Because no update yesterday i made this chapter a bit longer
The moment Lucky collapsed back in Magnolia, his vision fading into exhaustion, the world on the other side of the gate snapped into focus.
The moment the Gates slammed shut behind them, the world went still.No breeze. No distant city hum. No life.
The air here was thick and foul like breathing through a wet cloth soaked in rust and rot. Every inhale scraped the throat, leaving a metallic aftertaste that clung to the tongue.
One thousand clones stood on the rooftop of a crumbling skyscraper, the windless air pressing against their skin like a damp shroud. It wasn't just quiet it was empty. The silence wasn't peaceful. It was the silence of a world that had stopped breathing
Beneath their feet, the skyscraper's rooftop groaned under the weight of one thousand clones. From up here, the city below stretched into a dead labyrinth streets choked with wreckage, overturned cars piled into barricades, collapsed overpasses lying like broken bones. Twisted hulks of subway trains were welded into buildings as if some giant hand had slammed them into place.
They had arrived.
And they didn't waste a second.
Without a word, the clones moved.In an orderly but disoriented fashion, they began filing toward the stairwell. The plan was simple descend, regroup in the streets, and divide into smaller formations for scouting and clearing. The silence was deliberate; in a place like this, noise was bait.
One of the lead clones, a tall figure with his weapon resting on his shoulder, glanced at the other randomly selected leaders."Status check."
Another leader smacked him lightly across the back of the head. "What status? We just arrived."
The first grinned. "Always wanted to say that."
Several nearby clones gave him side glances that said not the time.
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Halfway down the skyscraper, movement caught their eyes.
In the street below, something shifted under a mound of rubble. A pale, bloated hand clawed free fingers black at the tips. Another hand followed. Then the rest of it emerged, tall and emaciated, skin stretched tight over bone, veins bulging purple like roots under dry soil. Its jaw hung slack, unhinged, emitting a wet, gurgling moan.
"Zombie," one clone muttered.
"Don't worry it's just a zombie," another replied.
From a higher floor, a clone's voice cut in. "Wait… look at its spine."
They all turned.
Where its vertebrae should have been, a thick, pulsating tendril sprouted from the base of its skull, writhing like a blind serpent. It split into smaller filaments, each twitching in the air as if tasting the world.
The tendril lashed out without warning.
It struck a lamppost. The metal blackened instantly, crumbling into dust.
"Acid secretion," one of them hissed.
The hiss must have carried, because the zombie froze… then turned its glowing eyes toward the building. For five long seconds, nothing moved. Then it roared so loud the sound seemed to rattle the glass in the skyscraper.
The ground trembled.
"Acid secretion," the clones hissed in unison.
The moment the word left their mouths, the creature stopped.
Its head snapped up.
Sunken, milky eyes locked onto the Building.
Silence.
Then ROAR.
It wasn't just loud. It was wrong. A guttural, inhuman scream that tore through the air like a physical force, shaking dust from the ruins. It lasted five seconds long enough to make their ears ring, their bones vibrate.
And then… nothing.
No more sound.
No more movement.
But the ground shook.
Not an earthquake something deeper. A slow, rhythmic thrum, like a heartbeat beneath the earth.
The clones exchanged glances.
"Okay," one said, rubbing his neck. "That's new."
From the streets, rooftops, and alleys, shapes began to move.They came in waves fast, purposeful.
Some had four arms, each wielding jagged metal scraps like weapons. Others had their legs fused into a single massive limb, leaping like monstrous frogs. A few bore two heads one staring forward, the other twitching as it scanned the air like a sensor. Others crawled on all fours, their limbs too long, fingers fused into claws. Some had multiple heads fused at the neck, mouths opening and closing in silent screams. One abomination dragged itself forward on a split spine, tendrils ending in toothless maws that dripped black fluid.
"Mutation levels are off the charts," a clone muttered.
"Could be an extreme mutation virus," another said. Several nodded.
"We should have used [AIR – MUFFLE] to hide our steps, [LIGHT – BEND] to bend visibility, [WIND – DISTORT] to blur our presence," one grumbled.
"What's done is done," a leader replied. "They're zombies. We spam and burn them down."
But then, the entire horde stopped.
That was worse.
The sudden stillness sent a ripple of unease through the ranks. Zombies didn't stop unless something made them. Something intelligent.
"Get ready!" the leader of Group One barked.
A distant roar rolled through the streets. The zombies convulsed… then surged forward, faster than before.
"As trained First Plan!"
[FIRE – Area Effect]
A clone unleashed Solid Script: FIRE. The flaming letters slammed into the first zombie, and on contact, they exploded outward igniting a three-meter radius. The creature's flesh went up like dry paper.
That was one spell.
And then 999 clones still stood ready.
Confidence surged.
They weren't just fighting. They were dominating.
"Overwhelm them now!" the leader shouted. "Watch for ranged attacks!"
The battlefield erupted.
[FIRE – SPIKE] spears of flame impaled a leaping mutant mid-air.
[LIGHTNING – CHAIN] crackled through a cluster, frying them where they stood.
[STONE – WALL] rose like a fortress, blocking a wave of acid spit.
The mutated zombies fell.
One by one.
Then in piles.
No casualties. Not yet.
Then splash. Acid arced toward the formation.
The clones only smiled. After the Thunderbird incident, Lucky had made sure his clones always guarded against surprise attacks. Shields of Solid Script: IRON flared into existence, catching the spray.
More spells rained down. Within minutes, the street was littered with twitching corpses.
