"Excellent."
The Enderman under Steve's control snatched the vial from Cooper's hand, and his lanky form vanished instantly in a burst of purple particles.
The Northern Front.
Swish!
A flash of violet light flickered at the edge of the battlefield. "Randy! The catalyst is here! Catch!"
Steve's voice echoed as the red vial became a streak of light, arcing through the air toward the center of the command circle. Randy disengaged from a clash with two mutants, his zombie vessel's hand snapping out to intercept the potion mid-air.
Looking at the boiling, dark-red liquid, Randy grinned. "Finally."
Without a second's hesitation, he drove the needle directly into the heart of his vessel.
Pfft!
As the serum surged through the dead veins, an earth-shattering, violent aura erupted from Randy's body.
BOOM!!!
A crimson shockwave swept across the snowfield, so potent that even Bellamy, locked in a dogfight with the Ender Dragon, was forced to look down in shock. A breakthrough? Now? he wondered. He felt a surge of hope that one of his own had ascended—until he saw the figure at the center of the storm.
"Roar!!!"
Randy unleashed a primal howl. His Peak Tier 4 vessel began to swell; muscle fibers knitted together with frightening speed, and his bones emitted a series of sharp cracks like stones grinding in a mill. In seconds, he shattered the final shackle and stepped into the realm of the Fifth-Order.
He was now a Tier 5 Zombie King—one who possessed human reason and the absolute immortality of the MC system.
Swish!
The moment the evolution finished, Randy vanished. A second later, he appeared like a ghost behind two Fifth-Order mutants that had already been beaten to the brink of death.
Puff! Puff!
With two clean, effortless strikes, he severed their limbs. Randy grabbed a mutant in each hand, snapped his wings open, and dragged the screaming mountains of flesh toward the rear.
The soldiers on the wall were momentarily bewildered. General Randy just hit Tier 5... shouldn't he be slaughtering the army? Why is he playing delivery man?
Only Steve understood: this was sustainable development.
With the success of the first batch, more Endermen began to arrive, delivering a steady stream of Tier 5 Rage Serums. Sovereign Wu and the other elite masters injected themselves one after another.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
One terrifying Fifth-Order aura after another erupted across the line. The number of high-level powerhouses on the human side began to grow exponentially.
Watching the scene below, Bellamy—battered and bleeding from the Ender Dragon's relentless assault—finally broke. The "evolutionary speed" he took so much pride in was a pathetic joke compared to Steve's industrial-scale genetic engineering.
"What's the matter, Bellamy?" Steve, controlling the Ender Dragon, circled the broken King. "I told you I was looking forward to this look on your face. Surprised? The evolution you worship as a god is just a daily routine for us."
Bellamy's eyes were bloodshot, his massive frame trembling with a mixture of rage and impotence. He couldn't find the words to rebut.
"Alright. Game over." Steve's gaze turned cold. "Spatial Lock."
Buzz!
An invisible ripple expanded, freezing the space around Bellamy. The King discovered, to his horror, that his wings wouldn't flap; his blood wouldn't pump. He was pinned in the air like a specimen in a jar.
"Goodbye."
The Ender Dragon opened her maw, and a final, concentrated beam of Spatial-Glacial Breath crashed down.
BOOM!
Locked in the void, Bellamy couldn't even struggle as the ghostly blue pillar swallowed him.
Crack.
The "insufferable" Zombie Emperor was transformed into a giant, suspended ice sculpture. Steve flicked the dragon's tail with a casual whip.
Bang!
The statue shattered into a cloud of sparkling ice-dust, dissipating into the howling wind. Bellamy was gone.
With the King's death, the zombie army lost its collective mind, devolving into a disorganized, panicked mess. Under the suppression of the newly ascended Tier 5 masters, the battle ceased to be a war and became a harvest.
"Capture them. Every last one," Steve commanded. He didn't stay to watch the mop-up. He snatched a few Tier 5 survivors and flew toward the base, carrying them like mere chicks.
As the last mutant was crated and teleported away, the silence of the cold wind returned to the Northern Wastes. The haze of despair that had loomed over the world for fifty years had finally lifted.
[Ding!]
The familiar mechanical prompt rang out in Steve's mind.
[Congratulations! You have purged all hostile forces and achieved the unification of the Zombie World.][Task Rewards Distributed:]
Tier 4 Perfect Awakening Serum x1
Full Set: Tier 2 Awakening Serum Formulas
New World Teleportation Gate x2
[Reminder: Place the Teleportation Gates to begin the conquest of the next planes.]
Steve looked at the two stone archways in his inventory, vibrating with an ancient, grayish aura. "System," he asked, "what worlds are behind these gates?"
[System Reply: Plane Anchoring and Channel Construction take 24 hours. Specific world data will be parsed during the construction process.]
"A lottery, then..." Steve rubbed his chin. He wasn't about to place them side-by-side. If a high-level cultivation world or a space-faring civilization was on the other side, a counter-attack could wipe out his progress. He needed a buffer.
Swish!
Steve returned to the Minecraft world and took flight. He raced along the X-axis for millions of blocks until his original base was a distant memory. There, on a peaceful prairie, he placed the first gate.
He then flew millions of blocks along the Z-axis, deep into a vast desert, and placed the second. Between the stone pillars, grayish-white vortices began to swirl, greedily swallowing the surrounding light as they reached out into the multiverse.
The journey was just beginning.