The ferry ride to Trost District was a miserable, slow-motion nightmare.
I spent the entire journey sitting against the wooden railing, my hat pulled low over my face, trying to ignore the sounds of thousands of people collectively realizing their lives were over.
My normal-guy brain was desperately trying to trigger my [Nap Anywhere] passive skill so I could just check out for a few hours.
Unfortunately, my Leon S.
Kennedy template was having an absolute field day.
‘Crowd density exceeds safe limits.
Disease transmission risk is at ninety-four percent,’ my paranoid tactical brain calculated, keeping my eyes darting beneath my hat.
‘Multiple concealed weapons detected among desperate civilians.
Perimeter unsecured.’
‘Please, just let me sleep,’ I begged my own nervous system.
‘I am ten years old.
I do not care if that guy in the corner is hiding a rusty knife.’
Across from me, Eren was curled into a ball, staring blankly at the wooden floorboards.
He hadn’t spoken a single word since we left the docks.
Mikasa sat beside him, her eyes dark and hollow, gently holding Carla’s cold, limp hand.
Carla hadn’t woken up.
The heavy-duty silver duct tape was still wrapped tightly around her crushed legs, holding her shattered bones in place and preventing further blood loss.
When the boat finally docked in Trost, the real chaos began.
The Garrison regiment was completely overwhelmed.
They were herding us like cattle into massive, drafty stone storehouses that smelled like mildew and despair.
“Medical attention!
We need a doctor!” Hannes yelled, pushing his way through the sea of refugees with Carla in his arms.
I followed closely behind, using my Leon reflexes to seamlessly weave through the dense crowd, physically clearing a path for Hannes by firmly shoving people aside at their exact center of gravity.
We finally found a makeshift triage center.
It was just a row of dirty cots in a warehouse corner, manned by a single, incredibly stressed doctor.
Hannes laid Carla on a cot.
The doctor rushed over, taking one look at her legs and stopping dead in his tracks.
“What in the walls is this?” the doctor asked, poking at the ‘Duck Tales’ tape.
“Is this some kind of metallic fabric?
It’s adhered directly to the skin!”
“It’s a high-tension load-bearing binding,” I lied smoothly, stepping between the doctor and my mother.
“Do not remove it.
If you break that seal, the arterial pressure will drop and she will bleed out in three minutes.”
The doctor looked down at me, a ten-year-old covered in dust, with absolute bewilderment.
“Who are you?”
“The guy who did the math,” I replied flatly.
“What’s her prognosis?”
The doctor blinked, completely thrown off by my tone, but my Parker-infused intellect made me sound exactly like a senior medical professional.
He checked her pulse and shined a small light in her eyes.
“She’s stable, but she’s in a deep comatose state induced by severe physical trauma.
Her legs…
I’ve never seen bones crushed like this.
Even if she wakes up, she will never walk again.”
Eren let out a choked sob behind me.
“I know,” I said coldly, suppressing the wave of grief threatening to crash over my lazy persona.
“We need a sterile environment.
Where do we go?”
“Sterile?” The doctor laughed bitterly, gesturing to the crowded warehouse.
“You get a patch of dirt on the floor, kid.
We have ten thousand refugees and exactly zero beds.”
Hannes looked heartbroken.
“I’m sorry, Kai.
I have to report back to my commanding officer.
I…
I don’t know what to do.”
“You did enough, Hannes.
Thank you,” I said, offering him a small nod.
Hannes left, looking like a man who had just watched his entire world burn down.
Which, to be fair, he had.
I turned to Eren and Mikasa.
“Grab her arms and shoulders.
I’ll take her legs.
We’re moving.”
We carried Carla to the darkest, most secluded corner of the massive storehouse, claiming a small patch of cold stone floor near a damp wall.
“Kai, she can’t sleep on the floor,” Eren cried, his voice cracking.
“It’s freezing.
She’ll get sick.”
‘He’s right,’ my Parker brain deduced.
‘The ambient temperature combined with the moisture will induce hypothermia within six hours.
Infection risk is critical.’
I let out a long, exhausted sigh.
I really didn’t want to explain this.
“Turn around, Eren.
Mikasa, guard the perimeter.
Don’t let anyone look at us,” I ordered.
Mikasa immediately turned her back to me, her eyes scanning the crowd with lethal intent.
Eren was too tired to argue and faced the wall.
I opened my glowing blue inventory.
‘Deploy the garbage,’ I commanded mentally.
With a soft foomp, a massive, neon-orange modern camping tent materialized on the cold stone floor.
It was completely ridiculous.
It had fiberglass poles, heavy-duty waterproof nylon, mosquito netting, and a bright yellow zipper.
It looked like a UFO had landed in the middle of a medieval refugee camp.
“What is that?!” Eren yelled, spinning around and nearly falling over in shock.
“It’s a tent, Eren.
Try to keep up,” I muttered, quickly unzipping the front flap.
“Where did you get a bright orange house?!”
“I found it in the wreckage of a rich merchant’s carriage,” I lied effortlessly.
“Apparently, the wealthy elite of the interior have very vibrant tastes in outdoor survival gear.”
Mikasa stared at the zipper, utterly fascinated by the interlocking metal teeth.
“Help me move her inside,” I said, ignoring their confusion.
The inside of the tent was actually incredible.
It was insulated, completely waterproof, and infinitely cleaner than the warehouse floor.
We laid Carla down on the built-in ground tarp, wrapping her in whatever blankets we had salvaged.
“This…
this is really warm,” Eren whispered, sitting cross-legged on the nylon floor, looking around in awe.
