Playboy Cultivator in the Apocalypse

An icy force gripped Calvin's chest, and he opened his mouth, hoping to relieve the torturous anxiety. "I accept your terms and will disclose knowledge on the trial and the operation to retake the Mortal Plane."

"I as well." Amy replied, visually stressed with a racing heart, "Mr….?"

"My name is Kaze Lexicon." Kaze declared boldly, "But you shall call me Emperor Lexicon from this day forward. Now observe your people."

Calvin and Amy felt the gravity of his words, listening to the mortals raging war through the distorted lens of the concealment technique.

Lainwright soldiers stood on a wall of steel containers pressed against the iron gates of the shipping yard, shooting Guided Arrows through the crowd of zombies.

An army of superhumans stood before them, sixty thousand strong. They packed streets leading to the pier, trampling over cars and broken glass, screaming insults.

From an aerial view, they could see the horde spread for miles. However, the soldiers could only see an endless sea without an end from the makeshift wall.

The sight made the soldiers realize how much protection Crux gave them with her sound isolation barrier. However, they didn't despair that she wasn't there.

Evalyn's merciless tough-love training paid off spectacularly. With their minds traumatized into believing that giving up equaled torture [before] death, they kept fighting despite feeling hopeless.

Calvin and Amy mistook their unflinching continuity as fearless-bravery, inspiring them. However, the truth was far more dire.

"DIE ALREADY!" A half-burnt woman screamed, running at the orange gates to the shipping yard, "WHY AREN'T YOU DEAD!?"

BOOOOM!

An arrow slammed into the woman, eviscerating her.

"Hell yeah!" A tall, muscular soldier that fist pumped proudly, "I feel like I'm Jackie Chan fighting a hallway full of first graders!"

"Fuckin' idiot." Chen scoffed under his breath, rolling his eyes, "These soldiers would leave a shower room feeling victorious if they dropped the soap. It's ridiculous."

"Do you think that you can do better?" The man gruffed adversarially.

The lean Chinese man snorted in vexation and waved his hand.

WHooOOooOSH! Boom, boom, BOOOOM!

Their arrows were night and day.

While the man's arrow killed a single screaming woman, Chen's skewered a man's head, hit a woman's stomach, and curved, ripping through twenty zombies before hitting a truck.

"You control the arrow." Chen sneered, "If you can't hit at least five when they're packed like sardines, you should be begging to wash General Skye's laundry."

The man's face lit up in humiliation. "You're acting like other people can do this!"

"You're so loud." Layla said coldly, capturing the man's attention.

WHoooOOoshHHhhooOOoshhHhhshoooOoooOosSH!

The blonde released an arrow that curved horizontally and began snaking through the battlefield, ripping through nearly 50 zombies before the arrow disappeared.

"I'm taking my cultivation break." Layla said coldly, jumping off the shipping crate and moving toward a group of hundreds cultivating, glowing green from the Tranquil Respire technique.

The elderly and children cultivated it to help calm the soldiers and improve their concentration. It was extremely effective due to the neverending supply of stress.

"W-When did you guys get so good?" Manny cried in shock.

"Don't take it personally." Jackson said, putting his hand on the man's soldier, "This is the [third] time we're doing this exact task. So we're better at it than everyone else."

"Then why do they have to be dicks about it?" The man asked bitterly.

"We're frustrated because our team has racked up over half the kills." Eric explained, "It's like we finally got thousands of reinforcements, but we're protecting them instead of getting help."

Manny's face flushed with shame and humiliation. He wanted to snap at the assertion but chose not to once he saw Denzel shoot an arrow and hit another thirty. "What are you doing differently?"

"Focus on curving the arrow horizontally before it hits the ground." Moe replied, her curly hair matted with sweat, "That's all it takes. Once you can do that, you'll start doing real damage."

He nodded and pulled out an arrow, preparing to attack.

Whoooooosh! Boom, boom!

Manny's eyes widened when he copied the team and killed three on his first try.

