Apocalypse King: Recruiting S-Tier Beauties With My Ruler System
Chapter 190: Stage 3 Stampede!?

Chapter 190: Stage 3 Stampede!?

The Brute’s skull caved under my gauntlet. I felt the crunch in my forearm, wet and brutal, like pounding a watermelon wrapped in rotted leather.

Blood sprayed up my arm, half-congealed and thick with black veins. The body crumpled, convulsed, and then stilled, its head twisted at the wrong angle.

"Two down," I muttered, scanning the yard. "How many more?"

The train depot was a goddamn maze. Cracked tracks, rusted rails, overturned cargo cars. Some containers still had old shipping logos barely visible under scorch marks and splattered gore. And deeper in the yard... I saw movement.

Too many. Too fast.

They weren’t the slow, twitching kind. But the sprinting and violent kind, like starving wolves.

A wave of them, over twenty, poured from between two crushed train cars. They came in different shapes. Some short and hunched, their blades fused to arms like living machetes. Others were tall, lean, and jittering with speed, heads twitching too fast to track.

At the centre, five more Brutes stomped forward like fleshy tanks, their backs hunched with layered muscle.

Stage 2.

All of them.

Though it’s not too hard for me... the rookies...

"Fuck me..." I exhaled, pressing the side of my gauntlet. "Tang Wei! Pull the rookies back. Liang Qiu, Liang Mei—go with them. Zhou Xue stays on me."

"Understood!" her voice came sharp and fast through the comm.

Behind me, Zhou Xue took a position by the rusted scaffolding, drawing her hunting bow without hesitation. Her fingers moved fast, eyes locked.

Mu Qinglan was nowhere to be seen—until I looked left.

A flash of black steel.

The Endless Night shimmered in the sun, slicing through a Speed-type with a whip of ice. Her face was twisted between joy and madness, her lips curled, her hair wild, and her cheeks red. The body fell apart into two neat halves behind her.

Shen Yifei was with her. Her black spear spun in wide arcs, keeping the Ghouls from swarming. One went low and tried to crawl under, but she stomped on its head, splattering bone and brain across the tracks without blinking.

I grinned.

Good.

The girls were fine.

Which left me with the Brutes.

I dashed forward. Dust and rusted gravel exploded beneath my boots. One came at me swinging a jagged pipe fused to its wrist. I ducked under the arc, drove my fist into its ribs, and fired the [Slug Shotgun Core] point-blank.

BOOM.

Half its torso blew out, the rest tumbling backwards like a cut sack of meat.

They roared louder.

Three more rushed in.

Perfect.

The ground cracked beneath me. One Brute down. Two more coming.

I ducked low, my gauntlets gleaming with blood and Qi. One swung a pipe like a bat, roaring as its mutated muscles bunched beneath blotchy, oily skin. I lunged inside the swing, my knee driving up under its jaw. Bone cracked. I followed up with a shotgun burst from the Crushing Moon, and half its skull turned to wet ash.

"Behind!" Zhou Xue shouted.

I twisted. The second Brute was already mid-swing—something long, rusted, maybe a car bumper. It whistled toward my head.

Too close.

I took the hit on my gauntlet, felt the metal groan, and rolled with it. Pain lanced up my arm. My feet dug into the dirt, skidding a few steps.

He was strong.

Stronger than the last ones.

But not smarter.

I bared my teeth, blood still warm on my lips. "Come on, fucker."

I shifted my stance and smashed my fist into its side, channelling Earth Qi through my core and into the gauntlets. The impact was solid. The ribs cracked. The zombie staggered, leaking black fluid, its face twisted in rage.

Then it shrieked.

Not screamed—shrieked. Loud. Wrong. Like a siren echoing through its lungs.

The sound made every other infected freeze for a heartbeat. Then I saw it.

Something was moving in the distance across the field of overturned trains and mangled debris.

No—changing.

A Brute, half its torso caved in, but still standing, was trembling violently. Muscles tore open. Bone split and regrew. Its size doubled. Its skin peeled back into raw meat and cables of muscle.

The smell turned worse, sharp and oily.

A System notification blinked faintly in my vision:

[John, be careful!]

[System Warning: Multiple Stage 3 Signatures detected!]

"Shit." I dropped low, spinning to the side as Zhou Xue fired another arrow past my shoulder. It thudded into a Ghoul’s eye. She had my back. Good.

Tang Wei’s voice came through the radio. "John! More incoming! We’re falling back—taking the rookies and archers!"

"Do it!" I roared, then turned to Zhou Xue. "Go with them."

She hesitated.

