(Around Chapter 12, we’ll join Shane’s camp.
Rest assured, dear readers, this book will absolutely not drift away from the original series’ main characters.)
Luke Li was woken by police sirens.
The sound of several police cars came from the highway in the distance, their wails stretching long through the morning air.
Luke Li heard someone in the room upstairs cursing at the top of their lungs.
He opened his eyes.
Gray morning light seeped in through the gaps in the curtains, and his phone showed 6:14 a.m.
[Apocalypse Countdown: 43:17:02]
Forty three hours.
Luke Li got up and washed his face.
Cold water hit his skin, flushing the last traces of sleep down the drain.
The face in the mirror was young and thin, with slightly sunken eyes.
The original body had belonged to a graduate student who stayed up late for years, so his foundation was not exactly great.
Before heading out, he tucked the Glock 19 into the back of his waistband and covered it with the hem of his shirt.
The fire axe was too conspicuous, so he left it in the backpack.
He started the pickup and drove onto the road.
Kingsland looked almost the same as yesterday.
The Waffle House was open as usual, the gas station sign was lit, and two children in school uniforms rode their bicycles past the intersection.
But there were still subtle changes.
Luke Li noticed a police car parked by the roadside.
Two officers stood at the door of a house, talking to the homeowner, a middle-aged woman with her arms crossed and her face pale.
He slowed down and glanced at the space above the woman’s head.
[Fear].
Orange.
[Shock].
Light yellow, flashing violently.
He did not stop.
In horror movies, cowardice and fear did not necessarily get people killed, but curiosity definitely did.
After a twenty minute drive to Brunswick, the atmosphere on the streets had clearly changed.
Walmart’s parking lot was twice as full as yesterday.
People were pushing carts piled high with goods and stuffing them into their cars with frantic movements, as if afraid someone would snatch everything away.
Seven or eight cars were lined up at the gas station.
Normally, there would be two or three at most at this hour.
As he passed a pharmacy, he saw three people arguing at the entrance, their voices loud enough to carry across the street.
They were one step away from grabbing baseball bats off the shelves and starting a fight.
Luke Li swept his gaze over their buffs.
[Anxiety].
Yellow.
[Anger].
Light red.
[Fear – Mild].
Light orange.
Different colors represented different emotions.
Before, most people’s emotional colors had stayed calm and neutral.
Now, yellow signs of anxiety were starting to appear everywhere.
It reminded him of playing SimCity.
At the start, when the city was first built, the residents’ mood index stayed green.
A few days later, yellow warnings would begin to appear.
Then large areas would turn red, management would fail, and the residents would move out.
While waiting at a red light, he saw a young woman crossing the sidewalk.
She was in her early twenties, with a ponytail, unsteady steps, and a faint pallor on her face.
The buff above her head read:
[Fever – Unknown Cause].
Orange.
[Cough].
Light yellow.
This woman’s condition was worse than the infected man he saw yesterday.
Luke Li looked away.
The light turned green, and he stepped on the gas.
Today’s goal was clear: restock at the pharmacy, buy a crossbow from the outdoor store, then return to the motel as quickly as possible.
Public anxiety had already started to ignite.
He did not want to still be outside when the crowds lost control.
The pharmacy took twenty minutes.
He cleared out all the broad-spectrum antibiotics, painkillers, fever reducers, and allergy medicine on the shelves, then stocked up on more gauze and bandages.
He also grabbed the largest bottles of povidone-iodine and alcohol he could find.
The pharmacist frowned when he saw how much Luke Li was buying.
“Sir, these medications…”
“I’m in charge of a summer camp in Savannah,” Luke Li said with a smile.
“Three hundred kids.
I need to make sure we’re fully stocked.”
The pharmacist’s expression eased.
The [Suspicion] above his head faded and changed into [Understanding].
Total cost: $312, paid by credit card.
His backpack was already full, so the extra medicine could only go into the back seat of the pickup.
Next stop: Bison Outdoors on the east side of town.
It was a medium-sized outdoor store that sold hunting gear, camping equipment, and fishing supplies.
Luke Li went straight to the hunting section and found what he wanted on the shelf.
A Barnett Jackal recurve crossbow, 150-pound draw weight, 40-yard effective range, fitted with a red dot sight.
A crossbow’s advantages in the apocalypse were obvious.
It was quiet, would not attract hordes of walkers, was easier to manage than a gun in certain situations, and the bolts could be recovered and reused.
At close range, a crossbow bolt was no less lethal than a firearm.
He also picked up sixty carbon fiber bolts, a quiver, and a set of string maintenance tools.
Then he added a hunting knife, a KA-BAR with a seven-inch blade, just right as a backup melee weapon.
At checkout, the clerk gave him a few extra looks but said nothing.
In Georgia, no permit was needed to buy a crossbow.
Asian faces were just rare here, especially Asian men buying weapons.
The total came to $487.
When he stepped out of the store, the sunlight was glaring.
Luke Li narrowed his eyes and walked toward the parking lot, carrying the long box that held the crossbow.
As he approached his truck, he suddenly stopped.
Two men were standing beside the pickup.
Two white men in their thirties, wearing sleeveless shirts, with cheap tattoos on their arms.
One was leaning against the door of his pickup, smoking.
The other was bent over, peering into the truck bed.
Luke Li glanced at the readings above their heads.
First man: [Hostility].
Red.
[Greed].
Dark yellow.
[Alcohol Influence – Mild].
Gray.
Second man: [Hostility].
Red.
[Tension].
Gray, flashing.
Drinking at ten in the morning and poking around someone else’s truck.
These were not the kind of bandits who would only appear after the apocalypse.
They were the kind of trash that had already existed before it.
