Apocalypse: King of Zombies

Before long, Chris and the others finished upgrading.

Chris and Sean both climbed to Tier 32.

Skinny Pete and Big Mike both advanced to Stage S.

When it was Skinny Pete’s turn to pick a new Stage S skill, he leaned on that weird ”gut feeling” of his and—once again—landed something outrageously strong: a lightning-type ability called Annihilation Bolt.

It was a pure single-target nuke. From Ethan’s read, it shouldn’t be any weaker than Tharok’s lightning power.

The moment Skinny Pete got it, his personal combat strength jumped by a massive margin.

Back when they’d first chosen Skinny Pete’s Innate Ability, they’d gone with Enthrallment, which meant his own combat stats had always been the weak link. Sure—after his Stage upgrades, Enthrallment evolved into Beast Control, and that ability had been crucial not just to Fallen Star Squad but to Fallen Star City itself. In the early days, more than once, they’d only survived because Skinny Pete managed to control a few powerful beasts and carry them through stretches that could’ve wiped them out.

But the problem was, Enthrallment’s later evolutions didn’t really boost Skinny Pete’s direct fighting ability. Even the skills he’d picked afterward were… fine, but nothing to write home about.

If you ranked the squad by raw personal combat power, Skinny Pete was honestly even behind Emily.

Of course, judging a beast tamer by his own body was missing the point. Every beast he controlled was part of his combat power.

But now?

Now it was different.

With Lightning Storm for AoE and Annihilation Bolt for single-target kills, he finally had both hands on the wheel. Crowd control, burst damage—he could do it all, and he could do it fast.

You could practically see the shift. Ever since that Premonition skill appeared, it was like the gears of fate had started turning in a new direction.

And from here on out, he was only going to get scarier.

Still, compared to that Stage S skill, the real surprise came from his Innate Ability evolving again—into something extremely unusual.

Memory Extraction.

He could extract the memories of a creature that had just died.

The moment Ethan heard it, his heart actually jumped. For half a second, he’d thought Skinny Pete might be able to pull memories from Dopey.

Ethan was insanely curious about Dopey’s era.

But then they confirmed the limitation: the target had to have died within three days.

That cut the practical value down hard.

Even so, it wasn’t useless.

Mind reading only worked on targets weaker than Skinny Pete. But Memory Extraction didn’t care about strength at all—if the target was dead for less than three days, he could take their memories.

In the right situation, that could be terrifyingly useful.

Skinny Pete himself didn’t seem bothered. With Annihilation Bolt in his pocket, he was already ecstatic. As for whatever weird add-ons his Innate Ability produced… he’d long since stopped expecting them to help his damage output.

Besides, everyone around him already treated him like a walking privacy violation. If he got another creepy, overpowered mind-type ability, he’d probably be even more miserable.

He’d never once had the intention of using his abilities on his own people.

They just didn’t believe him.

So yeah—if this one stayed ”normal,” he wasn’t going to complain.

Big Mike’s Stage S skill was a wind-type ability: Raging Gale.

It was a control skill. It could blow away opponents weaker than him, and it could send similarly-leveled enemies stumbling off course. But if the target was stronger than him, they could break free pretty easily.

Not a broken skill, but not worthless either—solid, middle-of-the-road.

Meanwhile, Big Mike’s Innate Ability gained Blazing Cleave, a close-range attack he could execute through his weapon. The damage potential was high, and it finally gave him a real melee finisher.

And melee skills were usually stronger than ranged ones for a simple reason: ranged abilities were mostly pure mental energy output, while melee skills stacked on top of your physical strength and your weapon—so the ceiling was higher.

Ethan’s Annihilation Strike. Chris’s Ambush Strike. Sean’s Power Strike.

Those were all melee skills. Combine base strength, weapon force, and skill amplification, and you could hit far above your Tier.

That was why most people who could fight across Tiers were monsters in close combat.

Of course, that didn’t mean ranged skills couldn’t do it.

Mia’s Spatial Banishment could punch above its weight.

And now Skinny Pete’s Annihilation Bolt could too.

With those two done upgrading, the Fallen Star Squad was almost fully Stage S.

Out of the ten members, only Miles still hadn’t reached Stage S yet.

