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Chapter 1 "I'll sign the consent forms for the ectopic pregnancy surgery myself." Hazel called out to the nurse, her hand bruised from the IV drips. She gripped the pen, her fingers trembling as she scrawled her name. As they wheeled her into the OR, a single tear slipped down her cheek. She could no longer tell if taking that Plan B pill had been the right call or the biggest mistake of her life. During her recovery, Hazel booked a one-way ticket to Ireland, scheduled for a month out. She pulled up her phone. The headlines were still dominated by the "New York Golden Boy's Multi-Million Dollar Tribute to His Girlfriend." And Hazel was the woman at the center of that grand obsession. Three days ago, Daniel held a press conference. He bankrolled a space mission in seven years; a spacecraft was now carrying a vinyl record into the deep reaches of the universe. On that record was Daniel's confession to Hazel, set to play on a loop for eternity, making the entire cosmos a witness to his devotion. With the successful launch, the story of their long-term romance went viral. People were calling it the "Love Story of the Century." A dull ache throbbed in her abdomen as Hazel scrolled through the comments. [Is there anyone left who doesn't know Mr. Lewis and Miss Allen were childhood sweethearts? They've known each other for twenty-five years, and they're still this obsessed after seven years of dating... I'm actually sobbing.] [You guys only see the money he spends on her. Do you remember when Daniel took a bullet for her years ago? He was at a charity swim meet recently, and you could see the scar on his shoulder—it was only inches from his heart!] [I heard he didn't even blink before shielding her. I still have the paparazzi shot of him on the stretcher, white-knuckling her hand. I'm literally dying, they're soulmates.] [Literal goals. They're basically the blueprint.] From the stolen glances at galas to the grand, sweeping gestures—every headline served as proof that they loved each other more than life itself. Hazel's vision blurred. She wiped her eyes, feeling a bitter surge of irony. The Lewises and the Allens had been family friends for generations. When she was born, two-year-old Daniel had been waiting right outside the delivery room. For as long as she could remember, Daniel had never left her side. When she was ten, the Allen empire collapsed into bankruptcy. Her parents took their own lives, leaving Hazel an orphan overnight. The Lewises had stepped in immediately to take her home. It was Daniel's care, his constant presence, that had pulled her out of the suffocating darkness of that grief. In the years she spent coming of age, she often felt she wasn't enough for him. She never dared to hope he could love her as a woman; she only wanted to be near him, even if it was just as the girl next door. But on her eighteenth birthday, in front of the city's high society, Daniel had formally asked her to be his. Looking into the heat in his eyes, Hazel hadn't hesitated to accept the red roses that symbolized his promise of forever. Tears had streamed down her face as she whispered in his ear, "Daniel, thank you for being my family. Just promise me... promise you'll never betray me. Don't ever leave me. I love you." Daniel had crushed her into a hug, his voice breaking. "Hazel, I swear on my life, I will never betray you. I will never leave you behind. I'll love you until the day I die." Throughout their relationship, he had been everything a man should be. Gentle, attentive, and devoted. But seven years of perfect loyalty were shattered. Hazel didn't doubt that his feelings had been real once, but "forever" was a fragile thing. If she hadn't stumbled upon the evidence of his affair, she might still believe she was the luckiest girl in the world. Daniel probably thought he'd covered his tracks. He forgot that while love is in the details, so is the end of it. His heart had become too crowded, and Hazel wouldn't—couldn't—stay to watch the fallout. Rather than suffer the agony of being abandoned all over again, she chose to be the one to walk away first. Hazel placed the surgical records for her terminated pregnancy into a luxury gift box. She wrapped it carefully and tucked a card on top. [To Daniel, on his 27th birthday.] ### Chapter 2 By the time Daniel finally got home, Hazel had already been discharged. She was sitting by the window, a book resting in her lap. "I'm so sorry, Hazel. Things were just insane on the trip. I caught the red-eye, but I still couldn't make it back in time for your birthday or our anniversary..." Daniel shed his suit jacket and walked over, pulling her into a tight hug. "I promise, this is the last time. From now on, I'm not missing a single milestone. I'll be there for everything." "Babe, don't be mad at me, okay?" Hazel felt a cold sneer forming in her chest. She closed her eyes, but the scent of Lydia's perfume clinging to his skin made her stomach churn. 「Taking Lydia on a business trip... I'm sure you were kept very busy.」 But none of it mattered anymore. Hazel gently pushed him away and met his eyes, her voice eerily calm. "It's fine." Daniel looked visibly relieved. He pulled a sleek black velvet box from his pocket and held it out to her. "Hazel, I got you something. I really hope you like it." She opened the box. Inside was a watch—a Patek Philippe Grandmaster Chime. A thirty-one-million-dollar masterpiece, one of only seven in existence. "Swiss watchmaking is all about precision. Every gear, every movement is perfectly aligned. Just like my heart—it's never skipped a beat for anyone but you." Hazel watched him with a blank expression, listening to the practiced ease of his lies. She turned around and picked up the gift box containing her surgical records and her breakup letter. She handed it over. "This is for your birthday." Daniel's face lit up with genuine surprise. He reached for the lid, eager to see what she'd chosen. Hazel stopped him. The sunlight hit her thin face, making her look fragile, almost ethereal. "Don't open it yet. Wait until your actual birthday. Next month." Daniel chuckled and ruffled her hair, his eyes full of doting affection. "Alright, whatever you want, Hazel. I'll wait. Thanks, babe!" As she watched his excitement, the smile didn't even come close to reaching her eyes. 「Daniel, I hope you remember exactly what you did to me that night when you finally open it. I wonder if you'll still be smiling then.」 *** The following day, the Lewises threw a lavish gala for Hazel at the largest estate in New York, inviting every major player in the city to make up for the missed birthday. The grounds were blanketed in red roses—Hazel's favorite. The ballroom floor was strewn with petals. Everywhere she looked, people were whispering about how much Daniel worshipped her. "Even if the Lewises took her in out of family loyalty, they wouldn't treat her like royalty if it weren't for Daniel. She's only this important because he's obsessed with her." "Tell me about it. Look at the way he looks at her. It's the exact same look he had when he confessed to her at eighteen." "It's been seven years, and they're still total goals. I'm literally crying." Hazel heard the comments, but she simply maintained a polite, distant smile for the sake of the family. She didn't say a word. The love between her and Daniel was exactly like those rose petals on the floor: beautiful at a glance, but already dying. Throughout the night, Daniel was the perfect partner. He intercepted every drink offered to her so she wouldn't get a headache. When people spoke to her, he stood by her side, listening intently and nodding at the right moments, perfectly happy to play the role of the devoted boyfriend. He held her bag, peeled her shrimp, and picked the bones out of her fish with meticulous care. Hazel realized then that Daniel was a natural-born actor. He was so convincing that she almost wondered if the affair had been a fever dream. "You two are truly the golden couple. So, when are we getting a wedding?" "Yeah, don't forget our invites! We've watched you two grow up together." Daniel squeezed Hazel's hand. "We won't forget. But before the wedding, I have to give Hazel the most spectacular proposal she's ever seen." Hazel stood beside him, her lips curved in a faint smile, but she was exhausted to her core. She suddenly remembered the first time she had attended a party as Daniel's girlfriend. Everyone had said the same things then—how they were the blueprint and how they were made for each other. Back then, Daniel had wrapped an arm around her shoulders and said proudly, "Of course we are. I must have hit the lottery to find a girl like Hazel. I'm not marrying anyone else in this lifetime." The younger Hazel had blushed and hidden her face against his chest. She had spent years dreaming about the moment he would finally get down on one knee, knowing she would say yes before he even finished the question. 「But now, Daniel, I'm done waiting.」 As the party wound down, Daniel led Hazel onto the stage. He opened a jewelry box and revealed a breathtaking, diamond-encrusted necklace. He stepped behind her to fasten it around her neck. "Happy birthday, Hazel." He leaned down and kissed her forehead. The room erupted in thunderous applause. Hazel looked down at the necklace, her gaze shifting slightly to the head table where Lydia was sitting. Lydia's face was dark, her eyes burning with a resentment that stood out sharply against the celebratory crowd. Hazel's lips twitched into a tiny, mocking smile. Lydia's expression crumbled. She gritted her teeth, turned, and walked out. No one else noticed the tension beneath the surface; the air was too thick with congratulations. Only Hazel knew the truth. Her love for Daniel had burned itself out, and they were finally at the end of the road. ### Chapter 3 The dinner service ended, and the dancing began. Daniel bowed to Hazel, offering his hand for the opening dance. Hazel hesitated for a heartbeat. She had no desire to humiliate the Lewises in front of their guests, so she started to reach out—but Lydia suddenly appeared, breathless. "Mr. Lewis, I'm so sorry to interrupt, but there's an emergency at the office. I'm afraid you have to go with me." Hearing this, Daniel straightened up instantly. Without even asking for details, he turned to Hazel with a look of practiced regret. "Hazel, I'm sorry. I have to go handle this. I'll be back to pick you up later tonight, okay?" Under the watchful eyes of the entire ballroom, Hazel slowly withdrew her hand. "Just go." As she watched the two of them hurry away together, a dull, throbbing ache filled her chest. Four months ago, Lydia had moved into the Lewis estate under the guise of being Daniel's distant, widowed cousin-in-law. The story was that her husband had died, leaving her with nothing, and the Lewises had taken her in out of the goodness of their hearts. At first, Hazel hadn't been suspicious of this sudden "family member" at all. She had even gone out of her way to make Lydia feel at home. Even when Lydia was hired as Daniel's personal secretary, Hazel simply chalked it up to the family's generosity. Until the relationship between Daniel and Lydia became too "close" to ignore. In the past, Hazel was never an option to Daniel; she was the only answer. But lately, she had started catching glimpses of hesitation in his eyes, as if he were struggling to make a choice. Eventually, the hesitation stopped. Now, he chose Lydia without a second thought. Hazel excused herself, claiming a headache, and retreated to a private room to rest. Meanwhile, Daniel and Lydia hurried into his private office. "Alright, what's so urgent?" "You didn't even ask me that on the drive over. I thought we were on the same wavelength." Lydia's eyes were heavy with suggestion as she stepped toward him, hooking a finger in his tie. Daniel frowned, grabbing her wrist. "I told you to stop playing games! Didn't you see we were celebrating Hazel's birthday?" "Daniel... don't be so mean to me. I'm three months along now. Haven't you missed me at all?" "Lydia..." "Didn't you say you always wanted to try it in the office?" Lydia shed her heavy coat, revealing a daring, skin-tight professional dress underneath. "Tell me, can she even satisfy you like this?" A predatory look swept over Daniel's face. He couldn't hold back any longer. He grabbed her by the waist and crushed his lips against hers. The fire ignited, then eventually burned out. When it was over, Daniel wiped the traces of Lydia's lipstick off his skin. He checked his phone; there were no messages from Hazel. His heart skipped a beat—a sudden, cold wave of unease. "Stay at my place tonight, please?" Daniel ignored her, buttoning his shirt and shaking off her hand. "I'll have the driver take you home. I need to go get Hazel." He didn't stay to watch Lydia's tearful pout. He just grabbed his keys and drove off. On the way back to the estate, he took a detour to pick up a box of peanut brittle from the most famous candy shop in the city. "Hazel? What happened? Your mom said you weren't feeling well." Daniel ran from the foyer all the way to her room, his face a mask of concern. "I'm fine." Hazel sat up in bed and shook her head. Daniel reached out and stroked her hair, his voice soothing as if he were comforting a child. "I bought your favorite peanut brittle. Just one bite? Then I'll take you home." It was from the century-old shop she loved. Since they were kids, Daniel would wait in massive lines just to make her smile, buying boxes of roasted chestnuts and peanut clusters. Hazel looked down. The scent of Lydia's perfume was all over him—thick, cloying, and making her stomach turn. 「Why? Why? We don't have much time left, and you couldn't even put in the effort to lie to me properly. Why?」 She pushed his hand away, her voice raspy. "I don't want it. Let's just go." 「Daniel, I only ever liked that candy because it came from you. But now, I've lost my taste for it.」 「And don't bother taking me home. The moment you betrayed me, I didn't have a home anymore.」
Chapter 1 "I'll sign the consent forms for the ectopic pregnancy surgery myself." Hazel called out to the nurse, her hand bruised from the IV drips. She gripped the pen, her fingers trembling as she scrawled her name. As they wheeled her into the OR, a single tear slipped down her cheek. She could no longer tell if taking that Plan B pill had been the right call or the biggest mistake of her life. During her recovery, Hazel booked a one-way ticket to Ireland, scheduled for a month out. She pulled up her phone. The headlines were still dominated by the "New York Golden Boy's Multi-Million Dollar Tribute to His Girlfriend." And Hazel was the woman at the center of that grand obsession. Three days ago, Daniel held a press conference. He bankrolled a space mission in seven years; a spacecraft was now carrying a vinyl record into the deep reaches of the universe. On that record was Daniel's confession to Hazel, set to play on a loop for eternity, making the entire cosmos a witness to his devotion. With the successful launch, the story of their long-term romance went viral. People were calling it the "Love Story of the Century." A dull ache throbbed in her abdomen as Hazel scrolled through the comments. [Is there anyone left who doesn't know Mr. Lewis and Miss Allen were childhood sweethearts? They've known each other for twenty-five years, and they're still this obsessed after seven years of dating... I'm actually sobbing.] [You guys only see the money he spends on her. Do you remember when Daniel took a bullet for her years ago? He was at a charity swim meet recently, and you could see the scar on his shoulder—it was only inches from his heart!] [I heard he didn't even blink before shielding her. I still have the paparazzi shot of him on the stretcher, white-knuckling her hand. I'm literally dying, they're soulmates.] [Literal goals. They're basically the blueprint.] From the stolen glances at galas to the grand, sweeping gestures—every headline served as proof that they loved each other more than life itself. Hazel's vision blurred. She wiped her eyes, feeling a bitter surge of irony. The Lewises and the Allens had been family friends for generations. When she was born, two-year-old Daniel had been waiting right outside the delivery room. For as long as she could remember, Daniel had never left her side. When she was ten, the Allen empire collapsed into bankruptcy. Her parents took their own lives, leaving Hazel an orphan overnight. The Lewises had stepped in immediately to take her home. It was Daniel's care, his constant presence, that had pulled her out of the suffocating darkness of that grief. In the years she spent coming of age, she often felt she wasn't enough for him. She never dared to hope he could love her as a woman; she only wanted to be near him, even if it was just as the girl next door. But on her eighteenth birthday, in front of the city's high society, Daniel had formally asked her to be his. Looking into the heat in his eyes, Hazel hadn't hesitated to accept the red roses that symbolized his promise of forever. Tears had streamed down her face as she whispered in his ear, "Daniel, thank you for being my family. Just promise me... promise you'll never betray me. Don't ever leave me. I love you." Daniel had crushed her into a hug, his voice breaking. "Hazel, I swear on my life, I will never betray you. I will never leave you behind. I'll love you until the day I die." Throughout their relationship, he had been everything a man should be. Gentle, attentive, and devoted. But seven years of perfect loyalty were shattered. Hazel didn't doubt that his feelings had been real once, but "forever" was a fragile thing. If she hadn't stumbled upon the evidence of his affair, she might still believe she was the luckiest girl in the world. Daniel probably thought he'd covered his tracks. He forgot that while love is in the details, so is the end of it. His heart had become too crowded, and Hazel wouldn't—couldn't—stay to watch the fallout. Rather than suffer the agony of being abandoned all over again, she chose to be the one to walk away first. Hazel placed the surgical records for her terminated pregnancy into a luxury gift box. She wrapped it carefully and tucked a card on top. [To Daniel, on his 27th birthday.] ### Chapter 2 By the time Daniel finally got home, Hazel had already been discharged. She was sitting by the window, a book resting in her lap. "I'm so sorry, Hazel. Things were just insane on the trip. I caught the red-eye, but I still couldn't make it back in time for your birthday or our anniversary..." Daniel shed his suit jacket and walked over, pulling her into a tight hug. "I promise, this is the last time. From now on, I'm not missing a single milestone. I'll be there for everything." "Babe, don't be mad at me, okay?" Hazel felt a cold sneer forming in her chest. She closed her eyes, but the scent of Lydia's perfume clinging to his skin made her stomach churn. 「Taking Lydia on a business trip... I'm sure you were kept very busy.」 But none of it mattered anymore. Hazel gently pushed him away and met his eyes, her voice eerily calm. "It's fine." Daniel looked visibly relieved. He pulled a sleek black velvet box from his pocket and held it out to her. "Hazel, I got you something. I really hope you like it." She opened the box. Inside was a watch—a Patek Philippe Grandmaster Chime. A thirty-one-million-dollar masterpiece, one of only seven in existence. "Swiss watchmaking is all about precision. Every gear, every movement is perfectly aligned. Just like my heart—it's never skipped a beat for anyone but you." Hazel watched him with a blank expression, listening to the practiced ease of his lies. She turned around and picked up the gift box containing her surgical records and her breakup letter. She handed it over. "This is for your birthday." Daniel's face lit up with genuine surprise. He reached for the lid, eager to see what she'd chosen. Hazel stopped him. The sunlight hit her thin face, making her look fragile, almost ethereal. "Don't open it yet. Wait until your actual birthday. Next month." Daniel chuckled and ruffled her hair, his eyes full of doting affection. "Alright, whatever you want, Hazel. I'll wait. Thanks, babe!" As she watched his excitement, the smile didn't even come close to reaching her eyes. 「Daniel, I hope you remember exactly what you did to me that night when you finally open it. I wonder if you'll still be smiling then.」 *** The following day, the Lewises threw a lavish gala for Hazel at the largest estate in New York, inviting every major player in the city to make up for the missed birthday. The grounds were blanketed in red roses—Hazel's favorite. The ballroom floor was strewn with petals. Everywhere she looked, people were whispering about how much Daniel worshipped her. "Even if the Lewises took her in out of family loyalty, they wouldn't treat her like royalty if it weren't for Daniel. She's only this important because he's obsessed with her." "Tell me about it. Look at the way he looks at her. It's the exact same look he had when he confessed to her at eighteen." "It's been seven years, and they're still total goals. I'm literally crying." Hazel heard the comments, but she simply maintained a polite, distant smile for the sake of the family. She didn't say a word. The love between her and Daniel was exactly like those rose petals on the floor: beautiful at a glance, but already dying. Throughout the night, Daniel was the perfect partner. He intercepted every drink offered to her so she wouldn't get a headache. When people spoke to her, he stood by her side, listening intently and nodding at the right moments, perfectly happy to play the role of the devoted boyfriend. He held her bag, peeled her shrimp, and picked the bones out of her fish with meticulous care. Hazel realized then that Daniel was a natural-born actor. He was so convincing that she almost wondered if the affair had been a fever dream. "You two are truly the golden couple. So, when are we getting a wedding?" "Yeah, don't forget our invites! We've watched you two grow up together." Daniel squeezed Hazel's hand. "We won't forget. But before the wedding, I have to give Hazel the most spectacular proposal she's ever seen." Hazel stood beside him, her lips curved in a faint smile, but she was exhausted to her core. She suddenly remembered the first time she had attended a party as Daniel's girlfriend. Everyone had said the same things then—how they were the blueprint and how they were made for each other. Back then, Daniel had wrapped an arm around her shoulders and said proudly, "Of course we are. I must have hit the lottery to find a girl like Hazel. I'm not marrying anyone else in this lifetime." The younger Hazel had blushed and hidden her face against his chest. She had spent years dreaming about the moment he would finally get down on one knee, knowing she would say yes before he even finished the question. 「But now, Daniel, I'm done waiting.」 As the party wound down, Daniel led Hazel onto the stage. He opened a jewelry box and revealed a breathtaking, diamond-encrusted necklace. He stepped behind her to fasten it around her neck. "Happy birthday, Hazel." He leaned down and kissed her forehead. The room erupted in thunderous applause. Hazel looked down at the necklace, her gaze shifting slightly to the head table where Lydia was sitting. Lydia's face was dark, her eyes burning with a resentment that stood out sharply against the celebratory crowd. Hazel's lips twitched into a tiny, mocking smile. Lydia's expression crumbled. She gritted her teeth, turned, and walked out. No one else noticed the tension beneath the surface; the air was too thick with congratulations. Only Hazel knew the truth. Her love for Daniel had burned itself out, and they were finally at the end of the road. ### Chapter 3 The dinner service ended, and the dancing began. Daniel bowed to Hazel, offering his hand for the opening dance. Hazel hesitated for a heartbeat. She had no desire to humiliate the Lewises in front of their guests, so she started to reach out—but Lydia suddenly appeared, breathless. "Mr. Lewis, I'm so sorry to interrupt, but there's an emergency at the office. I'm afraid you have to go with me." Hearing this, Daniel straightened up instantly. Without even asking for details, he turned to Hazel with a look of practiced regret. "Hazel, I'm sorry. I have to go handle this. I'll be back to pick you up later tonight, okay?" Under the watchful eyes of the entire ballroom, Hazel slowly withdrew her hand. "Just go." As she watched the two of them hurry away together, a dull, throbbing ache filled her chest. Four months ago, Lydia had moved into the Lewis estate under the guise of being Daniel's distant, widowed cousin-in-law. The story was that her husband had died, leaving her with nothing, and the Lewises had taken her in out of the goodness of their hearts. At first, Hazel hadn't been suspicious of this sudden "family member" at all. She had even gone out of her way to make Lydia feel at home. Even when Lydia was hired as Daniel's personal secretary, Hazel simply chalked it up to the family's generosity. Until the relationship between Daniel and Lydia became too "close" to ignore. In the past, Hazel was never an option to Daniel; she was the only answer. But lately, she had started catching glimpses of hesitation in his eyes, as if he were struggling to make a choice. Eventually, the hesitation stopped. Now, he chose Lydia without a second thought. Hazel excused herself, claiming a headache, and retreated to a private room to rest. Meanwhile, Daniel and Lydia hurried into his private office. "Alright, what's so urgent?" "You didn't even ask me that on the drive over. I thought we were on the same wavelength." Lydia's eyes were heavy with suggestion as she stepped toward him, hooking a finger in his tie. Daniel frowned, grabbing her wrist. "I told you to stop playing games! Didn't you see we were celebrating Hazel's birthday?" "Daniel... don't be so mean to me. I'm three months along now. Haven't you missed me at all?" "Lydia..." "Didn't you say you always wanted to try it in the office?" Lydia shed her heavy coat, revealing a daring, skin-tight professional dress underneath. "Tell me, can she even satisfy you like this?" A predatory look swept over Daniel's face. He couldn't hold back any longer. He grabbed her by the waist and crushed his lips against hers. The fire ignited, then eventually burned out. When it was over, Daniel wiped the traces of Lydia's lipstick off his skin. He checked his phone; there were no messages from Hazel. His heart skipped a beat—a sudden, cold wave of unease. "Stay at my place tonight, please?" Daniel ignored her, buttoning his shirt and shaking off her hand. "I'll have the driver take you home. I need to go get Hazel." He didn't stay to watch Lydia's tearful pout. He just grabbed his keys and drove off. On the way back to the estate, he took a detour to pick up a box of peanut brittle from the most famous candy shop in the city. "Hazel? What happened? Your mom said you weren't feeling well." Daniel ran from the foyer all the way to her room, his face a mask of concern. "I'm fine." Hazel sat up in bed and shook her head. Daniel reached out and stroked her hair, his voice soothing as if he were comforting a child. "I bought your favorite peanut brittle. Just one bite? Then I'll take you home." It was from the century-old shop she loved. Since they were kids, Daniel would wait in massive lines just to make her smile, buying boxes of roasted chestnuts and peanut clusters. Hazel looked down. The scent of Lydia's perfume was all over him—thick, cloying, and making her stomach turn. 「Why? Why? We don't have much time left, and you couldn't even put in the effort to lie to me properly. Why?」 She pushed his hand away, her voice raspy. "I don't want it. Let's just go." 「Daniel, I only ever liked that candy because it came from you. But now, I've lost my taste for it.」 「And don't bother taking me home. The moment you betrayed me, I didn't have a home anymore.」
Chapter 1 "I'll sign the consent forms for the ectopic pregnancy surgery myself." Hazel called out to the nurse, her hand bruised from the IV drips. She gripped the pen, her fingers trembling as she scrawled her name. As they wheeled her into the OR, a single tear slipped down her cheek. She could no longer tell if taking that Plan B pill had been the right call or the biggest mistake of her life. During her recovery, Hazel booked a one-way ticket to Ireland, scheduled for a month out. She pulled up her phone. The headlines were still dominated by the "New York Golden Boy's Multi-Million Dollar Tribute to His Girlfriend." And Hazel was the woman at the center of that grand obsession. Three days ago, Daniel held a press conference. He bankrolled a space mission in seven years; a spacecraft was now carrying a vinyl record into the deep reaches of the universe. On that record was Daniel's confession to Hazel, set to play on a loop for eternity, making the entire cosmos a witness to his devotion. With the successful launch, the story of their long-term romance went viral. People were calling it the "Love Story of the Century." A dull ache throbbed in her abdomen as Hazel scrolled through the comments. [Is there anyone left who doesn't know Mr. Lewis and Miss Allen were childhood sweethearts? They've known each other for twenty-five years, and they're still this obsessed after seven years of dating... I'm actually sobbing.] [You guys only see the money he spends on her. Do you remember when Daniel took a bullet for her years ago? He was at a charity swim meet recently, and you could see the scar on his shoulder—it was only inches from his heart!] [I heard he didn't even blink before shielding her. I still have the paparazzi shot of him on the stretcher, white-knuckling her hand. I'm literally dying, they're soulmates.] [Literal goals. They're basically the blueprint.] From the stolen glances at galas to the grand, sweeping gestures—every headline served as proof that they loved each other more than life itself. Hazel's vision blurred. She wiped her eyes, feeling a bitter surge of irony. The Lewises and the Allens had been family friends for generations. When she was born, two-year-old Daniel had been waiting right outside the delivery room. For as long as she could remember, Daniel had never left her side. When she was ten, the Allen empire collapsed into bankruptcy. Her parents took their own lives, leaving Hazel an orphan overnight. The Lewises had stepped in immediately to take her home. It was Daniel's care, his constant presence, that had pulled her out of the suffocating darkness of that grief. In the years she spent coming of age, she often felt she wasn't enough for him. She never dared to hope he could love her as a woman; she only wanted to be near him, even if it was just as the girl next door. But on her eighteenth birthday, in front of the city's high society, Daniel had formally asked her to be his. Looking into the heat in his eyes, Hazel hadn't hesitated to accept the red roses that symbolized his promise of forever. Tears had streamed down her face as she whispered in his ear, "Daniel, thank you for being my family. Just promise me... promise you'll never betray me. Don't ever leave me. I love you." Daniel had crushed her into a hug, his voice breaking. "Hazel, I swear on my life, I will never betray you. I will never leave you behind. I'll love you until the day I die." Throughout their relationship, he had been everything a man should be. Gentle, attentive, and devoted. But seven years of perfect loyalty were shattered. Hazel didn't doubt that his feelings had been real once, but "forever" was a fragile thing. If she hadn't stumbled upon the evidence of his affair, she might still believe she was the luckiest girl in the world. Daniel probably thought he'd covered his tracks. He forgot that while love is in the details, so is the end of it. His heart had become too crowded, and Hazel wouldn't—couldn't—stay to watch the fallout. Rather than suffer the agony of being abandoned all over again, she chose to be the one to walk away first. Hazel placed the surgical records for her terminated pregnancy into a luxury gift box. She wrapped it carefully and tucked a card on top. [To Daniel, on his 27th birthday.] ### Chapter 2 By the time Daniel finally got home, Hazel had already been discharged. She was sitting by the window, a book resting in her lap. "I'm so sorry, Hazel. Things were just insane on the trip. I caught the red-eye, but I still couldn't make it back in time for your birthday or our anniversary..." Daniel shed his suit jacket and walked over, pulling her into a tight hug. "I promise, this is the last time. From now on, I'm not missing a single milestone. I'll be there for everything." "Babe, don't be mad at me, okay?" Hazel felt a cold sneer forming in her chest. She closed her eyes, but the scent of Lydia's perfume clinging to his skin made her stomach churn. 「Taking Lydia on a business trip... I'm sure you were kept very busy.」 But none of it mattered anymore. Hazel gently pushed him away and met his eyes, her voice eerily calm. "It's fine." Daniel looked visibly relieved. He pulled a sleek black velvet box from his pocket and held it out to her. "Hazel, I got you something. I really hope you like it." She opened the box. Inside was a watch—a Patek Philippe Grandmaster Chime. A thirty-one-million-dollar masterpiece, one of only seven in existence. "Swiss watchmaking is all about precision. Every gear, every movement is perfectly aligned. Just like my heart—it's never skipped a beat for anyone but you." Hazel watched him with a blank expression, listening to the practiced ease of his lies. She turned around and picked up the gift box containing her surgical records and her breakup letter. She handed it over. "This is for your birthday." Daniel's face lit up with genuine surprise. He reached for the lid, eager to see what she'd chosen. Hazel stopped him. The sunlight hit her thin face, making her look fragile, almost ethereal. "Don't open it yet. Wait until your actual birthday. Next month." Daniel chuckled and ruffled her hair, his eyes full of doting affection. "Alright, whatever you want, Hazel. I'll wait. Thanks, babe!" As she watched his excitement, the smile didn't even come close to reaching her eyes. 「Daniel, I hope you remember exactly what you did to me that night when you finally open it. I wonder if you'll still be smiling then.」 *** The following day, the Lewises threw a lavish gala for Hazel at the largest estate in New York, inviting every major player in the city to make up for the missed birthday. The grounds were blanketed in red roses—Hazel's favorite. The ballroom floor was strewn with petals. Everywhere she looked, people were whispering about how much Daniel worshipped her. "Even if the Lewises took her in out of family loyalty, they wouldn't treat her like royalty if it weren't for Daniel. She's only this important because he's obsessed with her." "Tell me about it. Look at the way he looks at her. It's the exact same look he had when he confessed to her at eighteen." "It's been seven years, and they're still total goals. I'm literally crying." Hazel heard the comments, but she simply maintained a polite, distant smile for the sake of the family. She didn't say a word. The love between her and Daniel was exactly like those rose petals on the floor: beautiful at a glance, but already dying. Throughout the night, Daniel was the perfect partner. He intercepted every drink offered to her so she wouldn't get a headache. When people spoke to her, he stood by her side, listening intently and nodding at the right moments, perfectly happy to play the role of the devoted boyfriend. He held her bag, peeled her shrimp, and picked the bones out of her fish with meticulous care. Hazel realized then that Daniel was a natural-born actor. He was so convincing that she almost wondered if the affair had been a fever dream. "You two are truly the golden couple. So, when are we getting a wedding?" "Yeah, don't forget our invites! We've watched you two grow up together." Daniel squeezed Hazel's hand. "We won't forget. But before the wedding, I have to give Hazel the most spectacular proposal she's ever seen." Hazel stood beside him, her lips curved in a faint smile, but she was exhausted to her core. She suddenly remembered the first time she had attended a party as Daniel's girlfriend. Everyone had said the same things then—how they were the blueprint and how they were made for each other. Back then, Daniel had wrapped an arm around her shoulders and said proudly, "Of course we are. I must have hit the lottery to find a girl like Hazel. I'm not marrying anyone else in this lifetime." The younger Hazel had blushed and hidden her face against his chest. She had spent years dreaming about the moment he would finally get down on one knee, knowing she would say yes before he even finished the question. 「But now, Daniel, I'm done waiting.」 As the party wound down, Daniel led Hazel onto the stage. He opened a jewelry box and revealed a breathtaking, diamond-encrusted necklace. He stepped behind her to fasten it around her neck. "Happy birthday, Hazel." He leaned down and kissed her forehead. The room erupted in thunderous applause. Hazel looked down at the necklace, her gaze shifting slightly to the head table where Lydia was sitting. Lydia's face was dark, her eyes burning with a resentment that stood out sharply against the celebratory crowd. Hazel's lips twitched into a tiny, mocking smile. Lydia's expression crumbled. She gritted her teeth, turned, and walked out. No one else noticed the tension beneath the surface; the air was too thick with congratulations. Only Hazel knew the truth. Her love for Daniel had burned itself out, and they were finally at the end of the road. ### Chapter 3 The dinner service ended, and the dancing began. Daniel bowed to Hazel, offering his hand for the opening dance. Hazel hesitated for a heartbeat. She had no desire to humiliate the Lewises in front of their guests, so she started to reach out—but Lydia suddenly appeared, breathless. "Mr. Lewis, I'm so sorry to interrupt, but there's an emergency at the office. I'm afraid you have to go with me." Hearing this, Daniel straightened up instantly. Without even asking for details, he turned to Hazel with a look of practiced regret. "Hazel, I'm sorry. I have to go handle this. I'll be back to pick you up later tonight, okay?" Under the watchful eyes of the entire ballroom, Hazel slowly withdrew her hand. "Just go." As she watched the two of them hurry away together, a dull, throbbing ache filled her chest. Four months ago, Lydia had moved into the Lewis estate under the guise of being Daniel's distant, widowed cousin-in-law. The story was that her husband had died, leaving her with nothing, and the Lewises had taken her in out of the goodness of their hearts. At first, Hazel hadn't been suspicious of this sudden "family member" at all. She had even gone out of her way to make Lydia feel at home. Even when Lydia was hired as Daniel's personal secretary, Hazel simply chalked it up to the family's generosity. Until the relationship between Daniel and Lydia became too "close" to ignore. In the past, Hazel was never an option to Daniel; she was the only answer. But lately, she had started catching glimpses of hesitation in his eyes, as if he were struggling to make a choice. Eventually, the hesitation stopped. Now, he chose Lydia without a second thought. Hazel excused herself, claiming a headache, and retreated to a private room to rest. Meanwhile, Daniel and Lydia hurried into his private office. "Alright, what's so urgent?" "You didn't even ask me that on the drive over. I thought we were on the same wavelength." Lydia's eyes were heavy with suggestion as she stepped toward him, hooking a finger in his tie. Daniel frowned, grabbing her wrist. "I told you to stop playing games! Didn't you see we were celebrating Hazel's birthday?" "Daniel... don't be so mean to me. I'm three months along now. Haven't you missed me at all?" "Lydia..." "Didn't you say you always wanted to try it in the office?" Lydia shed her heavy coat, revealing a daring, skin-tight professional dress underneath. "Tell me, can she even satisfy you like this?" A predatory look swept over Daniel's face. He couldn't hold back any longer. He grabbed her by the waist and crushed his lips against hers. The fire ignited, then eventually burned out. When it was over, Daniel wiped the traces of Lydia's lipstick off his skin. He checked his phone; there were no messages from Hazel. His heart skipped a beat—a sudden, cold wave of unease. "Stay at my place tonight, please?" Daniel ignored her, buttoning his shirt and shaking off her hand. "I'll have the driver take you home. I need to go get Hazel." He didn't stay to watch Lydia's tearful pout. He just grabbed his keys and drove off. On the way back to the estate, he took a detour to pick up a box of peanut brittle from the most famous candy shop in the city. "Hazel? What happened? Your mom said you weren't feeling well." Daniel ran from the foyer all the way to her room, his face a mask of concern. "I'm fine." Hazel sat up in bed and shook her head. Daniel reached out and stroked her hair, his voice soothing as if he were comforting a child. "I bought your favorite peanut brittle. Just one bite? Then I'll take you home." It was from the century-old shop she loved. Since they were kids, Daniel would wait in massive lines just to make her smile, buying boxes of roasted chestnuts and peanut clusters. Hazel looked down. The scent of Lydia's perfume was all over him—thick, cloying, and making her stomach turn. 「Why? Why? We don't have much time left, and you couldn't even put in the effort to lie to me properly. Why?」 She pushed his hand away, her voice raspy. "I don't want it. Let's just go." 「Daniel, I only ever liked that candy because it came from you. But now, I've lost my taste for it.」 「And don't bother taking me home. The moment you betrayed me, I didn't have a home anymore.」
