As I looked down at the miserable figure beneath my foot, I heard a series of low groans surrounding me. I scanned the street and noticed several groups of infected drawn to the noise, but they quickly shifted their focus to me and came to a halt. I glanced back at the man and tilted my head in disgust.
"Aren't you supposed to be a JSDF Soldier? Isn't it your solemn duty to protect and serve this country and its citizens? Yet here you are, preying on desperate people who are fighting for survival and ruthlessly killing them for their supplies," I said, my voice rising. "How can you live with yourself? Aren't you ashamed of what you've become?"
The man began to cry as I pressed down even more. Bone shattered, and blood ruptured onto the ground below me.
I didn't feel an ounce of joy or shame at what I was doing.
This man had killed innocent people for his own gain.
To me, he looked like any other undead lining the streets.
"Agh! I-I was desperate! I've been stuck here forever, and I ran out of food days ago! T-They were supposed to come for me after those long-tongued bastards wiped out my squad, but no one ever showed up! What was I supposed to do?! Just sit here and starve?!" The man shouted, his voice trembling with a mix of anger and hopelessness. "I-I had to do something! Why wouldn't I take what I needed to survive?!"
I blinked, struggling to understand how someone could be so heartless. I stepped off his foot and reached down, easily lifting him into the air with one arm. I glared at him, my anger rising. Turning back to the bodies in the alleyway, I spotted the lifeless form of a young teenage girl with a bullet hole in the center of her forehead.
I blinked again, and the image of Komachi lying in place of the dead girl froze in my mind.
Shaking my head, I approached the alley and examined the bodies. They were all innocent people struggling to survive in this apocalypse. They had thought they would receive help at the sight of the military vehicle and the armed soldier in my grasp, but their hope had only led to their deaths.
As I stared at their corpses, I was reminded of how soft and fragile regular people were. At any moment, a person could lose their life to an infected or another selfish human.
The possibility that Komachi, Yui, or Yukino could have ended up in this situation and died because of this cowardly soldier's actions weighed heavily on my mind.
I turned back to the soldier, who was trying to escape my grip, and raised my other arm. Ready to transform it into a claw.
But before I could act on my bubbling anger, I forced myself to stop.
No matter how angry I was, I shouldn't kill another human. It was a line I shouldn't cross.
Even if the piece of trash in human skin deserved it for what he's done.
Taking a deep breath, I threw him down.
"Get… get the hell out of my sight," I forced out and turned to the dead girl. Komachi's overlapping image was no longer there.
The girl was young and still wearing her middle school uniform. I turned to a man nearby, whose arm was outstretched toward the girl. A bullet hole stuck out of the back of his head. He might have been her father or older brother. Whatever their relationship was, it was now moot. Hopefully, the two-
"You bastard!" the soldier yelled as he wrapped an arm around my throat. He raised a large combat knife with his right hand and plunged it deeply into my chest. "You think you can attack me and get away with it?! Fucking die!"
I grunted at the sharp sensation, but after battling the T-103 Tyrant to near death twice, being stabbed felt trivial.
Even so, the shock at how shameful the soldier was after I had let him go flashed across my face. Slowly, I began to shake with an irrational rage.
This bastard... I let him go. I let him live!
Enraged, I grabbed the man's right arm and snapped it in half. The soldier yelled in agony and let my neck go. I spun around and grabbed his neck, squeezing it tightly. In a swirl of tendrils and flesh, my left hand transformed into claws, scaring the soldier to his core.
"What?! W-What the fuck are you?!" He yelled and fought with everything he had to get away from me. "Let me go!"
"I let you live... and you wasted it." I hissed, throwing away my past hesitation.
Without a word, I stabbed my clawed arm into the soldier's chest. He gasped in agony and began to cough as blood filled his lungs. The soldier slowly began to choke on his own blood. With a quick jerk, I sliced his body in two. Blood and organs rained down to the ground, and before I could stop it, tendrils broke out from within me and absorbed the man's body.
I gasped and held my head as the memories of the man's entire life surged within me. They passed quickly before the recent events of the past few weeks emerged.
"Your squad is tasked with the critical mission of evacuating these VIPs to our military base in Kashima. Remember, failure is not an option."
The scene shifted, revealing a dimly lit room filled with soldiers, their faces a mix of determination and anxiety.
"Why the hell are we putting our lives on the line for these rich bastards?" one soldier exploded, his voice dripping with frustration. "We can't even go out and protect our own families! Why are we risking everything for them?!"
The image transitioned to the interior of a moving military vehicle. Armed soldiers, rifles gripped tightly, silently exchanged glances, their nods conveying a shared sense of dread.
"What the hell are those things?!" a soldier shouted over the roar of the vehicle's engine, panic rising in his voice. "Get us the hell out of here! Go! Go! Go!"
Outside the vehicle, chaos reigned. Shadows flitted past as Lickers attacked with predatory ferocity, tearing through the squad of soldiers with horrifying ease.
Suddenly, a new image appeared. "Just give me your food! You don't want anything to happen to your daughter, right?" the soldier said to a sobbing man who was on his knees. The soldier then looked toward a young girl in a middle school uniform who sobbed softly, her eyes wide with fear at the pistol aimed at her head.
