Apocalypse: King of Zombies

Seeing Ethan’s expression, the Winged Clan elder finally regained that smug sense of superiority. ”Good. Now that you understand how powerful the Winged Clan is, come back with us like a good boy.”

”Yeah,” Ethan said, eyes flat. ”Your Winged Clan really is powerful.”

He paused half a beat.

”Which is exactly why… you should die.”

Ethan vanished with a Teleportation, appearing right in front of the elder. His poleaxe chopped down in a vicious arc.

His mental energy still hadn’t recovered much. He couldn’t use Absolute Stasis again—so this time, it was going to be brute force.

He’d originally planned to stall, buy time, let Emily top him off.

But after hearing there were thousands of them here, stalling was the last thing he could afford. Winged Clan reinforcements might already be on the way.

These guys were fast. If support arrived, Ethan’s group wouldn’t even have the option to run.

The elder clearly hadn’t expected Ethan to strike first. He threw up a wind-type shield in a panic and shot backward.

BOOM—!

The poleaxe shattered the shield and slammed down into him.

The elder’s body got driven into the ground, dust blasting up in a dirty ring.

Ethan surged after him and stabbed his poleaxe hard toward where he’d fallen.

The instant Ethan moved, the rest of the squad—already primed—struck too.

Chris, still invisible, kicked on a strength boost. His spear flashed with lethal edge and shot forward at a Winged Clan fighter.

That Winged Clan expert was still stunned by Ethan’s sudden attack when a spike of pure danger hit his instincts. He jerked his head aside on reflex.

CHK!

The spear punched straight through half his face.

If he hadn’t tilted at the last instant, he’d be dead already.

His eyes widened. He snapped his wings and tried to escape—

—and then his brain screamed with sudden pain.

Before he could even process it, a Judgment Beam slammed into the wrecked side of his head.

BANG!

His skull detonated. He dropped out of the sky like a stone.

On the other side, Sean and the others—backed by the Fallen Star Guard—unloaded on the remaining two Winged Clan fighters.

Skills rained down like a storm.

The two Winged Clan experts were forced into a miserable, scrambling defense.

Sure, most Fallen Star Guard were still Tier 22—three tiers below their targets. Their hits didn’t do much on their own.

But there were so many of them.

This wasn’t like Dopey and Rocky slaughtering Infernals while being six or seven tiers above—where the weaker side couldn’t even scratch the stronger.

Here, Fallen Star Guard attacks still had impact. And when you stacked thousands of ”small” impacts together, it stopped being small.

Add in Sean and the others, plus the two hundred Awakened inside the Guard firing off all kinds of nasty abilities—

—and the two Winged Clan fighters got hammered so hard they couldn’t find a gap to counter.

Before long, Chris and Mia swung over to help. Working together, they finished the two off quickly.

Down below, Ethan had already ended his fight too.

Tier 25, that’s all.

Even without Absolute Stasis, Ethan didn’t feel pressured at all.

This time, he’d deliberately not used Dopey or Rocky. He knew Chris and the others could handle it.

And they did—faster than he expected.

Ethan moved immediately, sweeping the Winged Clan bodies into his spatial storage ring, then took off with the group and left the area at top speed.

A little over ten minutes after they were gone, hundreds of winged figures arrived, cutting through the sky.

”Aerion and the others’ aura disappears here,” one Winged Clan fighter said with a frown.

”There was a battle here,” another said grimly. ”Aerion’s group was probably killed.”

”Killed?” Rage flared through the formation. ”Who the hell dares kill Winged Clan?!”

”I remember that besides us, a few mutant beasts from Skyreach Continent also came out,” someone said. ”Could Aerion have run into them?”

”Unlikely. Aerion isn’t stupid. If they met those mutant beasts, they would’ve fled immediately.”

”Then… were they killed by the natives here?”

”No way,” another scoffed. ”These natives are weak as ants. How could they possibly kill Aerion’s group?”

”Enough arguing.” The leader’s voice cut through them, cold and decisive. ”Split up and search. I’m starting to suspect this world has other powerful existences.”

”Yes!”

In the next moment, the Winged Clan scattered in all directions, fanning out across the empty sky to hunt for traces.

On the other side…

To keep their profile small, Ethan and the others had already switched from flying to traveling on foot, sticking to covered routes and out-of-the-way terrain.

They didn’t have a choice. There were over five thousand Winged Clan elites in Rus Federation, with the strongest at Stage S (Tier 30). Even with Ethan able to control Dopey and Rocky—two soulless thralls—he still felt his scalp go tight at the thought of it.

If they got spotted by the Winged Clan’s main force, there was a good chance the entire squad would get wiped here.

Right now, Ethan only wanted one thing:

Get the hell out of this cursed place as fast as possible.

The Atlas Federation — Ridgegate City…

A portion of the Enhanced from Crownfall City’s compound had already pushed their front line up to here. They’d been fighting in Ridgegate for days.

Ridgegate City held more than three hundred thousand zombies, and they’d been methodically grinding them down.

Even though zombies had lost their intelligence, clearing them still required care—sweeping block by block, inch by inch. If you got surrounded, you could still die just as fast.

Zombies had a natural hostility toward humans.

Or to put it another way—humans were their favorite food.

The instant a zombie spotted a living person, it would lunge.

That meant every sweep had to be controlled. You didn’t engage unless you were sure there weren’t more zombies nearby that could collapse on you.

Right now, an Enhanced team numbering in the thousands was crouched and watching several hundred zombies wandering aimlessly down a street in the distance.

A young man jogged over, keeping his voice low. ”Captain. We already had the Vanguard Team pull the zombies on the other side away. There should only be these three hundred or so left around here. We can move.”

The captain nodded, eyes sharp. ”Alright. Get ready. On three, we rush them and end it fast.”

”Got it.”

”One… two…”

He didn’t even get to ”three.”

From farther away, a zombie’s roar suddenly tore through the streets.

The zombies in front of them reacted like they’d been yanked by an invisible rope. They snapped into motion and started sprinting toward the direction of the roar.

”???”

”What the hell?” People traded blank looks.

They’d killed an absurd number of zombies lately, and none of them had ever seen anything like this.

It looked like… a zombie calling in its subordinates.

But that made no sense. Zombies weren’t supposed to have intelligence anymore. How could it be summoning anything?

”Captain,” someone asked, uneasy, ”what do we do? Should we go check it out?”

The captain hesitated, then shook his head hard.

He knew one rule better than most:

Curiosity kills.

”Forget it. We’re leaving. Now.”

”Yes!”

The thousands-strong team immediately moved out at speed, pulling back from the area without looking for trouble.

That team had discipline.

Others didn’t.

A few squads couldn’t resist. They tailed the running zombies at a distance, trying to see what was going on.

What they found was… unreal.

And then they realized—too late—that they’d been surrounded.

In the end, they were eaten so clean there wasn’t even bone left.

By then, a zombie tide more than six hundred thousand strong was sweeping through Ridgegate City.

Wherever it went, it stripped everything—humans, mutant beasts—down to nothing.

And every zombie it encountered along the way joined in obediently, merging into the wave like it had always belonged there.

Like a snowball rolling downhill, the horde only grew larger and larger.

In the middle of that tide, a small figure stood balanced on the shoulder of a tall zombie, watching the distant humans fleeing for their lives.

A faint smile tugged at the corner of its mouth.

Then it let out another roar.

And the massive horde surged after the direction of the fleeing crowd.