January 13
At eight in the morning, a series of tremendous detonations echoed across the southeastern Pacific. On the horizon, it looked as if a second sun had appeared, as though two suns were shining in the sky at once.
Humanity's ultimate weapon had been unleashed again, and the secondary disaster it triggered would reach the Japanese mainland a little over six hours later.
At that moment, however, Takashiro Kyoko and Yurizono Huaxiu, far away in Fukushima, felt nothing at all.
Kyoko, who had risen early, first recycled the monster's corpse.
The battlefield was a complete mess. Yesterday's fight had been a dangerous one, but fortunately, the injuries she had taken were only superficial.
The headless corpse lay quietly on the ground, mangled beyond recognition. The severed head was even more gruesome—starting from the right eye socket, it had been stabbed into pulp by Kyoko. The bloodstains on the floor had already dried. The dried blood looked like a mix of ochre, olive green, and Prussian blue.
Kyoko picked up one of the scales she had sliced off and studied it, concluding that the creature was some kind of hybrid infected—a fusion of crustacean, dragonfly, and human.
"Looks like I really need to buy some new weapons from the system shop. This thing's defense is ridiculous."
She opened the compendium.
[Ghostshade: Possesses one pair of wings and three pairs of claws, capable of flight. Its body is covered in highly defensive scales. It can fire one-time-use venomous needles as ranged attacks and typically appears in groups, though solitary specimens occasionally occur. Charges at high speed and causes stagger effects, but has poor turning ability. Attracted to light and highly active at night. A fusion-type mutant created from a human infected host and insect organisms.]
It was more or less what she had guessed.
After dealing with the corpse, Kyoko began sharpening and maintaining the dagger she had used yesterday.
She had already cleaned the blood off it, but the scratches were hard to ignore. This was a tungsten-steel blade. Tungsten steel. Tungsten steel.
The knife itself was simple-looking, with no decorative patterns or fancy embellishments—just pure practicality.
But the price had not been simple at all. Just the YG10 tungsten-steel blade blank had nearly wrecked Kyoko's wallet. She had only managed to bargain the smith down to twenty thousand yen after some intense haggling.
Tungsten steel had a Mohs hardness of about ten. At that level, you could practically call it iron-cutting sharp; armor-piercing rounds used the stuff for their penetrators.
And yet now the edge was full of tiny chips, and the tip had bent so badly it was practically perpendicular to the original line of the blade.
Biotech really was something, wasn't it?
Eight o'clock came, and Kyoko's points arrived.
[Yesterday's Mission Points: 800. Kill Points: 240. Exploration Points: 20. Recycle Points: 31. Previous Balance: 88. Total: 1179.]
She opened the random shop, and what she saw nearly made her jump.
[Masterwork Knife – Abe Cutter: A sharp short blade commissioned from a swordsmith by Tetsuya, the greatest assassin of the age, before his attempt to assassinate the former prime minister. Blade length 32 cm, overall length 45 cm. It was eventually abandoned when he worried that cold steel would not be enough to defeat Abe. Even so, it remains an exceptionally fine weapon, forged from CPM 3V steel—well-suited for combat, with excellent overall performance, combining high hardness, high toughness, and good wear resistance. Price: 600 points.]
[Skill Book: Maintenance and Daily Care of Common Weapons. A manual covering the maintenance of standard infantry weapons from various nations in a systematic way. Price: 212 points.]
[KFC Family Bucket: Being able to eat this in the apocalypse would be a true luxury. Heavy oil, heavy salt, a massive calorie bomb. Price: 110 points.]
[Cute Catgirl Ear and Tail Set: Even in the apocalypse, you should stay adorable. Price: 54 points.]
[M21 Heavy Anti-Tank Mine: An older model heavy anti-tank mine. Though tanks are rare in the apocalypse, tank-like infected are not. Price: 180 points each.]
[M26 Anti-Personnel Fragmentation Mine: Perfect for ambushing groups of zombies. Price: 60 points each.]
But those were not what shocked Kyoko the most.
This was:
[Single-Soldier Tactical Exoskeleton: Fully featured, equipped with an advanced AI support system for tactical assistance. Ergonomically designed to increase the soldier's load-bearing capacity, with aluminum-alloy armor providing full-body protection. Battery life is somewhat weak, however; it uses lithium-sulfur cells, with different endurance by mode: Power-Saving Mode – 10 hours, Balanced Mode – 6 hours, Performance Mode – 4 hours. Price: 12,500 points.]
"I thought my system was supposed to be slice-of-life oriented. Why does it have something like this?"
This was like Dick Vincent's shop suddenly stocking classified military files. Totally impossible.
What kind of slice-of-life system sold powered combat exoskeletons?
If the system had been online, it definitely would have argued back:
[And what, you think slice-of-life worlds don't have military technology? Without things like this, how am I supposed to keep my host safe?]
"Twelve thousand five hundred... I could massacre the whole city of Nihonmatsu and still only scrape together a few chunks of twelve-five. It's way too expensive. Can't you give me a discount? Secondhand would be fine!"
Of course, this time there was no irritated rebuttal from Miss System.
She was still offline, updating herself.