Chapter 1 "I'll sign the consent forms for the ectopic pregnancy surgery myself." Hazel called out to the nurse, her hand bruised from the IV drips. She gripped the pen, her fingers trembling as she scrawled her name. As they wheeled her into the OR, a single tear slipped down her cheek. She could no longer tell if taking that Plan B pill had been the right call or the biggest mistake of her life. During her recovery, Hazel booked a one-way ticket to Ireland, scheduled for a month out. She pulled up her phone. The headlines were still dominated by the "New York Golden Boy's Multi-Million Dollar Tribute to His Girlfriend." And Hazel was the woman at the center of that grand obsession. Three days ago, Daniel held a press conference. He bankrolled a space mission in seven years; a spacecraft was now carrying a vinyl record into the deep reaches of the universe. On that record was Daniel's confession to Hazel, set to play on a loop for eternity, making the entire cosmos a witness to his devotion. With the successful launch, the story of their long-term romance went viral. People were calling it the "Love Story of the Century." A dull ache throbbed in her abdomen as Hazel scrolled through the comments. [Is there anyone left who doesn't know Mr. Lewis and Miss Allen were childhood sweethearts? They've known each other for twenty-five years, and they're still this obsessed after seven years of dating... I'm actually sobbing.] [You guys only see the money he spends on her. Do you remember when Daniel took a bullet for her years ago? He was at a charity swim meet recently, and you could see the scar on his shoulder—it was only inches from his heart!] [I heard he didn't even blink before shielding her. I still have the paparazzi shot of him on the stretcher, white-knuckling her hand. I'm literally dying, they're soulmates.] [Literal goals. They're basically the blueprint.] From the stolen glances at galas to the grand, sweeping gestures—every headline served as proof that they loved each other more than life itself. Hazel's vision blurred. She wiped her eyes, feeling a bitter surge of irony. The Lewises and the Allens had been family friends for generations. When she was born, two-year-old Daniel had been waiting right outside the delivery room. For as long as she could remember, Daniel had never left her side. When she was ten, the Allen empire collapsed into bankruptcy. Her parents took their own lives, leaving Hazel an orphan overnight. The Lewises had stepped in immediately to take her home. It was Daniel's care, his constant presence, that had pulled her out of the suffocating darkness of that grief. In the years she spent coming of age, she often felt she wasn't enough for him. She never dared to hope he could love her as a woman; she only wanted to be near him, even if it was just as the girl next door. But on her eighteenth birthday, in front of the city's high society, Daniel had formally asked her to be his. Looking into the heat in his eyes, Hazel hadn't hesitated to accept the red roses that symbolized his promise of forever. Tears had streamed down her face as she whispered in his ear, "Daniel, thank you for being my family. Just promise me... promise you'll never betray me. Don't ever leave me. I love you." Daniel had crushed her into a hug, his voice breaking. "Hazel, I swear on my life, I will never betray you. I will never leave you behind. I'll love you until the day I die." Throughout their relationship, he had been everything a man should be. Gentle, attentive, and devoted. But seven years of perfect loyalty were shattered. Hazel didn't doubt that his feelings had been real once, but "forever" was a fragile thing. If she hadn't stumbled upon the evidence of his affair, she might still believe she was the luckiest girl in the world. Daniel probably thought he'd covered his tracks. He forgot that while love is in the details, so is the end of it. His heart had become too crowded, and Hazel wouldn't—couldn't—stay to watch the fallout. Rather than suffer the agony of being abandoned all over again, she chose to be the one to walk away first. Hazel placed the surgical records for her terminated pregnancy into a luxury gift box. She wrapped it carefully and tucked a card on top. [To Daniel, on his 27th birthday.] ### Chapter 2 By the time Daniel finally got home, Hazel had already been discharged. She was sitting by the window, a book resting in her lap. "I'm so sorry, Hazel. Things were just insane on the trip. I caught the red-eye, but I still couldn't make it back in time for your birthday or our anniversary..." Daniel shed his suit jacket and walked over, pulling her into a tight hug. "I promise, this is the last time. From now on, I'm not missing a single milestone. I'll be there for everything." "Babe, don't be mad at me, okay?" Hazel felt a cold sneer forming in her chest. She closed her eyes, but the scent of Lydia's perfume clinging to his skin made her stomach churn. 「Taking Lydia on a business trip... I'm sure you were kept very busy.」 But none of it mattered anymore. Hazel gently pushed him away and met his eyes, her voice eerily calm. "It's fine." Daniel looked visibly relieved. He pulled a sleek black velvet box from his pocket and held it out to her. "Hazel, I got you something. I really hope you like it." She opened the box. Inside was a watch—a Patek Philippe Grandmaster Chime. A thirty-one-million-dollar masterpiece, one of only seven in existence. "Swiss watchmaking is all about precision. Every gear, every movement is perfectly aligned. Just like my heart—it's never skipped a beat for anyone but you." Hazel watched him with a blank expression, listening to the practiced ease of his lies. She turned around and picked up the gift box containing her surgical records and her breakup letter. She handed it over. "This is for your birthday." Daniel's face lit up with genuine surprise. He reached for the lid, eager to see what she'd chosen. Hazel stopped him. The sunlight hit her thin face, making her look fragile, almost ethereal. "Don't open it yet. Wait until your actual birthday. Next month." Daniel chuckled and ruffled her hair, his eyes full of doting affection. "Alright, whatever you want, Hazel. I'll wait. Thanks, babe!" As she watched his excitement, the smile didn't even come close to reaching her eyes. 「Daniel, I hope you remember exactly what you did to me that night when you finally open it. I wonder if you'll still be smiling then.」 *** The following day, the Lewises threw a lavish gala for Hazel at the largest estate in New York, inviting every major player in the city to make up for the missed birthday. The grounds were blanketed in red roses—Hazel's favorite. The ballroom floor was strewn with petals. Everywhere she looked, people were whispering about how much Daniel worshipped her. "Even if the Lewises took her in out of family loyalty, they wouldn't treat her like royalty if it weren't for Daniel. She's only this important because he's obsessed with her." "Tell me about it. Look at the way he looks at her. It's the exact same look he had when he confessed to her at eighteen." "It's been seven years, and they're still total goals. I'm literally crying." Hazel heard the comments, but she simply maintained a polite, distant smile for the sake of the family. She didn't say a word. The love between her and Daniel was exactly like those rose petals on the floor: beautiful at a glance, but already dying. Throughout the night, Daniel was the perfect partner. He intercepted every drink offered to her so she wouldn't get a headache. When people spoke to her, he stood by her side, listening intently and nodding at the right moments, perfectly happy to play the role of the devoted boyfriend. He held her bag, peeled her shrimp, and picked the bones out of her fish with meticulous care. Hazel realized then that Daniel was a natural-born actor. He was so convincing that she almost wondered if the affair had been a fever dream. "You two are truly the golden couple. So, when are we getting a wedding?" "Yeah, don't forget our invites! We've watched you two grow up together." Daniel squeezed Hazel's hand. "We won't forget. But before the wedding, I have to give Hazel the most spectacular proposal she's ever seen." Hazel stood beside him, her lips curved in a faint smile, but she was exhausted to her core. She suddenly remembered the first time she had attended a party as Daniel's girlfriend. Everyone had said the same things then—how they were the blueprint and how they were made for each other. Back then, Daniel had wrapped an arm around her shoulders and said proudly, "Of course we are. I must have hit the lottery to find a girl like Hazel. I'm not marrying anyone else in this lifetime." The younger Hazel had blushed and hidden her face against his chest. She had spent years dreaming about the moment he would finally get down on one knee, knowing she would say yes before he even finished the question. 「But now, Daniel, I'm done waiting.」 As the party wound down, Daniel led Hazel onto the stage. He opened a jewelry box and revealed a breathtaking, diamond-encrusted necklace. He stepped behind her to fasten it around her neck. "Happy birthday, Hazel." He leaned down and kissed her forehead. The room erupted in thunderous applause. Hazel looked down at the necklace, her gaze shifting slightly to the head table where Lydia was sitting. Lydia's face was dark, her eyes burning with a resentment that stood out sharply against the celebratory crowd. Hazel's lips twitched into a tiny, mocking smile. Lydia's expression crumbled. She gritted her teeth, turned, and walked out. No one else noticed the tension beneath the surface; the air was too thick with congratulations. Only Hazel knew the truth. Her love for Daniel had burned itself out, and they were finally at the end of the road. ### Chapter 3 The dinner service ended, and the dancing began. Daniel bowed to Hazel, offering his hand for the opening dance. Hazel hesitated for a heartbeat. She had no desire to humiliate the Lewises in front of their guests, so she started to reach out—but Lydia suddenly appeared, breathless. "Mr. Lewis, I'm so sorry to interrupt, but there's an emergency at the office. I'm afraid you have to go with me." Hearing this, Daniel straightened up instantly. Without even asking for details, he turned to Hazel with a look of practiced regret. "Hazel, I'm sorry. I have to go handle this. I'll be back to pick you up later tonight, okay?" Under the watchful eyes of the entire ballroom, Hazel slowly withdrew her hand. "Just go." As she watched the two of them hurry away together, a dull, throbbing ache filled her chest. Four months ago, Lydia had moved into the Lewis estate under the guise of being Daniel's distant, widowed cousin-in-law. The story was that her husband had died, leaving her with nothing, and the Lewises had taken her in out of the goodness of their hearts. At first, Hazel hadn't been suspicious of this sudden "family member" at all. She had even gone out of her way to make Lydia feel at home. Even when Lydia was hired as Daniel's personal secretary, Hazel simply chalked it up to the family's generosity. Until the relationship between Daniel and Lydia became too "close" to ignore. In the past, Hazel was never an option to Daniel; she was the only answer. But lately, she had started catching glimpses of hesitation in his eyes, as if he were struggling to make a choice. Eventually, the hesitation stopped. Now, he chose Lydia without a second thought. Hazel excused herself, claiming a headache, and retreated to a private room to rest. Meanwhile, Daniel and Lydia hurried into his private office. "Alright, what's so urgent?" "You didn't even ask me that on the drive over. I thought we were on the same wavelength." Lydia's eyes were heavy with suggestion as she stepped toward him, hooking a finger in his tie. Daniel frowned, grabbing her wrist. "I told you to stop playing games! Didn't you see we were celebrating Hazel's birthday?" "Daniel... don't be so mean to me. I'm three months along now. Haven't you missed me at all?" "Lydia..." "Didn't you say you always wanted to try it in the office?" Lydia shed her heavy coat, revealing a daring, skin-tight professional dress underneath. "Tell me, can she even satisfy you like this?" A predatory look swept over Daniel's face. He couldn't hold back any longer. He grabbed her by the waist and crushed his lips against hers. The fire ignited, then eventually burned out. When it was over, Daniel wiped the traces of Lydia's lipstick off his skin. He checked his phone; there were no messages from Hazel. His heart skipped a beat—a sudden, cold wave of unease. "Stay at my place tonight, please?" Daniel ignored her, buttoning his shirt and shaking off her hand. "I'll have the driver take you home. I need to go get Hazel." He didn't stay to watch Lydia's tearful pout. He just grabbed his keys and drove off. On the way back to the estate, he took a detour to pick up a box of peanut brittle from the most famous candy shop in the city. "Hazel? What happened? Your mom said you weren't feeling well." Daniel ran from the foyer all the way to her room, his face a mask of concern. "I'm fine." Hazel sat up in bed and shook her head. Daniel reached out and stroked her hair, his voice soothing as if he were comforting a child. "I bought your favorite peanut brittle. Just one bite? Then I'll take you home." It was from the century-old shop she loved. Since they were kids, Daniel would wait in massive lines just to make her smile, buying boxes of roasted chestnuts and peanut clusters. Hazel looked down. The scent of Lydia's perfume was all over him—thick, cloying, and making her stomach turn. 「Why? Why? We don't have much time left, and you couldn't even put in the effort to lie to me properly. Why?」 She pushed his hand away, her voice raspy. "I don't want it. Let's just go." 「Daniel, I only ever liked that candy because it came from you. But now, I've lost my taste for it.」 「And don't bother taking me home. The moment you betrayed me, I didn't have a home anymore.」
Chapter 1 "I'll sign the consent forms for the ectopic pregnancy surgery myself." Hazel called out to the nurse, her hand bruised from the IV drips. She gripped the pen, her fingers trembling as she scrawled her name. As they wheeled her into the OR, a single tear slipped down her cheek. She could no longer tell if taking that Plan B pill had been the right call or the biggest mistake of her life. During her recovery, Hazel booked a one-way ticket to Ireland, scheduled for a month out. She pulled up her phone. The headlines were still dominated by the "New York Golden Boy's Multi-Million Dollar Tribute to His Girlfriend." And Hazel was the woman at the center of that grand obsession. Three days ago, Daniel held a press conference. He bankrolled a space mission in seven years; a spacecraft was now carrying a vinyl record into the deep reaches of the universe. On that record was Daniel's confession to Hazel, set to play on a loop for eternity, making the entire cosmos a witness to his devotion. With the successful launch, the story of their long-term romance went viral. People were calling it the "Love Story of the Century." A dull ache throbbed in her abdomen as Hazel scrolled through the comments. [Is there anyone left who doesn't know Mr. Lewis and Miss Allen were childhood sweethearts? They've known each other for twenty-five years, and they're still this obsessed after seven years of dating... I'm actually sobbing.] [You guys only see the money he spends on her. Do you remember when Daniel took a bullet for her years ago? He was at a charity swim meet recently, and you could see the scar on his shoulder—it was only inches from his heart!] [I heard he didn't even blink before shielding her. I still have the paparazzi shot of him on the stretcher, white-knuckling her hand. I'm literally dying, they're soulmates.] [Literal goals. They're basically the blueprint.] From the stolen glances at galas to the grand, sweeping gestures—every headline served as proof that they loved each other more than life itself. Hazel's vision blurred. She wiped her eyes, feeling a bitter surge of irony. The Lewises and the Allens had been family friends for generations. When she was born, two-year-old Daniel had been waiting right outside the delivery room. For as long as she could remember, Daniel had never left her side. When she was ten, the Allen empire collapsed into bankruptcy. Her parents took their own lives, leaving Hazel an orphan overnight. The Lewises had stepped in immediately to take her home. It was Daniel's care, his constant presence, that had pulled her out of the suffocating darkness of that grief. In the years she spent coming of age, she often felt she wasn't enough for him. She never dared to hope he could love her as a woman; she only wanted to be near him, even if it was just as the girl next door. But on her eighteenth birthday, in front of the city's high society, Daniel had formally asked her to be his. Looking into the heat in his eyes, Hazel hadn't hesitated to accept the red roses that symbolized his promise of forever. Tears had streamed down her face as she whispered in his ear, "Daniel, thank you for being my family. Just promise me... promise you'll never betray me. Don't ever leave me. I love you." Daniel had crushed her into a hug, his voice breaking. "Hazel, I swear on my life, I will never betray you. I will never leave you behind. I'll love you until the day I die." Throughout their relationship, he had been everything a man should be. Gentle, attentive, and devoted. But seven years of perfect loyalty were shattered. Hazel didn't doubt that his feelings had been real once, but "forever" was a fragile thing. If she hadn't stumbled upon the evidence of his affair, she might still believe she was the luckiest girl in the world. Daniel probably thought he'd covered his tracks. He forgot that while love is in the details, so is the end of it. His heart had become too crowded, and Hazel wouldn't—couldn't—stay to watch the fallout. Rather than suffer the agony of being abandoned all over again, she chose to be the one to walk away first. Hazel placed the surgical records for her terminated pregnancy into a luxury gift box. She wrapped it carefully and tucked a card on top. [To Daniel, on his 27th birthday.] ### Chapter 2 By the time Daniel finally got home, Hazel had already been discharged. She was sitting by the window, a book resting in her lap. "I'm so sorry, Hazel. Things were just insane on the trip. I caught the red-eye, but I still couldn't make it back in time for your birthday or our anniversary..." Daniel shed his suit jacket and walked over, pulling her into a tight hug. "I promise, this is the last time. From now on, I'm not missing a single milestone. I'll be there for everything." "Babe, don't be mad at me, okay?" Hazel felt a cold sneer forming in her chest. She closed her eyes, but the scent of Lydia's perfume clinging to his skin made her stomach churn. 「Taking Lydia on a business trip... I'm sure you were kept very busy.」 But none of it mattered anymore. Hazel gently pushed him away and met his eyes, her voice eerily calm. "It's fine." Daniel looked visibly relieved. He pulled a sleek black velvet box from his pocket and held it out to her. "Hazel, I got you something. I really hope you like it." She opened the box. Inside was a watch—a Patek Philippe Grandmaster Chime. A thirty-one-million-dollar masterpiece, one of only seven in existence. "Swiss watchmaking is all about precision. Every gear, every movement is perfectly aligned. Just like my heart—it's never skipped a beat for anyone but you." Hazel watched him with a blank expression, listening to the practiced ease of his lies. She turned around and picked up the gift box containing her surgical records and her breakup letter. She handed it over. "This is for your birthday." Daniel's face lit up with genuine surprise. He reached for the lid, eager to see what she'd chosen. Hazel stopped him. The sunlight hit her thin face, making her look fragile, almost ethereal. "Don't open it yet. Wait until your actual birthday. Next month." Daniel chuckled and ruffled her hair, his eyes full of doting affection. "Alright, whatever you want, Hazel. I'll wait. Thanks, babe!" As she watched his excitement, the smile didn't even come close to reaching her eyes. 「Daniel, I hope you remember exactly what you did to me that night when you finally open it. I wonder if you'll still be smiling then.」 *** The following day, the Lewises threw a lavish gala for Hazel at the largest estate in New York, inviting every major player in the city to make up for the missed birthday. The grounds were blanketed in red roses—Hazel's favorite. The ballroom floor was strewn with petals. Everywhere she looked, people were whispering about how much Daniel worshipped her. "Even if the Lewises took her in out of family loyalty, they wouldn't treat her like royalty if it weren't for Daniel. She's only this important because he's obsessed with her." "Tell me about it. Look at the way he looks at her. It's the exact same look he had when he confessed to her at eighteen." "It's been seven years, and they're still total goals. I'm literally crying." Hazel heard the comments, but she simply maintained a polite, distant smile for the sake of the family. She didn't say a word. The love between her and Daniel was exactly like those rose petals on the floor: beautiful at a glance, but already dying. Throughout the night, Daniel was the perfect partner. He intercepted every drink offered to her so she wouldn't get a headache. When people spoke to her, he stood by her side, listening intently and nodding at the right moments, perfectly happy to play the role of the devoted boyfriend. He held her bag, peeled her shrimp, and picked the bones out of her fish with meticulous care. Hazel realized then that Daniel was a natural-born actor. He was so convincing that she almost wondered if the affair had been a fever dream. "You two are truly the golden couple. So, when are we getting a wedding?" "Yeah, don't forget our invites! We've watched you two grow up together." Daniel squeezed Hazel's hand. "We won't forget. But before the wedding, I have to give Hazel the most spectacular proposal she's ever seen." Hazel stood beside him, her lips curved in a faint smile, but she was exhausted to her core. She suddenly remembered the first time she had attended a party as Daniel's girlfriend. Everyone had said the same things then—how they were the blueprint and how they were made for each other. Back then, Daniel had wrapped an arm around her shoulders and said proudly, "Of course we are. I must have hit the lottery to find a girl like Hazel. I'm not marrying anyone else in this lifetime." The younger Hazel had blushed and hidden her face against his chest. She had spent years dreaming about the moment he would finally get down on one knee, knowing she would say yes before he even finished the question. 「But now, Daniel, I'm done waiting.」 As the party wound down, Daniel led Hazel onto the stage. He opened a jewelry box and revealed a breathtaking, diamond-encrusted necklace. He stepped behind her to fasten it around her neck. "Happy birthday, Hazel." He leaned down and kissed her forehead. The room erupted in thunderous applause. Hazel looked down at the necklace, her gaze shifting slightly to the head table where Lydia was sitting. Lydia's face was dark, her eyes burning with a resentment that stood out sharply against the celebratory crowd. Hazel's lips twitched into a tiny, mocking smile. Lydia's expression crumbled. She gritted her teeth, turned, and walked out. No one else noticed the tension beneath the surface; the air was too thick with congratulations. Only Hazel knew the truth. Her love for Daniel had burned itself out, and they were finally at the end of the road. ### Chapter 3 The dinner service ended, and the dancing began. Daniel bowed to Hazel, offering his hand for the opening dance. Hazel hesitated for a heartbeat. She had no desire to humiliate the Lewises in front of their guests, so she started to reach out—but Lydia suddenly appeared, breathless. "Mr. Lewis, I'm so sorry to interrupt, but there's an emergency at the office. I'm afraid you have to go with me." Hearing this, Daniel straightened up instantly. Without even asking for details, he turned to Hazel with a look of practiced regret. "Hazel, I'm sorry. I have to go handle this. I'll be back to pick you up later tonight, okay?" Under the watchful eyes of the entire ballroom, Hazel slowly withdrew her hand. "Just go." As she watched the two of them hurry away together, a dull, throbbing ache filled her chest. Four months ago, Lydia had moved into the Lewis estate under the guise of being Daniel's distant, widowed cousin-in-law. The story was that her husband had died, leaving her with nothing, and the Lewises had taken her in out of the goodness of their hearts. At first, Hazel hadn't been suspicious of this sudden "family member" at all. She had even gone out of her way to make Lydia feel at home. Even when Lydia was hired as Daniel's personal secretary, Hazel simply chalked it up to the family's generosity. Until the relationship between Daniel and Lydia became too "close" to ignore. In the past, Hazel was never an option to Daniel; she was the only answer. But lately, she had started catching glimpses of hesitation in his eyes, as if he were struggling to make a choice. Eventually, the hesitation stopped. Now, he chose Lydia without a second thought. Hazel excused herself, claiming a headache, and retreated to a private room to rest. Meanwhile, Daniel and Lydia hurried into his private office. "Alright, what's so urgent?" "You didn't even ask me that on the drive over. I thought we were on the same wavelength." Lydia's eyes were heavy with suggestion as she stepped toward him, hooking a finger in his tie. Daniel frowned, grabbing her wrist. "I told you to stop playing games! Didn't you see we were celebrating Hazel's birthday?" "Daniel... don't be so mean to me. I'm three months along now. Haven't you missed me at all?" "Lydia..." "Didn't you say you always wanted to try it in the office?" Lydia shed her heavy coat, revealing a daring, skin-tight professional dress underneath. "Tell me, can she even satisfy you like this?" A predatory look swept over Daniel's face. He couldn't hold back any longer. He grabbed her by the waist and crushed his lips against hers. The fire ignited, then eventually burned out. When it was over, Daniel wiped the traces of Lydia's lipstick off his skin. He checked his phone; there were no messages from Hazel. His heart skipped a beat—a sudden, cold wave of unease. "Stay at my place tonight, please?" Daniel ignored her, buttoning his shirt and shaking off her hand. "I'll have the driver take you home. I need to go get Hazel." He didn't stay to watch Lydia's tearful pout. He just grabbed his keys and drove off. On the way back to the estate, he took a detour to pick up a box of peanut brittle from the most famous candy shop in the city. "Hazel? What happened? Your mom said you weren't feeling well." Daniel ran from the foyer all the way to her room, his face a mask of concern. "I'm fine." Hazel sat up in bed and shook her head. Daniel reached out and stroked her hair, his voice soothing as if he were comforting a child. "I bought your favorite peanut brittle. Just one bite? Then I'll take you home." It was from the century-old shop she loved. Since they were kids, Daniel would wait in massive lines just to make her smile, buying boxes of roasted chestnuts and peanut clusters. Hazel looked down. The scent of Lydia's perfume was all over him—thick, cloying, and making her stomach turn. 「Why? Why? We don't have much time left, and you couldn't even put in the effort to lie to me properly. Why?」 She pushed his hand away, her voice raspy. "I don't want it. Let's just go." 「Daniel, I only ever liked that candy because it came from you. But now, I've lost my taste for it.」 「And don't bother taking me home. The moment you betrayed me, I didn't have a home anymore.」
