Free Web NovelChapter 1356: When Patience Runs Out
The Atlas Federation — Nevora State
As the largest state in the Atlas Federation, Nevora no longer had any active compounds inside its borders.
The land here was huge and sparsely populated. That made it hard for survivors to gather and hold. There used to be a few small and mid-sized compounds, but over time they’d been absorbed into the major ones.
In the end, the entire state became zombie territory.
That said, because Nevora was so spread out, zombie density was usually low—most of them drifted around in loose packs instead of forming true hordes.
Recently, though, the pattern changed.
Zombies across Nevora started converging, pulling together into a massive tide.
The reason was obvious.
The Zombie King had arrived.
After its crushing defeat at Crownfall City, the Zombie King fled northwest with a dozen Tier 19 zombies. It moved west out of Dustvale State, crossed Montara State, and finally entered Nevora—covering three massive states in just over ten days.
Luckily for the living, the Zombie King didn’t understand one key detail: those states were big, but they weren’t densely populated.
That was why, after traveling that far, its army had only grown to a little over twenty million zombies.
If it had run south or east instead?
By now it probably would’ve had over a hundred million.
The Zombie King was smart—but clearly not smart enough to grasp that.
Inside the tide, a small figure trudged along, clutching its head.
It had walked forever.
So why the hell did it still have so few "underlings"?
Unfortunately, that was a question it wasn’t going to solve anytime soon.
The horde kept moving anyway. This time, it was determined to stockpile an overwhelming army before it struck at the humans again.
Up above, red birds occasionally swept past the sky.
The Zombie King was already familiar with those Flamebirds—and the humans riding them. It knew they were hunting it.
So lately it had been hiding inside the horde, pretending to be an ordinary zombie.
It was small. In a crowd like this, it was basically invisible. And its strength wasn’t even that outrageous—there were hundreds of zombies at the same Tier mixed in, so it didn’t stand out.
At first, it had ordered its zombies to attack the Flamebirds.
But the humans were too strong, and they had the advantage of the air. After several failed attempts, the Zombie King got lazy and stopped bothering.
Besides, the Flamebirds weren’t actually attacking the horde either.
So it simply ignored them.
Then two more red birds appeared in the distance.
When it spotted the newcomers, the Zombie King just smiled with cold contempt and didn’t even bother reacting.
Two more?
So what?
Up in the sky, the Fallen Star Corps recon fighters noticed the pair immediately and rushed to meet them. freeωebnovēl.c૦m
"Commander!"
"Commander!"
Faces lit up with relief and excitement when they recognized Ethan.
Ethan nodded. "Anything new?"
The recon team lead lowered his head. "No."
"There are too many zombies. We can’t confirm the Zombie King’s Tier. And our sensing skills can’t pick up its ability signature. Finding one Zombie King in a tide of twenty million... it’s just too hard."
"I get it." Ethan’s voice stayed calm. "But you’re sure the Zombie King is inside the tide."
"Yes. That part we can confirm."
"Good." Ethan’s eyes narrowed. "Then I’ll handle it."
He turned and shot toward the airspace above the horde.
Even for Ethan, searching for a Zombie King with an unknown Tier inside twenty million zombies was a nasty challenge.
He didn’t have some perfect solution.
All he could do was the ugly method—check them one by one for ability traces.
If something could command higher-Tier zombies, its power almost certainly leaned mental.
So he’d filter for anything with a psy-type ability.
Simple in theory. ƒгeewebnovёl.com
Nightmare in practice.
This wasn’t a few hundred or a few thousand targets.
It was tens of millions.
Just looking down at that moving carpet made Ethan’s scalp prickle.
But he didn’t have a choice.
That Zombie King had to be found.
Because if they could control it...
They wouldn’t be "fighting zombies" anymore.
They’d be owning them.
The temptation was too big to ignore.
So Ethan started the search—grinding through the tide with sheer patience.
He searched from noon until nightfall before he finally found a zombie with a psy-type ability.
For a second, Ethan’s heart jumped.
Then the disappointment hit.
It wasn’t command. It was mental attack—and the zombie was only Tier 17.
Still, Ethan yanked it out and handed it to Skinny Pete to control. They tried using it to command the tide.
