SSS Class Awakening: Start With A God-Level Choice System

After locking into his targets, Ainsworth free-fell from the sky and landed on the street where the survivor group was making their escape.

Ainsworth landed on the street foot first. He had fallen as lightly as a feather, without causing any destruction on the street.

After he had used Freedom of Movement (SSS) to negate fall damage, Ainsworth shifted his attention to the group of survivors who were now heading towards him.

Of course, those survivors weren’t targeting him, but he merely stood in front of the path of their escape, which was within his intentions.

When the leader of the survivor group saw Ainsworth blocking their escape route, he gritted his teeth before deciding, as he shouted, "Explode him as well!"

The survivor group’s leader, as well as some of the survivors had seen Ainsworth descend from the sky so they could guess that Ainsworth was far stronger than them.

After all, even the two evolvers in their group couldn’t fly that high, let alone descend so lightly. They also heard the divine-like voice that resounded in the sky, summoning rain that extinguished the fire they had caused.

Putting two and two together, Ainsworth was likely the one who summoned the rain, so the survivor group’s leader wanted to eliminate him as soon as possible.

’Even if he can summon rain, he’s not a god. He’s still a fleshy mortal and just a powerful evolver, so he can still bleed and die.’

Having that thought in mind, the survivor group leader didn’t hesitate to command the evolvers in his group to attack Ainsworth immediately.

Hearing the leader’s command, Howard heeded it and swiped his right hand continuously towards Ainsworth.

In front of him, liquid blades appeared and headed towards Ainsworth like slicing blades.

But before Ainsworth could even block the attack, Howard controlled the liquid blades to move upwards above Ainsworth and detonated it, causing its liquid to rain down on Ainsworth.

In response to Howard’s attack, Ainsworth sneered and used Phantom Evasion (SS) to dodge every drop of liquid that fell above him.

Of course, dodging was unnecessary as he had already used Ultimate Freedom (SSS) to coat his body with a barrier that prevented those unknown liquids from drenching him.

After evading all the liquids, Ainsworth sniffed the air and frowned, ’Is this gasoline? That Evolver should have a liquid-based superpower that allowed him to generate and control any liquid, but the power and limitations of it are currently unknown.’

’If that’s the case, then the other evolver’s power should be explosion—’

Without letting Ainsworth take a break, Judy interrupted his train of thought as she forwarded her palm and released a huge ball of fire towards Ainsworth, shouting:

"EXPLOSION!!!"

The explosive fireball headed towards Ainsworth, but he merely smirked and, from what Judy and Howard were witnessing, Ainsworth arrogantly stood and took the fireball head on with open arms, as if welcoming their attack.

"Futile."

Judy and Howard heard Ainsworth’s mockery. However, it was soon drowned out by a huge explosion.

The explosive fireball detonated and used the gasoline as fuel, causing it to burn brighter and its explosion radius increasing with Ainsworth at the center of the explosion.

The explosion lit up the dark streets, and the heat emanating from it prompted Howard to create ice cold liquids to counter it so that his team wouldn’t be scalded by the heat.

A few seconds later, the explosion died down, leaving only a crater, with Ainsworth or his corpse nowhere to be found.

Seeing that Ainsworth was blown to ash, the survivor group’s leader heaved a sigh of relief, "Fortunately, that monster is killed. Now, we can focus on esca—"

Before the survivor group’s leader could finish his words, he noticed that he couldn’t speak. Not only that, his vision was flipped as if he somersaulted in the air, yet he remembered that he was stationary before.

When his perspective of the world rotated, the survivor group’s leader soon saw a headless corpse standing.

’Is that... my body...?’

With a thud, the survivor group leader’s decapitated head rolled on the ground. What followed was his headless body, which collapsed on the ground.

Not only Howard and Judy, but the rest of the survivors who were fending off the zombies were startled by the sudden death of their leader.

Especially Howard and Judy, who had an excellent relationship with their group leader. They couldn’t accept his death. After all, the two of them were at odds with each other, so neither of them wanted the other to be the leader, so their best friend was chosen as the leader by them despite him not being an evolver.

