[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 583 - Swallowing the Entire Solar Stairway

William carried an unusually specialized constant-temperature petri dish and set it carefully on the table in front of Leon.

Inside the glass dome, a strange plant lay perfectly still.

Petals in a deep, seductive crimson.

Several broad leaves with serrated edges.

The stem covered in fine, dense black patterns.

It looked like something living was flowing through its veins.

This was the Solar Stairway.

The original source of every biohazard catastrophe ever recorded.

Leon stood with his arms crossed, looking down at the flower.

"You're actually sure you want me to eat this thing raw?"

William pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

"Of course you eat it. It's a mandatory step before fusing with the G-Virus."

"And you have to swallow it whole. No holding back."

William braced both hands on the edge of the workstation.

"A month ago, I would have told you to stay as far away from this as possible. The survival rate for an ordinary person who ingests it is obscenely low."

"Even the most physically powerful athlete would have their entire body rot apart after swallowing it. They'd die in pieces. A revolting mass of flesh."

William fixed his gaze on Leon's eyes and held it there.

"But you are completely different now."

"The T-Virus restructured your constitution a long time ago."

"You could say you're already a walking super-toxic organism."

"This plant isn't even as toxic as you are."

He reached out and tapped the glass dome.

"The Progenitor Virus inside this Solar Stairway poses absolutely no threat to you. None."

"It won't turn against you."

"On the contrary — it will be completely devoured by the cells inside your body. Cells that have been starving for exactly this."

"It will become the most perfect nourishment for repairing every genetic defect in your current makeup."

Leon listened to all of it.

Then he simply reached out.

No hesitation. Two fingers closed around the dark crimson flower and dropped it straight into his mouth.

No slow chewing. He just crushed it.

The plant's juice was unusually thick, coating his throat as it slid down into his stomach.

William grabbed the data monitoring tablet from the workstation beside him and locked his eyes on the sensors attached to Leon's arm.

A few seconds passed.

The reaction came.

No gut-wrenching agony. No writhing on the ground.

What Leon felt was an extraordinarily strange tingling that detonated from the center of his stomach and then tore outward along his arteries and neural network at tremendous speed, flooding every bone and extremity all at once.

He closed his eyes.

He could feel it with complete clarity — every piece of tissue inside his body was changing.

His cells were like starving wolves that had finally found rain after a long drought. They were ferociously, greedily devouring the immense energy pouring off the Solar Stairway.

His bones began to heat up. He could even hear an extremely faint grinding sound from somewhere deep inside his body.

Muscle fibers tore apart rapidly, then reassembled in an instant, denser, thicker, tighter than before.

The entire process was completely controlled. No violent loss of control. No chaos.

So it really did pose no threat to him anymore.

Leon held still and felt it all.

After roughly 10 minutes, the burning heat slowly faded. He opened his eyes.

A flash of dark gold moved through his pupils, dangerous and brief, and then he raised both hands, clenched his fists, and his knuckles cracked out a sharp, clean series of pops.

The raw physical power behind that sound was noticeably stronger than before.

William stood to the side, holding the tablet with both hands. He watched the data on the screen, numbers that had been spiking wildly before finally settling into stability, and his whole body was trembling.

"Unbelievable."

He snapped his head up. The look on his face when he stared at Leon was the look of a man gazing at a flawless creation of God.

"The most perfect Genetic Blueprint!"

"Every single genetic flaw — repaired by the Solar Stairway!"

"The active compounds filled in the vulnerabilities left behind by your previous double mutation with extraordinary precision."

"The problem of your Loss of Humanity may have been completely resolved."

William started pacing back and forth across the lab, too wound up to stand still.

"Your bone density has jumped by a substantial margin."

"The tensile strength of your muscle fibers has improved by at least double."

"Your internal organs' pressure resistance has also improved."

He stopped.

"The structure of your body has already begun trending toward absolute perfection."

He swallowed and pointed at one core metric on the screen.

"And this isn't just a simple power increase."

"The upper limit of your cell division has been completely broken through."

"The rate of telomerase consumption is so slow it's obscene."

"Do you understand what that means?"

He stared straight at Leon.

"Your lifespan has been extended to an extraordinary degree."

"As long as you are not completely destroyed."

"Living a few hundred years, while staying in your current peak condition the entire time — that's nothing for you. Effortless."

"My God. You'll outlive a tortoise."

