Global Evolution: I Became A Zombie!

The Collective didn't spend a single word on the undead before bombarding the lair with lasers. A single intense beam shot down, burning anything and everything in its path.

Corpse walls, gone.

Turrets, gone.

Corpse pits, gone.

Blaze looked around emotionlessly as months of work turned into dust.

The nine circles of hell Blaze had envisioned fell apart and got turned into the actual hell.

It wasn't just his lair.

Places that were deemed lost, especially the blight zones, were being torched all over the globe. This was the Collective's way of cleansing a planet.

The beams of pure plasma would turn every inch of the Earth's land unsustainable for life. Any kind of life. To them, humans didn't matter any more than an undead did.

"My lord, your command?" Marrow asked.

Although her voice was calm as ever, even she realized it was a losing battle. Yet, as his second-in-command, she couldn't let it show.

"Command? Survive," Blaze said, without sparing a glance at anyone.

All he saw was the largest ship beyond the smaller ships. It was the Collective's flagship of the fleet, designated to wipe out North America.

From what Anur said, there were eight more of them spread throughout the planet. One for each continent and two to cleanse the oceans. They weren't there to say anyone, just to ensure Earth was burned to death.

As for the earthlings, they were helpless. How were they supposed to fight something that could incinerate them in an instant?

Marrow was stunned. She genuinely believed Blaze had a plan until the moment he didn't say those words. As useless as the instruction to survive was, she still turned to convey it to the horde.

"Are you going to convey an incomplete command?"

"…my lord?"

"Survive… the crashing sky," Blaze said with the widest smirk.

BOOM!

Fire erupted in the sky as one of the closest frigates burst into flames. Fire rained down from above as the ship's hull split open and came crashing down.

"Brace yourselves!" Marrow shouted towards the zombies.

The falling ship left a trail of smoke behind as it headed straight towards the ocean. Its massive shadow covered the lair in its entirety, shielding the lair from further plasma strikes, before finally exploding upon hitting the ocean.

The world lit and water splashed everywhere, rushing onto the land.

No one had recovered from the sudden turn of events when something even stranger happened.

A ship opened fire on the others!

At the same time, the firing rate of the other ships ceased. The command centers of each ship were in chaos.

"W-What is going on?" Neha stuttered.

And she wasn't the only one. No one apart from Blaze knew what was happening!

"Easy prey? Sure, for me that is," he scoffed, putting his arms into pockets as destruction unfolded above.

"My… lord, is this a new ability?"

"Always quick to catch on, Marrow," Blaze replied. His smirk did not leave his face even for a second. "A gift of evolution. A certain plague within me evolved into contagion."

"Mind Plague?! But how?"

"Contagion chain," Blaze replied. "Why else do you think I was so desperate to evolve?"

Memories of the time he spent inside the room flashed before his eyes. Anur made it clear that if they wanted to succeed, Blaze had to evolve at the last moment. Any sooner and the collective would change tactics.

She also informed him about certain eyes being on him who could inform the collective about his plans. It was essential to act defeated and lost.

It meant he couldn't go out and hunt himself. That's where Fester came in clutch. Not only could he locate nuclei needed by Blaze, but the little rat was also an expert in hunting.

Day in and day out, he hunted alongside the ants and brought the nuclei to him. However, that wasn't enough. Thankfully, Blaze had other means to get them, namely, the Cult.

Together, they helped him evolve and evolve the only ability that could harm any sentient species throughout the universe.

The evolution cured the only weakness of [Mind Plague], Blaze's need to infect a being himself. With [Contagion Chain], Blaze could speak through any infected host and could infect others.

"So that means…"

"Lo Da and his crew are on those ships," Blaze confirmed her thought.

The collective couldn't even imagine Blaze had unlocked such a skill, especially since they had shut down the operations. Unfortunately for them, Blaze's information was under Anur, not the collective.

