A rain of iron poured from the barrel, striking the giant zombie's head.
A hole a few centimeters in diameter appeared on the left side of its face, but it was incredibly shallow. Robbed of their kinetic energy, the lead pellets dropped onto the lawn one by one.
The bullets failed to pierce the giant zombie's skull; they hadn't even completely penetrated its tough hide and flesh.
Its body was entirely different from those of the frail, rotting undead. Beneath its dull, dark green skin lay incredibly dense and thick muscle tissue. In fact, it had likely surpassed the definition of mere muscle, reaching a level of durability akin to bulletproof armor.
This layer of natural armor successfully blocked the buckshot fired from the vintage gun. Buckshot consisted of eight or nine heavy lead pellets packed into a single shell, sitting somewhere between birdshot and a solid slug. It was most commonly used for hunting medium-sized game like deer at close to medium range.
Buckshot had a wide area of effect, but its main drawback was that its stopping power was not concentrated.
Or rather, the power was not concentrated enough to deal with the monster right in front of Bai Mu. If a wild deer had taken that blast head-on, the point of impact would have been instantly reduced to a mangled mess of blood and gore.
If the shot had hit a deer in the stomach, its intestines would have spilled completely out onto the ground.
After all, in human warfare, shotguns were often not aimed at enemy combatants at all. Instead, they were utilized as specialized equipment designed to blow through walls and clear out trenches.
Yet, this very weapon capable of blasting through walls seemed almost pitifully weak against the giant zombie.
Witnessing this, Bai Mu immediately discarded the submachine gun and rifle slung over his shoulder.
At such close range, not even a shotgun blast could shatter the giant zombie's defenses. Based on his past experience, the effectiveness of the submachine gun and rifle would be severely limited. Trying to kill this behemoth with mere firearms was virtually impossible; this was a creature that could easily be described as supernatural.
Keeping those two weapons on his back would only weigh him down.
He made this judgment almost instinctively. His objective was to stall the monster, not kill it. To maximize his mobility, he abandoned both firearms as well as the belt of wooden-handled grenades strapped around his waist.
Enraged, the giant zombie swung its concrete utility pole horizontally at him. The sheer force behind the massive, brutal weapon produced a sharp, howling gust as it cleaved through the air.
Freed of his heavy load, Bai Mu executed a quick sideways roll to the left, narrowly dodging the crushing blow.
Without a doubt, a direct hit from that utility pole would have smashed him into a bloody paste.
This was more than just a C-grade enemy. C was the danger rating Paradise had assigned to the current instance. Under the rules of the Script, he only had to face the giant zombie for thirty seconds. Once those thirty seconds were up, a scripted event would automatically trigger to bail him out.
In other words, simply surviving against this monster for half a minute was perilous enough to earn a C-grade danger rating from Paradise.
Its stats and description also served as a glaring warning to Players that this was an incredibly dangerous adversary.
[Name: Giant Zombie]
[Type: Zombie]
[Grade: Epic]
[Remarks: The Giant Zombie is the greatest masterpiece created by ???. When it walks, the earth trembles. When it roars, all other zombies fall silent. It is the idol every zombie dreams of becoming, but sadly, it still hasn't found a girlfriend.]
If the Player's objective was to duel this thing to the death in an arena, the danger rating would be at least B-grade.
Defeating it was a monumental task, especially for a novice Player like Bai Mu who was only at the F-grade. His methods of attack were simply too limited.
Fortunately, while the beast boasted terrifying strength and defense, it severely lacked agility. Bai Mu could easily kite it.
Even though he spent the entire time dodging, in those short few seconds of their confrontation, he was actually the one holding the upper hand.
He capitalized on the long wind-up of the giant zombie's attacks. Whenever it was about to smash him, he would fire a shot to disrupt its momentum and quickly widen the distance.
But rather than the conspicuous giant zombie in front of him, he was paying closer attention to the smaller one.
Riding on the back of this towering monster was a tiny zombie that looked like a premature infant.
That little zombie wore an eerie smile. Unlike the vacant, unfocused stares of regular zombies, its eyes darted around sharply, as if it was constantly plotting something.
Bai Mu locked his eyes on the little creature. As he used his shotgun to kite the giant zombie, he split his focus between Dave's progress and the easily overlooked little zombie.
Planted firmly in the lawn, the two Kernel-pults underwent a miraculous transformation in less than a minute.
They merged together, growing into a massive Cob Cannon.
It looked as though a gigantic ear of corn had been laid horizontally across a wooden cart. It was a super-sized cob, measuring nearly two meters in length and roughly half a meter in diameter.
Bai Mu had never seen such an enormous cob of corn. A sweet, fragrant aroma drifted through the air.
However, the cob was still wrapped tightly in its green husks. Standing off to the side, Dave was using every ounce of his strength to strip the husks away, helping to arm the cannon.
[Cob Cannon firing countdown: 17.23 seconds.]
[Cob Cannon firing countdown: 15.56 seconds.]
Bai Mu fired his fourth shotgun shell, obliterating the giant zombie's remaining eye. Yet, it didn't seem to rely on its eyes to see. Even with both eye sockets reduced to hollow black holes, the giant zombie still effortlessly tracked Bai Mu's location, wildly swinging its utility pole.
Right at the fifteen-second mark, the giant zombie suddenly halted its onslaught.
As if receiving a silent command, it reached its left hand behind its back and grabbed the stunted little zombie.
The next second, it hurled the little zombie through the air.
The deformed little zombie soared through the sky in a long arc. A high-pitched, sinister cackle escaped its lips, its wicked grin stretching so wide it looked ready to tear past its ears.
Spreading its stubby limbs, it plummeted straight toward its target—the Cob Cannon positioned behind Bai Mu.
Dave, who had been busy preparing the cannon, slipped in a highly coincidental manner. His arms and legs became tangled in the brown silks at the front of the cob, sending him crashing to the ground.
The giant zombie's throw was incredibly precise, as if some invisible force had perfectly corrected its trajectory.
As the little zombie glided over Bai Mu's head, he looked up, watching its silhouette briefly blot out the sun. Its shrill laughter was exceptionally grating on the ears.
"So this is how it strikes..." Bai Mu murmured. He had fully anticipated an unexpected variable to occur.
This was actually far better than he had feared. He originally suspected the creature possessed some other bizarre abilities, like spewing acidic venom or whipping out an elongated tongue.
Simply being tossed like a projectile was one of the most manageable outcomes.
Bai Mu leaned back and kicked off with both legs, sliding backward across the grass as he raised the pitch-black barrel of his shotgun.
His body glided over the lawn, the muzzle tracking straight toward the little zombie's stomach.
Boom! With a deafening roar, the terrifying impact blasted the flying little zombie cleanly in half. The left and right halves of its body crash-landed separately onto the lawn.
To prevent the creature from having some sort of self-destruct ability, Bai Mu had deliberately adjusted his firing angle, ensuring its severed remains were blasted into an empty patch of grass.
However, no corpse explosion occurred. The bisected little zombie wasn't dead. Instead, it stared at Bai Mu in utter bewilderment, the wicked grin completely wiped from its face, replaced only by a look of sheer confusion.
It seemed it simply couldn't comprehend why its takeoff had been such a miserable failure.