Apocalypse: King of Zombies Chapter 1402: Don’t Follow It In

A single roar rolled through the entire mountain range.

Every Winged Clan expert felt their skull rattle, like something had reached into their heads and shaken.

The ones at the very front got it the worst—several of them lost control on the spot and spiraled straight down.

Faces went white.

The whole flock recoiled, panicking as they tried to pull back—

Then the temperature around them .

Frost exploded across feathers and skin. A bunch of Winged Clan fighters went stiff midair, wings locking up like they’d turned to stone. They couldn’t even flap.

They just... fell. Straight down, bodies rigid as boards.

In the end, out of the hundreds that had flown into the mountains, only a handful—those at Stage S and above—managed to escape. Everyone else dropped into the white abyss below.

The Winged Clan elder leading them stared downward, horror spreading across his face.

"Stage SS feral beast...!"

The instant the words left his mouth, a huge snow-white shape launched up from below.

And then—

Ice spikes.

Countless spears of ice erupted from its body and blasted toward the Winged Clan like a hailstorm fired from a cannon.

"Damn it—retreat!" The elder’s expression twisted. He barked the order and turned, dragging the others with him.

They withdrew fast... but not fast enough.

Hundreds more Winged Clan experts were skewered mid-flight. Their bodies froze solid in an instant, turning into human-shaped ice statues that tumbled out of the sky.

Watching that happen, the elder’s face went dark—so dark it looked like it might crack.

"Damn beast. You really think the Winged Clan are pushovers?"

"Everyone—hit it together!"

At his command, wind-type abilities detonated across the airspace—cyclones, Cyclone Blades, and a storm of slicing pressure tearing toward the creature.

"ROAR—!"

The monster answered with another bellow.

A white mist poured from its mouth.

Wherever that mist passed, everything froze.

Rock. Air. The very moisture around them—

Even the incoming attacks locked up mid-flight, crusting over and stopping dead as if time had been snapped in half.

The white fog spread with terrifying speed, rolling straight toward the Winged Clan.

Every single one of them felt their hearts drop.

No hesitation. No pride.

They fled.

They could all tell the same thing in the same instant—if that stuff touched you, you were done.

The Winged Clan elder’s face was steel-gray. He shot one last furious look down at the beast... and then bolted too, his earlier bravado vanishing like it had never existed.

But it didn’t matter how fast they were.

The mist was faster.

The slower fliers got brushed by the fog and instantly frosted over, ice crawling across their bodies. Within seconds they were fully frozen, falling like stones into the mountains.

After paying another few hundred lives, the remaining Winged Clan finally managed to escape the area.

They didn’t stop until they’d flown more than sixty miles out.

Only then did they dare hover.

The elder’s expression was murderous as he turned on the few dozen survivors—the ones who’d originally fled back through the rift.

His voice dropped to ice.

"You knew there was a Stage SS feral beast here?"

"W-We... we knew." The survivors kept their heads down.

"Then why didn’t you say something earlier?!" the elder roared.

A few of them opened their mouths.

They wanted to say they yelled. That they’d tried to stop the charge.

But what was the point?

The elder was furious enough to kill someone just to feel better, and... they reacted too late. They hadn’t realized where the roc was diving until the last second.

So they swallowed it.

Heads down. Silent.

After venting, the elder didn’t execute them in the end.

He wasn’t as vicious as Aeralon. And now that the dimensional rift had closed again, nobody knew when it would reopen. This was exactly when manpower mattered.

Besides, these survivors knew this world far better than the newcomers did. They were useful.

The elder took a slow breath, forcing his temper back under control.

Then he asked, heavy and wary, "Are there many feral beasts like that in this world?"

"Not many," one of them said quickly. "As far as we know... there’s only that one."

"Only one?" The elder’s eyes narrowed.

"Only one. We’ve been here a long time. We’ve only ever seen that one."

"...Good." The elder finally let out a breath, tension easing from his shoulders.

Landing in a new world and running headfirst into a Stage SS monster was enough to make anyone’s blood run cold.

If creatures like that were everywhere, he wouldn’t be conquering anything.

He’d be hiding.

They’d lost over a thousand clan members in a single exchange.

It was terrifying.

"Elder... what do we do now?" a middle-aged Winged Clan member asked in a low voice. "That roc ran into there. We can’t go in."

The Winged Clan elder’s brow knotted. In a situation like this, there was only one choice.

Give up.

"Elder, don’t worry too much," someone else said quickly. "Those two feral beasts don’t get along. If it went in there, it probably walked straight into its own grave."

"Oh?" The elder turned, eyes sharp. "You’re sure?"

The man nodded. "Yeah. Some of our people saw them fight before. The roc lost and had to run."

The elder nodded back, but his expression didn’t ease.

He’d been chasing that roc this hard for more than revenge.

He wanted its crystal core.

If he could get the roc’s crystal core, it would shave off the time it would take him to break into Stage SS.

The Winged Clan had a unique method for absorbing crystal core energy—they didn’t just swallow them like humans did.

Their technique was more efficient. It let them absorb higher-tier cores, and even if they were already at the peak of a tier, they could still keep absorbing cores of that same tier to speed up their breakthrough.

In the end, humans had just started cultivating too recently. Eating crystal cores straight was the simplest, most brute-force method.

He’d hunted for so long, lost so many of his people... and now he wasn’t even getting the core.

Of course he was furious.

The elder’s gaze cut toward the frozen mountain range, toward where the Glacial Bear slept.

He spat the words like a curse. "Hmph. Dimensional rifts always reopen eventually. Next time it does, I’ll summon every powerhouse in the clan—and I’ll take your crystal core too."

He turned sharply.

"Let’s go. Back."

Elsewhere...

The Glacial Bear stared down at the field of Winged Clan ice statues scattered across the mountain slopes, and a pleased grin spread across its face.

A gift from nature.

Over a thousand pieces of food—enough to last it a long, time.

Then its eyes slid to the roc lying nearby, just as broken and still.

There was something openly mocking in the bear’s gaze.

"Roar..."

The roc struggled to pry its eyes open. It looked at the bear, and desperation flooded its stare.

"Skree..."

"Roar..."

"Skree..."

"Roar..."

The bear’s head tilted, like it was considering a joke.

"Roar..."

"Skree..."

"ROAR?!"

"Skree..."

The Glacial Bear’s eyes flickered with interest... and then hesitation.

It didn’t like traveling. The outside world was too warm. It preferred staying somewhere cold and sleeping for days at a time.

The roc forced the words out, like each one scraped its throat raw.

"Skree..."

"Roar!"

"Skree..."

The bear’s answer was immediate.

"ROAR."

The Glacial Bear was the decisive type.

It slammed a paw into the ground, smashing out a massive pit. Then it tossed the Winged Clan bodies down into it—one after another—and sealed the whole thing in ice, packing its "food" away like winter storage.

Once it was done, it followed the roc out of the frozen mountain range.