Apocalypse: King of Zombies

A single breath of white mist swept out and froze an entire stretch of the battlefield.

The Glacial Bear’s sheer presence hit every Void Realm creature like a bucket of ice water to the face—dousing the desperate courage they’d only just managed to scrape together.

Stage SS.

That thing was absolutely Stage SS.

And they? They were just a pack of Stage A nobodies. Did someone really have to unleash a Stage SS monster on them?

What was this—using a sledgehammer to kill a fly?

In that moment, the entire Void Realm force broke.

They’d never imagined that attacking a human city would actually draw out a Stage SS feral beast.

If you had a Stage SS beast, why the hell didn’t you say so earlier?

If they’d known, they wouldn’t have come even if they had ten thousand lives to throw away.

That thought howled through countless minds.

Then, almost all at once, huge groups of them dropped to their knees, hands raised in surrender.

”We were wrong! We were truly wrong! We’ll never do it again! Please spare us! We’ll leave right now and never set foot in this world again!”

”Yeah, yeah! We’re wrong! Please, just let us go! We can be your slaves—your servants!”

But faced with their begging, nobody even bothered to lift an eyelid.

And the Glacial Bear? It didn’t care whether they pleaded or not. The moment they’d dared lay hands on Henry, they’d already crossed its bottom line.

Its massive paw slammed down.

A colossal iceberg materialized overhead and crashed from the sky, flattening a wide swath of Void Realm creatures in an instant.

The survivors were scared out of their minds. They scrambled up and bolted in every direction.

Only to find escape was a joke.

All around them, the dense wall of zombies simply stepped in—using their own bodies to block every route out, sealing the Void Realm creatures in until there was nowhere left to run.

”Ke—!”

The roc shrieked, beating its wings as it launched upward—and plunged straight into the slaughter.

Ethan turned to Henry. ”Tell those two to take it easy. Don’t wipe them out completely. Leave some Tier 29 peak ones alive—cripple them if you have to. We still need some thralls.”

He said it because, whether it was the Glacial Bear or the roc, both of them listened to Henry more.

Ethan might be the one making the calls, but Henry was the one who made things happen.

Twice, the roc had been critically wounded, right on the edge of death—both times Henry had saved it. He’d dragged it back from the brink with his own hands. Of course the roc trusted him more, and of course it was grateful.

That said, the roc treated Ethan well too. It understood perfectly: the first time, if Ethan hadn’t held Aeralon and a whole swarm of Winged Clan experts back, it wouldn’t have had a single second to be healed.

The Glacial Bear was different.

Its attitude toward Ethan was… lukewarm at best.

The Glacial Bear was proud. Very few earned its approval.

Henry was probably the first human it had ever truly acknowledged.

That paw of its had been broken for hundreds of years. It had dreamed of fixing it—obsessed over it—yet never found a way. After so long, it had already given up hope.

And then Henry healed it.

Not only that—Henry had pushed himself so hard in the process that he’d straight-up passed out from exhaustion.

So the Glacial Bear’s gratitude toward Henry wasn’t polite or shallow. It was deep, real, and from the bottom of its heart.

Which was exactly why it listened to him.

”Also—don’t kill that green-haired old man. He’s mine,” Miles blurted out.

Chris stared at him like he’d grown a second head. ”Why are you so fixated on him? Wouldn’t one of the young, strong ones be better?”

”Because he’s got a punchable face,” Miles said matter-of-factly. ”And unlike you guys, I don’t need to fight nonstop. I need a stress-relief tool.”

”…You’re a freak.”

”…”

After Henry finished giving the Glacial Bear and the roc their instructions, Ethan released a batch of soulless thralls as well. Then the rest of them moved in and joined the battlefield.

It was a complete massacre.

The Void Realm creatures had numbers, sure—but their will to fight had already snapped. All they wanted was to run.

Except the zombies packed around them like a living barricade, plugging every gap. With nowhere to go, the Void Realm creatures could only hack at the undead, trying to carve out a bloody path.