"Oh. Right. System girl's still offline."
Realizing that, Kyoko scratched her head awkwardly.
She wanted all of it.
The only problem was that she did not have the money.
In the end, she marked the exoskeleton for later. Time to work for it, then. If she killed around a hundred special infected, she could probably buy it. If they were on the level of yesterday's one, fifty might be enough.
As for the rest...
Kyoko bought three M26 mines. She planned to place them in the stairwell passage on the sixth floor, where she had sealed the stairs off, just in case a horde broke through the barricade and rushed upward.
She had already checked: the nearby wall was not load-bearing, and the blast power of this mine was limited enough that even if it detonated, it would not damage the structure of the building.
[-180. Remaining Balance: 999.]
Kyoko did not bother hiding the mines.
Zombies were not intelligent enough to notice, so she simply set them on the floor, fixed four tripwires to the release lever with the wire spool, tied them to anchor points, and adjusted the tension. Then she rotated the cover to the armed position, removed the safety pin, activated the mines, and finished the emplacement.
Beside them, she even put a large cardboard box with the words WARNING: LAND MINES written on it in huge letters, then locked the door.
While Kyoko was setting up the mines, Huaxiu was carrying all the soil from the flowerpots they had looted from the apartments up to the twentieth floor.
After discussing it together, the two of them had decided to turn Rooms 2001 and 2002 into greenhouse grow-rooms. In winter, if you wanted to grow crops, then a greenhouse setup was the proper choice.
The reason was simple: the twentieth floor got excellent sunlight, the combined floor space of the two apartments was enough to help the two of them improve their diet, and once they collected rainwater from the rooftop, irrigation would be easy.
Huaxiu wore a mask and cap, and had even tied on an apron. All the rotten vegetables they had found in other apartments had been brought upstairs.
Why bring something that stank that badly up there?
Huaxiu's answer was immediate:
"Of course it's to increase the humus content."
Technically, they could also have composted infected corpses—but that was simply too disgusting. What normal person would willingly eat crops grown from the composted remains of their own species?
In any case, those compost materials still needed decomposers—earthworms, grubs, things like that—or the breakdown process would be very slow.
So the two girls made compost bins, using a layered "sandwich" method: a layer of soil at the bottom, then a layer of kitchen scraps, then a thin scattering of fermentation agent, and finally a thicker layer of soil on top.
Back when Huaxiu had stayed in the countryside of Fukushima, she had spent some time learning cultivation from her grandparents. In this field, Kyoko was no match for her at all.
Kyoko was like a survival master and combat expert.
Huaxiu, meanwhile, was more of a domestic-type grower and manager.
As far as farming went, Huaxiu could confidently say that Kyoko was no match for her.
Meanwhile, after placing the mines, Kyoko also bought reinforced indoor security bars from the system shop—enough for three full floors.
[-90 from the wallet.]
Another packed day.
Morning was nearly over, and the two girls headed home for lunch.
They had already finished putting together a water collector using plastic sheeting and buckets, and Kyoko had turned Room 1503 into a workshop and storage area for all their equipment.
But at that moment, the weather began to take a sharp turn for the worse.
Dark clouds in the distance slowly piled up. High-pressure winds spread downward toward the ground, and the first wave of it came screaming across the land, lifting loose snow into the air and turning the world outside into chaos.
Sensing immediately that something was wrong, Kyoko used the weather forecaster.
[Welcome to today's, tomorrow's, and the day-after-tomorrow's forecast. Warning: Superstorm approaching. Coastal Fukushima areas are at risk of tsunami impact. Snowfall expected: 100–250 mm, with isolated extreme blizzards of 250–300 mm. Wind force: coastal gusts reaching Force 9–10, inland southeasterly winds at Force 5–7. Light nuclear-radiation contamination detected within the storm system. Warning Level: Red. Beware storm surge, urban flooding, flash floods, and geological hazards.]
"What the hell? A superstorm with nuclear radiation? Are the surviving leaders of humanity trying to take the infected down with them?"
Thank God she had checked the weather.
If she had treated this like an ordinary storm and then gotten killed by radioactive contamination, that would have been the stupidest possible way to die.
Even being from Fukushima would not help her against that.
Kyoko immediately dragged Huaxiu into action, going floor by floor to close and lock every window and door.
At 1:50 in the afternoon, the gale hit.
Outside, it looked like the end of the world. The sky went black, the wind screamed, trees were torn up by the roots, and drifts of snow vanished from the ground as though erased.
Meanwhile, inside the apartment, Kyoko and Huaxiu soaked in their little hot-water bath and ate snacks.
They watched the storm through the window as though they were watching television.
The infected outside scrambled around in utter disarray, desperately trying to take shelter. If they made even the slightest mistake, they were lifted right off the ground.
Rain began to fall from the sky.
Nothing like chemical burns happened.
On the contrary—some of the infected caught out in the rain became visibly excited, agitated, even frenzied... and then got dragged around by the wind like dogs on a leash.
Some of the stupider infected hiding indoors saw it and came pouring out into the rain as well. For a moment the sky filled with mad howling.
Then, one after another, they turned into kites and were carried off by the storm.
Join here to read ahead.
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