Apocalypse: King of Zombies

”Let’s go…! Let’s try it!” Everyone was practically buzzing with excitement.

Ethan lifted a hand and stopped them.

If each person only got one shot, then they needed to do this right.

He activated True Sight and swept the entire Celestial Stairway carefully. He still couldn’t see where the ritual circle was, or how it worked…

…but he did see something.

A small smile tugged at Ethan’s mouth.

”In a minute, you all follow my footsteps,” he said, voice turning serious. ”Where I step, you step. Exactly.”

”Got it!” everyone answered.

Ethan’s tone made it clear this wasn’t optional.

Grace’s eyes widened. ”Ethan… are you saying the Celestial Stairway has a weak point?”

”Yeah,” Ethan said with a light shrug. ”Probably just age. It’s been here too long—there are patterns.”

Chloe’s face fell. ”Ugh… then didn’t we totally get ripped off?”

”You can’t say it like that.” Ethan chuckled. ”You found it first, got the power-up first. And it boosted your mysterious-energy absorption speed. That means you’ve been enjoying the benefits this whole time. That’s already a win.”

”Ethan’s right,” Grace said, surprisingly calm. ”Just running into something like this is huge luck. You have to know when to be satisfied.”

”…Fine,” Chloe muttered.

Ethan stepped forward first, planting his foot on the far-left edge of the first step.

Immediately, the pressure thickened—heavier than it was at the base, but still manageable.

Then Ethan shifted one step to the right.

The pressure increased again.

Same step, different position… and the pressure clearly wasn’t uniform.

Ethan’s eyes flickered with satisfaction.

So it works.

He lifted his foot and went up to the second step, choosing a spot slightly right of center. The pressure rose again.

Just like Grace said, every step higher added more weight.

But because Ethan was picking the weakest-pressure points on each step, the early climb was still relatively easy.

He kept moving upward, step by step.

Chris and the others followed tightly behind, stepping exactly where Ethan had stepped, not daring to be off by even an inch.

Like that, under Grace’s envious gaze, the group climbed steadily.

Before long, Ethan reached step forty-two—the highest point Grace had managed before.

He didn’t pause.

He kept going, calm and relentless.

One after another, everyone behind him crossed forty-two as well.

Grace’s mouth tightened.

Even after saying she didn’t mind, watching them pass her limit so casually still stung a little.

Ethan’s group kept climbing.

Fifty.

When Ethan hit step fifty, his body visibly stalled for a moment. The pressure had finally climbed into ”hard” territory.

But it still didn’t stop him. He pushed on—just slower than before.

Behind him, the others weren’t doing much better. By the time they reached fifty, sweat was already beading on their foreheads.

And that was with Ethan guiding them along the least oppressive path. If they’d been climbing normally, they probably wouldn’t have even made it this far.

Sixty.

Ethan stopped on step sixty.

Sweat rolled off his forehead in clear droplets. His face was set, serious now—like he was bracing against something that wanted to crush him into the stone.

After resting for a little over ten seconds, Ethan started climbing again—but now every step was painfully slow. On almost every single stair, he had to pause for more than ten seconds before forcing himself upward.

Everyone behind him was the same. The moment they crossed onto the 60th step, the pressure jumped hard. Every movement turned heavy, like wading through wet concrete.

And the higher they went, the longer they had to stop on each step.

Seventy.

When Ethan set foot on it, his whole body sank.

The pressure felt like it wanted to fold him in half.

And it wasn’t just physical anymore—there was something deeper, pressing down on his mind, on his spirit. A sharp sting bloomed behind his temples, and dizziness lapped at the edge of his vision.

Ethan clenched his jaw and shook his head, forcing clarity back into place.

He rested briefly, then pushed himself up another step.

Staying on a step for more than two minutes would count as your final result—you’d get shoved aside and start receiving the energy infusion. So they could rest, but not too long. Two minutes was the hard limit.

Ethan moved on.

Chris was the second person to reach the 70th step—and the moment he stepped onto it, the pressure drove him forward, bending him at the waist.

He planted both hands on his knees, gulping air. Sweat streamed off his forehead and splashed onto the stone.

”Come on, Chris!” Henry and the others called from below, pushing him on.

Chris let out a strained laugh. ”Relax… This little pressure isn’t gonna crush me.”

Slowly, stubbornly, he straightened his back.

Then he stepped forward again—no hesitation.

One by one, the others reached the 70th step too.

Some were slammed to the ground the instant they arrived. A few even had blood leaking from the corners of their mouths. But not a single one quit. Every one of them grit their teeth and forced themselves back up.

The Fallen Star Squad hadn’t made it this far on Ethan’s True Sight alone.

They’d fought more life-or-death battles than anyone.

With Henry around, they fought like lunatics—no fear, no retreat, no concern for their own safety. Even against enemies stronger than them, their attitude was always the same:

Life and death? Whatever. If you want it, come take it.

More than once, they’d crawled out of a fight with barely half a life left.

Sure, Henry would heal them afterward.

But pain was pain. Real pain.

There were times their bodies were practically wrecked, and they still kept fighting through it, biting down on the agony.

They didn’t have the government’s stockpiles of heavy weapons. They didn’t have the luxury of gathering huge numbers of Enhanced and winning by sheer headcount.

It had been just a handful of them—using their own hands, their own blades, clawing their way up from a school campus to where they stood now.

What they had today?

They’d bought it with their lives.

And that kind of path forged terrifying willpower.

Also—while Tier itself didn’t really affect climbing the Celestial Stairway (because the higher your Tier, the more pressure it threw at you), body strength still mattered. If two people were under the same pressure, the one with the tougher body could endure longer.

And in that regard, the Fallen Star Squad had a massive advantage.

They’d been tempering themselves with the Body Refinement Technique for a long time. Especially Ethan—his physical strength was in a different league entirely.

Down below, Grace and the others watched with tight, anxious expressions.

They looked excited. Shocked. Almost disbelieving.

They understood better than anyone how brutal the Celestial Stairway was. Ethan’s group had found a ”shortcut,” sure—but reaching the 70th step was still something Grace wouldn’t have even dared to imagine.

It was proof, plain and simple: the Fallen Star Squad’s strength wasn’t some accident.

And it wasn’t just them.

Aurora and Vivian were shocking in their own right.

Those two girls had willpower that was nothing like normal people. By the time they’d hit step ten, every move had already looked agonizing—and yet they’d ground their way up to step seventy through sheer stubbornness.

But the moment Aurora stepped onto the 70th…

Her body finally hit its limit.

The pressure drove her down flat. She tried to push herself up—couldn’t. Not even an inch.

She came from a military family and had trained since she was young, sure—but she’d still grown up under Maxwell’s protection. She hadn’t truly lived through repeated, brutal life-and-death fights.

Making it this far was already impressive. Beyond impressive.