Office work taught you a strange relationship with numbers.
When you're dealing with something that slowly eats away at your life, you naturally become more calculative. Salary. Leave days. How many of those leave days your boss would somehow still find a reason to call you during. How much of the month was left compared to how much money was left.
Eventually, you stopped looking at numbers as numbers.
They became measurements of how much inconvenience you could afford in your daily life.
Gacha games weren't very different.
They were routine. Almost like work, really. The same part of your brain, trained since school to follow requirements and chase arbitrary targets, now craving dopamine from something far less productive. Multiple currencies. Event tokens. Quest items. Daily objectives. Puzzles that made you run across half a map for a reward that would eventually become one tiny step towards another pull at the slot machine.
Do that long enough and the calculations start happening automatically.
The numbers had been working their way through my head throughout the day.
Z-Chips. Mission progress. Levels. Sanity. Affinity.
That last one bothered me the most.
Ever since I'd decided I was going to make proper use of this System, I'd also decided I needed to learn how to get along with the Operators it brought me. They were going to form the bedrock of whatever life I managed to build in this zombie apocalypse.
The problem was Affinity.
I still didn't understand how to control it.
With Lunallu, there were moments where my words seemed to reach her exactly the way I'd hoped, and others where they didn't. At the time, I'd mostly been feeling things out, watching her reactions and adjusting as I went.
But eventually, I thought I'd found something resembling a method. A way to deal with these extraordinary people without pushing too hard, saying too much, or repeating what happened the first time.
But... Charlotte was different.
I'd known what kind of person she was supposed to be before I even opened her chamber. One of the smartest characters in CWO. So I'd gone in prepared. Lay out my explanation as cleanly as possible. Keep the lies to a minimum. Answer just enough to keep her engaged. Dodge what I couldn't answer safely, redirect when necessary, and above all avoid giving her anything that might make her seriously question her own existence.
That plan lasted about a minute. Charlotte was an enigma.
...Let me complain for a bit.
For a while, I'd genuinely wondered whether Doctor's Authority — Emotional Resonance was even working the way I thought it did.
My original assumption was simple enough. The System gave me the Doctor's recognition. I inherited a certain amount of credibility from whoever the real Doctor had been to each Operator. From there, I only had to avoid doing anything stupid enough to destroy it.
Then Charlotte nearly put a Photon edge against my neck.
For a moment, I genuinely thought I was going to get killed by my own summon.
How ridiculous was that?
Except it didn't stop there.
She just kept asking questions.
Not aggressively, either. That would've been easier.
Charlotte would notice something, ask about it, accept half an answer without seeming particularly daunted, then move on as if she'd decided to let it go. Twenty minutes later, she'd somehow return to the same subject from a completely different direction.
Sometimes I wasn't even sure she'd caught me lying until she asked the next question.
Eventually, I stopped trying quite so hard. Mostly because of her Sanity value. It hardly fluctuated, staying somewhere in the high nineties. Charlotte had been almost completely stable from the moment she opened her eyes.
Suspicious? Definitely. Curious? Constantly. But unstable? Not even slightly.
If anything, being dropped into another world seemed to make her more interested. Which, thinking about it, was probably the most Charlotte Holmes reaction possible.
In CWO, she was a genius.
Not in the vague way games liked calling every character with glasses intelligent, either. Players actually used her because of it. Investigation missions became significantly easier if Charlotte was in the Party. Hidden evidence. Contradictory witness statements. Environmental clues. NPCs who were obviously withholding something.
I had to give the developers credit. They'd put an absurd amount of work into her.
Charlotte had unique dialogue for what felt like half the suspicious people, Operators and objects of interest in the game. Bring her somewhere the developers expected players to investigate and there was a decent chance she'd have something to say about it.
The developers had committed to the bit too, continuing to add new Charlotte interactions whenever fresh regions, characters or investigation content were released. Characters like that didn't come around often. Out of the hundreds released over CWO's lifetime, I could probably count them on one hand.
