Chapter 4: Volume One & Two: Chapter 4: Do You Want to Eat Me?

After watching Fuling for a while, Linglan turned and went to clean up the bodies.

She couldn’t help it. The heroine smelled so good… Not in a lustful way. More like food.

With such a beautiful girl lying helplessly in front of her, Linglan reached out and touched her face. Then she discovered, to her dismay, that she felt no desire at all.

After smoothing Fuling’s disheveled hair, Linglan crouched there, lost in thought.

If she couldn’t feel desire, what meaning did life have?

The novel had mentioned highly humanlike Mutants who possessed the full range of human emotions. If the story’s worldbuilding could be trusted…

There was a Mother Entity in an underground base on the outskirts of the city where the heroine lived. She was friendly to humans.

She identified as a mechanical arm. Originally, she had been a Spore Mother Entity under study. When she asked the research director what kind of creature he wanted her to become, he’d said he hoped she would be as sentimental as a human.

Later, after the director was transferred away, she began resisting every experiment. She pretended to be a remote-controlled mechanical arm. If she met someone she liked, she helped them; if she met someone she didn’t, she played pranks on them.

The Mother Entity had the ability to turn Mutants into humans. Unfortunately, the novel had glossed over every location and never explained how to get there.

Authors like that were the worst!

(｀ﾍ´)=3

I’ll find it eventually~

After wiping the blood and brain matter off the wall with a marauder’s clothes, Linglan stretched.

Early in the novel, the spore concentration in Xuzhou City was only high enough to produce D-Rank Mutants. Linglan guessed their combat ability would be about the same as hers.

And with Fuling, who could fight above her rank, the two of them could probably rule the city.

Linglan tossed the stripped bodies out the stairwell window, then lingered to watch.

The zombies devouring the bodies reminded her of a mukbang. She found herself watching with great interest.

“Senior, I’ve become an Awakened too~”

A pair of hands settled on Linglan’s shoulders. In a strangely intense, yandere-like voice, Fuling whispered into her ear.

That was fast!

Hadn’t the heroine been unconscious for four or five hours before waking up?

Linglan turned around expressionlessly. Seeing that Fuling wanted to look at the scene below, she slid one foot to block her.

The next instant, Linglan was standing behind the door. Fuling had her face flushed and was panting as she pulled herself back from the window.

That Time Acceleration is terrifying!

Fuling narrowed her eyes and smiled slowly, like an adult looking at a naughty child.

“Were you thinking about eating someone?”

Linglan shook her head.

“You really didn’t eat any of those bodies while you were tossing them out? You seem to be looking a little better, Senior~”

Fuling’s voice grew more and more dreamy. She had evolved to E-Rank and was already low on energy. After using her ability, she was now exhausted.

Linglan hurriedly pulled the Essence Extract over with her power, then went to Fuling and held her. Fuling drank the liquid offered to her without the slightest hesitation.

Her complexion quickly improved, though she was still flushed and breathing hard. Her unfocused eyes stayed fixed on Linglan.

“You can’t… eat people, Senior. Then you’ll be a bad zombie. Mm…” She swallowed, letting out a soft, absentminded moan. Her hand reached out to stroke Linglan’s face. “If you’re hungry, you can eat me~”

Linglan: Woman, you’re playing with fire.

It was a scene of such breathtaking allure, yet to Linglan it was like a mouthwatering meal reaching out to beckon her. She felt nothing but the physical urge to eat.

“Huh?”

Fuling didn’t understand why Linglan suddenly lowered her head in dejection. Linglan let her go and turned away.

The girl stood frozen for a long moment before realizing just how outrageous her words had been. Her blush returned, spreading until even her ears turned bright red. A string of steam-engine squeals escaped her.

What kind of weird thing did I just say to the senior I respect most?!

She’s going to hate me…

Fuling slapped her own face. She thought of a sure way to cheer Senior up!

With that in mind, she hurried upstairs without a thought for her exhausted body, which desperately needed rest.

Linglan had no idea what sort of mental struggle the heroine had gone through. She was simply mourning the changes in her own mind.

She hadn’t expected to adjust to zombie life so quickly. She’d even become engrossed in such a horrifying scene.

Now, when she thought about it, all it stirred in her was hunger and the urge to destroy.

Was that the price of becoming stronger, Dio?

Linglan dropped onto the sofa and rested her chin in her hand, miserable.

Come to think of it… Had she stolen the novel’s male lead’s wife?

No, Fuling had liked Linglan from the start. What did that make this?

As Linglan’s thoughts wandered, the sound of flapping wings and a rooster’s crow reached her ears. A short while later, Fuling came running into the room, holding a rooster and looking radiant.

“Look! To celebrate Senior’s resurrection, how about we have a big, big feast?”

The young woman smiled, bright-eyed and lovely. She was like a ray of sunlight, shining into Linglan’s heart.

For a moment, Linglan felt a warmth she hadn’t felt in a long time… as if this world were where she belonged.

The heart that had fallen silent in the apocalypse seemed to beat again. Linglan’s head stiffly bobbed up and down.

“Ehehe~ Senior’s still so aloof.”

Humming a song, Fuling skipped into the kitchen. The knife fell, the rooster went “Bawk!” and then its head came off.

Her adorable face peeked out from behind the door. “I’ll take care of everything. Senior, get some rest~”

Linglan felt warm inside, though her face stayed cold. With nothing better to do, she wandered around Fuling’s shelter.

According to the timeline, Fuling had been an Awakened for a year when she met the male lead. Before then, she’d survived on her own for nearly three years. Red Sun Base had fallen early in the second year of the apocalypse.

That meant it was probably now four years after the apocalypse began.

Linglan was considerate. She wouldn’t open someone else’s drawers and snoop through their private things. She’d only give the outside a little rub. (Proud face.)

She ran a hand over the weapons cabinet and felt a layer of dust on the handle. After a pause, she turned to the knives and crossbows casually scattered on the low table in front of the sofa. Then she hurried to the intestines on the drying rack.

They were completely dried out and hard, useless for making cord.

The hides had gone bad too. A box of food was full of rotten provisions, maggots crawling and writhing through them.

The sofa was the only clean spot in the entire living room. Everywhere else was… as though no one lived there and the place had been abandoned for ages.

Up close, the whole room was covered in dust, grease, and dried bloodstains. The area behind and beneath the furniture was especially filthy.

The living room looked neat and orderly at first glance, but beneath the surface it was saturated with desolation. Linglan could tell Fuling had put a great deal of effort into collecting the tools and supplies, only to leave everything lying around once she was done.

Had she set herself all these tasks just to keep from breaking down in the loneliness of her life?

Linglan thought of the overenthusiastic expressions Fuling had shown her and felt a pang of sadness.

Poor girl.

She couldn’t imagine how Fuling had endured all that despair, then managed to smile at her so openly.

Her senior had been her final obsession.

Linglan sighed inwardly. Then she saw wisps of black smoke drifting out of the kitchen.

Only now did she remember one of Fuling’s defining traits—

Her cooking skills were on the level of a single-celled organism.