Chapter 25
Chapter 25: Mutant Plants
The rain refused to stop.
Survivors huddled in their temporary shelters. The camp went quiet—except for patrols slogging through the downpour and the occasional mission vehicle rolling in, spraying muddy water.
But an hour after the Sun siblings returned to their dorm, the camp snapped into motion.
Patrol soldiers and stationed troops began clearing green plants across the entire base. Anything that looked too healthy—too bright, too fast-growing under the storm—became a priority target.
New missions went up in the task hall: clear the mutating greenery around the temporary base. The pay was high, and zombie-hunting squads with good intel rushed to take them.
This was safer than fighting zombies, and the rewards were better. Several large hunting squads met, carved up the work, and claimed everything within ten kilometers of the camp. Anything farther would be handled by the military. The heavier the rain, the farther you went, the more dangerous it became.
Everything rolled forward in a controlled, disciplined rhythm. Watching the camp respond, Sun Yi finally felt the knot in her chest loosen.
Still, the night wasn’t going to be quiet.
The storm raged until morning.
When the sun finally shoved a thin strip of light over the horizon, the rain stopped as if a switch had been thrown.
The air smelled clean. Even the rotten stink that clung to the world after the apocalypse felt thinner.
But beyond the camp’s sightline, the plants had already started to change—straining upward, greedy and alive, entering their first wave of mutation.
At the same time, the Black Eagle Squad was still hunkered down in the airport’s big warehouse. Everyone had made it through the night uninjured.
Now they stared at the hulking shapes of fighter jets in the hangar. Flying them out didn’t feel realistic anymore. Storing them in pocket space would be best—but the space ability user shook his head, frustration sharp on his face.
“Captain, my pocket space is limited. I can’t fit them.”
Ying Yi didn’t like it either. Military supplies were irreplaceable now. Every round fired was one round closer to empty.
The capital base had it worse—dense population, nonstop zombie cleanup, resources burning fast. They couldn’t spare support for W City.
“If we can’t take the jets,” Lian Yi said, “we turn this place into another base. Move part of the population here. What do you think?”
Ying Ao’s eyes lit up. He slapped his forehead. “She’s right. We’re trapped in old thinking. The temporary base is overflowing, and the longer that lasts, the more conflict we’ll see. This airport is perfect—flat ground, clear sightlines. If a zombie tide comes, we’ll spot it early. And if we can put these jets to use, evacuations and support runs become easy.”
The more he spoke, the more solid the idea became.
“Then we head back first,” Ying Yi decided. “We report to the brigade leader and build a plan.”
Black Eagle left the airport quickly. The jets stayed, but the ammunition had already been packed into pocket space. The mission was at least half complete.
On the way back, the storm’s aftermath showed its teeth.
“Captain,” the lookout reported, voice tense, “the plants out here are thicker than when we came.”
Before the words fully landed, a zombie bird dove toward their convoy.
It never reached them.
A green branch snapped out from a roadside willow, wrapped the bird, and yanked it down. The bird’s coarse scream cut off mid-note.
The driver panicked and stomped the gas. The jeep surged forward and fled, leaving the willow behind like nothing had happened.
“That tree… it… it…” The young earth-type ability user stammered, face gone pale. “It ate it.”
“Plants are mutating too,” Lian Yi said quietly.
Three months into the apocalypse, a single night of torrential rain pushed the Pocket World’s plant life into mutation. The direction and degree of those changes were viciously unpredictable.
Roadside grass turned sharp as knives—able to slice even a Level One zombie’s skin. Its root system grew absurdly long, ten times what showed above ground, and it stored water. Dig a clump up, peel the outer root layer, and pale green-blue fluid seeped out.
Massive banyan trees thickened, and their leaves could launch like blades. Against zombie birds, they were deadly. Once the base understood that trait, they sent ability-user squads to transplant banyans to the perimeter, paying steep costs to build a living barrier against aerial attacks.
The new airport base proposed by Black Eagle was approved quickly. It relieved pressure on the overcrowded temporary camp. The first residents sent to occupy it were military combat squads.
One year and five months into the apocalypse, Level Two zombies began appearing more frequently in the Pocket World. That triggered a small zombie tide and, in turn, pushed more Level Two ability users into existence.
W City’s airport base was hit by a zombie tide too. Sun Yi, who happened to be on leave, sensed it in time and reported it to Superior. Damage stayed limited, and they harvested another wave of crystal cores.
By then, crystal cores were officially recognized as an energy source for ability users to rank up. As zombie-hunting squads scaled up, they began accepting missions independently—gathering survival supplies while stockpiling cores for their own advancement.
That Level Two zombie tide gave the base an opening. More Level Two ability users emerged, though most were in the military—a reality everyone accepted. The toughest, most lethal missions fell on soldiers first, and soldiers gathered the most crystal cores. Leveling up was the natural result.
The members of the Black Eagle Combat Squad broke through to Level Two one after another. They became the camp’s ace squad, with the highest mission completion rate. Plenty of zombie-hunting squads wanted to partner with them. Black Eagle took supply-search missions and chose to cooperate with the stronger teams.
During that period, Lian Yi found an opportunity and revealed her jade fruit-pit space as a spatial ability. The squad nearly went numb when they realized what she’d been hiding. In the end, everyone agreed she should keep it secret—an assassin’s trump card for Black Eagle.
The real reason she revealed it was simpler than anyone expected.
She was sick of chewing dry compressed biscuits on missions.
She had raw food, cooked food, half-prepped food—enough to eat well even in hell. Why suffer?
Her decision benefited the whole squad. On long missions, at least they could eat something hot instead of gnawing stale rations.
As Level Two ability users began appearing in waves, W City’s research into crystal cores advanced too. They developed a crystal-core gun. The capital base, meanwhile, used crystal cores to build a protective shield—one meant to resist attacks from zombie birds and beasts, and from mutant plants, as much as possible.