All Chapters of The Tattooed Emperor: Reborn Before the Apocalypse: Chapter 31
- Chapter 40
47 chapters
Chapter 31: Killing You Won't Even Take a Snap of My Fingers
Three more of the black-clad soldiers went down in the span of two or three minutes.Both sides were fighting with total disregard for their own safety, but Ferris's numbers were starting to tell.At this rate, every last one of them would be dead inside ten minutes. Fifteen was already looking generous.Then a booming, energetic shout cut through the chaos."A bunch of reckless punks think they can lay hands on the Crimson Talon Syndicate and just walk away? Apocalypse or not, you're about to learn otherwise!"An older man with a full head of white hair appeared out of nowhere, standing directly between two of the attackers before either could react.Two punches later, both men were on the ground, badly broken."Cal!""Mr. Cai, what are you doing back here? Weren't Xander and the others supposed to have you clear of the encirclement by now?"Cal's sudden appearance threw the enemy's rhythm off completely, buying the surviving black-clad soldiers a few precious seconds to regroup."Th
Chapter 32: Not One Survivor
A figure in black dropped silently onto the branch of an ancient tree, landing without a sound.Damon looked down at the writhing, screaming mess of Ferris's crew below with an expression carved from ice.A quick scan told him everything he needed to know. Of the men originally sent to escort the tech shipment, only a dozen or so remained, every one of them wounded, some barely standing.The other twenty or so weren't missing. They were dead.Something in Damon's eyes went colder still, and his lips barely moved as he gave the order."No survivors. Cut every last one of them down.""YES, SIR!!"Two hundred elite soldiers surged forward as one, a black wave crashing over the remnants of Ferris's already-broken force."You lay hands on Sterling family men? You just signed your own death warrant!""Filthy scum, all of you!""I'll carve you into pieces myself and let the dogs finish the rest!"While the two hundred worked through what was left of the ambush party, Damon was already standi
Chapter 33: Cross the Crimson Talon, and No Distance Will Save You
Lazy had shrunk back down to his usual harmless self and dozed off in Damon's arms, worn out from his own transformation. Damon carried him quietly along the road home, mind drifting back through fragments of memory from his first life.Ever since the apocalypse hit, beasts and zombies had always evolved faster than humans could keep pace with.In the early days, scattered human factions had managed to hold their own, hunting beasts and zombies actively, harvesting crystal cores, staying ahead of the curve.But that window hadn't lasted. Higher-tier monsters started emerging in greater numbers, and everything got harder fast.Tree spirits turned into genuine threats instead of easy targets. Even zombies, historically the bottom of the food chain, became a real problem to deal with.The reason was simple, in hindsight: once higher-tier beings started asserting control over the lower-tier hordes, those hordes stopped rushing blindly into human territory. They started acting with actual
Chapter 34: Attempting to Unseal the Everfrost Phoenix
A full day passed in what felt like a blink. Damon sat upright inside a block of ice, mind locked in, pulling crystal cores into himself with the steady, relentless focus of a predator that never stopped feeding.Hum.Ten Tier 2 cores and a couple dozen Tier 1s dissolved into dust, their energy fully drained, and Damon, submerged waist-deep in ice water, finally opened his eyes.The moment the thought crossed his mind, his status panel flickered to life.[The Marked One: Damon Sterling][Tattoo: Vlad the Impaler Tier 2, 29,000/50,000]Saint Jerome, the Suffering Pilgrim Tier 2, 13,000/50,000Inferno Griffin Tier 2, 31,000/50,000Everfrost Phoenix Unlocked, 32/1,000 Unlock condition: absorbing extreme cold energyMichael the Seraph LockedLucifer, the Fallen LockedJesus Christ, LockedMerlin, the Arch-Sage, LockedNine Dragons Bearing the Coffin, Locked[Copied Ability: Mesmer 20%]With an effectively bottomless supply of crystal cores, his first three tattoos were climbing at a rate
Chapter 35: Assembly Complete All Forces Ready
"What's going on in here?"Recognizing the room full of brothers, Grace pulled back the power of her tattoo and crossed to Lance's side, confusion written across her face."Sister-in-law!"Lance answered with a pained grimace. "The Prince called us in special, said he needed help pushing his cultivation forward.""...By having all of you gang up and hit him? That's helping him cultivate?"Something skeptical flickered across Grace's face.Lance's grimace deepened at her expression.They'd followed Damon's instructions to the letter, groups of ten rotating through, each wave cranking up their output by twenty-five percent over the last. By this point, every man in the room was pushing half his real ceiling.And it hadn't mattered. They couldn't even crack his defenses, let alone leave a mark. Injuring him wasn't a possibility, it was a fantasy.They'd known Damon was strong. None of them had guessed it was this strong.Worse, their boss wasn't even fully focused on the fight. He was si
