Apocalypse: King of Zombies

”Emily, have you ever killed a zombie?” Henry asked, glancing over at her.

”Of course I have!” Emily rolled her eyes.

After surviving in the apocalypse this long, who hasn’t killed a zombie? The only question was how many.

”Alright then. You’re up.”

”But… there’s so many of them...” Emily hesitated, staring nervously at the dense horde of undead.

”You’ll be fine. I’ll be watching your back. Even if you get hurt, I’ll heal you.” Henry’s voice was steady. ”Fallen Star Squad doesn’t carry dead weight. If you’re too scared to fight, I’ll just ship you off to Fallen Star City. You can live there safe and sound—no zombies, no starvation, no danger. Just comfort.”

”Who said I was scared?!”

The moment she heard the threat of being sent away, Emily panicked. She grabbed her weapon without another word and charged headfirst into the swarm.

As someone already at Tier 7, handling five Tier 6 zombies wasn’t a problem. It was more about how fast she could take them down.

Ethan and the others? One-shot kills—clean and direct. No zombie could close within six feet of them.

Emily, though, hadn’t hit that level of control yet. She could deal with a few on her own, but once they started closing in from all sides, it was easy to get overwhelmed.

Still, that would come with time. More kills, more instinct. And with Henry keeping a close eye on her, she wouldn’t be in any real danger.

The squad carved their way toward the center of Lakeside Residential District. Normally, high-tier zombies nested in the core of the horde.

Ethan kept scanning the battlefield while swinging his poleaxe, searching for any sign of the Tier 8 that should’ve been leading this mob.

But—maybe it got spooked by their firepower—no sign of it yet. It was still hiding.

Which made things tricky. As long as it stayed back, Ethan couldn’t put it down. From the shadows, it could keep commanding the swarm, sending wave after wave right into their teeth.

That was a typical high-Tier zombie tactic: if they weren’t confident in a direct fight, they’d throw minions at you non-stop, chewing away at your stamina until you dropped. Zombies didn’t care about losses. They didn’t feel. If they ran out of underlings? They’d just find more.

Ethan couldn’t do much about that. With nearly 80,000 zombies here, even with his [True Sight] ability, it wasn’t easy to pick one elite out of the crowd. All they could do was push forward.

Other than Emily and her younger brother, everyone else—including the mutant beasts—held their own perimeter. Each fighter had their hands full, surrounded on all sides, maintaining a relentless pace. Blades didn’t get a break.

The slaughter dragged on for over an hour. By the time they’d cut down half the horde—forty thousand undead bodies piled up—the damn Tier 8 zombie still hadn’t shown itself.

Three Tier 7s had appeared, though. Ethan blinked in with [Teleportation] and wiped each one before they got a chance to cause trouble.

Still, after fighting that hard for that long, everyone was feeling it.

Chris, who’d been using stealth to duck zombie hits, finally emerged from the battlefield and reappeared beside Emily.

”Emily, hook me up with that stamina boost, will ya?” he asked, his tone smooth and playful as he suddenly materialized next to her. Emily yelped in surprise.

”Dude, seriously. Talk like a normal person. Cut the damn flirting,” Henry barked from the side.

Chris laughed it off. ”What? I’m just being charming.”

”It’s fine.” Emily didn’t mind. With a flick of her hand, a transparent wave of energy washed over Chris.

He felt the fatigue melting away almost instantly. In less than a minute, his stamina was back to full.

”Damn, that’s a lifesaver,” Chris said, grinning. ”I owe you one, Emily.”

Then, fully recharged, he dove back into the fray like a man reborn.

Seeing that, the others began drifting toward Emily too, one by one. Before long, everyone had come over.

Emily quickly cycled through them, restoring stamina with practiced ease.

Her power worked in two modes: group recovery or personal buffs. The energy cost depended on how many she helped and how strong they were.

