Cave Refuge

Zachary, who had originally been preparing to return, had already noticed the initial signs, since he had been using an Energy Shield to protect himself all along. After the death of the monster, he was the first to detect those parasitic creatures that suddenly appeared in the air.

Zachary, who then remained airborne, also witnessed the entire process from the beginning of the disturbance on the sea surface to its end.

And because of this, when the people on the sea surface realized the problem and all had left, Zachary did not leave immediately. Instead, he prepared to dive to the seabed to retrieve the headless corpse left behind after the monster's death.

However, as soon as everyone on the sea surface had departed, before Zachary could descend into the sea, the blood that had burst forth from the body and mingled with the sea began to flow back without any warning.

Using Divine Sense, Zachary focused on the headless corpse and witnessed the entire process.

Zachary also noticed that, along with the blood flowing back into the headless body, the corpses of Martial Artists that had fallen into the sea as well as those of the Otherworldly Creatures that had arrived at Blue Star via the spatial passage, also transformed into pools of blood after coming into contact with the bloody water emanating from the body.

And along with the blood that had burst forth from the body, they too returned to the corpse.

As the amount of blood returning to the body grew, the head that Zachary had previously blown off with explosives began to gradually regenerate.

Watching the head regenerating from the headless corpse, Zachary felt somewhat thorny about the situation.

After all, just beforehand, blowing up the monster's neck not only used up all the High Explosive he had obtained from Thomas Jefferson, but it also required the help of many people to distract its fire. At this moment, attempting to replicate the previous operation was almost impossible.

It was for this reason that Zachary felt particularly troubled when he saw the head regenerating from the headless corpse underwater.

Of course, Zachary was not the sort of person to give the enemy ample time to recover.

Hence, upon detecting that the headless corpse was using the bloody water to repair its body, Zachary took out another hundred kilograms of C4 Explosives, stuffed them into a timed detonation device, and, using the Art of Controlling Objects, sent them directly towards the neck of the underwater corpse that was regenerating using the bloody water.

This time the intention was not to replicate the previous operation using the explosives, but to directly deliver the explosives from the neck to the chest cavity of the headless corpse.

If the explosives could detonate within the chest cavity of the headless corpse, with luck, it might be possible to directly blow up the monster's heart. Even if fortune was not on his side, he might still delay the headless corpse's body from using the bloody water to repair itself.

Zachary conceived the plan well, but in actual execution, as he used the Art of Controlling Objects to move the explosives near the neck of the headless corpse,

Before Zachary could deliver the explosives from the neck into the chest cavity of the corpse, the explosives were abruptly seized by the hand of the headless body.

Only then did Zachary realize that with the surrounding blood returning, the headless corpse, which had appeared stiff and dead, seemed to have come back to life.

This resurrection might have happened because the head was lost, so the body now only had instincts left.

And it was precisely because of these residual instincts that the body, sensing the second use of explosives by Zachary, instinctively rejected the approach of the explosives, decisively taking action to attack them.

After all, with the body reduced to instincts alone, even without guessing Zachary's plans, it naturally resisted the intrusion of the bomb.

Under normal circumstances, Zachary could have avoided the headless corpse's instincts when using the explosives earlier as long as he was a bit more discreet.

But who could have foreseen that a headless body that appeared to be dead would still possess an autonomous defense driven by residual instinctual consciousness.

Watching the explosives firmly grasped by a giant hand, Zachary had not anticipated that the headless body left after he had beheaded the monster could resurrect through the external blood.

This operation had been an oversight on Zachary's part.

As the countdown to the explosion set by Zachary gradually decreased, eventually, amid a fierce explosion, the giant hand holding the explosives was blasted apart.

Since the giant hand had remained underwater, the blood that had been flowing back into the headless corpse paused for a moment, then resumed flowing towards the region where the corpse lay.

Perhaps seeing the others return or possibly having heard from them that the monster had been eliminated, Zachary then received a call from Madeline.

Upon answering the call, he heard Madeline's excited voice asking, "Zachary, have you returned? Are you hurt? I heard from those returning that you encountered a giant humanoid creature with eight arms.

If it weren't for someone using explosives to blast its neck, killing that monster would have only been possible with the Officials dispatching a Special Team.

Also, I heard that everyone returning has mysteriously contracted an infectious disease. What's the situation on your end, have you been infected by others?"

Hearing Madeline's rapid-fire questioning, if it hadn't started with a concern, Zachary would certainly think that the reason Madeline made the call was actually to understand the real situation from Zachary.