So yes. I knew Charlotte was good. What I didn't know was Charlotte herself.
I hadn't finished all of her Personal Episodes, not even close.
For a casual like me, Charlotte had mostly been an investigation tool. I'd cleared enough of her early progression to get what I wanted out of her kit, push through the Breakthrough requirement for level-locked missions, then moved on.
That was how I treated plenty of four- and five-stars.
If I liked them, maybe I'd read more. If I needed the Bond Perk, I'd do the episode.
If I needed the level cap, I'd do enough to break through it. Otherwise? There were hundreds of characters and only so many hours in a day.
And... I'd met smart people before. At work, in school, in life generally. People who could notice things faster than me, argue circles around a room, or make me reconsider whether I'd understood something as well as I thought I had.
None of them had cut into my confidence quite like this woman.
Even as the game's exaggerated caricature of a genius detective, Charlotte Holmes had exhausted me.
Which brought me back to the numbers.
I had spent most of the day watching them rise in places I understood, and occasionally in places I didn't.
Distance travelled. Infected killed. Supplies scavenged. Mission rewards.
Z-Chips.
By the time the construction-site operation was over, there had finally been enough.
Enough for another ten-pull.
I didn't spend the Z-Chips immediately.
After everything that had happened, pulling just because I could wasn't something I wanted to make a habit of. I'd already learned what being underprepared could cost me. Bringing another person into this world came with problems I couldn't fully predict, but not having enough options when something went wrong could be just as dangerous.
Regardless, the last few hours had made something else obvious.
Lunallu couldn't be everywhere. Charlotte couldn't be everywhere. And I definitely couldn't.
If I was going to keep moving through Eden, finding supplies, helping people where I could, and somehow keeping the people already around me alive, then two Operators weren't going to be enough forever.
I needed more superhumans. More eyes, more hands, more people capable of acting where I couldn't.
So I pulled.
Just one ten-pull.
Aurelia was still sitting there on the banner, and naturally, part of me wanted to see gold. A six-star healer—a Valkyrie, at that—would've been absurdly useful right now.
But after Mira, rarity wasn't the only thing I had to think about anymore.
More power also meant another person I would have to understand.
For now, one pull was enough.
And now the results were sitting in front of me.
Three purples. I blinked.
That went better than I expected.
The first one made me straighten slightly.
★★★★ Transporter
Of all the four-stars I could have gotten, that was useful. Very useful, actually. He was on rate-up, so if I kept pulling on this banner, running into him sooner or later was always likely.
The next two were equipment.
★★★★ Face Projection Skin — Roadghost
★★★★ Cyber Katana Mk II
"...Cosmetics?"
"Doctor?"
I glanced back.
Lunallu was following a few steps behind me up the stairs.
"Did you say something?"
"Ah, no. I was just thinking we should probably change out of these clothes soon."
Her eyes dropped to the darkened crimson of her bodysuit. She pinched lightly at the fabric near her waist, then seemed to realise what she was doing and let go a little too quickly.
"...Yes," she murmured, looking away as she gave a small nod.
We kept moving.
But my attention went straight back to the result.
Seeing cosmetics in the limited recruitment pool was news to me. In CWO, appearance items had their own separate gacha. I hadn't expected them to be mixed into the recruitment pool as possible results too.
So much for keeping the pool clean. I moved on before I could dwell on it too much.
The Cyber Katana Mk II, at least, was straightforward. Four-star melee equipment, no ammunition required, and considerably more useful in the current situation than most weapons I'd normally dismissed as style picks.
Calling it a katana was mostly for appearances. The blade was really a concentrated energy edge running along a reinforced core, closer to a beam cutter shaped like a sword than anything traditional. I vaguely remembered someone on the forums saying the developers had taken inspiration from Aldnoah.Zero—that beam katana Argyre used, specifically. Looking at the name again, I could see it.
In-game, it had ridiculous armour penetration for a melee weapon.
