Apocalypse King: Recruiting S-Tier Beauties With My Ruler System
Chapter 92: Three Ways to Die

Chapter 92: Three Ways to Die

March 17th, 20xx— 10:36 PM

Longwan University — Linbei Campus, North Lab Block, Sector C2

—

Guo Fan’s eyes widened as he opened his mouth.

I didn’t lower the gun.

He backed away. Hands raised slightly. Palms sweating.

The first infected slammed into the barricade.

It hit so hard that the shelf behind it shuddered. Dust dropped from the ceiling in a slow, grey curtain. The entire wall creaked once and settled again.

Liang Qiu stood with a steel pipe in one hand and something colder in her eyes.

The second one hit harder.

The barricade bent inward slightly. One of the legs snapped out of joint and clattered sideways.

"Reinforce it," I snapped at Guo Fan as I pushed myself against the frame, grabbing something heavy and dragging it with my legs... my muscular thighs a complex that I had from being young... not it’s even worse.

John... do you hate muscular women?

The idiot didn’t move, as my mind thought of John, I spoke to him to help soothe my panic, fear and uncertainty... yet I knew John could lead me through this... that’s why I had to become better, smarter... and a woman suited to stand beside him.

He didn’t move.

Another thump. Something clawed through the broken frame, fingers twitching wildly past the boards.

"Guo Fan!"

He turned.

But not toward the barricade.

He bolted for the chemical access door.

"No—!"

He yanked it open without even looking and slipped into the dark.

Then the screaming started.

I couldn’t see what killed him.

But I heard it.

Crunch. Wet. Fast. Bone splitting open like a fruit someone didn’t want. I fired twice into the darkness, just to cover the noise. Two bullets wasted.

"Close it!" I barked.

Liang Qiu moved fast, slammed the hatch shut and kicked a heavy crate in front of it. Deng Hua watched the whole thing unfold with no expression at all.

He turned to me.

"We only got two paths now, Ma’am!"

"I see..."

My thoughts were muddled, but I just told and asked myself what John would do. Then realised I couldn’t keep treating these people like inanimate objects.

Deng Hua didn’t look shaken. Just sweaty. His knuckles were white on the crowbar, like it had fused to his fingers.

"Hold your post," I said, breath tight. "Don’t get clever."

I turned back to the front barricade. Liang Qiu had already returned to position, crouched low behind the broken desk, breathing steady. The pipe rested against her shoulder like a second spine. I trusted her to swing when it mattered.

A groan echoed through the hall, low, broken, and wet... like something trying to speak through its stomach.

Then the dragging started again. Slower this time. Heavier... something different from a stage one zombie.

John explained everything to me about their colours. Green is fast, red has blades... and are dangerous, and the big guys can transform from a big lump to a rapid and deadly tank-like monster.

They were building mass on the other side.

"Good work, Deng Hua!" I called out. "Check Chen Xun."

His face looked confused at first. But he moved without complaint. Slid into the side alcove and crouched beside the wounded scout. I caught the rustle of him adjusting gauze, the soft clatter of a knife handle. No words. No moans.

Chen was still alive. Barely.

I crouched behind the overturned shelf. Pulled my knees in. Gun resting against the edge, barrel up.

Sweat rolled into the corner of my eye, and I didn’t blink it away.

There was a high-pitched ringing in the ceiling now. Pressure shift. Probably the air system is finally giving out.

My thoughts crawled back toward John again. I didn’t want them to.

He was probably clearing some ruined hallway, cool and unreadable as always. Calm voice. Precise eyes. He wouldn’t be panicking like me. Wouldn’t be thinking about my thighs or how stiff I sounded whenever I opened my mouth.

He’d be thinking about the exits. The angles. The math of it.

I envied that.

I hated that I envied that.

John was my boyfriend and partner... not competition.

Liang Qiu shifted beside me. Not toward the sound — toward me.

"You good?"

I blinked.

"Fine."

She stared a second longer than necessary.

"Keep your focus on the front," I said.

A pause.

Then she nodded and turned back.

From the corridor came an unfamiliar sound — metal scraping on cement.

It wasn’t claws or feet but something heavier...

