Chapter 24: Burning Flesh Mountain

Napalm.

I don't know how to make it actually, nor do I know its exact origin, but I do know that it refers to a chemical mixture that can easily burn, and the fire it makes can stick to the person regardless of what the person does. Even if the person being burned by it pours water on them, rolls around on the ground, or takes off any clothes they are wearing, it will continue burning them until they turn to ashes.

I think the last part is just an exaggeration, but there are some truths to it. It won't be included in banned weapons on modern warfare if it can't do that much, will it?

Anyway, I have a can filled to the brim with these chemicals. I don't really know what it was made of, but the Dream World has it when I wish for napalm. I think I recall there are variants of napalm around the world, but it's not like I care. Maybe I actually mislabeled it, and napalm actually refers to every burnable chemical mixture in this world?

It doesn't matter if I mislabel it or not. I have napalm, and I am pouring it around this gigantified tumor growing on the side of the road. Well, I can't really say it's growing on the side of the road when its whole length covers the entire width of the streets. This might be a suburban street, but the place around me looks like the commercial area of this block. It's still quite short compared to the main roads in the city, but it's sizable enough that seeing an abomination covering that entire width makes it look surreal and sickening.

There are also a lot of zombies gathered around this tumor-like growth on the road. They varied from those muscular zombies that are two to three meters tall, the lizard-like slithering flesh monsters, and even some incredibly thin-looking corpses that have a very long tentacle that seems to act as a replacement for its tongue.

It's why I cannot use Rewrite near that abomination, nor any place that has a lot of zombies in it. Manifesting the items I brought back to the real world cannot be done when something is occupying the space where I am attempting to do so. It is why, when I use Rewrite, I have to find an empty area where the object I am going to be manifesting has sufficient space to fit.

I already tried it at the condominium, and my power refuses to budge. I was originally planning to shove an object on the head of the zombies and then manifest those objects in reality, but it isn't just possible. There is nothing I can do about that.

So anyway, after I was done parking my car in the distance, I hauled the jerrycan filled with napalm in it and put it on the ground before using Rewrite on it. After it becomes a part of the reality, I start duplicating it before moving forward and then spilling it over the road while using Continuous Rewrite.

That is what I had been doing until I arrived in front of the pulsing mountain of flesh. I splash it with chemicals all over its body and keep targeting every part of it that I can possibly cover with napalm. Whenever I run low on mana, I take one of the crystals I am carrying in my bag to replenish it so I can continue. I keep doing this until I thoroughly cover everything in this road. I even made sure to go around each house around this stretch of this street and cover them with as much napalm as I can just to ensure that it will burn.

The three bags filled with monster cores have been emptied by the time I'm done. Evening was approaching soon, so I started wrapping things up. Despite not hearing them, the zombies have been making a racket since I started pouring chemicals on the road. I couldn't hear them, but the way they opened their grotesque mouths wide made me assume they were howling or screaming. I was getting convinced these zombies could recognize their surroundings and have some form of intelligence within them, because they seemed to realize that something was wrong when I started pouring these napalm solutions around their turf.

Not like it would help them. No matter what they do, burning this side of the street was inevitable. They couldn't blame me for being burned. It's their fault they haven't left this place when I've been deliberately covering this entire area with chemicals.

And now, for the finishing touch, I took a copy of the silver lighter I have from my pocket and then pushed the button, lighting it up. Then I just threw it in the air.

"Rewrite."

After saying that word, I turned around and entered my car before driving away. The spark of white light that illuminated this black and white world brightened the entire area instantly, and after a few seconds, I felt the warm sensation of mana entering my body.

Operation success!

____________________

They felt it. The destruction of one of their hatcheries through a sudden blaze of fire. Through their connection to this hub, they saw a small spark that quickly turned into a giant wall of flame. It engulfed the entirety of their hatchery along with the zombie variants that it produced. Tanks couldn't do anything. Crawlers couldn't find the one responsible for it. Even their Flesh Hounds, the dog-shaped creatures in their ranks that were specialized in sniffing out living beings, couldn't locate the origin of this fire.

The only thing they knew was that a liquid with no nutrients or any useful trait they could adapt to their properties was suddenly manifested out of nowhere, covering the entire area where this hub had taken root. They had no idea where it came from.

This was a surprising development. They have mostly identified the monsters that could predate them. There were the various insect mutants hiding within the tunnels and the basements, which they used as side dishes. There were the flying predators who hunted their variants, stealing precious forces from them that bore monster cores within them. There were also the subterranean worms that suddenly emerged on the ground, feasting on their hatcheries before they burrowed in the ground once again. There were also the creeping vines, the sentient oozes, husk leeches, and many more.

None of those monsters have the capability to just create these chemical mixtures out of nowhere. There also weren't any monsters out there who could just conjure fire in an instant. This was the first time they had encountered something like this.

They could only helplessly watch as that hatchery burned to ashes. They couldn't even order their zombie minion to get the monster cores that the hatcheries and their zombie minions bore. Monsters of the same species couldn't get any benefits from assimilating with the core of the same race. It was obvious because whatever the hatchery made, they also had it. They were interlinked with each other, with one main network fully in control of them.

They might not know who it was, but they became aware that another threat came to this district.

The slumbering queen of the flesh hatcheries in this region has become wary of this neighborhood. It immediately alerted every flesh hatchery in the surrounding area, increasing their vigilance to any mysterious entity that they might encounter.

____________________

Beneath the ground of Yachiyo City, a monstrous worm-like creature with a body that looked like segmented armored carapaces was moving through the earth. It was just a few meters below ground, uncaring of the pipelines, sewage systems, and entire underground tunnels it was breaking when it suddenly stopped. It was faint, but it sensed it.

It was the unmistakable pure essence of a nature-element monster core. Each monster core had their own elements, and swallowing an element that complements their traits would increase the chance of their evolution. Every monster in this world, even with limited intelligence, instinctively craves it. Monsters from the same species might not be able to benefit from their own cores, but other species were fair game. This specific worm has an earth-elemental trait that synergizes well with the nature element. If it could swallow that pure essence, its limited mental capacity managed to process that it would surely evolve.

So, it ignored the countless giant ants it disturbed who were currently trying to bite into its steel-like carapaces as it changed directions. It doesn't know specifically where the essence was located, but it will find it.

And then, it will devour it!

____________________

When I returned to my base, I immediately went to my stash of monster cores to recover my mana. There was a slight pressure in my head, and while it didn't hurt really, it made me so uncomfortable that I wanted to fill it up as soon as possible.

Anyway, I immediately ate dinner before starting my planning phase. So my first attempt to burn that pile of flesh was a success. This single operation netted me enough mana that I estimate I could stay within the empty alternate world for fourteen hours.

This is great! If I keep this up, then it won't take long before I can reach a mana capacity that will let me stay in an alternate world for a whole day!

Now then, reviewing my actions for today, it made me realize that just carrying cans of chemicals wasn't an efficient use of my time. It took me an entire day and three bags of monster cores before I could accomplish covering an entire area of a street with those chemicals. I'm in the Faded World, and using Continuous Rewrite all day was still heavy even with my current mana capacity. I needed to think of another way other than just hauling heavy objects and pouring their contents manually.

I needed to be fast. I cannot be satisfied with this speed!

So what should I do?

I spent my entire night thinking like that as I produced a book and a pen, writing any random ideas that popped up in my mind.