"See? It's not that hard." Chen sneered, "The arrow follows your eyes, so instead of getting excited after a hit, just have a seizure instead."

The team laughed, but the muscular man was still lost in amazement.

"Why haven't you guys been teaching this to people?" Manny asked in stupefaction, "It'd be a game changer!"

"We can't." Moe replied bitterly, "Didn't you hear Eric? We have half the kill count; if we stop shooting, we're toast."

The muscular soldier took a sharp breath but wasn't deterred.

"Then I'll do it!" Manny declared with loud, obnoxious enthusiasm, "Just focus on fighting and leave it to me. I won't let you fight alone!"

"I hate loud people with duty complexes." Chen gibed, "I'm taking my cultivation break."

After calming down in the Tranquil Respire field and cultivating for fifteen minutes, the Chinese man returned to his post and saw something amazing.

The area outside the pier had a new topography with rolling hills of corpses. They had already stacked up the same amount of bodies of the last hour in fifteen minutes.

"When did these cucks get useful?" Chen asked in disbelief.

"Just listen." Moe giggled, "You can hear it from here."

-

"You need to curve the arrow! Just watch! I'm telling you, it's what we need to turn the tide!"

"Yo, stop yelling and shoot zombies."

"I just did and you weren't watching!"

"Seriously, bro. You need to—"

"Shut up and do what Manny's telling you. If you look around, you'll find that you're the only three people [not] doing it."

"Wait, really?"

"Yeah, that's what I've been telling you!"

"Look, they got it, Manny. Now please find the other noobies and leave. We've heard this twenty times, and it's sounding like nails on a chalkboard!"

-

"Annoyingness has its perks." Layla smirked, "I'm not complaining."

"Me either, but… I kinda feel ashamed." Denzel chuckled strangely, capturing everyone's attention, "I have a feeling General Skye sent us to learn, hoping we'd teach the others, you know?

I feel stupid for failing General Skye, but I'm wounded that the annoying, yelling dude who has demonstrated twenty times and can still only kill five at a time is today's hero."

The group burst into laughter, bewildered that Manny Twills, the loud, obnoxious, everyday hero, had saved the day.

It made them feel hope for the first time. Even though the soldiers had only killed fifteen thousand zombies, leaving forty-five thousand to replace them, the situation seemed possible.

"WALL BREACH!" Eric roared. A massive hole cracked into the iron gate as the cultivator zombies crashed against it repeatedly, hurling vitriolic insults constantly.

The zombies pushed through, shaking the shipping crates the soldiers stood on, causing them to fall inside the gates.

Ten Immortals pushed the crates—filled with one-ton fish—in place. Another twenty stood around the sides with Qi Wall shields, holding back the sick.

"Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeew!" Eric wolf-whistled, "WE NEED CRATES AND FISH! NOW!"

Civilians and soldiers worked in shifts to lower the crates like building blocks while another group picked up frozen fish to fill them. It was a brutal task.

"We're trying!" A brunette yelled in agony, lifting the container with shaky legs, "We've already moved eighty in the last hour!"

"Complain about it tomorrow when you're still alive, soldier!" Sandra snapped, intervening, "They're breaking through—if you don't succeed, people are going to die!"

Everyone immediately set into action. However, there wasn't much time, and the progress was time-consuming. So she needed a stopgap.

"Lieutenant Captain Levingston!" The captain yelled, "We need more time! Prepare to mobilize!"

"Order received, Captain Mills." Aaron saluted, "You heard the lady; it's time to relieve the pressure. Keep your back on the gate, eradicate on sight, and stay in control!"

The Immortals let out ferocious battle cries and ran onto the top of the shipping containers, overlooking the sea of zombies.

"Let's get in there and show these greenhorns what it means to be Immortals!" The red-haired elite grinned, "I know you all have been itching to get into the action!"

"Yeeeeeaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!"

To Eric's team's disbelief, their shiftless training assessor jumped straight into a tidal wave of zombies. It was time to show the Lainwright soldiers what it meant to be an Immortal.