Chapter 1 "I'll sign the consent forms for the ectopic pregnancy surgery myself." Hazel called out to the nurse, her hand bruised from the IV drips. She gripped the pen, her fingers trembling as she scrawled her name. As they wheeled her into the OR, a single tear slipped down her cheek. She could no longer tell if taking that Plan B pill had been the right call or the biggest mistake of her life. During her recovery, Hazel booked a one-way ticket to Ireland, scheduled for a month out. She pulled up her phone. The headlines were still dominated by the "New York Golden Boy's Multi-Million Dollar Tribute to His Girlfriend." And Hazel was the woman at the center of that grand obsession. Three days ago, Daniel held a press conference. He bankrolled a space mission in seven years; a spacecraft was now carrying a vinyl record into the deep reaches of the universe. On that record was Daniel's confession to Hazel, set to play on a loop for eternity, making the entire cosmos a witness to his devotion. With the successful launch, the story of their long-term romance went viral. People were calling it the "Love Story of the Century." A dull ache throbbed in her abdomen as Hazel scrolled through the comments. [Is there anyone left who doesn't know Mr. Lewis and Miss Allen were childhood sweethearts? They've known each other for twenty-five years, and they're still this obsessed after seven years of dating... I'm actually sobbing.] [You guys only see the money he spends on her. Do you remember when Daniel took a bullet for her years ago? He was at a charity swim meet recently, and you could see the scar on his shoulder—it was only inches from his heart!] [I heard he didn't even blink before shielding her. I still have the paparazzi shot of him on the stretcher, white-knuckling her hand. I'm literally dying, they're soulmates.] [Literal goals. They're basically the blueprint.] From the stolen glances at galas to the grand, sweeping gestures—every headline served as proof that they loved each other more than life itself. Hazel's vision blurred. She wiped her eyes, feeling a bitter surge of irony. The Lewises and the Allens had been family friends for generations. When she was born, two-year-old Daniel had been waiting right outside the delivery room. For as long as she could remember, Daniel had never left her side. When she was ten, the Allen empire collapsed into bankruptcy. Her parents took their own lives, leaving Hazel an orphan overnight. The Lewises had stepped in immediately to take her home. It was Daniel's care, his constant presence, that had pulled her out of the suffocating darkness of that grief. In the years she spent coming of age, she often felt she wasn't enough for him. She never dared to hope he could love her as a woman; she only wanted to be near him, even if it was just as the girl next door. But on her eighteenth birthday, in front of the city's high society, Daniel had formally asked her to be his. Looking into the heat in his eyes, Hazel hadn't hesitated to accept the red roses that symbolized his promise of forever. Tears had streamed down her face as she whispered in his ear, "Daniel, thank you for being my family. Just promise me... promise you'll never betray me. Don't ever leave me. I love you." Daniel had crushed her into a hug, his voice breaking. "Hazel, I swear on my life, I will never betray you. I will never leave you behind. I'll love you until the day I die." Throughout their relationship, he had been everything a man should be. Gentle, attentive, and devoted. But seven years of perfect loyalty were shattered. Hazel didn't doubt that his feelings had been real once, but "forever" was a fragile thing. If she hadn't stumbled upon the evidence of his affair, she might still believe she was the luckiest girl in the world. Daniel probably thought he'd covered his tracks. He forgot that while love is in the details, so is the end of it. His heart had become too crowded, and Hazel wouldn't—couldn't—stay to watch the fallout. Rather than suffer the agony of being abandoned all over again, she chose to be the one to walk away first. Hazel placed the surgical records for her terminated pregnancy into a luxury gift box. She wrapped it carefully and tucked a card on top. [To Daniel, on his 27th birthday.] ### Chapter 2 By the time Daniel finally got home, Hazel had already been discharged. She was sitting by the window, a book resting in her lap. "I'm so sorry, Hazel. Things were just insane on the trip. I caught the red-eye, but I still couldn't make it back in time for your birthday or our anniversary..." Daniel shed his suit jacket and walked over, pulling her into a tight hug. "I promise, this is the last time. From now on, I'm not missing a single milestone. I'll be there for everything." "Babe, don't be mad at me, okay?" Hazel felt a cold sneer forming in her chest. She closed her eyes, but the scent of Lydia's perfume clinging to his skin made her stomach churn. 「Taking Lydia on a business trip... I'm sure you were kept very busy.」 But none of it mattered anymore. Hazel gently pushed him away and met his eyes, her voice eerily calm. "It's fine." Daniel looked visibly relieved. He pulled a sleek black velvet box from his pocket and held it out to her. "Hazel, I got you something. I really hope you like it." She opened the box. Inside was a watch—a Patek Philippe Grandmaster Chime. A thirty-one-million-dollar masterpiece, one of only seven in existence. "Swiss watchmaking is all about precision. Every gear, every movement is perfectly aligned. Just like my heart—it's never skipped a beat for anyone but you." Hazel watched him with a blank expression, listening to the practiced ease of his lies. She turned around and picked up the gift box containing her surgical records and her breakup letter. She handed it over. "This is for your birthday." Daniel's face lit up with genuine surprise. He reached for the lid, eager to see what she'd chosen. Hazel stopped him. The sunlight hit her thin face, making her look fragile, almost ethereal. "Don't open it yet. Wait until your actual birthday. Next month." Daniel chuckled and ruffled her hair, his eyes full of doting affection. "Alright, whatever you want, Hazel. I'll wait. Thanks, babe!" As she watched his excitement, the smile didn't even come close to reaching her eyes. 「Daniel, I hope you remember exactly what you did to me that night when you finally open it. I wonder if you'll still be smiling then.」 *** The following day, the Lewises threw a lavish gala for Hazel at the largest estate in New York, inviting every major player in the city to make up for the missed birthday. The grounds were blanketed in red roses—Hazel's favorite. The ballroom floor was strewn with petals. Everywhere she looked, people were whispering about how much Daniel worshipped her. "Even if the Lewises took her in out of family loyalty, they wouldn't treat her like royalty if it weren't for Daniel. She's only this important because he's obsessed with her." "Tell me about it. Look at the way he looks at her. It's the exact same look he had when he confessed to her at eighteen." "It's been seven years, and they're still total goals. I'm literally crying." Hazel heard the comments, but she simply maintained a polite, distant smile for the sake of the family. She didn't say a word. The love between her and Daniel was exactly like those rose petals on the floor: beautiful at a glance, but already dying. Throughout the night, Daniel was the perfect partner. He intercepted every drink offered to her so she wouldn't get a headache. When people spoke to her, he stood by her side, listening intently and nodding at the right moments, perfectly happy to play the role of the devoted boyfriend. He held her bag, peeled her shrimp, and picked the bones out of her fish with meticulous care. Hazel realized then that Daniel was a natural-born actor. He was so convincing that she almost wondered if the affair had been a fever dream. "You two are truly the golden couple. So, when are we getting a wedding?" "Yeah, don't forget our invites! We've watched you two grow up together." Daniel squeezed Hazel's hand. "We won't forget. But before the wedding, I have to give Hazel the most spectacular proposal she's ever seen." Hazel stood beside him, her lips curved in a faint smile, but she was exhausted to her core. She suddenly remembered the first time she had attended a party as Daniel's girlfriend. Everyone had said the same things then—how they were the blueprint and how they were made for each other. Back then, Daniel had wrapped an arm around her shoulders and said proudly, "Of course we are. I must have hit the lottery to find a girl like Hazel. I'm not marrying anyone else in this lifetime." The younger Hazel had blushed and hidden her face against his chest. She had spent years dreaming about the moment he would finally get down on one knee, knowing she would say yes before he even finished the question. 「But now, Daniel, I'm done waiting.」 As the party wound down, Daniel led Hazel onto the stage. He opened a jewelry box and revealed a breathtaking, diamond-encrusted necklace. He stepped behind her to fasten it around her neck. "Happy birthday, Hazel." He leaned down and kissed her forehead. The room erupted in thunderous applause. Hazel looked down at the necklace, her gaze shifting slightly to the head table where Lydia was sitting. Lydia's face was dark, her eyes burning with a resentment that stood out sharply against the celebratory crowd. Hazel's lips twitched into a tiny, mocking smile. Lydia's expression crumbled. She gritted her teeth, turned, and walked out. No one else noticed the tension beneath the surface; the air was too thick with congratulations. Only Hazel knew the truth. Her love for Daniel had burned itself out, and they were finally at the end of the road. ### Chapter 3 The dinner service ended, and the dancing began. Daniel bowed to Hazel, offering his hand for the opening dance. Hazel hesitated for a heartbeat. She had no desire to humiliate the Lewises in front of their guests, so she started to reach out—but Lydia suddenly appeared, breathless. "Mr. Lewis, I'm so sorry to interrupt, but there's an emergency at the office. I'm afraid you have to go with me." Hearing this, Daniel straightened up instantly. Without even asking for details, he turned to Hazel with a look of practiced regret. "Hazel, I'm sorry. I have to go handle this. I'll be back to pick you up later tonight, okay?" Under the watchful eyes of the entire ballroom, Hazel slowly withdrew her hand. "Just go." As she watched the two of them hurry away together, a dull, throbbing ache filled her chest. Four months ago, Lydia had moved into the Lewis estate under the guise of being Daniel's distant, widowed cousin-in-law. The story was that her husband had died, leaving her with nothing, and the Lewises had taken her in out of the goodness of their hearts. At first, Hazel hadn't been suspicious of this sudden "family member" at all. She had even gone out of her way to make Lydia feel at home. Even when Lydia was hired as Daniel's personal secretary, Hazel simply chalked it up to the family's generosity. Until the relationship between Daniel and Lydia became too "close" to ignore. In the past, Hazel was never an option to Daniel; she was the only answer. But lately, she had started catching glimpses of hesitation in his eyes, as if he were struggling to make a choice. Eventually, the hesitation stopped. Now, he chose Lydia without a second thought. Hazel excused herself, claiming a headache, and retreated to a private room to rest. Meanwhile, Daniel and Lydia hurried into his private office. "Alright, what's so urgent?" "You didn't even ask me that on the drive over. I thought we were on the same wavelength." Lydia's eyes were heavy with suggestion as she stepped toward him, hooking a finger in his tie. Daniel frowned, grabbing her wrist. "I told you to stop playing games! Didn't you see we were celebrating Hazel's birthday?" "Daniel... don't be so mean to me. I'm three months along now. Haven't you missed me at all?" "Lydia..." "Didn't you say you always wanted to try it in the office?" Lydia shed her heavy coat, revealing a daring, skin-tight professional dress underneath. "Tell me, can she even satisfy you like this?" A predatory look swept over Daniel's face. He couldn't hold back any longer. He grabbed her by the waist and crushed his lips against hers. The fire ignited, then eventually burned out. When it was over, Daniel wiped the traces of Lydia's lipstick off his skin. He checked his phone; there were no messages from Hazel. His heart skipped a beat—a sudden, cold wave of unease. "Stay at my place tonight, please?" Daniel ignored her, buttoning his shirt and shaking off her hand. "I'll have the driver take you home. I need to go get Hazel." He didn't stay to watch Lydia's tearful pout. He just grabbed his keys and drove off. On the way back to the estate, he took a detour to pick up a box of peanut brittle from the most famous candy shop in the city. "Hazel? What happened? Your mom said you weren't feeling well." Daniel ran from the foyer all the way to her room, his face a mask of concern. "I'm fine." Hazel sat up in bed and shook her head. Daniel reached out and stroked her hair, his voice soothing as if he were comforting a child. "I bought your favorite peanut brittle. Just one bite? Then I'll take you home." It was from the century-old shop she loved. Since they were kids, Daniel would wait in massive lines just to make her smile, buying boxes of roasted chestnuts and peanut clusters. Hazel looked down. The scent of Lydia's perfume was all over him—thick, cloying, and making her stomach turn. 「Why? Why? We don't have much time left, and you couldn't even put in the effort to lie to me properly. Why?」 She pushed his hand away, her voice raspy. "I don't want it. Let's just go." 「Daniel, I only ever liked that candy because it came from you. But now, I've lost my taste for it.」 「And don't bother taking me home. The moment you betrayed me, I didn't have a home anymore.」
Chapter 1 "I'll sign the consent forms for the ectopic pregnancy surgery myself." Hazel called out to the nurse, her hand bruised from the IV drips. She gripped the pen, her fingers trembling as she scrawled her name. As they wheeled her into the OR, a single tear slipped down her cheek. She could no longer tell if taking that Plan B pill had been the right call or the biggest mistake of her life. During her recovery, Hazel booked a one-way ticket to Ireland, scheduled for a month out. She pulled up her phone. The headlines were still dominated by the "New York Golden Boy's Multi-Million Dollar Tribute to His Girlfriend." And Hazel was the woman at the center of that grand obsession. Three days ago, Daniel held a press conference. He bankrolled a space mission in seven years; a spacecraft was now carrying a vinyl record into the deep reaches of the universe. On that record was Daniel's confession to Hazel, set to play on a loop for eternity, making the entire cosmos a witness to his devotion. With the successful launch, the story of their long-term romance went viral. People were calling it the "Love Story of the Century." A dull ache throbbed in her abdomen as Hazel scrolled through the comments. [Is there anyone left who doesn't know Mr. Lewis and Miss Allen were childhood sweethearts? They've known each other for twenty-five years, and they're still this obsessed after seven years of dating... I'm actually sobbing.] [You guys only see the money he spends on her. Do you remember when Daniel took a bullet for her years ago? He was at a charity swim meet recently, and you could see the scar on his shoulder—it was only inches from his heart!] [I heard he didn't even blink before shielding her. I still have the paparazzi shot of him on the stretcher, white-knuckling her hand. I'm literally dying, they're soulmates.] [Literal goals. They're basically the blueprint.] From the stolen glances at galas to the grand, sweeping gestures—every headline served as proof that they loved each other more than life itself. Hazel's vision blurred. She wiped her eyes, feeling a bitter surge of irony. The Lewises and the Allens had been family friends for generations. When she was born, two-year-old Daniel had been waiting right outside the delivery room. For as long as she could remember, Daniel had never left her side. When she was ten, the Allen empire collapsed into bankruptcy. Her parents took their own lives, leaving Hazel an orphan overnight. The Lewises had stepped in immediately to take her home. It was Daniel's care, his constant presence, that had pulled her out of the suffocating darkness of that grief. In the years she spent coming of age, she often felt she wasn't enough for him. She never dared to hope he could love her as a woman; she only wanted to be near him, even if it was just as the girl next door. But on her eighteenth birthday, in front of the city's high society, Daniel had formally asked her to be his. Looking into the heat in his eyes, Hazel hadn't hesitated to accept the red roses that symbolized his promise of forever. Tears had streamed down her face as she whispered in his ear, "Daniel, thank you for being my family. Just promise me... promise you'll never betray me. Don't ever leave me. I love you." Daniel had crushed her into a hug, his voice breaking. "Hazel, I swear on my life, I will never betray you. I will never leave you behind. I'll love you until the day I die." Throughout their relationship, he had been everything a man should be. Gentle, attentive, and devoted. But seven years of perfect loyalty were shattered. Hazel didn't doubt that his feelings had been real once, but "forever" was a fragile thing. If she hadn't stumbled upon the evidence of his affair, she might still believe she was the luckiest girl in the world. Daniel probably thought he'd covered his tracks. He forgot that while love is in the details, so is the end of it. His heart had become too crowded, and Hazel wouldn't—couldn't—stay to watch the fallout. Rather than suffer the agony of being abandoned all over again, she chose to be the one to walk away first. Hazel placed the surgical records for her terminated pregnancy into a luxury gift box. She wrapped it carefully and tucked a card on top. [To Daniel, on his 27th birthday.] ### Chapter 2 By the time Daniel finally got home, Hazel had already been discharged. She was sitting by the window, a book resting in her lap. "I'm so sorry, Hazel. Things were just insane on the trip. I caught the red-eye, but I still couldn't make it back in time for your birthday or our anniversary..." Daniel shed his suit jacket and walked over, pulling her into a tight hug. "I promise, this is the last time. From now on, I'm not missing a single milestone. I'll be there for everything." "Babe, don't be mad at me, okay?" Hazel felt a cold sneer forming in her chest. She closed her eyes, but the scent of Lydia's perfume clinging to his skin made her stomach churn. 「Taking Lydia on a business trip... I'm sure you were kept very busy.」 But none of it mattered anymore. Hazel gently pushed him away and met his eyes, her voice eerily calm. "It's fine." Daniel looked visibly relieved. He pulled a sleek black velvet box from his pocket and held it out to her. "Hazel, I got you something. I really hope you like it." She opened the box. Inside was a watch—a Patek Philippe Grandmaster Chime. A thirty-one-million-dollar masterpiece, one of only seven in existence. "Swiss watchmaking is all about precision. Every gear, every movement is perfectly aligned. Just like my heart—it's never skipped a beat for anyone but you." Hazel watched him with a blank expression, listening to the practiced ease of his lies. She turned around and picked up the gift box containing her surgical records and her breakup letter. She handed it over. "This is for your birthday." Daniel's face lit up with genuine surprise. He reached for the lid, eager to see what she'd chosen. Hazel stopped him. The sunlight hit her thin face, making her look fragile, almost ethereal. "Don't open it yet. Wait until your actual birthday. Next month." Daniel chuckled and ruffled her hair, his eyes full of doting affection. "Alright, whatever you want, Hazel. I'll wait. Thanks, babe!" As she watched his excitement, the smile didn't even come close to reaching her eyes. 「Daniel, I hope you remember exactly what you did to me that night when you finally open it. I wonder if you'll still be smiling then.」 *** The following day, the Lewises threw a lavish gala for Hazel at the largest estate in New York, inviting every major player in the city to make up for the missed birthday. The grounds were blanketed in red roses—Hazel's favorite. The ballroom floor was strewn with petals. Everywhere she looked, people were whispering about how much Daniel worshipped her. "Even if the Lewises took her in out of family loyalty, they wouldn't treat her like royalty if it weren't for Daniel. She's only this important because he's obsessed with her." "Tell me about it. Look at the way he looks at her. It's the exact same look he had when he confessed to her at eighteen." "It's been seven years, and they're still total goals. I'm literally crying." Hazel heard the comments, but she simply maintained a polite, distant smile for the sake of the family. She didn't say a word. The love between her and Daniel was exactly like those rose petals on the floor: beautiful at a glance, but already dying. Throughout the night, Daniel was the perfect partner. He intercepted every drink offered to her so she wouldn't get a headache. When people spoke to her, he stood by her side, listening intently and nodding at the right moments, perfectly happy to play the role of the devoted boyfriend. He held her bag, peeled her shrimp, and picked the bones out of her fish with meticulous care. Hazel realized then that Daniel was a natural-born actor. He was so convincing that she almost wondered if the affair had been a fever dream. "You two are truly the golden couple. So, when are we getting a wedding?" "Yeah, don't forget our invites! We've watched you two grow up together." Daniel squeezed Hazel's hand. "We won't forget. But before the wedding, I have to give Hazel the most spectacular proposal she's ever seen." Hazel stood beside him, her lips curved in a faint smile, but she was exhausted to her core. She suddenly remembered the first time she had attended a party as Daniel's girlfriend. Everyone had said the same things then—how they were the blueprint and how they were made for each other. Back then, Daniel had wrapped an arm around her shoulders and said proudly, "Of course we are. I must have hit the lottery to find a girl like Hazel. I'm not marrying anyone else in this lifetime." The younger Hazel had blushed and hidden her face against his chest. She had spent years dreaming about the moment he would finally get down on one knee, knowing she would say yes before he even finished the question. 「But now, Daniel, I'm done waiting.」 As the party wound down, Daniel led Hazel onto the stage. He opened a jewelry box and revealed a breathtaking, diamond-encrusted necklace. He stepped behind her to fasten it around her neck. "Happy birthday, Hazel." He leaned down and kissed her forehead. The room erupted in thunderous applause. Hazel looked down at the necklace, her gaze shifting slightly to the head table where Lydia was sitting. Lydia's face was dark, her eyes burning with a resentment that stood out sharply against the celebratory crowd. Hazel's lips twitched into a tiny, mocking smile. Lydia's expression crumbled. She gritted her teeth, turned, and walked out. No one else noticed the tension beneath the surface; the air was too thick with congratulations. Only Hazel knew the truth. Her love for Daniel had burned itself out, and they were finally at the end of the road. ### Chapter 3 The dinner service ended, and the dancing began. Daniel bowed to Hazel, offering his hand for the opening dance. Hazel hesitated for a heartbeat. She had no desire to humiliate the Lewises in front of their guests, so she started to reach out—but Lydia suddenly appeared, breathless. "Mr. Lewis, I'm so sorry to interrupt, but there's an emergency at the office. I'm afraid you have to go with me." Hearing this, Daniel straightened up instantly. Without even asking for details, he turned to Hazel with a look of practiced regret. "Hazel, I'm sorry. I have to go handle this. I'll be back to pick you up later tonight, okay?" Under the watchful eyes of the entire ballroom, Hazel slowly withdrew her hand. "Just go." As she watched the two of them hurry away together, a dull, throbbing ache filled her chest. Four months ago, Lydia had moved into the Lewis estate under the guise of being Daniel's distant, widowed cousin-in-law. The story was that her husband had died, leaving her with nothing, and the Lewises had taken her in out of the goodness of their hearts. At first, Hazel hadn't been suspicious of this sudden "family member" at all. She had even gone out of her way to make Lydia feel at home. Even when Lydia was hired as Daniel's personal secretary, Hazel simply chalked it up to the family's generosity. Until the relationship between Daniel and Lydia became too "close" to ignore. In the past, Hazel was never an option to Daniel; she was the only answer. But lately, she had started catching glimpses of hesitation in his eyes, as if he were struggling to make a choice. Eventually, the hesitation stopped. Now, he chose Lydia without a second thought. Hazel excused herself, claiming a headache, and retreated to a private room to rest. Meanwhile, Daniel and Lydia hurried into his private office. "Alright, what's so urgent?" "You didn't even ask me that on the drive over. I thought we were on the same wavelength." Lydia's eyes were heavy with suggestion as she stepped toward him, hooking a finger in his tie. Daniel frowned, grabbing her wrist. "I told you to stop playing games! Didn't you see we were celebrating Hazel's birthday?" "Daniel... don't be so mean to me. I'm three months along now. Haven't you missed me at all?" "Lydia..." "Didn't you say you always wanted to try it in the office?" Lydia shed her heavy coat, revealing a daring, skin-tight professional dress underneath. "Tell me, can she even satisfy you like this?" A predatory look swept over Daniel's face. He couldn't hold back any longer. He grabbed her by the waist and crushed his lips against hers. The fire ignited, then eventually burned out. When it was over, Daniel wiped the traces of Lydia's lipstick off his skin. He checked his phone; there were no messages from Hazel. His heart skipped a beat—a sudden, cold wave of unease. "Stay at my place tonight, please?" Daniel ignored her, buttoning his shirt and shaking off her hand. "I'll have the driver take you home. I need to go get Hazel." He didn't stay to watch Lydia's tearful pout. He just grabbed his keys and drove off. On the way back to the estate, he took a detour to pick up a box of peanut brittle from the most famous candy shop in the city. "Hazel? What happened? Your mom said you weren't feeling well." Daniel ran from the foyer all the way to her room, his face a mask of concern. "I'm fine." Hazel sat up in bed and shook her head. Daniel reached out and stroked her hair, his voice soothing as if he were comforting a child. "I bought your favorite peanut brittle. Just one bite? Then I'll take you home." It was from the century-old shop she loved. Since they were kids, Daniel would wait in massive lines just to make her smile, buying boxes of roasted chestnuts and peanut clusters. Hazel looked down. The scent of Lydia's perfume was all over him—thick, cloying, and making her stomach turn. 「Why? Why? We don't have much time left, and you couldn't even put in the effort to lie to me properly. Why?」 She pushed his hand away, her voice raspy. "I don't want it. Let's just go." 「Daniel, I only ever liked that candy because it came from you. But now, I've lost my taste for it.」 「And don't bother taking me home. The moment you betrayed me, I didn't have a home anymore.」
After a one-night stand, Carey is falsely accused of drugging Nolan and is cruelly cast aside. Two years later, she struggles to raise her child alone—until fate brings her face-to-face with her new boss: Nolan himself. Beneath his cold, dismissive exterior, Nolan finds himself drawn to her all over again. But how long will it take before he uncovers the truth—that Carey has been secretly raising his child?
Chapter 1 Worldspire Descends Beep... Beep... Beep... Inside a luxury villa, Wraith Boyd lay quietly in bed, an oxygen mask strapped to his face. Beside him, the life support machine emitted broken, rhythmic tones. The jagged line on the screen barely flickered—proof that he was hanging by a thread. "Wraith, don't come back to get revenge on me after you're dead, okay? I'm doing this for your own good. Besides, you might as well be dead already." Standing at his bedside, Seraphine Vale—a strikingly gorgeous woman—whispered softly as she reached for the machine. She was clearly about to pull the plug. Wraith's heart pounded with desperation as death closed in. A freak car accident had turned him into this—a vegetable. He still had billions in assets, but none of it mattered. He was fully conscious, able to hear everything around him, but his body wouldn't respond at all. And then, driven by sheer survival instinct, the tip of his finger twitched. But no one noticed. Seraphine's attention had shifted to the sudden sound of the door opening. A young man stepped inside, frowning. "Seraphine, what are you still hesitating for at this point?" That's Lucan? What the hell is he doing here? And what did he just say? The moment Wraith heard the voice, his stomach dropped. And by the time he caught the rest of the conversation, he was seeing red. "His parents are dead. Once he's gone, you'll be the sole legal heir to his estate." Lucan's eyes glinted with greed as he slipped an arm around Seraphine's waist and smirked. "I've been waiting for this day for five years. Five years! Do you even know what I've been through in that time?" His hands started wandering as he spoke. Seraphine rolled her eyes. "You didn't seem to mind when you were watching those videos of me with Wraith. Looked like you were pretty into it." Seraphine had been Wraith's college sweetheart—at least that's what everyone believed. She was the undisputed campus beauty. But in reality, she had been Lucan's girlfriend from the start. Everything they'd done was part of a long con—to get their hands on Wraith's wealth. Lucan had even set the stage himself, practically handing Seraphine over to Wraith. They got married. And once the papers were signed, it was time to cash in. Hence the "accident." Lucan lifted Seraphine's chin, eyes narrowing. "What, don't tell me you've actually fallen for the guy? You can't even finish the job now?" "Hmph, maybe if you'd done your part right," she said, pushing him away with a pout. "If you'd just killed him outright, we wouldn't be dealing with this mess." "Who knew he was this stubborn? The crash was brutal—he should've been dead." Lucan clicked his tongue and glanced at the bed. His gaze darkened. "But even if God himself came down today, the b*stard's not making it out of here alive." With that, he reached down and yanked off Wraith's oxygen mask. Seraphine didn't stop him. Arms crossed, she just stood there, watching. "It's done. From now on, everything he owned... is ours." Lucan was so excited he scooped Seraphine into his arms and kissed her. "Slow down, lover boy. You really wanna get it on in the same room as a corpse?" "What can I say? You're just too d*mn tempting." Their voices faded down the hall. Inside, Wraith was seething. Now it all made sense—these two had been playing him from the moment they met. And yet, he could do nothing. With the mask removed, each breath became a battle. He could feel the suffocating pressure closing in. Seconds passed. His vision dimmed. But just as he was about to lose consciousness, a massive, towering gate suddenly materialized in the sky above Terra Prime. Strangely, no matter where you were on the planet—northern or southern hemisphere—you could see it. Even as he hovered on the edge of death, Wraith saw it clearly in his mind. Across the world, alarms blared. Panic swept every nation. Then, a voice—mysterious and resonant—rang out in everyone's mind at once. "Congratulations, Terra Prime has been selected to join Worldspire. The full-scale transmigration will begin in 30 seconds." "Reminder: Game-related data has already been uploaded to your mind. Please retrieve it at your convenience." This eerie, godlike phenomenon threw the entire world into chaos. "My god, the data's really in my head. This is insane!" "Everyone's transmigrating? The whole planet's going into a game world from scratch?" "Man, this is wild. What even is Worldspire?" "The rich and powerful should be scared now!" "Hahaha, d*mn right! In Worldspire, everyone starts from zero." "Gamers, this is our time to shine!" "Please, let me awaken a powerful Talent!" "I don't need SSS, just give me S at least!" "According to the info, the odds of awakening an S-rank Talent are one in ten million. Don't hold your breath." Back in the villa, Lucan and Seraphine had frozen mid-movement. "I don't know how to play games," Seraphine muttered, clearly shaken. Lucan exploded, "D*mn! I spent five years planning this! I was about to become a billionaire, and now you're telling me I've gotta start from scratch again?!" Everyone on Terra Prime was being pulled into Worldspire. For Lucan and Seraphine, who were just about to inherit everything Wraith owned, it hit like a thunderclap out of nowhere. There were no top-up options in Worldspire. Once you were in, everyone started at zero—no exceptions. With the flood of information suddenly downloaded into their minds, they both realized the brutal truth. They had nothing going for them. "Wait, so as long as we're still alive, we're all getting dragged into Worldspire too?" A thought struck Seraphine, and her eyes widened. "You don't think... Wraith might get in too?" For the first time, panic flashed across her face. Lucan sneered. "With the shape he's in? Even if he makes it, he'll be trash." Worldspire scanned everyone's physical condition and converted it into up to 10 Base Attribute points across the board. With Wraith's broken body, his stats would be a joke. Lucan wasn't worried. All he cared about now was whether he could awaken a strong Talent. In the haze of near-death, Wraith felt something stirring in his mind. Worldspire? A game? Transmigration? The suffocation hadn't let up, but now, hope flared like a spark in the dark. It was like clinging to one last lifeline. With sheer willpower, he clung to consciousness, desperately trying to enter Worldspire. Thirty seconds never felt so long. His hatred toward Lucan and Seraphine kept him awake. Everything they'd done replayed in his mind, again and again, like a film reel stuck on loop. And then, just as the timer hit zero, the celestial gate in the sky reacted. Hummm. Blinding golden light shot down in beams, engulfing every single person on Terra Prime. In the blink of an eye, the light vanished. And with it, all of humanity disappeared. Chapter 2 It's Time to Break the Game In a dark and empty void, a grand Stellaris Hall floated among the stars. Inside the hall, Wraith lay motionless, eyes shut. Huuuuh! A heavy breath echoed through the hall. It meant only one thing—he was out of immediate danger. Waking up was now only a matter of time. "Welcome, Terra Prime player. Scanning body data now." With the system's mechanical voice, a pillar of golden light descended from above, sweeping across every inch of Wraith's body. "Scan complete. Generating base stats..." Hummm! The golden light vanished in an instant. Wraith's fingers twitched. Suddenly, he opened his eyes, gasping for air like someone had just yanked him out of deep water. "Haaah... It's real. It's actually real!" His eyes darted around the hall, taking in the surroundings with a wild mix of disbelief and joy. That choking feeling still haunted him, but right now, it didn't matter. "Seraphine. Lucan." He ground his teeth, their names like poison in his mouth. If not for Worldspire, he'd have been murdered by those two. Everything he owned would've become their prize. But now, this game had given him a second chance. A shot at revenge. "Next up... Talent Awakening, right?" He took a deep breath, a dangerous glint flashing in his eyes. "I just hope my luck doesn't suck." His vision took a second to adjust. It had been way too long since he last opened his eyes. Luckily, the glow inside Stellaris Hall wasn't blinding. Then came another system prompt. "Character profile complete. Beginning Talent Awakening." Every person who entered Worldspire awakened a Talent here inside Stellaris Hall. Talents ranged from F-rank to SSS-rank, spanning a total of nine tiers. The game never revealed what determined a player's talent. But one thing was clear—if you wanted to dominate in Worldspire, a powerful talent was essential. Soon enough, the system delivered a stunning surprise. "Talent Awakening Complete. Congratulations! You have awakened an S-rank Exclusive Talent: Promote." "S-rank?!" Wraith's eyes lit up. According to the info Worldspire embedded in his mind, the odds of getting an S-rank Talent were one in ten million. Yet somehow, he'd hit the jackpot. Anything below S-rank was considered a Shared Talent, meaning others could get the same ability. But anything S-rank and above was classified as an Exclusive Talent—it belonged to him and only him. No one else could ever awaken it. Promote (S-rank Exclusive Talent): Permanently upgrades any skill by one tier, up to a maximum of S-rank. Each use consumes a portion of the user's lifespan. (The first three uses are cost-free.) "Any skill?" Wraith blinked. Before he could dig deeper into the meaning, another prompt came through. "You are identified as a Descendant. Please confirm your in-game name." In Worldspire, all NPCs were real living beings. The people of Terra Prime had truly transmigrated into this world. The game simply turned them into data. As for returning home—Worldspire hadn't mentioned any way back. Wraith thought for a moment. "White." "Name registered successfully. Welcome, player White. Please choose your Class." Hummm! Beams of light rained down from above. Each beam contained a clone of Wraith, each representing a different class. These were the base classes in Worldspire, divided into four major categories: Physical, Magic, Defense, and Support. Warrior, Archer, Rogue, Brawler, Mage, Healer—you name it, it was there. There were also Hidden Classes, but those weren't selectable at the start. Usually, players picked a class that synergized with their Talent. But Wraith's Talent, Promote, was universal—it worked with any class. "Do I go warrior? Or pure caster?" He rubbed his chin, eyeing the options in front of him. But his hopes were crushed almost instantly. One by one, the clones started fading away. "Player White's base attributes do not meet requirements. Filtering incompatible classes..." The system's voice made Wraith's expression freeze. In just a few seconds, there was only one clone left standing. "Based on your current attributes, your only available class is: Necromancer." "Class selected successfully." The choice wasn't up to him. The last remaining figure flared with light and merged directly into his body. At the same time, his hospital gown transformed into a ragged linen robe. A faint aura of death began to swirl around him. "Open profile panel." Wraith's face turned stormy as he looked down at himself. He had nothing against the Necromancer class—but he needed to know how bad his starting stats really were. Player Profile Name: White Level: 0 (0.00%) Class: Necromancer Strength: 1 Constitution: 1 Agility: 1 Spirit: 10 Free Stat Points: 0 (Gain 5 per level) HP: 1 / 1 (For unknown reasons, cannot be increased.) MP: 200 / 200 (1 Spirit = 20 MP) Attack Power: 1 Spell Power: 10 Physical Defense: 1 Magic Defense: 5 (Different classes come with different stat bonuses.) Exclusive Talent: Promote Class Skills: Summon Little Boneguard (Lv.1), Soulfire Burn (Lv.1) Summon Slots: 0 / 1 Equipment: Practice Bone Wand, Patched Robe Remaining Lifespan: Less than 1 year "What the hell is this?" Staring at his miserable stats, Wraith was in disbelief. Every core attribute except Spirit was bottomed out at 1. No wonder Necromancer was his only option. Even Mages and Healers needed at least 2 Constitution or Agility to qualify. Normally, average players had base stats around 5, give or take. But Wraith's were an outlier. His Spirit stat was maxed, and everything else was trash. Even worse—his HP was capped at 1 permanently. One hit from anything, and he'd be dead. How was he supposed to play like this? And the less-than-one-year lifespan was another ticking time bomb. "Less than a year" could mean 364 days... or just a few hours. There was no way to tell. What if he just dropped dead mid-quest? It became clear—Worldspire had dragged him back from the brink, but it hadn't truly fixed anything. Wraith let out a bitter laugh. Sure, the game had that kind of power... but it never promised to save anyone. It was like dangling hope in front of him—only to rip it away again. The whiplash hit harder than pure despair. "Permanent 1 HP? Less than a year to live?" Staring at his character sheet, Wraith clenched his fists. "Screw it. If this is how it's gonna be... then I'm going all in." The Promote Talent could only upgrade up to S-rank skills. But what if he upgraded Promote itself first? Could he take it to SS-rank? If he could do that, would Promote be able to boost even stronger skills? That was his only shot. Taking a deep breath, Wraith focused his thoughts. "Stack Promote. Three times." Chapter 3 Bug Exploiting is Seriously Addictive "System Prompt: Triple promotion of exclusive skill 'Promote' will consume ??? years of lifespan." "Remaining lifespan insufficient." "You have three free uses available. Do you want to use them all to promote the exclusive talent skill 'Promote' to a higher tier?" Whoa, not even Worldspire knows how many years it costs? And they just hit me with three question marks like that's normal? As the mechanical voice echoed in his ears, Wraith's heart skipped a beat. But soon, his lips curled into a grin. Just as he'd guessed, exclusive talents can be promoted too. And once they are, they can boost higher-tier skills too. An S-rank talent, after one promotion, becomes SS-rank. Two? That's SSS. But what about three consecutive promotions? Now that was uncharted territory. Even the official Worldspire database made no mention of any talent beyond SSS-rank. No wonder the cost was marked with question marks. Even Worldspire couldn't calculate it. After all, who would've thought a madman like Wraith would go all-in like this? His HP had always been capped at 1, and with less than a year of lifespan left, he had nothing to lose. If this gamble worked, though? He'd hit the jackpot. With that thought, Wraith didn't hesitate. "Confirm." But the system didn't respond right away. As if it had just been blue-screened by his stunt. He tensed. If this went south, he was out of cards to play. A few long, anxious minutes passed. Then suddenly, an overwhelming force surged from deep within his body. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! Three beams of light shot into the sky, merging as they pierced through the black void above Stellaris Hall. Colors flickered and twisted as the pillars intertwined. When the light finally faded, the long-awaited system prompt rang again. "System Prompt: Exclusive talent skill "Promote" has been successfully promoted three times." "Congratulations, Player White has acquired the Forbidden Unique exclusive talent skill—Cataclysm." "I won the d*mn bet!" Wraith clenched his fist, excitement bursting across his face. A Forbidden Unique?! That name alone screamed broken. An exclusive talent meant it was his and his alone. But the word "unique" here—did it mean Cataclysm was literally the only Forbidden Unique talent in the entire Worldspire? He quickly pulled up the skill details. [Cataclysm] Forbidden Unique Exclusive Talent Skill Skill Effects: Promote: Permanently promotes any object by one tier. No cost. Ascend: Consumes specific resources to promote any object by two tiers. Cataclysm: Consumes lifespan to promote any object by three tiers and imbue it with a Cataclysm trait. (Effect surpasses system limits. Cannot be analyzed, copied, or stolen. Disappears upon Player White's permanent death.) The sheer brokenness of this skill left Wraith speechless. Promoting by one tier without any cost? Seriously? And the target isn't just "any skill" anymore—it is anything. In-game currency, gear, abilities—those were all things. But so were... classes. And even himself. He reread the description, once, twice, then a third time. His breath caught in his throat. This talent was so broken, even the one who created it felt it was overpowered. "Wait a second... promote by one tier with no cost?" Suddenly, something clicked. Wraith's eyes went wide. An idea struck like lightning. Promotion target: Cataclysm. If bug abuse had a fan club, he'd be president. But this time... it didn't go his way. No glowing light and no upgrade beam. Just the cold voice of the system. "Error: This skill has exceeded tier limits. Cannot be affected by Cataclysm." "D*mn, guess I got greedy." Wraith chuckled, not too surprised by the result. If he could just keep stacking promotions on top of promotions, the game itself would probably crash. Still, it confirmed one thing. Worldspire was a young game. A little too young to have patched holes like this one. He was about to check the rest of his skills when a new system prompt popped up. "Update: Your Forbidden Unique talent skill "Cataclysm" now has additional usage restrictions." (Click to view details) [Cataclysm] Forbidden Unique Exclusive Talent Skill New Restrictions: Cannot be used on itself. Cannot be used on the player's own body. Cannot target the Cataclysm trait. Repeated use on the same object will override previous effects. "D*mn it..." He stared at the screen, dumbfounded. Tried to cheat the system and got smacked with four new restrictions instead. Looks like the devs had patched the bug on the fly. But it wasn't a total loss. His eyes lit up as he read the last line of the skill description. "You may use the Cataclysm effect once at no cost." He'd half-expected there to be a limit anyway. If you could freely use Cataclysm without overwriting previous buffs, you'd be able to take every trash item and boost it to god-tier. Not even Worldspire was that stupid. But a free one-time use? That was huge. "If I can't use it on my talent or myself... then the next best target is obvious." He glanced at his dismal character sheet. Then made his move. "System Prompt: Promoting the class Necromancer by three tiers requires 100,000 years of lifespan." "Remaining lifespan insufficient." "You have one free use of Cataclysm. Do you wish to consume this usage to promote the class Necromancer to a higher tier and apply the Cataclysm trait?" 100,000 years? The number made Wraith's jaw drop. Then again, when it's free—you go big or go home. Promoting a class wasn't the same as upgrading a skill. From what he remembered, there were three class tiers in Worldspire: Normal, Hidden, and Unique Hidden. What would happen after a triple promotion? Could it become something like his talent—Forbidden Unique Class? Suppressing his excitement, Wraith took a deep breath and said, "Confirm. Use the charge." WHUMMM! The moment Cataclysm activated, a wave of mysterious energy enveloped him. Then came a rapid-fire stream of notifications. "System Prompt: Your class "Necromancer" has been promoted to a higher tier." "Congratulations, Player White has advanced to the Unique Hidden Class: Dread Sovereign." "Your attribute growth has changed." "You have learned new skill: Vital Link." "You have learned new skill: Summon Amplification." "You have acquired the exclusive item: Codex of Death." "Your Unique Hidden Class "Dread Sovereign" has been enhanced with Cataclysm effects. (Click to view details)"
