The green creature was seemingly angered by Hiroki's slow engagement and just charged at him, flailing its arms. Seeing this, Hiroki concentrated, his pupils constricting into holes the size of a pinhead.
His extensive fighting ability had been grown from an early age by his late father who was a very militant man. This was what caused his delinquent behavior - he had the strength to do what he wanted to do, so why wouldn't he?
But now, as the bulk of green muscle charged at him, he knew how it felt to be the underdog in a fight.
From what he'd saw before the brute in front of him was an absolute powerhouse, being able to stick its arms through a thick wall with ease. By proxy, Hiroki could guess it had to have the durability to put up with such strength, so most attacks he could think of doing were useless.
Hiroki was brought out of his thought process by the increasingly heavy vibrations traveling up his legs and shaking his core. He saw that the creature had closed the majority of the distance between them and worry started to flood Hiroki's system as he still hadn't thought of any way to kill the thing in front of him.
But suddenly, as all seemed bleak, Hiroki looked into the bipolar eyes of the creature - both unfeeling, yet full of such rage - and he thought of how you usually kill Zombies; Their Brains!
Hiroki was putting a lot of hope on the fact his knife would be able to pierce through the eye socket of the creature, but as it was all he had going for him, it was all he could do.
So, Hiroki jumped at the brute, wanting to control the pace of the fight between them. Surprisingly, the creature didn't pick him from the sky as it saw him jumping at him. Hiroki could see that it wanted to but it just couldn't.
Hiroki smirked, thinking that the brute's unresponsive body was one of the bad parts about being undead; A severe lack of dexterity.
His smirk soon worn off, however, as he flew through the sky and onto the torso of the monster. Looking so closely at its face, he really couldn't describe it any better than as a bald Hulk with white murky eyes. It had a sort of dumb, neanderthal look about it.
But recalling what he was doing, Hiroki admonished himself over his stupid jokes and got one of his hands around the back of the neck of the brute and placed both his feet on the sturdy stomach before drawing back his hand which had the knife in it.
By this point, the creature was reaching for Hiroki with its arms but it was already too late as Hiroki swung the knife down with all his considerable strength.
*SQUELCH!*
"RAGGGHHHHHH!" the big Zombie roared in a mixture of pain and anger as the combat knife sunk through its glassy eyes and into the bone behind the eye itself. The point of the knife lodged its way into the hole which the optic nerve travels through and a sickening crack resounded throughout the hallway.
Hearing the cracking and squelching noises, Hiroki ignored the blaring ache in his ears and pushed even harder on the knife, trying to push it through the cracks of the bone and into the delicate brain.
*CRACK! SLI--*
But before the knife could fully insert itself, Hiroki felt two big hands encircle themselves around his neck. Instantly choked for air, Hiroki let go of the knife out of pure instinct and brought his hands to the green ones currently choking him.
"Gagh!" Hiroki's face went red as the veins on his arms bulged as he tried to move the hands on him. The hands briefly budged which surprised the Zombie, and even Hiroki himself, but before either of them could act on their surprise, the Zombie brought Hiroki's body backward and got into something reminiscent of a baseball pitching stance.
Knowing what was about to come, Hiroki re-doubled his efforts and strained himself even more. From the pure pressure, he'd put on his body, plus the hand pushing all his blood into his head and stopping it from leaving, two trails of blood came from each of Hiroki's nostrils and his usually brown eyes started to glitter with an unusual color.
The Zombie noticed an increase in strength from it's captive but ignored it as it was still meager compared to its own strength and in one fluid motion brought it's hand forward at blinding speed.
Hiroki didn't register when he'd left the Zombie's hand as the force of the throw and the previous asphyxiation had left his mind pretty blank.
But he could write a full-blown essay on when his body hit the wall next to the living room doorway.
Because the throw somehow had some curve to it, Hiroki's body had spun mid-air and his back was the first thing to hit the wall, and it hit the wall with some momentum as when his back hit the wall, Hiroki felt and heard a resounding crack.
After that he limbs followed and slammed into the wall, resounding in dull thuds and nearly uncatchable cracking sounds; like eggs being broken in the distance.
Then his organs seemed to catch up to the rest of his body and slammed into his injured spine, squeezing up against it and switching position with one another. After that, Hiroki's head caught up and apart from some brutal whiplash, the back of his head split open similar to how a watermelon does when someone takes a hammer to it.
Hiroki heard a faint gasp and then felt someone rush to his side and start to whisper his name. He couldn't see who it was as his eyes and brain had apparently broken up at some point in the last 10 seconds and nobody had told him about it.