And it didn't need ammunition. Well, whether I could actually use the thing was another question. I didn't exactly have Jedi training, and swinging around something with that kind of cutting power while having no idea what I was doing sounded like a good way to remove one of my own limbs. Then there was the weight. After what happened with Pilgrim, I wasn't going to assume a weapon was meant for someone like me. The Doctor had never been a frontline combatant in CWO. Most of this equipment was designed for Operators who could actually use it.
For all I knew, I'd pick the katana up and discover it weighed as much as a steel beam.
...
The remaining results were much less exciting, mostly repeats. A day ago, I probably would've called that filler. I looked at the list again. Medical supplies. Food. Water. Protection. Something to hide behind if things went bad. As resources became harder to come by, there probably wasn't going to be such a thing as filler anymore.
I let the result window disappear.
For a second, my vision felt strangely empty without translucent boxes sitting in front of it.
We climbed the last flight of stairs and stepped back onto the rooftop.
"Oh~ finished making friends, Doctor?"
Ahead of us, the night sky stretched over Eden, with Charlotte sat near the edge, continuing to thin out the infected below.
"Good. I'm getting rather bored. Forty-three~"
Somewhere during the one-sided slaughter, she'd reached Level 7. I looked over her for a moment, then to the sky. Ten streaks were falling across the city in the distance, slowly separating from one another as they descended towards different parts of Eden.
Right. Those were mine now too. Somewhere out there was another person who knew me as the Doctor. Another person with an entire life I might only remember through voice lines, skill descriptions and whatever scraps of story I'd bothered reading years ago.
Transporter.
After Charlotte, I found myself ruminating over better means of handling Operators. Lunallu had been manageable mostly because she'd chosen to trust me. Charlotte had, well, exhausted me. And this was only two of them.
There would be more. Different personalities. Different histories with the Doctor. Different things they remembered that I didn't. Different ways they might react when I inevitably said the wrong thing.
"Charlotte. Luna."
Both of them faced me.
"We need to talk about what comes next. For all three of us."
Charlotte glanced at my hands.
"And perhaps before the Doctor finishes assigning himself responsibility for every corpse in Eden."
"Charlotte."
Lunallu's response was immediate.
Charlotte merely tilted her head. "Too soon?"
...Well. She's hit me right where it hurts.
I rubbed at my face, still unsettled by the fact that only a few hours ago, I'd killed someone.
A living person this time. Maybe it was some small comfort that I hadn't become completely numb to it yet. My hands were trembling.
But yes. It was all for the future.
I couldn't stop here. Time was running. It was always running.
Thinking back on what Yerin had told me, and what Lunallu had learned during the handover, the situation was becoming harder to ignore. Hana's mother was inside one of the EDF's protected areas now. Safe, for the moment. But the news surrounding the EDF's involvement—or lack of it—in the near future was grim. They were stretched thin, evacuation plans were already changing, and there were parts of Eden they might eventually have no choice but to abandon.
Handing someone over to the soldiers didn't mean I could simply stop worrying about them.
And right now, there was only so much I could do about any of it.
I needed to grow faster.
To that end...
"We have to part ways here."
Lunallu's attention shifted away from the falling streaks.
Charlotte watched one disappear beyond the skyline before looking back at me.
"I assume that means I'll be accompanying you again once you've decided which one to retrieve first."
"No."
Charlotte's brows rose slightly.
"No?"
"Neither of you are coming with me."
Lunallu studied me for a moment.
"You're planning to go alone?"
"For a while."
Her eyes flicked towards the city beyond the rooftop, then back to me.
"Then what do you want us to do?"
I hesitated for just a second. "Stay here. At least for tonight."
Neither of them answered immediately. Lunallu glanced towards the stairwell we'd just come through, then towards the people gathered below. Charlotte, meanwhile, simply watched me, as always.
"You want us to remain with them?" Lunallu asked.
"For now."
