I am sure, now you know the world is wider than you thought.
Author's note: Come on guys write some reviews.
If you want me to continue this work, I would appreciate encouragement. Let this novel become famous! I would like you to bring power stones. If you have any advice for me, please comment so I can improve.
****
Next was a scientist, lab coat hanging in tatters, jaw partially torn away. It turned, groaning, arms stretching forward.
Atlas didn't slow.
Three silver claws extended from his knuckles in a blur of motion. He twisted his body mid-stride, using rotational momentum—
—and decapitated the zombie in a single spinning slash.
The head hit the wall first.
The body followed a second later.
Atlas landed lightly, already moving.
He utilized the environment perfectly. He grabbed a maintenance worker by the collar of his jumpsuit and slammed him face-first into a protruding valve wheel.
Crunch.
He spun a female technician around, using her as a meat shield to block another zombie, then skewered them both with a single thrust of his long claws.
Blood painted the walls. Limbs flew.
Another zombie lunged from the side.
He ducked, grabbed its wrist, twisted—
CRACK.
The arm tore free.
Atlas drove his knee upward into its ribcage, shattering bone, then shoved it backward into a support beam.
Before it could fall—
SNIKT!
His claws pierced its skull from under the jaw, erupting out the top in a spray of dark, clotted blood.
Atlas ripped free and spun.
Three more zombies were closing in.
Atlas was a whirlwind of silver and grey. He ducked under a swing, sliding on his knees across the wet floor, and sliced upwards, opening a zombie from groin to chin. He vaulted off a wall, using the momentum to drive his claws into the top of a security guard's skull, riding the body down to the ground.
The notifications flashed in the corner of his vision, fueling his euphoria.
Three more zombies were closing in.
Slow.
Too slow.
He vaulted off a fallen gurney, using it as a springboard, flipping over their heads. As he passed above them, he slashed downward——hands, shoulders, spines severed mid-motion.
Bodies collapsed like broken puppets.
He felt alive. More alive than he had ever felt as a human breathing air. The power coursing through his muscles, the absolute control over his body, the knowledge that he was the apex predator here—it was intoxicating.
This is freedom.
'This is it,' he thought, ducking a clumsy bite and severing the attacker's arm. 'This is what I wanted. No rules. No limits. Just power.'
A zombie grabbed his ankle from the floor.
Atlas looked down, annoyed.
"Oh… you're still moving?"
He stomped.
The skull flattened with a wet crunch, brain matter spreading across the tiles.
He grimaced slightly.
"Tch. Disgusting."
More came.
From doorways. From ceiling hatches.
Crawling. Dragging themselves forward after hearing the loud sounds.
Atlas exhaled.
Then he laughed.
Not manic.
Not insane.
Happy.
He moved like a storm given form.
He ran up walls, kicked off ceilings, used gravity like a weapon. He grabbed zombies and hurled them into others, bones shattering on impact. He used pipes as pivot points, spinning around them to build speed, claws tearing through torsos in wide, elegant arcs.
One zombie leapt from above.
Atlas caught it mid-air.
Held it there.
Looked into its dead eyes.
"Wrong prey."
He pulled his claws upward.
The body split in half.
Blood rained down.
Atlas stood beneath it, arms spread slightly.
For a moment, he simply felt alive.
Within three minutes, the tunnel and the area was silent.
Atlas stood in the center of the carnage, surrounded by dozens upon dozens dismembered corpses. The water around his boots was dyed black with ichor. Steam hissed from a pipe he had dented during the fight.
He stood up straight, flicking his wrists violently.
SPLAT.
The gore slid off his silver claws, leaving them pristine.
He wiped a speck of blood from his cheek, careful not to get any near his mouth. The thought of tasting them revolted him. He was a connoisseur of souls, not a scavenger of rot.
"Hehehe..."
A low chuckle started in his chest, rumbling up his regenerated throat until it burst out as a manic, joyful laugh.
"Hahahaha!"
He looked at the path the Licker had taken.
"The hunter must fear sometimes," Atlas declared to the empty tunnel, his voice echoing with theatrical flair. "Because one day, he will be hunted."
He clenched his fist, the silver claws grinding together.
"And I am going to enjoy hunting you, Subject 01. Because you aren't just a monster..."
He grinned, his grey eyes flashing with greed.
"You are a walking, giant pile of Experience Points."
With a burst of speed that blurred his outline, Atlas took off running. He moved so fast that the human eye would struggle to track him—a grey streak racing through the darkness, hungry for the next level.
Fast.
His footsteps made no sound. His instincts sharpened.
Somewhere ahead—
The Licker screeched.
Atlas's smile returned.
---
Raccoon City Infrastructure – Underground Sewer Network.
Time: 04:30 AM.
The air in the utility tunnels grew heavier, wetter, and infinitely more foul as Atlas descended.
He had left the sterile, metallic corridors of the Hive behind, entering the ancient, brick-lined bowels of Hive directly connecting with the Raccoon City's sewer system. The water here was soles-deep, a sludge of chemical waste and industrial very damaging chemicals dumping ground.
Rusted pipes lined the walls like exposed veins, leaking chemical water that dripped endlessly into the darkness below. Emergency lights barely functioned here, flickering weakly, painting the tunnel in sickly shades of green and red.
