"Saeko-senpai, let's head back."
Su Yan expanded his En, locating Saeko Busujima. She was hunting down scattered zombies nearby after finishing fueling the motorcycle.
As soon as she saw Su Yan approaching, Saeko immediately transitioned out of her combat stance.
Perhaps because of the thugs from the gas station earlier, there were signs of the area being cleared out.
There were very few zombies to be found nearby, and she still hadn't learned the En technique from Su Yan yet.
After the last two days of exhilarating combat—which felt like something out of a Dynasty Warriors game—the stray zombies wandering near the gas station weren't even enough for a warm-up.
Saeko sheathed her Soul Slasher and asked curiously, "Is it over?"
"Yeah."
Su Yan nodded.
Thanks to the help of those 'kind-hearted' individuals.
Su Yan now understood exactly how the zombie virus in this world transmitted itself.
It wasn't through saliva, nor was it actually through the teeth themselves.
Instead, located in the upper jaw of the zombies, there was a gland similar to a venomous snake's that stored what he called the zombie toxin.
Only when a zombie bit its prey would it release this special toxin into the wound.
Once this toxin entered the human bloodstream, it triggered a strange chemical reaction, spreading throughout the body at an incredible speed.
Even immediately amputating the bitten area was useless; it didn't give the victim any time to react.
Furthermore, the toxin produced an extremely subtle and difficult-to-detect hallucinogenic effect.
This was why people grabbed by zombies often found it difficult to resist.
The virus traveled through the blood and eventually concentrated in the brain, transforming the infected into mindless monsters that only attacked surrounding life.
The most troublesome part was that once this toxin came into contact with air, it oxidized rapidly, losing its ability to infect.
While this significantly reduced the risk of being infected in the future through indirect means...
The nature of the zombie toxin left Su Yan somewhat puzzled.
With so many limitations—essentially requiring a bite to infect—how did the zombie crisis even start?
Besides the Will of the World, Su Yan couldn't think of any other possibility for the time being.
He could only suppress the thought for now.
The volatile nature of the virus had also made extraction difficult for Su Yan.
Fortunately, by relying on his Conjuration abilities, he managed to conjure a variety of tools and successfully extracted a small vial of the virus reagent from a zombie.
However, Saeko had no interest in Su Yan's experiments. She only spared a glance at the reagent he extracted before looking away.
She then looked at Su Yan and asked, "Are we going back now?"
"Right. It's getting late. We'll head back for lunch and rest. I'll take you out to kill more zombies in the afternoon."
Seeing that Saeko wasn't interested in the virus reagent, Su Yan didn't say much more.
Even though Transmutation was adjacent to Conjuration and Saeko would have some potential in developing that system...
He chose not to push it.
Firstly, Su Yan knew Saeko wasn't interested in such things; her heart was more set on slaughter.
Secondly, if a Nen system isn't one's natural affinity, even hard work often ends up wasting talent.
It was better for him to handle the technical side himself.
Because of the contracts, Su Yan now possessed Specialization, the Emission affinity synced from Shizuka Marikawa, and the Conjuration affinity from Saeko Busujima.
As time passed, he was certain he would collect all six systems of Nen and simultaneously possess the talent for each.
So no matter how much he experimented, it wasn't a waste of talent for him.
It was simply a matter of choosing which of the six tracks to run on first.
From his own progress in Conjuration, Su Yan felt his talent might lie in his versatility.
For instance, in Hunter x Hunter, the chains Kurapika conjured didn't have special abilities at first. He only granted them powers after understanding Vows and Restrictions.
Even so, it took Kurapika three months to truly manifest the chains from his mind.
Perhaps because of his rich imagination, Su Yan had taken less than two months to conjure a replica of Saeko's white oak bokken the first time.
And after manifesting a concrete object for the first time, his speed in conjuring other things became faster and faster.
Especially after contracting Saeko.
Su Yan's Conjuration ability felt like it had been fitted with rocket boosters.
Take the motorcycle he started riding yesterday, for example.
Su Yan was confident that if he rode it for a few more days, he could use his Nen to perfectly conjure an identical motorcycle.
As long as it was something that existed in reality—something he could see and touch—Su Yan was sure he could conjure it at high speed.
But that was the limit.
Aside from the unique Soul Slasher weapon held by Saeko, he couldn't conjure any weapons with special attributes.
Similarly...
While the Soul Slasher Su Yan conjured also had the trait of providing Nen feedback upon killing monsters...
Because the contract was Su Yan's own ability and not Saeko's...
The Nen feedback Su Yan received from killing zombies with his Soul Slasher would not be synced back to Saeko.
This was why he left the task of killing zombies to Saeko while he rarely lifted a finger himself.
Part of it was to satisfy Saeko's bloodlust.
But mostly, it was a matter of maximizing the gains.
...
"We're back."
Su Yan led Saeko back to Rika Minami's house and announced their return.
"Mew!" "Mew!"
As expected, the first ones to jump out and greet them were the two fluffy little cuties, the Snowball Beasts.
Su Yan picked up the two Snowball Beasts, placing one on each shoulder.
He looked like a budget version of Sage Mode Jiraiya.
However, Su Yan's look was much more handsome than Jiraiya's Sage Mode.
With a Snowball Beast perched on each shoulder, Su Yan changed into his indoor shoes and walked through the hallway into the living room.
"Yan-kun, welcome back."
"Su Yan-kun, w-welcome back."
At that moment, Rei Miyamoto put down her work and walked over to greet Su Yan, pulling Saya Takagi along by the hand.
However, Saya seemed a bit restrained. Though she spoke the words of welcome, her eyes flickered around, never quite daring to look Su Yan directly in the face.
"What's all this?"
Su Yan looked at the two girls in front of him with a hint of surprise in his eyes.
The two of them were actually wearing the same style of apron that Saeko had worn in the original anime.
Though they weren't exactly wearing nothing but the aprons...
Rei reached up to brush a strand of hair from her face and said softly, "Since we can't help Yan-kun with much else, we wanted to do whatever we could."
"Like prepping the ingredients before you got back. This way, we can help you save a lot of time."
Hearing this, Su Yan felt a bit surprised and nodded. "Is that so? Thank you for the trouble."
"It's nothing. Besides, Saya helped out a lot too." Rei shook her head gently and nudged Saya with her elbow.
Seeing Su Yan look her way, Saya explained somewhat nervously, "Don't get the wrong idea. I didn't do this on purpose just to make you like me more."
"I only did it because Rei said she needed my help."
"Is that so?"
Su Yan looked at the pink-haired girl with a strange expression.
When did these two become so close? They were already calling each other by their first names.
Besides that, he found Saya's reaction quite amusing.
Could this be the legendary 'tsundere'?
Interesting. I want to pet her.
Su Yan chuckled and experimentally reached out to pat Saya's head, saying, "In any case, thank you. I'll take it from here."
Even though Saya turned her head away with an air of reluctance, she didn't actually reject Su Yan's head pat.
If one looked closely, they would notice the pink-haired girl slightly standing on her tiptoes, subtly leaning her head into Su Yan's palm.
If Saya had an ahoge on her head, it would probably be wagging like a puppy's tail right now.
Watching Saya's behavior, a single thought simultaneously popped into everyone's mind.
Saya Takagi is...
Totally easy to read!
[Reviews - Power St0nes - Comments are highly appreciated to keep me going.....(+50 chapters) patre0n.c0m/talecrafter]