Chapter 36: Full Assault Kill Damon Sterling
Graves's hand froze mid-air, staring down the panicked man in his doorway."You barge in here without permission? You looking to die tonight?"He delivered the rebuke cold and sharp, then followed it with a question, almost bored."Go on, then. Which suicidal little outfit's trying to skim our supplies this time?""I'm in a decent mood today. Maybe I'll lead the response myself, wipe their whole operation off the map while I'm at it."Graves didn't sound remotely impressed by whatever this new threat was supposed to be.Ever since he and his men had claimed this estate and started ruling this stretch of Southridge like their own private kingdom, resource raids from local survivors had become routine background noise. People wanted to live comfortably, and Graves's stockpile made an easy target.The smarter ones had learned to play games, fake out an attack here, peel off a supply convoy there. Small-time harassment, nothing that ever actually cost Graves's crew anything real.He fully
Chapter 37: Full-Scale Clash! Saint Jerome Awakens
"That so?"The soft laugh had barely faded before Damon's eyes narrowed.BOOM!!A wave of power exploded outward, heavy, absolute, and strangely calm at the same time.Tier 2. Saint Jerome, the Suffering Pilgrim, activated.The instant Damon unleashed his aura, the two to three hundred men flanking him followed suit, their own auras flaring in near-perfect unison.On paper, they were badly outnumbered, eight hundred against three hundred wasn't close.But every single one of Damon's men carried a forbidden tattoo.And that wasn't even the real advantage. The real advantage was this: every last one of them had already pushed into the late stage of Tier 1.Not most. All of them.That single fact alone flipped the momentum of the fight before a single blow landed."They're all late-Tier-1, uniformly? And a chunk of them are already brushing up against Tier 2?"The confidence radiating off Graves's eight hundred men a minute earlier evaporated on the spot.They'd walked in expecting a sho
Chapter 38: The Pilgrim's Mercy, Total Devastation
Graves came at him wrapped in something monstrous, aura rolling off him like a physical wave. Damon didn't flinch.Facing down that surging, corrupted blood energy head-on, Damon didn't dodge, didn't sidestep. He simply met it."The Pilgrim's Mercy."His right hand came down in a slow, deliberate press, and behind him, Saint Jerome's phantom mirrored the motion exactly, hand raised, then pressed down with the same quiet finality.A soft, sacred light bloomed off the phantom's palm.ThenRUMBLE!!RUMBLE!!A deafening shockwave tore through the street.A wide, oval-shaped blast wave rippled outward in every direction, kicking up a wall of dust thick enough to blot out the fight entirely.Every combatant on the battlefield froze mid-swing, heads snapping toward the epicenter of that impact.Once the shockwave settled, the dust hung motionless in the air.Whatever had just happened, the outcome was already locked in. Everyone could feel it.For Graves's eight hundred, this was exactly the
Chapter 39: Something's Off With Augustus Whitlock
Something wasn't adding up.Something was seriously off.Damon's brow stayed furrowed.Ever since his rebirth, nearly everything had tracked closely enough with his first life that he could plan around it.But this, this deep, deliberate involvement from a man who should barely register as a factor this early on, had knocked the timeline off course in ways he couldn't fully account for.That, combined with the complete personality shift he was seeing...A thought hit him, sudden and sharp.If I got a second chance at this life, why couldn't Augustus Whitlock have gotten one too?If Whitlock had been reborn, that would explain almost everything.Because in Damon's first life, Whitlock had died months before Damon did.Not framed. Not murdered. Not torn apart by beasts or myth-tier monsters.He'd simply gotten sick and died. A man sitting on real power, on the verge of everything he'd worked toward, cut down by something as mundane as illness right as it all came together.If that same
Chapter 40: Overplaying Their Hand
None of the four in front of him had activated their tattoos yet.Didn't matter. The killing intent rolling off them alone was enough to make Miles Fenwick's chest tighten.How many people, how many beasts, have these four actually killed to radiate like this?Cursing silently, Fenwick forced his expression into something calm and reasonable."Since you're being direct, I'll return the favor. We're all just trying to survive out here in Southridge. Graves has hoarded so much that the rest of us have been scraping by on fumes.""Now that he's finally about to go down, we figured it's only fair we get a cut, proportional to what we're bringing to the table.""Proportional to your contribution? Cute."Lance had already drawn a slim, ornate blade without anyone noticing, flipping it once in his grip as his tattoo's power surged to life.Tier 2. Early stage."...Christ."Fenwick's pupils shrank as the aura hit him. He'd only just clawed his way to the peak of Tier 1 himself.This kid was a