Chapter 29: The Hardest Choices Are Borne By The Strongest Hearts

Chapter 29 - The Hardest Choices Are Borne By The Strongest Hearts

"I mean, you worked hard on cooking this. In this zombie apocalypse, such a dish is a luxury. Wouldn't it be fair if we share it together?"

Hearing Chloe's inquiry, Ainsworth smiled charmingly again and shook his head, "You can eat this without any guilt. I have cooked it especially for you so I'd be happy if you eat it."

"Oh, and do tell me how it tastes."

Looking at Ainsworth's harmless smile and selflessness as if it were all for her sake, Chloe felt her heart warmed. She didn't expect that in this cruel zombie apocalypse world, a stranger would treat her this well.

Since he told her that the dish was made for her, Chloe no longer hesitated as she took a bite of the foie gras.

The moment the foie gras touched her tongue, Chloe's eyes widened in disbelief.

A burst of flavor exploded in her mouth—rich, buttery, with a delicate crisp on the outside and a melt-in-your-mouth center that sent a shiver down her spine.

It was as if a choir of celestial geese had descended from the heavens to serenade her taste buds with golden harps made of duck fat.

"Mmmhhhnn~~!"

She moaned and dropped her fork with a soft clink, hands clutched to her chest as her soul briefly left her body and ascended into a five-star French restaurant floating in the clouds.

"I-it's... it's like being wrapped in a velvet blanket of umami and love!" she gasped. "As if the cruelty of the apocalypse was banished from my mouth for just one bite!"



Tears welled up in her eyes—real tears. Not of sadness or fear, but of pure, overwhelming culinary joy.

She didn't even stop to question what were the ingredients used for the foie gras and its cooking process. The flavor told her to shut up and eat—and she obeyed.

One bite became two. Two turned into a flurry of fervent fork-and-knife movements until, in what felt like seconds, the plate was licked clean.

Chloe sat there breathless, like a pilgrim who had just sipped ambrosia at the gates of food nirvana.

Just when she was about to thank Ainsworth for cooking her such a fine and hearty meal, Chloe soon felt her entire body heating up as if she was thrown in a furnace.

Her body temperature rose crazily past human limits, reaching 44 degrees Celsius, boiling from the inside as her zombie virus resistance crumbled against the flood of concentrated zombie virus now coursing through her blood.

The mutation in her body that could store the zombie virus and convert it into usable viral energy couldn't keep up with the input of the concentrated zombie virus.

Chloe's body went out of control and her body's immune system attempted to fight off the zombie virus, causing her to subconsciously release her ice superpower that froze her surroundings.

Her consciousness became weak and blurry, slowly fading away.

Ainsworth's face swam before her eyes, distorted like a dream slipping through her fingers. Her arm trembled as she raised it toward him, barely able to lift her hand.

"W-why...?"



Her voice was faint, rasping like wind brushing across cracked glass. The word dragged out from trembling lips, an accusation laced with confusion and betrayal—but too weak to hold weight.

"Wh... why... y-you...?"

Looking at Chloe's beautiful face etched with the pain of both betrayal and the pain of the zombie virus' infection in her body, Ainsworth smiled with cold indifference, "Why you ask? That's because—"

Spreading both of his arms as if he were embracing the future, he continued, "The human flesh is weak!"

"Ascend to a higher lifeform and become a zombie!"

As soon as those words were spoken, Ainsworth was notified that he received the choice reward for Choice 1 and he immediately used the reward.

Ignoring Chloe who had finally lost consciousness and fallen into a coma, Ainsworth felt the power surging in his body.

Aside from mana and aura, he now felt the existence of a third energy: viral energy.

It wasn't energy born of nature like mana or refined from the body like aura. This was something different—alive, aggressive, and infectious.

As the virus merged with his cells, a foreign organelle—like a second mitochondria—awakened within him. Scientists once called mitochondria the powerhouses of the cell.

These new ones? Virochondria.

They devoured the virus particles, broke them down, and converted their chaos into raw power. His body didn't resist the virus anymore—it welcomed it, fed off it.



That was the difference between humans and evolvers.

And what came along with it was the superpower he awakened—Pathogen Control.

A power that granted him complete dominion over viruses, bacteria, and other infectious agents. He could manipulate, cultivate, and weaponize them at will—turning deadly pathogens into energy or using them to infect others.

Whether it was suppressing infections, accelerating mutations, or extracting viral energy from corpses, everything that once plagued humanity was now nothing more than fuel in his hands.

Disease and evolution transformed into a tool he alone could control.

Ainsworth awakened the S-rank sub-class Evolver with Pathogen Control as one of his class exclusive skills.

Normally, the viral energy would conflict with aura and the chances of it coexisting with it in his body were extremely low.

However, Ainsworth wasn't certain whether it was due to the perks of being an Awakener or his God-Level Choice System, or maybe even both, he could accommodate conflicting power systems and energies within his body.

But from what Ainsworth knew, such occurrences weren't that unheard of since if an Awakener completed an extremely difficult Otherworld Mission, there was a small chance of getting a sub-class reward related to the Otherworld where the Otherworld Mission was held.

That's the safest way to gain a sub-class. The riskier option was to gain it in the Otherworld without receiving it as a reward from the Otherworld Mission.

Ainsworth didn't have to do either of those but the price was his morality when he made Choice 1.

Clenching his hand, feeling the zombie virus in his body under his control, he looked at Chloe who had fallen into a coma, and sighed, "The hardest choices are borne by the strongest hearts."