Dungeon Corpse Stacker: I Absorb Everything to Become Ominous Monarch
Chapter 34: THE MARCH ON SECTOR 1

Chapter 34: Chapter 34: THE MARCH ON SECTOR 1

The morning sun rose over the capital, casting a sickly, pale golden light across the towering glass-and-steel monoliths of Sector 1. Unlike the damp, rotting labyrinth of Sector 2 below, where the forgotten scavengers bled in silence, Sector 1 was the gleaming heart of the nation’s wealth. It was the glittering stronghold of Guild Apex, the high-altitude corporate penthouses, and the fortified regional headquarters of the Hunter Association.

Yet, on this particular morning, an unprecedented, suffocating dread hung heavy in the air.

Despite the Association’s emergency gag orders and strict media blackouts, news of the complete destruction of the Southern Strike Force in the lower tunnels had leaked through encrypted channels. Financial markets tied to monster-core speculation were plummeting. High-ranking Hunter guilds were frantically raising their defensive threat levels to maximum, locking down their vault facilities, and deploying private security details to their residential estates. Rumors spread like wildfire through the city’s underbelly: A nameless Calamity had emerged from the subterranean abyss, slaughtering three Association Directors and harvesting an entire militarized battalion in a single night.

At the fifty-story Apex Headquarters—the grandest skyscraper in the financial district—inside the opulent, top-floor executive suite, glass shattered into a thousand glittering pieces.

CRASH!

Guild Master Richard stood breathing heavily in the center of his expansive office, his towering, muscular frame radiating a golden, suffocating mana that scorched the imported white marble floor beneath his boots. Before him lay his massive mahogany executive desk, split clean in half and reduced to splintered kindling.

"Wiped out?!" Richard roared, his deep voice trembling with sheer, unbridled fury. The golden aura around his shoulders flared like a solar flare, blowing expensive art pieces off the walls. "Three Directors! Two hundred elite Hunters! Twenty artificial S-Rank enforcers! All slaughtered in less than an hour?!"

Sitting on a leather couch on the far side of the room, Vice Guild Master Vance—a sleek, sharp-eyed man dressed in a tailored charcoal suit—calmly adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses. Despite his calm posture, a cold bead of sweat trickled down his temple, disappearing into his collar.

"The black market supply lines in Sectors 2 and 3 are completely gone, Richard," Vance said, his tone grim and devoid of its usual corporate arrogance. "Our contraband monster core distribution, our illegal potion synthesis laboratories, our offshore money-laundering vaults... seized or destroyed. Whoever this entity is, they aren’t just attacking us physically. They are systematically dismantling our entire empire from the bottom up, cutting off every single drop of revenue."

"Find them!" Richard slammed his massive, golden-armored fist against the reinforced concrete wall, causing a web of spiderweb fractures to ripple up toward the ceiling. "Mobilize every S-Rank contractor on our payroll! I want Sector 2 carpet-bombed with high-density mana artillery! I want every rat in those lower tunnels exterminated!"

"I’m afraid it’s far too late for a search party, Guild Master," Vance whispered, standing up slowly and pointing a trembling finger toward the floor-to-ceiling glass window overlooking the capital. "They aren’t hiding in the tunnels anymore. They’re already here."

Richard froze. He slowly turned his broad shoulders toward the massive window.

Five hundred feet below, on the main arterial eight-lane highway leading directly to the front gates of Apex Headquarters, the morning traffic had come to a dead halt. Thousands of commuters and civilians were screaming, abandoning their luxury vehicles in the middle of the road and fleeing in utter, chaotic panic. Horns blared in a deafening chorus, but no one was driving forward. The street was turning into an abandoned graveyard of steel.

Walking down the exact center of the empty highway was a single figure wrapped in a tattered dark coat. His face was obscured beneath a deep hood, but twin golden eyes burned like dying stars from within the shadow of his hood, fixing their gaze on the top floor of the Apex tower. His stride was slow, deliberate, and unhurried—the walk of an executioner arriving at his scheduled appointment.

And behind him... marched a living nightmare.

Over two hundred Shadow Knights advanced in terrifying, silent synchronization. Their abyssal steel armor absorbed the morning sunlight, casting unnatural darkness across the pavement. Among their front ranks walked the spectral, dark forms of Director Gregory, Director Marcus, and Executive Director Harold—their eyes burning with cold violet flames, their loyalty entirely bound to the man leading them. Each step of the shadow army caused the highway asphalt to crack, spreading frost and black frost-veins along the ground.

[Absolute Extraction System: Territory War]

Infiltrating Sector 1: Apex Guild Headquarters.

Target: Guild Master Richard & Core Executives.

Commencing Mass Eradication Protocol.

Renan stopped at the base of the massive marble plaza outside the Apex skyscraper. The heavy, gold-plated emblem of Guild Apex—a towering dragon shield—hung proudly above the glass grand entrance, symbolizing absolute dominance over the nation’s Hunter hierarchy.

Renan slowly raised his left hand, pointing a single, pale finger toward the fifty-story building.

"Destroy the gates," Renan commanded quietly, his layered voice carrying across the empty plaza and echoing in the minds of everyone within a mile radius.

Beside him, the shadow entity of Executive Director Harold stepped forward, extending its dark arm. A massive, corrupted black-and-purple spell circle materialized in the air above the plaza, crackling with unstable necrotic energy and humming with an overpowering gravitational pull.

BOOM!

A colossal beam of dark, concentrated mana shot through the air like a localized meteor strike. It tore through the plaza’s reinforced anti-mana barricades, shattered the grand marble pillars, and blew the heavy steel gates of Apex Headquarters into twisted, molten scrap metal. The shockwave blew out every window on the first five floors, showering the plaza in a rain of razor-sharp glass.

The emergency sirens inside the building shrieked violently, echoing across Sector 1. Hundreds of Apex Guild security personnel, private enforcers, and high-tier mercenary Hunters flooded into the smoking plaza, drawing their weapons with pale, terrified faces as they beheld the two hundred shadow entities standing in disciplined formation before them. The air was suffocating, heavy with the stench of raw death and necrotic mana.

High above on the top floor, Richard glared down at the lone figure leading the shadow legion, his golden mana flaring into an explosive, tempestuous storm that shattered the rest of his office windows. The marble floor around him caved in under the weight of his rage.

"He dares..." Richard growled, his voice vibrating with murderous intent as he reached behind his back and drew his massive S-Rank golden broadsword, its blade glowing with radiant light. "He dares step into my domain?!"

Renan looked up at the top floor of the skyscraper. Through the shattered glass, his golden eyes locked onto Richard’s gaze across the vast distance. A cold, razor-sharp smile curved on Renan’s lips beneath his dark hood.

"I promised you I would return, Richard," Renan whispered into the morning wind, his voice resonating with the absolute authority of an awakening Monarch. "Today, Guild Apex falls."