She looked mildly puzzled by that. I couldn't blame her. Neither of them had any particular attachment to the people here. Lunallu had gotten a little more personally involved because of the hostage situation, and Charlotte because she'd followed my lead. That didn't suddenly make this place their responsibility.
"Those lights are already falling," I continued before either of them could press me. "And they'll be isolated again once they land."
I pointed towards the streaks separating across the skyline.
"If someone sees one come down, they might investigate. If it's equipment, they could move it. If it's one of our companions..."
I didn't finish that part. I knew they'd understand.
"So you intend to leave immediately," Charlotte said.
"Yes."
That part, at least, was completely true.
I'd made the pull without giving myself much time to prepare for what came after.
The moment the ten-pull finished, the deployments were already out there somewhere. Even in the dead of night, every minute I waited was another minute someone could stumble across one of the chambers, pry at it, drag it somewhere, or simply surround the area before I arrived.
I was impatient. Probably more impatient than I should've been.
But that wasn't the reason, merely an excuse plausible enough for me to leave without objections.
There were several reasons for this decision. Keeping Lunallu and Charlotte beside me everywhere was becoming wasteful. If every Operator I summoned had to move as one group with me, then all I was doing was collecting increasingly capable bodyguards. That wasn't what I needed. I needed reach. People who could act where I wasn't. Watch places I couldn't. Protect people without requiring me to stand beside them. Eventually, if I was serious about surviving whatever Eden was becoming, we would have to learn how to operate apart.
Better to find out now whether that was even possible.
And beneath all of that was the part I hadn't said aloud.
I wanted distance. Not from Charlotte specifically, no matter how difficult she was to keep up with. And certainly not from Lunallu either, who had done more than anyone to help me survive this far.
Just... enough space to think without constantly wondering what expression I was making, whether I'd said something suspicious, or whether the people I was starting to rely on were taking my words the way I'd intended.
After Mira, after Hana, after killing two people, after everything Yerin had told me... I'm starting to crack. The apocalypse was slowly getting to me, and it hadn't even passed a full week.
I needed a little time where the only person I had to manage was myself.
If I got the chance, I should probably start keeping a journal, not just for me.
CWO had hundreds of Operators, and whatever scraps I still remembered about them were only going to fade with time. Personalities, habits, story beats, things they liked or disliked—anything that might help if the System ever decided to drop one of them into my life.
Come to think of it, writing myself a character-conquest guide didn't sound like such a bad idea.
Charlotte kept looking at me. I knew she'd noticed something. Maybe not all of it, probably more than I would've liked. But for once, she didn't ask. She only folded her arms and looked back towards the city.
"Very well."
Lunallu glanced at her, then back at me.
"And if something happens?"
"Private Communications."
I tapped the side of my head.
"Give me a message. I'll do the same."
I paused, then added, "And if you really need another physical line, take the relay back from Yerin."
Lunallu considered that, then gave a slow nod.
Charlotte was quiet for another moment.
Then, just as I thought the conversation was over—
"Keep your promise, Doctor."
I looked at her.
She didn't elaborate. She didn't have to.
"...I remember."
That seemed to satisfy her.
Lunallu was still watching the two of us, her expression just slightly off in a way I couldn't quite place.
I stared at her for a second. Then at Charlotte.
A completely unrelated thought crossed my mind.
"Oh, right."
Both of them looked at me.
"Do you two know what a parfait is?"
Silence. Charlotte blinked. Lunallu slowly shook her head.
"It's sort of..." I searched for the right description. "A tall glass, layered with ice cream, whipped cream—sometimes chantilly if the place wants to sound expensive—fruit, syrup, sponge cake, cereal, maybe custard. Then they stick wafer rolls or chocolate batons on top."
There was a short silence.
Lunallu's lips moved faintly.
"...Ice... cream."
Beside her, Charlotte seemed to be testing another phrase under her breath.
"Wafer rolls..."
Neither of them looked entirely certain what half those things were.
