The sun rose once again.
Today was another day full of hope.
Still asleep, Yurizono Huaxiu unconsciously reached out to feel for the warm stove that had stayed beside her all night, mumbling in her sleep as she did.
"So warm... so soft... ahh... let me hug it... let me get warm..."
Her restless little hands groped around in confusion, but found nothing.
Some instinctive part of Huaxiu realized something was wrong, and she kicked the blanket away and jolted herself awake.
The moment she woke up, she had a terrible feeling.
Kyoko, who had been beside her, was gone.
On just the first day of them being together, had she already turned into dead weight?
"Oh no... my score with Sister Kyoko is definitely crashing on day one."
The little version of Huaxiu inside her head collapsed to the floor and started pounding it in despair, while the real Huaxiu hurriedly threw on her clothes.
In truth, when Kyoko saw that Huaxiu was sleeping soundly, she figured the girl had been frightened and tense for too long, so she chose not to wake her. Before leaving the bed herself, she had even carefully tucked the blanket back around Huaxiu.
But Huaxiu knew none of that.
After frantically folding the blanket, she rushed out of the bedroom without even putting on her glasses.
Still, after searching all over the apartment, she did not see Takashiro Kyoko anywhere.
"She's not already gone downstairs, is she? No, I need to go find her."
At the same time, the early-rising Kyoko was next door in Room 1501, studying how to build a proper stove.
The firepit and metal frame they had used last night were too crude and too inconvenient. What she wanted now was the kind of stove commonly used in northern rural villages back in her previous life.
"Stack bricks for the outer shell, use a large flowerpot for the inner lining, then smear mud mixed with plant stalks over the outside..."
Once she had the idea, she got to work immediately.
Now that the stairwell was completely sealed off, Kyoko had plenty of safe time to move around. She hurried off to "borrow" a few flowerpots from neighboring apartments, still full of dirt. As for the water needed to mix the mud together, there was no way she would waste precious drinking water on that.
"The melted snow from the roof may not be drinkable, but it should be fine for this, right?"
Thinking that over, Kyoko decided she would have Huaxiu haul up some snow from the rooftop in buckets later. As for bricks, she could probably find some in the lower unfinished units that still had bare concrete interiors.
At that moment, the system spoke.
[It is now 8:00 a.m. on January 10. Host, please check your credited balance.]
[Yesterday's settlement: exploration points 43, kill points 31, mission points 0, recycling points 0. Total: 74 points. Current balance: 229.]
The system's fixed-time payout was practically an alarm clock at this point. It was already eight in the morning. Time for tea—figuratively speaking—and time to check the random shop.
Kyoko skimmed through it carelessly, but nothing caught her eye. Better to keep reserving yesterday's virus detector.
"Whatever. I'll go back, eat breakfast, then drag that girl out to work."
Patting her own stomach and feeling rather empty, Kyoko headed back home.
But the instant she opened the door of 1501, something unexpected happened.
Bang—dang!
The doors of 1501 and 1502 slammed into each other with a heavy crash.
The shock startled both people standing behind them.
"Ahh—Sister Kyoko, you scared me half to death!"
Huaxiu clutched her somewhat more generous chest and breathed out in little gasps.
Kyoko did not comment. She simply took Huaxiu back to eat.
Today's breakfast was bread and jerky, all of it scavenged yesterday from that shut-in's apartment. The place had been overflowing with snacks. If they were careful, the stash would last the two girls nearly a full week.
"Huaxiu, after breakfast I'll give you some gear. Then you'll follow behind me and help collect supplies."
"Sister Kyoko, don't worry. I can do it."
Wiping bread crumbs from the corner of her mouth, Kyoko nodded in approval.
Anything genuinely dangerous—clearing infected, close combat, all that—would obviously fall to Kyoko, since she was the one with the combat ability. Huaxiu only needed to gather supplies.
Reasonable division of labor was the right call.
It would make scavenging much more efficient.
If you casually told a small, physically weak girl to go hunt infected, that would just be idiotic—a complete waste of manpower.
"Here. Catch. This knife is yours from now on."
Kyoko went into her bedroom, took out a multi-function folding knife, and tossed it to Huaxiu as a self-defense weapon.
"Sister Kyoko... how do I use this? I can't get the blade open."
Delighted to receive the knife, Huaxiu fiddled with it for a bit, but the blade stayed locked tight in the handle and refused to budge.
Without a word, Kyoko pressed a black button near the grip, and the blade snapped out at once.
"Thank you, Sister Kyoko."
"It's a simple trick. Just be careful when you use it. Don't cut yourself."
Once they were ready, the two of them stepped out and headed down toward the lower floors.
Everywhere they looked, there were blackened remains.
Setting an entire building on fire like that took nerve and ruthlessness. Most people simply would not have had the guts to do it.
Kyoko had thrown some of the bodies out through windows, but many were still left behind. They had been fused together by the heat and were too troublesome to deal with properly.
The two girls moved down the stairs one after the other until they finally reached today's destination.
Kyoko and Huaxiu arrived on the seventh floor.
The three sealed stairwell levels were doing an excellent job protecting everything above the sixth floor. Now, as long as they killed all the infected still hiding inside the apartments, they would gain a fairly solid safe zone.
"Huaxiu, stay farther back from the door. I'm going in."
Kyoko was worried that having both of them crowded into a narrow corridor would restrict her movement, so she told Huaxiu to hide off to one side. Once Kyoko cleared an apartment, Huaxiu could go in afterward.
Carrying a large backpack on her back, Huaxiu said nothing and obediently moved to the stairwell farther away.
Kyoko used the same old method as before.
