Another “tongue dart” shot right at Wu Xiaoming’s face the moment he stood firm and ready to face its charge. Wu Xiaoming sidestepped and dodged once again. Maybe it was because the nurse zombie was less “mutated”, its tongue attack did not shoot as fast and as far as the doctor zombie’s. Wu Xiaoming’s fire axe swung upwards and landed on the zombie’s left upper arm and cleaved cleanly through. With another quick step he moved behind the zombie’s back and launched a kick on its lower back.

The nurse zombie was thrown forward and fell face down on the ground. Before it could get up, Wu Xiaoming already stepped on its back and sunk the blade of the fire axe into the back of its skull. Two more swings, and the nurse zombie’s head was obliterated, along with the two pale creatures.

A sudden wave of dizziness, muscle soreness and fatigue struck Wu Xiaoming at the same time, almost making him collapse onto the ground. He held onto the fire axe and leaned on the wall to his side so that he would not fall onto the dirty ground.

He had been in much more demanding physical fights before, this was more than what would happen after adrenaline wore off. He took a moment to sense the surrounding area and his own status, and an idea popped into his mind - this was retaliation, from this limbo itself, for daring to use power that did not belong to this limbo.

And by “not belong to this limbo”, it was pretty obvious that it meant the use of Law of the Words skill.

He had to rest for a minute or two before he felt comfortable enough to continue moving. And during this time, no zombies had come close to his position. This was surely a good sign - this hospital was just that empty, and he could look around for some tools, documents with information, medicine or maybe even weapons.

He swept the broken skull pieces to the side using his fire axe to check on the creatures that took over the nurse zombie’s skull. It was cut up and smashed, so it was hard to tell what it looked like initially. But from the mess of its remains, he could see tissues that looked like muscles and cartilage. And judging from what was left of its skin, the creatures would probably look a bit like one half of a brain, with similar wrinkles.

He flipped the doctor zombie over and checked on its wounds and smashed skull. The zombie body also showed signs of mutation. He was no expert in human anatomy, but he was pretty sure the tendons connecting to human muscles would not have scale-like texture on their surfaces, and normal human muscles would not have gray spider-web like webbing tissue wrapped around them. Maybe these were the reasons the zombies were much more agile and physically powerful than most regular humans, and maybe, these were not the same kind of zombies that he was thinking of - the kind that were mutated from viruses.

The blood of the zombies were darker, with traces of gray slime inside. This made him curious, the first zombie he encountered, its blood was brighter in color, was the difference in the state or progress of mutation?

He pushed this idea down for now and proceeded to head to other rooms. If this was a hospital, then they must have some information about the zombie outbreak - patient records, copies of reports filed to authorities, or maybe even better, results of analysis and/or studies on the zombie disease.

He looked around quite a bit and finally found a room for documents, dispatching four “regular” zombies without tongue darts along the way - two were wearing hospital gowns in a bathroom, one was stuck in the morgue, and the last one was someone wearing a suit and carrying a suitcase - like a lawyer or insurance investigator. But the documents were all unreadable - all of them contained only garbled characters, mixing Roman characters, Chinese, Japanese, Korean characters and others he did not recognize. It looked like someone printed entire articles that failed to get decoded.

There were two computers in this room, both of which were still functional, but were locked in what looked like log in screens. He tried to type in something, using keyboards marked with garbled characters. None of his attempts worked. He dived back to the files again, and he was lucky - one of the files contained a printed photo on it. It was blurry, but it clearly showed the anatomy of a creature living inside of the zombie’s skulls. 

Just like he suspected, the creature had a lot of resemblance to half a human brain. It had five tentacles extending from the bottom of its body. The tentacles had fibrous internal textures similar to muscles, and at their tips were tiny, elongated tendrils with long descriptions. Probably “connectors” between their own nervous system and the zombies’.

He tucked the report into his clothes - this was a useful piece of information, maybe it could come in handy later.

 He found the pharmacy right after, and somewhat infuriatingly, the boxes and containers of the medicine also had garbled characters printed on them. So all he could do was pick a bottle of pills - the plastic bottle looked similar to a kind of over-the-counter painkillers’. He grabbed a small plastic bag and put some bottles in - if there was an NPC here, maybe they could decode the labels for him.

 Rather strangely, there were no medical tools anywhere. No scalpels, no scissors, no medical machinery like MRI machines, lights or other machines for testing and analysis.

Having found nothing else of value, he walked out of the front door of this hospital. Just as his entire body was out of the door, a wave of light dizziness hit him. A semi-transparent panel popped up before him showing three things.

From left to right, the first item on the panel was a handgun, the second was a metal baseball bat, and the third was a handheld radio.

“Holy - Roguelike?” Wu Xiaoming narrowed his eyes.

The descriptions below the three items were garbled as well. He fixed his eye on them, and hovered his eyes on them, trying to sense what any of them meant. Sadly, nothing popped up in his mind.

For a weapon, he already had the fire axe. Though the metal baseball bat seemed pretty fitting for his fighting habits and style, the handheld radio provided many more possibilities. Right this moment, in a limbo of which he basically had no knowledge or experience, the ability to gather potential information seemed wiser in general.

He pressed his hand on the handheld radio. The panel faded into the air, and a handheld radio appeared in its position. Wu Xiaoming caught it with his hand before it would fall and hit the ground.

The radio was rather simple: it had a simple switch to turn it on and off, and a dial to tune the frequency, or volume - it was not clearly marked either way. There was no place to plug in a headset, or slots to put in batteries.

He turned on the handheld radio as he began walking down the street. The meaningless buzzing sound from the static made for a pretty good background sound for this lonesome, deserted place. Everything screamed to him that this was an abandoned, previously wealthy and vibrant city: tainted, broken windows, high-rise buildings on both sides devoid of any signs of human activities, broken down cars covered in dirt, dust, blood and debris. 

And after a bit of try and error, the dial was not for tuning the volume of the radio - so it must be for tuning the frequency, or radio channels. And lucky for him, its only volume level was not too high, so using it right here should not attract any unwanted attention.

As he walked past a nightclub with non-functioning neon lights, a pungent smell pouring out of the entrance almost made him gag. He snuck in slightly through the front door to take a look, and what he saw was expected but still quite shocking: the dancefloor was almost entirely covered in blood. Broken limbs, torn internal organs were scattered everywhere. And on the stage at the center of the dance floor, was a tall, armless, mutated zombie.

To say it was mutated, it was because though this zombie had such an abnormally long spine, that half of it stuck out of its neck and was exposed in the air, with gray tubes wrapped around it. On top of it was a skinless and almost completely fleshless skull with tentacles protruding out from its eye sockets, ear holes and nostrils. As the zombie turned its head, the discs on its elongated bone neck clicked and cracked.

Wu Xiaoming backed away from the door and walked away with lightened steps. The zombie did not notice him.

Across the street was a gate, on top of which was a weathered sign: “PO IC”, with one letter missing in the middle and at the end. A police station.