SLASH!
The Bone Zombie's clawed hand tore across Caine's chest, ripping through his ribs and slicing into his lungs. Dark blood bubbled up from Caine's mouth as he struggled to respond to the devastating blow, while the nanites in his body issued a grim warning in his mind.
Driven by desperation, Caine swung the bat in his hands with all his strength, smashing it into the side of the Bone Zombie's skull just as it prepared to deliver another brutal attack. The impact echoed with the clash of metal against bone, sending fragments flying as the undead creature was knocked aside.
Springing to his feet, Caine glanced down at the claw marks across his chest and let out a resigned sigh. The nanites coursing through his bloodstream were already busily mending his torn flesh with the tireless efficiency of a colony of ants.
"Having the ability to heal is definitely a perk," he thought with a grin, tightening his grip on the bat until his knuckles turned pale.
The bone zombie, having shaken off the effects of the blow to its head, fixed its smoldering red eyes on Caine with a murderous glare, scanning him as though calculating the most effective way to inflict pain.
Suddenly, the bone zombie seemed to smirk.
Without warning, the bone zombie emitted a series of sharp, clicking sounds followed by a high-pitched, unnatural roar. As if responding to an unspoken command, the surrounding zombies began to convulse violently before turning their attention directly to Caine, their undead eyes brimming with insatiable hunger.
"Well... shit..." Caine muttered before the veritable horde encircling him began moving closer.
The first zombie lunged at Caine, a half-decayed blur of motion. His bat swung upward in a brutal arc, shattering its jaw and sending the corpse crashing into the horde behind it. He barely had time to breathe before another assailant attacked from his left. Instinct took over as he spun, the metal bat slicing through the air and landing with a hollow crack that echoed through the ruined aisles.
Each strike bought him precious seconds, but the swarm tightened its circle with every passing moment.
The nanites within him hummed like a swarm of enraged insects, frantically working to repair his wounds faster than the undead could inflict them. But the sheer size of the horde was overwhelming. He couldn't afford to think, only to act.
"Come on then," he growled, his voice raw and feral as another corpse slammed into him.
He drove his shoulder into the zombie's chest, impaling it on a jagged metal rod jutting from the floor, then swung the bat in one hand, crushing another skull. His movements grew faster, more desperate.
A low, rhythmic hum coursed through his body, intensifying with each moment. His veins darkened beneath his skin, writhing like ink dispersing in water. Each heartbeat sent waves of searing, unnatural heat radiating outward.
Caine demolished another attacker, but his swing was too wild, too forceful. The body tore apart mid-swing, and the bat bent slightly under the immense strain. He didn't falter.
The transformation was undeniable. His heartbeat slowed, becoming sluggish and deliberate. His breath turned icy, each exhale colder than the last. His skin faded to a pale, ashen gray.
His eyes, which had once been faintly red, now burned with a dim, hellish glow. His teeth clenched tightly, grinding with a pressure that emitted an audible creak. As another zombie hurled itself at him, its rotting arms encircled his body, holding him in an unrelenting grip. Yet he remained still, resolute, and unyielding as the creature sank its decayed jaws into his abdomen, tearing away flesh that had already begun to transform into a lifeless, ashen grey.
Caine didn't flinch. The agony that should have incapacitated him dissipated, drowned beneath the tempest coursing through his veins. His crimson eyes burned fiercely as his lips curled into a grim smile.
The zombie clung to him, its teeth still embedded in his side, until Caine's hand seized its skull.
"Let go," he snarled.
In one swift and brutal motion, he tore the creature away, its grip breaking loose with a sickening rip. Black ichor sprayed as he lifted the mangled corpse high, his fingers digging deep into the bone of its jaw. His movements became fluid, instinctive, an elegant savagery in every strike.
Another zombie lunged toward him.
Caine swung the first like a weapon, smashing its skull forward with bone-crushing force. The impact was deafening as the two heads collided, shattering bone under the sheer power. Both bodies dropped to the ground, lifeless.