But alas, they seemed to make up as his eyes slowly but surely started to see things once more.
He saw Ino's beautiful face, covered in worry and anxiety, her raven black hair looking like a blanket of night falling over the world as it hung over her and Hiroki. Hiroki thought about how dearly he wished to sleep at the moment...He also seemed to be forgetting something--
Hiroki's mind suddenly went under a massive reboot as he remembered what he'd just been doing and how the green creature had thoroughly handed his ass to him.
He looked up at Ino who was trying to whisper consolements to him but he couldn't hear any of them, but he smiled nonetheless. Or at least he tried to and his mouth did something weird, he just spoke on instinct, feeling that it was more important than smiling at Ino.
"Run..." was all Hiroki could get out before he saw a big green hand wrap its way around Ino's neck and drag her away from him and throw her toward the doorway. Granted she was thrown with much less force than Hiroki but it was enough to put her out of it.
The brute than went to reach for Hiroki but before it could reach him, the Tv from the front room flew into the side of the creatures head eliciting a roar from it. The green head darted to it's left and looked at Daichi who had just thrown it.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
Hiroki couldn't see Daichi at the moment as he was lying on the ground in a crumpled pile but he could definitely imagine the anger on his face at watching the Zombie harm his sister.
Daichi...what an honorable fella...
Hiroki was brought out of his mental ramblings as he felt something in his body click together. With the click, Hiroki could suddenly feel his body once again and he mentally rejoiced. But that happiness soon faded as volley after volley of pain followed the sensation of feeling returning to Hiroki.
"Arghh!" Hiroki let out a howl of pain as he felt his internals rearranging themselves. It wouldn't have been so bad but it felt like someone was doing a jigsaw puzzle in his body, and the main problem was that they were fucking terrible at jigsaw puzzles.
While Hiroki was howling in pain, Daichi was throwing new things at the Zombie. He threw the coffee table at it, the Tv stand, even a small bookshelf. The only reason the Zombie hadn't marched over a killed him was because it felt a mass of internal conflict; Kill the Human who stabbed it in the eye or kill the Human who kept throwing stuff at it.
The undead brain didn't seem capable of figuring out which would be better so it just stood there and looked back and forth between Hiroki and Daichi with anger and hatred building upon its face.
Looking around the room, Daichi seemed to find something of major value which made his eyes shine with hope.
If Hiroki wasn't screaming and howling in pain and saw what Daichi had found, he'd probably understand why the pretty boy teen who'd won multiple Kendo Tournaments would get excited over finding it.
Daichi had found a Katana that had once belonged to his Father's Father or Hiroki's Grandfather. Once his Father had died, Hiroki was meant to take up the sword, for his family honor or some shit like that, but he didn't want to - preferring his limbs and knives as his main weapons - so the Katana had just been collecting dust in the Living Room on a stand since his Father's death.
Daichi, however, was a Swordsman. Apparently a natural-born one at that. So, in the Zombie apocalypse when he had to decide on a cold weapon to use, why wouldn't he pick a Katana? The only problem was that he didn't personally own one, nor were they easy to find. Well, at least good ones, anyway.
Daichi picked up the blade and inspected it. It didn't look special but as a swords fanatic, Daichi could tell the workmanship on the blade, guard and handle were all superb.
So, now that he had it in his hand, what would he do? Attack the bulky, green dead man in front of him of course!
Daichi got into a stance before rushing at the brute in front of him. The brute was seemingly distracted and didn't realize what was coming at him as Daichi sliced at the side of the creature before slipping past him and slicing it once more on the back.
Both these attacks did draw blood but they were the equivalent of someone getting cut and drawing blood from a paper cut.
But the level of damage seemingly didn't matter to the brute anymore. The Human with the sword was beginning to be much more annoying than being stabbed in the eye, so it turned around to address the problem.
Daichi backed up a few feet and composed himself, his stance perfect and left with no openings.
Meanwhile, Hiroki had stopped screaming and was instead calmly watching something in front of him.
[Awakening Traits with the Virus...]
[Traits Successfully Awakened!]
[Traits Gained: Accelerated Metabolism, Adaptive Metabolism, and Superior.]
[Well done for surviving your Awakening, you have been given the Title "The One Who Adapts Survives"]
As he saw this lines of text, Hiroki felt his entire body click back into place, feeling better and stronger than ever. He didn't know why this was happening but he wouldn't question it right now, not when bigger things were on the line.
