Apocalypse: King of Zombies

As Ethan and Chris each dropped a Winged Clan expert, the Winged Clan’s numbers cratered right out of the gate.

They’d started with sixteen.

In a blink, four were gone.

Only twelve remained.

Their faces turned murderous—not just from anger, but from the sick realization that everything they ”knew” was wrong.

The intel they had said the target was weak, propped up by two soulless thralls. One of those thralls had supposedly already been killed, meaning he should’ve had only one left.

But what they were seeing now didn’t match at all.

Not only were there two thralls again, Ethan himself was terrifyingly strong.

Now they were down to twelve. Four were tied up trying to contain Aerisara. The other soulless thrall was a monster—eight of them could barely hold it back. And on top of that, there were two humans who could one-shot them.

What had been an advantage flipped into a losing fight in seconds.

”Retreat,” the leader said, decisively. ”Go back and report to Lord Aeralon!”

The remaining Winged Clan didn’t argue. They broke off immediately, abandoning the fight and trying to scatter.

The instant their pressure let up—

Dopey tore free of the bindings and appeared beside the leader like a nightmare teleporting into reality.

A fist came down.

The leader’s eyes blew wide. He tried to evade, but it was already too late. He slapped a Tempest Shield onto himself and wrapped his wings around his body like armor.

BOOM—!

The punch detonated his wings into bloody fragments.

And it didn’t stop.

Dopey’s fist drove straight through his torso.

The leader’s face twisted with pure unwillingness—then his body went limp, dropping like a rock toward the ground.

On the other side, Aerisara broke free as well.

A Death Maelstrom bloomed, swallowing a Tier 29 Winged Clan expert whole. He fought inside it, half-visible through the ripping black wind—

Then Aerisara sent several Cyclone Blades slicing into the storm.

The blades disappeared into the maelstrom, and the struggling figure inside was cut apart, killed on the spot.

Aerisara had been strong even in life. As a created thrall, an ordinary Tier 29 expert simply wasn’t enough to suppress her.

At the same time, Ethan and Chris saw the retreat for what it was—an attempt to escape—and moved without hesitation.

Ethan teleported to one Winged Clan expert’s flank and swung the poleaxe down hard.

The Winged Clan expert’s expression went feral. He countered with a Cyclone Blade, slashing straight at Ethan.

He was confident he’d split Ethan in half before that poleaxe could land.

He was Tier 26—two full Tiers higher than Ethan. That kind of confidence felt natural.

Reality was cruel.

The Cyclone Blade vanished as it neared Ethan—gone so completely it was like it had never existed.

And Ethan’s poleaxe, wrapped in black light, smashed into him.

No suspense. No miracle defense.

One hit turned his body into pulp.

Ethan had only just reached Stage A, but even using just the triple-force Annihilation Strike, a Tier 26 expert couldn’t withstand it.

Because of Body Refinement, Ethan’s raw strength ran more than a full Tier above others at the same level. As a Stage A early-stage fighter, his physical power was at least around mid–Tier 25. Killing a Tier 26 with Annihilation Strike wasn’t difficult.

Chris moved just as cleanly.

He threw Void Malediction onto a fleeing Winged Clan expert.

Black light latched onto the target’s body. The man’s flight stuttered midair, like his muscles suddenly forgot how to work. Pain flashed across his face.

That was all Chris needed.

Still invisible, he sprang up and drove his spear forward.

With his weapon’s sharpened edge, plus the strength amplification from his abilities, the spear punched into the enemy’s chest and tore straight through.

Chris yanked the spear free and slipped away, vanishing again.

Both times, Chris didn’t use Ambush Strike.

He’d chosen Tier 25 targets. With strength amplification, the stealth damage boost, and the black edge he’d layered onto his weapon for extra cutting power, that was already enough to kill Tier 25 cleanly.

Ambush Strike would break invisibility—and after using it, he couldn’t cloak again for a minute. Unless it was life-or-death, he couldn’t afford that.

In a fight like this, if his stealth dropped and they focused him, he’d probably die. He didn’t have Ethan’s absurd bag of tricks to keep himself alive.

While invisible, he had a speed boost and damage reduction. And with the enemy unable to see him, even if someone tried to hit him, he was confident he could withdraw safely.

But at this point, the Winged Clan didn’t even have the presence of mind to hunt him down.

Teammates were dying one after another. Whatever will they’d had to fight had already been gutted.

