Apocalypse King: Recruiting S-Tier Beauties With My Ruler System Chapter 265: Victory of the Living Dead

A Brute roared, swinging a slab-sized fist; I sidestepped, let the blow pass, then buried the bastard sword under its jaw, twisting free in a spray of gore. The gap it left was all I needed! Because the Commander was right there, climbing over the last corpse ramp.

I raised the blade high, spirit power flooding the steel, the edge humming with killing intent.

And then I froze from the sheer pressure.

As if the weight of a mountain slamd down on , thick and suffocating, like standing beneath a collapsing building.

My muscles locked as the air itself seed to tighten around my chest. The strange Qi was both dense and murky, like a swamp. The level was close to mine, no higher even! But lacked the sa finesse and technique.

It was wild like an untad beast.

The dark aura enveloped my body, wrapped my limbs and sowhere in the smoke... hidden by the horde, a new silhouette stepped into view.

A man I once knew.

Now he was nothing but a twisted monster with lifeless Yellow eyes.

[Mutated Human | Stage Six | Parasite-Type]

Na: Lao

Estimated Attribute Average: 15

Strength: 20

Danger: Extre

The mont the blue panel flashed red in my eyes, I knew sothing was wrong... To have a danger level of extre, even after reaching my current state, wasn’t good. Whether I let the girls fight or not, with a twenty Strength, he could kill them almost instantly.

***

His stench hit first.

Even under the rot and blood of the battlefield, Lao’s scent pushed through, sharp, sour and tallic while tinged with sothing foul. I rembered him before, still human—a smug grin, fast movents and the kind of man who wouldn’t end a fight midway.

Now there was no grin, no humanity. Just a hunched predator, his flesh warped into a grotesque armour of bone and exposed muscle.

One arm, his right, remained vaguely human, twisted and filled with thick black veins, but functional. The left was no longer recognisable. A curved black, dense as my thigh, jutted from his shoulder down to the wicked point that reached below his knee.

It glead wetly under the flas and moonlight, the colour of old ivory wrapped in vines of blackened flesh.

He didn’t rush to take action.

The horde pulled back from him in an unnatural wave, leaving a twenty-tre circle of flesh around us. The Command Type seed reluctant. Although wounded, it dragged itself away without breaking eye contact.

My bastard sword felt heavy, almost slipping from my grip. Just knowing what I would face caused to endure the pressure.

"Lao..." I muttered, half to myself... the other wanting to awaken sothing inside him.

His head twitched at the na, jerking slightly with insect-like movent. Those eerie yellow eyes narrowed, focused on and for a heartbeat... I thought sothing human remained.

That’s when he moved.

With a single slash, his curved blade swept across the sky, the force splitting a Brute’s corpse in half without slowing... like a hot knife through butter. I barely got my sword up in ti to catch it.

’What the Hell!?’

The impact rang like a bell through my arms, rattling my teeth.

Sparks shot off the eting edges, and my boots slid a full ter across the stone before I locked my stance.

Without pause, he pivoted, swinging again, forcing to twist my blade vertically and press my second hand against the blade to reinforce my defence. I tried to parry the blow, make it glance instead of taking it full on. The deflected blow carved a trench in the stone at my side.

He’s faster than before.

I lashed out with my gauntlet, shells humming.

Boom-Boom-Boom-Boom!

Four shots in a heartbeat, each blast of buckshot hamring into his torso.

The recoil jarred my elbow, the smoke thick in my face. Lao staggered, but his montum didn’t break, and he twisted in the smoke, reappearing at my flank.

"Shit....!"

I threw myself forward, sword arcing backwards over my shoulder in a blind slash. Steel t bone-blade again, the clang reverberating up my spine.

"Co on then!" I roared, driving my boot into his chest. He slid back, bare feet tearing through flesh and bodies beneath him, and then crouched.

He shot at with a low stance, then up, blade first, a sweeping uppercut that threatened to split from groin to crown. I dropped my weight, blade horizontal, catching the edge and angling it away so it tore past my side. Even so, the bone tip ripped through my body suit’s flank, hot blood blooming across my ribs.

Zao sniffed the air and snorted like a beast...

His lips twisted into a strange, inhuman smile, crooked and emotionless.