In a moment of anguish, despite the crying man following the orders given, the soldier raised his weapon and fired at the young girl without hesitation. The man's scream of despair echoed through the alley, but it was abruptly silenced by the sharp crack of another gunshot as he too was killed without mercy.
I gasped as the flood of memories ceased. I fell to my knees, desperately trying to push away the memories of the soldier I had killed, Arai Mashai. This experience was completely different from the fragmented images and sounds I had encountered after consuming the Tyrant and those three infected individuals.
I quickly came to the conclusion that consuming a regular person with a functioning brain granted me access to the full extent of their knowledge and life experiences.
With a grunt of effort, I finally managed to seize Arai's memories and quickly forced them into the recesses of my subconscious, hoping to remove them from my conscious mind.
"Fuck," I hissed and stood up. My legs were shaky as I looked down at the blood puddle that was once Arai Mashai. The man had once been a well-respected and skilled soldier. Only to fall to his base instincts once his back was against the wall. "Piece of shit."
As I was about to leap away, I glanced down at Arai's dropped pistol. A sense of familiarity washed over me. I picked it up and quickly examined it, drawing on my knowledge as an experienced soldier.
"The SIG Sauer P220... a premier, full-size, single-stack semi-automatic pistol chambered primarily in .45 ACP. Renowned for its exceptional accuracy, combat reliability, and crisp trigger," I muttered, channeling Arai's expertise.
I raised the pistol and expertly fired five rounds at an undead woman that had wandered too close. It collapsed as all my shots hit its head and chest.
Looking back down at the pistol, I methodically disassembled it piece by piece, as if I had done so hundreds of times before. Once I was finished, I dropped the pieces onto the ground.
As the pieces clattered onto the ground, I twitched as I felt something within me tingle. I would have normally pushed any foreign feeling away, but after everything, I decided to embrace it.
I gasped as my body swirled and shifted with tendrils and flesh. The sensation was odd, as if I were experiencing a full-body wave of goosebumps. The sensation only lasted two seconds before it was over.
I looked around and saw that I had grown slightly taller. Lifting my arms, I blinked as I saw a pair of arms that weren't my own dressed in a green military uniform.
"What the hell?" I said, my voice replaced with the annoying sound of Arai's own.
I walked over to a nearby shop window and stared at my reflection. There, standing in my place was Arai.
"Did I… transform into Arai? No… more like I shape-shifted to look like him," I muttered and stared at my reflection as I did a series of stretches. Even though I changed my shape into someone else's, I still felt like myself. "Okay, this is… weird. How do I turn back?"
Immediately, my body shifted and swirled once again. When it was done, I was left standing in my original skin and outfit. I tilted my head, and with a thought, I changed back into Arai. And then changed back to myself.
Okay, I thought I was weird before, but this, this takes the cake.
"Not only does consuming living people give me access to all their memories, skills, and experiences, but it also grants me the ability to transform into them," I said. "This power of mine... why do I have it? Why am I able to do this?"
I shook my head and leaped high into the air. Using the nearby buildings, I jumped from wall to wall until I reached the rooftop. Once there, I crouched on the ledge and looked out at the city before me.
Despite Arai being a piece of trash, I hadn't intended to consume him.
I only intended to kill him for his crimes and for trying to kill me. But once he died, my body reacted on its own before I could stop it.
Could it have been due to my injury?
Was my body automatically consuming those around me to heal and empower itself?
Whatever the reason was, it frightened me.
I needed to gain better control over myself and my abilities. I never wanted to consume another human being again. I didn't want anyone else's memories in my head while I lacked my own.
Even so, logically, I could see the usefulness of this ability. Any knowledge, secrets, skills, or experiences I could ever desire would be easily within my reach. Not to mention my ability to transform into them could allow me to infiltrate their life with ease.
The only cost would be the last remnants of my humanity, and that was something I wasn't ready to sacrifice.
I stood up and leaped away, jumping from rooftop to rooftop to get back to Rumi and the others. Hopefully, by the time I arrived, I could forget what I had done to Arai.
As I was about to leap to the next rooftop, something powerful wrapped around my ankle.
"What?!"
My eyes widened at the sight of a large hand covered in black leather. I quickly turned to see a tall, monstrous humanoid creature with a head covered in flesh that seemed to be stretched and stapled together. One lone eye stared up at me while a mouth filled with teeth, but lacking lips, groaned. Its muscular body stood 2.6 meters tall and was encased in tightly wrapped black leather that appeared to hold it together.
Thanks to the T-103 I had consumed, I recognized the creature immediately using the Tyrant's limited memories and knowledge.
"Hooorseman," Nemesis T-02 growled in a rough, beastly voice. With a powerful jump that shattered the rooftop below us, the Nemesis sprang into the air, my ankle still in its grasp, dragging me behind it.
With a powerful tug of its arm, Nemesis launched me down to the street below like a rocket.
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AN: Anyone else hyped after seeing the trailer for Resident Evil: Veronica? Capcom has been on a roll lately with all their releases. Besides that, I recently bought the entire light novel set for Oregairu and am now up to volume 4. Hopefully, the novels will help me with my writing and steer me in the right direction to keep all the characters in character. Or at least, as in character as they can be as a world-ending apocalypse reigns around them.