It failed.
Ethan exhaled, eyes hardening, and went back to work.
By nightfall, Ethan didn’t even think about resting.
If he slept, the horde would shift by morning, and all his progress would be scrambled.
Except... that sneaky Zombie King seemed to know exactly what Ethan was afraid of.
It ordered a full reshuffle.
The zombies started sprinting and weaving through each other in chaotic cross-currents, packs swapping places over and over until the entire tide became a moving mess. By the end, Ethan couldn’t even tell which ones he’d already checked and which ones he hadn’t.
The waste hit him like a slap.
He got so mad his temples throbbed.
"Damn it—how am I supposed to find anything like this?" Ethan snapped.
He dropped the search on the spot. At this point, it was impossible.
He turned to the recon lead. "Notify the Fallen Star Guard. I want everyone here tomorrow."
Then his eyes hardened. "We’re wiping this entire tide off the map."
"Yes!" the recon leader said quickly, relieved to have a clear order.
"I’m done," Ethan said flatly. "I’m sleeping."
He swung up onto Ember and flew to a clear patch of ground. From his spatial storage ring, he pulled out a tent, climbed in, and collapsed.
Keeping True Sight cranked to the max for an entire afternoon had drained him hard.
And for what?
Nothing.
It wasn’t just tiring—it was infuriating. Ethan’s irritation curdled into real hatred for that Zombie King.
Fine. He’d play it the other way.
When he finally caught it, he wasn’t just killing it. He was going to make it suffer first.
Early the next morning, thirty thousand Flamebirds arrived over Nevora State, each with two riders standing on its back.
It wasn’t just the Fallen Star Guard either.
The Fallen Star Corps showed up too—another forty thousand.
Even Chris and the others were here.
That part actually surprised Ethan.
He looked at Chris. "Why are you guys here?"
Chris shrugged. "Yesterday Skinny Pete told us you were pissed. Like... ’serious consequences’ pissed. We had to come watch."
Ethan’s eye twitched. "Great. Thanks."
Chris tilted his head. "So who pissed you off this bad?"
"Who else?" Ethan said, voice sharp. "That Zombie King. Once I find it, I’m making it regret being born."
Down inside the tide, the small figure saw the sky darken with red birds and—finally—felt something it hadn’t felt in a while.
Unease.
Last time, these Flamebirds had crushed it completely.
This time, sure, it had more underlings—more than double the previous horde.
But the Flamebirds?
There were three times as many as before.
That math didn’t favor it at all.
So it made a decision immediately.
It ordered the horde to scatter in every direction—and slipped away with them, hiding in the flow as it fled.
Up in the air, Ethan watched the movement and clicked his tongue.
"Goddamn. This Zombie King isn’t just smart. It’s annoying."
Then his voice cut cold.
"Kill."
The moment the order dropped, twenty thousand Fallen Star Guard and forty thousand Fallen Star Corps fighters jumped from their Flamebirds and plunged straight into the zombie sea.
Overhead, the thirty thousand Flamebirds took position and began bombarding the tide nonstop—skills raining down like a red hellstorm.
Big Mike and the others weren’t about to be spectators. They flew above the horde too, dropping one wide-range ability after another, harvesting zombies in huge chunks.
Big Mike’s ultra-wide Toxic Rain was basically a cheat code in this kind of fight.
One cast and thousands of zombies melted.
Under that level of slaughter, zombie numbers fell at a horrifying pace.
This wasn’t a defensive battle.
This was an execution.
And in this fight, Fallen Star City finally showed what "overwhelming" really looked like.
Back in Atlas City’s compound, a group of top officials sat locked onto the live feed.
The screen showed Nevora’s battlefield in real time—red birds in the sky, human elites carving down through the tide, the zombie sea collapsing by the minute.
The room went silent except for the occasional sharp inhale.
From a combat standpoint, it was obvious: any one of those sixty thousand Fallen Star City fighters was on par with the strongest experts their own compound could field.
Sixty thousand of them.
And the scary part wasn’t what they were seeing.
It was what they weren’t sure about.
How many more did Fallen Star City still have?
Nobody knew.
Only that Fallen Star City’s strength... couldn’t be measured anymore.
