The Harvest!

The four thousand zombies were not evenly distributed by gender.

Maxwell now had two mutated male zombies and one mutated female zombie.

There was one level 10 zombie of each gender.

However, Maxwell did not rush to merge them together. Instead, he planned to first check out another horde of zombies, deal with them, and then decide what to do next.

The other horde, led by his mutated male zombie, also returned to the deserted village. It took Maxwell over two hours to completely clear them out.

Unlike the first, this wave contained relatively more female zombies.

This allowed Maxwell to acquire another mutated female zombie and an additional level 10 male zombie, along with one level 8 and one level 9 zombie of each gender.

After dealing with both hordes, Maxwell took a short break before starting to consolidate the zombies.

First, he merged the previously acquired level 9 male zombie with the new one to create a level 10 male zombie. Maxwell now had four level 10 male zombies in his possession. By pairing these, he generated two new mutated male zombies.

Then, Maxwell merged the previous level 8 female zombie with the newly acquired level 8 and level 9 zombies, resulting in a new level 10 female zombie. Thus, he now had three level 10 female zombies, and after another round of fusion, he ended up with three mutated female zombies.

As a result, Maxwell now had five mutated zombies of each gender in his space, each marked with a level 11 tag in the upper right corner of their grid.

This left him with just one solitary level 10 female zombie, which had no counterpart to merge with.

In his space, the ratio of male to female zombies finally seemed balanced.

However, what's different is that Carline was an evolver before becoming a zombie, so she became a mutated zombie directly after her transformation. With this in mind, the male zombies seem to be consumed in greater numbers.

Now in his space, besides Eva and Carline, Maxwell has three other mutated female zombies.

Thus, Maxwell now faces two choices.

One is to use these three mutated female zombies to level up Eva and Carline each by one level.

The second option is to merge one mutated female zombie with Eva or Carline to advance her to level 12, then merge the remaining two mutated female zombies together to create another level 12 mutated female zombie. Then, he could merge this new level 12 zombie with the already level 12 Eva or Carline to advance one of them to level 13!

So the question arises, should he bring both to level 12 or should one of them reach level 13 first?

Unable to decide, Maxwell simply set the problem aside.

"Let's deal with the male zombies first."

Thinking this, Maxwell casually eliminated some male zombies. Since they were all basically laborers, he didn't care about the order and just dragged around to consolidate the male zombies in his space.

Then, he merged two male zombies together.

"I can go another round!"

Maxwell was about to continue when he suddenly stopped.

Because he noticed that the number displayed in the upper right corner of the grid after the fusion was not level 12.

It was level 21!

How could this be!

How did it jump from level 11 to level 21!

After all, level 11 was still first-tier, but reaching level 21 had made it second-tier!

"What the hell?"

Isn't it supposed to be that fusing two lower-level zombies results in one higher-level zombie? How did it jump a whole tier directly?

Could it be that two first-tier zombies can directly fuse into a second-tier? Can all the levels in between just be skipped?

Maxwell pondered, unable to understand, so he decided to check the beginner's guide again.

But when he went to look for it, he realized that he had passed the beginner phase, and the beginner's guide had completely disappeared!

Maxwell clicked his tongue and stroked his chin, thinking that since he couldn't consult the guide, he might as well just experiment based on his guess.

He then reached out and merged two level 21 zombies together.

After the fusion of the two zombies, the new zombie's grid in the upper right corner actually displayed the number 31!

Holy smokes!

Did he actually guess right?!

Indeed, it was so!

This time, Maxwell's theory was confirmed.

Although he didn't fully understand why this happened, it seemed to be a good thing for him.

It wasn't just a good thing; it was extremely beneficial for him!

This meant that in the future, when he acquired mutated zombies, he wouldn't need to fuse them level by level. He could upgrade them tier by tier!

Maxwell calmed his excitement and thought it over carefully.

This arrangement made sense.

If zombies had to be upgraded one level at a time from level 1, fusing two level 1 zombies would make a level 2, and making a level 3 would require four level 1 zombies, level 4 would need eight, and so on.

For every level up, the number of level 1 zombies needed would double. By the time he got to level 28, it would take about a hundred million level 1 zombies – considering level 28 is just a second-tier, that number is absurdly high.

The real question was, where would Maxwell find so many zombies?

And there were even more absurd issues to consider.

Even if Maxwell had one hundred million zombies in front of him, with an average fusion speed of one per second, that would still take one hundred million seconds, which equates to about 277,778 hours.

Converted into days, that's about 11,574 days.

In months, that's 37 months.

In years, Maxwell would need more than three years to complete this.

If there were a lot of high-level zombies, the time might be cut in half, but it would still take over a year, not including the time needed to search for zombies.

More than a year of continuous work without a break, let alone taking time to eat with someone.

If you wanted a level 100 zombie king, you'd need trillions upon trillions of level 1 zombies. Forget about Earth, it feels like the entire universe couldn't even muster that many, assuming there are zombies elsewhere.

As for the time, at a rate of one fusion per second, it would take tens of thousands of years!

Isn't this just like the king's chessboard and wheat story I've heard before?

This is said to be an Indian legend where a king was ready to reward the inventor of chess, but the minister had a simple request for his reward: he only wanted rice. Then he asked for one grain of rice on the first square of the chessboard, two on the second, four on the third, and so on, doubling the amount on each subsequent square until all the squares of the chessboard were filled.

When the king heard this, he thought it was very simple and agreed immediately.