Chapter 70 - 59: Gold Ability

After several continuous blows from his axe, Ethan Monroe finally managed to break open the safe.

When the door swung open, it wasn’t cash that filled the inside, but a dazzling, glittering expanse of eye-catching gold bars.

"No wonder it was so heavy! It’s gold!"

Neal Wallace stared at the sheer number of gold bars in the safe, momentarily stunned. But the gleam in his eyes quickly vanished.

Flora Bloom watched as Ethan Monroe tirelessly smashed open all seven safes. In addition to the gold bars in six of the large safes, a smaller one was surprisingly filled with a bag of priceless diamonds.

Ethan Monroe’s eyes lit up. He grabbed two gold bars and gave them a hard kiss. Then, holding the bars, he sidled up to Flora Bloom with a fawning smile. "My dearest Auntie Flora, I don’t suppose your space has any spare room? How about we put these away, too? Just look how these gold bars and diamonds sparkle! Don’t you girls just love shiny, glittering things like this?"

’Money might be useless in the apocalypse,’ Flora Bloom thought, ’but gold and diamonds will be made into all sorts of luxury goods and sold to powerful female ability users in the future. They’re expensive, but extremely popular among them.’

So, Flora Bloom swept all the gold bars and diamonds into her space.

"Hey, Auntie, let’s be clear! One of those boxes of gold is mine, okay? Don’t you forget!"

Flora Bloom shook her head with an amused smile, but in the next second, her brow suddenly furrowed. She yanked her mother and Caleb behind her, tightened her grip on her axe, and swung it at the head of a person leaping down from the armored truck’s driver’s seat.

It couldn’t be called a person. Even after Flora Bloom’s axe struck it squarely in the forehead, the creature—its face purple and bruised, the corners of its mouth split open—let out a guttural roar, "HRRGH... HRRGH," and lunged at her again, claws flailing.

Flames ignited in Neal Wallace’s hands, but Flora Bloom quickly stopped him.

"We don’t know how many dangers we’ll face on this journey. Don’t waste your superpower on a fight we can win with weapons."

Flora Bloom had another important reason for stopping Neal Wallace from using his superpower to kill the zombie: she wanted to use it to train her parents.

She raised her axe and struck the zombie’s forehead again, neither too hard nor too soft. Although the zombie was still lunging and snapping at her, looking extremely dangerous, Flora Bloom knew that all it would take was one more light tap to its head from someone else to finish it off for good.

Flora Bloom deliberately aimed her axe blows only at the zombie’s hands and shoulders, moving step by step toward her father, Caleb Bloom.

Caleb Bloom was, at heart, a man of courage. At that moment, he completely forgot that his daughter had become a warrior whose skills were in no way inferior to his own. All he knew was that his precious daughter was about to be bitten by a zombie, and he couldn’t let her get hurt.

In the early days of the apocalypse, zombies weren’t actually as powerful as one might imagine; their speed was also quite slow. However, their hideous appearance and great strength meant that if they got a hold of a person, it was nearly impossible for an ordinary person to break free from their grip.

Furthermore, a prolonged fight with a single zombie would inevitably attract the attention of others, leading to a swarm.

Facing a zombie on his own for the first time, Caleb Bloom swung the fire axe in his hands, smashing it into the zombie’s face. Although he missed the wound Flora Bloom had already created, the blow still made the zombie stagger.

His confidence surging, Caleb Bloom swung his axe down on the zombie’s face again. But the zombie refused to fall, instead turning and lunging at Flora Bloom once more.

This infuriated Caleb Bloom. He rushed in front of his daughter, axe in hand, but when he saw the zombie’s bruised, purple face and its gaping, bloody maw, his heart seized, and he hesitated for a second.

"Dad, look out!"

The zombie’s hands were a step faster than Caleb Bloom’s axe, and they seized his arm.

Caleb Bloom’s heart sank, and the axe fell from his grasp. But his years of military training allowed him to react in a split second.

He lifted his leg and kicked the zombie that was gripping his arm, sending it to the ground.

A zombie’s grip was incredibly strong, and its claws carried the virus. Although his kick could knock the zombie down, it should have also guaranteed that his arm would be scratched in the process.

