Apocalypse King: Recruiting S-Tier Beauties With My Ruler System
Chapter 163: What Devours the Dead

Chapter 163: What Devours the Dead

We pushed deeper into the back corridor—each step quieter than the last.

The lights here were different. Flickering, yes, but not all broken. They blinked in a steady rhythm, almost timed. An old maintenance grid was still feeding partial current, wiring hissing softly inside the walls. But it wasn’t the sound that bothered me.

It was the smell.

Like meat left to rot in a sealed coffin. Sweet at first, then acidic. Every breath felt like it left something behind in my throat. I covered my mouth with the edge of my shirt.

"I smell blood," Liang Mei muttered.

"No," I said. "It’s worse."

The corridor opened up into a chamber, ten meters wide, much smaller than the room behind us, and filled with debris. Bent rebar jutted from the walls. A forklift rested against a collapsed stairwell, its metal skeleton picked clean.

And the bones.

Everywhere.

Crawlers. In pieces. Limbs twisted like rope. Backs torn open from inside. Some were fresh. Some were old, but half devoured like husks.

In the centre, it crouched.

The Ghoul.

It’s back hunched, limbs longer than before, skin hanging from its body like paper soaked in oil. Its spine jutted upward like jagged mountain peaks, twitching with every movement. Its arms were buried elbow-deep into a corpse’s ribcage—no ceremony, no hunger. Just... instinct.

It didn’t chew.

It drank.

A slurping, sucking sound filled the chamber, wet and hollow, as if it were trying to extract more than just blood.

Tang Wei stopped beside me. "It’s... feeding."

"I have no idea..."

"It’s disgusting."

Yifei complained.

"Can’t we just kill it now, John?"

Mu Qinglan’s voice caused it to shift, still kneeling, and gorging, but now the skin along its back started to pulse.

Once. Twice.

Veins bulged.

The sack of flesh rippled unnaturally, like something was moving inside it. Like bones were bending. Shifting.

Then it stopped feeding.

The head turned.

There were no eyes. No lips. Just leathery flesh stretched across its skull, but we all felt it.

That gaze.

Even without sockets, it found us.

And it smiled.

The group froze.

Chen Xun stumbled a step back, his arrow trembling against the string. Liang Qiu lowered her weapon slightly, her eyes locked on the creature, but not blink. Even Zhou Xue’s stance, normally firm, shifted—her feet dragging an inch as she recoiled.

In the centre of the chamber, the Ghoul slowly began to rise.

Its limbs extended one at a time—deliberate, unnatural. The movements weren’t smooth. They dragged.

The joints swelled and strained beneath the skin, like the bones inside were too large for the frame that held them. Its spine snapped upright in a long ripple, vertebrae swelling and locking into new shapes. The sound of it was muffled and wet, rearranging bone and meat beneath a layer of rotting cloth.

Then its head turned.

Not quickly.

It twisted to the side, the skin on its neck bunching and tearing slightly as it moved. There were no eyes. No nose. Just smooth, slick tissue stretched over a skull that looked more alien than human. A faint ridge along the front began to split, slowly parting down the centre.

It didn’t open like a mouth.

It tore open, straight down from chin to navel.

A vertical slit, lined with twitching, red-black muscle and rows of pulsing flesh that looked too wet, too soft, like something that had never seen open air. The mouth wasn’t something for speaking... but designed to consume, devour.

Then the lights flickered.

Once.

Twice.

And the sound began—low at first. Bones grinding. Flesh separating. Tendons tearing like soaked rope.

The Ghoul didn’t flinch. It embraced the noise. Its shoulders swelled, then cracked outward. Arms lengthened. Fingers snapped into segments. Its legs bent at the knees and then again at the ankle joints, reforming with sharp, fluid jerks as if something inside was clawing for more room.

Something was happening to its skin.

The colour changed—from sickly pale to a slick, glistening grey, like something born underwater and dragged into the heat. The blood from the Crawlers it had devoured clung to its body like oil, soaking in instead of running off.

Its breathing changed, too. Deeper. Hungrier.

It wasn’t just transforming.

It was becoming something new.

And this wasn’t the end.

Its body convulsed again.

This time, the sound wasn’t just internal.

Something split open down its back—a wet tearing that made Liang Mei gag beside me. Spines erupted, thin and long like exposed roots, curling upward from its shoulder blades. They writhed in the air like they were tasting it.

One of them snapped sideways, cracking into a nearby pipe with a loud clang. Sparks fell. The lights flickered again.

Then the smell hit us.

Worse than rot.

Worse than blood.