"Two girls, one secret. And tonight, I hold the only key." "Close your door. Lock it. And whatever you see tonight... you take it to the grave, understand?" 🤫 Chapter 1: The Illusion of Perfection I’ve known Chloe for exactly two years and four months. We live in the same upscale apartment building, sharing the same elevator almost every morning at 7:30 AM. To the rest of the world—and to me, until last night—Chloe was the absolute definition of untouchable perfection. She’s a high-end yoga instructor. She always wears pristine white athletic gear, her blonde hair tied in a flawless ponytail. She smells like expensive lavender and morning rain. Whenever we cross paths, she gives me a polite, professional smile that clearly says: “You are a nice neighbor, but you do not exist in my world.” She is the kind of girl you’d never dare to approach in a crowded bar. You wouldn't even buy her a drink because you already know the answer. She represents order, discipline, and a perfectly curated life. I always assumed her nights consisted of drinking chamomile tea and reading literature. I was so incredibly wrong. It started at 1:30 AM on a rainy Tuesday. I couldn't sleep. The stress of the week was crushing my chest, so I opened the 1V1 social app I kept hidden in a folder on my phone. It was my secret sanctuary—a place where I didn't have to be the reliable guy, the hard worker, or the quiet neighbor. I was just scrolling through the live previews, looking for someone to talk to, when my screen suddenly froze. My heart skipped a beat, hammering so hard against my ribs I thought it might break them. There, on the screen, was a private call invitation. The username was anonymous, but the profile picture, though slightly blurred, had that unmistakable lavender aesthetic. I stared at the "Accept" button for what felt like an eternity. My thumb was shaking. If I clicked it, there was no going back. I took a deep breath, swiped right, and the screen transitioned from black to a live feed. Chapter 2: The Red Room When the video connected, I didn't see the bright, sunlit yoga studio. I didn't see the pristine white workout gear. The room on my screen was bathed in a thick, hazy red glow. The only light source seemed to be a neon sign buzzing softly in the background. The music playing was a heavy, slow bass track that seemed to vibrate right through my phone's speakers. And there was Chloe. But it wasn't the Chloe from the elevator. Her hair was down, wild and messy, cascading over her shoulders. She was wearing a sheer, dark silk slip that clung to her in ways the morning light would never allow. Her eyes, usually so bright and polite, were now dark, heavy with makeup, and staring directly into the camera lens with a predatory intensity. I couldn't speak. My throat was completely dry. But the biggest shock wasn't Chloe’s transformation. It was the fact that she wasn't alone. Sitting right beside her, so close that their shoulders were pressed tightly together, was another girl. A girl with sharp, piercing dark eyes and short black hair. She had a dangerous aura about her, an undeniable magnetism. "I told you he was awake," the dark-haired girl whispered. Her voice was husky, sending a shiver down my spine. She didn't look at the camera; she only looked at Chloe. Chloe smiled—a slow, wicked smirk that I had never seen before. She leaned closer to the camera, so close I could see the slight parting of her lips. "We’ve been waiting for you," Chloe whispered. Her voice was entirely different from her cheerful morning greetings. It was low, intimate, and dripping with secrets. "We were just having a little... private celebration. And we realized something was missing." "What was missing?" I finally managed to croak out, my voice sounding foreign even to me. "An audience," the dark-haired girl answered, her fingers slowly tracing a line down Chloe's arm. "A judge." Chapter 3: The Privilege For the next two hours, the world outside my apartment ceased to exist. I was paralyzed, glued to the glowing screen of my phone. In that 1V1 room, the rules of society evaporated. They didn't just talk to me; they pulled me into their private universe. They played games of truth or dare, but every dare was directed by me. Every time they whispered a secret, every time they moved closer to each other, laughing softly into the microphone, they made sure their eyes flicked back to the camera. To me. They weren't the "good girls" society expected them to be. They were untamed, electric, and breathtakingly real. "Do you like this side of me, neighbor?" Chloe asked at one point, her head resting on her friend's shoulder, her eyes burning into mine. "The side no one else in the building gets to see?" "I love it," I breathed. "Good," her friend whispered, leaning in to whisper something in Chloe's ear that made them both laugh—a private, beautiful sound. "Because tonight, you're the only man in the world who matters to us." I wasn't just a viewer. I was their confidant. I was the keeper of their midnight secret. They did things, shared things, and looked at each other in ways that would never pass a public review, but in this private digital space, I held the absolute power of observation. When the screen finally went dark at 3:30 AM, my room felt entirely different. My heart was still racing, echoing in the quiet of the night. The next morning, I stepped into the elevator at 7:30 AM. Chloe was there. White athletic gear, blonde ponytail, lavender perfume. "Good morning," she said, her voice bright and polite. "Morning," I replied. But just before the doors opened to the lobby, she turned her head slightly. She didn't say a word, but she gave me one look—a slow, dark, knowing glance that contained the entire red-lit room from the night before. A secret only we shared. The world sees her elegance. But only I possess her wild side. [The red room is online. She is waiting for your call. Enter their private world now.] 👇
Chapter 1 "I'll sign the consent forms for the ectopic pregnancy surgery myself." Hazel called out to the nurse, her hand bruised from the IV drips. She gripped the pen, her fingers trembling as she scrawled her name. As they wheeled her into the OR, a single tear slipped down her cheek. She could no longer tell if taking that Plan B pill had been the right call or the biggest mistake of her life. During her recovery, Hazel booked a one-way ticket to Ireland, scheduled for a month out. She pulled up her phone. The headlines were still dominated by the "New York Golden Boy's Multi-Million Dollar Tribute to His Girlfriend." And Hazel was the woman at the center of that grand obsession. Three days ago, Daniel held a press conference. He bankrolled a space mission in seven years; a spacecraft was now carrying a vinyl record into the deep reaches of the universe. On that record was Daniel's confession to Hazel, set to play on a loop for eternity, making the entire cosmos a witness to his devotion. With the successful launch, the story of their long-term romance went viral. People were calling it the "Love Story of the Century." A dull ache throbbed in her abdomen as Hazel scrolled through the comments. [Is there anyone left who doesn't know Mr. Lewis and Miss Allen were childhood sweethearts? They've known each other for twenty-five years, and they're still this obsessed after seven years of dating... I'm actually sobbing.] [You guys only see the money he spends on her. Do you remember when Daniel took a bullet for her years ago? He was at a charity swim meet recently, and you could see the scar on his shoulder—it was only inches from his heart!] [I heard he didn't even blink before shielding her. I still have the paparazzi shot of him on the stretcher, white-knuckling her hand. I'm literally dying, they're soulmates.] [Literal goals. They're basically the blueprint.] From the stolen glances at galas to the grand, sweeping gestures—every headline served as proof that they loved each other more than life itself. Hazel's vision blurred. She wiped her eyes, feeling a bitter surge of irony. The Lewises and the Allens had been family friends for generations. When she was born, two-year-old Daniel had been waiting right outside the delivery room. For as long as she could remember, Daniel had never left her side. When she was ten, the Allen empire collapsed into bankruptcy. Her parents took their own lives, leaving Hazel an orphan overnight. The Lewises had stepped in immediately to take her home. It was Daniel's care, his constant presence, that had pulled her out of the suffocating darkness of that grief. In the years she spent coming of age, she often felt she wasn't enough for him. She never dared to hope he could love her as a woman; she only wanted to be near him, even if it was just as the girl next door. But on her eighteenth birthday, in front of the city's high society, Daniel had formally asked her to be his. Looking into the heat in his eyes, Hazel hadn't hesitated to accept the red roses that symbolized his promise of forever. Tears had streamed down her face as she whispered in his ear, "Daniel, thank you for being my family. Just promise me... promise you'll never betray me. Don't ever leave me. I love you." Daniel had crushed her into a hug, his voice breaking. "Hazel, I swear on my life, I will never betray you. I will never leave you behind. I'll love you until the day I die." Throughout their relationship, he had been everything a man should be. Gentle, attentive, and devoted. But seven years of perfect loyalty were shattered. Hazel didn't doubt that his feelings had been real once, but "forever" was a fragile thing. If she hadn't stumbled upon the evidence of his affair, she might still believe she was the luckiest girl in the world. Daniel probably thought he'd covered his tracks. He forgot that while love is in the details, so is the end of it. His heart had become too crowded, and Hazel wouldn't—couldn't—stay to watch the fallout. Rather than suffer the agony of being abandoned all over again, she chose to be the one to walk away first. Hazel placed the surgical records for her terminated pregnancy into a luxury gift box. She wrapped it carefully and tucked a card on top. [To Daniel, on his 27th birthday.] ### Chapter 2 By the time Daniel finally got home, Hazel had already been discharged. She was sitting by the window, a book resting in her lap. "I'm so sorry, Hazel. Things were just insane on the trip. I caught the red-eye, but I still couldn't make it back in time for your birthday or our anniversary..." Daniel shed his suit jacket and walked over, pulling her into a tight hug. "I promise, this is the last time. From now on, I'm not missing a single milestone. I'll be there for everything." "Babe, don't be mad at me, okay?" Hazel felt a cold sneer forming in her chest. She closed her eyes, but the scent of Lydia's perfume clinging to his skin made her stomach churn. 「Taking Lydia on a business trip... I'm sure you were kept very busy.」 But none of it mattered anymore. Hazel gently pushed him away and met his eyes, her voice eerily calm. "It's fine." Daniel looked visibly relieved. He pulled a sleek black velvet box from his pocket and held it out to her. "Hazel, I got you something. I really hope you like it." She opened the box. Inside was a watch—a Patek Philippe Grandmaster Chime. A thirty-one-million-dollar masterpiece, one of only seven in existence. "Swiss watchmaking is all about precision. Every gear, every movement is perfectly aligned. Just like my heart—it's never skipped a beat for anyone but you." Hazel watched him with a blank expression, listening to the practiced ease of his lies. She turned around and picked up the gift box containing her surgical records and her breakup letter. She handed it over. "This is for your birthday." Daniel's face lit up with genuine surprise. He reached for the lid, eager to see what she'd chosen. Hazel stopped him. The sunlight hit her thin face, making her look fragile, almost ethereal. "Don't open it yet. Wait until your actual birthday. Next month." Daniel chuckled and ruffled her hair, his eyes full of doting affection. "Alright, whatever you want, Hazel. I'll wait. Thanks, babe!" As she watched his excitement, the smile didn't even come close to reaching her eyes. 「Daniel, I hope you remember exactly what you did to me that night when you finally open it. I wonder if you'll still be smiling then.」 *** The following day, the Lewises threw a lavish gala for Hazel at the largest estate in New York, inviting every major player in the city to make up for the missed birthday. The grounds were blanketed in red roses—Hazel's favorite. The ballroom floor was strewn with petals. Everywhere she looked, people were whispering about how much Daniel worshipped her. "Even if the Lewises took her in out of family loyalty, they wouldn't treat her like royalty if it weren't for Daniel. She's only this important because he's obsessed with her." "Tell me about it. Look at the way he looks at her. It's the exact same look he had when he confessed to her at eighteen." "It's been seven years, and they're still total goals. I'm literally crying." Hazel heard the comments, but she simply maintained a polite, distant smile for the sake of the family. She didn't say a word. The love between her and Daniel was exactly like those rose petals on the floor: beautiful at a glance, but already dying. Throughout the night, Daniel was the perfect partner. He intercepted every drink offered to her so she wouldn't get a headache. When people spoke to her, he stood by her side, listening intently and nodding at the right moments, perfectly happy to play the role of the devoted boyfriend. He held her bag, peeled her shrimp, and picked the bones out of her fish with meticulous care. Hazel realized then that Daniel was a natural-born actor. He was so convincing that she almost wondered if the affair had been a fever dream. "You two are truly the golden couple. So, when are we getting a wedding?" "Yeah, don't forget our invites! We've watched you two grow up together." Daniel squeezed Hazel's hand. "We won't forget. But before the wedding, I have to give Hazel the most spectacular proposal she's ever seen." Hazel stood beside him, her lips curved in a faint smile, but she was exhausted to her core. She suddenly remembered the first time she had attended a party as Daniel's girlfriend. Everyone had said the same things then—how they were the blueprint and how they were made for each other. Back then, Daniel had wrapped an arm around her shoulders and said proudly, "Of course we are. I must have hit the lottery to find a girl like Hazel. I'm not marrying anyone else in this lifetime." The younger Hazel had blushed and hidden her face against his chest. She had spent years dreaming about the moment he would finally get down on one knee, knowing she would say yes before he even finished the question. 「But now, Daniel, I'm done waiting.」 As the party wound down, Daniel led Hazel onto the stage. He opened a jewelry box and revealed a breathtaking, diamond-encrusted necklace. He stepped behind her to fasten it around her neck. "Happy birthday, Hazel." He leaned down and kissed her forehead. The room erupted in thunderous applause. Hazel looked down at the necklace, her gaze shifting slightly to the head table where Lydia was sitting. Lydia's face was dark, her eyes burning with a resentment that stood out sharply against the celebratory crowd. Hazel's lips twitched into a tiny, mocking smile. Lydia's expression crumbled. She gritted her teeth, turned, and walked out. No one else noticed the tension beneath the surface; the air was too thick with congratulations. Only Hazel knew the truth. Her love for Daniel had burned itself out, and they were finally at the end of the road. ### Chapter 3 The dinner service ended, and the dancing began. Daniel bowed to Hazel, offering his hand for the opening dance. Hazel hesitated for a heartbeat. She had no desire to humiliate the Lewises in front of their guests, so she started to reach out—but Lydia suddenly appeared, breathless. "Mr. Lewis, I'm so sorry to interrupt, but there's an emergency at the office. I'm afraid you have to go with me." Hearing this, Daniel straightened up instantly. Without even asking for details, he turned to Hazel with a look of practiced regret. "Hazel, I'm sorry. I have to go handle this. I'll be back to pick you up later tonight, okay?" Under the watchful eyes of the entire ballroom, Hazel slowly withdrew her hand. "Just go." As she watched the two of them hurry away together, a dull, throbbing ache filled her chest. Four months ago, Lydia had moved into the Lewis estate under the guise of being Daniel's distant, widowed cousin-in-law. The story was that her husband had died, leaving her with nothing, and the Lewises had taken her in out of the goodness of their hearts. At first, Hazel hadn't been suspicious of this sudden "family member" at all. She had even gone out of her way to make Lydia feel at home. Even when Lydia was hired as Daniel's personal secretary, Hazel simply chalked it up to the family's generosity. Until the relationship between Daniel and Lydia became too "close" to ignore. In the past, Hazel was never an option to Daniel; she was the only answer. But lately, she had started catching glimpses of hesitation in his eyes, as if he were struggling to make a choice. Eventually, the hesitation stopped. Now, he chose Lydia without a second thought. Hazel excused herself, claiming a headache, and retreated to a private room to rest. Meanwhile, Daniel and Lydia hurried into his private office. "Alright, what's so urgent?" "You didn't even ask me that on the drive over. I thought we were on the same wavelength." Lydia's eyes were heavy with suggestion as she stepped toward him, hooking a finger in his tie. Daniel frowned, grabbing her wrist. "I told you to stop playing games! Didn't you see we were celebrating Hazel's birthday?" "Daniel... don't be so mean to me. I'm three months along now. Haven't you missed me at all?" "Lydia..." "Didn't you say you always wanted to try it in the office?" Lydia shed her heavy coat, revealing a daring, skin-tight professional dress underneath. "Tell me, can she even satisfy you like this?" A predatory look swept over Daniel's face. He couldn't hold back any longer. He grabbed her by the waist and crushed his lips against hers. The fire ignited, then eventually burned out. When it was over, Daniel wiped the traces of Lydia's lipstick off his skin. He checked his phone; there were no messages from Hazel. His heart skipped a beat—a sudden, cold wave of unease. "Stay at my place tonight, please?" Daniel ignored her, buttoning his shirt and shaking off her hand. "I'll have the driver take you home. I need to go get Hazel." He didn't stay to watch Lydia's tearful pout. He just grabbed his keys and drove off. On the way back to the estate, he took a detour to pick up a box of peanut brittle from the most famous candy shop in the city. "Hazel? What happened? Your mom said you weren't feeling well." Daniel ran from the foyer all the way to her room, his face a mask of concern. "I'm fine." Hazel sat up in bed and shook her head. Daniel reached out and stroked her hair, his voice soothing as if he were comforting a child. "I bought your favorite peanut brittle. Just one bite? Then I'll take you home." It was from the century-old shop she loved. Since they were kids, Daniel would wait in massive lines just to make her smile, buying boxes of roasted chestnuts and peanut clusters. Hazel looked down. The scent of Lydia's perfume was all over him—thick, cloying, and making her stomach turn. 「Why? Why? We don't have much time left, and you couldn't even put in the effort to lie to me properly. Why?」 She pushed his hand away, her voice raspy. "I don't want it. Let's just go." 「Daniel, I only ever liked that candy because it came from you. But now, I've lost my taste for it.」 「And don't bother taking me home. The moment you betrayed me, I didn't have a home anymore.」
Chapter 1 "I'll sign the consent forms for the ectopic pregnancy surgery myself." Hazel called out to the nurse, her hand bruised from the IV drips. She gripped the pen, her fingers trembling as she scrawled her name. As they wheeled her into the OR, a single tear slipped down her cheek. She could no longer tell if taking that Plan B pill had been the right call or the biggest mistake of her life. During her recovery, Hazel booked a one-way ticket to Ireland, scheduled for a month out. She pulled up her phone. The headlines were still dominated by the "New York Golden Boy's Multi-Million Dollar Tribute to His Girlfriend." And Hazel was the woman at the center of that grand obsession. Three days ago, Daniel held a press conference. He bankrolled a space mission in seven years; a spacecraft was now carrying a vinyl record into the deep reaches of the universe. On that record was Daniel's confession to Hazel, set to play on a loop for eternity, making the entire cosmos a witness to his devotion. With the successful launch, the story of their long-term romance went viral. People were calling it the "Love Story of the Century." A dull ache throbbed in her abdomen as Hazel scrolled through the comments. [Is there anyone left who doesn't know Mr. Lewis and Miss Allen were childhood sweethearts? They've known each other for twenty-five years, and they're still this obsessed after seven years of dating... I'm actually sobbing.] [You guys only see the money he spends on her. Do you remember when Daniel took a bullet for her years ago? He was at a charity swim meet recently, and you could see the scar on his shoulder—it was only inches from his heart!] [I heard he didn't even blink before shielding her. I still have the paparazzi shot of him on the stretcher, white-knuckling her hand. I'm literally dying, they're soulmates.] [Literal goals. They're basically the blueprint.] From the stolen glances at galas to the grand, sweeping gestures—every headline served as proof that they loved each other more than life itself. Hazel's vision blurred. She wiped her eyes, feeling a bitter surge of irony. The Lewises and the Allens had been family friends for generations. When she was born, two-year-old Daniel had been waiting right outside the delivery room. For as long as she could remember, Daniel had never left her side. When she was ten, the Allen empire collapsed into bankruptcy. Her parents took their own lives, leaving Hazel an orphan overnight. The Lewises had stepped in immediately to take her home. It was Daniel's care, his constant presence, that had pulled her out of the suffocating darkness of that grief. In the years she spent coming of age, she often felt she wasn't enough for him. She never dared to hope he could love her as a woman; she only wanted to be near him, even if it was just as the girl next door. But on her eighteenth birthday, in front of the city's high society, Daniel had formally asked her to be his. Looking into the heat in his eyes, Hazel hadn't hesitated to accept the red roses that symbolized his promise of forever. Tears had streamed down her face as she whispered in his ear, "Daniel, thank you for being my family. Just promise me... promise you'll never betray me. Don't ever leave me. I love you." Daniel had crushed her into a hug, his voice breaking. "Hazel, I swear on my life, I will never betray you. I will never leave you behind. I'll love you until the day I die." Throughout their relationship, he had been everything a man should be. Gentle, attentive, and devoted. But seven years of perfect loyalty were shattered. Hazel didn't doubt that his feelings had been real once, but "forever" was a fragile thing. If she hadn't stumbled upon the evidence of his affair, she might still believe she was the luckiest girl in the world. Daniel probably thought he'd covered his tracks. He forgot that while love is in the details, so is the end of it. His heart had become too crowded, and Hazel wouldn't—couldn't—stay to watch the fallout. Rather than suffer the agony of being abandoned all over again, she chose to be the one to walk away first. Hazel placed the surgical records for her terminated pregnancy into a luxury gift box. She wrapped it carefully and tucked a card on top. [To Daniel, on his 27th birthday.] ### Chapter 2 By the time Daniel finally got home, Hazel had already been discharged. She was sitting by the window, a book resting in her lap. "I'm so sorry, Hazel. Things were just insane on the trip. I caught the red-eye, but I still couldn't make it back in time for your birthday or our anniversary..." Daniel shed his suit jacket and walked over, pulling her into a tight hug. "I promise, this is the last time. From now on, I'm not missing a single milestone. I'll be there for everything." "Babe, don't be mad at me, okay?" Hazel felt a cold sneer forming in her chest. She closed her eyes, but the scent of Lydia's perfume clinging to his skin made her stomach churn. 「Taking Lydia on a business trip... I'm sure you were kept very busy.」 But none of it mattered anymore. Hazel gently pushed him away and met his eyes, her voice eerily calm. "It's fine." Daniel looked visibly relieved. He pulled a sleek black velvet box from his pocket and held it out to her. "Hazel, I got you something. I really hope you like it." She opened the box. Inside was a watch—a Patek Philippe Grandmaster Chime. A thirty-one-million-dollar masterpiece, one of only seven in existence. "Swiss watchmaking is all about precision. Every gear, every movement is perfectly aligned. Just like my heart—it's never skipped a beat for anyone but you." Hazel watched him with a blank expression, listening to the practiced ease of his lies. She turned around and picked up the gift box containing her surgical records and her breakup letter. She handed it over. "This is for your birthday." Daniel's face lit up with genuine surprise. He reached for the lid, eager to see what she'd chosen. Hazel stopped him. The sunlight hit her thin face, making her look fragile, almost ethereal. "Don't open it yet. Wait until your actual birthday. Next month." Daniel chuckled and ruffled her hair, his eyes full of doting affection. "Alright, whatever you want, Hazel. I'll wait. Thanks, babe!" As she watched his excitement, the smile didn't even come close to reaching her eyes. 「Daniel, I hope you remember exactly what you did to me that night when you finally open it. I wonder if you'll still be smiling then.」 *** The following day, the Lewises threw a lavish gala for Hazel at the largest estate in New York, inviting every major player in the city to make up for the missed birthday. The grounds were blanketed in red roses—Hazel's favorite. The ballroom floor was strewn with petals. Everywhere she looked, people were whispering about how much Daniel worshipped her. "Even if the Lewises took her in out of family loyalty, they wouldn't treat her like royalty if it weren't for Daniel. She's only this important because he's obsessed with her." "Tell me about it. Look at the way he looks at her. It's the exact same look he had when he confessed to her at eighteen." "It's been seven years, and they're still total goals. I'm literally crying." Hazel heard the comments, but she simply maintained a polite, distant smile for the sake of the family. She didn't say a word. The love between her and Daniel was exactly like those rose petals on the floor: beautiful at a glance, but already dying. Throughout the night, Daniel was the perfect partner. He intercepted every drink offered to her so she wouldn't get a headache. When people spoke to her, he stood by her side, listening intently and nodding at the right moments, perfectly happy to play the role of the devoted boyfriend. He held her bag, peeled her shrimp, and picked the bones out of her fish with meticulous care. Hazel realized then that Daniel was a natural-born actor. He was so convincing that she almost wondered if the affair had been a fever dream. "You two are truly the golden couple. So, when are we getting a wedding?" "Yeah, don't forget our invites! We've watched you two grow up together." Daniel squeezed Hazel's hand. "We won't forget. But before the wedding, I have to give Hazel the most spectacular proposal she's ever seen." Hazel stood beside him, her lips curved in a faint smile, but she was exhausted to her core. She suddenly remembered the first time she had attended a party as Daniel's girlfriend. Everyone had said the same things then—how they were the blueprint and how they were made for each other. Back then, Daniel had wrapped an arm around her shoulders and said proudly, "Of course we are. I must have hit the lottery to find a girl like Hazel. I'm not marrying anyone else in this lifetime." The younger Hazel had blushed and hidden her face against his chest. She had spent years dreaming about the moment he would finally get down on one knee, knowing she would say yes before he even finished the question. 「But now, Daniel, I'm done waiting.」 As the party wound down, Daniel led Hazel onto the stage. He opened a jewelry box and revealed a breathtaking, diamond-encrusted necklace. He stepped behind her to fasten it around her neck. "Happy birthday, Hazel." He leaned down and kissed her forehead. The room erupted in thunderous applause. Hazel looked down at the necklace, her gaze shifting slightly to the head table where Lydia was sitting. Lydia's face was dark, her eyes burning with a resentment that stood out sharply against the celebratory crowd. Hazel's lips twitched into a tiny, mocking smile. Lydia's expression crumbled. She gritted her teeth, turned, and walked out. No one else noticed the tension beneath the surface; the air was too thick with congratulations. Only Hazel knew the truth. Her love for Daniel had burned itself out, and they were finally at the end of the road. ### Chapter 3 The dinner service ended, and the dancing began. Daniel bowed to Hazel, offering his hand for the opening dance. Hazel hesitated for a heartbeat. She had no desire to humiliate the Lewises in front of their guests, so she started to reach out—but Lydia suddenly appeared, breathless. "Mr. Lewis, I'm so sorry to interrupt, but there's an emergency at the office. I'm afraid you have to go with me." Hearing this, Daniel straightened up instantly. Without even asking for details, he turned to Hazel with a look of practiced regret. "Hazel, I'm sorry. I have to go handle this. I'll be back to pick you up later tonight, okay?" Under the watchful eyes of the entire ballroom, Hazel slowly withdrew her hand. "Just go." As she watched the two of them hurry away together, a dull, throbbing ache filled her chest. Four months ago, Lydia had moved into the Lewis estate under the guise of being Daniel's distant, widowed cousin-in-law. The story was that her husband had died, leaving her with nothing, and the Lewises had taken her in out of the goodness of their hearts. At first, Hazel hadn't been suspicious of this sudden "family member" at all. She had even gone out of her way to make Lydia feel at home. Even when Lydia was hired as Daniel's personal secretary, Hazel simply chalked it up to the family's generosity. Until the relationship between Daniel and Lydia became too "close" to ignore. In the past, Hazel was never an option to Daniel; she was the only answer. But lately, she had started catching glimpses of hesitation in his eyes, as if he were struggling to make a choice. Eventually, the hesitation stopped. Now, he chose Lydia without a second thought. Hazel excused herself, claiming a headache, and retreated to a private room to rest. Meanwhile, Daniel and Lydia hurried into his private office. "Alright, what's so urgent?" "You didn't even ask me that on the drive over. I thought we were on the same wavelength." Lydia's eyes were heavy with suggestion as she stepped toward him, hooking a finger in his tie. Daniel frowned, grabbing her wrist. "I told you to stop playing games! Didn't you see we were celebrating Hazel's birthday?" "Daniel... don't be so mean to me. I'm three months along now. Haven't you missed me at all?" "Lydia..." "Didn't you say you always wanted to try it in the office?" Lydia shed her heavy coat, revealing a daring, skin-tight professional dress underneath. "Tell me, can she even satisfy you like this?" A predatory look swept over Daniel's face. He couldn't hold back any longer. He grabbed her by the waist and crushed his lips against hers. The fire ignited, then eventually burned out. When it was over, Daniel wiped the traces of Lydia's lipstick off his skin. He checked his phone; there were no messages from Hazel. His heart skipped a beat—a sudden, cold wave of unease. "Stay at my place tonight, please?" Daniel ignored her, buttoning his shirt and shaking off her hand. "I'll have the driver take you home. I need to go get Hazel." He didn't stay to watch Lydia's tearful pout. He just grabbed his keys and drove off. On the way back to the estate, he took a detour to pick up a box of peanut brittle from the most famous candy shop in the city. "Hazel? What happened? Your mom said you weren't feeling well." Daniel ran from the foyer all the way to her room, his face a mask of concern. "I'm fine." Hazel sat up in bed and shook her head. Daniel reached out and stroked her hair, his voice soothing as if he were comforting a child. "I bought your favorite peanut brittle. Just one bite? Then I'll take you home." It was from the century-old shop she loved. Since they were kids, Daniel would wait in massive lines just to make her smile, buying boxes of roasted chestnuts and peanut clusters. Hazel looked down. The scent of Lydia's perfume was all over him—thick, cloying, and making her stomach turn. 「Why? Why? We don't have much time left, and you couldn't even put in the effort to lie to me properly. Why?」 She pushed his hand away, her voice raspy. "I don't want it. Let's just go." 「Daniel, I only ever liked that candy because it came from you. But now, I've lost my taste for it.」 「And don't bother taking me home. The moment you betrayed me, I didn't have a home anymore.」
