Using [Life Fabricator] to reverse a zombie infection was a huge task. Until now, on organic beings, Logan had used brute force tactics. From the bark ants to the tree vine at Hope’s End. Hell, even the mutated tree that he’d grown out of Thorin’s chest. He’d managed to age someone in Pied’s Kingdom, but he hadn’t been concerned with safety; he’d been experimenting. Whether the man had lived or died would have suited his purposes either way.

  It had never been a delicate operation.

  To reverse engineer a zombie infection, he had to do it in a way that would leave Tasha and Jack intact. It was one thing to get rid of the fungi hair and the flower tentacle tongues, but how did he fix whatever was going on inside of them? One degree too far one way could mean that instead of reverting them, he’d hatch something worse than a zombie. Worse than a zombie was difficult to contemplate, but by now, he knew that he’d barely scratched the surface of what was possible.

  At the same time, if he did nothing, Tasha and Jack were dead anyway. There was no way he could leave them in their current state; the risk was too great to Lara, the kids, and the others. Either he did this, or he might as well kill them now.

  So. Go big or go home?

  Down in the pit, Zombie Jack was shooting his flower tentacle tongue like a lizard to latch onto clumps of dirt and roots, using it as a foothold to scale the sides. On the other hand, Zombie Tasha continued to stand and stare, the pupils of her flower eyes writhing like worms. Her head was tilted, as if she were listening to something only she could hear.

  Logan didn’t know what type of connection these things had to the serpent queen, but he didn’t like the possibilities. The last time he’d encountered the queen, he’d managed to crush her young in her lair and enrage her beyond all sense. He doubted that she’d forgotten.

  That thing wanted to kill him like Logan wanted a beer.

  That meant that if these zombies could transmit images, a vision of Logan would be tempting. Still, although the serpent queen’s level had been too high, so high that [Idiot’s Inspect] had shown a bunch of question marks, was it possible that he’d advanced enough he could challenge her and come out on top?

  Logan blew out a breath. Whether he could or not was irrelevant. Not now. He had way too many things on his to-do list; the first of which was completing the Build an Empire quest.

  [Quest: Build an Empire! Craft ten lodestone access points and sell 100 items within 48 hours.]

  [Reward for completing the Quest: Lord status. Lord status will allow you to declare yourself the lord of your community, receive pledges of loyalty, and Karma tax.]

  [Penalty for not completing the Quest: All future KarmaCoin earnings will be reduced by fifty percent. In perpetuity.]

  [Quest Progress: 7% complete. 33 hours remaining.]

  He still had over a day remaining, but he was only 7 percent complete. Although a day seemed like a ton of time, to succeed, he’d have to find nine other locations for his remaining lodestones. Nine other locations close to high population densities. It wasn’t enough to craft the lodestone; he had to spread the word so enough people would buy items. To do that, he needed time.

  On top of that, once he secured the cabin, he needed to transport Lara, the kids, and the others here, but first, he’d have to make sure it was secure. Logan didn’t know what had happened to Tasha and Jack or how they’d been infected, but he suspected it had to do with the diseased green beans. Logan needed to help Tasha and Jack and get rid of the plant.

  His tension was ratchetting, his muscles tensing as he swallowed. For a second, he seriously contemplated saying the hell with it and finishing Jack and Tasha here and now, but just the thought of it made his stomach slosh.

  Logan had changed a lot since the System Integration, had become a hardened man, but he’d like to think that he had limits. If he killed Tasha and Jack without at least trying to save them, his morality would become too far skewed to the left. Worse yet, it was insidious. A slippery slope. If he kept making compromises for expedient’s sake, the next time, he might take another short cut, then another, then another, until he chipped away at his morality and became unrecognizable.

  No, he needed to do this.

  Peering into the pit, he pinched his nose. Zombie Jack had managed to scale the hole. He dug into the surface with his green-tined fingernails, his flower tentacle tongue snapping at Logan, his white pupiled eyes glinting playfully.

