Chapter 438: The phantoms descended

“Charge!”

A thousand elite Alpha Zombies surged onto the battlefield like a tidal wave of death. Their movements were swift and precise, their bodies lean and powerful—like a thousand blades slicing straight into the heart of the Zombie Horde.

They didn’t flinch at the gnashing teeth of lesser undead. Their enhanced bodies were built for war, and even when wounded, the Y-virus coursing through their veins healed them in seconds.

Wherever they passed, it was like a swarm of locusts tearing through a field—enemy zombies were shredded to pieces, black blood spraying, limbs flying. It was a slaughterhouse, a living meat grinder.

The moment the elite hit the field, the difference was obvious.

Each one of them could take on ten regular zombies without breaking a sweat. Together, they were a force of nature.

These thousand killing machines were worth more than ten thousand of the enemy’s horde.

“How are they going to respond to this?” Nightbane muttered, eyes locked on the chaos ahead.

With the elite Alpha Zombies joining the fray, the pressure on the other Zombie Kings eased up. The tide of battle, once against them, was starting to shift.

But just as they began to feel a flicker of hope—

Shapes began to emerge from the swirling black mist. Tall, imposing figures stepped forward, their eyes glowing with murderous intent, their presence radiating raw aggression. They didn’t charge. They didn’t even move.

Because in their hands, they held something different—sleek, silver weapons pulsing with energy. Inside each weapon, a crystal core glowed ominously, radiating a destructive aura.

These were the pinnacle of current tech—Crystal Core Armaments.

Ethan had scored a massive haul of these weapons during his raid in Texas, courtesy of a very generous “sponsor”—Richard.

He’d outfitted his elite troops with them, covering their one weakness: ranged combat. With their evolved intelligence, it only took a bit of training for these zombies to learn how to use firearms.

“Fire!”

The elite raised their weapons in unison and pulled the triggers. Energy surged through the air—crackling, swirling, building to a crescendo.

Then, all at once, the battlefield exploded in color.

Fire, water, ice—elemental blasts of every kind tore through the air like a meteor shower. The sky lit up with streaks of power, raining down on the enemy like divine wrath.

The blood-soaked battlefield was suddenly awash in color, a twisted kind of beauty—like fireworks over a graveyard.

But beneath that dazzling display was pure, unfiltered carnage.

The energy blasts slammed into the opposing elite like a storm.

BOOM!

Explosions rocked the ground. In some places, the blasts were so concentrated they kicked up miniature mushroom clouds.

Flames roared. Blood misted the air. Chunks of flesh and bone flew in every direction.

The enemy elite were torn apart. Some were blown to pieces on the spot. Others, even if they survived, were left crippled—missing limbs, crawling in the dirt. Their healing factor couldn’t save them now. A tiger with no teeth is just a big cat.

And then came the second volley.

Ethan’s troops didn’t let up. They reloaded and fired again, energy building and bursting in a relentless rhythm. The battlefield looked like a Fourth of July light show—if the fireworks were made of death.

Underneath that deadly spectacle, Nightbane’s Zombie Horde was being annihilated.

“What the hell…” Nightbane stared, stunned.

The weapons in those zombies’ hands—he recognized the red “GB” logo: Genesis Biotech. Human tech.

“Zombies… with guns?!” Watching his elite troops get blown apart, Nightbane felt like his heart was bleeding.

“Those cheating bastards! Every last one of them!”

And yet, a question gnawed at him. Where the hell did they get those weapons? He’d raided several Genesis Biotech facilities himself—none of them had anything like this.

Just when hope had started to flicker, it was snuffed out again.

The firepower of those weapons was insane. Nightbane could only pray they’d run out of energy soon—burn through their “ammo.”

And to be fair, Crystal Core Firearms did burn through energy fast. This battle alone would cost Ethan over a thousand B-grade crystal cores.

But Ethan had deep pockets.

Back in Blackhand City, he’d cleaned up at the underground arena, walking away with a fortune in cores.

All thanks to the generous joint sponsorship of Genesis Biotech and the Black Hand Legion…

But once the elite zombies drained the last of their Crystal Core Firearm energy, they didn’t hesitate—they tossed the weapons aside like empty shells. Their eyes burned even brighter with bloodlust, and without missing a beat, they charged back into the fray.

