"Not bad, but the firepower's g against the mutants," he muttered. A handful of mutated zombies, more resilient than the rest, were emerging unscathed from the devastation. He dismissed it quickly—the spreaders were meant to thin the numbers, not handle specialized threats.

  Zack turned back to the Avalon. "Ego, is the jammer still active?"

  "Yes, sir. The jammer is funing perfectly. Zombies tio verge on its signal."Zaced down, watg the horde relentlessly approach. Many were ed by the inferno, their charred remains piling up, but more kept ing. Soon, the fire was smothered uheir sheer numbers.

  “Your move now, Ego,” Zack said, slowing his thrusters to nd baside the Avalon. As he ehe , Annie rushed over, her face lighting up with excitement.

  "Big brother! That was amazing! I use that too?" she asked, eyes sparkling.

  Zack chuckled and ruffled her hair. "Sprinklers need altitude to deploy. Tarantu ’t fly, so you’ll have to pass on this one."

  Annie pouted. "Oh… fiheir versation was cut short as the tide of zombies below grew even dehough the outer perimeter had thinned signifitly, the core horde pressed on.

  “Ego, prep the cloud bombs,” Zack ordered. The Avalon banked sharply, l its altitude for a precision dive. The roar of its engines drew the attention of tless zombies, their grotesque forms turning toward the sound.

  Among them was a mutant Zack had never seen before. Its body was ed, no longer human in shape. Crawling on all fours like a beast, it sported grotesque, frog-like eardrums on its that expanded and tracted as it breathed. "What the hell is that?" Zack muttered, narrowing his eyes.

  The mutant crouched low, its muscles coiled like springs. The eardrums on its ballooo an arming size, apanied by a sinister creaking sound, as if its very flesh was straining under pressure. Before Zack could react, the mutant opes mouth wide.

  Boom!

  A thunderous noise erupted as pressed air burst out, f visible shockwaves. The air bsts rocketed toward the Avalon with terrifying speed, creating ical vacuums in their wake. "Air ons?" Zack excimed in disbelief.

  “Warning! Hostile threat detected. Turbulence immi!” Ego’s voice cut through the chaos.

  The moment, the air ons struck the Avalon. The impacts rattled the , and Zack felt the vibrations under his feet. Annie grabbed onto a support bar, her eyes wide with arm. The Avalon shook violently but remained intact. Ego’s diagnostic report came through immediately. “Minimal damage detected. Paint scratches only.”

  Zack smirked, relief mixing with pride in the ship’s durability. “Not bad for a first enter with zombie artillery.”

  The Avalon quickly stabilized, its flight smoothing out. Zack peered down at the mutants, his mind rag. "When did zombies start developing le attacks?" he muttered grimly.

  The mutated zombies didn’t pose much of a threat, but their peculiar abilities were enough to make Zack stay on high alert. “Sir, we’re approag the optimal release point. Should we proceed with the bombing mission?” Ego’s calm, meical voice buzzed in Zack’s ears.

  “Proceed,” Zack replied decisively, his curiosity about the mutant zombies overridden by practicality.

  “Uood, Sir. Deploying cloud bombs now.” As the Avalon flew over the horde of zombies, the bomb bay doors beh the aircraft slid open. A massive 600-kilogram magic fluid cloud bomb dropped into the horde below, cutting through the air like a fallieor.

  The bomb deto a height of 100 meters with a thunderous explosion. Instantly, thousands of magic spheres, each the size of a marble, scattered into the air alongside a dense wave of dark e high-energy fuel. The magic spheres repelled each other, spreading the fuel into a fine mist that bed a ten-kilometer radius like an ominous e cloud.

  The zombies below tilted their heads, r and hissing at the Avalon. Their decayed brains couldn’t prehend the danger desding upohe e mist g to every surface, adhering to the zombies’ rotting flesh like a sed skin. It spread with eerie precision, ensuring not a single creature escaped its reach. Then, the iable happened. A stray ember from the remnants of buration below made tact with the high-energy fuel. A spark ignited, and within seds, an explosion ripped through the air.

  BOOM!

  A massive fireball erupted, shooting fmes high into the sky. The bst expanded outward, engulfing everything within ten kilometers in a r inferno. The explosion was so inte sucked all the oxygen out of the area, creating a vacuum. Zombies were ied on the spot, their bodies ed by fmes so hot they began to melt the grouh them.

  Those on the edges of the bst met equally horrifying fates. The sudden ge in air pressure caused their bloated bodies to expand violently. Eyeballs burst from their sockets, ans exploded from every orifice, and the surrounding terrain became a nightmare of blood and fire.

  For several seds, the air was filled with deafening explosions and the uing roar of the fmes. As the fireball began to die down, air rushed bato the vacuum, creating a fierce hurrie that scattered the ash and charred remains of zombies like powder. Bones and debris were swept into the bzier, feeding the dying fmes with dry powder that smothered the fire.

  When the fmes finally subsided, nothing reizable remaihe once-bustling area had been reduced to molten, gss-like earth. Rivers of magma slowly flowed over the scorched nd, where no signs of life—or death—were left. Ihe Avalon, silence reighe sheer scale of destru left Anne speechless.

  Zack swallowed hard, his eyes fixed on the hellscape below. “Unbelievable…” he muttered, his voice low and shaken. The power of the magic fluid cloud bomb had been described in the briefing, but seeing it in a was something else entirely. No amount of words or numbers could prepare someone for the reality of such devastating power.

  “I think I uand now…” Zack murmured, recalling a quote he had read once: Humankind has devoted unparalleled creativity to destru.

  Beside him, Anne was visibly shaken. “Brother… these ons…” Her voice trembled as she struggled to find the words. “You should keep them. I—I don’t want anything to do with this…”

  Zack sighed, snapping out of his daze. “Let’s go back.”

  “Okay,” Anne replied, eager to leave the horrific se behind.

  The Avalon arced gracefully in the sky, looping back toward the mansion. Zaced at the scorched earth below and murmured, “The meical beasts should be able to clear out the remaining zombies soon.”

  After waves of zombie hordes and the destru from Zack’s test, only a fra of the undead popution remaihe survivors were either severely damaged or straant species that avoided regur zombies altogether. “It won’t be long before the resources of this city are mine,” Zack muttered to himself. The thought of reg aire city sparked a flicker of ambition.

  As the Avalon soared toward its destination, Zack remained unaware that his as hadn’t gone unnoticed. Far above the Earth, three reaissaellites hovered in low orbit, their cameras capturing every sed of Zack’s o. Somewhere, powerful eyes were watg, and pns were being made.