Chapter 340: Stone Marten Revives

Without hearing a system notification, Joo Joowon did not stop using his spider silk. It continued destroying the internal structures of the stone marten’s body without pause.

However, when the spider silk reached the stone marten’s heart, a sudden burning pain shot through Joo Joowon’s Mental Power.

Joo Joowon immediately withdrew the spider silk, his gaze filled with suspicion and uncertainty.

Although he knew that the heart was not a fatal weakness for zombies, when the spider silk had first entered the stone marten’s body, he had instinctively attacked its heart as well.

At that time, the heart had been nothing more than an ordinary organ. Even when the spider silk had sliced it apart, it had not displayed anything unusual or worth paying attention to.

But now it was different. His Mental Power clearly sensed wisps of red mist spreading out from its heart.

"Hwi, come back!"

Although he could not figure out what was happening, Joo Joowon immediately called Hwi back.

"Meow?"

Although Hwi was somewhat confused, he obediently moved away from the stone marten. His body returned to its normal size, and he came back to Joo Joowon’s side.

Joo Joowon retreated with Hwi. Before long, he saw red mist gradually spreading out from the stone marten’s body, quickly enveloping the surrounding area.

After the red mist had spread to a certain range, it stopped expanding any farther. Because the mist was too dense, visibility was extremely poor. Therefore, even after Joo Joowon activated his enhanced vision, he still could not see what was happening inside.

Even at this point, Joo Joowon still had not heard the system’s notification that the enemy had been killed.

"Roar!"

Less than ten minutes later, Joo Joowon heard a powerful roar coming from within the red mist.

The roar of zombies was almost like a way of declaring their identity. No matter what species of zombie it was, the sound of their howls was generally quite similar. However, Joo Joowon looked toward the figure within the red mist.

A huge figure slowly stood up from within the red mist. It was even taller and larger than before, but from its long and slender body, it was still possible to tell that it was the same stone marten that he and Hwi had dealt with earlier.

The mist gradually dispersed, revealing the stone marten’s eyes, which had become even more bloodthirsty and savage.

Joo Joowon could not help raising an eyebrow.

A second-stage mutation?

Hwi also could not help widening his eyes. His eyes, which were already slightly cross-eyed, now completely turned into a comical cross-eyed stare, while his little head was clearly unable to understand what was happening.

What was going on? Hadn’t its head already been bitten off by him? How was it alive again? Not only was it alive, but why had it become even stronger?

Hwi could not understand the situation at all. He only felt as though his CPU was about to burn out from thinking too hard.

Even though he did not understand what was happening, when he saw the stone marten charging toward Joo Joowon, he immediately rushed in front of him and attacked the stone marten head-on.

This time, Joo Joowon discovered that the stone marten had clearly gained much more experience when dealing with the two of them. Whenever his spider silk moved toward it, the stone marten would immediately dodge, refusing to give the threads any chance to penetrate its body. Whenever Hwi attacked it, it would deliberately avoid allowing Hwi to bite its neck.

Because the stone marten was already prepared for their attacks, Joo Joowon and Hwi had to spend much more effort killing it this time. Even so, the battle was still relatively easy for them.

This time, Joo Joowon once again chose to use a clever method. Since he could no longer get the spider silk inside its body, he simply targeted its four limbs.

Without making a sound, he wrapped spider silk around all four of the stone marten’s limbs. In the end, he directly tore it apart limb by limb.

After losing all four of its limbs, the stone marten no longer posed any threat to Hwi, so he directly bit it to death.

However, there was still no system notification indicating that it had been killed.

Before figuring out the secrets of the red mist, Joo Joowon did not dare to enter the red mist carelessly. However, this time, he did not leave immediately. Instead, he tried to take the heart that was releasing the red mist out of the stone marten’s body.

The heart that had been removed looked completely ordinary, and there was not the slightest sign that anything was wrong with it. However, even after Joo Joowon smashed the heart into pieces, the stone marten’s body still continued releasing red mist outward. It seemed that the moment he took the heart away, the red mist had already transferred to another location.

Joo Joowon held Hwi in his arms and avoided the spreading mist, watching the dense forest become filled with red mist once again. His expression grew heavy.

In terms of strength, the stone marten could not be considered particularly strong. What was even more surprising was that, as an Elite Zombie, it actually did not have any skills.

One had to know that after the Black Rain, every Elite Zombie Joo Joowon had encountered without exception had possessed skills.

This made the stone marten seem like a defective product among Elite Zombies.

As for its ability to repeatedly resurrect, that was clearly not a skill belonging to the stone marten. It was an ability of the red mist. Or perhaps, was it the red mist that had transformed the stone marten into an Elite Zombie in the first place?

However, Joo Joowon did not know anything about the secrets of the red mist. At the same time, he could not possibly allow such a threat to continue existing unchecked. Having Hwi act as bait to lure one of them out had originally only been meant to let him see what the situation was like.