Back to basics. Back to what they did best.

They became meat grinders once more, tearing through the wounded enemy zombies like reapers in a field of corpses.

The scales of victory had now tipped completely in Ethan’s favor.

And he wasn’t about to let up.

He was going to press the advantage, crush the enemy in one final, overwhelming blow. So he played his last card.

The black mist thickened, and the ground began to tremble—deep, rhythmic quakes, like something massive was stirring beneath the surface.

Then they appeared.

One after another, monstrous figures emerged from the fog—Bio-Titans, twisted abominations of the G-virus. Each one was a unique nightmare, radiating raw savagery. Their power levels were easily on par with A-rank threats, and in terms of sheer combat ability, they even outclassed the elite zombies.

Towering at over ten feet tall, their hulking bodies shook the earth with every step. They charged into the battlefield like living tanks, unstoppable and merciless.

Any zombie that tried to block their path was instantly crushed into paste—no resistance, no mercy. Some of the Bio-Titans even retained fragments of their former human abilities—awakened powers that made them even more terrifying.

Nightbane’s pupils contracted sharply. His expression darkened.

It was obvious—these monsters were virus-born too.

“But… I don’t have anything like that…”

“Did I hit the Genesis Biotech bases too early? Before they finished developing these things?”

Now, his forces were being completely overrun. The Zombie Horde was thinning fast, cut down without pause. At this rate, they’d lose more than half their numbers in minutes.

Even the Four War Generals were struggling, each locked in brutal, losing battles.

Kong was badly wounded, still getting manhandled by Bulldozer.

Deathspeaker Falseword couldn’t get a rhythm going—his guitar riffs were being disrupted by Elegy Zombie King’s counter-chords, and PhD’s psychic suppression kept him from focusing.

Hellhound, once proud of his aerial dominance, was now grounded—surrounded by a murder of crows, his airspace completely denied.

And Daisy… was still locked in a ridiculous hair-pulling match with Lil’ Shroom.

Even their subordinates, Bighead and Chompers, were getting chased down and beaten by the Overlord Squad—Big Ears and the rest weren’t giving them a second to breathe.

Nightbane clenched his jaw.

“Looks like I can’t hold back anymore…” he muttered, already preparing to step in himself.

If he didn’t turn this around now, it was game over.

With a single thought, his immense psychic power surged outward. As an SS-class Zombie King—one of the few recorded in the Zombie King Archives alongside Ethan—he had awakened an Absolute Domain of his own. And it was nothing to scoff at.

As his Domain expanded, it quickly spread out over a thousand feet in every direction.

The entire battlefield shifted. The air grew heavy, strange. Reality itself seemed to warp.

He had activated his Absolute Domain—Phantom Domain.

And with it, the phantoms descended.

Bulldozer and the other Zombie Kings felt it immediately—a chill in their cores, a creeping dread. It was the same kind of pressure Ethan’s Domain of the Dead used to suppress lesser zombies.

Now, it was Nightbane’s turn.

A crushing aura radiated from him, unmistakably that of a Zombie King in full power mode.

Bulldozer shook his massive head, trying to fight off the disorientation. But his vision blurred, and for a moment, everything felt… off.

When he looked back at Kong—he froze.

There were two of them.

Two Kongs. Same size. Same wounds. Same furious expression.

“What the hell? A clone?” Bulldozer blinked, confused.

Before he could figure it out, both Kongs roared and lunged at him, fists raised.

Bulldozer panicked, jerking his head to the side just in time to dodge one of the punches—but then, the Kong in front of him vanished.

WHAM!

A brutal blow slammed into the back of his skull. Bulldozer staggered, nearly collapsing.

He spun around—and there was Kong, standing behind him.

But how? What just happened?

And it wasn’t just him.

Across the battlefield, every Zombie King from L.A.—even the regular zombies—were seeing things. Their enemies were shifting, duplicating, vanishing and reappearing. Nothing looked right anymore.

The entire battlefield had become a twisted hallucination.

A nightmare made real.

…