After returning to the safe house and taking a quick shower, Renee Kane had long since digested the little she'd eaten that morning.
She threw together a simple tomato beef rice bowl, devoured it with some milk tea, and took a satisfying nap. When she woke up, it was already past three in the afternoon.
She checked the security monitor and saw that the surface of the cement she'd used to fill the cracks was already completely dry. In this heat, it should be fully set by evening.
Renee Kane took out the bottle of Insect Repellent Medicine she had gotten at the very beginning and sprinkled a circle of it around the safe house. It was just barely enough.
Next up was to quietly wait for the first wave of volcanic eruptions, and then go "restock" from Spinning Top.
Although she was in the safe house, Renee Kane wasn't idle. She planned to practice her combat and evasion skills.
Her current physical constitution was good, but her fighting technique was practically nonexistent, and her combat sense was limited to subconscious physical reactions.
It might be enough to deal with ordinary people, but as the game progressed, everyone else would also obtain all sorts of powerful Skills and items, and even highly destructive weapons.
Moreover, the danger level of the creatures appearing in the later treasure chests would also keep increasing. If she stagnated, the advantage of her rebirth would be wasted.
But this was also what troubled Renee Kane.
With her own Agility, she could easily dodge ordinary attacks. What she needed was the kind of split-second judgment and precise reactions found in life-or-death situations.
In other words, what's commonly known as combat instinct.
Sometimes, even with all the strength in the world, a wrong move meant you couldn't even use half of it.
But this kind of combat instinct was fundamentally built through constant training and fighting. As an ordinary person, Renee Kane had no suitable way to train.
'The only thing she could do, it seemed, was follow along with some fitness boxing video…'
'How could she rapidly improve her practical combat ability?'
'If only she had a 'Combat Mastery' Skill Card or something. At least it would give her a proper direction for her training.'
Unable to find a solution for now, Renee Kane could only take a different approach and first focus on fully utilizing the speed advantage her Agility provided.
She had already set up a small, square training room in the safe house. She rummaged through her dimensional space and found ten automatic tennis ball machines, which she arranged in pairs.
Her plan was to face the machines bare-handed, dodging and striking the launched tennis balls. She would start with one pair and only add more once she could accurately dodge and strike every ball at the highest launch speed.
Renee Kane, who had been brimming with confidence due to her high Agility stat, was nearly beaten black and blue by the tennis balls in the very first round.
Although she was fast, the tennis balls would ricochet after hitting the walls or floor. Especially in a small room like this, the high-speed balls could bounce several times without losing much velocity.
With too many balls in the room, she found herself overwhelmed when facing multiple trajectories at once, unable to find the most efficient dodging path.
After getting hit several times, Renee Kane wasn't discouraged. On the contrary, she grew even more eager.
'A challenge is a good thing. Otherwise, what's the point of training?'
Through the constant process of dodging and striking, Renee Kane finally became more familiar with her current body. With each practice session, those stat points truly became her own strength.
After training for nearly two hours, Renee Kane saw that she had less than a third of her Physical Strength left and reluctantly stopped.
Her body was now covered in bruises, and she couldn't help but wince at the slightest touch, but the smile on her face was radiant.
Although she still couldn't intercept every ball while perfectly dodging, she could clearly feel her improvement compared to when she started.
This feeling of constantly getting stronger through training was truly addictive.
She glanced at the time. It was almost 18:00. The first volcanic eruption was imminent.
In truth, the volcanic eruptions themselves wouldn't directly cause player casualties. The material of the volcanoes in this instance was special and wouldn't be easily melted by lava.
This was, in a way, a lifeline the game left for the players.
The real dangers were the lava that would pour back through the dug-out tunnels, the unstoppable high temperatures, and the Fire Ants that swarmed out with the lava.
In her past life, many people were instantly engulfed because they happened to be hiding in the path of the lava flow—a path that might have even been a tunnel they'd dug with their own hands.
And as the lava surged, even with the mountain rock as a barrier, many people still died of dehydration, their bodies steamed dry.
The only reason Renee Kane had survived her past life was that she'd been lucky. The volcano she hid in hadn't erupted, so the number of Fire Ants was also much lower.
After the eruption, the surviving players hid like rats in the winding caves, because anywhere outside that was overrun with lava was also teeming with Fire Ants.
If you were spotted by a Fire Ant scout and couldn't catch and kill it within thirty seconds, what awaited you was a massive army of Fire Ants and the sound of your own flesh being mercilessly gnawed away.
Soaking in the massage tub with essential oils, Renee Kane relaxed her body while scrolling through the chat lobby.
By now, the strange noises outside were growing louder and louder. Everyone could feel that something was wrong.
"I've been meaning to ask... on a map like this, there's no way we're getting a volcanic eruption, right?"
"I told you all I heard weird noises last night, but you didn't believe me!"
"With so many volcanoes, can they all erupt? If they're really going to, then I guess we'll just die."
"I don't want to die! I worked so hard to find all these supplies! I want to live!"
"What's the use of crying about it? Who doesn't want to live? Just pray the lava doesn't flood the cave you're hiding in."
...
Two minutes later, the sound of countless volcanoes erupting in unison shocked everyone to the core.
In an instant, two-thirds of the avatars in the chat lobby went dark. The public channel, once constantly bustling, became eerily quiet.
Renee Kane opened her friends list. Whirlwind, who still owed her a debt, and Spinning Top, the one she wanted to kill, were both stubbornly still lit up.
Another two minutes passed. A player named Scarlet Donkey Green asked in the chat lobby, "Anyone still alive?"
Then, a group of players who had survived the cataclysm began to pop up.
"Holy crap, that scared me to death! I really thought I wasn't going to make it this time!"
"Hahaha, my mountain didn't erupt! I'm the legendary chosen one!"
"Give it a rest. My mountain didn't erupt either, but I've got a bad feeling the game is still holding back something big."
"Can you just shut up? We just barely survived. Can't you hope for something good for a change?"
"No way, it's too hot. If I could have a bottle of ice water right now, I'd even be willing to eat three tubs of ice cream for it."
"So you want it both ways, huh?"
"My mountain erupted, but the rock is thick. I dug straight up, so the lava can't get in."
"Wait, are you guys hearing something...?"