Sickly Girl Doesn’t Die in Zombie Simulator 188

Chapter 188: A Hive Network?

After leaving those puzzling words, the man watched as a black tentacle with dense holes extended towards him.

With a buzzing and pulsating sound, a drop-shaped golden insect curled into a ball and landed on the man.

“Shing—”

The moment the insect landed on the man’s neck, it unfurled its body. Its three pairs of legs transformed into sharp bone spurs, piercing directly into the man’s throat, instantly becoming one with his neck.

If you didn’t look closely, you would think the lump was just a tumor.

“Ugh… uh…”

The man collapsed on the ground, face down, his legs trembling uncontrollably. He let the stinging pain in his neck spread, but didn’t dare to resist.

Just one attack had completely crippled the entire team. Resist? What a joke.

The other party didn’t seem to want to start a massacre. He definitely had to lie down obediently and wait for the other party to finish their business. Wouldn’t moving be courting death?

These weren’t skills he learned after the apocalypse. He had been taught this method long before.

Before being stopped by the police, it was best to undress faster than them, open the car door, and lie down on the ground. He was more familiar with this procedure than anyone else.

When someone patted his shoulder, the sweat-drenched man flinched as if startled, raised his head, and begged for mercy.

But the two strange girls had already disappeared. Standing before him was his partner, a middle-aged man with thinning hair.

“Get up, Franklin, they’re gone… What did they say to you?”

Fear was evident in the man’s eyes, but they didn’t seem to notice anything unusual about Franklin’s neck.

Franklin reached up and touched his neck. The lump was still there, proof that what he had just experienced wasn’t a hallucination.

“Franklin? What’s wrong, Franklin?”

His partner’s call finally brought Franklin back to his senses.

He clutched the lump on his neck with his left hand, propped himself up with his elbow, and reached out with his right hand to grasp his partner’s, letting him pull him to his feet.

“Nothing… they told me to deliver a message to the Hand of Freedom… After that, I don’t know what happened.” Franklin shook his head, withdrew his hand, and looked at his slightly pale palm.

Although his skin was still dark, his lips were definitely pale.

He looked around, and in the dim light of the car’s headlights, he saw almost everyone staring at him.

Franklin was the only one who had spoken to them and lived. The others, having narrowly escaped death, could only learn what happened through him.

Franklin glanced towards the bus. Behind it lay a corpse riddled with holes, its skull, stripped bare of flesh, also covered in densely packed, disgusting holes. Its hands were clasped to its face in a pose of silent screams.

“Ugh…”

Franklin dry heaved, grateful he hadn’t died such a gruesome death.

Although there was now something unknown on his neck, at least he was alive.

“Carry his body onto the bus. We’re returning to the Hand of Freedom, full speed, now.”

As the only remaining C-rank in the convoy, he raised his right hand and began to quickly organize the remaining personnel.

Strangely, the rest of the convoy was practically unharmed in the encounter, only suffering a few minor puncture wounds. Only Peter, with his green hair, had been brutally killed.

It seemed those two girls were indeed connected to that giant monster…

He had to get back quickly and report this to the higher-ups of the Hand of Freedom. The difficulty of this mission far exceeded what they could handle; it was a misrepresentation of the danger level.

And… he had to go back and relay what had just happened, and the barefoot girl’s message, to the Hand of Freedom’s leadership.

Because something had been planted on his neck.

He didn’t doubt its lethality. He was certain it was a means of surveillance.

If he didn’t follow the terrifying girl’s instructions, he would definitely end up a corpse at least as gruesome as Peter’s.

Franklin began to gather his team to return to LA.

Meanwhile, Lin Jiayao, having made contact with the Hand of Freedom and avenged Huayibai, sat on Huayibai’s mycelium stool, looking down at her hands.

They were slender and pale, the kind of hands that would make anyone think their owner was weak and frail.

In fact, Lin Jiayao felt the same way.

After logging into the evolved Goldie, she immediately felt something was off, a sense of extreme dissonance.

The familiar tentacles were gone, replaced by small, thin legs, almost the same as before her C-rank evolution.

Perhaps because they were so pale, they didn’t even look as strong as Huayibai’s legs—at least Huayibai’s legs were a normal flesh color, with some muscle definition.

Not to mention her limbs, even the eyes she relied on for combat at C-rank had reverted to normal human eyes.

Lin Jiayao had originally thought that Goldie’s evolution mainly focused on her eyes.

But soon, after moving Goldie’s body a little, Lin Jiayao gradually began to sense the power and abilities of this body…

This outer layer of little girl skin was really just skin.

It felt like a soft monster had been stuffed into a human-shaped leather suit. This outer layer of skin, including the hair, was just decoration.

As long as Lin Jiayao wanted, she could discard this useless shell at any time, revealing Goldie’s true form, and she wouldn’t need to wear the mycelium windbreaker made by Huayibai.

However, this outer skin wouldn’t restrict any of Goldie’s abilities, and she could remove it at any time. It even provided some defense and high regeneration capabilities.

Having a skin suit was also convenient for movement, so she wouldn’t be immediately recognized as a zombie upon encountering humans, leading to a life-or-death struggle.

Perhaps because she had never devoured brains after controlling Goldie’s evolution into a Hive Zombie, this ability had completely disappeared after this evolution, replaced by a stronger mental enhancement ability.

She didn’t know if this was Goldie’s instinctive choice or the system’s intervention.

Now, Goldie not only had a significantly increased number of controlled flying insects, but their strength had also increased by several levels, and they could even switch between different forms at will.

If she only focused on the other insects, Lin Jiayao was like controlling tens of thousands of Digas that could transform at any time. (TN: Referring to Ultraman Tiga)

And now, Goldie’s method of acquiring mental power was also unique. It had changed from “devouring” to “parasitism.”

