## To save his precious first love, the so-called “light of his life,” my boyfriend didn’t hesitate to shove me straight into a horde of zombies. When I opened my eyes again, I had already become one of them. And I swore, I would kill him. Ironically, fate had other plans—he became the Zombie King. But that didn’t matter. I still planned to kill him. If I couldn’t beat him head-on, I’d use every trick in the book. “Ahhh! Help me! Someone, please!” A piercing scream echoed from downstairs. I hesitated for a moment, but my boyfriend, Chris, took off like a sprinter, rushing toward the sound. A few of his teammates exchanged glances and smirked knowingly. “Looks like the Captain’s in a hurry. I bet it’s Anna Lane—the goddess he’s been pining after forever. His first love. Still hasn’t gotten over her, has he?” Someone coughed awkwardly, trying to shut them up. “Hey, his girlfriend is right here. Watch what you’re saying.” Another one chuckled. “Relax, it’s just a joke. You’re not mad, are you?” Mad? I wanted to shoot him right between the eyes. But this was Chris’s squad, his people. I had no power here, no influence. Picking a fight with them would only make things worse. So I swallowed my anger and kept quiet. It wasn’t like they cared what I thought anyway. Still, when Chris didn’t come back after a while, everyone started to look uneasy. “We should go check on them,” someone suggested. I didn’t want to go. But if I refused, they’d brand me as selfish, a liability, someone who didn’t care about the team. And I couldn’t let them drag my name through the mud. Reluctantly, I followed them downstairs. What we saw made my stomach drop. Anna Lane stood in the middle of the zombie horde, surrounded by a faint protective shield. She was screaming her lungs out as the zombies pressed closer and closer. The light of her shield was dimming rapidly—she wouldn’t last much longer. Among the horde were high-tier zombies. Trying to rescue her would be a suicide mission. Even the ones who had been shouting about saving their “goddess” moments ago went quiet. Chris was hurling fireballs at the zombies, but they barely made a dent in the crowd. His attacks did nothing to stop the tide. And then, he crouched down, his face buried in his hands. Was he… crying? I had never seen him like this before. When I was in danger, he always stayed calm, calculating the risks before swooping in at the last second to “gracefully” save the day. If I ever voiced even the slightest dissatisfaction, he’d look at me like I was being unreasonable. “It’s for the good of the team,” he’d say, his tone clipped. “I can’t prioritize you over everyone else. Can’t you be a little more understanding?” Or worse: “It’s the apocalypse. Death is normal. Consider this practice for the day you’re really surrounded by zombies. At least then you won’t embarrass yourself by breaking down.” Sometimes, he didn’t even bother pretending. “Why can’t you be more like Anna? She’s soft, sweet—everything a girl should be. You’re too independent. It’s exhausting. You make me feel like I’ve got nothing to offer you.” But the man who claimed to put the team above all else had risked our lives countless times for Anna. Funny how his priorities shifted when it came to her. Disgusting. “What do we do, Boss?” one of the teammates asked hesitantly. Chris’s eyes were bloodshot as he looked around, desperate. Then, his gaze locked onto me. In that split second, I knew something was wrong. Before I could react, he shoved me forward—straight into the horde. The zombies, who had been fixated on Anna, turned their attention to me. Their hollow, black eyes gleamed with hunger. Panicking, I tried to retreat, but elemental blasts from behind forced me back. I looked toward the team, hoping for help, but their faces were cold, indifferent. Some even aimed their attacks at my weak spots, ensuring I couldn’t fight back. These people, my so-called teammates, had turned into executioners. In the end, I was devoured by the horde. And Chris? He used the time I bought with my life to save Anna. If I could do it all over again, I’d make sure to kill that bastard with my own hands.
When I opened my eyes, the pain was gone. Zombies shuffled around me, occasionally stepping on my mangled body. But none of them attacked me. Confused, I sat up, only to see that half my flesh had been chewed off. My stomach had a gaping hole, and when I reached inside, I could feel my intestines. Oh. I was dead. Or rather, undead.
The next few days were a blur. I was starving. The urge to bite, to devour, consumed me. I managed to find a few rats, but every time I tried to eat, dozens of other zombies swarmed in, fighting over scraps. I couldn’t even get a bite of fur. Frustrated and weak, I sat in a daze. Then, I heard voices. Human voices. In this zombie-infested world, hearing people was as rare as winning the lottery. Where there were humans, there was a fight. And where there was a fight, there were high-level ability users. As a low-level zombie, I had no strength to charge into a battle. Doing so would be suicide. But risk and opportunity are two sides of the same coin. If I wanted revenge, I had to grow stronger. And to do that, I needed crystal cores. These ability users probably had plenty of them.
