"Level 4 Infected detected. Mutated evolution genes available—define direction, host."
"Let him choose," Lu Qiu murmured, spreading his arms as the Hive pulsed below, "this power is his… born from your betrayal."
The words hung in the air.
"GUH— AAGH!"
The fleshy mass erupted, revealing Yuri's transformation. Three stories tall, its body was a nightmare: chitinous black hide split by pulsating crimson veins, twelve compound eyes blazing scarlet, a maw of fused bone and virus-twisted muscle where its face should be.
A Level 4 Infected—part insect, part horror, all hunger.
Stein froze, sword clattering. That thing was Yuri? The boy he'd tortured, the 蛆虫 (maggot) he'd discarded—now a godless abomination, its presence warping the ground into a living, hungry membrane.
"You!" Stein screamed, seizing Lu Qiu's collar, "What have you done to him? To everything?"
Lu Qiu dangled over the roof's edge, zombies clawing below. "Me?" He tilted his head, glasses slipping, "You broke him, Stein. You made him hungry."
The exorcist's grip tightened, sweat dripping onto Lu Qiu's smirk. "Fix it! Or I'll—"
A scarlet tendril slammed into the building, shaking loose Stein's hold. The exorcist stumbled, grabbing the edge just in time—only to feel Lu Qiu's hand close around his ankle, pulling.
"Monster—!" Stein kicked, but Lu Qiu's grip was iron, his smile wider now, glasses cracked to reveal scarlet eyes, fangs glinting.
"See it now, holy man?" Lu Qiu purred, "I'm the nightmare you taught the world to fear."
Stein's wrist snapped as Lu Qiu wrenched him over the edge. They fell together, into the horde's embrace, but where zombies tore at Stein, they ignored Lu Qiu—their true master radiated death, not prey.
"Save me!" Stein shrieked, holy power sputtering as undead teeth tore his arm, "I'll—I'll worship you!"
Lu Qiu stood over him, pistol drawn from the System's void. "Worship? Too late, Stein." He aimed at the Infected towering nearby, "See that hunger in its eyes? That's what you made. That's what you are."
The monster roared, swatting zombies aside to reach Stein. Its maw opened, saliva dripping onto the exorcist's face.
"No—"
The scream cut off as teeth closed, bone crunching, flesh tearing. Lu Qiu watched, indifferent, as the creature swallowed Stein whole, then turned its gaze on the rooftop where Danna and Mark huddled.
"Run," Lu Qiu called, reloading, "but nowhere's safe now."
Danna's camera shook as she filmed the horror, Mark pulling her toward the stairwell. But Lu Qiu was faster, blocking their path, pistol now pointed at Mark's chest.
"Please…" Danna wept, "we're just—"
"Civilians?" Lu Qiu finished, smirking, "Precisely why you'll die last. Let the world see what happens when good people do nothing."
Mark lunged, but Lu Qiu's free hand snapped his neck, gentle as a lover's touch. Danna's scream died with a bullet between her eyes, camera clattering to the ground.
Alone now, Lu Qiu faced the Infected, which paused, as if waiting.
"Go," he said, waving toward the captain's frozen battlefield, "feast on her ice. Grow stronger."
The creature roared, scuttling away, Hive tendrils merging with its body. Lu Qiu smiled, tasting the surge of Despair Points—20,000, the System chimed, a bountiful harvest.
Somewhere, the captain's ice shattered under the Infected's weight, her scream muffled by its maw. Somewhere, Su Le's flames burned distant, a losing battle against the Hive's spread.
But Lu Qiu cared not. He walked to the roof's edge, staring at the city's ruin—his ruin.
The System hummed, Destruction Progress: 45%.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" he asked no one, voice soft, "Despair grows best when watered with faith… and betrayal."
Below, the Hive pulsed faster, birthing more horrors, more evolutions. And in the distance, the first rays of sunset stained the sky bloodred—a fitting hue for the world he was rewriting.
Let the heroes burn. Let the faithful pray.
Lu Qiu・F・Arcarde was no longer the hunted.
He was the harvester, and this?
Merely the first field.