Wait... what is that?
The ground before him cracked, and a head peeked out.
Blaze was happy yet confused upon seeing the rat. He had assumed Fester had met the same fate as the rest of his horde. However, it surprised him.
How are you unaffected by the Headless’s control?
Fester didn’t possess the intelligence to know the reason. So it told Blaze what it had experienced.
At first, Fester had the same reaction as the rest. It felt unbearable pain, but instead of just standing there, it dug a hole and slipped inside, as any scared rat would.
Once it was underground, the pain ceased, as if the connection the Headless was trying to establish was severed.
Fester took the time to stabilize before it began looking for Blaze. Fearing the pain, it didn’t dare surface above. Even now, the rat was hesitant to get out of its hole.
Blaze scratched his chin. If it were any other zombie trying to control his horde, he could have just said the connection broke because the zombie couldn’t see Fester anymore.
However, his theory failed at the first step. The Headless didn’t have eyes to see. Whether or not Fester was underground shouldn’t matter in that case. There had to be something else.
I can think about it later.
Blaze thought, looking over his shoulder. It was time to get his horde back from the Headless.
With that plan, the two escaped while the sprinters struggled against his traps.
Once underground, Blaze directed Fester towards the horde members, dragging them inside before filling the opening with traps. If the Headless or anything else tried to follow them, they’d meet a gruesome fate.
True to Fester’s observation, the headaches ceased the moment they were underground. However, it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows for them.
Unlike the converted and manually assembled corpses, Crawler couldn’t retain its ’sanity’ following the Headless’s attack.
The moment Blaze yanked it underground, the creature thrashed like a rabid dog, its claws tearing through dirt and stone.
Crawler could compromise his position, so the moment it turned against Blaze, he decided to put the thing out of its misery.
Blaze unleashed his tendrils that pinned Crawler to the walls of the tunnel. The beast’s claws scraped against the ground as it tried to rip the tendrils off. Blaze popped his claws out before it could and jumped on its chest for leverage.
You know what happens when a dog bites its owner?
Blaze groaned and sank his claws into Crawler’s head.
In one swift move, he ripped the Crawler’s head off its shoulders, killing it... again. The horde didn’t react as the Crawler’s head hit the ground.
Blaze still looked over his shoulder as if warning them it would be the same for them.
It was a cruel but necessary reminder that their usefulness was all Blaze valued. While they were expected to show loyalty, they couldn’t expect the same from Blaze.
It went for all of them except Fester. The little guy had a special place in their master’s heart.
Then his eyes returned to Crawler’s headless corpse.
One would think he would be saddened, or at least affected by the loss of a horde member. However, the truth was far from it.
If anything, Blaze was relieved. Crawler had been nothing more than filler in his horde. It was an experiment that lived on longer than it was supposed to.
Crawler’s death wasn’t a loss. If anything, it freed up a slot for something more useful.
Consume it and recover your strength.
The horde jumped at the opportunity. Meanwhile, Blaze and Fester slipped away.
The two had something else to do as they headed towards the Headless. While hidden underground, of course.
It didn’t take them long to get to the ’root’ of all problems. The links that the Headless used to control the sprinters hung above them.
Long, blackened roots resembling the rot, pulsed as if they were alive. The more Blaze looked at them, the more they seemed to resemble the nerves of a sentient creature.
No wonder killing the walkers awakened the Headless.
Blaze couldn’t stop smiling as he realized how weird and wonderful a place the planet had transformed into. He hoped there would be more such creatures on the planet, so he could exploit them.
But for now, he had to focus on getting rid of the Headless’s army.
Without these, the sprinters would run rampant.
Blaze popped his claws out and ripped off a link. It recoiled violently upon being slashed and flailed like a severed limb before going still.
Strange. I thought the Headless would squirm in pain, yet I can’t sense it doing anything weird.
Blaze wasn’t sure if his little trick was working or not.
However, there was no stopping afterwards. Blaze grabbed a bunch of roots and began hacking away. Soon, all the links had been severed.
That should have been it, but as the severed links squirmed in his hand, a thought entered his mind.
It was a strange thought, one that might just kill him for good. However, he wanted to try it without prior testing.
What’s the point of being a zombie if every little thing scares you?
He let go of the links and dropped to one knee, pulling his suit off. Then he pulled out a single finger-claw and ran it across his nape to the base of his skull.
Cold, rotten blood oozed out of the deep incision, but Blaze didn’t care. Slowly, he made his way deeper and reached the point where the spine met the cranium.
He had to be careful now. One wrong move and he could paralyze himself. For a moment, the thought of backing out appeared in his mind. But by then, he had already ripped out the outer layer of muscle and the thin membrane protecting the spinal cord.
He shoved two claws inside the neck incision, widening the gap until he could reach behind with his other hand. Then, without hesitation, Blaze took the severed links and pressed them against his exposed head and spine.
The blackened nerves twitched, sensing the presence of a new host, and latched on. A jolt of electricity ran through him. He smelled something burning, but kept going as he felt no pain... until he did.