Apocalypse: I Can Upgrade Everything

Chapter 153: My Days of Slacking Off on the Battlefield 1

The blood moon retreated behind thick clouds, as if unwilling to witness the tragedy about to unfold in the mortal realm.

The heavy snow that had fallen incessantly for days finally ceased. Now, only the pristine white drifts on the ground provided any illumination, painting the world in a pale, desolate, and bone-chilling hue.

Around the school—no, across the entirety of Rong City—every single Anomaly seemed to receive a silent, terrifying signal at the exact same moment.

Whether they were lurking near the school gates or miles away, these grotesque, nightmarish existences uniformly snapped their heads toward Rong City No. 2 Primary School.

Creatures nesting in abandoned residential high-rises, beasts stalking the empty halls of luxury hotels, and shadows draped over the desks of government offices—all of them began to move. Some walked on two legs, some scrambled on all fours, but every single one of them surged toward the school.

If one were to look down from the sky, they would see the dense ring of monsters already besieging the school expanding exponentially. A tidal wave of endless, writhing horrors was converging from all four points of the compass.

For a brief, terrifying moment, the rest of Rong City was completely devoid of monsters, forming a temporary, eerie Safe Zone.

Captain Chu Che, usually a pillar of stoic composure, felt the seismic shift in the supernatural auras. For the first time, all the blood drained from his face.

“Yezi… this time…” he breathed, his voice trembling slightly. “I think we’re actually done for.”

He turned his head. “Yezi…”

The spot next to him was completely empty. Chen Ye had already vanished without a trace.

“Son of a…”

“Don’t worry, Captain! Even if I have to die, I’ll die right in front of you!”

Just as panic began to grip Chu Che’s chest, a hulking wall of muscle stepped in front of him.

Iron Lion. Or rather, the dormant persona of the Mad Lion had fully awakened.

The sheer size of the man and the violently aggressive aura rolling off him provided Chu Che with a desperate sliver of comfort.

“Mad Lion,” Chu Che sighed in relief. “I can always count on you. That bastard Chen Ye…”

Before he could even finish his sentence, a wide, thoroughly unhinged grin split Mad Lion’s scarred face. “Hehehe… I can finally let loose! Awoooo! Daddy’s coming to play!”

The instant the words left his mouth, Mad Lion exploded forward like a runaway freight train. The resulting shockwave of displaced air hit Chu Che like a physical blow.

CRASH!

The heavy classroom door was blasted completely off its hinges. Mad Lion didn’t stop. He plowed straight through the sealed balcony, his massive frame ripping a gaping hole through the layers of reinforced cardboard and heavy plastic sheeting.

Freezing wind instantly howled into the room, whipping Chu Che’s hair around his face.

The captain stood frozen in the draft, utterly dumbfounded.

You son of a bitch! Didn’t you literally just say you’d protect me?!

“Come here, you little runts! Your grandpa is here!” Mad Lion roared into the night.

Without a second thought, the behemoth leaped directly from the fourth-floor balcony. He dropped from the sky like an iron meteor, smashing into the frozen concrete courtyard below with a deafening BOOM. A geyser of snow and pulverized rock exploded outward, leaving a massive crater in his wake.

By now, the school courtyard was boiling with thousands of pale, writhing Crawlers, all surging mindlessly toward the main teaching building.

Iron Lion threw his head back and laughed maniacally. He threw a devastating haymaker, the sheer kinetic force vaporizing the head of the nearest Crawler, sending its mangled corpse flying backward.

But for every monster he crushed, a dozen more immediately pounced, a tidal wave of snapping jaws and rotting claws.

“You absolute…” Chu Che managed to hiss, cutting himself off as a frantic voice echoed from the hallway.

“Captain!”

It was Xiao Wang, the convoy assistant, his face pale with terror. He wasn’t alone. Behind him stood Xue Nan, Xu Lina, and the rest of the surviving convoy members.

“Captain, they’re here! So many Anomalies! What do we do?!” Xiao Wang panicked.

“What do you think we do?! Grab Uncle Bao and run!” Chu Che barked, snapping back into leader mode. “Do you have the supplies I told you to pack?”

“Yes, Captain!”

Chu Che was of the exact same mind as Chen Ye: staying to fight this horde was suicide.

Forget the fact that Anomalies possessed horrifying, unnatural vitality; the sheer volume of enemies made victory impossible. The Crawlers currently swarming the courtyard were nothing but cannon fodder—the absolute lowest rung of Rong City’s nightmare ecosystem.

The truly terrifying entities, the ones casting those suffocating auras outside the gates, hadn’t even made their move yet.

Even if Chen Ye had just successfully advanced to a Sequence 2 Mist Master, there was no way he could fight an entire city.

The horde was only going to grow.

