The bright light originating from Jules’ core cell slowly dimmed revealing the outline of multiple clouds.
‘What just happened?’ Jules thought in confusion.
Jules had been suffering from a weird chain of events up until this point; he had been killed in alien crossfire causing him to be reincarnated anew with a super powerful alien probe in his head. As if this wasn’t enough, he had become a bacteria and had been thrown in a hostile environment right from the get-go. With a stroke of luck and ingenuity, he had been able to successfully survive only to find himself forced into yet another strange situation. It would be an understatement to say that he was handling this situation really well.
Judging from what had just happened, Jules thought it safe to assume that he had merged with the brain of the corpse he had reincarnated in. After going through such far-fetched circumstances, Jules had no troubles accepting the idea that he had merged with his host.
Since he had been reflecting on what had just happened, Jules had completely forgotten that he could now see! Overflowing with delight due to his newly recovered sight, Jules sat up and looked around.
He was sitting in a small clearing in which an abundance of tall grass was growing wildly as if fighting one another to reach the sky. In the center of the clearing sat an old broken down well that had probably sustained many families back in its prime. Large trees grew on the outskirts of the grassy area seemingly isolating it within a dense and lively forest.
An expression of surprised appeared on Jules’ face; it was nigh time! How had he not realized that before? Everything looked as clear to him as if it was daytime. If it was not for him looking up and noticing the stars and the moon, Jules would not have been able to tell that it was not daytime!
‘How is this possible?’ he asked himself.
‘[Beep! Sensory input from the host has been enhanced automatically upon acquiring senses.]’ A female robotic voice sounded in his head. This was Xena an alien artificial intelligence that had come to this world with him. It seemed she had the ability to take in any sensory information from his body and optimize it to essentially give Jules super senses!
“That’s so cool!” Jules exclaimed out loud in a surprisingly high-pitched voice before giving way to confusion once more.
‘Why is my voice so high pitched?’ He thought.
A quick look at his new body that he had yet to take notice of was enough to answer his question. He had merged with a girl’s body!
‘What? Really? Why do I keep being so unlucky? I never asked for all of this to happen.’ he thought with a mixture of sadness and exasperation on his face.
‘Sitting around and cursing my misfortune isn’t going to achieve much.’ He resolutely decided, filled with optimism about his new life.
He stood up and had a look at himself. He wasn’t nearly as tall as he used to be, and he now had long blond hairs that easily reached past his shoulders. A quick check of his body, to his regret, confirmed that he was indeed fully female. His body was slightly malnourished and severely wounded with two bullet wounds and a huge bite mark.
Surprisingly Jules could not feel any pain, yet his sense of touch had remained intact. Curious, Jules asked Xena if this was her doing.
‘[Beep! Negative. No pain has been intercepted.]’ the monotonous voice replied.
‘What the hell happened to this girl for her body to be such a mess?’ Jules thought with surprise and curiosity.
This simple question seemed to have caused something to change within his mind. He couldn’t quite pinpoint what it was until he felt something starting to break within him. Before he could even formulate another thought, a wall within his mind broke. A flood of emotions and memory fragments surging from deep within completely drowned his consciousness.
These were memories and emotions coming from the body’s original owner and seemed to have been triggered by Jules enquiring about her! Under this vortex, there was nothing Jules could do but experience all of her life in fragments first-hand while burning in the fury of her emotions. After what seemed to be hours the intense emotions and memories had now been completely absorbed by Jules.
Jules had completely merged with Anne’s remnants. If it were not for the fact that these were incomplete, Jules’ identity might have completely fused with Anne’s as well.
Filled with a new sense of injustice originating from the memory fragments, Jules’ hatred for human nature grew by leaps and bounds. What he wanted more than anything was to get revenge on this despicable trash that was Todd. As he was about to rashly chase after Todd a familiar voice resounded within his mind.
‘[Beep! Host’s mind is unstable. Source determined to be disorder in memories. Beginning tidying procedure.]’
Within moments Jules found his mind to get clearer, however, his hatred remained deeply rooted. Regardless, if it wasn’t for Xena he might have fallen into insanity and he was deeply grateful for her help. She had reorganized all his new memories and emotions so that his mind became stable again.
Jules carefully had a look at his new memories and quickly came to a surprising conclusion. It seemed that he had become a zombie strand, that would explain why he was a bacteria and did not feel any pain! That would mean that Anne was his patient zero and her body was now his core. Upon closer inspection, he noticed that his blood was black and that his heart wasn’t beating. Jules found this to be fascinating.
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On the other hand, it seemed that having become a zombie, he would be killed on sight by any human capable of doing so. This was due to a deeply rooted hatred between humans and zombie that had been around for as long as anyone could remember.
Digging a bit deeper in Anne’s memories Jules found that the world he had reincarnated in was called the Arcane world. This world’s landmass mainly consisted of four huge continents that each took their quarter of the world. He roughly estimated using Anne’s memories that each continent had more than 10 times the surface area of his old earth! They were the Holy continent, Wild continent, Plague continent, and the Tribal continent. They were arranged in such a way that the Plague and Holy continent were on opposite sides of the planet, the same went for the Wild and the Tribal continent.