  With a hiss, Logan used his foot to press against Jack’s chest and push him back into the pit. His flower tentacle flashed like a whip and tried to grab hold of Logan’s foot, but Logan just sneered and tore it away. At this point, fighting a level 20 undead minion was like swatting a fly.

  Backing up so he gave himself enough space, he closed his eyes. He suspected that he would get nowhere by watching them as he tried to do this, too worried that he’d inadvertently screw up and hurt them.

  Instead, he used [Life Fabricator] to sense their auras, concentrating on Tasha to start. Her aura radiated life, the same life that any other person did, which was confusing. How could a zombie ping as a person? But then he realized that although a normal aura radiated bright life, this one was tinged with the same dark spots he’d sensed in the green bean plant. It was as if the majority of Tasha was still that—Tasha, but the infection had interwoven into her body until she became other—became rot.

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  But how could he exorcise rot when it had seeped into her entire body? It was like trying to remove mold on the outside of an apple, when all along, the core was rotten.

  Logan opened his eyes and then paced as he ran a hand through his hair, tugging on the ends in frustration and kicking a green bean shoot for good measure. All his success with [Life Fabricator] had come down to visualization. From breaking through that first barrier by envisioning a brick wall, to crafting his armour by envisioning a patchwork quilt. If he thought of Tasha not as a zombie, and not as a person, but as a being represented by an image, would that work?

  There was only one way to find out.

  Rot. Fungi. Mold.

  Tasha was infected with fungi; the spores in the green bean plant had managed to leach into her cells. The fungi hair and the flower tentacle tongue were symptoms of the underlying infection. If he managed to purge that infection, it would follow that she would no longer be a zombie.

  And although Logan had never done anything like that before, he knew how to communicate with mold. He’d done it in the agility trial when he’d forced the mold inside of the tiger to multiply and explode until it overwhelmed the System construct. If he could nudge mold along and encourage it to replicate, couldn’t he do the opposite? Not make it dormant or go to sleep, but what if he encouraged it to find another host? A host other than Tasha and Jack?

  That way, he wouldn’t brute force Tasha and Jack out of their zombie state, which would backfire anyway. Instead, it would be as if Logan were operating on them and cutting out cancer.

  Concentrating on the dark ping in Tasha’s aura that represented the infection, Logan said, that doesn’t look like a very comfortable host.

  He received a sense of startlement back, but that was all. As if he’d nudged it, but it wasn’t yet able to communicate. Or unwilling.

  That host is wrong, Logan said. Fungi want to multiply, fungi want to breed. Don’t you want to spread, don’t you want to be happy?

  …WE ARE HAPPY.

  Logan gasped, a stab of pain radiating from behind his nose. It was like straining your hearing, expecting a whisper and instead being blasted with a megaphone.

  You can’t be satisfied in such a small body, Logan sent, limited, unable to spread. Don’t you want to sate your appetite? Don’t you want to gorge?

  WE ARE SATISFIED.

  WE HAVE FULFILLED OUR PURPOSE.

  Fuck, that was one obstinate fungus. But if Logan knew anything, it was that fungi and mold wanted to replicate and spread if it could. In fact, wasn’t the purpose of a zombie to spread its infection to others? One touch of that flower tentacle tongue back at the resort could transform a regular person into a gestating minion.

  Logan only had to get the fungi to realize that it could think big picture and continue to spread, but not within Tasha. Within something else.

  It was time to use less suggestion, and more command.

  You’re not happy, Logan sent. You’ve never been happy. You haven’t fulfilled your purpose.

  WE ARE HAPPY.

  This time instead of a megaphone it might as well be a blast of noise. Logan got the sense that he’d angered it. Worse yet, whatever it was doing was seriously messing with his head. [Idiot’s Paradox] did a lot to blunt his pain, but it did nothing for mental strain.