At that exact moment, Chen Ye was standing motionless in the pitch-black shadows of the teaching building’s ground floor.

Thick, unnatural smoke poured from his body, filling the dark corner and completely swallowing his physical form.

This fog was fundamentally different from the sensory-deprivation smoke he had used previously. This was the signature ability of the Smoke Apostle’s Sequence 2, Mist Master: Absolute Aura Shielding.

His previous mist had been a localized smokescreen, blinding only the physical sight of enemies within it. But Anomalies came in an endless variety of horrific forms. Against creatures that didn’t rely on sight—those that hunted by smell, sound, or supernatural echolocation—his old mist had been a glaring weak point.

Now, as a Mist Master, the shielding properties of his smoke had undergone a terrifying evolution.

Sight, smell, hearing, spiritual perception, heat signatures—if an entity entered his mist, all of it was violently severed. It was total, absolute sensory annihilation.

The only exception was Chen Ye himself.

As long as he remained enveloped in the mist, he simply did not exist to the outside world. Just moments ago, a pack of rabid Crawlers had sprinted mere inches past his hiding spot, completely oblivious to the fresh meat standing right next to them.

Of course, no ability was flawless.

The fatal drawback of Absolute Aura Shielding was that it was stationary. He couldn’t move while sustaining it. If he could, it would be infinitely superior to Chu Che’s mobile concealment barrier.

Chen Ye had chosen this specific corner for a reason: it was the absolute closest point to the Doomsday Pickup.

He had made his decision. The instant a viable opening presented itself, he was making a mad dash for the truck and abandoning this sinking ship.

However, he couldn’t move yet. What kept him pinned in the shadows were the colossal, suffocating auras still looming outside the school gates.

Through the gaps in the wall, he could see the grotesque silhouette of the Eight-Limbed Human Face floating in the fog, the pale, chilling form of the Snow Woman, and several other indescribable horrors.

The most alarming was a massive, hulking figure topped with a wolf’s head. The beast had been sweeping its snout back and forth, vacuuming the air.

Just before Chen Ye had managed to activate his new mist, the wolf had snapped its head toward his location, its nostrils flaring violently. Fortunately, Chen Ye had deployed the Absolute Aura Shielding just in time, instantly erasing his scent from the world.

Every single one of those apex Anomalies sent a shiver of genuine dread down Chen Ye’s spine.

Even with his newly upgraded stealth, he didn’t dare make a reckless move. God only knew what bizarre, logic-defying abilities those monsters possessed.

So, while the rest of the school fought for their lives, Chen Ye comfortably slacked off in the shadows.

While Chen Ye waited for his moment, the vanguard of the Crawler horde slammed into the teaching building.

The stairwells were instantly choked with a rising tide of pale, squirming bodies. Hundreds more began scaling the exterior walls like morbid spiders, their limbs finding purchase on the frozen brick as they hunted for the scent of the living.

Screams of pure terror erupted from the upper floors. The sickening crunch of shattering glass echoed through the night as Crawlers began violently headbutting the reinforced classroom windows.

“They’re here! Anomalies!”

“Go find the Bishop! Run!”

“We need the Sequence Beyonders! Only they can save us!”

“Oh god, please—!”

Amidst the screaming, the frantic chanting of the cultists began to echo through the halls. “Tears of blood, visage of mercy! Bones pave the divine path! Our Lord above, witness the end!”

In mere seconds, Rong City No. 2 Primary School devolved into a chaotic, blood-soaked slaughterhouse.

ROAR!

Suddenly, the night sky was painted a blinding, searing orange.

A colossal pillar of fire erupted from a third-floor classroom, accompanied by a sound resembling a furious dragon’s roar. The makeshift plastic and cardboard barricades sealing the third-floor corridor instantly flash-fried into ash. Embers rained down, igniting the barricades on the second and fourth floors in a chain reaction of roaring flames.

The serpentine pillar of fire whipped around the exterior of the building. The Crawlers clinging to the walls didn’t even have time to shriek before they were instantly incinerated, raining down as nothing but drifting black snow.

Standing on the burning railing of the third-floor corridor was a young girl.

Her bright pink hair whipped violently in the heat draft. She wore a pristine white down jacket, a short skirt that exposed long, pale legs, and high-top sneakers.

Under normal circumstances, wearing such an outfit in sub-zero, post-apocalyptic winter would be considered sheer lunacy. But here, wreathed in roaring, magical fire, it didn’t look out of place at all.

With the fiery dragon coiling around her slender frame, she looked like an descending goddess of war.

Down in the courtyard, every surviving human who witnessed the spectacle stared up at her, their eyes wide with awe and desperate hope.

It was a stark, almost comical contrast to Chen Ye, who was currently doing absolutely nothing in a dark corner.