The city of Largen was situated near the east coast of the Wild continent. The Wild continent was home to many powerful wild beasts. Although it was inhabited by both humans and zombies, neither species were dominating this area. On the other hand, humans and zombies each had a continent under their control. The zombies infested the Plague continent whereas the humans occupied the Holy continent situated at the east of the Wild continent. Largen used to be a colony from the Holy continent, which explained its location.
It also seemed that the technological and scientific level of this world was similar to that of the industrial revolution. Yet, this world had something more, it had arcane magic! It was the science of studying magic, this allowed them to create complex and unique technologies that Jules’ old world had not even come close to making! Things such as weather making stations, or sentient artificial intelligence, or even golems which were the equivalent of robots that could reach the heights of skyscrapers!
Now having gained a deeper understanding of this new world, Jules felt more comfortable to take action. The first thing he would do was take revenge on Todd. However, since he had been lucky enough to be reincarnated and had sworn to himself that he would never be taken advantage of again, Jules would under no circumstances endanger his life unless it was unavoidable.
According to Anne’s last memories, Todd had fled right after shooting her. If he was still in the forest and had yet to reach the city, there would be a chance to Jules to get his vengeance. Sadly, Jules had no ideas as of how long ago all of this had happened. Just judging from his time as a bacteria, days could have passed since the incident.
Regretfully he decided not to pursue this matter for the time being. Since he was now standing up he could notice the few nearby corpses that had resulted from the zombie attack.
He slowly walked to Thomas and closed his eyes that were still filled with terror gently.
“I swear I’ll avenge you!” he promised to both himself and Thomas.
Despite Thomas not being his real brother, he had inherited Anne’s memories and will. It could be said that she was a part of him.
In order to at least give Anne’s brother a decent farewell, Jules dug a grave with a suitable shaped rock from the well and gently deposited Thomas within it. As he was filling up the grave, he reflected on a few things about his new body that he had noticed while digging.
It seemed that this body was quite strong and sturdy. Jules was confused since according to Anne’s memories, people in this world were about as strong on average as those from his old world, and Anne surely did not shine amongst them.
‘Could this be due to becoming a zombie? Maybe since I can’t feel pain, I’m able to use more strength. Or perhaps maybe the bacteria have merged with my muscle cells giving them extra power.’ He thought as an idea appeared within his mind.
‘Xena! What’s my body’s current stats compared to an average individual from this world using Anne’s memories? Use 1 as the average value.’ he enquired within his mind.
‘[Beep! Task established. Beginning average statistic simulation!] [Beep! Average statistics established! Beginning host body’s scan.] [Beep! Stats have been calculated!] [Name: Anne Martel (Jules Argent). Species: Zombie (Strand). Body statistics: Strength - 1.5, Vitality – 0, Agility – 1.4. Mind statistics: Intelligence – 1.3, Perception – 0.9 (2.5).]’ A voice rang out as a blue hologram displaying stats appeared in Jules’ mind.
It seemed that due to having become a zombie, his strength and agility had risen above average, however, his vitality was at zero. Presumably, due to being a corpse, that would mean that he did not have the ability to heal and moreover would probably start rotting soon. Putting this unpleasant thought aside he took a look at the mind stats. His intelligence was slightly above average, this seems to be roughly the same as it was back in his old world. However, his perception was slightly lower than average standing at 0.9, luckily thanks to Xena this was increased to 2.5!
Jules was rather surprised by how different all of his stats were from the average and was surprisingly happy at such good abilities. On the other hand, his 0 in vitality was an issue he would have to address soon in the future. However now was not the time for it, as he had just heard a noise similar to someone running coming from the forest.
-
“Dammit! Damn it all! Why did this stupid bitch have to bloody infect me before dying! I hope she rots in hell for all of eternity!” An angry voice resounded.
Todd had been running for the city as soon as he had been infected. He knew he only had a couple of days at most before he would die if left untreated. Due to this, he was completely unwilling to lose even a fraction of a second. Sadly, karma had caught up to him, as he was about to reach the city gates, he realized the absence of identification papers within his chest pocket! Without it, there was no chance for the guards to let him in at night even more so when considering he was infected.
Thinking through the events of the past hour, Todd realized that he had probably dropped them when he took his gun out. Due to this, he found himself running back to the clearing as fast as his severely unfit body would allow him to. He kept cursing Anne as he ran for the whole trip back, breathing heavily while large amounts of sweat rolled down his forehead.
By the time he had arrived at the clearing again, the wound in his neck had started to hurt atrociously. He hurried along to the spot his identification papers should have fallen.
He quickly found them after searching for a short while, letting out a huge sigh of relief. However, as he stood back up, instead of showing signs of relief a concerned look was displayed on his face. Something was not right about the clearing. Looking around carefully, Todd quickly realized something was missing.
Thomas’ corpse wasn’t where he had left it! Instead, he found a grave nearby that had not been there when he left. He immediately looked at where Anne’s corpse ought to be. Nothing. It wasn’t there, this terrific revelation caused a chill to go down his spine.
As he was about to leave, he heard the last thing he ever wanted to hear in his life coming from behind him.
“Well, well, well. Who do we have here?” Said vicious female voice that seemed to be filled to the brim with the intent of killing him.