easily.
While this was practically impossible according to traditional physics, in a world where Zombies and humans coexisted, these balloons already defied all the laws of physics Bai Mu knew.
He merely observed the phenomenon and exploited it. Mighty Dave possessed a towering physique, but he was still far smaller than the Giant Zombies. Over a dozen balloons were more than enough to lift him off the ground. As for Bai Mu, simply holding onto two balloons allowed him to feel the upward pull as he ascended into the air.
Clutching the balloons, the two soared up into the dense fog right before the Giant Zombies' eyes.
The Giant Zombies swung their utility poles wildly but couldn't reach high enough. The very fog meant to conceal the Balloon Zombies now became their perfect camouflage, swallowing them completely from view.
"My god, friend, this is my first time taking to the skies..." Mighty Dave muttered, clinging tightly to his balloons.
"Mine too," Bai Mu replied. He glanced down, but there was nothing beneath them save for a sea of white mist.
Floating via balloons felt bizarre, but it had worked, carrying them out of harm's way.
The super-massive shadow below ground to a halt. Without its Balloon Zombies, it seemingly had no way to track Bai Mu and Mighty Dave anymore. "But how do we get to my brother's house?" Mighty Dave asked. "I kind of... can't control the direction."
Bai Mu was pondering the exact same problem. He didn't have a bamboo copter on his head, but he discovered he could slightly alter the balloons' trajectory by shifting his body weight.
So, twisting and wriggling in midair, the two incrementally corrected their course until they amazingly spotted Dave's Backyard.
On the red roof below, Crazy Dave was peering at them through a pair of binoculars. His expression froze in shock before he exclaimed, "Good heavens! That is absolutely crazy!"
Despite a few minor hiccups along the way, the two successfully drifted down onto the roof of the house.
Bai Mu used his handgun to pop the balloons, and he and Mighty Dave touched down. As they dropped from midair, Bai Mu pulled the Sunflower from his inventory and heard the system chime.
[Main Quest completed.]
[Side Quest completed.]