Internet Mage Professor-Chapter 61: Strange New infected

Nolan swallowed hard.

As much as it annoyed him to admit, they were right.

These kids had grown up wielding blades since their earliest training cycles—swords, short sabers, curved knives.

Their stances, reflexes, and instincts were built around edge-weapons.

A machete might be heavier, rougher, but the feel, the swing, the bite—it was close enough to a sword that muscle memory alone could carry them through a few early clashes.

He couldn’t deny that.

But then, his lips curled into a smile. Not smug this time. Just... entertained. "Close to a sword, sure," he muttered under his breath. "But this game isn’t a sword fight."

He turned back toward the main screen and tapped into the new simulation’s live feeds.

"This... is 27 Hours Later," he whispered.

If 27 Seconds Later was chaos and speed, then 27 Hours Later was something else. Something meaner.

Something more calculated. The infected here weren’t rabid monsters charging at the first scent of blood. They had been mutated to persist. Their strength had multiplied. Their instincts honed.

Even with ranged weapons like automatic rifles, players struggled to take them down—and these kids wanted to hack at them with a machete?

Nolan chuckled as the simulations began.

One by one, the students loaded into their single-player scenarios.

The game randomized their starting points—different streets, alleys, city blocks—each section dripping in post-apocalyptic dread.

Broken cars, flickering neon signs, silent glass towers, blood-streaked walls.

The silence in the game was deafening, pierced only by the occasional shriek in the distance.

Calien’s feed loaded first. He moved through the shattered ruins of what once looked like a metro station, his machete held in both hands, tension clear in every movement.

He darted past two wrecked vending machines, careful not to trip the broken glass alarm near the stairs. From above, movement flickered. Shadows blurred.

An infected dropped to the ground twenty feet ahead.

It was tall, unusually lanky, wearing remnants of a black raincoat that flapped behind it like wings.

As soon as it saw Calien, it let out a soundless snarl and started sprinting—not charging, sprinting—its limbs coiling like ropes, every step calculated and precise.

Calien didn’t hesitate. He exhaled once and stepped forward, slashing with the machete in a rising arc, aiming directly for the head.

But just as the blade should’ve landed—

The infected’s arms snapped up.

CLANG!

The machete bit into one of the arms, but the creature twisted its body unnaturally, causing the strike to slide off at an angle.

It grabbed Calien’s wrist mid-swing, its knuckles cracking from the force, and then with terrifying precision, it twisted its hips and threw Calien backward like a rag doll.

He hit the metal wall behind him hard.

Dazed, bleeding, he tried to rise.

The infected didn’t wait.

It lunged—its jaw locking onto his neck.

GAME OVER. freёnovelkiss.com

Calien’s simulation faded to gray.

At almost the same time, Erik’s feed displayed him darting through a narrow alley lined with graffiti and burning trash bins. He was quieter than Calien, more calculated.

He laid a sound trap to distract a cluster of infected before ducking into a fire escape to reach a second-floor window.

Inside was dark, but he crept forward until a cough echoed down the hallway.

He knew it was close.

He exhaled, eyes scanning, and then—BAM! A door burst open.

The infected wasn’t sprinting. It walked toward him, slowly, head tilted.

Erik didn’t wait.

He dashed forward and swung.

But the infected dropped to its knees, twisted like a spider and rolled forward, catching Erik mid-swing in the gut with its shoulder.

As Erik stumbled, the infected popped up behind him, grabbed his shoulder, and—snap—drove him straight into the floor.

Then the bite.

GAME OVER.

One by one, each student fell.

Selin lasted longer. She used the shadows, threw bricks to mislead one of the infected, and crept behind a broken taxi cab. She waited until it turned, and dashed out with a roar, slicing toward its neck.

The infected ducked.

With a strange, almost reptilian motion, it leaned backwards, bent so far that its spine seemed to crack, and rolled under her swing. Before she could correct, it kicked her leg—hard.

She fell to one knee.

Then it was over.

Bitten.

GAME OVER.

Another.

And another.

And another.

Each one had a different location. Each one had a different encounter. But all of them led to the same ending.

Death.

Nolan laughed. A full, sharp, bark of laughter that echoed in the room like a whip crack.

"Well? That’s one down each," he said, arms folded, eyes glinting. "Wanna give up now? I can show you how to pass it. All you need to do is pay me... the right price."

He lifted one eyebrow like a merchant with a particularly tasty deal on the table.

The students were breathless. Sweating. Still recovering from the whiplash of their first attempts.

But they didn’t back down.

"This... this is it," Selin said, her hand still shaking slightly as she removed the simulation headset. "This is what we wanted."

"Yeah," muttered Erik. "Something impossible. That’s what we asked for."

"No tutorials. No training wheels."

"No holding hands."

"No spoon-feeding."

"This is a real challenge."

"Exactly what we needed before heading to the Academy."

Nolan snorted. "You say that now. Let’s see what happens after ten more deaths."

And so, they dove in again.

Each run became more brutal.

The infected were unpredictable.

Sometimes they screeched from rooftops and pounced. Other times, they’d pretend to be injured or dead—then rise the moment the blade approached.

They didn’t just dodge—they adapted.

One ducked under a swing and bit straight into a student’s thigh.

Another snapped a pipe off the wall and used it like a club. One jumped onto a third-floor balcony, smashed through a window, and pulled a student down from behind.

Run after run.

Death after death.

GAME OVER.

Selin managed to stab one in the chest before it broke her arm. Ruvin used a flare to blind it briefly, but still died when it tackled him through a window.

Erik figured out how to dislocate the infected’s shoulder, but not how to finish the job in time.

Calien used the environment—slammed doors, collapsed furniture—but every time, the infected adjusted, responded, evolved.

The students started to shout.

"What the hell is with this AI?!"

"They weren’t supposed to be this smart!"

"Why do they know judo?!"

"I stabbed that one in the neck! It shouldn’t still be alive!"

"Is that one using a chair as a shield?!"

Nolan leaned against the wall, sipping a mana-infused coffee drink.

"Well? Are you enjoying yourselves?"

No answer.

"I told you. 27 Hours Later isn’t about killing them. It’s about surviving them. If a player gets cocky? They die. If they hesitate? They die. If they rely on patterns? They die."

He took another long sip.

"Wanna quit now?"

The students didn’t answer. Their jaws were clenched, their brows furrowed. What started as determination was now frustration—and underneath that, obsession.

Another attempt. And another. One student tried to use the environment to collapse a stairwell.

It worked—but the infected survived the fall and still made the kill. Another tried to light a firetrap. It backfired—literally—and roasted both of them.

The room was filled with groans, curses, the sounds of teeth grinding and heads banging on tables.

And Nolan just smiled.

He walked back to the center of the room, looked at each of their pale, sweating faces, and clapped his hands once.

"So? What now?"

His voice was low. Calm.

"Give up?"