[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 741 - One Strike to Shatter Alexia

Leon's remaining consciousness was drowning in fear.

He could feel his own life-form being forcibly rewritten, overwritten by a will of absolute, insatiable greed.

Every cell screamed with a single hunger: evolve. Devour.

Chris and Ada stared in horror at what was happening in front of them.

The Leon they knew was disappearing.

What replaced him was a... monster.

A thing that barely held a humanoid shape, yet radiated pure, uncut destruction from every inch of its body.

The G-Virus's first stage. G1 form.

"This... what is this..."

Every trace of composure and mockery drained from Alexia's face.

She had created Veronica. She had named herself a god of the new world.

She had watched countless viruses birth countless horrors, and not one of them had ever filled her with terror like this. Not one.

The thing standing before her had none of the elegance or order of Veronica's creations.

It was chaos itself.

A calamity that existed for the sole purpose of evolution, something that defied definition entirely.

Leon raised his head.

The face still held the rough outline of a human being, but every trace of expression was gone. His left eye remained dark gold. His right had become the deep, unmistakable blue of the G-Virus.

His gaze moved past the trembling Alexia and settled on the pool of blood not far away.

Claire's body was still lying there.

BOOM!

In that instant, the last fragments of Leon's human emotion and the G-Virus's all-consuming, savage instinct fused into a single terrible purpose.

Greatest threat in range — locked on.

The next second.

Leon moved.

The marble beneath his feet exploded to powder. His entire body became a blur no human eye could follow, and he drove himself straight at Alexia.

Too fast.

She had no time to react. None at all.

She had built her entire identity on Veronica, had taken such pride in it, but before her brain could fire a single command, raw, bottomless terror had already seized control of her body.

She wanted to run.

She couldn't.

That massive, grotesquely mutated claw came down wrapped in a sonic boom, air tearing apart around it. No technique. No finesse. Pure savage destruction, nothing else.

BANG,!

The entire banquet hall shuddered under the impact. The crystal chandelier on the domed ceiling couldn't take the shockwave. It exploded with a tremendous crash, and countless shards came raining down like a violent storm.

Alexia didn't even get to scream.

Her body hit the marble floor like a tomato thrown in front of a freight train. That enormous claw drove her straight down, deep into the stone.

RUMBLE!

The floor caved in around her, forming a crater more than 3 meters across. Cracks exploded outward in every direction like a spiderweb, and the entire banquet hall floor groaned, buckled, slabs tilting and splintering apart.

Dust and smoke swallowed everything.

Dead silence.

Chris had stopped firing. He stood motionless, staring at the crater.

Ada lowered her grapple gun. Her face was white.

One strike.

A single strike.

That impossibly powerful queen, the one who had called herself a god, Leon had just driven her into the ground.

The dust slowly cleared.

At the center of the crater, Alexia's condition was laid bare before everyone.

The vine armor Veronica had built around her body was completely shattered. Bones throughout her frame had snapped — she didn't know how many — twisting her into a shape no living person should hold.

That face. The one that had always looked down on everything. The perfect one.

There was no arrogance left in it at all.

She lay in the rubble and the dust, blood surging from her mouth in thick waves, mixed with fragments of her internal organs, soaking the ground beneath her dark red.

She tried to move. Tried to force her body to begin repairing itself.

The damage was too severe. Without Veronica or some other energy source to draw from, she couldn't manage even that. Not effectively.

Leon looked down at the barely-living prey at the bottom of the crater with the enormous eyeball that had grown from his shoulder.

He didn't attack again.

What emanated from that massive eye was not killing intent.

It was something else. Something harder to name.

A hunger that came very close to... appetite.

In the G-Virus's calculus, the Veronica host before it, brimming with vast biological energy, was not an enemy.

She was nourishment. The finest it had ever encountered.

Devour her, and it would evolve again.

Become stronger.

The G-creature opened its mouth. A low, rattling growl rose from somewhere deep in its throat. Thick saliva dripped from the corners of its jaws.

It was going to eat her.

Alexia read that from the depths of that enormous eye.

No.

Death, she wasn't afraid of death.

But to be treated like food. To be gnawed and devoured alive by a monster. That most humiliating of ends. It shattered the pride embedded in her very bones.

"No... no, please..."

The only answer she got was a louder, more frenzied roar.

The massive claw rose, preparing to dig this choice meal out of the rubble and then, savor it.

But.

At the instant the claw was about to come down, Leon's motion locked.

That enormous eyeball snapped to the other side of the banquet hall.

"Leon..."

There. Claire's body in the pool of blood. The savage wooden spear jutting from her chest.

It pierced straight through the last thread of humanity still left inside him.

"Clai... re..."

One hoarse, broken word. Forced out of Leon's throat like something tearing loose.

➤ Next: Parasitizing Claire