That's why when Lo Da contacted the Collective to surrender and claim responsibility for his failure, they brought him and his crew to one of the assault ships.

From there, Blaze had spent the last night infecting anyone and anything who had had a conversation with Lo Da and the crew.

Interrogators? Infected.

Dropship pilots? Infected.

Hell, even the cleaners aboard were infected. All within twenty-four hours.

Only a handful of aliens couldn't be infected by the chain. Since their mental fortitude was on an entirely different level.

Besides, even Anur had told him not to try since it could expose his plan. Still, there wasn't much they could do, since most of them were on the flagship.

Yes, they could contact other ships and relay the information. But Blaze had already taken care of that, too.

Not everyone on the flagship was uninfected. Those who were there interfered in their own subtle ways, like dumping a strange file that was laced with a strange virus provided to him by the strange lady named Anur.

The virus ensured that the flagship couldn't contact other ships. Nor could it use its weapons.

"Though it took longer than I thought it would," Blaze said, staring in the direction the ship had crashed. "Oh well, it is what it is."

They weren't the sitting ducks anymore. That position belonged to the ones in the sky.

"My lord!"

Unable to hold her excitement, Marrow jumped and hugged Blaze from behind, almost knocking him over. The elite zombies were relieved and elated, and so were the humans.

"Well played, Blaze. Well played."

Even Neha couldn't hold back from complimenting the lord of the zombies.

Meanwhile, the ships turned their aim towards the flagship. The Collective wouldn't harm Blaze's territory anymore.

The sky was lit up again, but their aim wasn't to take down the flagship, but to conquer it. Now that he had the numbers advantage, he could seize the flagship with force.

After all, the collective wouldn't ignore him anymore. In a matter of days, they'd arrive again, only this time Blaze would have a fleet of his own to fight back.

At the same time, Blaze seemed to have learned something and pointed towards a few humans.

"Kill them," he ordered.

Zombies lunged at the marked humans, tearing them into pieces. Screams merged with growls as humans were turned into pools of blood.

"What are you doing!?" Neha yelled, hurrying towards him for answers. "Just because you dealt with ships alone doesn't mean you can kill them."

"Do you think I'm so shallow?" Blaze scoffed. "They aren't with you or me, but with the collective. They were promised to be spared if they fed the information to the flagships. Why do you think I acted in absolute secrecy?"

"They were… spies?"

Judging by his expression, it didn't seem like he was lying. Yet, a part of her refused to believe the humans she had formed bonds with since her arrival would betray even her.

However, all that doubt disappeared when a group of humans rushed towards Blaze. Marrow's skeletons stopped them, forcing them to their knees.

"Please forgive us!"

"We had no choice. They would have killed us if we didn't follow through!"

"We'll swear loyalty to you. As long as you forgive us, we'll fight till our—"

The last guy had his head blown off before he could even say the words. Surprisingly, it wasn't Blaze or the zombies who killed him.

"Neha?"

Covered in the man's blood, she turned towards Blaze and replied in an eerie tone, "I hate traitors."

Blaze's lips curled into the faintest smirk, while Neha turned and killed the remaining humans herself. Perhaps being in proximity had rubbed some of his qualities onto her.

Seems like there were other spies you didn't know about.

[The leaders have a habit of conducting personal experiments. Those humans weren't registered on the files that I accessed.]

Blaze nodded as Anur's words made sense. After he, too, was her personal experiment. Hidden away from the eyes of the collective. At least till then.

Hm… I should have captured them before they died. We could have gotten some information from them.

[No need. Considering how easily they exposed themselves, it was likely they didn't know much.]

Blaze remained quiet, watching the flagship's assault through Lo Da's perspective.

It was only a matter of time before they took over the flagship. It would give him plenty of rewards, which he'd be busy reaping through until the next fleet arrived.

However, he had something else on his mind.

What about the… possession issue?

[Already captured the culprit. You can visit me tomorrow to see them yourself.]

Alright, I'll head there after things calm down here.