I crept closer to the voices, careful to stay just outside their detection range. My experience as a scout helped me gauge the right distance—close enough to watch, far enough to avoid being noticed. The other zombies? They charged in blindly, throwing themselves at the ability users and dying instantly. But when they died, crystal cores burst from their skulls. My mouth watered at the sight. While the ability users were distracted, I snuck around, scavenging the cores from the fallen zombies. The unpurified energy was chaotic and weak, but it was better than nothing. After swallowing a few, I felt a faint surge of power coursing through me. Curious, I turned to a nearby zombie that was crawling forward. “Sit,” I commanded in my mind. The zombie paused, then clumsily crouched down, obeying the order. A grin spread across my decayed face. This was just the beginning.
I always had a special ability—a rare support skill: control. But it only worked on my own kind. I couldn’t control zombies whose minds operated on a different wavelength. In the human world, my ability was seen as useless, almost laughable. But among humans, it was feared. People worried I’d use it against them. Because of that fear, every time I went on a mission, the crystal cores that were rightfully mine were taken away under one excuse or another. I died without even having the power to control a single person. But now? The tables had turned. A grin tugged at the corners of my mouth as I observed the ongoing battle. Both sides were locked in a stalemate. The humans were strong and experienced in killing zombies. Even when multiple high-tier zombies attacked at once, they could hold their ground. But humans had limits. Their stamina would run out, while zombies had no such weakness. Patiently, I waited, watching countless zombies sacrifice themselves. Finally, the humans began to show signs of exhaustion. The high-tier zombies noticed this shift, too. They began preparing to strike. Everyone wanted what the humans carried—their purified crystal cores. These weren’t ordinary cores. They were refined from hundreds, if not thousands, of raw cores, packed with immense energy. Eating just one could elevate a low-tier zombie to a mid-tier one. I needed those. But so did the high-tier zombies around me, all of whom were stronger and deadlier than I was.
After sneaking off and swallowing countless crystal cores, I let out a satisfied belch. My body, once mangled and skeletal, had begun to regenerate. Thin layers of flesh covered my bones like a fragile membrane, almost like plastic wrap. In just one day, I had made this much progress. I should have been content. But I wasn’t. Greed had always been my driving force. Even when I was human, I knew that fortune favored the bold. It was why I left the safety of the quarantine zones to join a mercenary squad. Sure, I died miserably in the end, but it was still better than living a life of poverty and humiliation. Then, a scream snapped me out of my thoughts. I turned toward the sound. The humans were being overwhelmed by the zombie horde, still putting up a desperate fight. That’s when the high-tier zombies, who had been biding their time, finally joined the fray. After a brutal battle, the zombies’ sheer numbers won out. The humans were defeated. But zombies don’t share. As soon as the external fight ended, the high-tier zombies turned on each other, vying for the spoils. I don’t know who started it. All I heard was a piercing howl, and suddenly the horde split into factions. To avoid suspicion, I blended into one of the groups. Three-way chaos broke out. The high-tier zombies stood atop the rubble like alpha wolves, commanding their respective factions to attack. The low-tier zombies below clashed violently, while the high-tier ones above fought with vicious precision, each aiming for their opponent’s head to rip out the crystal cores inside.
Three high-tier zombies dominated the battlefield: one with teleportation abilities, one with tentacle-like appendages, and one with regeneration. The fight was absolute chaos—low-tier zombies tearing each other apart below, while the high-tier ones battled relentlessly above. The first to fall was the regenerating zombie. Its recovery speed was impressive, but its opponents were faster. The tentacle zombie wrapped around it, rendering it helpless. When it was finally thrown from the heights, it hit the ground with a sickening splat, reduced to a puddle of gore. The low-tier zombies it commanded scattered instantly. Obedience to high-tier zombies is instinctual, but that loyalty doesn’t extend to one that’s barely clinging to life. Up above, the tentacle zombie and teleportation zombie continued their heated battle, completely ignoring everything below. They were locked in a fight to the death. I seized the opportunity and moved toward the humans’ backpacks, hoping to loot their crystal cores. But another zombie moved faster than me. The puddle of gore that had once been the regenerating zombie had begun to twitch. By the time I noticed, it was already slithering toward the backpacks, its movements almost imperceptible. It was playing a clever game, pretending to be defeated. By faking its downfall, it had removed itself from everyone’s radar, allowing it to quietly approach the prize. But as the saying goes, “The mantis stalks the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind.” It didn’t expect someone else—me—to be watching. If zombies had a hierarchy of strength, and only the strong deserved to claim the spoils, why should I back down? As the regenerating zombie began to reform into a humanoid shape, I took control of the low-tier zombies nearby. “Roar,” I commanded them silently. The low-tier zombies howled on cue, drawing the attention of the two high-tier zombies above. Startled, the regenerating zombie froze.
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