  Logan was dealing with a constitution attribute that was way too low. It made him vulnerable to mental attacks. He wouldn’t think that mold would cause that, but whatever was happening was doing a number.

  Grinding his teeth, Logan sent back with all his mental fortitude, putting conviction in his voice. Command. YOU ARE UNHAPPY.

  ….

  …

  YOU ARE UNHAPPY, he sent again.

  …We are?

  A trickling of excitement made him straighten, eager. This time, there was no nudging this thing along. The fungi needed commands to make it do what he wanted.

  YOU ARE UNHAPPY, he said again, blasting it with everything he had. Then he gasped as his airways suddenly tightened. No, no, no!

  Karma deprivation:

  50/3,600.

  60/3,600.

  40/3,600.

  It was fluctuating up and down and his Karma regeneration rate was struggling to keep up. He must be using a massive amount of Karma to deplete his pool that quickly.

  Hissing in a breath, Logan collapsed his armour and let the sand and diamond dust rain to the ground. There was no way he could pause to let his Karma replenish, since he suspected that if he did, he would lose all his progress and be back to square one.

  But how was it possible that it was taking this much Karma? It had to be because it was a command rather than a suggestion. Logan was trying to override the fungi’s will and force it to believe something that went against its nature. It was happy inside of its host and it wanted to stay inside of Tasha.

  To keep this up, he needed more Karma.

  That meant [Liche Devourer]. But other than Tasha and Jack, there wasn’t anything around them. Far off in the distance, he could sense fish within the lake, but they were too far away and scattered. Within the tree line, he could sense a rabid squirrel hiding within the foliage, but again, one squirrel wouldn’t be enough. If he were draining 3600 Karma just from a command, that meant he would need a massive amount.

  But there was nothing around other than the green bean plant.

  Huh.

  Normally, Logan would say that a plant wouldn’t have Karma. That trying to drain it would be like trying to get water from a stone, but this wasn’t a regular plant. The fungi had spread from the lake to the plant, infecting it and turning it into something alive. After all, he’d tried to throw it inside of his spatial collar, and he’d received an error message. It was alive, it was likely sentient, and it was the size of ten baseball fields.

  If he needed Karma, it was right in front of him.

  Clenching his fist, Logan deployed [Liche Devourer], envisioning a straw connecting from the green bean plant to his own chest, sucking in Karma and filling his empty pool. Unlike last time, activating the skill was easy, like riding a bicycle. With a gasp, he could tell it had an immediate effect. His airways loosened, and he straightened, feeling like he’d gotten a boost of adrenaline. Instead, it was a massive power surge—a surge of Karma.

  With that surge, Logan felt empowered to make his command more firm, more forceful.

  YOUR HOST IS ROTTING FROM THE INSIDE. YOU’RE DISEASED. YOU’RE DYING. YOU’RE UNHAPPY.

  Ding!

  [You have fed the blackhole! Liche Devourer at 3% satiation.]

  Logan felt a sense of alarm from the fungi, of panic. We are unhappy. We are unhappy. We are unhappy.

  Logan scrunched his nose as he looked down at Zombie Tasha and gazed into her eyes. LEAVE.

  We will leave. We will leave. We will leave.

  As Logan watched, something crept out of Tasha, a black pool tinged with brown that trailed down her legs like an oil spill, travelling to the ground and then climbing out of the pit. One by one, the fungi on top of her head began to wither like a weed inside of a heatwave. The gold thread that was interwoven into her skin faded, becoming black sludge. The flower petals that had overtaken her eyes withered and dropped to the ground like shriveling tissue paper.

  She gasped, her flower tentacle tongue swaying like a cat’s tail, slapping her face as if it had been injected with steroids. And then it went limp, turning gray, then black. That blackness dissolved into more sludge, trailing down her chin as if she’d swallowed a mouthful of soy sauce.

  Swaying, she gripped the side of the pit, blinking with eyes that looked milky white and pale.

  “Tasha…?” said Logan.