Defiance of the Fall

Chapter 173: Disrupt the Call

Zac felt he’d stumbled upon something important as he slowly controlled the Dao of Trees to rotate over the wound. It was a way of manipulation of the Dao that he’d never done before. Usually, he just pushed the Dao into his attack or his body, but now he realized that type of usage probably could be likened to back when he was alone on the island.

The way he used Cosmic Energy in the start was to simply push it into his arms and legs to run faster and punch harder. There was no refinement or finesse to it, and most of the energy was wasted. However, using it in a controlled manner, such as through skills, showed far higher effectiveness.

It seemed that it was the same with the Dao. Even though he was anxious to get going he felt it was critical to test this further, so he slowly manipulated the little whirlpool containing his Dao of Trees. Eventually he managed to manipulate it slightly, such as growing or making it smaller.

More importantly, as he kept the small Dao field spinning over his wound Zac noticed that keeping it going was almost effortless. He still hadn’t really understood exactly what the power from Dao was. Ogras called it the Power of Laws, whereas Calrin mentioned Spirit. Zac himself thought of it as mental energy.

In any case, the consumption of mental energy seemed far lower when he’d turned the Dao field into a small whirlwind, as though the spinning was keeping the field from dissipating on its own. Zac only needed to supply it with a bit of energy every now and then to keep the rotation going. It was far more efficient than wasting a lot of energy to keep a blob of Dao to cover the wound for a while, and then rest a bit as the wound grew worse again.

Having finally found a way to combat the corruption he got up to his feet and started to walk away. However, he quickly walked back and cut off a few saplings from the tree, as the mutation was worth further study. It had even opened up a new avenue for him in a sense, showing a possible direction of how to take his Dao one step further.

Without death, there can be no life. The tree had taken that even further, as it created life out of death, converting miasma to cosmic energy. It was like the seasons, the death of winter turning into the warm life of summer. He felt it was very possible to use this concept into improving his Dao of Trees, though he wasn’t quite there yet.

Zac kept going southeast through the forest, not bothering going back to the road. It didn’t make much difference in speed whether he drove over broken-down roads or sped through the forest on foot, at least not now when his wound was under control.

Had this been a year or so ago he’d be extremely freaked out by the gloomy atmosphere, but now it barely registered as most of his mind was preoccupied with the Dao of Trees. If he wasn’t on a clock he would have secluded himself right at this moment, trying to formalize the wisp of insight he’d gained as he sat under the resisting tree.

However, time waits for no man. There were myriad things he needed to get done. The first and foremost was finding Kenzie, but that was just the start. Next thing on his list was the hegemony quest. There was a one-month time limit on it, so needed to finish it quickly. It was only called the first step, which made it sound like a classic quest chain.

But even though it was only the first step it gave extravagant rewards, making Zac extremely curious as to what other things were waiting down the road. It was also quite welcome considering that there soon was the global treasure hunt.

He had been hemming and hawing whether he should go or not, especially now that it looked like he’d become a persona non grata with the government. But it was starting to feel like he didn’t have much of a choice. The weight of responsibility was starting to push down on him. He simply wasn’t strong enough at the moment.

He might be strong compared to some rabble, or even on earth in general. Yet he barely managed to fight off the Corpse Lord, who wasn’t even the leader of the incursion. That was only one of the Incursions, and beyond that were the Dominators who were suspiciously silent.

The treasure hunt was supposed to give unique opportunities to gain power, and he couldn’t afford not to go anymore, no matter what he personally wanted to do. He would just have to keep his head down and fight for opportunities, and hopefully not get dragged into any large-scale conflict.

Four days quickly passed, and Zac felt he was making good time through the Dead Zone. He’d been afraid that he would be bogged down by endless waves of Zombies, but he barely saw a single one. Then again, it made sense since the incursion had grown way out of proportion, being almost as large as the old United States in landmass.

Still, with his superhuman attributes, he’d crossed around half of the Dead Zone, as he guessed he was somewhat near the Core by now. Just two or three days of travel to the southwest and he should be right at the Nexus Hub that was the core of the Undead Incursion. Of course, he was heading east, almost in the opposite direction. For the moment he had no interest in meeting the real core forces of the Undead Empire.