Chapter 1 "I'll sign the consent forms for the ectopic pregnancy surgery myself." Hazel called out to the nurse, her hand bruised from the IV drips. She gripped the pen, her fingers trembling as she scrawled her name. As they wheeled her into the OR, a single tear slipped down her cheek. She could no longer tell if taking that Plan B pill had been the right call or the biggest mistake of her life. During her recovery, Hazel booked a one-way ticket to Ireland, scheduled for a month out. She pulled up her phone. The headlines were still dominated by the "New York Golden Boy's Multi-Million Dollar Tribute to His Girlfriend." And Hazel was the woman at the center of that grand obsession. Three days ago, Daniel held a press conference. He bankrolled a space mission in seven years; a spacecraft was now carrying a vinyl record into the deep reaches of the universe. On that record was Daniel's confession to Hazel, set to play on a loop for eternity, making the entire cosmos a witness to his devotion. With the successful launch, the story of their long-term romance went viral. People were calling it the "Love Story of the Century." A dull ache throbbed in her abdomen as Hazel scrolled through the comments. [Is there anyone left who doesn't know Mr. Lewis and Miss Allen were childhood sweethearts? They've known each other for twenty-five years, and they're still this obsessed after seven years of dating... I'm actually sobbing.] [You guys only see the money he spends on her. Do you remember when Daniel took a bullet for her years ago? He was at a charity swim meet recently, and you could see the scar on his shoulder—it was only inches from his heart!] [I heard he didn't even blink before shielding her. I still have the paparazzi shot of him on the stretcher, white-knuckling her hand. I'm literally dying, they're soulmates.] [Literal goals. They're basically the blueprint.] From the stolen glances at galas to the grand, sweeping gestures—every headline served as proof that they loved each other more than life itself. Hazel's vision blurred. She wiped her eyes, feeling a bitter surge of irony. The Lewises and the Allens had been family friends for generations. When she was born, two-year-old Daniel had been waiting right outside the delivery room. For as long as she could remember, Daniel had never left her side. When she was ten, the Allen empire collapsed into bankruptcy. Her parents took their own lives, leaving Hazel an orphan overnight. The Lewises had stepped in immediately to take her home. It was Daniel's care, his constant presence, that had pulled her out of the suffocating darkness of that grief. In the years she spent coming of age, she often felt she wasn't enough for him. She never dared to hope he could love her as a woman; she only wanted to be near him, even if it was just as the girl next door. But on her eighteenth birthday, in front of the city's high society, Daniel had formally asked her to be his. Looking into the heat in his eyes, Hazel hadn't hesitated to accept the red roses that symbolized his promise of forever. Tears had streamed down her face as she whispered in his ear, "Daniel, thank you for being my family. Just promise me... promise you'll never betray me. Don't ever leave me. I love you." Daniel had crushed her into a hug, his voice breaking. "Hazel, I swear on my life, I will never betray you. I will never leave you behind. I'll love you until the day I die." Throughout their relationship, he had been everything a man should be. Gentle, attentive, and devoted. But seven years of perfect loyalty were shattered. Hazel didn't doubt that his feelings had been real once, but "forever" was a fragile thing. If she hadn't stumbled upon the evidence of his affair, she might still believe she was the luckiest girl in the world. Daniel probably thought he'd covered his tracks. He forgot that while love is in the details, so is the end of it. His heart had become too crowded, and Hazel wouldn't—couldn't—stay to watch the fallout. Rather than suffer the agony of being abandoned all over again, she chose to be the one to walk away first. Hazel placed the surgical records for her terminated pregnancy into a luxury gift box. She wrapped it carefully and tucked a card on top. [To Daniel, on his 27th birthday.] ### Chapter 2 By the time Daniel finally got home, Hazel had already been discharged. She was sitting by the window, a book resting in her lap. "I'm so sorry, Hazel. Things were just insane on the trip. I caught the red-eye, but I still couldn't make it back in time for your birthday or our anniversary..." Daniel shed his suit jacket and walked over, pulling her into a tight hug. "I promise, this is the last time. From now on, I'm not missing a single milestone. I'll be there for everything." "Babe, don't be mad at me, okay?" Hazel felt a cold sneer forming in her chest. She closed her eyes, but the scent of Lydia's perfume clinging to his skin made her stomach churn. 「Taking Lydia on a business trip... I'm sure you were kept very busy.」 But none of it mattered anymore. Hazel gently pushed him away and met his eyes, her voice eerily calm. "It's fine." Daniel looked visibly relieved. He pulled a sleek black velvet box from his pocket and held it out to her. "Hazel, I got you something. I really hope you like it." She opened the box. Inside was a watch—a Patek Philippe Grandmaster Chime. A thirty-one-million-dollar masterpiece, one of only seven in existence. "Swiss watchmaking is all about precision. Every gear, every movement is perfectly aligned. Just like my heart—it's never skipped a beat for anyone but you." Hazel watched him with a blank expression, listening to the practiced ease of his lies. She turned around and picked up the gift box containing her surgical records and her breakup letter. She handed it over. "This is for your birthday." Daniel's face lit up with genuine surprise. He reached for the lid, eager to see what she'd chosen. Hazel stopped him. The sunlight hit her thin face, making her look fragile, almost ethereal. "Don't open it yet. Wait until your actual birthday. Next month." Daniel chuckled and ruffled her hair, his eyes full of doting affection. "Alright, whatever you want, Hazel. I'll wait. Thanks, babe!" As she watched his excitement, the smile didn't even come close to reaching her eyes. 「Daniel, I hope you remember exactly what you did to me that night when you finally open it. I wonder if you'll still be smiling then.」 *** The following day, the Lewises threw a lavish gala for Hazel at the largest estate in New York, inviting every major player in the city to make up for the missed birthday. The grounds were blanketed in red roses—Hazel's favorite. The ballroom floor was strewn with petals. Everywhere she looked, people were whispering about how much Daniel worshipped her. "Even if the Lewises took her in out of family loyalty, they wouldn't treat her like royalty if it weren't for Daniel. She's only this important because he's obsessed with her." "Tell me about it. Look at the way he looks at her. It's the exact same look he had when he confessed to her at eighteen." "It's been seven years, and they're still total goals. I'm literally crying." Hazel heard the comments, but she simply maintained a polite, distant smile for the sake of the family. She didn't say a word. The love between her and Daniel was exactly like those rose petals on the floor: beautiful at a glance, but already dying. Throughout the night, Daniel was the perfect partner. He intercepted every drink offered to her so she wouldn't get a headache. When people spoke to her, he stood by her side, listening intently and nodding at the right moments, perfectly happy to play the role of the devoted boyfriend. He held her bag, peeled her shrimp, and picked the bones out of her fish with meticulous care. Hazel realized then that Daniel was a natural-born actor. He was so convincing that she almost wondered if the affair had been a fever dream. "You two are truly the golden couple. So, when are we getting a wedding?" "Yeah, don't forget our invites! We've watched you two grow up together." Daniel squeezed Hazel's hand. "We won't forget. But before the wedding, I have to give Hazel the most spectacular proposal she's ever seen." Hazel stood beside him, her lips curved in a faint smile, but she was exhausted to her core. She suddenly remembered the first time she had attended a party as Daniel's girlfriend. Everyone had said the same things then—how they were the blueprint and how they were made for each other. Back then, Daniel had wrapped an arm around her shoulders and said proudly, "Of course we are. I must have hit the lottery to find a girl like Hazel. I'm not marrying anyone else in this lifetime." The younger Hazel had blushed and hidden her face against his chest. She had spent years dreaming about the moment he would finally get down on one knee, knowing she would say yes before he even finished the question. 「But now, Daniel, I'm done waiting.」 As the party wound down, Daniel led Hazel onto the stage. He opened a jewelry box and revealed a breathtaking, diamond-encrusted necklace. He stepped behind her to fasten it around her neck. "Happy birthday, Hazel." He leaned down and kissed her forehead. The room erupted in thunderous applause. Hazel looked down at the necklace, her gaze shifting slightly to the head table where Lydia was sitting. Lydia's face was dark, her eyes burning with a resentment that stood out sharply against the celebratory crowd. Hazel's lips twitched into a tiny, mocking smile. Lydia's expression crumbled. She gritted her teeth, turned, and walked out. No one else noticed the tension beneath the surface; the air was too thick with congratulations. Only Hazel knew the truth. Her love for Daniel had burned itself out, and they were finally at the end of the road. ### Chapter 3 The dinner service ended, and the dancing began. Daniel bowed to Hazel, offering his hand for the opening dance. Hazel hesitated for a heartbeat. She had no desire to humiliate the Lewises in front of their guests, so she started to reach out—but Lydia suddenly appeared, breathless. "Mr. Lewis, I'm so sorry to interrupt, but there's an emergency at the office. I'm afraid you have to go with me." Hearing this, Daniel straightened up instantly. Without even asking for details, he turned to Hazel with a look of practiced regret. "Hazel, I'm sorry. I have to go handle this. I'll be back to pick you up later tonight, okay?" Under the watchful eyes of the entire ballroom, Hazel slowly withdrew her hand. "Just go." As she watched the two of them hurry away together, a dull, throbbing ache filled her chest. Four months ago, Lydia had moved into the Lewis estate under the guise of being Daniel's distant, widowed cousin-in-law. The story was that her husband had died, leaving her with nothing, and the Lewises had taken her in out of the goodness of their hearts. At first, Hazel hadn't been suspicious of this sudden "family member" at all. She had even gone out of her way to make Lydia feel at home. Even when Lydia was hired as Daniel's personal secretary, Hazel simply chalked it up to the family's generosity. Until the relationship between Daniel and Lydia became too "close" to ignore. In the past, Hazel was never an option to Daniel; she was the only answer. But lately, she had started catching glimpses of hesitation in his eyes, as if he were struggling to make a choice. Eventually, the hesitation stopped. Now, he chose Lydia without a second thought. Hazel excused herself, claiming a headache, and retreated to a private room to rest. Meanwhile, Daniel and Lydia hurried into his private office. "Alright, what's so urgent?" "You didn't even ask me that on the drive over. I thought we were on the same wavelength." Lydia's eyes were heavy with suggestion as she stepped toward him, hooking a finger in his tie. Daniel frowned, grabbing her wrist. "I told you to stop playing games! Didn't you see we were celebrating Hazel's birthday?" "Daniel... don't be so mean to me. I'm three months along now. Haven't you missed me at all?" "Lydia..." "Didn't you say you always wanted to try it in the office?" Lydia shed her heavy coat, revealing a daring, skin-tight professional dress underneath. "Tell me, can she even satisfy you like this?" A predatory look swept over Daniel's face. He couldn't hold back any longer. He grabbed her by the waist and crushed his lips against hers. The fire ignited, then eventually burned out. When it was over, Daniel wiped the traces of Lydia's lipstick off his skin. He checked his phone; there were no messages from Hazel. His heart skipped a beat—a sudden, cold wave of unease. "Stay at my place tonight, please?" Daniel ignored her, buttoning his shirt and shaking off her hand. "I'll have the driver take you home. I need to go get Hazel." He didn't stay to watch Lydia's tearful pout. He just grabbed his keys and drove off. On the way back to the estate, he took a detour to pick up a box of peanut brittle from the most famous candy shop in the city. "Hazel? What happened? Your mom said you weren't feeling well." Daniel ran from the foyer all the way to her room, his face a mask of concern. "I'm fine." Hazel sat up in bed and shook her head. Daniel reached out and stroked her hair, his voice soothing as if he were comforting a child. "I bought your favorite peanut brittle. Just one bite? Then I'll take you home." It was from the century-old shop she loved. Since they were kids, Daniel would wait in massive lines just to make her smile, buying boxes of roasted chestnuts and peanut clusters. Hazel looked down. The scent of Lydia's perfume was all over him—thick, cloying, and making her stomach turn. 「Why? Why? We don't have much time left, and you couldn't even put in the effort to lie to me properly. Why?」 She pushed his hand away, her voice raspy. "I don't want it. Let's just go." 「Daniel, I only ever liked that candy because it came from you. But now, I've lost my taste for it.」 「And don't bother taking me home. The moment you betrayed me, I didn't have a home anymore.」
Chapter 1 "I'll sign the consent forms for the ectopic pregnancy surgery myself." Hazel called out to the nurse, her hand bruised from the IV drips. She gripped the pen, her fingers trembling as she scrawled her name. As they wheeled her into the OR, a single tear slipped down her cheek. She could no longer tell if taking that Plan B pill had been the right call or the biggest mistake of her life. During her recovery, Hazel booked a one-way ticket to Ireland, scheduled for a month out. She pulled up her phone. The headlines were still dominated by the "New York Golden Boy's Multi-Million Dollar Tribute to His Girlfriend." And Hazel was the woman at the center of that grand obsession. Three days ago, Daniel held a press conference. He bankrolled a space mission in seven years; a spacecraft was now carrying a vinyl record into the deep reaches of the universe. On that record was Daniel's confession to Hazel, set to play on a loop for eternity, making the entire cosmos a witness to his devotion. With the successful launch, the story of their long-term romance went viral. People were calling it the "Love Story of the Century." A dull ache throbbed in her abdomen as Hazel scrolled through the comments. [Is there anyone left who doesn't know Mr. Lewis and Miss Allen were childhood sweethearts? They've known each other for twenty-five years, and they're still this obsessed after seven years of dating... I'm actually sobbing.] [You guys only see the money he spends on her. Do you remember when Daniel took a bullet for her years ago? He was at a charity swim meet recently, and you could see the scar on his shoulder—it was only inches from his heart!] [I heard he didn't even blink before shielding her. I still have the paparazzi shot of him on the stretcher, white-knuckling her hand. I'm literally dying, they're soulmates.] [Literal goals. They're basically the blueprint.] From the stolen glances at galas to the grand, sweeping gestures—every headline served as proof that they loved each other more than life itself. Hazel's vision blurred. She wiped her eyes, feeling a bitter surge of irony. The Lewises and the Allens had been family friends for generations. When she was born, two-year-old Daniel had been waiting right outside the delivery room. For as long as she could remember, Daniel had never left her side. When she was ten, the Allen empire collapsed into bankruptcy. Her parents took their own lives, leaving Hazel an orphan overnight. The Lewises had stepped in immediately to take her home. It was Daniel's care, his constant presence, that had pulled her out of the suffocating darkness of that grief. In the years she spent coming of age, she often felt she wasn't enough for him. She never dared to hope he could love her as a woman; she only wanted to be near him, even if it was just as the girl next door. But on her eighteenth birthday, in front of the city's high society, Daniel had formally asked her to be his. Looking into the heat in his eyes, Hazel hadn't hesitated to accept the red roses that symbolized his promise of forever. Tears had streamed down her face as she whispered in his ear, "Daniel, thank you for being my family. Just promise me... promise you'll never betray me. Don't ever leave me. I love you." Daniel had crushed her into a hug, his voice breaking. "Hazel, I swear on my life, I will never betray you. I will never leave you behind. I'll love you until the day I die." Throughout their relationship, he had been everything a man should be. Gentle, attentive, and devoted. But seven years of perfect loyalty were shattered. Hazel didn't doubt that his feelings had been real once, but "forever" was a fragile thing. If she hadn't stumbled upon the evidence of his affair, she might still believe she was the luckiest girl in the world. Daniel probably thought he'd covered his tracks. He forgot that while love is in the details, so is the end of it. His heart had become too crowded, and Hazel wouldn't—couldn't—stay to watch the fallout. Rather than suffer the agony of being abandoned all over again, she chose to be the one to walk away first. Hazel placed the surgical records for her terminated pregnancy into a luxury gift box. She wrapped it carefully and tucked a card on top. [To Daniel, on his 27th birthday.] ### Chapter 2 By the time Daniel finally got home, Hazel had already been discharged. She was sitting by the window, a book resting in her lap. "I'm so sorry, Hazel. Things were just insane on the trip. I caught the red-eye, but I still couldn't make it back in time for your birthday or our anniversary..." Daniel shed his suit jacket and walked over, pulling her into a tight hug. "I promise, this is the last time. From now on, I'm not missing a single milestone. I'll be there for everything." "Babe, don't be mad at me, okay?" Hazel felt a cold sneer forming in her chest. She closed her eyes, but the scent of Lydia's perfume clinging to his skin made her stomach churn. 「Taking Lydia on a business trip... I'm sure you were kept very busy.」 But none of it mattered anymore. Hazel gently pushed him away and met his eyes, her voice eerily calm. "It's fine." Daniel looked visibly relieved. He pulled a sleek black velvet box from his pocket and held it out to her. "Hazel, I got you something. I really hope you like it." She opened the box. Inside was a watch—a Patek Philippe Grandmaster Chime. A thirty-one-million-dollar masterpiece, one of only seven in existence. "Swiss watchmaking is all about precision. Every gear, every movement is perfectly aligned. Just like my heart—it's never skipped a beat for anyone but you." Hazel watched him with a blank expression, listening to the practiced ease of his lies. She turned around and picked up the gift box containing her surgical records and her breakup letter. She handed it over. "This is for your birthday." Daniel's face lit up with genuine surprise. He reached for the lid, eager to see what she'd chosen. Hazel stopped him. The sunlight hit her thin face, making her look fragile, almost ethereal. "Don't open it yet. Wait until your actual birthday. Next month." Daniel chuckled and ruffled her hair, his eyes full of doting affection. "Alright, whatever you want, Hazel. I'll wait. Thanks, babe!" As she watched his excitement, the smile didn't even come close to reaching her eyes. 「Daniel, I hope you remember exactly what you did to me that night when you finally open it. I wonder if you'll still be smiling then.」 *** The following day, the Lewises threw a lavish gala for Hazel at the largest estate in New York, inviting every major player in the city to make up for the missed birthday. The grounds were blanketed in red roses—Hazel's favorite. The ballroom floor was strewn with petals. Everywhere she looked, people were whispering about how much Daniel worshipped her. "Even if the Lewises took her in out of family loyalty, they wouldn't treat her like royalty if it weren't for Daniel. She's only this important because he's obsessed with her." "Tell me about it. Look at the way he looks at her. It's the exact same look he had when he confessed to her at eighteen." "It's been seven years, and they're still total goals. I'm literally crying." Hazel heard the comments, but she simply maintained a polite, distant smile for the sake of the family. She didn't say a word. The love between her and Daniel was exactly like those rose petals on the floor: beautiful at a glance, but already dying. Throughout the night, Daniel was the perfect partner. He intercepted every drink offered to her so she wouldn't get a headache. When people spoke to her, he stood by her side, listening intently and nodding at the right moments, perfectly happy to play the role of the devoted boyfriend. He held her bag, peeled her shrimp, and picked the bones out of her fish with meticulous care. Hazel realized then that Daniel was a natural-born actor. He was so convincing that she almost wondered if the affair had been a fever dream. "You two are truly the golden couple. So, when are we getting a wedding?" "Yeah, don't forget our invites! We've watched you two grow up together." Daniel squeezed Hazel's hand. "We won't forget. But before the wedding, I have to give Hazel the most spectacular proposal she's ever seen." Hazel stood beside him, her lips curved in a faint smile, but she was exhausted to her core. She suddenly remembered the first time she had attended a party as Daniel's girlfriend. Everyone had said the same things then—how they were the blueprint and how they were made for each other. Back then, Daniel had wrapped an arm around her shoulders and said proudly, "Of course we are. I must have hit the lottery to find a girl like Hazel. I'm not marrying anyone else in this lifetime." The younger Hazel had blushed and hidden her face against his chest. She had spent years dreaming about the moment he would finally get down on one knee, knowing she would say yes before he even finished the question. 「But now, Daniel, I'm done waiting.」 As the party wound down, Daniel led Hazel onto the stage. He opened a jewelry box and revealed a breathtaking, diamond-encrusted necklace. He stepped behind her to fasten it around her neck. "Happy birthday, Hazel." He leaned down and kissed her forehead. The room erupted in thunderous applause. Hazel looked down at the necklace, her gaze shifting slightly to the head table where Lydia was sitting. Lydia's face was dark, her eyes burning with a resentment that stood out sharply against the celebratory crowd. Hazel's lips twitched into a tiny, mocking smile. Lydia's expression crumbled. She gritted her teeth, turned, and walked out. No one else noticed the tension beneath the surface; the air was too thick with congratulations. Only Hazel knew the truth. Her love for Daniel had burned itself out, and they were finally at the end of the road. ### Chapter 3 The dinner service ended, and the dancing began. Daniel bowed to Hazel, offering his hand for the opening dance. Hazel hesitated for a heartbeat. She had no desire to humiliate the Lewises in front of their guests, so she started to reach out—but Lydia suddenly appeared, breathless. "Mr. Lewis, I'm so sorry to interrupt, but there's an emergency at the office. I'm afraid you have to go with me." Hearing this, Daniel straightened up instantly. Without even asking for details, he turned to Hazel with a look of practiced regret. "Hazel, I'm sorry. I have to go handle this. I'll be back to pick you up later tonight, okay?" Under the watchful eyes of the entire ballroom, Hazel slowly withdrew her hand. "Just go." As she watched the two of them hurry away together, a dull, throbbing ache filled her chest. Four months ago, Lydia had moved into the Lewis estate under the guise of being Daniel's distant, widowed cousin-in-law. The story was that her husband had died, leaving her with nothing, and the Lewises had taken her in out of the goodness of their hearts. At first, Hazel hadn't been suspicious of this sudden "family member" at all. She had even gone out of her way to make Lydia feel at home. Even when Lydia was hired as Daniel's personal secretary, Hazel simply chalked it up to the family's generosity. Until the relationship between Daniel and Lydia became too "close" to ignore. In the past, Hazel was never an option to Daniel; she was the only answer. But lately, she had started catching glimpses of hesitation in his eyes, as if he were struggling to make a choice. Eventually, the hesitation stopped. Now, he chose Lydia without a second thought. Hazel excused herself, claiming a headache, and retreated to a private room to rest. Meanwhile, Daniel and Lydia hurried into his private office. "Alright, what's so urgent?" "You didn't even ask me that on the drive over. I thought we were on the same wavelength." Lydia's eyes were heavy with suggestion as she stepped toward him, hooking a finger in his tie. Daniel frowned, grabbing her wrist. "I told you to stop playing games! Didn't you see we were celebrating Hazel's birthday?" "Daniel... don't be so mean to me. I'm three months along now. Haven't you missed me at all?" "Lydia..." "Didn't you say you always wanted to try it in the office?" Lydia shed her heavy coat, revealing a daring, skin-tight professional dress underneath. "Tell me, can she even satisfy you like this?" A predatory look swept over Daniel's face. He couldn't hold back any longer. He grabbed her by the waist and crushed his lips against hers. The fire ignited, then eventually burned out. When it was over, Daniel wiped the traces of Lydia's lipstick off his skin. He checked his phone; there were no messages from Hazel. His heart skipped a beat—a sudden, cold wave of unease. "Stay at my place tonight, please?" Daniel ignored her, buttoning his shirt and shaking off her hand. "I'll have the driver take you home. I need to go get Hazel." He didn't stay to watch Lydia's tearful pout. He just grabbed his keys and drove off. On the way back to the estate, he took a detour to pick up a box of peanut brittle from the most famous candy shop in the city. "Hazel? What happened? Your mom said you weren't feeling well." Daniel ran from the foyer all the way to her room, his face a mask of concern. "I'm fine." Hazel sat up in bed and shook her head. Daniel reached out and stroked her hair, his voice soothing as if he were comforting a child. "I bought your favorite peanut brittle. Just one bite? Then I'll take you home." It was from the century-old shop she loved. Since they were kids, Daniel would wait in massive lines just to make her smile, buying boxes of roasted chestnuts and peanut clusters. Hazel looked down. The scent of Lydia's perfume was all over him—thick, cloying, and making her stomach turn. 「Why? Why? We don't have much time left, and you couldn't even put in the effort to lie to me properly. Why?」 She pushed his hand away, her voice raspy. "I don't want it. Let's just go." 「Daniel, I only ever liked that candy because it came from you. But now, I've lost my taste for it.」 「And don't bother taking me home. The moment you betrayed me, I didn't have a home anymore.」
Chapter 1 "I'll sign the consent forms for the ectopic pregnancy surgery myself." Hazel called out to the nurse, her hand bruised from the IV drips. She gripped the pen, her fingers trembling as she scrawled her name. As they wheeled her into the OR, a single tear slipped down her cheek. She could no longer tell if taking that Plan B pill had been the right call or the biggest mistake of her life. During her recovery, Hazel booked a one-way ticket to Ireland, scheduled for a month out. She pulled up her phone. The headlines were still dominated by the "New York Golden Boy's Multi-Million Dollar Tribute to His Girlfriend." And Hazel was the woman at the center of that grand obsession. Three days ago, Daniel held a press conference. He bankrolled a space mission in seven years; a spacecraft was now carrying a vinyl record into the deep reaches of the universe. On that record was Daniel's confession to Hazel, set to play on a loop for eternity, making the entire cosmos a witness to his devotion. With the successful launch, the story of their long-term romance went viral. People were calling it the "Love Story of the Century." A dull ache throbbed in her abdomen as Hazel scrolled through the comments. [Is there anyone left who doesn't know Mr. Lewis and Miss Allen were childhood sweethearts? They've known each other for twenty-five years, and they're still this obsessed after seven years of dating... I'm actually sobbing.] [You guys only see the money he spends on her. Do you remember when Daniel took a bullet for her years ago? He was at a charity swim meet recently, and you could see the scar on his shoulder—it was only inches from his heart!] [I heard he didn't even blink before shielding her. I still have the paparazzi shot of him on the stretcher, white-knuckling her hand. I'm literally dying, they're soulmates.] [Literal goals. They're basically the blueprint.] From the stolen glances at galas to the grand, sweeping gestures—every headline served as proof that they loved each other more than life itself. Hazel's vision blurred. She wiped her eyes, feeling a bitter surge of irony. The Lewises and the Allens had been family friends for generations. When she was born, two-year-old Daniel had been waiting right outside the delivery room. For as long as she could remember, Daniel had never left her side. When she was ten, the Allen empire collapsed into bankruptcy. Her parents took their own lives, leaving Hazel an orphan overnight. The Lewises had stepped in immediately to take her home. It was Daniel's care, his constant presence, that had pulled her out of the suffocating darkness of that grief. In the years she spent coming of age, she often felt she wasn't enough for him. She never dared to hope he could love her as a woman; she only wanted to be near him, even if it was just as the girl next door. But on her eighteenth birthday, in front of the city's high society, Daniel had formally asked her to be his. Looking into the heat in his eyes, Hazel hadn't hesitated to accept the red roses that symbolized his promise of forever. Tears had streamed down her face as she whispered in his ear, "Daniel, thank you for being my family. Just promise me... promise you'll never betray me. Don't ever leave me. I love you." Daniel had crushed her into a hug, his voice breaking. "Hazel, I swear on my life, I will never betray you. I will never leave you behind. I'll love you until the day I die." Throughout their relationship, he had been everything a man should be. Gentle, attentive, and devoted. But seven years of perfect loyalty were shattered. Hazel didn't doubt that his feelings had been real once, but "forever" was a fragile thing. If she hadn't stumbled upon the evidence of his affair, she might still believe she was the luckiest girl in the world. Daniel probably thought he'd covered his tracks. He forgot that while love is in the details, so is the end of it. His heart had become too crowded, and Hazel wouldn't—couldn't—stay to watch the fallout. Rather than suffer the agony of being abandoned all over again, she chose to be the one to walk away first. Hazel placed the surgical records for her terminated pregnancy into a luxury gift box. She wrapped it carefully and tucked a card on top. [To Daniel, on his 27th birthday.] ### Chapter 2 By the time Daniel finally got home, Hazel had already been discharged. She was sitting by the window, a book resting in her lap. "I'm so sorry, Hazel. Things were just insane on the trip. I caught the red-eye, but I still couldn't make it back in time for your birthday or our anniversary..." Daniel shed his suit jacket and walked over, pulling her into a tight hug. "I promise, this is the last time. From now on, I'm not missing a single milestone. I'll be there for everything." "Babe, don't be mad at me, okay?" Hazel felt a cold sneer forming in her chest. She closed her eyes, but the scent of Lydia's perfume clinging to his skin made her stomach churn. 「Taking Lydia on a business trip... I'm sure you were kept very busy.」 But none of it mattered anymore. Hazel gently pushed him away and met his eyes, her voice eerily calm. "It's fine." Daniel looked visibly relieved. He pulled a sleek black velvet box from his pocket and held it out to her. "Hazel, I got you something. I really hope you like it." She opened the box. Inside was a watch—a Patek Philippe Grandmaster Chime. A thirty-one-million-dollar masterpiece, one of only seven in existence. "Swiss watchmaking is all about precision. Every gear, every movement is perfectly aligned. Just like my heart—it's never skipped a beat for anyone but you." Hazel watched him with a blank expression, listening to the practiced ease of his lies. She turned around and picked up the gift box containing her surgical records and her breakup letter. She handed it over. "This is for your birthday." Daniel's face lit up with genuine surprise. He reached for the lid, eager to see what she'd chosen. Hazel stopped him. The sunlight hit her thin face, making her look fragile, almost ethereal. "Don't open it yet. Wait until your actual birthday. Next month." Daniel chuckled and ruffled her hair, his eyes full of doting affection. "Alright, whatever you want, Hazel. I'll wait. Thanks, babe!" As she watched his excitement, the smile didn't even come close to reaching her eyes. 「Daniel, I hope you remember exactly what you did to me that night when you finally open it. I wonder if you'll still be smiling then.」 *** The following day, the Lewises threw a lavish gala for Hazel at the largest estate in New York, inviting every major player in the city to make up for the missed birthday. The grounds were blanketed in red roses—Hazel's favorite. The ballroom floor was strewn with petals. Everywhere she looked, people were whispering about how much Daniel worshipped her. "Even if the Lewises took her in out of family loyalty, they wouldn't treat her like royalty if it weren't for Daniel. She's only this important because he's obsessed with her." "Tell me about it. Look at the way he looks at her. It's the exact same look he had when he confessed to her at eighteen." "It's been seven years, and they're still total goals. I'm literally crying." Hazel heard the comments, but she simply maintained a polite, distant smile for the sake of the family. She didn't say a word. The love between her and Daniel was exactly like those rose petals on the floor: beautiful at a glance, but already dying. Throughout the night, Daniel was the perfect partner. He intercepted every drink offered to her so she wouldn't get a headache. When people spoke to her, he stood by her side, listening intently and nodding at the right moments, perfectly happy to play the role of the devoted boyfriend. He held her bag, peeled her shrimp, and picked the bones out of her fish with meticulous care. Hazel realized then that Daniel was a natural-born actor. He was so convincing that she almost wondered if the affair had been a fever dream. "You two are truly the golden couple. So, when are we getting a wedding?" "Yeah, don't forget our invites! We've watched you two grow up together." Daniel squeezed Hazel's hand. "We won't forget. But before the wedding, I have to give Hazel the most spectacular proposal she's ever seen." Hazel stood beside him, her lips curved in a faint smile, but she was exhausted to her core. She suddenly remembered the first time she had attended a party as Daniel's girlfriend. Everyone had said the same things then—how they were the blueprint and how they were made for each other. Back then, Daniel had wrapped an arm around her shoulders and said proudly, "Of course we are. I must have hit the lottery to find a girl like Hazel. I'm not marrying anyone else in this lifetime." The younger Hazel had blushed and hidden her face against his chest. She had spent years dreaming about the moment he would finally get down on one knee, knowing she would say yes before he even finished the question. 「But now, Daniel, I'm done waiting.」 As the party wound down, Daniel led Hazel onto the stage. He opened a jewelry box and revealed a breathtaking, diamond-encrusted necklace. He stepped behind her to fasten it around her neck. "Happy birthday, Hazel." He leaned down and kissed her forehead. The room erupted in thunderous applause. Hazel looked down at the necklace, her gaze shifting slightly to the head table where Lydia was sitting. Lydia's face was dark, her eyes burning with a resentment that stood out sharply against the celebratory crowd. Hazel's lips twitched into a tiny, mocking smile. Lydia's expression crumbled. She gritted her teeth, turned, and walked out. No one else noticed the tension beneath the surface; the air was too thick with congratulations. Only Hazel knew the truth. Her love for Daniel had burned itself out, and they were finally at the end of the road. ### Chapter 3 The dinner service ended, and the dancing began. Daniel bowed to Hazel, offering his hand for the opening dance. Hazel hesitated for a heartbeat. She had no desire to humiliate the Lewises in front of their guests, so she started to reach out—but Lydia suddenly appeared, breathless. "Mr. Lewis, I'm so sorry to interrupt, but there's an emergency at the office. I'm afraid you have to go with me." Hearing this, Daniel straightened up instantly. Without even asking for details, he turned to Hazel with a look of practiced regret. "Hazel, I'm sorry. I have to go handle this. I'll be back to pick you up later tonight, okay?" Under the watchful eyes of the entire ballroom, Hazel slowly withdrew her hand. "Just go." As she watched the two of them hurry away together, a dull, throbbing ache filled her chest. Four months ago, Lydia had moved into the Lewis estate under the guise of being Daniel's distant, widowed cousin-in-law. The story was that her husband had died, leaving her with nothing, and the Lewises had taken her in out of the goodness of their hearts. At first, Hazel hadn't been suspicious of this sudden "family member" at all. She had even gone out of her way to make Lydia feel at home. Even when Lydia was hired as Daniel's personal secretary, Hazel simply chalked it up to the family's generosity. Until the relationship between Daniel and Lydia became too "close" to ignore. In the past, Hazel was never an option to Daniel; she was the only answer. But lately, she had started catching glimpses of hesitation in his eyes, as if he were struggling to make a choice. Eventually, the hesitation stopped. Now, he chose Lydia without a second thought. Hazel excused herself, claiming a headache, and retreated to a private room to rest. Meanwhile, Daniel and Lydia hurried into his private office. "Alright, what's so urgent?" "You didn't even ask me that on the drive over. I thought we were on the same wavelength." Lydia's eyes were heavy with suggestion as she stepped toward him, hooking a finger in his tie. Daniel frowned, grabbing her wrist. "I told you to stop playing games! Didn't you see we were celebrating Hazel's birthday?" "Daniel... don't be so mean to me. I'm three months along now. Haven't you missed me at all?" "Lydia..." "Didn't you say you always wanted to try it in the office?" Lydia shed her heavy coat, revealing a daring, skin-tight professional dress underneath. "Tell me, can she even satisfy you like this?" A predatory look swept over Daniel's face. He couldn't hold back any longer. He grabbed her by the waist and crushed his lips against hers. The fire ignited, then eventually burned out. When it was over, Daniel wiped the traces of Lydia's lipstick off his skin. He checked his phone; there were no messages from Hazel. His heart skipped a beat—a sudden, cold wave of unease. "Stay at my place tonight, please?" Daniel ignored her, buttoning his shirt and shaking off her hand. "I'll have the driver take you home. I need to go get Hazel." He didn't stay to watch Lydia's tearful pout. He just grabbed his keys and drove off. On the way back to the estate, he took a detour to pick up a box of peanut brittle from the most famous candy shop in the city. "Hazel? What happened? Your mom said you weren't feeling well." Daniel ran from the foyer all the way to her room, his face a mask of concern. "I'm fine." Hazel sat up in bed and shook her head. Daniel reached out and stroked her hair, his voice soothing as if he were comforting a child. "I bought your favorite peanut brittle. Just one bite? Then I'll take you home." It was from the century-old shop she loved. Since they were kids, Daniel would wait in massive lines just to make her smile, buying boxes of roasted chestnuts and peanut clusters. Hazel looked down. The scent of Lydia's perfume was all over him—thick, cloying, and making her stomach turn. 「Why? Why? We don't have much time left, and you couldn't even put in the effort to lie to me properly. Why?」 She pushed his hand away, her voice raspy. "I don't want it. Let's just go." 「Daniel, I only ever liked that candy because it came from you. But now, I've lost my taste for it.」 「And don't bother taking me home. The moment you betrayed me, I didn't have a home anymore.」