But surely, desserts possessed some kind of universal grammar. Put enough words involving cream, fruit, chocolate and sugar beside one another and women from another world could still somehow reconstruct the important part.
Their expressions were already changing.
For the first time, I felt like I'd found something I could actually lead these difficult women around by the nose with.
I continued, encouraged.
"You eat it from the top and keep digging down. Every layer is different, so eventually everything starts mixing together."
"Custard..." Lunallu murmured this time, as though committing the word to memory.
Charlotte gave her a brief sideways glance.
I pretended not to notice.
"And depending on the place, they'll put strawberries on top. Chocolate sauce. Maybe little pieces of cake. Sometimes those wafer sticks."
"...Wafer sticks," Charlotte repeated.
Right.
They understood enough.
"It's sweeter than chocolate."
Lunallu went very still.
Charlotte's eyes narrowed slightly.
"...You're exaggerating," she said.
"I'm really not."
"Something sweeter than chocolate..."
Lunallu repeated it under her breath as though I'd just described some rare Cyverse artefact.
I couldn't help smiling.
"When things settle down a little, I'll get you both one."
Charlotte glanced at me.
"Another promise?"
"...Apparently."
"Then I'll remember it."
Of course she would.
Lunallu gave a small nod beside her, still seemingly preoccupied with the idea that chocolate could somehow be surpassed.
For a moment, with the three of us standing beneath the night sky talking about desserts, everything almost felt embarrassingly normal.
I adjusted the strap on my bag.
"Anyway... I should get moving."
That brought the mood back down a little.
Lunallu looked towards the skyline, then back at me.
"Be careful."
Charlotte gave a small nod. "Try not to make yourself too interesting while we're apart, Doctor."
"I'll do my best."
I took a few steps towards the stairwell, then stopped.
"And you two."
They both looked at me.
"Make sure the hostages get out properly. Help Yerin if she needs it, but don't go picking fights unless you have to."
"Yerin?" Charlotte started.
Lunallu's hand came up almost immediately, covering her mouth before she could finish.
"And..." I looked between them. "Try to settle in a bit while I'm gone."
Charlotte tilted her head.
"I mean it. Learn how things work here. Talk to people. Figure out what you can about Eden."
My eyes dropped briefly to Lunallu's bodysuit, then to Charlotte's equally conspicuous clothes.
"And... cough. Find something normal to wear."
Lunallu followed my gaze, then calmly glanced down at her own bodysuit.
Charlotte, naturally, did the opposite.
"Although, considering our late host's assumptions..." She glanced down at herself, then back at me. "I suppose I should be flattered. Apparently, I already pass for girlfriend material in this world."
"...That's what you took from that?"
"I prefer to focus on the useful observations."
Before she could elaborate, Lunallu reached over and planted a palm squarely across her face.
"Mmph—!"
Charlotte pulled back with a startled yelp, her composure finally cracking.
"Must you?"
Lunallu regarded her coolly.
"Let the Doctor finish, Detective."
Charlotte stared at her, visibly displeased.
"You do enjoy giving orders, don't you?"
Lunallu's expression didn't change.
"When necessary."
Charlotte's mouth tightened.
I decided that was probably my cue to leave.
Any more of this and the quiet I’d been looking forward to was going to become a medical necessity.
With a resigned sigh, I turned back towards the stairs.
"And try not to kill anyone unless you really have to."
There was a brief pause behind me.
"That request seems rather specifically directed," Charlotte said.
It is.
I kept those words close to my chest.
Cyverse had always treated life more cheaply than this world did. Not because everyone there was some kind of monster, but because it was the sort of place where violence had been normalised for generations. Wars, corporate purges, failed states, human experimentation. Sometimes it felt closer to reading about the Middle Ages than anything modern.
Even the kinder Operators carried a certain ruthlessness with them. If someone became a threat, most of them could make the decision to kill without freezing up the way I did.
I wasn't sure I wanted that becoming normal here too.
I waved once over my shoulder.
"Message me if anything happens."