Arrogant, bitter men at the bottom, looking down on everyone else.
Luke Li slowed his pace.
His right hand quietly reached behind his waist, and his fingertips touched the grip of the Glock 19.
Draw the gun?
No.
Opening fire now would be suicide.
The police were still maintaining social order.
He could not get arrested and end up welcoming the apocalypse from a holding cell.
He let go of the gun and instead took the short-handled camp axe out of his backpack, gripping it in his right hand, hidden behind the long crossbow box.
Then he continued toward the pickup, his steps steady and his expression calm.
“Hey!” the man leaning against the door called out first, cigarette between his fingers as he tilted his head and sized him up.
“This your truck?”
Luke Li did not answer.
He stopped three steps away from them.
“Got a lot of stuff in this truck, kid.” The second man straightened from the truck bed, a smirk on his face.
“Water, lumber, gasoline…
What are you preparing for?
The end of the world?”
Both men laughed, their eyes carrying a natural contempt.
Luke Li watched their buffs.
The red [Hostility] remained stable, but the second man’s [Tension] was growing stronger.
That reaction was telling.
Hesitation meant this guy was not truly tough.
He was only pretending, all bark and no bite.
The real danger was the first man.
“Move away from my truck.
I’m not in the mood to hurt anyone right now.”
The first man flicked his cigarette butt onto the ground, crushed it under his shoe, then pulled a folding knife from behind his waist and snapped it open with a click.
“Big mouth for a nobody.
Leave the goods and hand over the keys, or I’ll cut the tendons in your hands.”
The [Hostility] above his head shifted from red to dark red.
[Violent Tendencies – Active]
Luke Li’s mind raced.
The other man had a knife.
Three steps away.
Luke Li had an axe, hidden behind the box, and they did not know he was armed.
The second man’s [Tension] was flashing wildly.
He was about to back down.
Take down the first one, and the second would most likely run.
At least, that was how it usually went on TV.
Luke Li pushed the crossbow box forward as if handing it over.
The knife-wielding man instinctively lowered his head to look.
He never expected the axe to swing out from behind the box.
Luke Li did not aim for his head.
His target was the knife hand.
The back of the camp axe struck the man’s wrist with precision.
The folding knife flew from his hand and bounced twice across the asphalt.
The man screamed, clutching his wrist as he stumbled back.
Luke Li stepped forward and rested the axe blade against the side of his neck.
The whole exchange took less than two seconds.
[Bladed Weapons Skill EXP +30]
[Bladed Weapons Skill: Lv.1 → Lv.2]
He felt that familiar sensation of memory being written into him.
The angle of force in his arm, the arc of the axe, his judgment of distance, all of it became extremely clear, as if carved deep into his muscles.
Just as Luke Li expected.
The second man ran.
Without the slightest hesitation, he sold out his partner and bolted.
The restrained man’s face turned deathly pale.
His wrist hung at an unnatural angle, and his eyes were locked on the axe blade beside his neck.
The buffs above his head changed rapidly.
[Hostility] faded, while [Fear] and [Pain] flared up like light bulbs.
“Don’t kill me…
I’ve got a seventy-year-old grandma…”
“Get lost.”
Luke Li could not be bothered to waste time on him.
The apocalypse would deal with people like this soon enough.
The man scrambled away, clutching his wrist, and disappeared around the corner.
Luke Li put away the axe and scanned the area.
There were no other witnesses in the parking lot.
He opened the truck door, got in, and started the engine.
The combat rush brought by adrenaline faded quickly.
This was his first real violent conflict since transmigrating.
He had won cleanly and decisively.
The difference in information provided by the emotional readings above their heads had allowed him to make the right judgment in an instant.
This buff monitoring was a true “Eye of God.”
The pickup returned to the road, and Luke Li glanced at the system panel.
The mission progress bar had already passed A-Rank and was moving toward S-Rank.
The crossbow and bolts had given his total supplies a real qualitative boost.
But he was still a little short.
He looked at the medicine and crossbow box in the back seat, then checked the fuel gauge.
More than half a tank remained.
On the way back to the motel, he stopped at another gas station and bought two more cases of bottled water and every lighter they had left.
The cashier scanned everything in a fluster, with [Anxiety] glowing above her head.
She had just taken a phone call.
It seemed her family was urging her to come home early.
Something terrible had happened at a neighbor’s house.
Uncle Berg had injured his eldest son.
“The news says something happened in Atlanta too,” she muttered under her breath.
Luke Li did not respond.
Back at the motel, he shut and locked the door.
He organized everything he had bought today.
Another nearly eight hundred dollars had gone onto his credit cards.
His dollars were almost spent.
Then a golden notification popped up on the system panel.
[Apocalypse Preparation Mission.
Progress has reached S (Legendary)!]
[Rewards will be distributed once the Apocalypse Countdown reaches zero.]
[Please prepare yourself, Host.]
S-Rank rewards.
He had done it.
The rewards would only be issued once the apocalypse officially began: 10 attribute points, an all-purpose beginner gift pack, 3 random blueprint boxes, and that unknown “???”
Ten attribute points, if allocated properly, would be enough to raise him from an ordinary person to near-professional level.
Luke Li leaned against the headboard and closed his eyes.
Outside the window, sirens were becoming more frequent.
On the TV, the news had begun showing captions advising residents to “reduce unnecessary travel.”
His phone received an emergency alert from the local government, saying that a certain area had been temporarily locked down due to a “public health incident.”
The cracks of the crisis were widening.
By this time tomorrow, those cracks would become an abyss.
[Apocalypse Countdown: 36:11:44]
Thirty six hours.
He opened his eyes and looked at the cold blue glow of the countdown on the ceiling.
The preparation phase was over.