Apocalypse: King of Zombies

Over the next few days, the Fallen Star Guard rotated through the Celestial Stairway in shifts.

There were simply too many of them. This wasn’t something you knocked out in a day or two. At their current pace, it would take at least six or seven days to get all twenty thousand through the climb.

Ethan showed up on the first day—and after that, he didn’t bother coming back.

Instead, he took the Fallen Star Squad home and basically holed up, using the ritual circle’s power to grind their own strength upward.

During their time in the Yamato Empire, it had been nonstop—either killing people or killing zombies. They barely had time during the day. Most of their growth had come from nights spent staring up at the sky, absorbing that mysterious energy. It worked, but the progress was slow.

Ethan had been stuck at Stage B peak for a while now. The last couple days, he’d started to feel a breakthrough coming, so he kept the ritual circle running all day, every day.

Finally, on the third day, he broke through.

Tier 19.

The first human on Earth to reach it.

After that, Ethan took a trip to Nova City.

Rowan and a whole group of Nova City compound higher-ups came out to greet him like he was royalty—

…and Ethan beat the hell out of Rowan.

It was brutal. Rowan’s screams were so miserable they made the others’ eyelids twitch, but nobody stepped in.

Because, seriously—who was going to try and stop the man who’d wiped out the Yamato Empire?

Rowan, at least, understood exactly why he was getting his ass kicked.

His intentions had been good, but he hadn’t explained things clearly. That part was on him. If he had to eat a beating for it, fine.

So he didn’t complain. He didn’t beg.

He just screamed louder, hoping Ethan would vent faster and get it over with.

Unfortunately for him, the louder he screamed, the more into it Ethan got—until Rowan finally didn’t have the strength left to make a sound at all.

Still, Ethan had control. It looked savage, but he didn’t leave any serious lasting damage.

Once he’d gotten it out of his system, Ethan ate a good meal in Nova City, then headed for the mansion they’d used before.

When he’d left, he’d warned Rowan: nobody was allowed to go near it.

Rowan had handled that part well. Everything inside was exactly the way it had been when they left—proof nobody had been in.

Ethan went straight to the backyard.

Hundreds of Infernal corpses were piled there.

They were the ones they’d killed in Nova City. Back then, they’d been preparing to head to the Yamato Empire and needed to clear space in the spatial storage ring, so Ethan had dumped the bodies in the yard.

Luckily, Infernals were strong enough that even after all this time, the corpses still hadn’t rotted.

And those bodies?

They were prime food for the Flamebirds—and for Goldie and the others.

Sure, the beasts could hunt mutant animals in the mountains, but Earth’s mutant beasts still weren’t that strong. Good enough to fill a stomach, useless for real growth.

Infernal corpses, on the other hand, were treasure.

Ethan collected all the bodies into his spatial storage ring and left Nova City without wasting another minute.

Back in Fallen Star City, he specifically gathered the others and went to find the few white-furred apes.

Ever since their leader, Blizzard, had died, Ethan had carried a quiet sense of guilt toward them.

But they were doing well—really well. It was obvious Miles had been taking special care of them.

The white-furred apes’ bloodline was no joke. It had only been a little over a month, and every one of them had already reached Tier 13 peak.

When they saw Ethan and the others, the apes were openly happy, crowding in, wrestling and roughhousing with them like oversized kids.

From the way they acted, it looked like they’d finally climbed out of the grief of losing their leader in battle.

Ethan had Skinny Pete call Goldie and Pumpkin over, and the whole group—people and mutant beasts together—threw a barbecue.

The main course was, naturally, Infernal meat.

The mutant beasts tore into that.

Ethan and the others stuck to grilled mutant rabbit instead.

No choice. Infernals were humanoid. None of them could bring themselves to bite into that, no matter how ”nutritious” it was supposed to be. Besides, humans couldn’t absorb the energy from corpses anyway. To Ethan’s group, those Infernal bodies had zero appeal.

Watching the feast, the difference between the beasts was obvious.

Goldie and the rest couldn’t finish a whole Infernal on their own. Usually it took several of them splitting one.

But the white-furred apes?

Each one casually devoured an entire Tier 16 Infernal by itself.

And their current strength was only Tier 13 peak.

Eating a whole Tier 16 like that was honestly terrifying.

It was clearly their bloodline—something about them was just built different.

After the meal, two of the white-furred apes broke through on the spot, stepping into Tier 14 right there in front of everyone.

Ethan and the others could only watch with naked envy.

Once the barbecue wrapped up, Ethan called Grace over. Then he had Miles bring in sixty-nine Fallen Star Guard Squad Leaders who were worth investing in.

After that, Ethan transferred all seventy Awakened abilities he’d brought back from the Yamato Empire to them.

Grace finally got the ability she’d been dreaming about.

And Ethan let her pick first—so hers was the strongest out of the entire batch.

Maybe it was karma.

Back then, she’d given up her chance to become Awakened so someone else could take it. And now, she’d ended up with something even better, and much faster than anyone would’ve expected.

Her gratitude toward Ethan only deepened. She knew exactly who had made this happen.

As for the other sixty-nine Squad Leaders…

Their worship of Ethan was bordering on unhinged. At this point, if Ethan told them to die, they probably wouldn’t even blink.

With that, Fallen Star City—counting Fallen Star Squad and the second echelon—now had over ninety Awakened.

Just that number alone already put them in a league no other compound could touch.

By the time Ethan and the others had been back in Fallen Star City for seven days, every last member of Fallen Star Guard had finally finished climbing the Celestial Stairway.

All twenty thousand of them.

The weakest among them had reached Tier 13. The stronger ones were already Tier 14.

Right now, in most compounds, Stage C was considered top-tier—something you only got by dumping the compound’s entire resource pool into synthesizing Tier 12 crystal cores and forcing a handful of people up. No compound had many at that level.

But here?

Reaching Stage C still wasn’t even enough to touch the entry requirement for Fallen Star Guard.

That was how terrifying Fallen Star City had become.

And yet, Ethan wasn’t happy at all.

Tier 13 and Tier 14 weren’t what he wanted.

The crystal cores he had were either too low-tier to matter, or too high-tier to use. And the people who’d just hit Tier 13–14 were stuck in the worst possible spot—because he didn’t have Tier 13 or Tier 14 crystal cores to keep feeding them.

He was still grinding his teeth, trying to figure out how to push Fallen Star Guard higher, when Maxwell called.

On the phone, Maxwell told him Atlas City had developed a crystal core decomposition technique, and wanted to know if Ethan needed it.

The moment Ethan heard that, he practically wanted to grab Maxwell and kiss him.

Perfect timing.

Like someone had handed him a pillow the second his head hit the desk.

Ethan hung up and immediately gathered Fallen Star Squad. They each mounted a Flamebird and took off straight for Atlas City.

The Flamebirds were obedient now—shockingly so. Tell them to do something, and they did it.

Ever since coming to this world, their happiness level had basically skyrocketed.

Back in that Void Realm pocket world, they might go ten days or half a month without eating. They’d lived hungry all the time.

The environment there was brutal, too—and on top of that, they always had to worry about being found by Infernals. Survival had been a constant struggle.

But here?

They got meat every day. They had comfortable places to roost. People even bathed them.

It was basically heaven.

Half the time the Flamebirds acted like the whole thing couldn’t possibly be real—like if they didn’t work hard enough, someone would take this life away.

So they flew like their lives depended on it.