Bai Li kept walking down the third floor corridor, but the moment she stepped out of the stairwell, she immediately felt something was wrong. The hallway lights on the other floors had all been on, at least enough to make the place look normal from a distance, but this floor was different. Dark. Really dark. Not just dim, but the kind of darkness that swallowed the far end of the corridor so completely that she couldn’t even see where it ended. It looked less like an apartment floor and more like the hallway of some old horror movie where something was waiting at the end just to jump at you the second you let your guard down. Bai Li slowed her steps a little, her fingers tightening around Whisperfang. She didn’t feel scared, but she did feel alert. The silence here was too thick. The doors on both sides of the corridor were mostly shut, and the air itself felt stale, like nobody had dared come out since the outbreak warnings started. She moved forward carefully, her eyes adjusting to the low light little by little, and the deeper she walked, the more ugly details appeared. Bloodstains were scattered across the walls in ugly dark smears. There were scratch marks too, deep and messy, running along the wallpaper and painted surfaces like someone had clawed desperately at the walls while trying to escape. Then she saw the body at the end of the corridor, and even she had to pause for a second. It was not just a dead body anymore. It barely looked human. Most of the flesh had been eaten away, bones showing through in several places, and the face was half gone, crushed and torn open in a way that made it hard to tell what it had looked like when alive. Clotted blood covered the body and the floor beneath it, and a large chunk of the skull was missing, leaving the brain exposed and leaking out. Bai Li looked at it with a slightly disgusted expression, but that was all. No shock. No fear. Just a small quiet feeling of disgust that passed through her and then disappeared. She stared at the body for a second longer, then her eyes shifted to the apartment door right next to it.

The door was open.

Not wide open, but enough to let her understand that whatever had happened here had happened from inside. Bai Li frowned slightly. She didn’t know who lived there, and honestly she didn’t care much, but the fact that the door was open in this state meant something inside had gone wrong a long time ago. She took a breath, tightened her grip on the dagger, and moved closer. The apartment inside was dark, almost completely black, with only a faint amount of light coming in from the corridor behind her. At first she couldn’t see much, just the outlines of furniture and shadows that looked wrong in the dark. But then she felt it. Several presences. Not one. Not two. A few clustered deeper inside, some close together, some moving in different directions. Bai Li narrowed her eyes and stood just at the doorway, the blade low in her hand, her body still. Then the system’s voice, which had stayed quiet for a while, suddenly rang in her head like a little warning bell.

"Host, be careful. Some zombies carry future high level potential even at basic level. They may have special traits. If they survive long enough and absorb enough crystal cores later, they may evolve into stronger types faster than normal zombies."

Bai Li didn’t answer aloud. She only looked deeper into the dark room. Special traits, huh. That meant trouble. But also means more crystal cores later. She stepped inside slowly, and almost the moment she crossed the threshold, something moved on her left. A small shape shot forward low to the ground, much faster than the zombies she had fought before. Bai Li’s eyes widened just a little before she shifted her body back and the figure tore past her shoulder instead of into her throat. It hit the wall behind her with a weird sharp sound, then bounced off and moved again almost instantly. It was a child zombie, probably around ten or eleven years old before death, and unlike the slow clumsy zombies from the stairs, this one was quick. Really quick. Its hands were thin and pale, fingers bent strangely, its head cocking at impossible angles as it turned back toward her with sharp jerking movements. Before Bai Li could fully focus on that one, another child zombie leapt out from behind a sofa, small body moving with freakish speed, while a third one came from the right side near the kitchen doorway, all three of them moving with the kind of ugly agility that made it clear they were different from the others. Their limbs were too loose, too fast, like their bodies had already lost the normal human stiffness that made older zombies slow. It was almost like they had been built to move quickly from the start. That alone made Bai Li’s expression sharpen. These were not ordinary first stage zombies. The system had been right. Some of them really did carry special traits even now.

