Glancing up at the darkening sky, and then at the countdown on the screen, the Umbrella Corporation's field commander knew the time had come. The residents infected with the T-virus would begin turning into zombies at any moment.
He turned to his assistant and said calmly, "Initiate the plan."
"Yes, sir."
With that, the assistant pressed a button.
Far across the city, in one of Raccoon City's buildings, the story's protagonist—Alice—suddenly opened her eyes.
"...Hiss…"
A sharp pain coursed through her entire body, forcing her to draw in a breath.
It felt like she'd just been beaten half to death.
After taking a few seconds to recover, she began surveying her surroundings.
She found herself lying on a surgical table. Discarded medical tools were strewn carelessly across the room, and several syringes and IV tubes were still embedded in her arms and torso.
Trying to recall how she got there, her mind came up blank.
'Who am I? Where am I? What happened?'
Those three questions echoed in Alice's thoughts.
She couldn't remember a thing—not how she ended up here, not even her own name.
Still, something about the disarray in the room stirred a deep, instinctual sense of danger within her.
She knew one thing: she had to get out.
Biting back the pain, she yanked out the IVs, staggered to her feet, and made her way out of the room, limping down the empty corridors toward the exit.
---
Gunshots, sirens, screams, crying, and frantic yelling rang out across the city.
Hearing it all, Li Wei rose from his chair, his expression serious.
"Alright, everyone. It's time. Let's move."
He looked around at the team and added, "Remember—you've all already died once. This life? It's a bonus round. So when things get crazy out there, don't panic. Don't waste your second chance."
Then, he pushed open the door to lead by example.
And promptly came face-to-face with the motel owner… who was hunched over a corpse, gnawing on it like a rabid dog.
Startled by the door opening, the zombie looked up, and their eyes locked in a very unsettling moment of eye contact.
The hallway went completely still.
'Of all the rotten luck… open the door and it's this bastard waiting for me...'
Though Li Wei was cursing up a storm in his head, he maintained a calm exterior—for the sake of his team.
From behind, Huang Liu and the others saw only his cool, composed face and couldn't help but raise their evaluation of him.
Without a word, Li Wei raised his machete and slashed with all his strength.
CRACK!
The sound of bone shattering echoed down the hall as the blade sank into the zombie's skull, knocking it to the ground.
But it didn't die. Like a squashed cockroach, its limbs flailed and twitched grotesquely on the floor.
Without hesitation, Li Wei gritted his teeth and struck again.
This time, he cleaved the creature's neck in one clean blow.
Only then did the writhing stop.
Gasping slightly for air, he realized that both swings had required his full strength.
'Damn it… I thought killing one of these things would be as easy as in the movies. Why was that so hard?'
He'd played all kinds of zombie games—Resident Evil, Left 4 Dead, Dying Light—you name it. In those, the zombies went down like butter.
But here?
This one took real effort.
Reassessing the threat level, he turned to the others and warned,
"Avoid close combat if you can. These things are tougher than they look. Even with a machete, I couldn't kill it in one hit. We'll need sledgehammers or fire axes for clean kills."
Huang Liu nodded in agreement.
"That's expected. The human skull is the hardest part of the body. Getting proper firearms should be our top priority.
Trying to bash through their skulls one by one isn't sustainable."
Draco nudged the corpse that had been eaten with the toe of his boot and inspected the injuries.
"The guy's ribs were bitten clean through. That zombie's bite force was at least a few times stronger than a normal human's…"
Before he could finish speaking, the corpse suddenly opened bloodshot eyes and reached up to grab his leg.
The virus had done its job.
Without flinching, Draco stepped forward, planted his boot between the zombie's shoulder blades, and crushed it face-down into the ground.
Then he calmly raised his hatchet and embedded it directly into the back of its skull.
With a twist, he scrambled the brain matter, then yanked the blade free and casually flicked the mess off onto a nearby wall.
He looked at the others and gave his analysis:
"I weigh about 162 pounds. This guy, from his frame, couldn't be more than 120.Under normal circumstances, he shouldn't have been able to lift me."
"But he did—easily."
"That means zombies are physically stronger than they were in life. If one of them gets you on the ground, chances are… you're not getting back up."
'Solid logic. Professional analysis. This guy's the real deal.'
Everyone felt more confident hearing Draco speak.
But they also felt an urgent hunger—for guns.
So they began clearing out the zombies in the area, making their way toward the nearby gun shop.
Thanks to Draco and Huang Liu leading the way, they reached their destination safely.
Once inside, they started picking out appropriate weapons under the soldiers' guidance, boosting their pitiful combat potential.
---
Meanwhile, in the supermarket...
Orsaga remained completely unbothered by the chaos outside.
Gunshots, screams, sirens—it all sounded like background noise to him. Nothing more than a light drizzle.
He was still immersed in his "project."
His original plan was to build a makeshift nuke, then preempt Umbrella by nuking Raccoon City himself.
That way, he could complete a number of side objectives:
Side Mission 3: Wipe out Umbrella's forces in Raccoon City – 5,500 points
Side Mission 4: Prevent the Umbrella Corporation from using their own nuke – 12,500 points
Side Mission 7: Kill 100 standard zombies – 1,000 points
Side Mission 8: Kill 5 Lickers – 1,000 points
…And so on.
It would've been a neat bundle of profit.
But after crunching the numbers, he realized the raw materials for a bomb of that scale would take at least two full days to extract under current conditions.
So he changed tactics.
He'd play to his real strength: viruses.
After all, from what he remembered, the T-virus in this world was bottom-tier garbage.
Even back when he was just a fragile Lesser Demon, he hadn't bothered with such low-efficiency methods.
Sure, some mutations were halfway decent. But most of the infected were just limp-legged zombies, slower than retirees on crutches.
Even average civilians could take them out with a pipe.
It was an embarrassment to virology.
So, as a matter of professional pride, he decided:
He'd help them upgrade.
At the very least, he couldn't let the world think bioweapons were such a joke.
__
T/N:
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