Chapter 1 "I'll sign the consent forms for the ectopic pregnancy surgery myself." Hazel called out to the nurse, her hand bruised from the IV drips. She gripped the pen, her fingers trembling as she scrawled her name. As they wheeled her into the OR, a single tear slipped down her cheek. She could no longer tell if taking that Plan B pill had been the right call or the biggest mistake of her life. During her recovery, Hazel booked a one-way ticket to Ireland, scheduled for a month out. She pulled up her phone. The headlines were still dominated by the "New York Golden Boy's Multi-Million Dollar Tribute to His Girlfriend." And Hazel was the woman at the center of that grand obsession. Three days ago, Daniel held a press conference. He bankrolled a space mission in seven years; a spacecraft was now carrying a vinyl record into the deep reaches of the universe. On that record was Daniel's confession to Hazel, set to play on a loop for eternity, making the entire cosmos a witness to his devotion. With the successful launch, the story of their long-term romance went viral. People were calling it the "Love Story of the Century." A dull ache throbbed in her abdomen as Hazel scrolled through the comments. [Is there anyone left who doesn't know Mr. Lewis and Miss Allen were childhood sweethearts? They've known each other for twenty-five years, and they're still this obsessed after seven years of dating... I'm actually sobbing.] [You guys only see the money he spends on her. Do you remember when Daniel took a bullet for her years ago? He was at a charity swim meet recently, and you could see the scar on his shoulder—it was only inches from his heart!] [I heard he didn't even blink before shielding her. I still have the paparazzi shot of him on the stretcher, white-knuckling her hand. I'm literally dying, they're soulmates.] [Literal goals. They're basically the blueprint.] From the stolen glances at galas to the grand, sweeping gestures—every headline served as proof that they loved each other more than life itself. Hazel's vision blurred. She wiped her eyes, feeling a bitter surge of irony. The Lewises and the Allens had been family friends for generations. When she was born, two-year-old Daniel had been waiting right outside the delivery room. For as long as she could remember, Daniel had never left her side. When she was ten, the Allen empire collapsed into bankruptcy. Her parents took their own lives, leaving Hazel an orphan overnight. The Lewises had stepped in immediately to take her home. It was Daniel's care, his constant presence, that had pulled her out of the suffocating darkness of that grief. In the years she spent coming of age, she often felt she wasn't enough for him. She never dared to hope he could love her as a woman; she only wanted to be near him, even if it was just as the girl next door. But on her eighteenth birthday, in front of the city's high society, Daniel had formally asked her to be his. Looking into the heat in his eyes, Hazel hadn't hesitated to accept the red roses that symbolized his promise of forever. Tears had streamed down her face as she whispered in his ear, "Daniel, thank you for being my family. Just promise me... promise you'll never betray me. Don't ever leave me. I love you." Daniel had crushed her into a hug, his voice breaking. "Hazel, I swear on my life, I will never betray you. I will never leave you behind. I'll love you until the day I die." Throughout their relationship, he had been everything a man should be. Gentle, attentive, and devoted. But seven years of perfect loyalty were shattered. Hazel didn't doubt that his feelings had been real once, but "forever" was a fragile thing. If she hadn't stumbled upon the evidence of his affair, she might still believe she was the luckiest girl in the world. Daniel probably thought he'd covered his tracks. He forgot that while love is in the details, so is the end of it. His heart had become too crowded, and Hazel wouldn't—couldn't—stay to watch the fallout. Rather than suffer the agony of being abandoned all over again, she chose to be the one to walk away first. Hazel placed the surgical records for her terminated pregnancy into a luxury gift box. She wrapped it carefully and tucked a card on top. [To Daniel, on his 27th birthday.] ### Chapter 2 By the time Daniel finally got home, Hazel had already been discharged. She was sitting by the window, a book resting in her lap. "I'm so sorry, Hazel. Things were just insane on the trip. I caught the red-eye, but I still couldn't make it back in time for your birthday or our anniversary..." Daniel shed his suit jacket and walked over, pulling her into a tight hug. "I promise, this is the last time. From now on, I'm not missing a single milestone. I'll be there for everything." "Babe, don't be mad at me, okay?" Hazel felt a cold sneer forming in her chest. She closed her eyes, but the scent of Lydia's perfume clinging to his skin made her stomach churn. 「Taking Lydia on a business trip... I'm sure you were kept very busy.」 But none of it mattered anymore. Hazel gently pushed him away and met his eyes, her voice eerily calm. "It's fine." Daniel looked visibly relieved. He pulled a sleek black velvet box from his pocket and held it out to her. "Hazel, I got you something. I really hope you like it." She opened the box. Inside was a watch—a Patek Philippe Grandmaster Chime. A thirty-one-million-dollar masterpiece, one of only seven in existence. "Swiss watchmaking is all about precision. Every gear, every movement is perfectly aligned. Just like my heart—it's never skipped a beat for anyone but you." Hazel watched him with a blank expression, listening to the practiced ease of his lies. She turned around and picked up the gift box containing her surgical records and her breakup letter. She handed it over. "This is for your birthday." Daniel's face lit up with genuine surprise. He reached for the lid, eager to see what she'd chosen. Hazel stopped him. The sunlight hit her thin face, making her look fragile, almost ethereal. "Don't open it yet. Wait until your actual birthday. Next month." Daniel chuckled and ruffled her hair, his eyes full of doting affection. "Alright, whatever you want, Hazel. I'll wait. Thanks, babe!" As she watched his excitement, the smile didn't even come close to reaching her eyes. 「Daniel, I hope you remember exactly what you did to me that night when you finally open it. I wonder if you'll still be smiling then.」 *** The following day, the Lewises threw a lavish gala for Hazel at the largest estate in New York, inviting every major player in the city to make up for the missed birthday. The grounds were blanketed in red roses—Hazel's favorite. The ballroom floor was strewn with petals. Everywhere she looked, people were whispering about how much Daniel worshipped her. "Even if the Lewises took her in out of family loyalty, they wouldn't treat her like royalty if it weren't for Daniel. She's only this important because he's obsessed with her." "Tell me about it. Look at the way he looks at her. It's the exact same look he had when he confessed to her at eighteen." "It's been seven years, and they're still total goals. I'm literally crying." Hazel heard the comments, but she simply maintained a polite, distant smile for the sake of the family. She didn't say a word. The love between her and Daniel was exactly like those rose petals on the floor: beautiful at a glance, but already dying. Throughout the night, Daniel was the perfect partner. He intercepted every drink offered to her so she wouldn't get a headache. When people spoke to her, he stood by her side, listening intently and nodding at the right moments, perfectly happy to play the role of the devoted boyfriend. He held her bag, peeled her shrimp, and picked the bones out of her fish with meticulous care. Hazel realized then that Daniel was a natural-born actor. He was so convincing that she almost wondered if the affair had been a fever dream. "You two are truly the golden couple. So, when are we getting a wedding?" "Yeah, don't forget our invites! We've watched you two grow up together." Daniel squeezed Hazel's hand. "We won't forget. But before the wedding, I have to give Hazel the most spectacular proposal she's ever seen." Hazel stood beside him, her lips curved in a faint smile, but she was exhausted to her core. She suddenly remembered the first time she had attended a party as Daniel's girlfriend. Everyone had said the same things then—how they were the blueprint and how they were made for each other. Back then, Daniel had wrapped an arm around her shoulders and said proudly, "Of course we are. I must have hit the lottery to find a girl like Hazel. I'm not marrying anyone else in this lifetime." The younger Hazel had blushed and hidden her face against his chest. She had spent years dreaming about the moment he would finally get down on one knee, knowing she would say yes before he even finished the question. 「But now, Daniel, I'm done waiting.」 As the party wound down, Daniel led Hazel onto the stage. He opened a jewelry box and revealed a breathtaking, diamond-encrusted necklace. He stepped behind her to fasten it around her neck. "Happy birthday, Hazel." He leaned down and kissed her forehead. The room erupted in thunderous applause. Hazel looked down at the necklace, her gaze shifting slightly to the head table where Lydia was sitting. Lydia's face was dark, her eyes burning with a resentment that stood out sharply against the celebratory crowd. Hazel's lips twitched into a tiny, mocking smile. Lydia's expression crumbled. She gritted her teeth, turned, and walked out. No one else noticed the tension beneath the surface; the air was too thick with congratulations. Only Hazel knew the truth. Her love for Daniel had burned itself out, and they were finally at the end of the road. ### Chapter 3 The dinner service ended, and the dancing began. Daniel bowed to Hazel, offering his hand for the opening dance. Hazel hesitated for a heartbeat. She had no desire to humiliate the Lewises in front of their guests, so she started to reach out—but Lydia suddenly appeared, breathless. "Mr. Lewis, I'm so sorry to interrupt, but there's an emergency at the office. I'm afraid you have to go with me." Hearing this, Daniel straightened up instantly. Without even asking for details, he turned to Hazel with a look of practiced regret. "Hazel, I'm sorry. I have to go handle this. I'll be back to pick you up later tonight, okay?" Under the watchful eyes of the entire ballroom, Hazel slowly withdrew her hand. "Just go." As she watched the two of them hurry away together, a dull, throbbing ache filled her chest. Four months ago, Lydia had moved into the Lewis estate under the guise of being Daniel's distant, widowed cousin-in-law. The story was that her husband had died, leaving her with nothing, and the Lewises had taken her in out of the goodness of their hearts. At first, Hazel hadn't been suspicious of this sudden "family member" at all. She had even gone out of her way to make Lydia feel at home. Even when Lydia was hired as Daniel's personal secretary, Hazel simply chalked it up to the family's generosity. Until the relationship between Daniel and Lydia became too "close" to ignore. In the past, Hazel was never an option to Daniel; she was the only answer. But lately, she had started catching glimpses of hesitation in his eyes, as if he were struggling to make a choice. Eventually, the hesitation stopped. Now, he chose Lydia without a second thought. Hazel excused herself, claiming a headache, and retreated to a private room to rest. Meanwhile, Daniel and Lydia hurried into his private office. "Alright, what's so urgent?" "You didn't even ask me that on the drive over. I thought we were on the same wavelength." Lydia's eyes were heavy with suggestion as she stepped toward him, hooking a finger in his tie. Daniel frowned, grabbing her wrist. "I told you to stop playing games! Didn't you see we were celebrating Hazel's birthday?" "Daniel... don't be so mean to me. I'm three months along now. Haven't you missed me at all?" "Lydia..." "Didn't you say you always wanted to try it in the office?" Lydia shed her heavy coat, revealing a daring, skin-tight professional dress underneath. "Tell me, can she even satisfy you like this?" A predatory look swept over Daniel's face. He couldn't hold back any longer. He grabbed her by the waist and crushed his lips against hers. The fire ignited, then eventually burned out. When it was over, Daniel wiped the traces of Lydia's lipstick off his skin. He checked his phone; there were no messages from Hazel. His heart skipped a beat—a sudden, cold wave of unease. "Stay at my place tonight, please?" Daniel ignored her, buttoning his shirt and shaking off her hand. "I'll have the driver take you home. I need to go get Hazel." He didn't stay to watch Lydia's tearful pout. He just grabbed his keys and drove off. On the way back to the estate, he took a detour to pick up a box of peanut brittle from the most famous candy shop in the city. "Hazel? What happened? Your mom said you weren't feeling well." Daniel ran from the foyer all the way to her room, his face a mask of concern. "I'm fine." Hazel sat up in bed and shook her head. Daniel reached out and stroked her hair, his voice soothing as if he were comforting a child. "I bought your favorite peanut brittle. Just one bite? Then I'll take you home." It was from the century-old shop she loved. Since they were kids, Daniel would wait in massive lines just to make her smile, buying boxes of roasted chestnuts and peanut clusters. Hazel looked down. The scent of Lydia's perfume was all over him—thick, cloying, and making her stomach turn. 「Why? Why? We don't have much time left, and you couldn't even put in the effort to lie to me properly. Why?」 She pushed his hand away, her voice raspy. "I don't want it. Let's just go." 「Daniel, I only ever liked that candy because it came from you. But now, I've lost my taste for it.」 「And don't bother taking me home. The moment you betrayed me, I didn't have a home anymore.」
Chapter 1 "I'll sign the consent forms for the ectopic pregnancy surgery myself." Hazel called out to the nurse, her hand bruised from the IV drips. She gripped the pen, her fingers trembling as she scrawled her name. As they wheeled her into the OR, a single tear slipped down her cheek. She could no longer tell if taking that Plan B pill had been the right call or the biggest mistake of her life. During her recovery, Hazel booked a one-way ticket to Ireland, scheduled for a month out. She pulled up her phone. The headlines were still dominated by the "New York Golden Boy's Multi-Million Dollar Tribute to His Girlfriend." And Hazel was the woman at the center of that grand obsession. Three days ago, Daniel held a press conference. He bankrolled a space mission in seven years; a spacecraft was now carrying a vinyl record into the deep reaches of the universe. On that record was Daniel's confession to Hazel, set to play on a loop for eternity, making the entire cosmos a witness to his devotion. With the successful launch, the story of their long-term romance went viral. People were calling it the "Love Story of the Century." A dull ache throbbed in her abdomen as Hazel scrolled through the comments. [Is there anyone left who doesn't know Mr. Lewis and Miss Allen were childhood sweethearts? They've known each other for twenty-five years, and they're still this obsessed after seven years of dating... I'm actually sobbing.] [You guys only see the money he spends on her. Do you remember when Daniel took a bullet for her years ago? He was at a charity swim meet recently, and you could see the scar on his shoulder—it was only inches from his heart!] [I heard he didn't even blink before shielding her. I still have the paparazzi shot of him on the stretcher, white-knuckling her hand. I'm literally dying, they're soulmates.] [Literal goals. They're basically the blueprint.] From the stolen glances at galas to the grand, sweeping gestures—every headline served as proof that they loved each other more than life itself. Hazel's vision blurred. She wiped her eyes, feeling a bitter surge of irony. The Lewises and the Allens had been family friends for generations. When she was born, two-year-old Daniel had been waiting right outside the delivery room. For as long as she could remember, Daniel had never left her side. When she was ten, the Allen empire collapsed into bankruptcy. Her parents took their own lives, leaving Hazel an orphan overnight. The Lewises had stepped in immediately to take her home. It was Daniel's care, his constant presence, that had pulled her out of the suffocating darkness of that grief. In the years she spent coming of age, she often felt she wasn't enough for him. She never dared to hope he could love her as a woman; she only wanted to be near him, even if it was just as the girl next door. But on her eighteenth birthday, in front of the city's high society, Daniel had formally asked her to be his. Looking into the heat in his eyes, Hazel hadn't hesitated to accept the red roses that symbolized his promise of forever. Tears had streamed down her face as she whispered in his ear, "Daniel, thank you for being my family. Just promise me... promise you'll never betray me. Don't ever leave me. I love you." Daniel had crushed her into a hug, his voice breaking. "Hazel, I swear on my life, I will never betray you. I will never leave you behind. I'll love you until the day I die." Throughout their relationship, he had been everything a man should be. Gentle, attentive, and devoted. But seven years of perfect loyalty were shattered. Hazel didn't doubt that his feelings had been real once, but "forever" was a fragile thing. If she hadn't stumbled upon the evidence of his affair, she might still believe she was the luckiest girl in the world. Daniel probably thought he'd covered his tracks. He forgot that while love is in the details, so is the end of it. His heart had become too crowded, and Hazel wouldn't—couldn't—stay to watch the fallout. Rather than suffer the agony of being abandoned all over again, she chose to be the one to walk away first. Hazel placed the surgical records for her terminated pregnancy into a luxury gift box. She wrapped it carefully and tucked a card on top. [To Daniel, on his 27th birthday.] ### Chapter 2 By the time Daniel finally got home, Hazel had already been discharged. She was sitting by the window, a book resting in her lap. "I'm so sorry, Hazel. Things were just insane on the trip. I caught the red-eye, but I still couldn't make it back in time for your birthday or our anniversary..." Daniel shed his suit jacket and walked over, pulling her into a tight hug. "I promise, this is the last time. From now on, I'm not missing a single milestone. I'll be there for everything." "Babe, don't be mad at me, okay?" Hazel felt a cold sneer forming in her chest. She closed her eyes, but the scent of Lydia's perfume clinging to his skin made her stomach churn. 「Taking Lydia on a business trip... I'm sure you were kept very busy.」 But none of it mattered anymore. Hazel gently pushed him away and met his eyes, her voice eerily calm. "It's fine." Daniel looked visibly relieved. He pulled a sleek black velvet box from his pocket and held it out to her. "Hazel, I got you something. I really hope you like it." She opened the box. Inside was a watch—a Patek Philippe Grandmaster Chime. A thirty-one-million-dollar masterpiece, one of only seven in existence. "Swiss watchmaking is all about precision. Every gear, every movement is perfectly aligned. Just like my heart—it's never skipped a beat for anyone but you." Hazel watched him with a blank expression, listening to the practiced ease of his lies. She turned around and picked up the gift box containing her surgical records and her breakup letter. She handed it over. "This is for your birthday." Daniel's face lit up with genuine surprise. He reached for the lid, eager to see what she'd chosen. Hazel stopped him. The sunlight hit her thin face, making her look fragile, almost ethereal. "Don't open it yet. Wait until your actual birthday. Next month." Daniel chuckled and ruffled her hair, his eyes full of doting affection. "Alright, whatever you want, Hazel. I'll wait. Thanks, babe!" As she watched his excitement, the smile didn't even come close to reaching her eyes. 「Daniel, I hope you remember exactly what you did to me that night when you finally open it. I wonder if you'll still be smiling then.」 *** The following day, the Lewises threw a lavish gala for Hazel at the largest estate in New York, inviting every major player in the city to make up for the missed birthday. The grounds were blanketed in red roses—Hazel's favorite. The ballroom floor was strewn with petals. Everywhere she looked, people were whispering about how much Daniel worshipped her. "Even if the Lewises took her in out of family loyalty, they wouldn't treat her like royalty if it weren't for Daniel. She's only this important because he's obsessed with her." "Tell me about it. Look at the way he looks at her. It's the exact same look he had when he confessed to her at eighteen." "It's been seven years, and they're still total goals. I'm literally crying." Hazel heard the comments, but she simply maintained a polite, distant smile for the sake of the family. She didn't say a word. The love between her and Daniel was exactly like those rose petals on the floor: beautiful at a glance, but already dying. Throughout the night, Daniel was the perfect partner. He intercepted every drink offered to her so she wouldn't get a headache. When people spoke to her, he stood by her side, listening intently and nodding at the right moments, perfectly happy to play the role of the devoted boyfriend. He held her bag, peeled her shrimp, and picked the bones out of her fish with meticulous care. Hazel realized then that Daniel was a natural-born actor. He was so convincing that she almost wondered if the affair had been a fever dream. "You two are truly the golden couple. So, when are we getting a wedding?" "Yeah, don't forget our invites! We've watched you two grow up together." Daniel squeezed Hazel's hand. "We won't forget. But before the wedding, I have to give Hazel the most spectacular proposal she's ever seen." Hazel stood beside him, her lips curved in a faint smile, but she was exhausted to her core. She suddenly remembered the first time she had attended a party as Daniel's girlfriend. Everyone had said the same things then—how they were the blueprint and how they were made for each other. Back then, Daniel had wrapped an arm around her shoulders and said proudly, "Of course we are. I must have hit the lottery to find a girl like Hazel. I'm not marrying anyone else in this lifetime." The younger Hazel had blushed and hidden her face against his chest. She had spent years dreaming about the moment he would finally get down on one knee, knowing she would say yes before he even finished the question. 「But now, Daniel, I'm done waiting.」 As the party wound down, Daniel led Hazel onto the stage. He opened a jewelry box and revealed a breathtaking, diamond-encrusted necklace. He stepped behind her to fasten it around her neck. "Happy birthday, Hazel." He leaned down and kissed her forehead. The room erupted in thunderous applause. Hazel looked down at the necklace, her gaze shifting slightly to the head table where Lydia was sitting. Lydia's face was dark, her eyes burning with a resentment that stood out sharply against the celebratory crowd. Hazel's lips twitched into a tiny, mocking smile. Lydia's expression crumbled. She gritted her teeth, turned, and walked out. No one else noticed the tension beneath the surface; the air was too thick with congratulations. Only Hazel knew the truth. Her love for Daniel had burned itself out, and they were finally at the end of the road. ### Chapter 3 The dinner service ended, and the dancing began. Daniel bowed to Hazel, offering his hand for the opening dance. Hazel hesitated for a heartbeat. She had no desire to humiliate the Lewises in front of their guests, so she started to reach out—but Lydia suddenly appeared, breathless. "Mr. Lewis, I'm so sorry to interrupt, but there's an emergency at the office. I'm afraid you have to go with me." Hearing this, Daniel straightened up instantly. Without even asking for details, he turned to Hazel with a look of practiced regret. "Hazel, I'm sorry. I have to go handle this. I'll be back to pick you up later tonight, okay?" Under the watchful eyes of the entire ballroom, Hazel slowly withdrew her hand. "Just go." As she watched the two of them hurry away together, a dull, throbbing ache filled her chest. Four months ago, Lydia had moved into the Lewis estate under the guise of being Daniel's distant, widowed cousin-in-law. The story was that her husband had died, leaving her with nothing, and the Lewises had taken her in out of the goodness of their hearts. At first, Hazel hadn't been suspicious of this sudden "family member" at all. She had even gone out of her way to make Lydia feel at home. Even when Lydia was hired as Daniel's personal secretary, Hazel simply chalked it up to the family's generosity. Until the relationship between Daniel and Lydia became too "close" to ignore. In the past, Hazel was never an option to Daniel; she was the only answer. But lately, she had started catching glimpses of hesitation in his eyes, as if he were struggling to make a choice. Eventually, the hesitation stopped. Now, he chose Lydia without a second thought. Hazel excused herself, claiming a headache, and retreated to a private room to rest. Meanwhile, Daniel and Lydia hurried into his private office. "Alright, what's so urgent?" "You didn't even ask me that on the drive over. I thought we were on the same wavelength." Lydia's eyes were heavy with suggestion as she stepped toward him, hooking a finger in his tie. Daniel frowned, grabbing her wrist. "I told you to stop playing games! Didn't you see we were celebrating Hazel's birthday?" "Daniel... don't be so mean to me. I'm three months along now. Haven't you missed me at all?" "Lydia..." "Didn't you say you always wanted to try it in the office?" Lydia shed her heavy coat, revealing a daring, skin-tight professional dress underneath. "Tell me, can she even satisfy you like this?" A predatory look swept over Daniel's face. He couldn't hold back any longer. He grabbed her by the waist and crushed his lips against hers. The fire ignited, then eventually burned out. When it was over, Daniel wiped the traces of Lydia's lipstick off his skin. He checked his phone; there were no messages from Hazel. His heart skipped a beat—a sudden, cold wave of unease. "Stay at my place tonight, please?" Daniel ignored her, buttoning his shirt and shaking off her hand. "I'll have the driver take you home. I need to go get Hazel." He didn't stay to watch Lydia's tearful pout. He just grabbed his keys and drove off. On the way back to the estate, he took a detour to pick up a box of peanut brittle from the most famous candy shop in the city. "Hazel? What happened? Your mom said you weren't feeling well." Daniel ran from the foyer all the way to her room, his face a mask of concern. "I'm fine." Hazel sat up in bed and shook her head. Daniel reached out and stroked her hair, his voice soothing as if he were comforting a child. "I bought your favorite peanut brittle. Just one bite? Then I'll take you home." It was from the century-old shop she loved. Since they were kids, Daniel would wait in massive lines just to make her smile, buying boxes of roasted chestnuts and peanut clusters. Hazel looked down. The scent of Lydia's perfume was all over him—thick, cloying, and making her stomach turn. 「Why? Why? We don't have much time left, and you couldn't even put in the effort to lie to me properly. Why?」 She pushed his hand away, her voice raspy. "I don't want it. Let's just go." 「Daniel, I only ever liked that candy because it came from you. But now, I've lost my taste for it.」 「And don't bother taking me home. The moment you betrayed me, I didn't have a home anymore.」
