My Apocalypse System Arrives 10 Years Early

Chapter 554: Chapter 349: Hibernation and Fall: Dawn of the Exotic Beast Era

Underground City 02, the massive metropolis located in what was once Shanghai.

Eight young people—four couples—had sneaked to the surface through the ventilation ducts.

The lead couple was particularly ”eye-catching.” The guy sported a mohawk dyed fluorescent green, a skull earring in his left ear, and a cursive tattoo on his neck that read ”Indifferent to Life and Death.” The girl had pink-and-purple-streaked pigtails, a rhinestone stud in her nostril, a lip ring, and fishnet stockings. A mess of keychains jingled at her waist, and she wore studded, thick-soled platform shoes.

The other three couples had a similar style—dyed hair, shaved heads, and tattoos. The beams of their flashlights revealed unhealed needle marks on their arms, and the air was thick with the sour stench of sweat mixed with cheap perfume.

”The air up here is so fresh! So much more breathable than down below.”

Each armed with a high-powered flashlight, they laughed and joked as they arrived at a high-end villa community, Platinum Palace Garden—a place they previously wouldn’t have even been qualified to enter. Naturally, they were going to go have a look around.

The place was long deserted, and the eight of them easily vaulted the walls. As a flashlight beam swept past Roman columns, it glinted coldly off the carbon-fiber bodies of a Bugatti Veyron and a Rolls-Royce Phantom in an open garage.

”Holy shit! The paint job on this car is worth ten of my fucking lives!” Ah Jie kicked open the courtyard gate, its smart lock long dead. The group swarmed into the villa, ransacking the place until they found the crystal key fobs.

A girl named Xiao Lu straddled the Phantom’s steering wheel, snapping a selfie. In the background, Da Fei was smashing open the wine cellar with a baseball bat. He pulled out a bottle of red wine the rich owners had left behind and started chugging it. ”This sweet crap’s got nothing on Erguotou!”

The car stereos were cranked to full volume, blasting the song ”Loving to Death” as the two luxury cars tore out of the community and onto the main road.

”Those gutless cowards are still hiding underground, trembling like rats, while we’re up here living it up!” the dreadlocked youth bragged. With a cigar he’d swiped from the study clamped between his teeth, he pushed the car to 280 kilometers per hour.

The G-force was exhilarating!

The surface was deserted and the roads were wide open. They could race however they pleased.

The headlights sliced through the darkness, illuminating a wide stretch of road ahead. Suddenly, the girl in the passenger seat—her smoky eyeshadow smudged to her cheekbones, her dress a backless, sequined affair—pointed at the sky and screamed. Dozens of house-sized black silhouettes, wreathed in purple flames, were plummeting from above. The closest one, a heavily armored Exotic Beast, slammed into the ground five meters in front of their car. The impact from its many-legged body jolted the Rolls-Royce Phantom half a meter into the air.

”Holy shit! What the hell is that?”

”Hey, buddy! We’re locals!” Ah Jie stammered. Bolstered by liquid courage, he forced himself to wave at the Exotic Beast and flash a friendly smile, hoping it might let them go. He’d seen a viral video once, where someone in the Northeast ran into a wild tiger and got away with it by doing the exact same thing.

What they didn’t know was that this was an Earth Demon Abyss Demon, a beast whose Tier was in the teens. It was an eyeless, multi-legged creature that sensed prey purely through vibrations, and its carapace could secrete a highly toxic slime.

Black mist seeped from the gaps in the creature’s carapace as it lunged, its six pairs of pincer-like limbs easily flipping the Phantom over. Behind them, the Bugatti Veyron tried to reverse, but another beast—a Corrosive Poison Heart-Eating Spider—erupted from the ground. Its legs pierced the tires before it sprayed a corrosive web from its abdomen...

Throughout this, the dashcam kept recording. The last thing it captured was the girl with the lip ring and fishnets as a juvenile Exotic Beast burrowed into her open mouth, her stockings melting into her skin from the corrosive venom.

Deep in the Underground City, the car’s owner watched the footage transmitted from the dashcam. His face went deathly pale, and with trembling hands, he dialed 911.

Things were actually better in China. Thanks to strict, grid-based social management, over 99% of the population was cooperative. But things were far worse abroad, where similar scenes were much more common.

In the United States, at the Centennial Underground City in Colorado, a group of young extreme sports enthusiasts climbed to the surface through an abandoned subway tunnel.

They were livestreaming their ”Apocalypse Adventure,” claiming they wanted to ”record humanity’s last blue sky.”

Having escaped the confines of the city, the group was thrilled and exhilarated.

When a black mist rolled in, they pressed on with their exploration. Suddenly, a Tier Twenty-Five Blazing Heaven-Burning Eagle plummeted from the sky. The camera shook violently, catching only a glimpse of fiery wings flashing past before the livestream abruptly ended.

Afterward, the military found a half-charred GoPro at the tunnel entrance. The memory card held nothing but shrill screams and the sound of shattering bones.

In Mexico, thousands of homeless people in the slums of Tijuana, who hadn’t been granted access to the Underground City, gathered in a church plaza to pray. From within the black mist descended hundreds of Corrosive Poison Heart-Eating Spiders, ranging from Tier Six to Tier Twelve. Their silk wrapped around the people, rapidly dissolving their flesh. Survivors recalled how the victims, skin festering, continued to march forward mechanically, like puppets controlled by the swarm. They walked together into the spiders’ nest and became nourishment. The church itself became another nest for the Corrosive Poison Heart-Eating Spiders.

In Paris, France, a group of rich kids calling themselves the ”Apocalypse Revelers” drove a modified off-road vehicle past the outer defenses of the Underground City. Mistaking a herd of Tier Fifteen Eclipsed Moon Star Remains Beasts for ”Glowing Meteorites,” they gathered around to take pictures, only to be instantly vaporized by beams of ethereal blue energy fired by the creatures.

The next day, an Alchemy Puppet crafted by Erin—a reconnaissance bird only the size of a palm but with incredible endurance—was sent to scout the area. Beside the wreckage of the vehicle, it recovered only a half-melted diamond necklace and a Van Cleef & Arpels watch.

In Africa, on the edge of the Sahara Desert, a nomadic tribe had refused to move into the Underground City, firm in their belief that the power of their ancestral spirits would dispel the darkness. When the Female Beast, a Garuda Nether Phoenix with a wingspan of over a hundred kilometers, soared overhead, countless blood-red eyes opened within the ensuing sandstorm. The entire Oasis was torn from the earth. Tents, people, and livestock were ripped to shreds in mid-air, staining the yellow sands a deep, dark red.