"We will," Lunallu said.
Charlotte's answer came a moment later.
"Do come back alive, Doctor. I still intend to collect on several promises."
I glanced back at her.
"...Yeah."
Then I headed downstairs.
The middle of the night had settled properly over Eden by then.
Not peaceful. The city had gone too quiet for that. No traffic washing through the streets, no late buses groaning at junctions, no clusters of people lingering beneath convenience-store lights. Just scattered fires, distant sirens that came and went, and occasionally something unpleasant carrying much farther through the dark than it normally would have.
I let out a quiet breath. The night felt colder than it should have for this time of year, the chill slipping through my clothes whenever the wind picked up.
Maybe it was only my imagination.
The city was still mostly asleep—or whatever passed for asleep now. Every so often, something carried through the night that had me reaching for the PZ400 before I even knew what I'd heard.
I found a safe spot to rest and lowered my backpack, rolling one shoulder before rubbing at the ache that had settled across both of them.
When I finally took out my phone, I turned the brightness all the way down and still cupped one hand around the screen before waking it, careful not to let even that faint glow spill too far into the dark.
My phone read 4:18 AM.
Apparently, the apocalypse wasn't enough to excuse me from dailies.
My phone was sitting at 37% now, courtesy of the power bank. Good enough. I slipped it back into my pocket. The dailies could wait. There was something much more important on my mind.
One final reason I'd left the two of them behind.
The biggest one.
System windows that I'd already read once, then quietly pushed aside while the two of them were still there.
I called them back up.
And beneath those was a tab that had added itself to the System interface.
Events
There was only one entry inside.
Permanent Event: A Place to Return To
A demure woman occupied most of the banner art, dressed in a cobalt-blue Victorian maid outfit and caught halfway through a curtsey. Azure hair fell in a neat hime cut, long sidelocks softly framing her cheeks. Just behind the frilled headband rose a pair of unmistakable wolf ears.
A demihuman.
I knew her immediately.
✦✦✦✦✦ YoruOne of the few surviving subjects of the Chimera Project, introduced during Version 1.7.
Yeah. I noticed the discrepancy too.
If we followed the version logic of the gacha banner, Yoru was seven patches early.
And even in 1.7, she only appeared as an NPC. The only reason she was introduced then, was to tie her in to the story that led players towards the next region after Halcyon. It wasn't until Version 2.0 that she became officially playable, handed out through the new housing tutorial as part of the Stronghold system.
Which made it strange that the System had escalated things this early.
[Stronghold Foundation Reward Acquired.]
It had been sitting in my Inventory since.
★★★★★★ Obsidian Cube
A featureless black cube rotated slowly inside the preview window. No seams. No markings. Nothing that suggested it could unfold into anything larger than something I could comfortably hold between both hands.
Yet this was apparently the foundation of an entire Stronghold. Or, in simpler terms, the player's base of operations. Their housing system. And the black cube itself was the Terraforming equipment.
Give it a suitable space and the cube would restructure the surrounding area into the first stage of a base. Floor, ceiling, walls—the whole enclosure reinforced and isolated from whatever structure had originally been there. The beginnings of a Workshop. Somewhere defensible enough for the System to recognise as its own space.
A proper safe zone. Like one of the Beginner Missions had suggested ever since I left my own apartment.
Or maybe the System had been pointing towards this from the beginning. If it worked the way I remembered, keeping every Operator beside me was about to become unnecessary anyway.
I dismissed the description and kept walking through the darkness, sticking to cover and listening for anything that didn't belong.
Yoru. The Stronghold. Ten new deployments scattered across Eden. The two people most capable of keeping me alive staying behind while I moved on alone. For the first time in a while, I was back to being what everyone else here was.
Just another survivor in a zombie apocalypse.
My grip tightened slightly around the strap of my bag.
The last twenty-four hours had been about surviving whatever this world threw at me.
Perhaps now was the true beginning.
The part where I started deciding what came next.