The Apocalypse Solution Provider

Chapter 34: Light and Dark Twinborn, Strength and Speed Double A

“Superman…” The entire room stared, dumbfounded, as Su Jin hauled himself off the floor.

He was covered in dust, but that display of physics-defying acrobatics looked straight out of a CGI blockbuster.

The sheer hang time, fluidity, and explosive speed were completely inhuman.

Su Jin stood, bent his knees slightly, and sprang upward, tapping the ceiling with effortless grace.

Landing silently, he froze, lost in thought.

It was impossible not to feel a surge of euphoria at this miraculous biological upgrade, but a cold spike of corporate paranoia kept him grounded.

He had just absorbed an unknown pathogen extract from a Zombie. Short-term gains were great, but the long-term side effects were a massive, undocumented liability.

Still, morale was low; there was no strategic value in voicing those concerns out loud.

Sun Ya rushed forward, aggressively patting down Su Jin’s arms and chest. “Superpowers! You actually developed an Ability! A forced evolution!”

Even the chronically stoic Wei De looked visibly electrified.

Days of suffocating tension, compounded by Su Jin’s sudden coma, had pushed the team to the breaking point.

Now, this wasn’t a disaster—it was a massive tactical advantage.

Su Jin flexed his fingers, testing the grip strength. “I don’t have the data to explain it yet… but my vitals are stable. If anything, I feel optimized.”

“Nature always provides a counterbalance. The Zombies are a walking extinction event, but they also carry the evolutionary cure.”

“It makes perfect sense…” Sun Ya muttered, nodding frantically, his clinical detachment completely shattered.

His rational mind had spent days screaming that the swift collapse of the government meant the existing scientific paradigm was useless against this apocalypse.

A ragtag startup team of survivors had virtually zero projected chance of long-term survival.

But now, they had a breakthrough!

An anomalous crisis demanded an anomalous solution. Maybe the ecosystem was simply running a harsh recalibration patch.

“The testing environment here is too constrained. I’m taking this outside for a field run. Hold position.” Delivering the order, Su Jin turned and headed for the stairs.

As he descended, he ran internal diagnostics on his shifting physiology.

His agility and baseline speed had absolutely skyrocketed.

A mere twitch of his calf muscles threatened to launch him forward like a coiled spring.

He decided to push the parameters.

Standing at the third-floor landing, Su Jin pushed off lightly with his right foot, rocketing toward the half-landing below.

Before his boots even touched concrete, he rebounded off the sidewall, twisting mid-air to launch himself directly down to the second floor.

He stuck the landing in utter silence. No joint shock, no jarring impact.

It felt as casual as stepping off a single curb.

Glancing back up the stairwell, Su Jin ruthlessly suppressed a smirk and continued his descent.

So the Zombies were walking loot boxes after all. The gray mist crystals had just mutated into the Fleshy Orb—different packaging, same premium product.

He paused right before the heavy lobby doors on the ground floor.

Rolling his shoulders, he detected a distinct shift in his physical parameters.

His muscle density felt… looser. Lighter.

Leaving the apartment, he had felt a subtle sluggishness, an almost imperceptible drag.

Down here in the lobby, the anti-gravity sensation was returning with a vengeance.

He mentally reviewed the variables. The only shifting environmental factor was ambient illumination.

The apartment was well-lit, the stairwell was dim, and this ground-floor lobby was completely cloaked in shadows.

Was this Ability photosensitive? Or was the mutation simply running a delayed installation?

Speculation without data was a waste of time. Su Jin shoved the heavy doors open and stepped into the exterior.

The morning sun crested the horizon, flooding the compound in harsh, brilliant light.

The courtyard was completely exposed to the glaring rays.

The instant the sunlight hit his skin, Su Jin’s jaw clenched tight.

His feather-light bones instantly felt like they had been injected with liquid lead. The god-like agility vanished in a heartbeat.

He took two heavy, plodding steps. His mobility had merely reverted to normal human baseline; he wasn’t paralyzed.

But the brutal whiplash from being a physics-defying acrobat to a regular pedestrian was jarring.

Trudging to the center of the courtyard, Su Jin tilted his head back, shielding his eyes to look up at the building.

Several heads poked out of the third-floor window, watching him like scientists observing a lab rat.

“How are the specs looking, Director?” Fu Hu hollered down.

The harsh glare forced Su Jin to squint.

The internal lead-weight sensation was plateauing. It was uncomfortable, but entirely manageable. No other negative debuffs detected.

Suddenly, a terrified shriek tore from the window. Fu Qingdai frantically pointed toward the perimeter bushes.