Like everything it had eaten had fermented inside and now seeped through its pores—acrid and organic, layered with bile and something bitter I couldn’t place. The Crawlers’ corpses had begun to melt where the fluid touched them, their bodies dissolving into a black slurry that hissed softly.

"Don’t breathe through your mouth," Tang Wei said, her voice low but hoarse.

Liang Qiu was shaking.

I could see her fingers twitch where she held her bow, her body leaning too far to the left, trying to put space between her and the thing in front of us.

Chen Xun had backed against the wall. His quiver clattered at his hip. His mouth moved like he wanted to say something, but no words came.

Deng Hua’s weapon dropped a few centimetres. Its legs bent, ready to move... but not forward.

Even Liang Mei had stopped breathing. I saw her lips parting in shallow gasps, and her shoulders locked. She wasn’t looking at the Ghoul anymore. She was staring through it. Frozen.

Their Spirit was low.

They weren’t ready for this.

The Ghoul’s limbs cracked again.

Not violently—just a long, slow pull of pressure as it lifted both arms and opened that vertical maw wider.

A sound escaped its throat this time—not speech, but something closer to a choked hiss.

Then its feet shifted.

Only a few inches.

But the tiles cracked under the weight.

It was testing its new form.

And it liked what it felt.

I stepped forward and raised one gauntlet slowly.

"Back," I said, not turning my head. "Now."

No one moved.

I repeated it. Louder.

"Get back."

Zhou Xue was the first to obey.

She grabbed Liang Mei by the wrist and pulled her toward the hallway.

Chen Xun followed, stumbling as he turned. Deng Hua caught Liang Qiu before she fell and dragged her with him.

The others stayed.

Qinglan.

Tang Wei.

Roulan.

Yifei.

Fighters.

The door behind us was still open—but not for long.

As the students ran, the Ghoul took its first full step forward.

It didn’t sprint.

It walked.

Confident.

Predatory.

Like it wasn’t afraid of anything.

And that meant the time to hesitate was over.

Even with my current spirit, there were tingling sensations travelling up my spine, an uncomfortable warning in my chest and mind. Danger.

"Qinglan, Roulan—can you shut the door?"

However, they seemed a little dazed by the monster’s appearance.

"Qinglan, Roulan—shut it. Now."

They moved without hesitation. Roulan kicked the door’s inner bolt while Qinglan yanked the rusted locking bar into place. I stepped in and slammed my gauntlet against the latch, crushing the metal into place with a solid crunch. It wouldn’t hold forever, but it didn’t need to.

Just long enough.

I turned back.

Six of us were left in the chamber: me, Qinglan, Roulan, Tang Wei, Zhou Xue, and Shen Yifei.

The rest were behind the door.

Safe.

The Ghoul watched from ten meters away—spine curled slightly, limbs swaying with grotesque weight. Its skin had finished changing: no longer pale, but wet and grey, slick like a newborn beast. Its body was twitching—each joint shifting with thick, deliberate tension.

The sound it made wasn’t a growl.

It was breathing.

Low. Wet. Rhythmic.

Like it was savouring the moment.

My spirit stat was higher than most of the group, but even so, I could feel it pressing against my skin—an instinctive, bone-deep discomfort that refused to fade.

It moved.

One step.

Then another.

Slow at first.

Then it charged.

No scream.

Just the brutal sound of claws shredding across the concrete.

"Spread and fire!" I shouted.

Tang Wei dropped to a knee and fired—slug round to the left shoulder. It staggered for half a second, but didn’t fall. Roulan lit it up next, full-auto burst. The bullets stitched across its flank, but the meat swallowed them. They didn’t pass through.

I fired both gauntlets—double slugs to the chest. The recoil rocked me back a step. Gore sprayed—but it still kept coming.

Shen Yifei intercepted it.

Her spear drove in, full-force, right beneath the collarbone. A direct strike.

It gripped the shaft.

Then hurled Yifei sideways like she weighed nothing.

She crashed into a shelving rack, metal clattering down. I heard her groan—she was still moving.

Zhou Xue stepped into the gap and loosed two arrows in quick succession. The first one slammed into the thigh; the second struck the creature’s exposed spine.

It flinched.

The first real reaction we’d seen.

Qinglan lunged from the right—The Endless Night flashing across its chest. Her swing struck clean, the blade biting deep into the flesh.

It twisted with an inhuman motion, but didn’t flee.

Adapting.

Watching.

Its vertical mouth opened again. Not to scream—but to breathe in.

Like it could taste our movements.

"We hold here," I said coldly. "No retreat."

And then it came again.