But the zombie horde was too deep for that to be easy.

And Ethan’s side clearly had no intention of giving them time.

The Glacial Bear and the roc didn’t even need mentioning—any one of their wide-area attacks erased hundreds, sometimes thousands, in a single sweep.

Aeralon and Aerisara were just as terrifying in this kind of fight. One cyclone tore through the field and dropped entire clusters of Void Realm creatures at once.

Even the Umbral thralls—who’d taken a beating against the Lionfang Beasts—were finally showing what they were capable of. That horrific Decay power rolled outward, turning Void Realm bodies into puddles of bloody sludge one after another.

As for Ethan and the others, their strength was nothing to scoff at either. They couldn’t instantly delete the higher-tier enemies, so they simply focused on Tier 24 to Tier 26 instead.

One target.

One clean kill.

On the distant city walls, the Azure Nereids’ experts watched the scene with blank, stunned faces.

Seeing those once-arrogant elites from every race being butchered without the slightest chance to fight back… the Azure Nereids women felt their entire understanding of the world flip upside down.

Wasn’t the human race supposed to be weak in this world?

Then what the hell was this—Stage SS beasts, just casually showing up? Wasn’t that ridiculous?

”So they really did have a trump card that could wipe us out,” Nerissa murmured, a bitter smile on her lips. ”And I was blindly confident the whole time… Thank god we didn’t offend them. Otherwise…”

In sharp contrast to the stunned Azure Nereids, the people of Fallen Star City were practically boiling with excitement.

Cheers erupted from the walls.

”Commander!”

”Kill them!”

”Show them what happens when they mess with Fallen Star City!”

To the citizens, their Commander wasn’t just a leader—he was practically a belief. No matter how terrifying the enemy looked, as long as Ethan came back, they trusted he’d find a way to crush them.

And now he had.

The Void Realm creatures that had been strutting around seconds ago were being slaughtered like trapped animals.

The battle dragged on, and the Void Realm army’s numbers dropped at a terrifying rate.

Miles stood a short distance from the fighting, watching with an indifferent expression.

He’d always positioned himself as the brains. In a fight with an outcome this obvious, there was no reason for him to jump in. All he needed to do was keep an eye out for anything unusual.

And that was exactly when it happened.

A figure that had been lying motionless on the ground suddenly pushed itself up and began creeping toward him.

When it got within thirty feet—

It struck.

A vine snapped into existence and wrapped around Miles in an instant, binding him tight. The attacker lunged, closing the distance in a blur, and a long, thick thorn spike formed in his hand—driving straight for Miles’s head.

”Die!”

The Sylvan elder’s eyes were wild, borderline deranged. If he was going to die anyway, then he was taking someone with him.

But right as he was sure the blow would land—

A body appeared in front of Miles.

The thorn spike plunged straight into the newcomer’s torso.

The figure didn’t even flinch.

Instead, it slapped the Sylvan elder across the face with a backhand so violent it sent him flying.

Then several Wind Cutters flashed through the air, slicing the vines clean off Miles.

Miles brushed off his clothes, still smiling as he looked at the Sylvan elder.

”Sorry. Forgot to tell you—I carry a thrall with me, too.”

The thrall he’d brought was only Tier 28, but once it was made into a thrall, it wasn’t any weaker than the Tier 29 Sylvan elder.

”Don’t worry,” Miles added, smile widening. ”You’ll be keeping him company soon.”

”Ah… I’LL KILL YOU!” The Sylvan elder had completely lost it now. All that was left in his head was killing Miles.

He hadn’t even taken a step when Ethan—already aware something was wrong—teleported in.

His poleaxe was wrapped in black light as it came down in a single brutal strike, slamming the Sylvan elder to the ground.

”…”

”Boss,” Miles said, genuinely surprised, ”since when did you get this brutal?”

”I didn’t,” Ethan replied coldly. ”He’s just weak.”