Apocalypse: King of Zombies

The green-skins shook their heads, forcing down that uneasy feeling. Then they snarled at Ethan’s group, barking something harsh and guttural.

Ethan glanced at Skinny Pete.

”He says we’ve ruined their good life,” Pete translated. ”We either submit… or die.”

Ethan squinted at him. ”He just yelled once and you got all that out of it?”

Pete lifted both hands. ”That’s the vibe. Same meaning.”

”Alright, sure.”

Ethan looked the green-skins over, unimpressed. ”Not that strong, but they sure love acting big. Same disease as the Seorin people.”

He spoke calmly, like he was assigning chores.

”Five Tier 22. Seven Tier 23. Perfect for you guys to warm up on. One Tier 23 each. The Tier 22s—Chris, you handle those.”

”No problem,” Chris said.

Eight versus thirteen, with most of them higher Tier—yeah, there was pressure.

But only pressure. Nothing more.

Choi Tae-jun watched Ethan’s group casually discussing the ”honored ones” like they were livestock and couldn’t help the cold smile creeping onto his face.

Let’s see how you die in a minute.

The green-skins, meanwhile, were genuinely pissed.

”RAAAH—!”

With the leader’s roar, the rest attacked at once.

The ground rippled.

Vines erupted out of nowhere, whipping up like living ropes and lunging for Ethan’s team, twisting to strangle and shred.

Garrick reacted instantly, throwing up a protective dome around everyone.

The vines slammed into the shield, sending waves of ripples across its surface—but they couldn’t break through.

Then the sky lit up.

A Rain of Flames came crashing down, searing hot. The fire washed over the vines and burned them to ash in seconds.

”Ice Blade Storm.” Mia’s voice cut through, calm and sharp.

The area around the green-skins turned white in a blink. A violent blizzard of ice blades spun into a grinding storm, tearing at them from every angle.

”Twister!” Skinny Pete added immediately, throwing a roaring tornado into the mix to amplify Mia’s storm—like he was making sure they got the full experience.

The green-skins clearly hadn’t expected humans on this planet to hit that hard.

Vines surged up again, but this time they weren’t attacking—they were protecting. In a heartbeat, the monsters wrapped themselves tight, layer after layer, forming thick vine cocoons.

The two storms shredded vines apart…

…and more vines grew right back, replacing them almost instantly.

”This won’t work.” Chris shook his head once.

Then he vanished.

Invisibility—clean and sudden. He slipped out of the dome’s protection and into the open.

Once Chris moved, the others stopped huddling behind the shield too. Weapons came out—blades, polearms, whatever each of them preferred—and they charged.

The cocoons were wrapped too tightly for ranged skills to matter. Anything they destroyed just regenerated.

So fine.

Close-range it was.

Seeing them rush in, the green-skins abandoned the cocoon state immediately. Staying wrapped up like that meant they couldn’t move—basically turning themselves into targets.

These monsters had plenty of combat experience. A pale spiritwood shield formed over their bodies, hardening into armor. At the same time, thick wooden clubs manifested in their hands—massive, brutal things—and they surged forward.

And then—

A long spear wreathed in black light flashed out of nowhere.

It slammed into the forehead of the green-skin charging in front.

Psshhk—!

With all Chris’s buffs stacked, the spear punched straight through the spiritwood shield like it wasn’t there and pierced the monster’s skull clean through.

Instant kill.

Chris yanked the spear free.

And his body blurred out of sight again, disappearing like a ghost.

”—!!”

The scene was so wrong it stunned everyone watching.

Seorin Enhanced froze with their mouths half-open.

”How is that possible?!”

”These monsters were unstoppable! We had so many people and we still couldn’t kill them—how did he just one-shot it?!”

They couldn’t process it.

But the corpse on the ground—still, lifeless—didn’t care about their disbelief.

In that moment, something inside the Seorin defenders cracked.

Their faith collapsed.

They’d fed these monsters like royalty. They’d even sent women to them.

And now, when it actually mattered… these ”honored ones” were dropping like cheap meat.

Choi Tae-jun’s face looked like it had been carved out of stone—ugly and rigid. He sucked in a hard breath.

”It’s fine,” he muttered, forcing himself to believe it. ”Maybe that one got careless. There are still plenty left. We still have a chance.”