But Atlas wasn't living. And to his enhanced senses, the stench wasn't nauseating—it was just information. He could smell the moss, the rust, the decaying rats, and the overwhelming copper scent of the fresh blood trail left by the Licker.
He bounded off a slick concrete walkway, his boots splashing into the muck.
'Agility 18,' he noted, feeling the way his muscles adjusted instantly to the slippery terrain. 'I don't lose balance. I don't slip. I am perfectly adapted.'
He rounded a bend, tracking the claw marks the Licker had gouged into the brickwork. But as the tunnel widened into a junction, he skidded to a halt.
Blocking the path ahead was a sea of grey.
It was a horde. A congestion of the undead that had likely wandered down from the city drains or up from the Hive's lower levels. There were easily forty of them, a groaning, shuffling roadblock standing between him and the train platform.
Atlas narrowed his grey eyes.
"Oh... I almost forgot about them."
Ahead, the tunnel widened into a junction that connected directly to the underground rail system—the same path Alice and the others would soon take toward the train. The smell told him everything.
'So they're almost at the end,' Atlas realized.
He stood casually in the center of the sewer pipe, the chemical lapping at his shins. He watched the Licker—now far ahead—scuttle up the wall and bypass the horde effortlessly, disappearing toward the train station.
Atlas paused, his tactical mind overriding his bloodlust.
'Wait. If I rush in now and kill the Licker, I disrupt the timeline. Alice and Matt need to get the train moving. They need to open the blast doors to the mansion. If I kill the "Boss" now, they might relax. They might slow down.'
He tapped his chin with a deadly, silver-clawed finger.
'And Matt might not even become Nemesis!'
'Better to wait. Let the "heroes" do the heavy lifting. Let them start the train. Let them deal with the drama. I'll catch up when the exit is guaranteed.'
"So that means they're nearly done. Good. Very good."
He nodded to himself, satisfied with the plan.
"Am I picking up a habit of talking to myself?" he asked the damp walls, his deep voice echoing.
He paused, considering it.
'Maybe. But who cares? Isolation breeds eccentricity. Besides...'
A slow, hedonistic smile spread across his pale face.
'I'm not just talking to myself. I'm planning my future.'
He looked at his claws. They were instruments of death, yes, but to him, they were keys. Keys to a vault.
'Every kill is V-Gold. Every kill is power. And what does power buy?'
His mind drifted from the sewers to the life he craved. He imagined a penthouse suite overlooking a neon city. He imagined silk sheets. He imagined fine wine—now that he knew he could taste. He imagined women—Alice, with her fierce eyes; Ada, with her fire. He wanted to experience it all.
He didn't just want to survive the apocalypse. He wanted to own it. He wanted to indulge in every lust, every gluttony, every desire he had been denied in his previous, mediocre life.
'I want the best life,' Atlas thought, a fire burning in his grey eyes. 'I want to be a God. And Gods don't starve. Gods feast.'
"Groooaaah..."
His daydream was interrupted.
A zombie in a tattered sanitation vest had noticed him. It lunged from the shadows, drawn by the sound of his voice.
Atlas didn't even look at it. He simply leaned back.
The zombie's rotting hands clawed the air where his face had been a millisecond before.
"Rude," Atlas tutted. "I was having a moment."
He spun, his leg snapping out in a devastating roundhouse kick.
CRACK.
The zombie's head twisted 180 degrees. It dropped into the sewage with a splash.
But the noise had alerted the rest. More than Forty pairs of milky, clouded eyes turned toward him. The moaning intensified, echoing off the curved ceiling until it sounded like a choir of the damned.
Atlas stood his ground. He looked at the horde, then down at his hands.
"Nevermind," he whispered, the corners of his mouth stretching into a feral grin. "Waiting is boring. I will have some fun first."
He lowered his stance, engaging the muscles in his legs. The water around him rippled from the tension.
"Thanks for the meal!" he shouted.
The zombies paused for a microsecond, their primitive brains confused. Who was the predator? Who was the prey?
Unfortunately for them, they were about to find out.
BOOM.
Atlas launched himself forward. He moved so fast that the water exploded behind him in a geyser.
He crashed into the front line like a cannonball.
SNIKT-SHING!
His silver-white claws became a blur of white light in the darkness.
He appeared in front of the first zombie—a large man in a construction helmet. Atlas didn't go for the head; he went for the style points. He crossed his arms and slashed outward.
The zombie fell into four distinct pieces. The helmet rolled away, the head still inside it.
Atlas flowed into the next move. He grabbed a female zombie by the throat, lifted her into the air with one hand—Strength 18 making her feel light as a feather—and used her as a battering ram to knock down three others.
Then, he crushed her cervical spine and tossed her aside.
"Next!"
He spun, his momentum carrying him into the next zombie. Three rapid slashes carved the creature into neat, twitching slices before it even hit the ground.
One tried to grab him from behind.
Atlas grabbed its wrist instead.
Twisted.
The arm tore free.
He shoved the screaming corpse into the horde, using it like a bowling ball to knock down three more. He leapt onto a pipe running along the wall, sprinted along it sideways, then jumped—
—landing knee-first onto a zombie's face.
The skull collapsed inward.
Another lunged.
Atlas ducked under its arms, drove his claws upward through its ribcage, lifted it off the ground—
—and ripped it in half.
Blood sprayed across the tunnel ceiling like paint.