Restoring Chris and the others burned through her reserves like she was back in Silverfox Squad healing a hundred people at once. The drain hit hard—without hesitating, she pulled out a Tier 5 crystal core and popped it into her mouth like a vitamin.

Recharged and revved up, the whole squad surged back into the zombie masses like they’d just mainlined adrenaline.

Even Ethan came over eventually, breathing hard. His poleaxe was a beast—huge damage, but it ate through his stamina quick in fights like this.

As the wave of energy swept through him and his body filled back up to peak, he couldn’t help but feel relieved.

Good thing he’d bumped into Emily earlier.

Her ability? Straight-up game-changer.

With her around, there was no need to skirt around massive swarms anymore. They could just face ’em head-on—and win.

The battle raged on.

By the time they’d cut down another twenty thousand zombies, Ethan finally spotted the Tier 8.

Only reason he saw it? The damn thing was running away.

Yep. It had thrown all its underlings into the meat grinder—then silently tried to bail.

If that wasn’t peak coward shit, Ethan didn’t know what was.

But in ditching its horde and breaking formation, it finally exposed itself.

One [Teleportation] later, Ethan appeared right in front of it.

”Damn, you made yourself hard to find,” Ethan said with a grin, and without a moment’s hesitation, he brought his poleaxe down in a brutal arc.

The Tier 8 zombie let out a roar and threw its arm over its head to shield the blow.

Didn’t help.

Ethan wasn’t just Tier 9—he was Tier 9, capital T, terrifying. Against someone like him, throwing up an arm was basically begging to lose it.

The poleaxe sheared straight through the limb like it was paper, then kept going—burying itself into the zombie’s skull and nearly splitting its head in two.

The hulking corpse staggered, then collapsed with a heavy thud.

Ethan reached down and yanked the crystal core from its fractured skull. Then he turned and bellowed over his shoulder.

”Pumpkin! This body’s yours!”

Mutant beasts could boost their strength by consuming high-Tier zombie corpses. It took time—digesting them wasn’t exactly instant—but the gains were solid.

As for Goldie and Speckles? No dice. Both were already bumped up to peak Tier 8, and since they were under Skinny Pete’s control via [Beast Control], they couldn’t afford a Tier 9 boost yet. Once a beast crossed into Tier 9, Pete’s mental energy consumption would spike hard—and he wasn’t geared for that.

Pumpkin, meanwhile, came bounding over like a kid at a buffet, practically drooling. It planted its paws on the corpse and started chomping in with noisy enthusiasm. Goldie and Speckles watched on with obvious envy.

”Relax, you two,” Skinny Pete said quickly. ”Next time we bring down a Tier 9, you’ll get first bite.”

With the Tier 8 commander down, the horde finally snapped.

The remaining zombies scattered like dry leaves in a storm.

They’d never wanted to fight in the first place—not against these monsters. But with the Tier 8 issuing orders, they’d had no choice. Now though? It was every corpse for itself.

Ethan and the group didn’t bother chasing them. They were too busy staring at the field of wreckage stretched around them—piles upon piles of rotting bodies, the fight’s aftermath more overwhelming than the battle itself.

”Captain,” Big Mike groaned, eyeing the carnage like it physically hurt him. ”Please don’t tell me we’re supposed to dig all the crystal cores out ourselves...”

For the Fallen Star Squad, core extraction was always the real nightmare. Killing zombies? Fun. Digging cores out of rank meat by the thousands? Actual hell.

Ethan gave it a beat, then said, ”Pull the Tier 6 and up cores. Leave the rest for the military—give them a 20% cut for handling it.”

”Oh, that’s genius,” someone muttered. Everyone’s eyes lit up.

Yeah, sure, there were over sixty thousand bodies out here... but as long as they didn’t have to do all the grave-digging? No complaints.

”Sean!” Ethan called. ”You’re the fastest. Go run word back to the military. The rest of you—start digging those Tier 6 cores!”

”On it!” Sean took off immediately in a burst of wind, leaving the others groaning, stretching... then reluctantly getting to work.