He had already braced himself for injury, but as the zombie grabbed his arm, a harsh, scraping sound of metal on metal erupted between his arm and the zombie’s claws.

Flora Bloom looked closely and saw a metallic sheen flash across her father’s arms. The zombie’s claws scraped against them but failed to cause any damage.

Seeing the change in her father’s arms, Flora Bloom smiled in relief.

A Gold Ability!

Her father had spontaneously awakened a Gold Ability.

In her previous life, her father had died fighting zombies without ever awakening a superpower.

But in this life, he had awakened a superpower so early—and it was the Gold Ability, which excelled in both offense and defensive power. This was something Flora Bloom had never anticipated.

’Could it be that my rebirth has changed the course of many people’s lives? Will this create more butterfly effects in the future?’

Seeing that her father had awakened his power in a moment of desperation made Flora Bloom wonder. ’Is it possible that under certain circumstances, a state of emergency can trigger a person’s latent potential and cause them to awaken a superpower?’

Flora Bloom easily finished off the zombie and continued to scout the surrounding area.

As she’d suspected, the area was crowded with large container trucks, and some of their open doors were blocking the view of Vert and Golden Cicada in the sky.

In a tour bus not far away, its doors and windows all intact, an entire busload of people, including the driver, had all turned into zombies.

When they heard a noise, they all began to stir. The sight of Flora Bloom and the others approaching—the stimulus of fresh meat—sent them into a frenzy, and they began to pound excitedly on the doors and windows.

"Dad, the superpower you just awakened is the Gold Ability. You can harden parts of your body to be as tough as metal, which is very useful for both attack and defense. You can also enhance the weapon in your hand, making an ordinary weapon sharper and more durable."

Caleb Bloom had been very envious of Neal Wallace and his daughter for having superpowers. Now that he had one of his own, he was naturally eager to try it out.

"Dad, don’t rush," Flora advised. "First, try concentrating your will on the area you want to enhance."

Caleb Bloom did as his daughter said and tried it. Sure enough, under the influence of his superpower, the fire axe in his hands—handle and all—took on a metallic texture. After being enhanced, the axe seemed to be coated in a layer of metal, and its sharp edge was like a polished sword—so sharp it could sever a hair that blew across it.

"Dad, when you’ve just awakened a superpower, you must be careful not to overuse it. The axe you’ve enhanced is much sharper than a normal one, so killing zombies with it will take less effort."

"We ability users have a certain resistance to the zombie virus, so we don’t get infected that easily, but it’s not absolute. So you still need to be careful when you’re fighting zombies."

What Flora Bloom didn’t tell him was that with her Space Spirit Water and special Water Ability, it would be difficult for any of them to turn into a zombie even if they wanted to.

The zombies on the bus were already in an uproar over the group’s arrival. Flora Bloom didn’t tell her mother and Caleb to go hide.

No one could escape the cruelty of the apocalypse; all they could do was adapt, survive, and constantly grow stronger.

Her mother had never experienced killing, and Flora Bloom wanted her to adapt as quickly as possible—at the very least, to become visually accustomed to the slaughter.

Although she wanted to protect her mother, she didn’t want her to remain too soft in this bloody, dog-eat-dog apocalypse.

"Just break one window. The opening will be narrow enough for only one zombie to get out at a time."

This was to let her father get used to his awakened superpower without overwhelming him with too many zombies at once.

So, Ethan Monroe shattered one of the bus’s glass windows, immediately drawing nearly all the zombies inside to swarm toward the opening.

First, one zombie squeezed out. It tumbled out of the bus, and just as the fallen zombie got to its feet, it was met by Caleb Bloom’s enhanced axe.

As expected of an axe enhanced by a Gold Ability User, Caleb Bloom brought it down in a single chop, and the zombie’s head was instantly split open with a huge gash. Its skull was nearly cleaved in two, and brains spilled all over the ground.

The moment Flora Bloom saw the brains splatter, her stomach started to churn. She couldn’t help but take a large gulp of spiritual water to suppress the nausea, then continued to direct the fight and protect her parents.