The green-skins were just as shaken.

So their earlier instinct hadn’t been paranoia after all—these humans really could threaten them.

Unfortunately, realizing that now didn’t help. The moment they’d stepped into the fight, there was no clean way to back out.

They slowed, spread their stance, and started scanning the battlefield warily, no longer acting like kings.

That was when Sean charged in first, raising his staff and smashing it down toward a green-skin’s head.

The monster snorted and swung its massive wooden club up to meet him.

BANG—!

The impact cracked through the air.

Sean slid back two steps.

The green-skin, though, stumbled backward more than ten—its arm bending at an ugly angle.

A Tier 23 green-skin, and it still lost the strength contest.

Sean’s full-body metalization gave him a brutal boost to both defense and raw power, and his body-training strength stacked on top of that. Pure physical force alone was already enough for him to fight across Tiers.

But being the first one in also made him the first target.

Vines burst out from all directions and wrapped him tight, layer after layer. Sean strained, snapping a few—only for even more to grow in and replace them immediately, locking him down again.

”Damn it,” Sean spat. ”Nature-type abilities are such a pain.”

The vines cinched tighter, and sharp thorns formed along them, stabbing, trying to pierce into his body.

Too bad for them—between Thornmail and metalization, those spikes couldn’t punch through his skin at all.

A Rain of Flames dropped from above and burned the vines off him in seconds.

Big Mike laughed like this was the best show he’d seen in a while. ”Sean, looks like these guys are kind of a bad matchup for you, huh?”

”A little,” Sean admitted, annoyed.

But he didn’t stop. He kept watching the vines, then condensed energy into his fist and blasted a punch straight at the green-skin in front of him.

Around the same time, everyone else found their own targets and went to work.

Mia opened with Soul Spike, ripping at her opponent’s spirit so hard it couldn’t even maintain its spiritwood shield. A Judgment Beam followed immediately—clean, brutal, and final. The green-skin vanished in a few seconds, reduced to nothing.

Garrick dropped Suppression Field, dragging his opponent’s speed into the dirt. Meteors hammered down one after another, and Garrick’s staff kept swinging—one crushing hit after the next—beating the monster so hard it couldn’t breathe, let alone counter. It tried to bind him with vines, but every time they rose, a meteor smashed them apart.

It didn’t last long.

Garrick caved the green-skin’s skull in, literally pounding it into mush.

Henry fought under Divine Shield, light flaring around him like a buzzsaw. Any vine that got close was sliced apart. His spear work, paired with Void Beam, kept the monster guessing until Henry caught a split-second opening and drove the spear straight through its throat.

Skinny Pete kept tornadoes spinning around him, shredding any vines that dared approach. He pressed his opponent with his spear while layering Wind Cutter again and again. When the enemy shield finally cracked, Pete’s spear punched through—and a follow-up Wind Cutter cleanly took its head off.

Big Mike looked like he was having the time of his life. Flames roared around his body nonstop, making it impossible for vines to get a grip. He kept dropping Rain of Flames and hammering in Dragonflame, burning his opponent so hard it didn’t even get to struggle.

The green-skin was cooked alive in short order.

The ones having the roughest time were Emily and Sean.

Emily’s Wind Barrier could block the vines, but her Vampiric Vines did nothing to these targets. Without other reliable offense, she was forced into pure swordplay—and that meant the fight dragged.

Sean was in the same boat. He didn’t have a clean answer to the vine spam either. He could outplay with movement, but he kept getting snagged and pinned, and more than once Big Mike had to burn him free.

Before long, everyone had finished—except those two.

As for the Tier 22 green-skins?

Chris had already taken care of all of them.

Chris wasn’t ”strong for his Tier.” He was a problem. Against same-tier enemies, his first strike was almost always a killing strike—quick, silent, and absolute.

All around them, the Seorin people looked like they’d been hit so many times they’d gone numb.

They kept repeating the same words under their breath, over and over:

”How is that possible…?”

Same species. Same ”human.”

So why did these people feel like something out of a nightmare?

By now, the Seorin defenders understood the truth: relying on the green-skins was a dead end.

Choi Tae-jun’s thoughts were already spinning, frantic and slippery, trying to figure out one thing—

How to get on Ethan’s good side before it was too late.