Apocalypse King: Recruiting S-Tier Beauties With My Ruler System

"Let's kill this thing, honey."

Qinglan's voice was silky and sweet. Liang Mei was already crouched high on the broken exterior, calves tight as bowstrings, an arrow nocked that looked more like a spear than a shaft.

"Everyone hear me," I barked into the convoy comms. "Engines off. No panicked running. It tracks vibration, but its actual sigh seems horrible. So lets bait it on our terms."

A rapid chorus of jeeps went silent, and men halted their movements in response. The jeeps' hum died, and the street settled into a tense, brittle quiet. Somewhere distant, a loose sign creaked in the wind, and far below, I felt it and the vibrations and a massive noise.

The Alpha wasn't happy.

I touched my palm to the ground. Earth qi poured from me in a low thrum, spreading like ripples through a pond. Come on. Feel me. I'm here.

It thrashed about like a wild stallion in mating season.

Without our vibrations, the monster seemed aggravated because it lost a meal.

Qinglan slid closer until her shoulder brushed mine. Endless Night tipped down, the blade frosting the asphalt at our feet. "Want me to freeze the area, and make a kill zone he cannot take advantage in?"

"We can try, but don't overexert yourself.

"Prepare for it, three seconds." Mei Mei squatted lower, the fabric of her bodysuit clinging to her snatch. "Mei Mei, I trust you best, try to anchor it ot the left or right buildings. If it breeches, we'll anchor it."

Her answer was a bright, fearless, "Mm!"

"Grenadiers," I added, eyes never leaving the cracked blacktop, "On my mark, cluster charges into the main exposed gullet. If you miss, you run."

"Copy."

The stone beneath my palm shivered.

It's closer.

"One," I breathed.

Qinglan exhaled, frost billowing over the street in a spiderweb of glittering lines. The air snapped cold; my breath steamed.

"Two."

Liang Mei's first cable-arrow thumped into the left building's ribcage of rebar, the line taut. The second streaked to the right, the cable humming. Two jeeps lurched, winches primed.

"Three."

The road exploded.

The Alpha ripped out of the earth like a bone-white train, jaws yawning wide enough to eat a room. Pulverised concrete geysered around it as that massive fin scythed the air, casting the convoy into a storm of grit.

"NOW!"

Qinglan's blade smashed down.

A sheet of frost slammed over the snout mid-breach, locking fangs in a rime of blue-glass ice. I drove both gauntlets into the ground and injected more and more earth and ice qi into the ground, freezing the surface along with Qinglan's strike.

Rebar screamed as my earth qi tore through the subsurface, bending metal in a cage that knifed up through the street. Bent steel speared around the Alpha's ribs and along the base of its fin, pinning mass for a heartbeat.

The soldiers, with their jeeps, all tossed their hooks from the winches, which wrapped around the rebar and the creatures' exposed bones.

"Pull!" I roared.

The winches screamed. Cables snapped taut across the street, slicing through dust as the Alpha's side jerked and twisted, yanked between buildings. Bone cracked like timber in a gale.

"Now, throw grenades!"

Grenade pins flicked in the air.

Five arced into that iced-open maw.

"Fire!" I bellowed, and eight shells boomed from my gauntlets as the grenades vanished past the palate.

A moment of silence followed.

Then...

The world bloomed. Fire and frost met inside a cathedral of teeth; heat flashed to steam and pressure hammered outward. The Alpha screamed like an earthquake given voice, thrashing with enough force to shear the ice and snap a cable. A jeep skidded, winch shrieking, men scrambling to brace it with chocks.

It tore a building in half with one thrash of its fin.

"Hold!" I snarled, driving my sword down at the hinge where jaw met skull. The bastard blade sank deep; ichor boiled over the edge, hissing on ice.

Qinglan moved behind me, wrapping close to the broken winch and slashing through the air, her sword covered in ice-white runes as she took an icy, deep breath.

Four slashes. A box of cutting cold slammed around the Alpha's head, sealing it in plates of moonlit ice. Her knees buckled; I caught her elbow without looking, and we finished binding the monster with my stone and her ice.

"Mei Mei! Step on it!" I snapped.

"On it!"

