Chương 84: Impact Crystal

Whoosh— The massive torch spewed a wave of scorching heat; even standing across the street, the terrifying temperature was palpable. The giant pillar of fire was blindingly bright, but after roaring for only a few seconds, it abruptly ceased. Vince merely felt his vision momentarily darken as the pillar of fire vanished completely.

"It's the automatic shut-off valve!" Ben had just emerged from his hiding spot, and a few men followed closely behind him. One of them spoke up,"During the recent municipal gas renovations, the pipes and flow valves were all swapped for new ones. If there's a massive leak or pressure drop, the main valve automatically trips..."

"You're saying it won't keep exploding?" Hearing this, Ben quickly asked.

"It shouldn't. But right now, the gas supply to these buildings—maybe even the entire complex—is completely cut off..." the man added.

"That's a relief..." Hearing there wouldn't be a chain reaction of explosions, Ben let out a heavy sigh of relief. Standing off to the side, Vince also wiped the cold sweat from his forehead. He had been just as tense, but he simply hadn't let his panic show in front of the others. After all, he knew absolutely nothing about how city gas pipelines worked...

If the fire had genuinely detonated its way down the gas lines, these residential blocks and the first-floor storefronts beneath them would have been completely blown to hell. Hearing the explosions were over finally put his mind at ease. That damn Giant-Armed Zombie. I guess we're stuck using induction cookers for stir-fry from now on.

"All of you, stay away from this building. Don't want anything else burning its way out to catch you off guard..." Thinking about the Giant-Armed Zombie's corpse, Vince turned to warn Ben and his crew, then grabbed his heavy spear and jogged over. Along the way, he casually finished off the few zombies that had plummeted from the upper floors and crippled themselves, leaving them with only thirty-something HP.

Sure enough, now that his Max HP had surpassed [600]—double the HP of a regular zombie—killing normal zombies no longer increased his Max HP ceiling. [630/630]... His Max HP had only increased by 30 points. Vince hadn't noticed earlier in the heat of battle, but it was highly likely that the 2, 000 HP Giant-Armed Zombie gave him 20 points, and the 1, 000 HP Banshee Zombie gave him 10 points. However, even though they no longer granted permanent stat boosts, regular zombies still dropped loot.

Killing those five crippled zombies just now yielded seven or eight portions of canned food and water. Jogging up to the Giant-Armed Zombie's corpse, he looked up and saw roaring flames still leaping wildly out of the fourth-floor windows. The building's exterior decorative tiles and the concrete balcony slabs looked as if they were on the verge of collapsing.

Vince quickly wedged his heavy steel spear into the gaps of the monster's bones and dragged it to the opposite side of the street, far away from the burning building... Ben and his men stood nearby with their weapons drawn, keeping watch in case any zombies ran out from the lower floors. This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

They had seen Vince studying something on the Banshee Zombie's corpse earlier, and now, seeing him risk running beneath a burning building just to drag this massive corpse back, their curiosity peaked. Ben cautiously approached. Poking the corpse on the ground with his steel pipe, he asked:"Vince, is this corpse useful for something?" Vince crouched on the ground and didn't answer him directly. Instead, while prodding the mangled flesh with the tip of his spear, he said casually:"Go find me a knife.

Any knife will do..."

"Ah, sure thing..." Ben agreed immediately, turning and jogging back toward the small supermarket. The men standing behind him were all holding various long steel pipes; not a single one actually possessed a bladed tool. Vince had no intention of making a razor-sharp blade materialize out of thin air in front of an audience, nor did he want to drag this two-meter-tall monstrosity all the way back to his apartment. God only knew what kind of wild, terrifying conclusions people would jump to.

Based on Vince's understanding of human nature and how rumors spread, by tomorrow there would probably be whispers claiming his superhuman strength came from eating mutated zombie meat. If some idiot actually believed it and tried to replicate it, who knew what kind of chaotic disaster it might cause... While Ben was off fetching a knife, Vince reached his hand deep into the massive wound his spear's energy had blasted open and groped around.

Soon, he felt a hard object structurally similar to the one inside the Banshee's body—a dense shell with an irregular curvature, functioning much like a sealed skull. A portion of the shell had already been blasted apart by the eruption of razor-sharp energy, and the sticky, semi-liquid brain matter inside had mostly leaked out. He reached into the thick, porridge-like substance and fished out a multifaceted crystal coated in grayish-white slime.

[Impact Crystal] [Energy Level: Level 1] [Rarity: Superior (Mergeable, Effective Conduit Structure 20%)] [Equippable] [Impact: When equipped, adds an Impact effect to attacks. Consumes user energy while active. (Degree of impact scales with Crystal Energy Level)]"Impact?" So the monster's ability wasn't some sort of rapid multi-hit combo like Vince had previously hypothesized; it was raw, concussive impact. With a mental command, he equipped the crystal.

A bizarre, intuitive sensation immediately blossomed in his mind—it felt as though an invisible hand grip strengthener had materialized in his palm. As long as he exerted mental force, he could accumulate and compress energy within that "grip." Following that sensation, Vince half-clenched his fist, and a strange, violently oscillating energy materialized in his palm. At the exact same time, the blue energy bar beneath his Health Bar began to steadily drain... 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6...

By the time it drained 10 points, the compressed energy in his hand had reached a point where he physically could not contain it anymore. It vibrated violently against his palm, feeling as though it would detonate at any given microsecond. Sensing he was at his limit, Vince slammed his right fist down, driving that mass of kinetic energy straight into the concrete! BOOM! The men standing behind Vince felt the ground beneath their feet violently tremble!

Immediately after, a spiderweb of deep fissures radiated outward from beneath Vince's fist, expanding rapidly to a radius of about one meter.

"Vince, what happened?! Was it the zombie?!" Ben, holding a meat cleaver in one hand, ran over in a panic, shouting as he approached.

"It's nothing. The zombie just twitched a bit. I handled it, don't panic..." Vince didn't explain in detail, casually brushing him off with a half-truth. But internally, his mind was far less calm than his outward appearance suggested. Although this punch didn't look as visually spectacular as the Giant-Armed Zombie's massive AoE attack, Vince, as the one who threw it, knew with absolute certainty that its concentrated destructive power was equal, if not greater...

When the zombie punched the ground, the impact energy expanded outward to four meters, but it didn't leave a crater directly beneath its fist... Yet, the punch he had just thrown, charged with a mere 10 energy points, had actually smashed a bowl-sized crater directly into the solid concrete road. And not just the crater—the energy had violently displaced the surrounding material, creating a one-meter radius of shattered fissures. Terrifying destructive power...

If the Sharpness ability dealt cutting damage by injecting and detonating energy along a specific plane, then this Impact ability directly pulverized solid tissue and material through pure, concussive energy oscillation. He stood up. Using his boot, he casually kicked a large chunk of the zombie's peeled-off charred armor directly over the crater he had just punched into the asphalt, completely concealing the evidence. He had already displayed enough miracles today.

Vince only wanted to maintain his absolute authority; he had zero desire to give anyone enough data to make logical, terrifying deductions. The signature ability of the mutated zombie he had just killed suddenly appearing on him the very next second... That specific correlation alone was enough to make observant people start questioning his identity, his nature, and his humanity. Once that seed of suspicion took root, it was nearly impossible to eradicate, and that would be the beginning of his authority crumbling.