The time reached the twenty-minute mark, and the second wave of the zombie horde surged from the highway.
Their numbers were even greater this time. The densely packed horde of Zombies squeezed together, slowly moving toward Bai Mu.
Bai Mu threw his second grenade. The shockwave of the explosion knocked down a circle of Zombies, mashing them into a heap. They crushed against one another, struggling helplessly on the ground like overturned turtles.
Bai Mu noticed that the Zombie pinned at the very bottom wore an expression as if it had just eaten shit. Did Zombies feel pain?
No, it was not pain that caused this expression.
If Zombies felt pain, they would have been screaming bloody murder when struck by bullets.
The rest of the Zombies crushed beneath the pile behaved perfectly normally. Only that specific one stuck out its tongue in a gagging motion.
Bai Mu's superhuman eyesight allowed him to spot a minute detail. A Zombie's leg, blown off by the explosion, had landed right in front of that gagging Zombie. The small leather shoe on that severed limb had a hole in it, revealing a dark gray, stiff, foul-smelling sock.
It was a sock belonging to one of its own kind, thoroughly caked in dust and dirt.
It was impossible to tell whether the sock was originally dark gray or if it had been worn until it turned from white to dark gray, but Bai Mu leaned toward the latter.
He saw faint white smoke rising from the sock. The residual heat from the grenade explosion was singeing it, and the sunlight illuminated a clear beam through the hazy smoke.
Objectively speaking, it was the pungent stench emanating from that sock that caused the Zombie to show such an agonizing, fate-worse-than-death expression.
It was reacting to the "stinky sock". It could smell the stench and thus displayed a highly humanized sense of disgust.
This was truly fascinating. They were completely oblivious to the rotting stench of their own bodies, yet a smelly sock actually possessed an "evil-warding" effect.
If a smelly sock worked, would other things with pungent odors also disgust them?
Like garlic, for instance?
Amidst the slaughter, Bai Mu did not forget to speculate on the habits of the Zombies.
Like a scholar, he observed the Zombies' sensitivity and reactions to environmental conditions such as sound, smell, and temperature.
This was a habit he had cultivated over many years. One should never underestimate such minor details. As the saying goes, knowledge is power. When encountering a Zombie with no bullets on hand and only a clove of garlic, that garlic just might save your life.
Of course, he maintained his highly efficient slaughter, gripping his gun and firing single precise shots one by one.
Those flailing limbs quickly ceased moving. Facing his one-man barrage of bullets, the Zombies were utterly powerless to fight back. Not a single Zombie managed to take a step onto the lawn.
Aside from the initial outbreak of the horde where Bai Mu was slightly overwhelmed, the rest of the time could be described in three words:
Kill on sight.
He handled the situation with absolute ease and composure. If a layman were standing beside him, they would definitely think this zombie horde posed no threat at all and believe they could easily do it themselves. However, an expert would instantly recognize just how terrifying his accuracy was.
Anyone else would absolutely fail to achieve such an astronomical hit rate. If a bullet did not precisely strike a Zombie's head, it was practically the same as inflicting no injury at all—merely a complete waste of ammunition.
Meanwhile, Bai Mu's bullet utilization rate reached over ninety percent. An inspection of the Zombie corpses would reveal that he scored headshots almost every single time. Shooting at a close range of thirty meters was no different to him than pointing a finger and instantly hitting the mark.
After all, his marksmanship was completely different from those who trained in shooting ranges. If he missed, he died. Therefore, he had to be accurate. Even if it was difficult, he had to force himself to hit the target.
Had he lacked accuracy, he would have ended up like so many others in the apocalypse—bitten to death in some dark corner by the omnipresent Zombies and Mutants.
Or rather, those who missed were all dead. Only those who shot accurately, like him, survived.
Thinking back on those ten years, he had yet to find another person whose aim matched his own. Thus, he had always been alone.
With the final bullet in his rifle magazine, Bai Mu fired a shot into the ordinary Zombie pinned at the very bottom of the pile.
He had intentionally saved that abnormally behaving creature for last just so he could observe it a little longer.
Now it was finally freed from the torment of the stinky sock. Truly a cause for celebration.
The next ten minutes passed without incident. Having found his rhythm, he effortlessly defended Dave's backyard.
The movements of these Zombies were simply too predictable. They did not walk as fast as typical undead, nor did they evolve bizarre and unpredictable movement patterns like the Mutants.
They only attacked from the front and walked in straight lines. They did not even know how to take a detour, and the piled-up walls of corpses would frequently cause them to trip over themselves.
Throughout the thirty-minute zombie horde, the shotgun never even got a chance to make an appearance.
Holding off the zombie horde with firearms felt significantly easier than using the garden plants suggested in the guides—at least, it was easier for Bai Mu.
In the final wave of the horde, only three figures remained standing: two ordinary Zombies and one Conehead Zombie. Their path was blocked by the corpses of their own kind. Over a hundred bodies had piled up into a small mound. These final three warriors charged fearlessly toward the hill of flesh, grabbing onto severed limbs and broken arms as they struggled to crawl upward.
While Bai Mu reloaded his magazine, he gained a deeper understanding of the advice given to him by Light Evening Breeze.
"The strong monopolize more resources and become even stronger..."
If he had just blissfully lounged in his grass tent eating and drinking during the Deserted Island Script, neglecting to repair that marine walkie-talkie, he never would have contacted the rescue team. Furthermore, he never would have obtained "Walking Headline", a Title unique to that grade.
Without a Title, Dave would not have issued him a new task.
Even the "Police Badge" he won from the lottery was an extra resource obtained after completing a Hidden Quest.
It might have seemed like a sheer coincidence that he used the "Police Badge" to fool Dave into handing over firearms and unlocking a new task, but in reality, he had squeezed every ounce of value out of his previous Script to open up these new possibilities.
The Script had not yet been tallied, but it was entirely foreseeable that he would receive a very high rating. He had completed a high-difficulty Side Quest that required numerous conditions to trigger, and he had protected all the wheelbarrows.
A Player who cleared the stage according to the standard guide and saved all the wheelbarrows could only achieve a maximum rating of A, with a Script completion rate of eighty percent.
But he had done more than just save the wheelbarrows. He had unlocked the hidden area, "Dave's Secret Arsenal". Additionally, there was a subtle detail in his zombie-killing process that was easy to overlook.
From the beginning of the horde to the end, not a single Zombie had stepped foot on the lawn. Without exception, every last one of them died outside the highway bounds.
'Perhaps this counts as a Hidden Quest as well,' Bai Mu thought to himself.
To complete this potentially existent Hidden Quest, Bai Mu, having finished reloading his magazine, pulled the trigger.
Six bullets, three bursts. The bodies of the final three Zombies collapsed in time with the gunshots, limply becoming members of the mountain of corpses.
[Side Quest "Crazy Idea" completed.]
Bai Mu breathed a sigh of relief. The backyard was finally quiet.
But before his nerves could fully relax, he suddenly heard a muffled, low roar. A faint tremor rippled against the soles of his feet, and a notification chime from Paradise rang in his ears.
[Because you perfectly defended the backyard, a Giant Zombie has detected an anomaly.]
[The Giant Zombie has seen the mountain of its kin's corpses and feels enraged. It will arrive on the battlefield in thirty seconds.]
[Script danger rating increased. Current rating: C.]