"Go! I’ve got this!"

She nodded once and sprinted after the others.

That left me.

Alone.

I smirked, heart pounding.

Then the Stage 3 Brute charged.

It wasn’t just strong.

It was fast.

We scattered.

Mu Qinglan went right, blade trailing frost across the dirt. Shen Yifei backed up, launching a piercing thrust that forced it to angle its bulk away.

I met it head-on.

Fists out, Qi roaring through my dantian.

It was time to push my limits.

***

The monster charged. Every footstep it took left craters in the concrete, cracked and steaming from the pressure of its mass. A Stage 3 Brute wasn’t just muscle—it was pure carnage wrapped in meat, like a siege weapon with teeth.

I darted left. Its fist slammed down where I’d been a heartbeat ago. The impact sent a shockwave through the ground, spraying dirt into my eyes.

I didn’t stop.

My gauntlets pulsed with Qi. I jumped, twisting in the air, and drove both fists into the back of its knee. There was a nice give in the thick tendons shredding under my blows, but not enough. It howled, and its backhand clipped my ribs.

Pain. Blinding and deep.

I hit the ground hard, rolled twice, then spat blood.

Mu Qinglan moved in. Her sword danced, carving deep gashes across its thigh, leaving a frozen trail that spread like blooming frostbite. The Endless Night sang in the air, wild and hungry.

Shen Yifei’s spear came from the opposite angle, stabbing under the Brute’s arm and drawing black sludge with every precise jab. Her breath was steady, her form almost graceful.

I stood, wiped my mouth, and charged again.

This wasn’t just a fight.

It was a test.

Every movement, swing, and jolt of pain sharpened me. The Primordial Tyrant Body Scripture pulsed through my core, drawing in Qi from three women who meant everything to me.

Mu Qinglan’s Ice Qi cooled my mind, keeping my footwork tight and lethal. Shen Yifei’s Fire Qi surged in my limbs, crackling with heat, turning every strike into an explosion. Jiang Roulan’s Earth Qi was quieter—settled in my bones, stance, and spine. Unshakable. Centred.

It flowed through me now, mixing inside the Scripture’s furnace.

The Stage 3 Brute roared and charged again, its massive arms tearing up gravel with each swing. I didn’t back down. My boots dug in. Earth Qi reinforced my balance. I tanked the hit with my shoulder, twisted under the second, and countered with a straight punch to its ribs.

The Crushing Moon gauntlets cracked loudly as my fist connected.

The monster didn’t slow. It grinned. Blood poured from its mouth, black and thick, but it wasn’t finished.

Neither was I.

My dantian swirled with rising pressure. Not unstable. Not overwhelming.

Rising.

It responded to contact, to combat, to danger.

That was how the Scripture grew—through sex, through training, through raw violence.

I baited the Brute in again. Sidestepped low. Ice Qi flooded my arms, and I drove an uppercut into its throat. The blow knocked it back, gagging.

I closed in, raining down hits.

Left. Right. Spin and slam.

The Brute swung wild, dazed, but still breathing.

That’s when I felt the shift. From deeper in the depot, more Stage 2s were coming—then one, no, two others began to mutate. Their bodies rippled, flesh thickening, bones cracking.

More Stage 3s.

"Shit," I hissed.

Then she was there again...

Mu Qinglan.

Laughing like a devil, her eyes glowing as she danced into the fray, her black Zhanmadao gleaming in her hands.

The Endless Night carved through a Speed-type in a single brutal arc, her feet sliding through gore with the grace of a woman enjoying herself far too much.

"John~" she giggled. "I missed you!"

"You picked a great time to show up," I called out, dodging a swing and crushing a Brute’s kneecap with my gauntlet.

Shen Yifei stabbed one through the back with her spear, her braid flicking over her shoulder as she kicked off a corpse, flushed and breathing hard. "Don’t ignore me either, idiot!"

Zhou Xue and Jiang Roulan fired from the flank. Arrows whistled through the air, striking clean and deep into rotted skulls. Roulan’s tonfa cracked another’s neck clean to the side.

Tang Wei barked orders at the recruits, forcing them to pull back. I spotted Liang Mei and Liang Qiu covering the rear, arrows trembling in their hands, but they fired.

They were scared. But they didn’t run.

Good.

I dropped my stance low as another Stage 3 Brute lumbered toward me, twice the size of a normal man, arms like concrete pillars.

Mu Qinglan appeared beside me, her blade resting against her shoulder.

"Back-to-back?" she purred.

My lips curled. "Let’s make them regret evolving."

The real fight was just starting.