Chapter 654: Control?

“Black-Skin Zombies…”

Ethan recognized them right away. These things were what happened when regular zombies got too hungry—so hungry they lost all sense of self and started devouring their own kind. The result? These twisted, feral creatures.

Black-Skin Zombies weren’t intelligent. They were pure instinct—kill and consume. Nothing more.

But their presence meant something else, something far more important: intelligent undead weren’t far behind.

Ethan immediately dropped his flight altitude, tailing the pack of Black-Skin Zombies from above.

Below, the barren wasteland stretched out like a graveyard. Bones littered the ground, piled layer upon layer.

The Black-Skin Zombies tore across the terrain, their feet crunching down on brittle skeletons, shattering them into dust. Bone shards flew in every direction.

They didn’t care. Their faces were twisted and grotesque, with hollow eye sockets that stared into nothing. They looked like nightmares made flesh.

Their mouths never stopped—constant, guttural howls poured out, wild and frenzied, as they surged toward a single direction.

Sure enough, not long after, Ethan spotted a group of regular zombies in the middle of the chaos, locked in a desperate fight against the Black-Skin horde.

Leading them was a Zombie King—easily over 6’7″, built like a tank. He let out a thunderous roar, swung a fist the size of a cinder block, and smashed it straight into a Black-Skin Zombie’s skull.

BOOM!

With a sickening crunch, the creature’s head exploded like a melon, and its body was launched over a hundred feet through the air.

Thick, black blood sprayed everywhere, reeking like rotting meat left out in the sun.

The stench only made the other Black-Skin Zombies more frenzied. They went berserk, charging in from every direction, completely fearless.

“Boss! We can’t hold them off much longer!” one of the lesser zombies shouted from behind, his body soaked in black gore, the stench clinging to him like a curse. Hunger gnawed at him so badly he was barely holding onto his sanity.

“Just hang in there! We can make it out of this!” the Zombie King barked, trying to rally them.

“No one makes it out of the Exile Zone, boss! We’re gonna die here!” another zombie screamed, his voice cracking with panic.

The hunger, the relentless assault—it was pushing them all to the edge.

The Black-Skin Zombies kept coming, their monstrous faces closing in, like demons clawing their way out of hell, ready to drag them down.

Above them, Ethan’s aircraft hovered silently.

The hatch was already open. He stood at the edge, looking down with a calm, unreadable expression.

“So these are the zombies from another planet, huh? Finally, some intelligent ones,” he muttered to himself.

Then, without hesitation, he stepped forward—and dropped.

From five hundred feet up, he plummeted straight down.

As he fell, the power of the Domain of the Dead surged around him, radiating outward in a wave of raw, oppressive force.

He wasn’t just falling—he was descending like a mountain crashing from the sky.

BOOOOM!

The moment he hit the ground, the earth shattered. Cracks spiderwebbed in every direction, and chunks of reddish-brown rock exploded into the air.

Every single Black-Skin Zombie in the area was obliterated on impact. Their bodies burst apart in a spray of blood and gore, torn to pieces by the sheer force of Ethan’s landing.

He wiped the field clean in an instant.

The frenzied howls of the Black-Skin Zombies stopped dead. Silence fell like a hammer—sudden, jarring.

The Zombie King, who’d been locked in brutal combat just seconds ago, stood frozen, panting, his rage still burning. But now, all his enemies were gone. Just like that.

“What the hell…?”

“What just happened?”

A few of the zombies were still mid-swing, claws raised, their bodies frozen in place like statues.

The Zombie King’s glowing red eyes darted around, confusion and shock spreading across his face.

A lone figure stood atop a jagged boulder, his silhouette sharp against the scorched, desolate landscape. The hot wind howled past, whipping his clothes around him like tattered flags.

His face was striking—handsome, but cold. Detached. His eyes, calm and unreadable, stared down at the group below.

“It’s him…” the power-type Zombie King muttered, scanning the field of mangled Black-Skin Zombie corpses. Something clicked in his mind.

There was no doubt—this man had done it.

And the sheer power it must’ve taken… it shook him to his core.

What kind of strength is this?

Ethan, meanwhile, was sizing up the Zombie King. The guy wasn’t weak—S-rank, clearly. A brute-force type, but with a surprising level of intelligence for a zombie.

“Where is this place?” Ethan asked, his voice calm but firm.

“The… The Exile Zone…” the Zombie King stammered, clearly intimidated.

Ethan raised an eyebrow. That name didn’t sound promising.

The Zombie King noticed his reaction and looked surprised. “You… don’t know? If you piss off the overlord of Solaris Citadel, they exile you here. For zombies, it’s the cruelest punishment there is.”

“Oh…” Ethan nodded slowly, starting to piece it together.

Yeah, dumping zombies in a place like this? That was brutal. The sun alone would cook them into Black-Skin freaks, and if that didn’t kill them, the others would.

And that “overlord of Solaris Citadel” he mentioned? Probably another high-level Zombie King—maybe even stronger.

“How long until I can get out of here?” Ethan asked, not interested in the politics. His priority was clear: get out.

“This is the center of the Exile Zone,” the Zombie King said, his voice heavy with resignation. “We don’t know how long it takes to escape.”

“…The center?” Ethan’s brow furrowed.

He’d been walking for days, even flying for a full day straight—and somehow, he’d ended up in the middle of this place?

Thinking back… yeah, he might’ve gone the wrong way.

He hadn’t really considered distance when he first arrived. But now it was obvious—this planet was nothing like Earth. The scale was massive.

I got careless, Ethan thought. Next time, I need to be more cautious.

Behind the Zombie King, one of the lesser zombies slumped forward, his voice low and hopeless. “It’s useless. No zombie’s ever made it out of the Exile Zone. We’re all gonna end up as Black-Skin freaks…”

Ethan tilted his head. “How’d you guys get dumped here in the first place?”

“Aircraft,” the zombie muttered. “They threw us out of a ship. We flew for three days and nights before we landed here…”

His voice trailed off as he lowered his head, despair settling in like a weight.

The others looked just as broken. Three days of flight? Who knew how far that was? There was no way they could walk out of here on foot. Not in these bodies.

Hopelessness spread like a virus, feeding into their already fraying minds. The hunger, the heat, the endless fighting—it was pushing them to the brink.

“RRAAAHHH—!”

“I can’t take it anymore! I’d rather die here! I’m starving…”

“Hold on! You have to stay in control!” the Zombie King shouted, grabbing the crazed one by the shoulders, trying to restrain him.

But the despair was contagious.

The others started to lose it too—eyes wild, breath ragged, snarls rising in their throats. They were slipping, one by one, beyond the King’s control.

“Control? With what? I’ve got nothing left!”

“I can’t do this anymore…”

“We’re never getting out. Might as well end it now!”

“RAAAHHH—I’m done holding back!”

The air was thick with rage and desperation. The group was seconds away from tearing itself apart.

“Hey! What the hell are you doing?!” the Zombie King roared, trying to rein them in. His body was tougher, more resistant to hunger, so he could still hold on—but the others? They were too far gone.

Then, just as the chaos was about to explode—

A deep mechanical hum echoed from above.

All heads turned upward.

A sleek aircraft descended slowly behind Ethan, its autopilot guiding it down with smooth precision. The hull gleamed silver in the sunlight, reflecting a blinding shine. It looked like something out of a sci-fi movie—sleek, deadly, and impossibly advanced.

The moment it touched down, the entire battlefield went still.

The frenzied zombies froze mid-snarl, their madness snuffed out in an instant. They stood there, motionless, stunned.

You could hear a pin drop.

Only the wind remained, whistling across the wasteland…