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The clones exhaled, surveying the battlefield. Dozens of blackened, twitching corpses littered the ground. Cards scattered like leaves dozens of them, glowing faintly.
"Collect the drops," the leader ordered.
They moved quickly, gathering every card, every usable item. When the count was done, the lead clone whistled.
"Ten thousand zombies. Wiped out in under ten minutes."
"Insane," another muttered. "We're basically farming XP and OL like this is a Farm."
"How's mana?" Group One's leader asked.
"No issue. Universal Core's keeping us topped off."
"Good."
They smiled but no one smiled for long.
They looked around.
The city was dead. Not just ruined defeated. Skyscrapers stood like tombstones. No birds. No wind. No life.
"How did this world fall?" one clone asked. "Look at these buildings. This was an advanced civilization. Even without magic, an army could've held back zombies… right?"
"Unless the army became the zombies," another said.
"Or unless the zombies weren't the real threat."
They pressed on.
Hours passed.
They split into teams, each taking a sector of the city. Maps were found in a ruined subway station hand-drawn, desperate, marked with red zones and warnings. Every clone Leader got one.
"You know the rules," one said. "Split. Scout. Regroup if the signal's called."
Farewells were brief but genuine. The thousand broke into smaller groups, some traveling together before parting ways.
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But as one team reached the city's edge, they found something wrong.
The ruined streets gave way to a vast, dead forest twisted trees standing like petrified sentinels, their bark blackened, branches clawing at the ashen sky like skeletal fingers. The air grew heavier with every step, thick with the stench of decay and something older something that made their skin crawl not from fear, but from instinctual revulsion, as if their bodies recognized a predator long buried in genetic memory.
Then, through the skeletal trees, they saw it.
Not a structure.
Not a ruin.
A mountain.
But it wasn't made of stone.
It breathed.
It stood taller than any skyscraper, wider than a city block, rising from the cracked earth like a blasphemy against nature. Its surface wasn't rock or soil it was flesh. Pulsating, necrotic flesh, stretched taut over a frame of fused bone and writhing muscle. Veins the size of subway tunnels throbbed beneath its grayish, ulcerated skin, pumping a sluggish, dark fluid that oozed from fissures in its side, pooling into rivers of black sludge that hissed as they ate into the ground.
The shape was humanoid barely. A colossal torso. Two massive arms, each longer than a football field, lay half-buried in the earth, fingers curled like broken pillars. A head if it could be called that sat atop the mountainous body, tilted at a broken angle. No eyes. Just hollow sockets weeping thick, tar-like fluid. Its jaw hung open in a silent scream, a cavernous maw lined with rows of jagged, yellowed teeth the size of cars. From deep within that throat, a low, rhythmic groan echoed not a sound, but a vibration that rattled their bones, shook dust from their cloth, and made their mana waver in their cores.
Holding the Monocular that they aquired from lucky draw they A terrifying scene from the huge creature back
And from its back, things grew.
Not spines. Not growths.
Zombies.
Hundreds of them thousands sprouting like tumors from the creature's back, half-fused with its flesh, arms twitching, mouths opening and closing in silent hunger. Some were fresh, still wearing tattered clothes. Others were skeletal, their bones grafted into the monster's tissue like living armor. And all of them faced outward, as if guarding it.
Guarding it Was huge mutant Zombie that were huge in size.
It seemed it is producing 1,000 Zombies every 10 second from what the clones could see
"Is that... a zombie?" one clone whispered, voice cracking.
"No," the leader breathed. "That's not a zombie."
He took a step back.
"That's the source."
Then one clones who seemed to have a screw lose "Unlimted Spawn"
They all stared at him "...."
but Looking at this
The air changed.
Not just pressure reality.
The light dimmed. Not from clouds, but as if the world itself was being drained. Their mana normally stable, it began to leak. Not fast. Just a slow, steady drip, like blood from a wound they couldn't see but they absorbed it Back using the cultivation technique
"Life drain?" one clone gasped.
They Felt it becuase they were Clones and They were made of mana so they felt thier life are Seeping away not the mana from the universal core
"Impossible," another muttered. "We're not even close to it!"
But the numbers didn't lie by them losing mana.
And then movement.
From deep within the mountain's chest, something shifted. A massive, pulsing organ swelled beneath the skin, glowing a sickly green. It wasn't a heart.
It was more like a core.
And it saw them.
The clones didn't scream. They didn't panic.
They knew.
This wasn't a monster.
This was the Spawn point.
And it was still alive.
"Plan Four," the leader ordered, voice tight.
A clone stepped forward.
And dissolved into mist, vanishing in a flash of smoke. The emergency signal had been sent. Every other clone in this world would feel it a jolt in their mind, a vision of the flesh-mountain, a single, undeniable truth:
We will Need more Clones.
Like a Lot more Clones.
The rest of the team didn't wait.
They turned and ran, shadows flickering as they activated [WIND – DISTORT], vanishing into the dead forest.
Twenty minutes later, the horizon darkened.
Not with clouds.
With clones.
A thousand figures emerged from the ruins, drawn by the signal, their expressions shifting from confusion to dread as they saw the truth of this world.
They stood in silence.
No jokes. No plans. but confidence.
Just staring at the thing that had killed a civilization.
"Maybe this world's destruction wasn't the zombies," one finally said, voice hollow.
Another stared at the mountain of flesh, at the zombies growing from its back like cursed fruit.
"Maybe," he whispered, "the zombies are just the A part."
And deep beneath the mountain, in the hollow of its broken jaw, something laughed not with sound, but they Felt it.