“Are you happy now?” Jules said with a slightly annoyed look on his face.

“Y-you… What are you?!” Mia replied clearly shocked by what she was seeing. Anyone seeing such a sight would definitely not expect that ‘creature’ to be human. After all, what kind of humans had huge pulsating hearts on their back that emitted black smoke on top of having quite visibly black blood.

“Ugh. How to say. I’m a bloody zombie.” He replied, still annoyed yet this time with a slightly embarrassed look on his face.

It still hadn’t been long since he had been reincarnated in this new world. On top of the odd events that occurred after his reincarnation, he currently had the body of a female. Which to say the least, made him rather uncomfortable. Therefore, thinking back upon what put him in this situation still made him feel slightly awkward. Despite that, he was still a strong will individual and managed to mostly conceal that expression. If he started giving in to his hostages, he wouldn’t know what to think of himself anymore.

“You’re what? Zombies can’t talk, you must be lying. What are you really? What do you want to do with us?”

“I’m a zombie and I talk. If you don’t want to believe me well that’s your problem. I’m not here to convince you otherwise. Now it would be nice of you to shut your mouth while I check-up on my experiments.” He snapped back; this girl was getting on his nerves fast.

This seemed to have achieved something as the girl finally shut her mouth and watched him with an incredulous look in her eyes. As if she wasn’t expecting Jules to reply to her that way. However, that look quickly faded and was replaced by another, more ferocious one, when she saw Jules approach her dear friend Felix.

“Hey! What do you think you’re doing to my friend?!” She exclaimed as soon as Jules had started inspecting how Felix’s new immune system was doing.

This majorly pissed him off. This girl was his bloody captive. He had already told her to shut up, yet she still wouldn’t stop. Was she even aware that she and her friend’s lives were in his hands?

“Do you want me to knock you out?” He replied accompanied with an equally furious stare.

“I swear if you dare harm him in any wa…”

SMACK!

Thud.

Jules had punched her straight in the head, causing her to instantly lose consciousness and collapse back down on her bed.

‘Finally, some quiet’ he thought.

Now that he was freed of Mia’s annoying voice, he proceeded to shift his focus back to Felix. He was looking forward to the results of this experiment because it would essentially give him the ability to steal magicules from humans without killing them. Yet, in Jules’ eyes, the potential of this research was far greater. If his bacteria truly became able to remain in a host over a long term, then there were many things he would potentially be able to do. There was one such idea that stood out to him. Quite eager to try it out later he tasked Xena to put some work into making it possible. He named this the ‘Mnemo’ project. Sadly, according to Xena’s estimates, it seemed that it will take about two days for it to be complete. Luckily, he still had plenty to experiment with.

Looking at Felix he could instantly see that there was something wrong with him. He was quite pale, and his condition seemed to be deteriorating fast. His breathing was quick and yet very weak.

‘Interesting.’ Jules thought. This was by no means bad news. In science a failure was always a step forward, there was always something to learn from things going wrong. In fact, lots of inventions had been discovered completely by mistakes either from failed experiments or as by-products. Therefore, instead of being demoralized, Jules was actually looking forward to seeing what was going wrong.

Using his bacteria and Xena’s abilities, Jules was able to go through a series of step that allowed him to identify the problem. And indeed, it seemed that the immune system that he had set up was malfunctioning. Although in theory, all should have been fine, it turned out that a certain part of Felix’s body caused it to go wrong. This caused Jules’ bacteria to identify his hemoglobin as a foreign threat. Due to this, they had been constantly destroying it on top of the red blood cells they were on.

So how did that put Felix into such a tough spot? Hemoglobin is a protein responsible for carrying oxygen from the lungs to the cells. Therefore, since Felix was losing his rapidly, this meant that he was essentially suffocating because he wasn’t able to get oxygen to his body. Hence the weak rapid breaths.

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Unfortunately for him, Jules was completely unable to replenish his hemoglobin stock. Although he instantly fixed the problem with his bacteria, he wasn’t able to repair the damage they had done. Unless Felix were to get a blood transfusion, he would certainly die within the next few minutes.

“What a shame. I would have liked to experiment more on him…” He thought out loud.

However, this wasn’t all for nothing. Although his bacteria had started to attack Felix’s red blood cells, it wasn’t the only thing that went wrong. Thanks to that, Xena had been able to gain a lot more data in order to improve the procedure until it became perfect.