I answered with the other gauntlet.

Boom-Boom-Boom-Boom!

Eight shells in ten seconds, both arms numb from the exchange. The sudden concussive blasts threw him back a step, shredded flesh peeling from his abdon. But the parasite’s body moved differently; the wounds didn’t bleed normally, dark tendrils squirming to pull themselves back together.

Parasite-Type regeneration.

This wasn’t going to be an easy battle...

No. I cannot be weak; remain confident, John!

I pressed forward anyway, trying to convince myself. Every step into him was a step he couldn’t use to reposition. I brought the bastard sword around in tight, powerful arcs, rising slash to keep his block high, then a diagonal cut ant for his leg. He parried the first with his manti-blade, but my follow-through forced him to shift his stance.

His right — the human arm — shot forward, claws extending unnaturally. I caught it on my gauntlet’s reinforced forearm plate, sparks flaring as bone scraped tal, then snapped my elbow up into his jaw.

The hit rocked his head back, just long enough for to drive my boot into his knee.

With a crack, it bent backwards.

He fell sideways with a guttural hiss, but before I could capitalise, that mantis-blade swept my legs in a horizontal arc. I jumped, boots finding the sticky back of a corpse mid-fall, then kicked off, bringing my sword down in a plunging strike.

Clang!

Sparks burst out.

Bone t steel again, but this ti the sound was different; a deep crack followed. His weapon-arm flexed under the blow, a thin fracture spreading along the edge.

Lao shrieked as if I had just cut out his heart.

It wasn’t a human sound, nor an animal... sothing twisted and alien.

I staggered back, driving the blade in a half-circle to keep him from recovering. "You don’t get to walk away from this," I shouted in rage.

He responded by lunging straight at , shoulder-first, with no fear, using his superior weight and strength to slam back. My boots left the floor before skidding until my heels caught on sothing.

A corpse, maybe?

We went down in a heap, his blade stabbed down, missing my skull by inches as I rolled to the left.

My gauntlet barrel pressed to his ribs.

Boom! Boom!

Point-blank. The shockwave blew him sideways, chunks of bone and parasite-flesh spraying across the bloodied stone.

For the first ti, he hesitated.

The horde, focused on the walls, suddenly stirred... their groans as if reacting to his screams.

I struggled to my feet, breathing hard... My own blood seeped from the various wounds under my bodysuit, and my ribs burned where he’d cut . His yellow eyes locked on mine again, and this ti I saw a flicker of sothing strange.

Recognition.

It lasted only a mont before the parasite consud it, and he roared, charging again.

We t in the middle, steel and bone screaming as they collided.

I forced him back step by step, every blow driving deeper into the fracture along his mantis-blade. My strikes ca faster, tighter, not giving him room to swing fully.

A rising cut caught the underside of the weapon arm and crack! The bone split wider, a jagged line opening toward his shoulder. Lao reeled, his left arm shooting out, but I caught it on my gauntlet and twisted hard, hearing ligants tear.

His roar faltered into a snarl.

"This ends now!" I surged forward, sword glowing with spirit-infused heat, and swung in a brutal diagonal. The strike bit deep into his collar and ripped downward, nearly severing the arm entirely.

He stumbled, parasite flesh twitching wildly as he fell to one knee.

I planted my boot on his chest, blade raised for the killing blow.

For a heartbeat, it felt like the tide had shifted.

Then his body convulsed.

A wet, ripping sound filled the air as blackened tendrils burst from the wound, writhing like snakes, spraying foul ichor in every direction. The blast of parasite flesh forced back a step, and in that instant, his silhouette vanished into the haze.

I spun to avoid...

Too late.

Pain tore across my back as sothing hit from behind with bone-splitting force, hurling face-first into the mound of corpses.

Then a voice... almost human, yet warped by hunger, hissed in my ear, its breath reeking of mould and spoiled milk.

"Still too slow... John."

A heartbeat later, fire lanced through my body as several black tendrils punched clean through my chest and abdon, lifting off the ground. Their slimy, barbed lengths writhed inside , and the stench of rot and curdled air filled my lungs.

Sowhere beyond the ringing in my ears, distorted voices scread — voices I knew. Roulan. Wei-Wei. Yifei... and Lan’er...

All calling my na.