As the dense swarm of bone spurs streaked toward him, Zack activated his auxiliary thrusters, pulling into a sharp, evasive maneuver. Still, curiosity got the better of him. Deliberately, he let one spike strike the alloy on his left shoulder.

  Bang! The bone spur shattered on impact, leaving not so much as a scratch. “That’s it?” Zaeered, unimpressed. Without hesitation, he unched eight spiral anti-ground missiles, each targeting clusters of the Spitter below.

  Boom! Boom! Boom!

  A series of fiery explosions tore through the horde, leaving a long, bzing trail of destruore than half of the Earth Roars were obliterated in seds. “Sir, there’s a Mutated Lord at your three o’clock,” Ego’s voice cut in.

  At the same time, Ava’s sed-geion Avalon swooped down, log onto the Mutated Lord with its depleted uranium-loaded on. The Avalon’s 20mm on roared as Ava strafed the horde. The Silverback, despite its formidable defenses, was riddled with holes and colpsed, bringing a line of lesser zombies down with it. “Be careful! These zombies have rataow,” Zack warned over the s.

  “Uood,” Ava replied without hesitation, pulling the nose of her pne up and away from the bone spurs. As a soldier, following orders was sed nature to her.

  “Sir, high-frequency sound waves detected. Suspected leader. Coordinates uploaded,” Ego reported.

  “So soon?” Zack was genuinely surprised. His inal pn had been to use the nuclear strikes to divide the massive zombie tide into smaller groups, then locate the leader hidden among them. The odds of finding it so quickly were slim.

  “Good luck,” Zack muttered, a smirk f as he adjusted course toward the marked location. As he approached the marked zohe density of mutated zombies increased dramatically. Dozens of Mutated Lord, tless lords, Hunters, and even more Spitter packed the area. But what truly made the leader hard to find was its uny ability to blend in with ordinary zombies.

  Ordinary in appearance, indistinguishable in movement, aing sound waves inaudible to human ears, the leader was an enigma that even the end of the world hadn’t fully revealed. Zad the Vanguard anization were among the few who knew of its existence. “But luck isn’t on my side today,” Zack muttered coldly, eyeing the horde. Despite the nuclear strikes, which had annihited tens of millions of zombies, the leader had survived, hidden among its monstrous army.

  “Sir, high-energy rea detected!” Ego’s sudden warning snapped Zack’s attention forward.

  A dark shadow burst from the horde at an incredible speed, heading straight for him. “What the hell?” Zack excimed, instinctively yanking the trols. The Apex suitresponded with an almost impossible sharp-aurn, narrowly avoiding the ining projectile.

  Boom! The shadow missed Zack, arg through the air before smming into the ground like a onball. The impact left a massive crater, the force shaking the surrounding area. There were no flying zombies, which meant this creature had leaped over a hundred meters into the air purely on raw power. “A Sara?” Zack muttered, turning to get a better look at the monstrosity.

  The creature below him was unmistakably a Sara , but far more formidable than the one he had faced before. Last time, the Sara had been little more than a newborn, barely uanding its capabilities. This one, however, had fully matured. “Roar…” From within the deep pit, the Sara raised its head and locked eyes with Zack. For a moment, Zack could have sworn he saw something disturbingly human in its gaze—a mog, taunting glint.

  “Sir! High-frequency sound waves detected!” Ego’s voice broke through Zack’s thoughts. “The source isn’t the leader—it’s the Sara below!”

  Zack frowned. “You’re tellihe zombies are learning to lie now?”

  “Target locked!” Ava’s voice cut through the s as she dove toward the Sara in her Avalon. The depleted uranium rounds from her 20mm on streaked toward the creature in a fiery torrent.

  “Roar!!!” The Sara roared as the bullets smmed into its body, creating fist-sized craters in its thick flesh. But eveed uranium rounds, powerful enough to shred through tank armor, couldn’t pierce its defenses.

  With a deafening crash, the Sara leaped again, the grouh its feet exploding into rubble as it soared over a hundred meters into the air. It reached for the Avalon, holding its own against the relentless onfire. But Ava had been warned. She quickly pulled the nose of her aircraft upward, maintaining an altitude of two to three hundred meters to stay out of the Sara’s reach. “Sir, the depleted uranium rounds are iive. I’m withdrawing to attack other targets!” Ava announced before divertitention to the masses of zombies below.

  Moments ter, the Aegis and the unmanned armors arrived. “Master, I break through its defense. Let me ha,” Lillian offered from ihe Aegis. Her abilities were uniquely suited to taking down heavily armored foes.

  “No need. You and Ava will focus on the sed sound signal. Leave this oo me,” Zack ordered, his tone decisive.

  “Yes, sir!” Lillian replied without hesitation. As the Aegis and the unmanned armors veered toward another se of the divided horde, Lillian and the seven Fearless Warriors leapt from the aircraft, falling a hundred meters into the swarm of zombies below.

  They nded with ah-shaking crash, their impact seemingly swallowed by the eide of corpses. “The sound wave’s in has been pinpointed! Kill!”

  What looked like drops of water falling into an o suddeed into chaos as Lillian and the Fearless Warriors carved their way through the horde like a bde through flesh. Meanwhile, Zack hovered mid-air, watg the Sara below. “Call the Titan,” Zaanded coldly.

  The Aegis’s sleek form split into many modules, each equipped with thrusters of its own. The modules shot through the air like homing missiles, verging on Zack. The Apex arman shutting down its systems as the Titan modules attached themselves to it, piece by piece. With each module added, the suit grew bulkier, heavier, and deadlier. The thrusters maintaining Zack’s hover cut off, and he began to plummet toward the ground, a mass of several tons. The sound of maery log into pce echoed in the air as each piece of the Titan suit ected seamlessly. To Zack, the sound was like a symphony—a heavy, meical rhythm no warrior could resist.

  “Roar!!!” The Sara, seeing its ce, let out a furious roar and charged toward Zack’s falling form with terrifying speed. Its massive frame, over four meters tall, moved like a blur as it barreled through lesser zombies, knog them aside like ragdolls.

  As Zaeared the ground, the Sara leaped once more, eling its full momentum into a single devastating punch aimed directly at him.

  BOOM! At the same moment, the final piece of Zack’s armor—a massive, reinforced head module—locked into pce, pleting the Titan suit. Zack smmed into the ground like a meteor, creating a crater several meters deep. “The neural link is online. Full system funality achieved,” Ego reported.