His chest rose and fell, not from weariness, but from something far more primal. An unnatural surge of strength pulsed through him, electrifying his limbs. His nails extended into claws, which glinted faintly under the dim, flickering light, their edges gleaming like polished obsidian.
Another pack charged toward him, shrieking and clawing.
With the bent bat gripped tightly in one hand and his clawed hand poised for action, he lunged forward to confront them.
CRACK!
The bat shattered the zombie's skull into a gruesome mess of bone, blood, and brain matter, splattering across the room. Without hesitation, he seized a zombie on his left with his clawed hand and drove it face-first into the ground. The impact caused spiderweb cracks to form in the surface, which quickly filled with blood, creating a macabre pattern.
A sudden slash tore across Caine's back as another zombie attacked, leaving a shallow wound shaped like human fingers. Ignoring the pain, Caine spun around and drove his clawed fingers into the zombie's eyes. Even without the claws, such an attack would have been devastating to any living being. With the claws, however, his fingers pierced through the zombie's orbital bone and sliced into its brain. The zombie immediately went limp, collapsing lifelessly to the ground.
The battle raged on as the bone zombie scrutinized its foe, its breath held in anticipation, and its gaze ravenous with hunger.
Caine stood amidst the devastation, surrounded by shattered corpses and pools of darkened blood. The final zombie collapsed, spasming at his feet, its skull reduced to a mangled mess beneath his clawed grip. For a fleeting moment, the ensuing silence was overwhelming; the only sound was the nauseating drip of undead ichor falling from his claws onto the floor.
His breathing was slow, calculated, almost unnervingly mechanical. His pupils had transformed into bestial slits, faintly glowing beneath a murky, crimson haze. Every muscle in his body quivered with volatility, his nanites erratically pulsing like fading embers coursing through his veins.
The voice in his mind grew faint, smothered by the roar of something darker, a force ancient and ravenous, surging from within. His muscles coiled, sinewy cords shifting beneath ashen skin. Black veins snaked across his body like creeping vines, pulsating with malevolent energy.
Pain should have followed, but instead, there was liberation. He could feel the nanites relinquishing their grip, yielding to a primal force that had always lurked beneath the surface, the part of him that was no longer human.
His head jerked, the corners of his lips curling into a feral grin, revealing teeth now unnaturally sharp. When he spoke, his voice was layered, distorted, a demonic resonance that made the very air hum.
Across the shattered aisle, the Bone Zombie observed. Its glowing red eyes burned with malevolent intelligence, scrutinizing him, as though acknowledging that the man he had been was gone, replaced by something far more lethal.
Caine's claws flexed, dripping with blackened blood. His chest rose and fell, slow and deliberate, before his head snapped toward the hulking creature. His voice erupted in a guttural, bestial roar that dislodged dust from the ceiling.
"COME… AND FUCKING GET IT!"
The words detonated in the air, a defiant challenge, raw, monstrous, forged in pain and rage, and something far beyond comprehension.
The Bone Zombie answered with a thunderous roar of its own, the sound reverberating through the supermarket's corpse-strewn aisles. Then it advanced, every step a resounding quake, its skeletal armor grinding and shifting with menacing intent.
But Caine did not retreat.
He crouched low, claws raking the cracked tiles, the faint vestiges of his humanity flickering behind the burning crimson of his eyes. His grin widened, his body trembling with anticipation as the beast within claimed him entirely.
The moment lingered between them; two monstrous figures locked in a standoff amidst the carnage and desolation. The dim, flickering fluorescent lights overhead sputtered weakly, casting the battlefield in alternating bursts of sterile white and crimson hues that reflected off the rivers of blood coating the Walmart floor. The air was thick with the stench of decay and the metallic tang of iron.
The Bone Zombie struck first.