“Incoming! Six o’clock! It’s a cat!”

Su Jin whipped around. A mangy, rotting stray had already launched itself from the shrubbery, its jaw unhinged in a vicious, mid-air ambush.

The infected feline was less than two yards from his face.

Without a millisecond to formulate a strategy, Su Jin practically fired his right leg upward in a brutal punt.

His heavy combat boot connected flush with the Zombie cat’s lower abdomen.

CRACK!

The sheer kinetic force ruptured the creature entirely. It spewed a geyser of black pus, coagulated blood, and minced organs from both ends, pinwheeling through the air like a grotesque helicopter blade before vanishing into the distance.

A foul-smelling shower of infected gore rained down, thoroughly drenching Su Jin from chest to boots.

“Holy shit! Seal the door!” Sun Ya barked at the others inside, then leaned dangerously far over the balcony railing. “Stay out! Get into the stairwell and initiate a self-quarantine!”

Su Jin gagged violently, frantically spitting thick, coppery saliva onto the pavement.

Brute force.

In direct sunlight, his physical damage output scaled to an absurd level!

But the universe had excellent comedic timing. The exact moment he unlocked an Ability, he had to go and take a shower in highly infectious biowaste.

Stay logical. Breathe. He had just metabolized the source material. Maybe his optimized immune system rendered the virus obsolete.

Sprinting back into the shadowy lobby, Su Jin backed into a corner, his face grim as he ruthlessly monitored his own pulse and temperature for any signs of the fatal fever.

Exactly one hour later, Fu Qingdai’s voice echoed nervously down the dark stairwell.

“Brother, are you still human?”

“Still breathing. No mutations yet.”

Over the grueling sixty minutes, Su Jin’s cold pragmatism had reasserted itself. Aside from the nauseating stench of rotten meat clinging to his clothes, his biological functions remained perfectly stable.

“Okay. Are you hungry? Are you freezing?”

“Disregard my comfort. Relay my status to Old Sun immediately.”

Fu Qingdai went silent. A minute later, Sun Ya’s gravelly voice drifted down the shaft.

“Xiao Li, are you telling me you aren’t shivering?”

“My core temp is completely fine.”

Su Jin glanced down at his attire.

In the brief thrill of unlocking an Ability, he had completely neglected his gear, walking out into a frozen apocalypse wearing nothing but a thin long-sleeved shirt.

It was a gross oversight that none of them had caught.

While the catastrophic blizzard had passed, the ambient temperature was still hovering around a lethal minus twenty degrees Fahrenheit.

Yet, his skin wasn’t even prickling. His body’s thermal regulation had clearly undergone a massive upgrade.

“An hour is past the standard incubation window for direct fluid exposure. Going by our animal trials, you should be seizing by now. Given your unique ingestion of the Fleshy Orb, probability strongly suggests you possess active viral immunity. But we aren’t skipping protocols. Proceed to the vacant fourth-floor unit for a mandatory twenty-four-hour quarantine. Rations, water, and fresh clothes have been pre-staged by the door.”

“Understood. Keep the perimeter locked down.”

Acknowledging the directive, Su Jin straightened up.

Sinking into a deep crouch, he fired his leg muscles, cleanly clearing an entire flight of stairs in a single, gravity-defying bound.

…

The following morning dawned bright and bitterly clear.

Su Jin stood shirtless before the frosty windowpane, staring directly into the glaring sun.

He had logged a meager three hours of sleep, but his internal battery felt overcharged.

Field testing complete: direct exposure to Zombie bio-fluids resulted in zero infection.

Furthermore, twenty-four hours in isolation had given him ample time to map the parameters of his new Ability.

Ambient light was the primary toggle for his biological switch.

His physical specs operated on an extreme sliding scale: a strength-based bruiser under the sun, and an agility-focused assassin in the dark.

Maximum lux output triggered total dermal hardening, accelerated cellular regeneration, and immense blunt-force output. His burst speed remained decent, but the stamina drain was absolutely catastrophic.

Maximum darkness triggered hyper-flexibility, anti-gravity lightness, and friction-defying speed. His brute strength and healing dropped back to baseline, but his stamina efficiency became near-infinite.

The mechanics behind this photosensitive buff were pure sci-fi nonsense. After burning several hours trying to rationalize the physics, he filed it under “Don’t Care, It Works” and moved on.

Bathing in the UV rays, Su Jin flexed his dense, hyper-powered muscles, entirely focused on his new assets—until a sharp knock rattled the apartment door.