Jules had been making his way through the forest for over an hour at this point. Due to his low vitality, he was forced to take many breaks in order to make sure he would not hurt his body. Due to having no vitality, normal zombies would not bother with taking care of their bodies since it would break down regardless. Or even more simply, because they were to dumb to think about it. Luckily Jules was smart since he couldn't feel fatigued, he had Xena notify him whenever he needed to take a break. Afterall he did not want to stupidly bring harm to this new body of his especially knowing that it would take a very long time to heal due to his low vitality.

As he was walking, he had Xena explain more thoroughly how the stat system she came up with worked.

Vitality was the measure of the metabolic strength of the body. If your vitality reached 0 you were considered dead. The benefits of having high vitality would be faster healing, stronger immune system, more endurance, better resistance to poison and enhanced organs. Jules’ core body’s vitality went from 0 to 0.1 before and was able to come back to life due to a weird energy. On the other hand, it seemed his auxiliary bodies, aka zombies, were more like autonomous puppets and remained dead.

Strength was pretty simple; it was the average of how strong one’s muscles were throughout their body. Individuals with great strength would have high defensive and offensive ability.

Agility covered how well an individual was able to control their body, it included flexibility, accuracy, coordination and fine movements. Those with high agility would be very good at using their hand for tasks such as crafting or even theft.

Intelligence was for the intellectual prowess of an individual. It included thought depth and speed, learning, comprehension, planning and emotional control. It went without saying that anyone with high intelligence would be considered a genius.

Lastly, perception measured how well an individual processed information from its senses. This encompassed processing speed and accuracy of all senses including sight, smell, hearing, touch, time, balance and body awareness. Individuals with high perception were even able to feel time go in slow motion if they wanted to.

This made Jules rather satisfied with his current statistics. Originally, upon further thoughts, Jules was rather afraid that his core body would be rather vulnerable to diseases due to its low vitality. He quickly realized that in fact he already had an extremely good immune system. They were the trillions of overpowered bacteria within his body that obeyed all of his commands. Therefore, he did not have to fear for the two partially healed bullet wounds to get infected.

Those wounds had originally killed the previous owner of his new body; Anne. Later due to his zombie nature, he had entered a frenzied state caused and had drunk a lot of blood. This seemed to have caused the wounds to heal at a surprising pace. Although the wounds were not fully healed, Jules was much better off than if they were not. Therefore, he logically deduced that there should be something in the blood that caused zombies to regenerate. He even speculated that he might be able to extend how long his zombies would take to rot if he fed them blood.

After a few more hours of walking, Jules stumbled upon what seemed to be a camp. This would be a great opportunity to strengthen himself. Afterall he didn’t have many zombies and it seemed that according to Todd and Anne’s memories there were plenty of people or creatures far stronger than he currently was.

Besides that, Jules had completely forsaken humans and his own humanity. To him, they were just tools to increase in power. He was very resolute in his heart that he would eradicate all humanity in order to get rid of the injustice it brings. He would not take pity on anyone, they only had themselves to blame for being born human. Afterall even if they were innocent at that moment, it was certain that due to their nature they would eventually turn into despicable beings. The world was just better off without them.

Back to reality, Jules did not immediately rush into the camp. This simply was a foolish thing to do, he didn’t even know how many people resided there! Therefore, he decided to stay put and watch the camp.

Jules had been watching for over a day before feeling reasonably sure of the number of people living within this camp. It seemed that they were bandits and a whole eight of them. He could tell since these guys did not seem to have jobs and yet were quite wealthy and armed to the teeth. They also looked viscous and quite bloodthirsty. On a few occasions, some of them had wandered near Jules, luckily, he had managed to remain unnoticed to them thanks to his perception. He detected them far before they could notice him, therefore, it allowed him to move away before they came too close.

During this wait, he had also discovered another one of Xena’s abilities. It seemed that by analyzing the looks, movements, and interactions of an individual, she was able to create an approximation of their stats. This had allowed Jules to notice two individuals that had significantly higher stats than normal within the group. One had a strength near 2 whereas the other one had agility close to 2 as well. However, it seemed that both of them had similar vitality as well.

‘Perhaps it's due to having another high stat.’ Jules theorized.

On that though, Jules put it aside to focus on the present, those bandits weren’t going to become zombies by themselves. Due to those two above average individuals, Jules definitely would not be able to fight them without dying, especially when considering how low his vitality was. Even if he sent Todd, those guys would probably be able to take him out without getting infected. But they were far too good of a target to let go.

After all these guys were bandits. They had no one backing them and nobody would miss them. If they were to suddenly disappear, it would just be assumed that they had moved away, and people would rejoice. Nobody would bother checking what had happened to them. This meant that if Jules was able to turn them into zombies, he would not have to be wary of any retaliation from stronger powers like Largen as long as he did not let any escape.

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Due to this Jules spent a while to think of a good plan.

A pretty looking girl ran out of the wood towards the bandit, she was injured and clearly looking for help. One of the bandits on guard duty noticed her and called out for the others to come to have a look at this peculiar event.

As the others arrived, the girl threw herself into the arms of the guard. She was seemingly crying and mumbling something about having been chased into this forest. They quickly learned that she was called Anne and had been robbed on her way to Largen from a nearby village. She had been forced to run into the forest while injured. Luckily, she had managed to survive for a few days, however, she was completely lost. Now that she had finally found some people she was completely overjoyed.

