TWD - Zomboid - Chapter 242: Krauser (Patreon)

Sparks flew from the guard’s armor. Even the massive halberd in its hands couldn’t stop the point-blank barrage. A huge hole was blasted through its chest, sending it staggering backward.

But it still wasn’t dead.

Hideous Plaga tentacles suddenly burst from the gaping wound, trying to pull the flesh back together and repair the damage.

“Big health bar, huh?” Luke’s eyes turned cold.

He shifted his aim, pointing the AA-12 directly at the Plaga itself.

“Bang! Bang! Bang!”

Another burst completely obliterated the guard’s upper body.

Regenerate?

Regenerate my ass.

The elite guard crashed to the floor.

The other guard roared and charged. Luke rolled sideways beneath a sweep of its massive halberd, shoved the shotgun against its back, and unleashed another burst, shredding the Plaga inside along with everything around it.

He hadn’t even needed a flashbang. The armored guard died on the spot.

Luke could have taken them down with just his knife, but he wasn’t in the mood to waste time.

The twisted grin on Ramon’s face froze.

He had spent years raising these personal death guards. Even before the outbreak, they had helped him control the entire castle. Yet the young man’s weapon had sent them to hell with ridiculous ease.

“Damn you! What... what kind of monster are you?!”

Ramon shrieked.

“I’m your daddy!”

Luke swapped in a fresh drum magazine and casually added,

“Daddy is home!”

He took another step forward, climbing the stairs toward the altar.

“Come on. Taste my big gun!”

Ramon’s face went deathly pale. He stumbled backward like a terrified little girl, then darted through a hidden door behind the altar and vanished in the blink of an eye.

Was Ramon really that much of a coward?

Luke muttered to himself but didn’t chase him.

This castle was Ramon’s territory, and its hidden passages formed a maze. Chasing him would accomplish nothing and would only make it easier to walk into an ambush.

Luke’s objective was clear. Get the antidote first, meet up with Ada, get everyone out, then make a list and squeeze a nice payout out of Wesker and Ashley’s dad.

Perfect plan.

The sealed iron gate automatically rose after Ramon fled, opening like a motion-activated door.

“Let’s go.”

Luke put away the shotgun. “Luis, take us to the lab.”

The three of them and the dog crossed the Main Chapel and followed a stone staircase behind the altar down into the castle’s underground levels.

The Underground Passage had clearly been excavated much more recently. Gone were the castle’s ornate decorations and ancient grandeur. There were only cold, rough stone walls, along with modern equipment that looked completely out of place here, including electrical wiring, pipes, and light bulbs.

The smells in the air were easy to distinguish. There was the stench of rotting corpses, mixed with a strong chemical odor.

“We’re almost there.”

Luke moved quickly, and nothing they encountered along the way managed to stop them.

Luis finally stopped in front of a metal door.

“Beyond this is where Los Illuminados researches and cultivates the Plaga. I have the Amber, but all the research data and equipment are inside. Unfortunately, so are some of their creations.”

“If we barge in there and wake those things up... it won’t be much fun.”

Luke tightened his grip on the dragon-head knife.

“Open it, kid. We’ve got someone else footing the bill, so what are you worried about?”

“Fine.”

Luis sighed and started working on the combination lock.

The lock beeped, and the metal door slowly slid open.

The smell of formaldehyde drifted out, accompanied by a faint trace of blood. Laboratories were normally supposed to maintain sterile conditions. From the smell alone, Luke already thought these people seemed pretty amateurish.

Beyond the door was a spacious room lined on both sides with rows of glass culture tanks. Inside floated all kinds of grotesque creatures. Some were half human and half insect, while others were pale, bloated things with huge swollen bodies.

Luke recognized several of them.

The pale, bloated specimens, for example, had weak points that could only be spotted through a special sniper scope in the game. Destroying those weak points one by one would kill them, though some variants would explode upon death.

They were some pretty nasty elite monsters.

“This is the core laboratory of Los Illuminados. Keep your voices down,” Luis whispered, as though afraid of waking the specimens.

“Every Plaga mutant you’ve seen was bred, selected, and enhanced here, generation after generation.”

Ashley’s face turned pale. She instinctively moved behind Luke and grabbed the edge of his clothes.

Luke looked over the culture tanks.

“All your experimental data and research equipment are here, right?”

“Right.” Luis nodded. “The laboratory is the most restricted area in the entire place. Even ordinary believers aren’t allowed anywhere near it. Anyone permitted inside is no ordinary person. We need to move as quickly as...”

Before he could finish, Luke suddenly looked up.

His senses screamed a warning.

“Back!”

Ashley and Luis immediately retreated.

The instant the three of them moved, a flash of cold steel tore through the air.

“Whoosh!”

A military knife shot past them at incredible speed and buried itself in the exact spot where they had just been standing.

The blade sank deep into the stone floor, its polished surface gleaming under the lights while the handle continued to vibrate.

It had been a vicious throw from a difficult angle. Fast, precise, and deadly.

If Luke hadn’t warned them in time, Luis’s endlessly chatty mouth might have been silenced for good.

Luke stared into the darkness.

A tall man slowly emerged.

He was heavily muscled and wore a modern military camouflage vest. Grotesque parasite-like markings covered the left side of his face.

Judging by his physique alone, this clearly wasn’t an ordinary man. He looked like a textbook example of a bio-engineered human.

“Krauser?”

Luke recognized him almost immediately.

In the game, Krauser had been Leon’s instructor. Later, for various reasons, he turned against the US government. As Luke vaguely remembered it, the government hadn’t treated him particularly well after his service, leaving him bitter enough to become violently antisocial.

Krauser was nothing like the ordinary elite soldiers.

He was basically a mini-boss.

“Three people... and a dog?” Krauser frowned.

He wasted no time talking.

Right in front of them, his left arm began to swell and distort. Flesh split apart as bone rapidly grew outward, transforming his arm in seconds into a massive scythe-like blade.

He was using his strongest form right from the start.

Compared to Ramon, Krauser was clearly much more cautious.

“Villains are supposed to talk too much. What happened to you?” Luke kept his eyes fixed on Krauser. “Aren’t we supposed to chat for a while first, get all worked up, rant at each other, and then start fighting when somebody finally gets pissed off?”

Krauser stared at him coldly.

“Hand over the sacred relic. I’ll give you a quick death. At least you won’t end up as one of those mindless bugs.”

“Oh? You really think you’ve already won?” Luke twirled the dragon-head knife, his eyes settling on Krauser’s mutated arm. “Where’d that confidence come from? Saddler?”

“That thing looks pretty intimidating. Even a kris doesn’t look that nasty. Wonder if it can stop my dragon-head knife.”

“Enough talk.”

Krauser’s eyes hardened.

Like a cheetah poised to strike, he suddenly launched himself forward.

He was incredibly fast, far beyond any of the villagers they had faced. In a single burst of movement, he was already in front of Luke, his bone scythe cutting through the air toward Luke’s neck.

A soldier’s fighting style was straightforward and efficient.

The attack was fast and vicious.

An ordinary person wouldn’t even have had time to react before losing their head.

Even Leon had barely survived some of his fights with Krauser.

Back when Luke had tried to beat Krauser on Expert with nothing but a knife, Krauser had slaughtered him more times than he cared to remember.

But things were different now.

He wasn’t the struggling player he had been back then.