The room exploded into motion almost immediately. One of the child zombies came at her from the front in a sudden zigzag motion that made it hard to read its path, and Bai Li shifted her feet just in time, letting the thing rush past her before she brought Whisperfang down hard across its neck. The blade sliced through cleanly, but the zombie was so fast that even after the head separated, the body still stumbled forward a few more steps before falling. Another came at her low, almost crawling over the floor with both hands while its feet pushed hard behind it, and Bai Li had to swing her leg out and kick it sideways into the wall before it could grab her ankle. The impact made the small body bounce back hard, but it didn’t stop for long. It was already twisting around again, its jaw opening and closing with those wet clicking sounds that made her skin crawl a little. Bai Li clicked her tongue softly. "These little ones are annoying." She didn’t sound worried, just mildly irritated. The third child zombie had already circled to her back, moving too fast for something that size should have been able to move. It lunged, and Bai Li ducked just enough that its hands scraped over her jacket instead of her neck. The claws caught fabric and pulled slightly, but the jacket held. She turned and slashed back at it, but the zombie was quick enough to twist sideways and only took a shallow cut along the shoulder before darting away again. Bai Li’s eyes narrowed. Fast, agile, hard to hit, and clearly smarter in movement than the basic slow zombies. She could already imagine these things causing absolute disaster if they reached higher levels later.

Then the adult zombies moved too.

Two of them came out from deeper inside the apartment. One was a man with half his face gone, the mouth hanging open in a wet ugly shape. Another was a woman with one arm bent at an unnatural angle and blood dried thick across her chest. They were slower than the children, but still dangerous because they had more weight behind them. One of them slammed into a table and knocked it over while rushing her, making the whole room shake with the impact. Bai Li didn’t bother backing all the way away. Instead she stepped into the motion, like she was testing the flow of the fight itself. The man reached first, and she used the side of her blade to push his arm aside before driving Whisperfang straight across the neck in one clean movement. The cut was so smooth the head almost looked detached before the body understood it had died. The woman behind it lunged over the fallen body, trying to grab her shoulders, and Bai Li answered with a short forward kick that slammed into the zombie’s stomach and sent it staggering backward into the kitchen counter. The force wasn’t flashy, but it was enough to stop the momentum. She moved before it could recover, closing the distance and bringing the dagger down again. Another head fell. No hesitation. No wasted motion. Just clean execution after clean execution, like she was simply checking off targets in a training drill.

But the three kid zombies were still the real problem. They weren’t strong enough to overpower her directly, but they were hard to pin down because they kept changing direction and darting around the furniture. One climbed up onto the sofa, used the armrest like a step, and launched itself at her from above. Bai Li barely tilted her head enough to avoid its teeth, and the zombie’s face scraped against her shoulder instead. She felt the cold rotten air brush past her skin, and that was enough to make her expression harden. She caught its arm with one hand, spun it around using its own weight, and slammed it into the floor hard enough that the crack echoed through the apartment. Before it could spring back up, her dagger flashed down and ended it. Another kid zombie had been circling the kitchen island, trying to use the shadows and furniture as cover. It was smart enough to wait for her blind spot, but Bai Li was already watching through the corner of her eye. The moment it darted forward, she shifted one step to the side and let the blade pass through its neck with almost lazy ease. The last one was the trickiest. It had a weird habit of pausing and then suddenly bursting forward from the most unexpected angle, and Bai Li could see from its movement alone that it was probably the most promising one of the bunch. If it survived, it might turn into something nasty later. Maybe one of those fast crawler types or ambush zombies. The thought crossed her mind while she ducked its next jump. It landed on the table, crouched like an animal, and then leapt at her again with claws spread wide. Bai Li raised one hand to catch its wrist, then twisted hard and used the momentum to pull it down in front of her. It hit the floor on its back, dazed for a split second. That split second was all she needed. The blade dropped. The room went quiet for the briefest moment before the body stopped moving.

Only then did Bai Li exhale and glance around the apartment. Furniture was knocked over, blood was spread across the floor in several places, and the whole room looked like a mess, but she herself still looked mostly clean except for a few ugly stains on her boot and the lower side of her jacket. She frowned a little at the dirt on her clothes, then looked at the pile of bodies with a more thoughtful expression. These zombies had been different. Not stronger in raw power, but clearly more dangerous because of how fast they moved and how they reacted. The system had been right. These were probably the kind that could become high level zombies later if they survived long enough and kept feeding on crystal cores. Bai Li didn’t like that thought one bit. If even basic level children could move this fast, then later stages would be a disaster. She bent slightly, wiping the edge of her blade against the clothing of one of the fallen zombies with a small frown, then looked toward the dark apartment one last time. The fight had been one sided in the end, but she knew better than to get arrogant. These were still only the early stage monsters. The real dangerous ones were still ahead. Still, she couldn’t deny that this fight had been useful. The speed test. The movement test. The reaction test. Whisperfang had performed beautifully, and her own body had handled the pressure far better than she expected. With that thought, she heard the system’s familiar cute voice ring in her head again, cheerful as ever despite the scene around her.

"Congratulations, dear. You have collected seven Level One Zombie Cores."

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To be continued.