“Yeah, well, don’t get used to luxury.
We have bigger problems,” I said, zipping the tent shut to block out the prying eyes of the other refugees.
The next morning, the reality of our situation hit us like a brick.
Food.
The Garrison was passing out emergency rations.
The line stretched for miles outside the storehouse.
When we finally reached the front, the soldier handed me exactly half a loaf of stale, rock-hard bread.
“This is for four people?” Eren yelled, his green eyes blazing with sudden fury.
“My mother is in a coma!
She needs actual food!”
“That’s the ration, kid.
Move along,” the tired soldier grunted, trying to wave us away.
“You’re holding back food for the military, aren’t you?!” Eren screamed, stepping forward and balling his hands into fists.
“I’ll kill you!”
‘Hostile action initiated by allied unit,’ my Leon S.
Kennedy template calculated in a fraction of a second.
‘Intervention required to prevent arrest.’
Before Eren could even swing his ten-year-old fist, I moved.
I didn’t even think about it.
My body simply executed a flawless CQC takedown.
I stepped into Eren’s blind spot, grabbed his wrist with my left hand, applied perfectly calculated pressure to his radial nerve, and swept his ankle with my right foot.
Eren was horizontal in the air before he even realized what was happening.
I guided his fall, dropping him flat on his back into the dirt and locking his arm in a painfully effective joint lock.
The Garrison soldier stared at me, his eyes wide with shock.
Mikasa actually gasped, taking a half-step forward.
“My brother is a suicidal idiot with severe blood sugar issues, sir,” I said politely to the guard, casually holding Eren pinned to the ground with one hand.
“We apologize for the inconvenience.”
I dragged a sputtering, highly confused Eren back to our neon-orange fortress of solitude.
“How did you do that?!” Eren demanded once we were zipped inside, rubbing his sore shoulder.
“You didn’t even look at me!”
“I’m lazy, Eren.
Fighting takes too much energy, so I learned how to end them instantly,” I lied, tossing him a piece of the stale bread.
I sat back against the nylon wall, chewing on a crust of bread that tasted like actual sawdust.
My Parker brain was spinning.
We needed better food.
We needed medical supplies.
If Carla got an infection, the duct tape wasn’t going to save her.
‘The system requires currency or items of high value to purchase extra gacha tickets,’ I remembered, bringing up the blue interface in my mind.
‘I need to farm the system.
Which means I need money.
Which means I actually have to get a job.’
A deep, profound wave of depression washed over me.
I was ten years old and I had to enter the workforce during an apocalyptic recession.
“I’ll be right back,” I sighed, unzipping the tent.
“Where are you going?” Mikasa asked quietly.
“I’m going to aggressively exploit the technological illiteracy of the general public,” I replied.
I walked out into the massive, crowded warehouse, my eyes scanning the miserable refugees.
My Parker intellect instantly highlighted dozens of mechanical failures all around me.
A merchant was sitting next to a cart with a shattered wooden wheel.
A refugee was struggling to fix a jammed flintlock pistol.
A group of men were failing to assemble a rudimentary pulley to lift heavy supply crates.
I walked up to the merchant with the broken cart.
“Your load distribution is entirely wrong, and your axle pin is bent,” I said lazily, pointing at the wooden wreckage.
The merchant sneered at me.
“Get lost, street rat.”
“I can fix it in ten minutes,” I offered, ignoring the insult.
“And I’ll reinforce the structural integrity so it can hold twice the weight.”
The man paused, looking at the broken cart and then back at my small, ten-year-old frame.
“If you make it worse, I’ll beat you.”
“If I fix it, you pay me three silver coins,” I countered smoothly.
He scoffed but nodded.
I got to work.
I didn’t have tools, so I used the edge of a sharp stone, my deep understanding of material tension, and a small strip of my rapidly depleting Duck Tales tape.
Nine minutes later, the cart was perfectly balanced and the wheel spun flawlessly.
The merchant stared at it like I had just performed dark magic.
He wordlessly handed me three silver coins.
I walked away, instantly feeding the coins into the invisible blue system interface hovering in front of me.
‘[Currency Accepted.
Value determined.
0.3 Basic Draw Tickets awarded.]’
‘Only point-three?’ I groaned internally.
‘This algorithm is a literal loan shark.’
I looked around the warehouse.
There were thousands of broken things, and I had the brain of a comic-book genius.
‘Fine,’ I thought, cracking my knuckles.
‘If I have to grind, I’m going to grind.’
‘[Parker Template Integration increased to 38%.
Capitalist enterprise initiated.]’
For the next week, I became the phantom mechanic of the Trost refugee camp.
I fixed carts, repaired weapons, built clean-water filtration systems out of charcoal and sand, and charged everyone exactly what they could afford.
I didn’t sleep.
My Leon paranoia kept me awake, and my Parker intellect kept me working.
By the end of the week, I had managed to scrape together exactly two full Gacha tickets.
I sat outside our neon-orange tent, my hands covered in grease and dirt, completely and utterly exhausted.
My lazy, average-guy persona was officially dead.
The world had forced my hand.
‘Okay, system,’ I thought, closing my tired eyes and initiating the draw.
‘I earned these.
Please, for the love of everything, give me some penicillin.’
The slot machine spun.
‘[Congratulations!
Host has pulled an [Uncommon] Tier Reward!]’
I held my breath.
‘[Item Acquired: A 5-Gallon Drum of WD-40.]’
I stared at the heavy metal barrel t
hat suddenly materialized next to the tent.
“You have got to be kidding me,” I whispered into the dark.