She could control the flying insects to enter the blood vessels of humans or zombies undetected, releasing a neurotoxin while infiltrating the brain, and finally parasitizing it.

This parasitism wouldn’t kill the host, and would even enhance their mental power, making them think faster, only making them more prone to drowsiness…

And with each brain parasitized, Goldie’s mental power would increase accordingly, and even her intelligence would slightly improve.

This was equivalent to borrowing the brains of countless humans and zombies to assist Goldie in mind control and calculations.

It was like the mining malware from before the apocalypse.

This malware wouldn’t immediately damage your computer, and would even try its best to avoid detection, lurking on your hard drive, secretly overclocking your computer’s performance, and then using it to mine.

Goldie’s ability was similar to this malware.

Of course, in extreme situations, Goldie could even choose to directly overload the brains of all parasitized hosts, ultimately killing them from fever and shock caused by the overload.

In a sense, Goldie’s current form was more in line with the concept of a “Hive Zombie.” It was just a pity that these insects parasitizing brains couldn’t control the host, only slightly influence their emotions.

If she could directly control and transmit commands, it would be like the vascular network, realizing a more powerful “hive network,” with millions of zombies and humans sharing a super brain for thinking.

Although it was impossible now, if she could evolve to the peak, reaching A-rank…

Creating a hive network might not be impossible.

But these were not things Lin Jiayao needed to worry about now. After testing Goldie’s specific abilities, she had to start preparing for extraction.

She desperately needed Goldie’s parasitic flying insect ability now. This might be the way for her to quickly increase her mental power in a short time.

If she could use this ability to parasitize all the zombies in an entire city, she could transfer the mental pressure of each login to countless brains.

If it really worked, theoretically, she could directly obtain all of A4’s abilities in one day – because A4 ran fast and extracted quickly. With unlimited mental power, logging in twenty or thirty times a day wouldn’t be a problem.

This would be a huge improvement for Lin Jiayao.

Now, Lin Jiayao had already parasitized the flying insects into the bodies of everyone in that convoy, and the first batch of parasites had already entered their brains.

Feeling her mental power continuously expanding little by little, Lin Jiayao craved this ability even more.

She had also tried switching back to her main body just now and found that her main body couldn’t benefit from this increase in mental power at all.

If her main body obtained this ability, it should also not interfere with Goldie, they would be two independent hive networks.

The fact that they couldn’t be connected made Lin Jiayao feel a little pity. She turned her head and looked at Huayibai standing beside her, the sadness no longer on her face.

“Let’s go, Huayibai.” Lin Jiayao looked at the location of the Extraction Point and pointed to a location further west.

This time, Lin Jiayao planned to extract towards the east – this was the way back.

If Goldie hadn’t evolved this ability, Lin Jiayao would never have thought of going to the densely populated eastern America, but now, what she needed was a large population.

If she went further west, it would be a vast expanse of wasteland and highways. Lin Jiayao didn’t want Goldie to stay there and act in a western movie.

If she wanted to keep going west to Los Angeles on the far west coast to find the Hand of Freedom, relying on Goldie’s movement speed and the range of the Extraction Points, Lin Jiayao estimated that she wouldn’t be able to reach Los Angeles even after logging in forty or fifty times.

If she wanted to quickly find a densely populated place to parasitize, she could only go to the wealthy cities in the east.

As for the Headshavers?

Mind control?

Sorry, Lin Jiayao, with the existence of the overpowered system bug, was least afraid of mind control.

And with her supporting from the side, Huayibai’s mind wouldn’t be easily influenced by others. Even if it was really influenced, she could directly switch consciousness and feed Huayibai next to her body a few drops of blood, and everything would be fine.

And, not only the Hand of Freedom, but also the so-called Headshavers could become Lin Jiayao’s trading targets.

Anyway, it was all about exploiting others through the almost costless system exchange, so who wasn’t being exploited?

What? Did Capitalist Jiayao only exploit good people and not bad people? Bad people should be exploited even more!

Taking all the Blood Crystals from their hands was the right thing to do.

Only by completing the primitive accumulation of blood crystal capital could she quickly max out all the buildings in the Hideout, let the system upgrade to its most perfect state faster, and make her ability improvement twice as effective with half the effort.

The other two “Blood Crystal Farms” had also been set up by Huayibai, just waiting for the zombies to slowly gather, and she could find a time to harvest them.

Since her mind had opened up, Lin Jiayao felt that most things could make her earn Blood Crystals faster.

If she was lucky and successfully chose Goldie’s brain parasite evolution, then during the preparation time before possessing an A-rank, Lin Jiayao might choose to log into India and see if there were any organizations there that could trade.

A large population and high population density meant more blood crystals, and there would be more high-level blood crystals.

This was a country with an even larger and denser population than China, and it was time to explore it.

Maybe there would be some special evolutions there that Lin Jiayao just happened to need?

No matter what, just for the sake of this population, Lin Jiayao had to log in there once.

She didn’t dare to go before the apocalypse because they even dared to attack lizards.

After the apocalypse, they couldn’t possibly even dare to attack zombies, right?

Humans couldn’t, at least they shouldn’t.

After recalling the black and rough skin of lizards, and then recalling many zombies that could still be considered somewhat human-shaped, Lin Jiayao hesitated.

It was hard to say now.

“Crack, crack—”

While Lin Jiayao was thinking, Huayibai, who had originally flattened herself into a mycelium blanket, wriggled her mycelium and began to construct the form of a flapping-wing insect, based on the mycelium sofa Lin Jiayao was sitting on.

Now Huayibai was completely lost in her own world, almost only acting according to Lin Jiayao’s commands, and even completely forgot the pain of being burned by fire just now.

Because now she was being worn by Mommy…

Huayibai’s favorite episode.