The roof of the world. The southern slopes of the Himalayas.
A place where life was forbidden, where human civilization amounted to nothing more than a footnote before the raw power of nature.
Wind cut through the heavy snowpack like a blade. Visibility in the blizzard had dropped to less than ten meters.
Yet in this silent world of ice and snow, something that defied every law of natural evolution was spreading like wildfire.
Standing on Star Fire's forward snowline position at five thousand meters above sea level, looking through a high-powered thermal imaging scope, the view was enough to shake any sane person to their core.
Hundreds of thousands of New Human monsters, like a dark-gold swarm of ants pouring out of hell itself, were scaling the near-vertical ice cliffs at high speed in total defiance of physics.
They didn't need the ice axes or ropes human climbers relied on. Their sharp claws, sheathed in dark-gold keratin, punched into ancient glacial ice with a piercing crack each time they struck. At this altitude where atmospheric pressure was negligible, those sounds layered and merged into a symphony of death that raised every hair on the body.
"Vanguard cluster, eighteen hundred meters from the first defensive line." "Massive high-energy biological signatures detected. Their dark-gold crystal is radiating anomalous heat... God, they're melting the glaciers as they climb!"
The Star Fire observer's voice crackled through the comm, shredded by electromagnetic interference.
"Everyone hold steady. Fingers off triggers."
Inside the command post, Sherry Birkin stood still in the howling wind. Her black tactical coat snapped in the gusts. Her once-small frame, after receiving the Abyss Enhancer, radiated a crushing pressure like an ancient glacier.
Those deep blue eyes reflected the terrifying tide of dark-gold light surging up the mountain below.
"Aunt Donna, you're up." Sherry pressed her comm, her voice ice-cold and perfectly flat. "Uncle Ryan always said the best defense is making the enemy tear itself apart from the inside. Don't let these disgusting things dirty our snow."
"Hehehe... Angie says she just loves playing hide and seek with these 'many-armed, many-legged' new friends..."
Donna Beneviento's slightly unhinged giggle drifted through the comm channel, followed by a piercing laugh from the doll Angie that cut clean through the blizzard.
About a kilometer ahead of the Star Fire defensive line, in the snow buffer zone, a lone and eerie figure sat perfectly still at the dead center of the gale. Donna wore her signature black Gothic mourning dress, face hidden behind a black veil, the uncanny doll cradled in her arms.
The instant the vanguard of the dark-gold monsters, close enough now to make out their twisted faces, stepped into the buffer zone, a "miracle" that defied every law of global climate occurred.
From the barren permafrost that had been frozen for tens of thousands of years, countless tiny shoots broke through. Within seconds, vast carpets of faintly glowing yellow flowers burst up through the ice.
In the extreme cold, these flowers didn't wither. They bloomed more vibrantly than ever.
This was a joint creation of Miranda and Star Fire's Genetics Division: Mutant Hallucinogenic Flower - Sequence Zero.
As the flowers opened, an extremely high concentration of yellow pollen was swept up by the gale, but instead of scattering, it defied the wind direction entirely, forming a towering wall of yellow fog dozens of meters high and stretching for kilometers.
The first wave of New Human monsters hit the yellow fog and their lockstep charge fell apart instantly.
Wesker's prized "dark-gold Ouroboros" virus had given these monsters a hive-mind shared consciousness, allowing them to move with military precision. But Donna's hallucinogenic pollen exploited exactly that shared link.
Inside the fog, every monster's senses were forcibly warped. In their vision, the allies beside them were no longer comrades. They became their most hated enemies, or whatever creature lurked deepest in their subconscious fears.
One stocky New Human whipped around and drove its dark-gold barbed claws straight through the skull of the one behind it. More monsters spiraled into the same hysterical fratricide.
Dark-gold keratin shattered as they tore into each other. Blackish-purple blood splashed across the pristine snow like spilled ink.
The entire buffer zone became a massive, reeking meat grinder. Some monsters, driven mad by the hallucinations, hurled themselves against solid rock. Others screamed and threw themselves off cliffs into the abyss below.
"Ten minutes in. Vanguard force down forty-five percent." Becky stood beside Sherry, watching the thermal signature dots on her tablet flicker and change color. A small smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. "Wesker probably never imagined his precious comm network would become the express lane for our neurotoxin delivery."
But the sheer volume of the dark-gold tide was staggering. Even with tens of thousands of monsters tearing each other apart, the ones behind kept trampling over their comrades' corpses and flooding into the yellow fog without pause.
"Warning, fog concentration dropping. The monster swarm is releasing massive amounts of dark-gold spores, forcibly neutralizing the hallucinogenic pollen!"
"Aunt Donna, fall back to the safe zone." Sherry issued the order coldly, slowly raising her right hand. "Phase one crowd control is over. Now it's time to show these pieces of shit what it really means... to face the truth of humanity."
[This novel is now COMPLETE. Read the entire series right now on Patreon: patreon.com/NiaXD]