Chapter 1 "I'll sign the consent forms for the ectopic pregnancy surgery myself." Hazel called out to the nurse, her hand bruised from the IV drips. She gripped the pen, her fingers trembling as she scrawled her name. As they wheeled her into the OR, a single tear slipped down her cheek. She could no longer tell if taking that Plan B pill had been the right call or the biggest mistake of her life. During her recovery, Hazel booked a one-way ticket to Ireland, scheduled for a month out. She pulled up her phone. The headlines were still dominated by the "New York Golden Boy's Multi-Million Dollar Tribute to His Girlfriend." And Hazel was the woman at the center of that grand obsession. Three days ago, Daniel held a press conference. He bankrolled a space mission in seven years; a spacecraft was now carrying a vinyl record into the deep reaches of the universe. On that record was Daniel's confession to Hazel, set to play on a loop for eternity, making the entire cosmos a witness to his devotion. With the successful launch, the story of their long-term romance went viral. People were calling it the "Love Story of the Century." A dull ache throbbed in her abdomen as Hazel scrolled through the comments. [Is there anyone left who doesn't know Mr. Lewis and Miss Allen were childhood sweethearts? They've known each other for twenty-five years, and they're still this obsessed after seven years of dating... I'm actually sobbing.] [You guys only see the money he spends on her. Do you remember when Daniel took a bullet for her years ago? He was at a charity swim meet recently, and you could see the scar on his shoulder—it was only inches from his heart!] [I heard he didn't even blink before shielding her. I still have the paparazzi shot of him on the stretcher, white-knuckling her hand. I'm literally dying, they're soulmates.] [Literal goals. They're basically the blueprint.] From the stolen glances at galas to the grand, sweeping gestures—every headline served as proof that they loved each other more than life itself. Hazel's vision blurred. She wiped her eyes, feeling a bitter surge of irony. The Lewises and the Allens had been family friends for generations. When she was born, two-year-old Daniel had been waiting right outside the delivery room. For as long as she could remember, Daniel had never left her side. When she was ten, the Allen empire collapsed into bankruptcy. Her parents took their own lives, leaving Hazel an orphan overnight. The Lewises had stepped in immediately to take her home. It was Daniel's care, his constant presence, that had pulled her out of the suffocating darkness of that grief. In the years she spent coming of age, she often felt she wasn't enough for him. She never dared to hope he could love her as a woman; she only wanted to be near him, even if it was just as the girl next door. But on her eighteenth birthday, in front of the city's high society, Daniel had formally asked her to be his. Looking into the heat in his eyes, Hazel hadn't hesitated to accept the red roses that symbolized his promise of forever. Tears had streamed down her face as she whispered in his ear, "Daniel, thank you for being my family. Just promise me... promise you'll never betray me. Don't ever leave me. I love you." Daniel had crushed her into a hug, his voice breaking. "Hazel, I swear on my life, I will never betray you. I will never leave you behind. I'll love you until the day I die." Throughout their relationship, he had been everything a man should be. Gentle, attentive, and devoted. But seven years of perfect loyalty were shattered. Hazel didn't doubt that his feelings had been real once, but "forever" was a fragile thing. If she hadn't stumbled upon the evidence of his affair, she might still believe she was the luckiest girl in the world. Daniel probably thought he'd covered his tracks. He forgot that while love is in the details, so is the end of it. His heart had become too crowded, and Hazel wouldn't—couldn't—stay to watch the fallout. Rather than suffer the agony of being abandoned all over again, she chose to be the one to walk away first. Hazel placed the surgical records for her terminated pregnancy into a luxury gift box. She wrapped it carefully and tucked a card on top. [To Daniel, on his 27th birthday.] ### Chapter 2 By the time Daniel finally got home, Hazel had already been discharged. She was sitting by the window, a book resting in her lap. "I'm so sorry, Hazel. Things were just insane on the trip. I caught the red-eye, but I still couldn't make it back in time for your birthday or our anniversary..." Daniel shed his suit jacket and walked over, pulling her into a tight hug. "I promise, this is the last time. From now on, I'm not missing a single milestone. I'll be there for everything." "Babe, don't be mad at me, okay?" Hazel felt a cold sneer forming in her chest. She closed her eyes, but the scent of Lydia's perfume clinging to his skin made her stomach churn. 「Taking Lydia on a business trip... I'm sure you were kept very busy.」 But none of it mattered anymore. Hazel gently pushed him away and met his eyes, her voice eerily calm. "It's fine." Daniel looked visibly relieved. He pulled a sleek black velvet box from his pocket and held it out to her. "Hazel, I got you something. I really hope you like it." She opened the box. Inside was a watch—a Patek Philippe Grandmaster Chime. A thirty-one-million-dollar masterpiece, one of only seven in existence. "Swiss watchmaking is all about precision. Every gear, every movement is perfectly aligned. Just like my heart—it's never skipped a beat for anyone but you." Hazel watched him with a blank expression, listening to the practiced ease of his lies. She turned around and picked up the gift box containing her surgical records and her breakup letter. She handed it over. "This is for your birthday." Daniel's face lit up with genuine surprise. He reached for the lid, eager to see what she'd chosen. Hazel stopped him. The sunlight hit her thin face, making her look fragile, almost ethereal. "Don't open it yet. Wait until your actual birthday. Next month." Daniel chuckled and ruffled her hair, his eyes full of doting affection. "Alright, whatever you want, Hazel. I'll wait. Thanks, babe!" As she watched his excitement, the smile didn't even come close to reaching her eyes. 「Daniel, I hope you remember exactly what you did to me that night when you finally open it. I wonder if you'll still be smiling then.」 *** The following day, the Lewises threw a lavish gala for Hazel at the largest estate in New York, inviting every major player in the city to make up for the missed birthday. The grounds were blanketed in red roses—Hazel's favorite. The ballroom floor was strewn with petals. Everywhere she looked, people were whispering about how much Daniel worshipped her. "Even if the Lewises took her in out of family loyalty, they wouldn't treat her like royalty if it weren't for Daniel. She's only this important because he's obsessed with her." "Tell me about it. Look at the way he looks at her. It's the exact same look he had when he confessed to her at eighteen." "It's been seven years, and they're still total goals. I'm literally crying." Hazel heard the comments, but she simply maintained a polite, distant smile for the sake of the family. She didn't say a word. The love between her and Daniel was exactly like those rose petals on the floor: beautiful at a glance, but already dying. Throughout the night, Daniel was the perfect partner. He intercepted every drink offered to her so she wouldn't get a headache. When people spoke to her, he stood by her side, listening intently and nodding at the right moments, perfectly happy to play the role of the devoted boyfriend. He held her bag, peeled her shrimp, and picked the bones out of her fish with meticulous care. Hazel realized then that Daniel was a natural-born actor. He was so convincing that she almost wondered if the affair had been a fever dream. "You two are truly the golden couple. So, when are we getting a wedding?" "Yeah, don't forget our invites! We've watched you two grow up together." Daniel squeezed Hazel's hand. "We won't forget. But before the wedding, I have to give Hazel the most spectacular proposal she's ever seen." Hazel stood beside him, her lips curved in a faint smile, but she was exhausted to her core. She suddenly remembered the first time she had attended a party as Daniel's girlfriend. Everyone had said the same things then—how they were the blueprint and how they were made for each other. Back then, Daniel had wrapped an arm around her shoulders and said proudly, "Of course we are. I must have hit the lottery to find a girl like Hazel. I'm not marrying anyone else in this lifetime." The younger Hazel had blushed and hidden her face against his chest. She had spent years dreaming about the moment he would finally get down on one knee, knowing she would say yes before he even finished the question. 「But now, Daniel, I'm done waiting.」 As the party wound down, Daniel led Hazel onto the stage. He opened a jewelry box and revealed a breathtaking, diamond-encrusted necklace. He stepped behind her to fasten it around her neck. "Happy birthday, Hazel." He leaned down and kissed her forehead. The room erupted in thunderous applause. Hazel looked down at the necklace, her gaze shifting slightly to the head table where Lydia was sitting. Lydia's face was dark, her eyes burning with a resentment that stood out sharply against the celebratory crowd. Hazel's lips twitched into a tiny, mocking smile. Lydia's expression crumbled. She gritted her teeth, turned, and walked out. No one else noticed the tension beneath the surface; the air was too thick with congratulations. Only Hazel knew the truth. Her love for Daniel had burned itself out, and they were finally at the end of the road. ### Chapter 3 The dinner service ended, and the dancing began. Daniel bowed to Hazel, offering his hand for the opening dance. Hazel hesitated for a heartbeat. She had no desire to humiliate the Lewises in front of their guests, so she started to reach out—but Lydia suddenly appeared, breathless. "Mr. Lewis, I'm so sorry to interrupt, but there's an emergency at the office. I'm afraid you have to go with me." Hearing this, Daniel straightened up instantly. Without even asking for details, he turned to Hazel with a look of practiced regret. "Hazel, I'm sorry. I have to go handle this. I'll be back to pick you up later tonight, okay?" Under the watchful eyes of the entire ballroom, Hazel slowly withdrew her hand. "Just go." As she watched the two of them hurry away together, a dull, throbbing ache filled her chest. Four months ago, Lydia had moved into the Lewis estate under the guise of being Daniel's distant, widowed cousin-in-law. The story was that her husband had died, leaving her with nothing, and the Lewises had taken her in out of the goodness of their hearts. At first, Hazel hadn't been suspicious of this sudden "family member" at all. She had even gone out of her way to make Lydia feel at home. Even when Lydia was hired as Daniel's personal secretary, Hazel simply chalked it up to the family's generosity. Until the relationship between Daniel and Lydia became too "close" to ignore. In the past, Hazel was never an option to Daniel; she was the only answer. But lately, she had started catching glimpses of hesitation in his eyes, as if he were struggling to make a choice. Eventually, the hesitation stopped. Now, he chose Lydia without a second thought. Hazel excused herself, claiming a headache, and retreated to a private room to rest. Meanwhile, Daniel and Lydia hurried into his private office. "Alright, what's so urgent?" "You didn't even ask me that on the drive over. I thought we were on the same wavelength." Lydia's eyes were heavy with suggestion as she stepped toward him, hooking a finger in his tie. Daniel frowned, grabbing her wrist. "I told you to stop playing games! Didn't you see we were celebrating Hazel's birthday?" "Daniel... don't be so mean to me. I'm three months along now. Haven't you missed me at all?" "Lydia..." "Didn't you say you always wanted to try it in the office?" Lydia shed her heavy coat, revealing a daring, skin-tight professional dress underneath. "Tell me, can she even satisfy you like this?" A predatory look swept over Daniel's face. He couldn't hold back any longer. He grabbed her by the waist and crushed his lips against hers. The fire ignited, then eventually burned out. When it was over, Daniel wiped the traces of Lydia's lipstick off his skin. He checked his phone; there were no messages from Hazel. His heart skipped a beat—a sudden, cold wave of unease. "Stay at my place tonight, please?" Daniel ignored her, buttoning his shirt and shaking off her hand. "I'll have the driver take you home. I need to go get Hazel." He didn't stay to watch Lydia's tearful pout. He just grabbed his keys and drove off. On the way back to the estate, he took a detour to pick up a box of peanut brittle from the most famous candy shop in the city. "Hazel? What happened? Your mom said you weren't feeling well." Daniel ran from the foyer all the way to her room, his face a mask of concern. "I'm fine." Hazel sat up in bed and shook her head. Daniel reached out and stroked her hair, his voice soothing as if he were comforting a child. "I bought your favorite peanut brittle. Just one bite? Then I'll take you home." It was from the century-old shop she loved. Since they were kids, Daniel would wait in massive lines just to make her smile, buying boxes of roasted chestnuts and peanut clusters. Hazel looked down. The scent of Lydia's perfume was all over him—thick, cloying, and making her stomach turn. 「Why? Why? We don't have much time left, and you couldn't even put in the effort to lie to me properly. Why?」 She pushed his hand away, her voice raspy. "I don't want it. Let's just go." 「Daniel, I only ever liked that candy because it came from you. But now, I've lost my taste for it.」 「And don't bother taking me home. The moment you betrayed me, I didn't have a home anymore.」
Chapter 1 "I'll sign the consent forms for the ectopic pregnancy surgery myself." Hazel called out to the nurse, her hand bruised from the IV drips. She gripped the pen, her fingers trembling as she scrawled her name. As they wheeled her into the OR, a single tear slipped down her cheek. She could no longer tell if taking that Plan B pill had been the right call or the biggest mistake of her life. During her recovery, Hazel booked a one-way ticket to Ireland, scheduled for a month out. She pulled up her phone. The headlines were still dominated by the "New York Golden Boy's Multi-Million Dollar Tribute to His Girlfriend." And Hazel was the woman at the center of that grand obsession. Three days ago, Daniel held a press conference. He bankrolled a space mission in seven years; a spacecraft was now carrying a vinyl record into the deep reaches of the universe. On that record was Daniel's confession to Hazel, set to play on a loop for eternity, making the entire cosmos a witness to his devotion. With the successful launch, the story of their long-term romance went viral. People were calling it the "Love Story of the Century." A dull ache throbbed in her abdomen as Hazel scrolled through the comments. [Is there anyone left who doesn't know Mr. Lewis and Miss Allen were childhood sweethearts? They've known each other for twenty-five years, and they're still this obsessed after seven years of dating... I'm actually sobbing.] [You guys only see the money he spends on her. Do you remember when Daniel took a bullet for her years ago? He was at a charity swim meet recently, and you could see the scar on his shoulder—it was only inches from his heart!] [I heard he didn't even blink before shielding her. I still have the paparazzi shot of him on the stretcher, white-knuckling her hand. I'm literally dying, they're soulmates.] [Literal goals. They're basically the blueprint.] From the stolen glances at galas to the grand, sweeping gestures—every headline served as proof that they loved each other more than life itself. Hazel's vision blurred. She wiped her eyes, feeling a bitter surge of irony. The Lewises and the Allens had been family friends for generations. When she was born, two-year-old Daniel had been waiting right outside the delivery room. For as long as she could remember, Daniel had never left her side. When she was ten, the Allen empire collapsed into bankruptcy. Her parents took their own lives, leaving Hazel an orphan overnight. The Lewises had stepped in immediately to take her home. It was Daniel's care, his constant presence, that had pulled her out of the suffocating darkness of that grief. In the years she spent coming of age, she often felt she wasn't enough for him. She never dared to hope he could love her as a woman; she only wanted to be near him, even if it was just as the girl next door. But on her eighteenth birthday, in front of the city's high society, Daniel had formally asked her to be his. Looking into the heat in his eyes, Hazel hadn't hesitated to accept the red roses that symbolized his promise of forever. Tears had streamed down her face as she whispered in his ear, "Daniel, thank you for being my family. Just promise me... promise you'll never betray me. Don't ever leave me. I love you." Daniel had crushed her into a hug, his voice breaking. "Hazel, I swear on my life, I will never betray you. I will never leave you behind. I'll love you until the day I die." Throughout their relationship, he had been everything a man should be. Gentle, attentive, and devoted. But seven years of perfect loyalty were shattered. Hazel didn't doubt that his feelings had been real once, but "forever" was a fragile thing. If she hadn't stumbled upon the evidence of his affair, she might still believe she was the luckiest girl in the world. Daniel probably thought he'd covered his tracks. He forgot that while love is in the details, so is the end of it. His heart had become too crowded, and Hazel wouldn't—couldn't—stay to watch the fallout. Rather than suffer the agony of being abandoned all over again, she chose to be the one to walk away first. Hazel placed the surgical records for her terminated pregnancy into a luxury gift box. She wrapped it carefully and tucked a card on top. [To Daniel, on his 27th birthday.] ### Chapter 2 By the time Daniel finally got home, Hazel had already been discharged. She was sitting by the window, a book resting in her lap. "I'm so sorry, Hazel. Things were just insane on the trip. I caught the red-eye, but I still couldn't make it back in time for your birthday or our anniversary..." Daniel shed his suit jacket and walked over, pulling her into a tight hug. "I promise, this is the last time. From now on, I'm not missing a single milestone. I'll be there for everything." "Babe, don't be mad at me, okay?" Hazel felt a cold sneer forming in her chest. She closed her eyes, but the scent of Lydia's perfume clinging to his skin made her stomach churn. 「Taking Lydia on a business trip... I'm sure you were kept very busy.」 But none of it mattered anymore. Hazel gently pushed him away and met his eyes, her voice eerily calm. "It's fine." Daniel looked visibly relieved. He pulled a sleek black velvet box from his pocket and held it out to her. "Hazel, I got you something. I really hope you like it." She opened the box. Inside was a watch—a Patek Philippe Grandmaster Chime. A thirty-one-million-dollar masterpiece, one of only seven in existence. "Swiss watchmaking is all about precision. Every gear, every movement is perfectly aligned. Just like my heart—it's never skipped a beat for anyone but you." Hazel watched him with a blank expression, listening to the practiced ease of his lies. She turned around and picked up the gift box containing her surgical records and her breakup letter. She handed it over. "This is for your birthday." Daniel's face lit up with genuine surprise. He reached for the lid, eager to see what she'd chosen. Hazel stopped him. The sunlight hit her thin face, making her look fragile, almost ethereal. "Don't open it yet. Wait until your actual birthday. Next month." Daniel chuckled and ruffled her hair, his eyes full of doting affection. "Alright, whatever you want, Hazel. I'll wait. Thanks, babe!" As she watched his excitement, the smile didn't even come close to reaching her eyes. 「Daniel, I hope you remember exactly what you did to me that night when you finally open it. I wonder if you'll still be smiling then.」 *** The following day, the Lewises threw a lavish gala for Hazel at the largest estate in New York, inviting every major player in the city to make up for the missed birthday. The grounds were blanketed in red roses—Hazel's favorite. The ballroom floor was strewn with petals. Everywhere she looked, people were whispering about how much Daniel worshipped her. "Even if the Lewises took her in out of family loyalty, they wouldn't treat her like royalty if it weren't for Daniel. She's only this important because he's obsessed with her." "Tell me about it. Look at the way he looks at her. It's the exact same look he had when he confessed to her at eighteen." "It's been seven years, and they're still total goals. I'm literally crying." Hazel heard the comments, but she simply maintained a polite, distant smile for the sake of the family. She didn't say a word. The love between her and Daniel was exactly like those rose petals on the floor: beautiful at a glance, but already dying. Throughout the night, Daniel was the perfect partner. He intercepted every drink offered to her so she wouldn't get a headache. When people spoke to her, he stood by her side, listening intently and nodding at the right moments, perfectly happy to play the role of the devoted boyfriend. He held her bag, peeled her shrimp, and picked the bones out of her fish with meticulous care. Hazel realized then that Daniel was a natural-born actor. He was so convincing that she almost wondered if the affair had been a fever dream. "You two are truly the golden couple. So, when are we getting a wedding?" "Yeah, don't forget our invites! We've watched you two grow up together." Daniel squeezed Hazel's hand. "We won't forget. But before the wedding, I have to give Hazel the most spectacular proposal she's ever seen." Hazel stood beside him, her lips curved in a faint smile, but she was exhausted to her core. She suddenly remembered the first time she had attended a party as Daniel's girlfriend. Everyone had said the same things then—how they were the blueprint and how they were made for each other. Back then, Daniel had wrapped an arm around her shoulders and said proudly, "Of course we are. I must have hit the lottery to find a girl like Hazel. I'm not marrying anyone else in this lifetime." The younger Hazel had blushed and hidden her face against his chest. She had spent years dreaming about the moment he would finally get down on one knee, knowing she would say yes before he even finished the question. 「But now, Daniel, I'm done waiting.」 As the party wound down, Daniel led Hazel onto the stage. He opened a jewelry box and revealed a breathtaking, diamond-encrusted necklace. He stepped behind her to fasten it around her neck. "Happy birthday, Hazel." He leaned down and kissed her forehead. The room erupted in thunderous applause. Hazel looked down at the necklace, her gaze shifting slightly to the head table where Lydia was sitting. Lydia's face was dark, her eyes burning with a resentment that stood out sharply against the celebratory crowd. Hazel's lips twitched into a tiny, mocking smile. Lydia's expression crumbled. She gritted her teeth, turned, and walked out. No one else noticed the tension beneath the surface; the air was too thick with congratulations. Only Hazel knew the truth. Her love for Daniel had burned itself out, and they were finally at the end of the road. ### Chapter 3 The dinner service ended, and the dancing began. Daniel bowed to Hazel, offering his hand for the opening dance. Hazel hesitated for a heartbeat. She had no desire to humiliate the Lewises in front of their guests, so she started to reach out—but Lydia suddenly appeared, breathless. "Mr. Lewis, I'm so sorry to interrupt, but there's an emergency at the office. I'm afraid you have to go with me." Hearing this, Daniel straightened up instantly. Without even asking for details, he turned to Hazel with a look of practiced regret. "Hazel, I'm sorry. I have to go handle this. I'll be back to pick you up later tonight, okay?" Under the watchful eyes of the entire ballroom, Hazel slowly withdrew her hand. "Just go." As she watched the two of them hurry away together, a dull, throbbing ache filled her chest. Four months ago, Lydia had moved into the Lewis estate under the guise of being Daniel's distant, widowed cousin-in-law. The story was that her husband had died, leaving her with nothing, and the Lewises had taken her in out of the goodness of their hearts. At first, Hazel hadn't been suspicious of this sudden "family member" at all. She had even gone out of her way to make Lydia feel at home. Even when Lydia was hired as Daniel's personal secretary, Hazel simply chalked it up to the family's generosity. Until the relationship between Daniel and Lydia became too "close" to ignore. In the past, Hazel was never an option to Daniel; she was the only answer. But lately, she had started catching glimpses of hesitation in his eyes, as if he were struggling to make a choice. Eventually, the hesitation stopped. Now, he chose Lydia without a second thought. Hazel excused herself, claiming a headache, and retreated to a private room to rest. Meanwhile, Daniel and Lydia hurried into his private office. "Alright, what's so urgent?" "You didn't even ask me that on the drive over. I thought we were on the same wavelength." Lydia's eyes were heavy with suggestion as she stepped toward him, hooking a finger in his tie. Daniel frowned, grabbing her wrist. "I told you to stop playing games! Didn't you see we were celebrating Hazel's birthday?" "Daniel... don't be so mean to me. I'm three months along now. Haven't you missed me at all?" "Lydia..." "Didn't you say you always wanted to try it in the office?" Lydia shed her heavy coat, revealing a daring, skin-tight professional dress underneath. "Tell me, can she even satisfy you like this?" A predatory look swept over Daniel's face. He couldn't hold back any longer. He grabbed her by the waist and crushed his lips against hers. The fire ignited, then eventually burned out. When it was over, Daniel wiped the traces of Lydia's lipstick off his skin. He checked his phone; there were no messages from Hazel. His heart skipped a beat—a sudden, cold wave of unease. "Stay at my place tonight, please?" Daniel ignored her, buttoning his shirt and shaking off her hand. "I'll have the driver take you home. I need to go get Hazel." He didn't stay to watch Lydia's tearful pout. He just grabbed his keys and drove off. On the way back to the estate, he took a detour to pick up a box of peanut brittle from the most famous candy shop in the city. "Hazel? What happened? Your mom said you weren't feeling well." Daniel ran from the foyer all the way to her room, his face a mask of concern. "I'm fine." Hazel sat up in bed and shook her head. Daniel reached out and stroked her hair, his voice soothing as if he were comforting a child. "I bought your favorite peanut brittle. Just one bite? Then I'll take you home." It was from the century-old shop she loved. Since they were kids, Daniel would wait in massive lines just to make her smile, buying boxes of roasted chestnuts and peanut clusters. Hazel looked down. The scent of Lydia's perfume was all over him—thick, cloying, and making her stomach turn. 「Why? Why? We don't have much time left, and you couldn't even put in the effort to lie to me properly. Why?」 She pushed his hand away, her voice raspy. "I don't want it. Let's just go." 「Daniel, I only ever liked that candy because it came from you. But now, I've lost my taste for it.」 「And don't bother taking me home. The moment you betrayed me, I didn't have a home anymore.」
Chapter 1 "I'll sign the consent forms for the ectopic pregnancy surgery myself." Hazel called out to the nurse, her hand bruised from the IV drips. She gripped the pen, her fingers trembling as she scrawled her name. As they wheeled her into the OR, a single tear slipped down her cheek. She could no longer tell if taking that Plan B pill had been the right call or the biggest mistake of her life. During her recovery, Hazel booked a one-way ticket to Ireland, scheduled for a month out. She pulled up her phone. The headlines were still dominated by the "New York Golden Boy's Multi-Million Dollar Tribute to His Girlfriend." And Hazel was the woman at the center of that grand obsession. Three days ago, Daniel held a press conference. He bankrolled a space mission in seven years; a spacecraft was now carrying a vinyl record into the deep reaches of the universe. On that record was Daniel's confession to Hazel, set to play on a loop for eternity, making the entire cosmos a witness to his devotion. With the successful launch, the story of their long-term romance went viral. People were calling it the "Love Story of the Century." A dull ache throbbed in her abdomen as Hazel scrolled through the comments. [Is there anyone left who doesn't know Mr. Lewis and Miss Allen were childhood sweethearts? They've known each other for twenty-five years, and they're still this obsessed after seven years of dating... I'm actually sobbing.] [You guys only see the money he spends on her. Do you remember when Daniel took a bullet for her years ago? He was at a charity swim meet recently, and you could see the scar on his shoulder—it was only inches from his heart!] [I heard he didn't even blink before shielding her. I still have the paparazzi shot of him on the stretcher, white-knuckling her hand. I'm literally dying, they're soulmates.] [Literal goals. They're basically the blueprint.] From the stolen glances at galas to the grand, sweeping gestures—every headline served as proof that they loved each other more than life itself. Hazel's vision blurred. She wiped her eyes, feeling a bitter surge of irony. The Lewises and the Allens had been family friends for generations. When she was born, two-year-old Daniel had been waiting right outside the delivery room. For as long as she could remember, Daniel had never left her side. When she was ten, the Allen empire collapsed into bankruptcy. Her parents took their own lives, leaving Hazel an orphan overnight. The Lewises had stepped in immediately to take her home. It was Daniel's care, his constant presence, that had pulled her out of the suffocating darkness of that grief. In the years she spent coming of age, she often felt she wasn't enough for him. She never dared to hope he could love her as a woman; she only wanted to be near him, even if it was just as the girl next door. But on her eighteenth birthday, in front of the city's high society, Daniel had formally asked her to be his. Looking into the heat in his eyes, Hazel hadn't hesitated to accept the red roses that symbolized his promise of forever. Tears had streamed down her face as she whispered in his ear, "Daniel, thank you for being my family. Just promise me... promise you'll never betray me. Don't ever leave me. I love you." Daniel had crushed her into a hug, his voice breaking. "Hazel, I swear on my life, I will never betray you. I will never leave you behind. I'll love you until the day I die." Throughout their relationship, he had been everything a man should be. Gentle, attentive, and devoted. But seven years of perfect loyalty were shattered. Hazel didn't doubt that his feelings had been real once, but "forever" was a fragile thing. If she hadn't stumbled upon the evidence of his affair, she might still believe she was the luckiest girl in the world. Daniel probably thought he'd covered his tracks. He forgot that while love is in the details, so is the end of it. His heart had become too crowded, and Hazel wouldn't—couldn't—stay to watch the fallout. Rather than suffer the agony of being abandoned all over again, she chose to be the one to walk away first. Hazel placed the surgical records for her terminated pregnancy into a luxury gift box. She wrapped it carefully and tucked a card on top. [To Daniel, on his 27th birthday.] ### Chapter 2 By the time Daniel finally got home, Hazel had already been discharged. She was sitting by the window, a book resting in her lap. "I'm so sorry, Hazel. Things were just insane on the trip. I caught the red-eye, but I still couldn't make it back in time for your birthday or our anniversary..." Daniel shed his suit jacket and walked over, pulling her into a tight hug. "I promise, this is the last time. From now on, I'm not missing a single milestone. I'll be there for everything." "Babe, don't be mad at me, okay?" Hazel felt a cold sneer forming in her chest. She closed her eyes, but the scent of Lydia's perfume clinging to his skin made her stomach churn. 「Taking Lydia on a business trip... I'm sure you were kept very busy.」 But none of it mattered anymore. Hazel gently pushed him away and met his eyes, her voice eerily calm. "It's fine." Daniel looked visibly relieved. He pulled a sleek black velvet box from his pocket and held it out to her. "Hazel, I got you something. I really hope you like it." She opened the box. Inside was a watch—a Patek Philippe Grandmaster Chime. A thirty-one-million-dollar masterpiece, one of only seven in existence. "Swiss watchmaking is all about precision. Every gear, every movement is perfectly aligned. Just like my heart—it's never skipped a beat for anyone but you." Hazel watched him with a blank expression, listening to the practiced ease of his lies. She turned around and picked up the gift box containing her surgical records and her breakup letter. She handed it over. "This is for your birthday." Daniel's face lit up with genuine surprise. He reached for the lid, eager to see what she'd chosen. Hazel stopped him. The sunlight hit her thin face, making her look fragile, almost ethereal. "Don't open it yet. Wait until your actual birthday. Next month." Daniel chuckled and ruffled her hair, his eyes full of doting affection. "Alright, whatever you want, Hazel. I'll wait. Thanks, babe!" As she watched his excitement, the smile didn't even come close to reaching her eyes. 「Daniel, I hope you remember exactly what you did to me that night when you finally open it. I wonder if you'll still be smiling then.」 *** The following day, the Lewises threw a lavish gala for Hazel at the largest estate in New York, inviting every major player in the city to make up for the missed birthday. The grounds were blanketed in red roses—Hazel's favorite. The ballroom floor was strewn with petals. Everywhere she looked, people were whispering about how much Daniel worshipped her. "Even if the Lewises took her in out of family loyalty, they wouldn't treat her like royalty if it weren't for Daniel. She's only this important because he's obsessed with her." "Tell me about it. Look at the way he looks at her. It's the exact same look he had when he confessed to her at eighteen." "It's been seven years, and they're still total goals. I'm literally crying." Hazel heard the comments, but she simply maintained a polite, distant smile for the sake of the family. She didn't say a word. The love between her and Daniel was exactly like those rose petals on the floor: beautiful at a glance, but already dying. Throughout the night, Daniel was the perfect partner. He intercepted every drink offered to her so she wouldn't get a headache. When people spoke to her, he stood by her side, listening intently and nodding at the right moments, perfectly happy to play the role of the devoted boyfriend. He held her bag, peeled her shrimp, and picked the bones out of her fish with meticulous care. Hazel realized then that Daniel was a natural-born actor. He was so convincing that she almost wondered if the affair had been a fever dream. "You two are truly the golden couple. So, when are we getting a wedding?" "Yeah, don't forget our invites! We've watched you two grow up together." Daniel squeezed Hazel's hand. "We won't forget. But before the wedding, I have to give Hazel the most spectacular proposal she's ever seen." Hazel stood beside him, her lips curved in a faint smile, but she was exhausted to her core. She suddenly remembered the first time she had attended a party as Daniel's girlfriend. Everyone had said the same things then—how they were the blueprint and how they were made for each other. Back then, Daniel had wrapped an arm around her shoulders and said proudly, "Of course we are. I must have hit the lottery to find a girl like Hazel. I'm not marrying anyone else in this lifetime." The younger Hazel had blushed and hidden her face against his chest. She had spent years dreaming about the moment he would finally get down on one knee, knowing she would say yes before he even finished the question. 「But now, Daniel, I'm done waiting.」 As the party wound down, Daniel led Hazel onto the stage. He opened a jewelry box and revealed a breathtaking, diamond-encrusted necklace. He stepped behind her to fasten it around her neck. "Happy birthday, Hazel." He leaned down and kissed her forehead. The room erupted in thunderous applause. Hazel looked down at the necklace, her gaze shifting slightly to the head table where Lydia was sitting. Lydia's face was dark, her eyes burning with a resentment that stood out sharply against the celebratory crowd. Hazel's lips twitched into a tiny, mocking smile. Lydia's expression crumbled. She gritted her teeth, turned, and walked out. No one else noticed the tension beneath the surface; the air was too thick with congratulations. Only Hazel knew the truth. Her love for Daniel had burned itself out, and they were finally at the end of the road. ### Chapter 3 The dinner service ended, and the dancing began. Daniel bowed to Hazel, offering his hand for the opening dance. Hazel hesitated for a heartbeat. She had no desire to humiliate the Lewises in front of their guests, so she started to reach out—but Lydia suddenly appeared, breathless. "Mr. Lewis, I'm so sorry to interrupt, but there's an emergency at the office. I'm afraid you have to go with me." Hearing this, Daniel straightened up instantly. Without even asking for details, he turned to Hazel with a look of practiced regret. "Hazel, I'm sorry. I have to go handle this. I'll be back to pick you up later tonight, okay?" Under the watchful eyes of the entire ballroom, Hazel slowly withdrew her hand. "Just go." As she watched the two of them hurry away together, a dull, throbbing ache filled her chest. Four months ago, Lydia had moved into the Lewis estate under the guise of being Daniel's distant, widowed cousin-in-law. The story was that her husband had died, leaving her with nothing, and the Lewises had taken her in out of the goodness of their hearts. At first, Hazel hadn't been suspicious of this sudden "family member" at all. She had even gone out of her way to make Lydia feel at home. Even when Lydia was hired as Daniel's personal secretary, Hazel simply chalked it up to the family's generosity. Until the relationship between Daniel and Lydia became too "close" to ignore. In the past, Hazel was never an option to Daniel; she was the only answer. But lately, she had started catching glimpses of hesitation in his eyes, as if he were struggling to make a choice. Eventually, the hesitation stopped. Now, he chose Lydia without a second thought. Hazel excused herself, claiming a headache, and retreated to a private room to rest. Meanwhile, Daniel and Lydia hurried into his private office. "Alright, what's so urgent?" "You didn't even ask me that on the drive over. I thought we were on the same wavelength." Lydia's eyes were heavy with suggestion as she stepped toward him, hooking a finger in his tie. Daniel frowned, grabbing her wrist. "I told you to stop playing games! Didn't you see we were celebrating Hazel's birthday?" "Daniel... don't be so mean to me. I'm three months along now. Haven't you missed me at all?" "Lydia..." "Didn't you say you always wanted to try it in the office?" Lydia shed her heavy coat, revealing a daring, skin-tight professional dress underneath. "Tell me, can she even satisfy you like this?" A predatory look swept over Daniel's face. He couldn't hold back any longer. He grabbed her by the waist and crushed his lips against hers. The fire ignited, then eventually burned out. When it was over, Daniel wiped the traces of Lydia's lipstick off his skin. He checked his phone; there were no messages from Hazel. His heart skipped a beat—a sudden, cold wave of unease. "Stay at my place tonight, please?" Daniel ignored her, buttoning his shirt and shaking off her hand. "I'll have the driver take you home. I need to go get Hazel." He didn't stay to watch Lydia's tearful pout. He just grabbed his keys and drove off. On the way back to the estate, he took a detour to pick up a box of peanut brittle from the most famous candy shop in the city. "Hazel? What happened? Your mom said you weren't feeling well." Daniel ran from the foyer all the way to her room, his face a mask of concern. "I'm fine." Hazel sat up in bed and shook her head. Daniel reached out and stroked her hair, his voice soothing as if he were comforting a child. "I bought your favorite peanut brittle. Just one bite? Then I'll take you home." It was from the century-old shop she loved. Since they were kids, Daniel would wait in massive lines just to make her smile, buying boxes of roasted chestnuts and peanut clusters. Hazel looked down. The scent of Lydia's perfume was all over him—thick, cloying, and making her stomach turn. 「Why? Why? We don't have much time left, and you couldn't even put in the effort to lie to me properly. Why?」 She pushed his hand away, her voice raspy. "I don't want it. Let's just go." 「Daniel, I only ever liked that candy because it came from you. But now, I've lost my taste for it.」 「And don't bother taking me home. The moment you betrayed me, I didn't have a home anymore.」
