Maybe I'd seen a shadow of my own past self in that girl. That was why I'd handed over a whole playbook for free.
Whether the girl ever read it, whether she listened — that part was up to fate.
Message sent, I turned to my own body. I had a few days to bring myself back to the absolute peak I'd once trained to.
I'd barely started when a chime went off in my head.
Ding — Overlord Protocol initiated.
Limited window: ten days. Every gain in host combat capability earns rewards.
Final reward will be graded by completion.
My eyes went wide — and my workout got a lot more serious. This time I was taking the hundred-percent reward.
"Hooh. Hooh. Hooh."
Inside the bunker I put myself through training of frankly deranged intensity. "Three hundred fifty-four."
"Three hundred fifty-five."
"Three hundred fifty-six."
"Three hundred sixty."
I finished the three-hundred-and-sixtieth set dripping, and when the final plank was done, my whole body felt like it had been taken apart. Nothing left. Completely wrung out.
And being wrung out, I could feel it clearly: my limits breaking, one after another. I was climbing. Getting stronger.
He'd been a soldier before the end. He'd come to City A on the relief effort, and been abandoned by his own command mid-operation — his unit dead or scattered, just him alone drifting into the Grandland base where I was. I was the one who'd taken him in. He never talked, never complained; he only executed. My most important blade.
Squad after squad had tried to poach him. He never heard a word of it. Soldiers, maybe, just run loyal: once he'd decided I was his captain, he didn't betray. Right up until the siege, when he died in front of me.
I finished the workout, the old lives pressing close — but my track had already bent away from all of it. The people and the debts of that life were never coming back around. Be grateful for what you have. This life, with Summer, I could do it all the same.
I dragged my wrecked body to the shower, and while the water ran I got the rice cooker going, microwaved ten self-heating packs, and fried five golden eggs.
This text was taken from NovelPhoenix. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Shower done, I piled everything over the rice, cracked a cold soda, and ate hugging the rice cooker at my computer. Big burn, big meal.
Supplies were the one thing I had too much of — plus the eggs and duck eggs, the chicken, the fish, all of it renewing itself. I could eat however I pleased.
I opened the computer to find a movie — and found my comment section blowing up instead.
Scrolling through: *"Made it! Didn't see a single one of them on the way!"*
*"I did what you said — went out through our complex's back garden, the exit with the fewest people. I'm inside the convenience store now! I just took down three of them in a row, I was terrified! But it went okay — there's nobody in the store!"*
*"Packed a whole bag of supplies! Heading out now! Thank you, Midsummer bro!"*
I looked at *Midsummer bro* and snorted. My handle was Midsummer. The girl had decided I was a man.
I thought about it, found the DM button, and sent one private line.
*"Don't go home. Block the store door and hole up in the small staff room in the back. There's water and food there, and convenience stores sit on good ground by design. The outbreak hit in the morning — the streets look crawling but actually aren't. In the end times, what you avoid is PEOPLE, not the dead. Board up the front, hide in a narrow back room, and you'll eat and drink while you wait — when the relief convoys come through, you'll be first out. It's residential blocks that are the real trap. The dead are lying low in every corner of them, and the moment people start coming out for supplies, every complex gets its own horror wave. Get clear of crowds, and you're somewhere safe."*
No reply ever came.
Maybe the girl had made it home. Maybe she'd be lucky. Maybe she'd die on the way. I stopped reading, picked something light, and ate dinner in front of it — and while I watched, I downloaded every movie, series, and novel the connection would still give her. That was next month's seasoning. The source of this chapter is novelping.com.
After dinner I walked it off with Summer, doing the rounds of the base, checking on the chickens and ducks, the garden and the lambs. Then back inside for round two of training, straight through until late night, and I slept like the dead myself.
Next morning, first thing: training again. And this time I could feel it plainly — strength up, endurance up. Everything ached and I bit down and finished every set anyway. Only then: shower, breakfast.
Another mountain of rice — today's menu: roast chicken and army stew, all of it looted from the big supermarket, all of it perfectly preserved in my storage space. A little water, plug it in, and the army stew came up bubbling: beef slices, shrimp paste and whole prawns, every kind of beef ball and chicken ball and fish ball, mushrooms of every species — enoki, oyster, shiitake — and a mountain of vegetables. A four-person pot.
I ate all four portions. Plus several fried eggs, fragrant and fresh-laid.
From my own coop, those. I'd checked that morning: twenty eggs a day now. I couldn't eat that many, so the surplus stayed under the hens to hatch — stock for later.
Full to the brim, I sipped roasted-yogurt drink to settle it all down — training was coming, and everything had to be digested first. Who else on earth was living like this? Everyone else couldn't get full; I had to *exercise off* my surplus.
I closed the half-finished movie — boring — and went back to the forum. My post from yesterday had gone nuclear: ten thousand likes in a day, a crowd calling me boss and begging for more.
Someone was asking if I was some kind of official — how did I know all this in such detail. I ignored all of it.
I only cared about one reply. From the original poster — Sunny.
*"Midsummer bro — I made it home safe. Thank you!"*
My brow went up. So. She'd gone home anyway.
I didn't reply. And a moment later, a brand-new post went up on the girl's page.
*"Today is day four of the end of the world..."*