In the quiet hallway, the fog of panic born from a newly arrived apocalypse tended to induce two opposing—and equally fatal—behaviors in people: blind paralysis or reckless heroism.
In the web novels Allisson devoured after his shifts, the protagonist would invariably sprint straight for the cafeteria to secure food supplies or dash toward the main gate to rescue anyone in their path.
Allisson, however, was a twenty-five-year-old math teacher with 7.5 Constitution and the accumulated fatigue of an exhausting routine. He knew the architecture of a public school like the back of his hand.
Terrain probability breakdown:
The Cafeteria is a metabolic trap: The scent of stored food, compounded by the blood of the first students who panicked and bolted there during the blackout, would turn the hall into a convergence zone. Carnivorous predators would be drawn to the odor. Attempting to secure the cafeteria now was a logical fallacy.
The Main Gate is a bottleneck: Running toward the street meant entering an urban choke point. Collided vehicles, blaring alarms, and hundreds of panicking humans created a spike in noise and vibration that would attract every mutated organism in the neighborhood.
Mass and Impact: With 12.5 Strength, colliding with a two-hundred-pound beast in an open field meant the kinetic energy of the impact would crush him, regardless of his spear's reach.
"The primary goal tonight isn't hunting," Allisson whispered to himself. "The primary goal is isolation."
To survive the first twelve hours of the collapse, he needed a shelter with strict access control and low attraction value for the mutated fauna.
His mind mapped the building's floor plan. The ideal location existed:
The school's Computer Lab.
As a public institution with a history of break-ins, the administration had invested years ago in reinforced security infrastructure to protect the hardware.
The room sat at the end of the west hallway, featuring a two-inch-thick reinforced steel door and an external double iron gate with dual internal deadbolts.
What had once been designed to keep human intruders out was now the perfect bunker to keep the mutated fauna out.
Allisson advanced down the corridor in calculated steps, holding his Twin-Blade Alloy Spear at a low diagonal angle. His 17.5 Perception kept his senses tuned to the slightest shift in the air.
As he approached the custodian closet, a muffled sound cut through his stride—shallow, erratic breathing interspersed with choked sobbing.
Allisson stopped instantly. He adjusted his grip on the spear, keeping both mineral claws pointed at the gap of the classroom's cracked door. Using the tip of his shoe, he nudged the heavy wood open.
The pale moonlight revealed a 5'2" figure curled up between two desks. It was Paulo, a fifteen-year-old freshman. Weighing around 175 pounds with a sedentary build, the boy was trembling uncontrollably, his school uniform caked in dust. Paulo was his frequent chess partner during recess breaks.
The boy raised his terrified face, locking eyes with the silhouette at the door and the steel tip stained with greenish blood. Paulo opened his mouth to scream.
"Silence," Allisson’s voice cut through the air like a cold blade—whispered with an authority so absolute that the boy froze.
Allisson lowered the point of his spear, stepped into the room, and pulled the door shut until only a sliver remained open. He dropped to one knee at Paulo's eye level.
"Mr... Allisson?" the boy whimpered, his voice shaking. "I... I saw a blue window in front of me. I can see things in slow motion when I get scared, but my body burns up, and I feel sick..."
Allisson narrowed his eyes, focusing his 17.5 Perception on his student to trigger the System's basic inspection interface.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[STATUS SHEET: PAULO (HUMAN)]
Level: 1 (0 / 10 XP)
[STATS]
Strength: 6
Dexterity: 14
Constitution: 5
Intelligence: 15
Perception: 16
Mana: 1
[UNIQUE SKILL]
[Synaptic Acceleration - Lv. 1]: Dilates the user's temporal perception by up to 300% and increases neural reaction speed for 3 seconds.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Allisson cross-referenced the variables instantly, deconstructing the skill with cold, mathematical precision.
"Listen to me carefully, Paulo," Allisson said, his tone pedagogical and calm. "You have the skill [Synaptic Acceleration]. Your perception dilates by 300%, but your Constitution is 5 and your Strength is 6, carrying a 175-pound frame."
Paulo blinked, confused. "What does that mean, Mr. Allisson?"
"It means pure physics: F = m \cdot a. If you attempt to use neural acceleration to sprint across smooth ceramic tiles, the reaction force will tear your tendons or shatter your joints upon deceleration. Furthermore, high-level neural processing burns glucose at a critical rate and generates thermal stress in your brain. That's why you feel that burning sensation."
Allisson placed a firm hand on the student's shoulder.
"You will not run. You will treat this skill like a chess clock. Use it exclusively in one-second micro-bursts to read an incoming attack and dodge—exactly how you anticipate a check in chess. No sudden, prolonged movements. Understood?"
Paulo swallowed hard, processing the teacher's cold logic. The mathematical clarity of the explanation grounded the boy, draining the immediate panic from his eyes.
"Understood... One second. Only for dodging."
"Good. Get up. We're heading to the computer lab."
Clearing the final sixty feet took three long minutes. Allisson guided the boy, using the spear's five-foot effective reach to cover their blind spots.
Upon reaching the computer lab's entrance, Allisson pulled a key ring from his pocket. He still had a duplicate key because he had been running a graphing workshop with his students the previous week and hadn't returned it yet.
He inserted the key into the heavy padlock, turning the cylinder with painstaking slowness. The iron gate slid back without a sound. He unlocked the inner steel door next.
"Inside. Quick and quiet," Allisson instructed.
They slipped into the dark room. Allisson pulled the gate shut from the inside, engaged both cast-iron deadbolts, and slid the heavy solid-wood bar into place.
CLACK. CLACK.
The mechanical locks echoed softly in the sealed lab.
"Are we safe?" Paulo asked in a hushed whisper within the windowless lower room.
"The wall density and door plating reduce the probability of direct vibration detection by eighty-eight percent," Allisson replied, opening Paulo's backpack on a nearby desk. "What do you have in here?"
The boy's supplies were modest, but vital:
1 Bottle of mineral water (16 oz / 500 ml)
1 Half-eaten pack of cream-filled cookies
"We ration," Allisson said, setting the water bottle aside. "Three precise gulps each now. The rest is reserved for tomorrow morning. We split the cookies into two portions. The fast-acting sugar will help your neural recovery from [Synaptic Acceleration]."
He handed Paulo his portion. The boy ate silently while Allisson measured out his exact three gulps of water.
The lab's only window was positioned high up the wall—a narrow, transom-style glass panel protected by horizontal steel bars over eight feet off the ground.
Allisson stepped onto a swivel chair and peered through the high gap toward the central courtyard.
The moonlight illuminated a scene of total ruin. The lawn was shredded. The cars in the parking lot looked like crushed soda cans, torn apart by colossal claws. In the distance, the skeletal frame of a vehicle burned in silence.
Disharmonious roars, distant howls, and the wet crunch of snapping bones cut through the cold night air.
There was no doubt left: the urban world was dead. "Year Zero" offered no mercy to those unwilling to calculate every step with millimeter precision.
Allisson stepped down from the chair, propped the Twin-Blade Spear against his seat, and looked at Paulo, who had already curled up under a computer desk, overcome by exhaustion.
The teacher sat down with his back against the reinforced door. He held three Free Points and two [Rigid Chitin Plates] stowed in his inventory, ready for immediate allocation whenever the next threat required it.
He closed his eyes to rest his body, but kept his mind operating in a state of quiet vigilance—counting every second of the apocalyptic night as he preserved his strength for the dawn.