The third wave had arrived.

—

The front barricade exploded inward... not cracked, or bent... It shattered.

The Brute came through first — eight feet of stitched white muscle, chunks of rotting flesh barely hanging on. It moved wrong — not stiff like a corpse, not lumbering like the infected I knew. It flowed, thick goo stretching between the tears in its body as it dragged itself through the broken door.

Its stomach split open with a wet, yawning sound — teeth. So many teeth. The mouth there snapped twice, spraying white mucus across the floor.

Behind it, something faster.

Something green.

A blur snapped across the gap, barely human-shaped — wiry arms, elongated fingers, skin drawn tight like someone had vacuum-sealed it. The Green shot sideways off a broken shelf and clung to the wall like a lizard.

My gut clenched.

They were both looking at me.

No. Smelling me.

Their heads jerked slightly, mouths opening — twitching — zeroing in on something only they could feel. It was my core. My system marker. Whatever John called it... I had... whatever made me different now... they could sense it.

He said I was like a delicious meal to them... once they evolved!

Deng Hua roared, swinging the crowbar.

The Brute didn’t even react. It barrelled forward, swatting Deng aside like a drunk shoving a chair out of the way. He slammed into the wall and dropped, weapon clattering out of reach.

Liang Qiu lunged — pipe raised — but the Green moved first.

It dropped from the wall, hit the floor, and vanished in a blur of motion.

Straight for me.

I didn’t think.

I moved.

The metal bat came up on instinct. I caught the thing’s slash with the side of the bat — a sickening crack against its claw — and spun off the impact.

It skidded back on two limbs, hissing, bone fingers twitching.

The Brute screamed.

The sound was lower, deeper — like an earthquake before a landslide.

I didn’t wait for it to finish.

I sprinted left, toward the ruined lab benches, toward space. The Green bolted after me, lashing out at my legs, my arms, anything it could reach.

Fast. Too fast.

But I was faster now.

Not from strength. From need.

I ducked as low as possible, then slid under a toppled cabinet, spun up on the far side — and smashed the bat upward as the Green tried to follow. It caught the blow in its ribs, and something snapped.

It shrieked — a high, glassy sound — but didn’t fall.

Movement to my right — the Brute shifted, twitching violently.

White goo poured from its wounds. Its body twisted unnaturally.

Then it sprinted.

Faster than it should have been. Way faster.

I barely threw myself sideways in time.

The Brute slammed into the wall where I’d been standing, blowing chunks of cement into the air like a grenade had gone off.

The Green used the distraction to lunge again.

I met it midair, teeth gritted, swinging the bat in a tight, ugly arc. Connected with its neck. It crumpled sideways, rebounded off a table, and screeched again — but it wasn’t dead.

None of them ever died easy.

The horde spilt in behind them — fifty, sixty bodies — a wall of grasping hands and dragging teeth.

Liang Qiu was fighting near the supply closet, swinging the pipe mechanically, keeping Chen Xun shielded.

Deng Hua was back up, bleeding from his forehead, gripping a desk leg like a club.

But they weren’t the targets.

Only me.

The Brute turned, mucus boiling out of its stomach mouth, and charged again.

I ran.

I ducked, dodged, feinted left, then right — legs burning, lungs searing — the bat gripped so tight in my hand that my knuckles went numb.

The pistol was useless now — four shots left, maybe three — and nothing slow enough to shoot without wasting bullets.

I weaved through the dead, the living, the half-living.

The Green blurred into my side vision again, slashing at my thighs this time. But I kicked it, hard, catching it across the jaw. It spun, screeching, but not down.

The Brute was slower now, regenerating wounds slowing it, but not by much.

Another second.

Another breath.

I couldn’t keep this up.

I wasn’t John.

I wasn’t—

The chemical lab door shuddered behind me.

For a second, I thought the Brute had broken something else.

But it wasn’t the Brute.

It was something heavier.

Boots.

Then a thick pair of hands wrapped around me... lifting me into the air as I saw his face, sweaty... covered in dirt, dust and blood.

But my heart thumped... and almost exploded.

He came for me again!

"JOHN!"

Search the lightnovelworld.cc website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.