Unknown to Hiroki, his eyes had turned from brown to a light yellow and the pupils were slightly elongated and they currently constricted a little looking similar to slit pupils as he looked at the brutish Zombie.
He leaned down and took out his spare combat knife and using his unusually keen senses, flung the knife like a throwing knife at the back of the creature. The knife split the air in a hurry and firmly entered the green flesh, black blood spilling from the edges of the knife.
"RAGHH!" The monster spun around only to see the Human it had crippled back up, seemingly as if nothing had happened to him. The Zombie even sensed there was something different about the Human, it was definitely more dangerous than the Human with the sword.
The Zombie thought this was weird as the knife Human had lost its weapon but the creatures pea-sized brain figured it wasn't worth thinking about and instead let anger decide it's decisions again.
So, like it had done more than once today, the Zombie charged at the knife Human, Hiroki.
Seeing the charge, unlike the fear Hiroki felt before, he currently felt disdain when he looked at the disorderly charge of the Zombie. It had magnificent strength, it just didn't know how to use it.
With that thought, Hiroki rushed at the Zombie, looking like he was about to charge at it. This angered the undead creature even more and it re-doubled it's effort in its charge and caused even more vibrations to shake the hallway, alerting any Zombies within a half-mile that a fight was underway.
Hiroki kept his calm and continued charging at the Zombie but as they were about to meet, Hiroki dodged under the raised arms of the brute and his hand flickered up to the knife in the Zombies back and pulled it free, the blade now dyed black.
The Zombie was shocked its opponent had thought of dodging its charge but it couldn't do anything about it as its momentum was too strong and carried it toward the wall where Hiroki had been thrown into.
But Hiroki wasn't going to let it reach the wall. He pivoted on the spot where he'd grabbed the knife and with an unnatural amount of grace and control, instantly shot after the green brute.
Hiroki's speed shocked Daichi as he instantly accelerated to speeds that even some sprinters would find troubling to run at. Daichi was further shocked as he watched Hiroki speed up and overtake the Zombie.
Looking at it from Daichi's perspective it seemed like Hiroki and the Zombie were having a race for who could reach the wall first and whoever got there first would live. Well, that's what his instincts told him at least.
Hiroki knew this was his only chance because as dumb as the Zombie was, it seemed to be learning, so he needed to pull off his plan. Thinking this, he pushed his legs further causing the muscles to burn and ache for him to stop but he didn't and his speed increased once again.
After less than a second the wall was in front of him and he jumped and placed his feet against the wall, the momentum and power going through his legs caused something to rip but Hiroki ignored the pain in his lower body and instead used whatever power he had left in his legs and pushed off the wall with, quite frankly, inhuman strength cracking the plaster around his feet.
Hiroki shot through the air at the Zombie's head and brought up his knee to impact the knife in the brute's eye socket.
The Zombie saw what Hiroki wanted to do but like before, the Zombies body just wouldn't move quick enough for it to be able to do something to stop it's impending doom.
*CRACK! SQUELCH!*
Hiroki's knee collided with the handle of the knife and the force of his flying body and the force of the Zombie's charge worked together and the knife went straight into the Zombie's head and even split the Zombies head open.
"Argh!" of course Hiroki wasn't completely exempt from injuries from that exchange but from what happened when he healed from a broken spine, a broken knee wouldn't be too hard, right?
Hiroki dropped to the floor and because of his knee, his earlier appearance of having superb control disappeared as he hit the floor and started rolling, unable to stop himself. But he didn't care, he had a dumb smile on his face as he realized he'd not only survived such dire circumstances, he'd even gained something from them.
Coincidentally, Hiroki kept rolling and only stopped at Daichi's feet who looked down at him with a happy smile on his face, "Well done, Kurosawa-san!--Wait, what's happened with your eyes!" Daichi instantly got worried about Hiroki.
Hiroki only smiled before laughing, "Shouldn't you be worried about your sister? She was thrown over here, right?" his mood seemed impossible to bring down and it was only made better by his knee sliding back into its rightful place.
However, Hiroki wasn't incredibly eager on explaining his eyes and his powers.
Meanwhile, Daichi who heard what Hiroki said, instantly paled and turned around to see his sister with a bloodied nose on the floor near the door. He quickly rushed over to her and did a once over on her and to his relief, she was fine.
Seeing that everything was fine, for now at least, Daichi collapsed back onto the ground and figured his questions for Hiroki could wait until later. For now, all three of them could rest.