Most of the area he walked through was pure wilderness, and he skirted around the towns and hovels he passed while he traveled. He assumed that the Zombies would be gathered in the towns, as those who wandered out into the wild would likely be picked off by the wandering beasts.

Zac did, however, get accosted by mutated beasts every now and then, frenziedly trying to ravage him. Zac quickly dispatched the monsters, not bothering with collecting their bodies. They were teeming with miasma, making the meat inedible unless you were desperate. Especially since yesterday, the monsters had grown particularly wretched, as the concentration of miasma had grown far higher. As for their hides, Zac already had a mountain of those from the wolf hordes.

Since there were almost no impediments to his travels he decided to take a few extra hours a day to work on his Dao. Being forced to ceaselessly combat the surrounding miasma had one strong point. It was continuously sharpening his control over his Dao. The deathly energy of the corrupted Cosmic Energy was also a great contrast to his Dao of Trees, which was a subcategory of the Dao of Nature or the Dao of life.

They were almost opposites, and seeing the two forces combat each other through the whirling vortices kept giving Zac new insights. It was on the third day he realized that while the two forces were restricting each other, they also were empowering each other in a sense.

Some of the miasma was still entering him even with his Dao whirl keeping vigil, but Zac initially didn’t care as the Dao of Trees purified a bit of the energy in the wound as well. However, Zac started to note that energy kept going in, but never left.

As he pushed through the wilderness he pondered on the implications. The wound was acting up less and less as his control of his Dao increased, but the energy had to go somewhere. He was starting to get worried that something was accumulating inside him, but a loud explosion dragged him out of his thoughts.

The explosion clearly didn’t come from a natural source, and though Zac generally wanted to avoid problems he couldn’t help but curiously move toward the source of the sound. In just a few seconds a large plume of smoke rose in the air in the distance, giving him a clear direction.

As he moved forward through the gloomy forest he started to hear the sound of machine guns incessantly firing. Zac was surprised, as he didn’t expect human activity this far into the Dead Zone. He’d moved quite quickly, sleeping only a few hours each day for four days by now, bringing him far into undead territory.

There should be good targets quite a bit further out with many towns being overrun by zombies, so there weren’t many reasons for Zombie Hunters venturing this far inside. It exponentially increased the risk of running into something dangerous, like the core invaders themselves. Besides, Zac had already run into two beasts that were quite a bit stronger than the tiger that caused John so much trouble, so the invaders weren’t the only thing to worry about.

The gunfighting sounded more and more intense as Zac increased his pace through the forest, until he finally reached the edge of the woods, the decaying trees giving way to what once might have been vast paddies, perhaps for growing rice. The vast irrigated field had turned into sickly puddles with thick fog wafting above it.

However, the fields weren’t what garnered Zac’s attention. Rather it was the huge swarm of zombies walking together, and the people desperately trying to impede their march. However, even with zombies dropping every second the number was just unimaginable. The number of Zombies couldn’t even be put in the same category as those that invaded his island. If Zac had to guess there had to be at least half a million of them stumbling along.

It was an ocean of the undead, and the only solace was that there seemingly weren’t any Aberrations or corpse golems amongst the ranks. There were however a few zombies who stood out from the mindless masses, and every now and again one would leap out from the ranks and try to snag one of the humans running along with the horde.

The resistance consisted of roughly 300 people, mostly of Asian descent, who kept moving along the flanks of the huge swarm of the undead, using various means of downing one zombie after another. Zac was a bit confused why they fought so hard though, as it seemed the endless hordes of undead were stumbling toward the core of the Dead Zone, rather than out towards the settlements.

Perhaps they simply tried to impede whatever was going on. Nothing good could come from hundreds of thousands of zombies gathering together, after all. If so, Zac could only salute their brave efforts. Normally he would have helped, but between his wound and his mission he decided that this was a battle he would simply have to bow out from.

He was about to recede into the forest and walk around the army, but a prompt in front of him suddenly appearing stopped him in his tracks.

[Distrupt the Call (Unique, Limited): The Undead are gathering. As a Lord of the living, spearhead the efforts to impede their progress. Slay 10 000 undead within ten minutes. Reward: 10 Purification pills (0/10 000) NOTE: Failure to complete quest results in your location and status be shared with the Lords of Undeath for 7 days.]

“SHIT!” Zac roared with frustration as he took out his axe while balefully glaring at the zombie horde.