On a side note, he also found an easier and stealthy way of asphyxiating people. Another thing that came out of this experiment was that I seemed that red blood cells were rather prone to be destroyed by his bacteria. This was due to their rather small size and lack of ability to defend themselves. This proved to be a way easier way to cut someone’s oxygen flow than to crudely get them to form a lump within the throat. The later needing a rather large number of bacteria to accomplish. On top of that, using this method would probably cause people to feel more and more faint-headed until they collapsed, not vigorously gripping their throats. This made the new method a quicker, more efficient and quieter way to kill someone.

Overall Jules was quite satisfied with what his experiment on Felix earned him. Knowing he was no longer a threat, he decided to untie him. This way he would be able to get up as soon as he became a zombie.

Having accomplished his goals for the day he proceeded to make his way to the now repurposed dining tent.

As soon as he stepped in, he could smell the stench of blood within this room as well. The inside of the tent was dim, just like the one he just came from.

Inside the room, on a mattress laid a rather large lizard. The lizard was fast asleep, still recovering from its heavy wounds. Large white bloodstained bandages were wrapped across its torso. Although it wasn’t extremely visible, the lizard seemed to be in pain.

Jules walked up to it and sat down.

“Here buddy. It gonna be okay.” He said in a reassuring voice. For some reason, he seemed to care a lot more about that lizard than the humans. Despite his hatred towards the latter, he was still quite surprised at his lack of empathy towards them. He literally just sentenced one of them to death and yet wasn’t feeling anything. At first, he thought perhaps its normal, maybe shock or something. But he quickly dismissed that idea, as he didn’t feel bad about it before the experiment or when he killed the bandits.

His main hypothesis was that it was due to his new body. He was a zombie. Zombies lived to kill, why would they care about the person they just killed? The idea that his body exerted such huge control over his mind quite frankly terrified him. However, upon deeper reflection he still deemed it to be an advantage. If he wanted to get stronger in this world, he would have to kill. There was no way around that, even if he decided to farm magicules, there was no guarantee that it would make him stronger. Zombies had evolved to spread their disease, why the hell would they focus on making a strong core when they have an army. Thinking over it logically, a core probably evolved to become some sort of support unit, not a fighter. Therefore, he was quite glad not to have to worry about that aspect of things. Although then on he made sure to always be on guard towards strange thinking patterns as he did not want to become a stupid zombie. His strength originated from his caution, he knew that, and he didn’t want to lose it.

Looking back at the lizard he noticed that it seemed to have woken up. Its deep dark eyes were wide open and looking around the room quite curiously. It stood up slowly and stared at Jules intensely. This lasted for a few seconds until it decided to throw itself at him. Jules let out a surprised scream, but instead of finding himself hurt, he looked down only to see a happy lizard rolling around on his lap with its tongue out. In a surprisingly similar way to a dog... This somewhat amusing sight and made Jules giggle a bit. Although it was still injured, it seemed that it was still well enough to roll around and play a bit.

It seems that it had deemed Jules to be friendly after their intense gaze battle. Perhaps it even recognized him as the one who saved it from the three kids. Although Jules was remotely controlling one of his bodies at the time, it seems that the lizard was able to see through that. Which in a way made it easier for him to manage the creature.

The lizard looked at him again, this time with pleading eyes. Jules having noticed that immediately knew what it wanted.

“Alright, I’ll play with you for a bit.”

Instantly after having said these words the lizard jumped at him almost as if it understood these words. They played for about 15 minutes until Jules decided to stop it to make sure that it got all the rest it needed. Only leaving after he made sure that it had plenty of water, as for food, Jules was still unsure as of what it needed.

Now back in his hut, Jules decided to spend some of his time to practice his remote-control skills. Although it was a bit easier and significantly faster than it used to be when he started, it was still a very mentally exhausting task.

After a couple of attempts, he noticed something peculiar. He had one more zombie than he should have. And of course, suddenly, without any warning, a rush of magicules surged within his body, causing his heart to expand a little bit more. He couldn’t get enough of that feeling, it was almost like a drug. In a way it kind of was his food, therefore it somewhat made sense for his brain to reward that action, except that was rather extreme. But hey, he wasn’t complaining about it.

Having acquired this new zombie, he decided to try and remote-control it as well. After some focussing, he finally manages to take control, only to find a pleasant surprise. It seemed that Mia had awoken, and she was looking at him with an incredibly bright smile.

‘Oh boy, she’s in for one hell of a surprise!’ Jules thought to himself, almost laughing.