All they wanted now was to run.

Their figures shot higher and higher, wings beating as they fled at top speed toward the distance.

”Shhk—shhk—shhk—shhk—shhk!”

From the rear of the compound, several beams of laser fire lanced into the sky.

They were so fast they didn’t even look like projectiles—just straight lines of light. The remaining Winged Clan didn’t have time to react before the shots slammed into them.

Two Winged Clan experts were pierced on the spot. Their bodies went rigid, then dropped like stones.

Another one coughed up a mouthful of blood. His body wobbled mid-flight, nearly losing altitude—but he stabilized and kept running.

The last two only let out muffled grunts. They clutched their chests, glanced back once, and then forced their speed even higher.

Ethan tracked it instantly.

The two killed outright were Tier 25.

The one spitting blood, heavily wounded, was Tier 26.

And the two who only grunted—Tier 27.

So Maxwell hadn’t been bluffing. Those laser cannons were no joke.

Ninety-nine Tier 22 crystal cores in one shot produced a terrifying beam—enough to delete a Tier 25 outright, and even seriously injure Tier 26.

But they’d missed one critical detail: Tier 25 was the floor for this group. Half of these Winged Clan were Tier 27 and above.

Maxwell’s people couldn’t accurately judge each target’s Tier. Five shots later, they’d only dropped two.

Way less than they’d expected.

And in that tiny window, the surviving Winged Clan had already opened a huge gap in the sky.

Dopey and Chris couldn’t fly. They could only watch them pull away.

Ethan had telekinetic flight, but his speed simply couldn’t catch true Winged Clan fliers.

The only one who could pursue was Aerisara.

Ethan moved fast—he pulled Dopey back into the spatial storage ring, then teleported onto Aerisara and wrapped his arms around her.

No romantic thoughts. No time for that.

Winged Clan flight wasn’t like Superman, flat and horizontal. They flew upright, angled forward. There was no stable ”standing” position on her back. Holding on was the only option.

”Go,” Ethan said hard. ”Catch them.”

Aerisara didn’t hesitate. Her wings snapped once, and she shot after the fleeing Winged Clan.

At near Stage S power, her speed was on another level. The distance started shrinking, steadily, relentlessly—close enough that Ethan could already pick out silhouettes—

And then the trap sprung.

Of the six remaining Winged Clan ahead, five abruptly stopped and turned around.

They charged back at Ethan and Aerisara, throwing out waves of Razor Wind that tore through the air like spinning blades.

Aerisara was forced to brake. She answered with her own Razor Wind, the two storms colliding in a violent, screaming grind.

Ethan dropped off her, landing into a hover again with a dagger under each foot. He opened Nullspace Domain, letting it eat the worst of the cutting wind as it raked at him from every angle.

But his eyes kept snapping to the sixth one—the one who hadn’t turned back.

The runner.

Ethan’s chest tightened.

Aerisara was pinned by five opponents. She couldn’t break free quickly.

And if that last one escaped…

The consequences were unthinkable.

Ethan clenched his jaw and made the call.

He teleported out of the melee—straight into open air—and then started spamming Teleportation, chasing the fleeing Winged Clan as hard as he could.

The one he was chasing was Tier 29.

And his speed was insane—like he’d activated some kind of movement skill and kicked it into overdrive.

Ethan blinked after him again and again, but even with continuous teleports, he was only gaining a little at a time.

Teleportation was a Stage D skill, and it had limits: the maximum range per blink was only about two miles.

In combat, two miles was more than enough.

For pursuit across open sky, it was frustratingly short.

The Winged Clan expert could cover two miles in the blink of an eye, too. Ethan was faster—barely—but not enough to end it quickly.

Still, Ethan wasn’t out of cards.

Once he’d closed the gap a bit more, he activated Absolute Stasis.

The fleeing Winged Clan expert froze in midair like time itself had grabbed him by the throat.

Ethan kept teleporting.

One second.

That was all he got—but it was enough to slash the distance down brutally.

The moment the Winged Clan expert snapped free of the stasis and saw Ethan right behind him, his face twisted.

He whipped a hand out and hurled a massive Death Maelstrom at Ethan without slowing down, then surged forward again.

Ethan didn’t dare test a Tier 29 attack head-on. He teleported away from the maelstrom’s path—

—and immediately resumed the chase, blinking after the fleeing figure as the sky ahead narrowed into a single, deadly line.