She dropped from the ruin like thunder, both heels hammering into the fin's root. The shockwave rippled through the Alpha's spine; cracks spiderwebbed across bone ridges. The second cable found purchase again as she recoiled, drawing and loosening; the steel line sang.

The monster heaved, dragging the entire street an inch toward its maw. Cracks radiated under our boots, chewing toward the convoy.

"Grenades—second volley! Aim for the bastard's tail," I shouted.

The grenades flew in droves, clattering between exposed ribs and bone, into the softer mess our attacks reveal, a delicate marrow. A fraction later, the rolling thunder devastated the Alpha's belly, as it buckled like a capsized ship.

"John!" Qinglan cried out, issuing a warning and oath at once.

"I know!"

We didn't kill it on the first try.

So I broke first.

I tore the bastard blade free, flipped my grip, and drove the point down and up in the same motion—under the jawline, through the narrow seam where even bone must give. Fire qi roared through the steel, the edge turning white-hot. The sword chewed through, a brutal, ugly cut that smelled of burned marrow and old graves.

"Push!" I snarled through my teeth.

Qinglan's frost surged with my fire, steam bursting around the wound. The Alpha convulsed and snapped the last cable, the right building heaving forward by inches before settling. It almost tore free.

Then, Liang Mei screamed, not in fear but delight. She vaulted the broken facade in a single, blurred arc, her arrow drawn to a full, impossible crescent. Pink hair streamed like a comet tail. "Die!"

The shot struck deep into the gill-slit I'd carved, hammering through to lodge in soft meat. Liang Mei didn't wait—she was already sprinting, cable looped round her waist. The line went taut. Her legs flared, muscles like sculpted granite, and for one insane heartbeat, she anchored the Alpha.

"Pull, you bastards!" she roared.

The jeeps caught and hummed as their lines sang.

I released the sword and plunged both gauntlets into the wound beside her arrow. Worked the angle. Ignored the acid stinging my sleeves and the cold burning my wrists. There—tendon, cartilage, slick and hateful.

"Lan'er," I grunted. "Finish."

Her hand found my shoulder. Frost rose through my arms without freezing me, a cold we had learned together to share. Endless Night drew a slow, perfect curve, the kind that splits night from morning.

"Endless Night—Winter Guillotine."

The blade fell.

The head did too.

It sheared with a shock that rolled through the street, a mountain conceding to gravity. The Alpha's skull struck stone, bounced once, then crashed through the rebar cage with enough force to collapse part of the hole it had torn. The body spasmed, spinal lights flickering gutter-yellow, then dimmed.

Silence fell like snow.

For a long second, nobody moved. Dust drifted in pale ribbons. Steam rose from the severed neck and from Qinglan's blade in equal measure.

Then the cheering started.

It rolled down the street from the furthest jeep to the front like a fuse being lit—stomping boots and ragged laughter and the strangled noise men make when they barely survived something that should have killed them. Helmets slammed into hoods. Someone sobbed and didn't care who heard.

Qinglan sagged; I turned without thinking and caught her. She was shaking from adrenaline and cold. She pressed her forehead to my jaw, hot breath ghosting my throat.

"I knew you'd cut it," she murmured, half-laughter, half-exhaustion.

I stroked a thumb over the line of ichor drying on her cheek. "Without you could we have succeeded?"

Her eye narrowed with a delightful smile. "You're right."

Liang Mei dropped lightly beside us, cheeks flushed, cable still cinched around her waist, thighs quivering from the insane pull. She grinned so brightly it almost hurt to look at. "Did you see? We ripped a shark into pieces."

"You anchored a building to a monster," I corrected, then flicked her ponytail. "Nice legs."

She puffed her cheeks adorably, then beamed. "I trained them for you."

Qinglan coughed once, suspiciously close to a laugh.

I stepped forward and planted the tip of the bastard sword in the severed head's eye socket, levering it open. Hollow bone. A channel of stone-dust and sinew where a brain should be.

At the base of the skull, something pulsed once, then stilled and a multicoloured core dropped into my palm, the cold sphere bringing up a system message.

[Alpha Landshark (Stage Five) - Slain]

[ZKP +15,000]

[EXP +10,000]

[Rare Material Acquired: Ossified Resonance Fin ×1]

[Core: Stage Five (Multi Core)]

"I'll take this for now."

I muttered before storing the cores into my inventory.