While they were distracted, it caused casualties among the members who were normal humans and couldn’t use their superpowers to defend themselves.

Just as Judy was about to conjure another explosive fireball to clear the zombie horde and assist Howard in helping the rest of their group, a sudden gleam of light reflected by the moon flashed across her vision.

A sharp pain followed—right on her neck—forcing her to freeze on instinct.

She glanced down to see a white energy construct shaped like a kitchen knife pressed against her throat. It had already nicked her skin, and a thin stream of red trickled down her chest.

That was when Judy knew: she fucked up.

’Fuck! I’m being held hostage!’

Before she could even plead for her life, Ainsworth—who now stood beside her with the blade to her neck—spoke casually,

"You know what’s interesting? I’m not just the chef and scout of my team... I’m also the assassin."

He sighed, sarcasm dripping from his voice.

"It’s such a shame you blew up such a loud explosion, only to hit the afterimage I left behind."

"In the end, you traded your leader’s life for my illusion. When I slashed his neck, none of you even saw me."

Ignoring Ainsworth’s mockery, Howard summoned several rotating water blades beside him and barked,

"Let Judy go, or I’ll shoot you alongside her!"

Hearing Howard’s threat, Ainsworth sneered, "Heh, do you want to bet? Whether your water blades are faster or my knife is?"

"Just like what happened before, you couldn’t even see how I decapitated your leader’s head. Guess what would happen if you shot your water blades towards us."

Ainsworth stated, "I wouldn’t even need to decapitate her. I can restrain her and dodge instantly, letting you kill her with your water blade."

"So, what would be your choice?"

Hearing Ainsworth’s question, Howard weakly sighed and dissipated the water blades he had on standby.

Without any weapons present, Howard raised both of his hands in defeat and asked, "What do you even want? We didn’t even offend you, and you killed our leader."

Listening to Howard’s bullshit, Ainsworth retorted, "Do you have amnesia? I just arrived here, and your leader immediately ordered you two to explode me to smithereens as well."

As if thinking of something, Ainsworth concluded, "You know what? This is truly a waste of time. You bastards detonated an explosion at such a late hour and woke me up, and now you are feigning ignorance for a sin you have committed."

"I can just ask you all later when you all become zombies."

After making that decision, Ainsworth released his father zombie virus, and his viral energy seeped into the wound on Judy’s neck.

Since he infused a lot of zombie virus into his viral energy, Judy immediately transformed into a zombie.

Before Howard and the rest of the survivors could react, Ainsworth created several formless kitchen knives. However, instead of them being made up of aura and mana, he used viral energy instead.

Like throwing knives, Ainsworth shot them towards Howard and the survivors at a rapid speed.

When Howard and the survivors reacted, the virus-infused kitchen knives had already stabbed their bodies and injected the father zombie virus into their bodies.

Ainsworth only needed a knife or two for those survivors, while he used more than ten on Howard. After all, they would become zombies later, so these flesh wounds wouldn’t really kill them when they successfully transform.

In just under half a minute, whether it was Howard, Judy, or the survivors, they all became zombies and were forcibly recruited into his Hive Mind.

Ainsworth didn’t care much about the death of their leader as he was useless and his value was the same as those normal survivors. However, he did value Howard and Judy a bit.

Even when Howard and Judy became zombies, they still retained the superpower they had when they were still alive.

If he wasn’t mistaken, from the Elite Zombies he had seen, he could guess that through normal evolution progress, it would mostly be Special Zombies who could awaken a superpower. An exception would be those evolvers who turned into zombies.

’I wonder which evolution rank those zombies would gain sentience and sapience? And if they do, would it create a new personality or would it recover their past human selves?’

’If it’s the latter, then zombies could create their own society and even create a human ranch to farm them as livestock.’

’This world is more twisted than I expected, and if I’m not mistaken, this should be the last resort that the Zombie Apocalypse World’s Will had planned.’