The bandits, seeing an opportunity, looked and smiled at each other with obvious perverted intentions. They were clearly looking at taking advantage of the situation to have some fun later on this evening. They took the girl to one of their tents, gave her the opportunity to clean her wounds, some food and a bed to rest.

The girl seemed not to have noticed their looks and continued to express extreme gratitude to them.

After the girl had gone in, the bandits sat around a campfire and started making preparations for dinner. Of course, there was plenty of talk about the great opportunity that had literally walked into their camp. After all this girl was rather pretty, this was an unusual thing to come across.

A small while later the girl came out of the tent looking refreshed from a nice nap. After she probably hadn’t gotten any good sleep in the past few days. She went to sit by the bandits and engaged in a conversation with them. The bandits feigned being happy at knowing she felt better after having cleaned her wounds and eaten a bit. However, her clothes were still stained in blood and her face remained dirty. The bandits made a quick mental note to remedy that before the evening. They still did their best to remain courteous, after all, they preferred it if the girl were to willingly join in with their fun. This would sadly not stop them from forcing her to do so if she refused.

In an effort to show her gratefulness the girl offered to serve dinner. Dinner looked to be some sort of soup with a few chunks of meat and vegetables flowing within. It smelled surprisingly good.

The bandits were too happy at having stumbled upon such good fortune to notice the girl pricking her finger with a knife before letting some of her blood drip within the soup. Surprisingly, instead of being crimson, these droplets of blood were of a pure black. In fact, if someone were to look carefully at the girl, they would notice that her veins were black. This, however, was very hard to discern due to the dirt present all over her body, almost as if it had been done intentionally.

The girl gently stirred the soup and began to serve the bandits one by one and then proceeded to serve herself some. She sat down and began eating with them, not letting a single of her emotions hint at what she had done previously. Her acting was perfect.

At one point during the evening, one of the men excuses himself and leaves saying he needed some fresh air as he was not feeling so well. Time went by and the man still hadn’t returned. An extremely strong looking that seemed to be the leader expressed his concerns as of why the man had not returned yet and sent another to check up on him. After another while, neither man had returned. A look of worry now occupied the leader’s face, this could be an attack!

He got everybody to grab their weapons as he grabbed a huge sword and to follow him towards where the two men had gone. They were quickly spotted by one of the bandits lying down on their front in the grass. The leader took the lead and made his way to them. Having reached them he kneeled and grabbed onto one man proceeding to flip him on his back.

The man’s face revealed a panicked expression, his throat held marks of having been clutched strongly. It seemed that the man had been strangled. The leader instantly stood up and looked around looking extremely worried and focussed. He instructed the others to be on their guard as well. It seemed there was a killer roaming within their base. He ordered them in a circular formation with their back facing the center, and in the center was the girl.

Nothing had been happening for a while. Tension was high and many of the bandits had been startled by either the wind or a couple of nearby small animal. The killer had yet to reveal themselves, they probably did not want to fight the bandits as a group. They would be at a disadvantage if they did so.

Suddenly, one of the bandits started grasping at his neck as if chocking. His eyes revealed terror as he grasped for his neck in a futile attempt to recover his ability to breath. He was quickly followed by another bandit, and another and one more. Quickly four of the bandits found themselves struggling for their lives, trying to recover their breath in a frantic panic. The leader and a person that seemed to be his right-hand man looked extremely confused as all of his remaining men suddenly started choking.

Within no time all four of the men had fallen to the ground and died. The leader and his right-hand man had not seen any attack, yet his mean had suddenly died. ‘Could it be poison?’ he thought. Perhaps they had been shot with poisoned darts or something of the likes.

Soon enough the leader found his mind to get dizzy. At this moment he heard the girl at his side talk in a melodious yet sinister voice.

“I can’t actually believe it all actually went so smoothly. Leader. Thank you very much for your hospitality. However, I’m afraid there is one more thing I must request from you, and that is your life.” She said with a satisfied smirk on her face.

This girl actually happened to be Jules! He had tricked them all into believing he was a defenseless girl and used that opportunity to sneak his bacteria in their food. All of these men had died from them. It normally took significantly longer for zombie infections to normally kill someone. Unluckily for them, Jules was the one controlling it. He could get all of the bacteria within their body suddenly accumulate within their throat at will. This blocked their airway and caused them to suffocate. After all, dead people were much easier to infect than living one, therefore, it was in his best interest to kill them as soon as he could.

“You bitch!” The leader exclaimed loudly.

He took a step forward and tried to hit Jules with a huge swing of his massive sword. If Jules were to be hit by that he would surely be killed. Surprisingly the blow never came. The leader had been restrained by two odd figures. These were the two bandits that had died early on! Moreover, they were actually zombies!

The leader had not expected that in the slightest. If anything, he thought Jules was part of an organization that meant them harm, not a zombie!

Within seconds of struggling, he felt a ball grow within his throat. Quickly that ball had blocked his airway and had caused him to start to suffocate. Due to his superior vitality, his immune system had greatly slowed down the spread of the bacteria. Sadly for him, the bacteria had infected him a while ago and have had plenty of time to replicate.

Next to him, his right-hand man who also had high vitality had finally started to suffocate as well. Within a couple of minutes, both of them had stopped moving and fell on the ground.

The moment their bodies lost all life Jules exclaimed with a bright smile.

“This plan was a great success!”