After the upgrades, Ethan didn’t leave right away. He kept everyone in Rivermark and drove them back into the fight.

Rivermark State had way too many Outland Beasts for this to be the end of the Stage S ones. This time, Ethan planned to gorge himself—clean the place out as much as possible. Ideally, he wanted to push the entire second echelon up to Stage S too. Once that happened, he’d be ready to take Fallen Star Squad and test the idea that had been sitting in the back of his mind.

While Ethan’s group was grinding through the Blackpine Wilds of Rivermark State…

Across the Atlas Federation, the major compounds started moving as well—actively hunting Outland Beasts and picking off weaker Void Realm creatures.

The reason was simple: the Satellite Operations Control Center was back online again.

With real-time feeds restored, the leaders of each compound could finally see what was happening—where Void Realm races were gathering, where Outland Beasts were roaming, how threats were shifting across the Federation.

Ethan had freed the compounds. He’d taught them how to create thralls. He’d even handed each compound more than a dozen Stage S Void Realm captives so they could turn them into soulless thralls and build a baseline fighting force.

After living under Void Realm slavery, none of the compounds were willing to be occupied again.

And if they didn’t want to be occupied, they needed strength. Real strength.

So the compounds were desperate—hungry—to level up.

As long as a compound wasn’t currently under attack, its leaders would organize teams to go out with their thralls and hunt. If they found Outland Beasts, they killed them and dug out the crystal cores. If they ran into intelligent Void Realm races, they crippled them and turned them into soulless thralls.

But they weren’t reckless about it.

Every operation was filtered through satellite intel first—choosing targets they could actually handle.

Maybe that was humanity’s biggest advantage.

The Atlas Federation had started its counterattack.

But outside the Federation?

Most countries had already fallen.

If you were lucky, you ran into a ”better” Void Realm race—one that only treated humans like servants, keeping them alive as long as they were useful.

If you weren’t lucky—if you ran into something like the Flamekin—then people died by the tens of thousands every single day.

Across the world, survivors clawed through life in despair. Unlike the Atlas Federation, they didn’t have Fallen Star City.

They didn’t have hope.

No one would’ve guessed it would turn out like this—that humanity would survive the zombie apocalypse, only to get blindsided by a second disaster even worse.

In the end, despair wasn’t the most terrifying part.

The most terrifying part was what came after despair—numbness.

When people suffered for long enough, their backs slowly bent. And once someone learned how to survive on their knees, standing back up became the hardest thing in the world.

Of course, some countries adapted faster than others. They’d spent most of their history bowing to stronger powers. To them, this was just a change of masters. Serving Void Realm races was still better than being ripped apart by zombies.

But while the rest of the world sank deeper…

One nation was living shockingly well.

The Cathay Republic.

Cathay had been suffering badly too—right up until the day a Stage SSS powerhouse appeared out of nowhere and descended on Cathay Republic, walking through the air itself.

Overnight, everything flipped.

And Cathay knew exactly how to ride that wave.

Using the Stage SSS expert’s presence as a deterrent, they not only stopped Void Realm creatures from daring to touch them—they even forced many of those creatures to submit.

Their message was blunt:

Submit, or we’ll send that Stage SSS monster to wipe you out.

It was the same kind of borrowed-power bluff Maxwell liked to play—except Cathay Republic somehow played it even cleaner.

The funny part was, after that Stage SSS expert entered their compound, they vanished into some sealed room and—no one knew what they were doing—never really came out again.

But it didn’t matter.

Too many witnesses had seen that figure arrive. Seen them enter. That alone gave Cathay’s threats real weight.

A Stage SSS powerhouse was the kind of existence no one dared offend. If you made one enemy, it wasn’t just you who suffered—your entire race could get erased.

After all, most intelligent Void Realm races didn’t have Stage SSS experts of their own. For someone at that level, wiping out a race was easy.

With that name hanging over everyone’s heads, Cathay started absorbing Void Realm creatures into their workforce—especially using them to hunt Outland Beasts and dig out crystal cores.

In an absurdly short time, Cathay Republic’s overall strength multiplied several times over.

And with strength came something else, swelling right alongside it—

Ambition.