The ground cracked beneath its massive charge, shelves collapsing like dominoes in its wake. The creature was a behemoth, a grotesque amalgamation of sinew and calcified armor, its claws gleaming like ivory scythes.
Feral Caine waited until the last possible moment, his head tilting slightly, a faint, almost taunting grin playing on his lips as the world seemed to slow around him.
When the monster's claw slashed toward him, he ducked low, the strike screaming past his head and embedding deep into the floor.
Caine attacked.
With a feral roar, he slammed both clawed hands into the Bone Zombie's chest, his fingers tearing through layers of armor and flesh with a sickening rip. Steam hissed from his mouth as he bellowed directly into the creature's face, a sound primal and inhuman. Before the Bone Zombie could react, Caine heaved, flipping the massive beast over his shoulder and sending it crashing into a nearby freezer unit.
The glass doors exploded outward in a chaotic spray of frost and shattered meat packaging.
The Bone Zombie rose almost immediately, snarling, a section of its plated ribcage dangling precariously. It seized a nearby corpse, one of many strewn across the battlefield from Caine's earlier rampage, and hurled it with terrifying force.
Caine didn't evade. He caught it.
The body disintegrated in his grasp, blackened blood splattering across his ashen skin. Letting the mangled remains drop.
Nanite Cohesion: 23%. Warning: Conscious Override Failure.
Caine's laughter emerged as a guttural, warped sound, reminiscent of static crackling through shattered speakers. His eyes flared with an intense, crimson glow, piercing through the thickening shroud of black smoke that billowed from his form. The nanites were disintegrating, their structure collapsing, but amid the turmoil, the remnants of Caine's mind seemed to revel in the disorder.
The Bone Zombie lunged forward once more, a towering juggernaut of destruction, each movement reverberating with seismic force. Its claws ripped through rows of shelves and aisles, unleashing a cascade of wreckage that rained down like a storm of splinters and debris.
Caine met the assault head-on without hesitation.
Their collision was cataclysmic, the ground beneath them fracturing into a web of jagged cracks. Bone clashed against flesh, claws slashed against claws, and the violent encounter sent fragments of bone and sprays of blood scattering in all directions.
The Bone Zombie struck again, its claws carving deep gashes across Caine's torso, spraying black ichor onto the shattered tiles. Unyielding, Caine counterattacked with a powerful backhand, his strike connecting with the creature's jaw and reducing it to shards with a thunderous crunch that echoed through the chaos.
The monster howled in pain, but Caine pressed the advantage. He moved with a savage grace, driving his knee into the Bone Zombie's abdomen and plunging his claws deep into its exposed ribcage. The sound was sickening, a grotesque mix of tearing flesh and hollow cracks.
"Break," Caine growled, his voice guttural and resonating with unbridled power.
With a savage motion, he tore away several of the creature's ribs, splattering the ground with a spray of dark, oily sludge. The Bone Zombie let out a guttural roar, lurching back and smashing its forehead into Caine's skull. The collision fractured the tiles beneath them, unleashing a shockwave of dust and gore across the room.
For a fleeting moment, both beasts were locked in place, snarling mere inches apart, steam rising ominously from their wounds.
Then the battle resumed with renewed ferocity.
The Bone Zombie lashed out wildly, its claws ripping deep grooves through the aisles. Caine ducked under one swing, his movements fluid and unnaturally swift, before plunging his claws into the creature's leg. Bone splintered, flesh gave way, and the undead monstrosity dropped to one knee.
Seizing the opportunity, Caine vaulted onto its back like a predator claiming its kill, delivering blow after relentless blow. Each strike pierced deeper, each claw tore wider. Black ichor gushed from the creature's wounds, pooling beneath them as its body convulsed under the onslaught.
But it wasn't finished yet. With a violent roll, the Bone Zombie attempted to crush Caine beneath its massive bulk.
The floor groaned and buckled under their combined weight, and for a moment, the brutal confrontation seemed to reach a pause.