She punched out the peephole, threaded in a wire, caught the door handle, and twisted downward.
Click.
Another blind box was opened.
This one came with a few extra "bonus gifts."
Two full-grown infected had been clawing at the door the entire time after hearing the noise. Standing off to one side of the entrance with her body lowered, Kyoko drew her blade in a flash and demonstrated one of the old Japanese classics—
an iaijutsu slash.
With a sharp shrrk, before Huaxiu in the distance could even clearly see the afterimage of Kyoko's blade, two heads hit the floor.
The headless corpses collapsed limply to the ground.
Kyoko stepped over them without a second glance and entered the apartment.
Blood, already turning faintly green, slid down from the tip of her blade. She gave it a light flick to shake the blood from the steel.
Standing in the living room, she surveyed the surroundings with the sword in hand and found no immediate abnormalities. Then she began checking the other rooms.
Kitchen, clear.
Master bedroom, clear.
Bathroom, clear...
Wait.
Something was wrong.
There seemed to be movement in the smaller bedroom.
Kyoko pressed her ear to the locked bedroom door. From inside came a low, strange sound.
It was like the sound of a live fish being pinned to a cutting board while someone scraped off its scales—the fish thrashing and slapping helplessly against the wood.
Was something tied to the bed in there?
Frowning, Kyoko pulled out the tactical axe and hacked into the thin composite-wood door several times. Then, with one more heavy blow, she smashed off the handle.
Now she could get inside and see what was going on.
"This axe is pretty decent. Even after chopping through a metal door handle, the edge isn't chipped."
[System-made products are always premium. Naturally.]
The system chose that moment to interject smugly.
Fair enough—those 260 points had not been wasted.
Still, Kyoko made a mental note that next time, if she had to hack through doors again, she should bring a proper axe. This compact tactical hatchet was not really built for that kind of work.
She kicked the damaged door open.
The room inside was not as horrifying as she had expected. In fact, it had been decorated quite warmly.
The air quality, however, was terrible.
A baby stroller.
All kinds of children's toys.
A whole wall covered in family photographs.
Near the window stood a small crib surrounded by wire mesh.
That was where the disturbing noise had been coming from.
Don't tell me there was a trapped baby inside?
With a hiss, Kyoko drew her blade fully and moved cautiously toward the crib. The banging sounds coming from it were rapid and urgent, like a pounding heartbeat, and deeply unsettling.
A horrible smell leaked out from within the wire cover. The closer she got, the worse it became.
At that point, Kyoko wanted nothing more than to kill whatever was in there and leave this lung-damaging place immediately.
She did not hesitate at all.
Whatever it was, she would kill it first and ask questions later.
With one thrust, she stabbed through the wire mesh, pinning the thing beneath the blanket straight to the bed frame.
"It's still not dead? Pretty tenacious."
Olive-green blood seeped out of the thing she had just skewered. It thrashed wildly in place.
Annoyed, Kyoko raised her pistol and fired once.
Muzzle flash flared.
The thing was finished instantly.
Classical mechanics once again demonstrated their unmatched power.
Blowing the smoke from the gun's barrel, Kyoko covered her nose and used her sword to lift the blanket. She intended to see exactly what had been underneath.
There lay a tiny corpse, its whole body rotted and ruined, a grotesque patchwork of purples and greens.
Safety straps had bound it tightly in place.
"Poor little thing. Barely born, and then this happened."
But since it had already been completely infected, there was really nothing more to say.
Kyoko grabbed the corpse together with the crib and hurled both of them out the window.
Then she withdrew to the corridor.
Time to let Huaxiu come in and finish the cleanup.
The moment she stepped back out, she found the younger girl struggling to drag the two bodies from the doorway out into the hall.
"Huaxiu, leave these two to me. The inside's already clear. Go look for food, water, and medicine."
Huaxiu nodded obediently, wiped the grime from her gloves onto the white wall, and entered looting mode immediately.
"And also—keep an eye out for anything electronic that still has power. I need those too, though they're lower priority than survival essentials."
"I'll remember, Sister Kyoko."
With the two of them working in clearly defined roles, the plan proceeded smoothly.
Kyoko cleared one apartment, and Huaxiu followed behind, sweeping up a neat little mountain of supplies.
The morning operation on the tenth had gotten off to an excellent start.
So far, the apartment-building cleanup had begun very successfully.
Kyoko's killing speed was frighteningly fast. More often than not, the infected never even got a clear look at her face before their heads were already rolling away. Huaxiu, meanwhile, worked hard gathering supplies, turning over cabinets and drawers with the hand speed of a professional treasure-hunting game player.
At their current pace, by tonight the two of them working together should be able to completely clear and thoroughly loot the seventh, eighth, and ninth floors.
Looking at the pile of supplies that had already grown nearly waist-high, both Kyoko and Huaxiu felt delighted.
This much would last them a very long time.
At eleven-thirty in the morning, they took a break.
The two girls rested in a relatively clean apartment, making a brief stop to recover and prepare for the afternoon's operation.
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 178)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 115)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League ( 126 )
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter110)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter108)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter82)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter144)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 65
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 70
From Junkman to Wasteland 66
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 46
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 99
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 65
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 95
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass 99
The Way the Umamusume Look at 68
Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 92
Naruto: Weaving the Future, Be 65
Zenless Zone Zero, but Kamen R 76
Multiverse Crossover: The Perf 66
My Cyberpsycho Girlfriend 65
Uma Musume: The Dark Trainer 47
Uma Musume: A Calamity Born fr 44
I, a Reincarnation-Loop Player 43
The Violent Girl Group Is Beat 26
Uma Musume: The Horse Girl Who 27
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