Vampire Overlord's Harem In The Apocalypse

"You know… you're supposed to be one of them, right?" Simon's voice broke the silence, the words slipping out without preamble.

It was almost as though he hadn't meant to speak them aloud, yet they hung in the air between them.

His tone was flat, matter-of-fact, as though stating the obvious rather than offering a question.

The woman's gaze flicked toward him, confusion passing over her face for a moment. "What do you mean?"

"The voice," Simon continued, ignoring her confusion, "said people who come into contact with Zombies during their transformation can get infected too. And you, well… A single glance is all I need to see that you're not human."

Her eyes widened slightly, then slowly shifted to her arms. The skin, which had once been the pale flesh of someone living, was now tinged with a sickly green.

Not as vivid as the full transformation she'd seen in Zombies, but it was unmistakable.

The horror and realization seeped into her expression, a sinking feeling that had been growing ever since she'd encountered the infected, now coalescing into something solid.

"I… I thought I was seeing things," she whispered, her voice shaking as she examined her arms, flexing them as though to confirm that this was indeed her new reality. "But it's real… I'm no longer human." Her voice trailed off at the end, the weight of her words hitting her like a physical blow.

Simon observed her reaction carefully. He expected something more. Maybe anger. Maybe denial.

But instead, she simply stared at her arms as if the change were inevitable. She had accepted it too easily, and that left him feeling slightly off-kilter.

He had hoped for a little more resistance — something that would show her inner turmoil — but all he saw was quiet acceptance.

She didn't even flinch at the thought of becoming one of the monsters.

She had been quiet for a while, staring at her green-tinged skin in disbelief, and Simon could see the exhaustion in her eyes.

This world did that to people — broke them, hollowed them out until they stopped questioning their fate and just moved with the current of survival.

The sound of destruction still echoed through the mansion. The furniture, once polished and gleaming, was now a casualty of the chaos the Zombies had wreaked on the place.

Tables had been overturned, chairs splintered into pieces, and entire bookshelves emptied of their contents.

The place had once been a symbol of wealth and power, but now it was just another ruin in the world left behind by the outbreak.

Simon's gaze swept over the broken furniture, his mind lingering for just a second on the comfort they once represented. But the world no longer had room for comfort. It only had room for survival.

Turning his attention back to the woman, Simon spoke again. "The Apocalypse isn't about comfort, you know. It's about surviving."

She didn't reply, and he didn't expect her to. The weight of their new reality was heavy on both of them, and words could only do so much to alleviate the cold truth of it all.

Zombies were roaming the mansion, hunting them, and all they could do was keep moving forward.

The sounds of the Zombies — moaning and shuffling — had grown quieter, and Simon's keen hearing told him they were probably a few rooms away now.

There might be one or two left, but they were far enough that he felt the need to prepare.

His senses were always alert, always calculating. It wasn't paranoia; it was survival.

"You ready?" he asked, breaking the silence that had settled between them.

The woman blinked, still distracted by her transformation, but she nodded in acknowledgment.

Her eyes were still wide with disbelief, but there was a glimmer of determination creeping in. Simon saw it, and it was enough.

Bending down, he picked up a broken leg of a wooden table that had been discarded in the corner.

It was heavy in his hand, splintered at one end where it had clearly been snapped off in a violent fit. He held it out to her.

"Take it," Simon said, his voice calm but firm. "You can break it."

She looked at the wooden leg skeptically, unsure of what he meant. "Break it?"

"Yeah," Simon continued, "Just by applying strength to your palm. You don't need anything else, no external force. Just focus your power into your grip, and it'll crack."

She looked at the piece of wood in her hand, her brow furrowing. The idea was absurd to her, but Simon's unflinching gaze told her he wasn't joking.

The world around them had shifted into a place of absurdity. It was a place where survival wasn't about fighting fair, it was about adapting. And this, this was something she needed to adapt to.

She took a deep breath and closed her fingers around the leg of the table. She could feel her pulse in her fingertips as she concentrated.

The green in her skin seemed to pulse along with the rhythm of her heartbeat, a sign that the infection — whatever it was — was responding to her will.

It felt… unnatural. The power inside her was foreign, but it was real. And she had no choice but to use it.

She squeezed.

The wood trembled in her grasp. The pressure built up in her hand, and a series of cracks echoed as the grain of the wood began to split, running up the length of the table leg.

The tension in the air was thick, a silence hanging in the room as she exerted more strength. Her knuckles turned white as she pushed, and then…

The table leg snapped cleanly in half. The woman's eyes went wide with shock. She looked down at the broken pieces in her hands, the realization of her new power sinking in.

"I... I did it," she breathed, as though she couldn't quite believe it.

Simon simply nodded. "You did. And you'll get stronger, the more you get used to your new power – We'll need all the help we can give each other, if we want to survive in this world,"