Leon peeled off his shirt, which had been soaked through with sweat, and draped it over his shoulder. The muscle definition across his upper body was fully exposed to the open air.

Not the exaggerated, sculpted look of a bodybuilder, every muscle was proportioned exactly right. But the explosive power packed beneath that skin was enough to make anyone's scalp prickle even at a distance.

"Data looks good."

Leon rolled his neck.

"But I need to know exactly what level this body is actually at right now."

"I need something to test it on."

William immediately pointed at the ceiling.

"The yard expansion project up top."

"That big guy you assigned to manual labor."

"He'll make a perfectly qualified test sandbag."

Leon said nothing more.

He walked out of the lab and headed straight up to the yard construction site.

The weather was overcast.

In the open ground behind the yard, several bulldozers were running. But none of them were the most eye-catching thing out there.

That was the colossal figure hauling construction materials through the mud on foot.

The Tyrant, under Leon's control.

The veins on its thick arms wound around its muscles like tree roots. Four load-bearing steel beams, each one weighing at least a hundred jin, were slung across its shoulders like they weighed nothing.

Leon walked to the open ground at the edge of the site, looked at the colossus, and sent the command directly through the neural network in his mind.

"Big guy."

"Drop the load and come here."

The Tyrant's stride halted immediately.

No hesitation. Its shoulder tilted sharply.

All four steel beams hit the ground at once.

The Tyrant turned and walked toward Leon with heavy, deliberate steps.

Its massive shadow swallowed him whole.

Every survivor working in the area stopped what they were doing.

They knew this monster was the camp's manual laborer. They'd seen it hauling steel for weeks. But every time it moved like this, toward a person, that primal, suffocating dread crawled right back up their spines.

Claire happened to be walking over from the direction of the Administration Building, carrying a stack of registration forms. She saw what was happening and stopped dead.

Her eyes went wide.

"What's going on?" she asked Daryl beside her.

Daryl had a cigarette dangling from his lips. He shook his head.

"No idea."

"The way the boss is standing, looks like he's about to fight that thing."

Chris had just jogged over. His face was pure bewilderment.

Leon looked up at the killing machine in front of him.

He stepped back half a pace and dropped into a stance.

Another command through the neural network.

"Attack me with maximum force."

"Don't hold back."

The Tyrant's face showed nothing. No expression. No hesitation.

The moment the absolute order landed, it moved.

Its right arm wrenched backward. Every muscle across its body snapped taut in an instant. Then it swung, that terrifying fist bigger around than a pot lid, cutting through the air with a sound like ripping canvas, driving it straight down toward Leon's face with everything it had.

That punch could cave a car door in flat.

Claire cried out. Her hand dropped instinctively toward the gun at her hip.

Leon didn't move. Didn't shift a foot. Didn't even adjust his weight.

In the instant the Tyrant's fist was about to drive through his skull, he raised his right hand in a completely casual motion, fingers spread wide, and put it in the way.

THUD!

A deep, muffled impact detonated between them.

Everyone stopped breathing.

Then they saw it.

The Tyrant's punch, loaded with enough force to destroy a vehicle, was dead in its tracks. Caught in one hand.

Leon's palm sat flush against that enormous fist. His arm hadn't bent. Not even a fraction.

He held there. Shoulders perfectly still. Steady as an iron tower welded straight into the earth.

Back at the Spencer Mansion, this same Tyrant had pushed him to his limit. He'd needed the Leeches, overwhelming numbers, everything he had just to manage it. Now he didn't need any of that. He could take it apart in direct melee.

"Still too light."

Leon said it like a passing observation.

Then his other hand came up. Both hands closed around the Tyrant's fist.

And he threw it.

Grabbed it and wrenched the entire colossal creature clean off the ground.

The Tyrant's feet left the earth in an instant. Its massive body swung through the air in an outrageously wide arc, up, over, and around, and then Leon slammed it down hard on the open ground on the other side.

BOOM!

The Tyrant hit the earth.

Dirt exploded outward in all directions.

A sharp, collective intake of breath rose from every person watching.

Chris's jaw nearly hit the floor.

He had fought this kind of creature head-on. He knew exactly how terrifying that strength was, knew it in the ache that never quite left his ribs.

Even a glancing hit from that thing would crack your chest open and leave you vomiting blood.

And Leon had just swung it through the air like it was nothing.

➤ Next: This One's No Tougher Than the Last