Chapter 1 "I'll sign the consent forms for the ectopic pregnancy surgery myself." Hazel called out to the nurse, her hand bruised from the IV drips. She gripped the pen, her fingers trembling as she scrawled her name. As they wheeled her into the OR, a single tear slipped down her cheek. She could no longer tell if taking that Plan B pill had been the right call or the biggest mistake of her life. During her recovery, Hazel booked a one-way ticket to Ireland, scheduled for a month out. She pulled up her phone. The headlines were still dominated by the "New York Golden Boy's Multi-Million Dollar Tribute to His Girlfriend." And Hazel was the woman at the center of that grand obsession. Three days ago, Daniel held a press conference. He bankrolled a space mission in seven years; a spacecraft was now carrying a vinyl record into the deep reaches of the universe. On that record was Daniel's confession to Hazel, set to play on a loop for eternity, making the entire cosmos a witness to his devotion. With the successful launch, the story of their long-term romance went viral. People were calling it the "Love Story of the Century." A dull ache throbbed in her abdomen as Hazel scrolled through the comments. [Is there anyone left who doesn't know Mr. Lewis and Miss Allen were childhood sweethearts? They've known each other for twenty-five years, and they're still this obsessed after seven years of dating... I'm actually sobbing.] [You guys only see the money he spends on her. Do you remember when Daniel took a bullet for her years ago? He was at a charity swim meet recently, and you could see the scar on his shoulder—it was only inches from his heart!] [I heard he didn't even blink before shielding her. I still have the paparazzi shot of him on the stretcher, white-knuckling her hand. I'm literally dying, they're soulmates.] [Literal goals. They're basically the blueprint.] From the stolen glances at galas to the grand, sweeping gestures—every headline served as proof that they loved each other more than life itself. Hazel's vision blurred. She wiped her eyes, feeling a bitter surge of irony. The Lewises and the Allens had been family friends for generations. When she was born, two-year-old Daniel had been waiting right outside the delivery room. For as long as she could remember, Daniel had never left her side. When she was ten, the Allen empire collapsed into bankruptcy. Her parents took their own lives, leaving Hazel an orphan overnight. The Lewises had stepped in immediately to take her home. It was Daniel's care, his constant presence, that had pulled her out of the suffocating darkness of that grief. In the years she spent coming of age, she often felt she wasn't enough for him. She never dared to hope he could love her as a woman; she only wanted to be near him, even if it was just as the girl next door. But on her eighteenth birthday, in front of the city's high society, Daniel had formally asked her to be his. Looking into the heat in his eyes, Hazel hadn't hesitated to accept the red roses that symbolized his promise of forever. Tears had streamed down her face as she whispered in his ear, "Daniel, thank you for being my family. Just promise me... promise you'll never betray me. Don't ever leave me. I love you." Daniel had crushed her into a hug, his voice breaking. "Hazel, I swear on my life, I will never betray you. I will never leave you behind. I'll love you until the day I die." Throughout their relationship, he had been everything a man should be. Gentle, attentive, and devoted. But seven years of perfect loyalty were shattered. Hazel didn't doubt that his feelings had been real once, but "forever" was a fragile thing. If she hadn't stumbled upon the evidence of his affair, she might still believe she was the luckiest girl in the world. Daniel probably thought he'd covered his tracks. He forgot that while love is in the details, so is the end of it. His heart had become too crowded, and Hazel wouldn't—couldn't—stay to watch the fallout. Rather than suffer the agony of being abandoned all over again, she chose to be the one to walk away first. Hazel placed the surgical records for her terminated pregnancy into a luxury gift box. She wrapped it carefully and tucked a card on top. [To Daniel, on his 27th birthday.] ### Chapter 2 By the time Daniel finally got home, Hazel had already been discharged. She was sitting by the window, a book resting in her lap. "I'm so sorry, Hazel. Things were just insane on the trip. I caught the red-eye, but I still couldn't make it back in time for your birthday or our anniversary..." Daniel shed his suit jacket and walked over, pulling her into a tight hug. "I promise, this is the last time. From now on, I'm not missing a single milestone. I'll be there for everything." "Babe, don't be mad at me, okay?" Hazel felt a cold sneer forming in her chest. She closed her eyes, but the scent of Lydia's perfume clinging to his skin made her stomach churn. 「Taking Lydia on a business trip... I'm sure you were kept very busy.」 But none of it mattered anymore. Hazel gently pushed him away and met his eyes, her voice eerily calm. "It's fine." Daniel looked visibly relieved. He pulled a sleek black velvet box from his pocket and held it out to her. "Hazel, I got you something. I really hope you like it." She opened the box. Inside was a watch—a Patek Philippe Grandmaster Chime. A thirty-one-million-dollar masterpiece, one of only seven in existence. "Swiss watchmaking is all about precision. Every gear, every movement is perfectly aligned. Just like my heart—it's never skipped a beat for anyone but you." Hazel watched him with a blank expression, listening to the practiced ease of his lies. She turned around and picked up the gift box containing her surgical records and her breakup letter. She handed it over. "This is for your birthday." Daniel's face lit up with genuine surprise. He reached for the lid, eager to see what she'd chosen. Hazel stopped him. The sunlight hit her thin face, making her look fragile, almost ethereal. "Don't open it yet. Wait until your actual birthday. Next month." Daniel chuckled and ruffled her hair, his eyes full of doting affection. "Alright, whatever you want, Hazel. I'll wait. Thanks, babe!" As she watched his excitement, the smile didn't even come close to reaching her eyes. 「Daniel, I hope you remember exactly what you did to me that night when you finally open it. I wonder if you'll still be smiling then.」 *** The following day, the Lewises threw a lavish gala for Hazel at the largest estate in New York, inviting every major player in the city to make up for the missed birthday. The grounds were blanketed in red roses—Hazel's favorite. The ballroom floor was strewn with petals. Everywhere she looked, people were whispering about how much Daniel worshipped her. "Even if the Lewises took her in out of family loyalty, they wouldn't treat her like royalty if it weren't for Daniel. She's only this important because he's obsessed with her." "Tell me about it. Look at the way he looks at her. It's the exact same look he had when he confessed to her at eighteen." "It's been seven years, and they're still total goals. I'm literally crying." Hazel heard the comments, but she simply maintained a polite, distant smile for the sake of the family. She didn't say a word. The love between her and Daniel was exactly like those rose petals on the floor: beautiful at a glance, but already dying. Throughout the night, Daniel was the perfect partner. He intercepted every drink offered to her so she wouldn't get a headache. When people spoke to her, he stood by her side, listening intently and nodding at the right moments, perfectly happy to play the role of the devoted boyfriend. He held her bag, peeled her shrimp, and picked the bones out of her fish with meticulous care. Hazel realized then that Daniel was a natural-born actor. He was so convincing that she almost wondered if the affair had been a fever dream. "You two are truly the golden couple. So, when are we getting a wedding?" "Yeah, don't forget our invites! We've watched you two grow up together." Daniel squeezed Hazel's hand. "We won't forget. But before the wedding, I have to give Hazel the most spectacular proposal she's ever seen." Hazel stood beside him, her lips curved in a faint smile, but she was exhausted to her core. She suddenly remembered the first time she had attended a party as Daniel's girlfriend. Everyone had said the same things then—how they were the blueprint and how they were made for each other. Back then, Daniel had wrapped an arm around her shoulders and said proudly, "Of course we are. I must have hit the lottery to find a girl like Hazel. I'm not marrying anyone else in this lifetime." The younger Hazel had blushed and hidden her face against his chest. She had spent years dreaming about the moment he would finally get down on one knee, knowing she would say yes before he even finished the question. 「But now, Daniel, I'm done waiting.」 As the party wound down, Daniel led Hazel onto the stage. He opened a jewelry box and revealed a breathtaking, diamond-encrusted necklace. He stepped behind her to fasten it around her neck. "Happy birthday, Hazel." He leaned down and kissed her forehead. The room erupted in thunderous applause. Hazel looked down at the necklace, her gaze shifting slightly to the head table where Lydia was sitting. Lydia's face was dark, her eyes burning with a resentment that stood out sharply against the celebratory crowd. Hazel's lips twitched into a tiny, mocking smile. Lydia's expression crumbled. She gritted her teeth, turned, and walked out. No one else noticed the tension beneath the surface; the air was too thick with congratulations. Only Hazel knew the truth. Her love for Daniel had burned itself out, and they were finally at the end of the road. ### Chapter 3 The dinner service ended, and the dancing began. Daniel bowed to Hazel, offering his hand for the opening dance. Hazel hesitated for a heartbeat. She had no desire to humiliate the Lewises in front of their guests, so she started to reach out—but Lydia suddenly appeared, breathless. "Mr. Lewis, I'm so sorry to interrupt, but there's an emergency at the office. I'm afraid you have to go with me." Hearing this, Daniel straightened up instantly. Without even asking for details, he turned to Hazel with a look of practiced regret. "Hazel, I'm sorry. I have to go handle this. I'll be back to pick you up later tonight, okay?" Under the watchful eyes of the entire ballroom, Hazel slowly withdrew her hand. "Just go." As she watched the two of them hurry away together, a dull, throbbing ache filled her chest. Four months ago, Lydia had moved into the Lewis estate under the guise of being Daniel's distant, widowed cousin-in-law. The story was that her husband had died, leaving her with nothing, and the Lewises had taken her in out of the goodness of their hearts. At first, Hazel hadn't been suspicious of this sudden "family member" at all. She had even gone out of her way to make Lydia feel at home. Even when Lydia was hired as Daniel's personal secretary, Hazel simply chalked it up to the family's generosity. Until the relationship between Daniel and Lydia became too "close" to ignore. In the past, Hazel was never an option to Daniel; she was the only answer. But lately, she had started catching glimpses of hesitation in his eyes, as if he were struggling to make a choice. Eventually, the hesitation stopped. Now, he chose Lydia without a second thought. Hazel excused herself, claiming a headache, and retreated to a private room to rest. Meanwhile, Daniel and Lydia hurried into his private office. "Alright, what's so urgent?" "You didn't even ask me that on the drive over. I thought we were on the same wavelength." Lydia's eyes were heavy with suggestion as she stepped toward him, hooking a finger in his tie. Daniel frowned, grabbing her wrist. "I told you to stop playing games! Didn't you see we were celebrating Hazel's birthday?" "Daniel... don't be so mean to me. I'm three months along now. Haven't you missed me at all?" "Lydia..." "Didn't you say you always wanted to try it in the office?" Lydia shed her heavy coat, revealing a daring, skin-tight professional dress underneath. "Tell me, can she even satisfy you like this?" A predatory look swept over Daniel's face. He couldn't hold back any longer. He grabbed her by the waist and crushed his lips against hers. The fire ignited, then eventually burned out. When it was over, Daniel wiped the traces of Lydia's lipstick off his skin. He checked his phone; there were no messages from Hazel. His heart skipped a beat—a sudden, cold wave of unease. "Stay at my place tonight, please?" Daniel ignored her, buttoning his shirt and shaking off her hand. "I'll have the driver take you home. I need to go get Hazel." He didn't stay to watch Lydia's tearful pout. He just grabbed his keys and drove off. On the way back to the estate, he took a detour to pick up a box of peanut brittle from the most famous candy shop in the city. "Hazel? What happened? Your mom said you weren't feeling well." Daniel ran from the foyer all the way to her room, his face a mask of concern. "I'm fine." Hazel sat up in bed and shook her head. Daniel reached out and stroked her hair, his voice soothing as if he were comforting a child. "I bought your favorite peanut brittle. Just one bite? Then I'll take you home." It was from the century-old shop she loved. Since they were kids, Daniel would wait in massive lines just to make her smile, buying boxes of roasted chestnuts and peanut clusters. Hazel looked down. The scent of Lydia's perfume was all over him—thick, cloying, and making her stomach turn. 「Why? Why? We don't have much time left, and you couldn't even put in the effort to lie to me properly. Why?」 She pushed his hand away, her voice raspy. "I don't want it. Let's just go." 「Daniel, I only ever liked that candy because it came from you. But now, I've lost my taste for it.」 「And don't bother taking me home. The moment you betrayed me, I didn't have a home anymore.」
Chapter 1 The Countdown Ends It was the year 2027, and the end of the world was now less than an hour away. "00:59:23" Riley Carter stood on a ladder with a screw clenched between her teeth, an impact driver in her hand, securing the last window panel in place. A month ago, that timer had just appeared out of nowhere, hanging in the corner of everyone's vision like it had always been there. At first, people wrote it off as some kind of mass hacker prank. The government fed the media soothing statements in an attempt to keep things calm, but there was no way to talk down the panic as prices kept rising and supplies were held in a monopoly in real time. News outlets might spin whatever narrative they wanted, but no one could argue with the price of eggs. For a while, it was a frenzy. People cleaned out grocery stores like locusts. The government did what they could—price caps, purchase limits, reassurances from the podium—but none of it mattered. The cost of living kept climbing, and bit by bit, the country started coming apart at the seams. Online, it was a circus. Some people posted doom-laden predictions. Others openly celebrated the thought of the world finally burning. A few just seemed relieved they wouldn't have to clock in on Monday. In that final hour, things got truly ugly. Both on the streets and on social media, it was chaos. Some people figured why not went out with a bang? If the world was ending, they'd spend their last hours doing every reckless thing they'd ever fantasized about. Others, paralyzed by fear of whatever was coming, scrambled for anything they could hoard. Supplies. Weapons. Gasoline. Didn't matter what, as long as they had more of it than the next guy. Most people just wanted to be with the ones they loved. Riley didn't have that luxury anymore. Fresh out of community college, she'd lost both her parents in a highway pileup eighteen months back. The only thing they'd left her was the family hardware store, a cramped little place wedged between a laundromat and a taqueria. She'd been running it solo for just over a year when that d*mn countdown appeared overhead. At first, she'd thought maybe an apocalypse wouldn't be the worst thing. Maybe there'd be something on the other side. A reunion. But then she thought about her folks. They'd doted on her. Made her feel like the center of their world. And even though she'd grown a thick skin since going it alone, feeling indifferent to the world, she knew what they'd want. They'd want her to fight. To stay. She was the only piece of them still left in this world. People always say you aren't really gone until the last person forgets your name. As long as she kept breathing, kept carrying them with her another day, they weren't truly dead. Riley spat the screw into her palm, face calm, the impact driver whirring as she sank another fastener into the reinforced frame. "Flour's three hundred a pound now, and you can't even buy it straight—they make you tack on a bunch of other junk you don't need just to get it," she muttered to herself, shaking her head. When that timer first flickered into existence, Riley had done something smart. She'd liquidated everything. Converted every dollar she could scrape together into supplies. Unfortunately, by the time she hit the stores, inflation had already done its damage. Her savings didn't go nearly as far as they should have. Any cash that was left went toward tools. If the world was ending, she thought they could be useful. Riley pressed the last sheet of thick insulation foam into the window frame, seating it flush against the reinforced plywood beneath. The impact driver snarled as she buried the screws. Then she reached for her pneumatic glue gun—a satisfying pfft as the sealant filled the final gap. She wiped sweat from her forehead and climbed down off the ladder. Stepped back to admire her work. The little apartment was a fortress now. Doors reinforced. Windows barricaded. Every interior wall lined with an extra layer of insulation. She glanced down at herself. Custom-fit heavy-duty workwear. Slash-resistant fabric. More pockets than she'd ever need. Reinforced padding at the knees and elbows. It wasn't fashionable, but it was practical. And her real treasure: tools. A chainsaw. A reciprocating saw. The impact driver in her hand. A multi-bit screwdriver that had cost more than she wanted to admit. She'd brought everything usable from the shop back here, consolidated it into three massive toolboxes. She'd also grabbed some stuff like an air purifier and some spare filters—anything that might matter when civilization took a vacation. She didn't know what the countdown would bring. Some folks online predicted zombies. Others said asteroid impact. Volcanic winter. Alien invasion. Take your pick. Food. Tools. Shelter. She'd even started working out, building strength she'd never needed before. She'd done everything she could think of to prepare. Whatever was coming, she figured she'd last longer than most. With nothing left to do, she dropped onto one of the big toolboxes laid flat on the floor, wiped her forehead again, and pulled out her phone. Most news apps had crashed. The only things still loading were comment sections, and they were going crazy. [Anyone got rice? I'll pay eight grand for a bag. Please, we got nothing left.] [Forget it, man. Money's toilet paper now. Saw it with my own eyes—some rich assholes cleared out the Costco warehouse last week. All that 'purchase limit' crap was just theater. Shelves were empty 'cause the stock never made it there. It's all sitting in some hedge fund guy's basement.] [No kidding? Same thing happened to me! Store manager kept telling me, 'We're limiting purchases, come back next week, we'll put your name on the list.' So the whole time the back room was empty? They were just jerking us around?] [Of course they were. Rich people cornered the market on everything. So what are normal people supposed to do? Just sit here and die?] [Anyone know what actually happens when the clock hits zero? Like, is it nukes? That virus thing from that old video game?] Riley locked her phone. Tucked it away. She didn't have anything to add to that conversation. A month ago, when the countdown first showed up, prices had spiked instantly. A fifty-pound bag of rice that normally went for thirty bucks jumped to eight hundred overnight. By yesterday, it was breaking two grand. The wealthy had rolled up with trucks and cleaned out supermarkets. Riley had been smart—she'd gone early, bought stuff that would keep, stuff that was calorie-dense and cheap. Chocolate. Survival biscuits. Canned goods. It wasn't much, but it was enough for one person, at least for a while. She took a deep breath and glanced at the timer. "00:01:10" Just over a minute. Riley gripped the toolbox beneath her. Knuckles white. Who knew what would happen when that thing hit zero? Maybe it'd be like 2012—all hype, nothing real. In that last minute, her life flickered past. Her parents' faces. The hardware store. The lonely months since. "00:00:00" The countdown ended. Riley had just started to breathe a sigh of relief—nothing happened, maybe it really was nothing—when the world lurched beneath her. A dizzying weightlessness. A sensation of falling. Everything spun. ***** She didn't know how long she was out. "Whew." A wind like a knife blade sliced across her face. Riley's eyes snapped open. Her warm apartment was gone. In its place, an endless white expanse stretched in every direction. Snow whipped through the air. Wind howled like a wounded animal. And at her feet, a small campfire guttered in the gale, threatening to die at any second. "What the—" Before she could process, a chime rang directly in her skull. Not heard. Known. "Welcome to the Extreme Cold Survival Game. "Earth no longer exists. This is your new home. This is your grave. "Survival rules are as follows. "1. Each player begins with one campfire. It is your only defense against the cold. If the campfire dies, you will be judged deceased by the system. Not that it matters—without the fire, you won't last anyway. "2. This is a real world. You can die from hunger. From exposure. From animal attack. "3. Supplies stockpiled in your previous world do not carry over. Only items on your person, or in direct physical contact at the moment of transfer, are retained. "4. Struggle to survive. It is your only hope." Riley's heart slammed against her ribs. Supplies didn't carry over? Her mind flashed to those wealthy forum posters bragging about their warehouse stockpiles. And then she looked down at herself. Workwear. Intact. And— She was still sitting on the three giant toolboxes. They sat solidly in the snow, dusted with powder, unmistakably here. "Whew." Riley let out a long breath. A white cloud dispersed in front of her face. Pity, though. During her renovations, she'd stocked those boxes with a lot of power tools. The expensive impact driver. The reciprocating saw. In a world with no electrical outlets, once those batteries died, they were just dead weight. But even so. The hand tools. The consumables. The sheer volume of stuff in those boxes—it was a treasure beyond measure in a place like this. Riley forced herself to calm down. She was here. She'd deal with it. Something new lived in her mind now. She concentrated, and a translucent pale-blue screen materialized in front of her eyes. Looked just like a video game HUD. "Personal Panel "Name: Riley Carter "ID: 1120-US "Level: 1 (Standard Survivor) "Strength: 8 (Years of manual labor have made you stronger than average) "Agility: 8 (You've got quick reflexes) "Constitution: 6 (You've been skipping meals lately) "Spirit: 9 (You keep your head when others panic) "Inventory: 16/16 slots (Base capacity)" "Inventory?" Riley studied the sixteen empty squares at the bottom of the display. She reached out, touched one of the toolboxes, and thought the word, "Store." Whoosh. The heavy box vanished. In its place, a tiny icon appeared in the first inventory slot, a miniature "x1" in the corner. "It actually worked." For the first time since arriving, a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. Retrieve. Thud. The toolbox landed back in the snow, puffing up powder. No energy cost. No sense of weight. And in that inventory, she could carry anything, regardless of how heavy it was. Later on, when she went scavenging, that would make all the difference. Riley rubbed her stiff, freezing hands together and turned her attention to the campfire at her feet. It was the only warmth in this frozen wasteland. Hovering above the flames, visible only to her, were a few lines of glowing text. "Basic Campfire (Lv.1) "Remaining Burn Time: 05:28:00 "Current Coverage: Radius six feet (Blocks wind and snow) "Upgrade Requirements: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Steel x5 "Description: This is your life. Do not let it die. Upgrading expands your safe zone and unlocks additional construction options." "Needs upgrading." Riley frowned. Wood and stone she could probably find. But coal? Steel? Out here in the middle of nowhere? A flash of movement caught her eye. A small wooden box, half-buried in the snow not far from the fire. The starter crate. Had to be. Riley didn't rush. First, she pulled the claw hammer from her belt—the one she always kept there, habit from years of work—and gripped it tight. She scanned the tree line. Listened past the wind. Nothing moved. No sounds but the storm. She walked over quickly, crouched by the box. No lock. She pried the lid open with the claw end of her hammer. Inside, a handful of items. "Obtained: Iron Axe x1 "Obtained: Stale Dark Bread x2 "Obtained: 500ml Bottled Water x1 "Obtained: Kindling x5 "Obtained: Insulated Field Jacket x1 "Obtained: Utility Rope (25ft) "Obtained: Thermal Underwear (Set) x2 Not much. Barely anything. Riley picked up one of the dark loaves. It was rock hard. She examined the jacket—basic, but warm-looking. "So this is what a standard survivor starts with." At least the system had thought of everything. Including the underwear. She'd half-expected to wake up naked in the snow; at least she didn't have to worry about that. She stored everything in her inventory, then shrugged on the field jacket. The temperature shift was brutal. Even those few seconds exposed had left her hands numb. Hypothermia would set in fast out here. Jacket on, she hurried back to the campfire. She pulled the five units of Kindling from her inventory and tossed them onto the flames. The fire roared higher. Warmth flooded over her. "Fuel added. Remaining Burn Time: 10:28:00" Ten hours. If she didn't move fast, in ten hours she'd freeze to death on this ice field. And the game had made it clear—if the fire died, the system would judge her dead. Whether she actually froze or not. Riley lifted her head and scanned the landscape. She was in a sparse coniferous forest. Barely alive trees, crusted with frost, dotted the area not far from her position. "Wood." A slow smile spread across her face. She patted the toolbox beside her. "Other people might have axes. But felling a tree with just an axe takes hours. Exhausts you." She unlatched the box. Pulled out the chainsaw. Checked the battery gauge—full. "I've got a handsaw in here too. And a chainsaw with a full charge." The battery wouldn't last forever. But it would last long enough to give her a massive head start. In this race for survival, that was everything. Chapter 2 The Chainsaw The wind screamed across the open ground, picking up loose snow and flinging it against her goggles like sand. It sounded like static. Riley had pulled her basic work gear from the toolbox before heading out. Now she stood in the snow, surrounded by clusters of thin conifers that looked half-dead already. She took a breath. The air burned going down. "Zzzzzzz—!!!" She squeezed the trigger. The orange-and-black lithium-ion chainsaw in her hands roared to life, the chain spinning so fast it blurred. She buried the teeth in the nearest pine trunk. Wood chips exploded everywhere. Fragrant shavings—still wet with resin—scattered across the pristine snow, stark and yellow against all that white. Five seconds. Crack. The pine tree, thick as her arm, groaned and tilted. Then it fell slow and heavy into a drift, sending up a puff of powder. "God bless modern technology." Riley shook out her wrist—the vibration had numbed her fingers—and allowed herself a small smile. Without that chainsaw, with just the basic iron axe the system had given her, felling a tree frozen solid like this would have taken twenty minutes minimum. And it would have left her soaked with sweat. In subzero temps, sweat was a death sentence. Once your base layers got wet, the moment you stopped moving, your body temperature would plummet. Hypothermia would follow fast. Riley didn't waste time celebrating. She knew the saw in her hands was a hungry machine. She'd brought two spare high-capacity batteries, sure, but until she found a way to recharge them, every second the motor ran was borrowed time. She had to gather as much wood as possible before the batteries gave out. "Zzzzz—Zzzzz—" At the edge of the forest, the chainsaw's snarl rose and fell, shattering the frozen silence. Riley worked like she was possessed. Fell a tree. Move to the next. Fell another. But she had to stay alert—watch for hidden snow pits underfoot, keep adjusting her collar against the wind that kept finding its way down her neck. Her stamina drained faster than she'd anticipated. In extreme cold, body burned through calories just to stay alive. Added walking through knee-deep snow, where every step took three times the energy of walking on pavement, and the math got ugly fast. Pretty soon, Riley was breathing hard. Her breath fogged the inside of her goggles, and she had to keep wiping them clear. "Zzzzz..." She was mid-cut on a tree—didn't even know which number anymore—when the chainsaw's roar stuttered. Died. The chain jammed solid in the wood. A red light blinked at her. Dead battery. Riley yanked the saw free and patted its housing. "Good work, buddy." Genuine regret in her voice. She straightened up and looked around. Pine trunks lay scattered across the snow in every direction. A decent haul. She counted silently. "Twenty-three total." Then the next problem hit her. According to the system, until she actually possessed these logs, they were still just natural resources. That meant they didn't qualify for Inventory storage. She couldn't just snap her fingers and make them disappear. She had to drag them back to camp. Riley grabbed the nearest pine and tried to pull. Heavy. Like, unreasonably heavy. Fresh-cut wood was full of moisture. Add the branches catching in the snow, dragging like anchors, and she felt like she was hauling a dead body through mud. "Huff... huff..." She gritted her teeth, looped rope around the trunk, slung it over her shoulder, leaned forward, and started walking. Inch by inch. The tree line to her campfire was maybe fifty yards. Right now, it felt like fifty miles. By the time she'd wrestled the fourth tree back into the fire's warm radius, she was wrecked. Her legs felt like someone had filled them with concrete. Her lungs burned from hauling freezing air through them. "Can't... can't do more." Riley made the call. She stopped. Those nineteen trees still out there in the snow—they called to her. Tempted her. But if she kept pushing without rest, without fuel for herself, she'd collapse out there. And out there, collapse meant death. She dropped down next to the big wooden crate that had held her starter supplies. It was less than three feet from the campfire. The flames danced orange and red, pumping out heat that felt like heaven. The shift from frozen to warm made her shiver violently. She pulled off her goggles and thick gloves, set them near the fire to warm up, then—still shaking—pulled the half-empty water bottle from her Inventory. Took a small sip. Then the bread. Two black bricks that looked more like construction material than food. "Crunch." Riley bit off a piece with effort. It was coarse. Tasted like sawdust with a hint of burnt toast. Bitter. But it was calories. Carbs. Fuel for her own fire. She forced herself to chew, swallow. When the food hit her stomach, warmth finally started spreading through her core. The uncontrollable shaking eased. After half a loaf, Riley leaned back against the crate. Her eyelids drooped. Post-exhaustion crash hit her like a wave. The campfire crackled. The wind seemed farther away now. Muffled. She really wanted to sleep... Her head nodded. Her body started sliding sideways. "Wait—" Some animal instinct jolted her awake just before she went under. She pinched her thigh. Hard. Then looked up at the timer floating above the flames. "Shelter Level 1 "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 06:28:00" Six and a half hours. If she slept too deep, too long, and that fire went out—what then? Even ignoring the obvious—that she'd freeze to death in this hellhole without a heat source—the game rules were clear. When the campfire hits zero, it's game over. "No sleeping. Not allowed." Riley slapped her own cheeks, forced herself upright. She stayed near the fire, but she didn't take off her heavy work clothes. She remembered reading something once, a survival article. "In the late stages of hypothermia, your hypothalamus malfunctions. You get a false sensation of heat. It's called "paradoxical undressing"—people strip down right before they freeze to death." "Okay. Process these four. Keep the fire fed." She pulled a traditional handsaw from the toolbox. Looking at the four thick pine logs on the ground, she almost laughed. Without power tools, breaking these down into burnable pieces would take at least half an hour. Burn the little energy she had left. But what choice did she have? Riley knelt in the snow, positioned the blade against the trunk, and was about to start cutting— A soft white light shot out from the system panel on her chest. It washed over the logs. "Ding! "Detected felled, intact logs within shelter range. "Perform quick recovery?" Riley's hand froze mid-saw. Quick recovery? It took her a second to process. Then relief flooded through her so hard she almost cried. "Yes! Recover!" She didn't hesitate. The next moment, something impossible happened. The four pine trunks—the ones she'd have to saw and split by hand, the ones that represented hours of brutal labor—dissolved into pale blue light particles. Not into dust. Into neat, uniform logs that stacked themselves automatically in her Inventory. The branches, the needles, all the useless parts—purified out of existence. "Recovery successful! "Obtained: Common Wood x20" Riley's eyes went wide, staring at the perfect lumber in her inventory display. Looked like it came straight from a hardware store. "One tree gives five units of wood? "And I don't have to cut it myself?" This changed everything. It meant she only had to handle the felling and the dragging. Once a log crossed into her camp's boundary, the system recognized it as hers. The most time-consuming part—the processing—just... didn't exist anymore. Riley immediately grabbed five units of wood and fed them to the fire. Whoosh. The flames leaped, hungry and grateful. "Fuel added. "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 12:20:00" "Five logs, five hours..." She did the math fast, looking at the fifteen units still on the ground. If she threw all of those in, that'd be another fifteen hours. Total of twenty-seven. She could sleep like the dead right now, and that fire would still be burning when she woke up. Security. For the first time since the world ended, Riley felt something like security. She selected the remaining wood. Deposited it all. Watched the countdown tick up to a very comfortable "27:20:00". Then her nerves finally let go. She dragged one of the toolboxes into position to block the wind, wrapped the field jacket tight around herself, pulled her hat down over her eyes, leaned back against the warm crate, and let the crackle of the fire pull her under. ***** She didn't sleep long. When she opened her eyes again, the sky was still that same dull gray-white. Impossible to tell if it was morning or afternoon. System clock said three hours. Her body ached. Shoulders and arms especially—felt like she'd gone ten rounds with someone. But her head was clear. She stretched her stiff neck and stood up. The snow seemed lighter. The feathery flakes had tapered off into sporadic icy grains. Riley ate a little more, got some fuel back in the tank, then stepped outside the campfire's warmth. The fire's effect wasn't what she'd expected. It wasn't that the temperature gradually dropped as you moved away. It was sharper than that. Like there was an invisible barrier around the flames. Inside, livable. Outside, the cold hit you like a wall. She wandered a little way off. The cold found every gap in her clothing. She thought about going farther, exploring. But there was nothing visible except that stand of trees she'd already worked. Maybe stuff was buried under the snow, but she couldn't see it. "No proper snow boots. Not going far." Riley glanced at the endless white distance with real regret. "Don't get greedy. Get those nineteen trees first." She turned. Looked at the woods. Her loot was still out there. And now she knew: if she could drag them back into the campfire's circle, the system would cash them out automatically. "Time to work." Riley rubbed her hands together. Let the motivation build. For the next few hours, she became a machine. Drag a tree to camp. Recover it. Go back for another. Repeat. It was boring. Exhausting. But watching those logs turn into numbers in her inventory—that feeling was hard to describe. Satisfying, in a way nothing had been satisfying in a long time. When the last pine trunk crossed into the light and dissolved into particles, Riley just collapsed. Lay flat in the snow and stared at the gray sky. She pulled up her Inventory. The once-empty slots were full now. Stack after stack of wood icons. "Item: Common Wood "Quantity: 80 "Description: Basic survival resource. Can be used for fuel or construction." Eighty units. Plus what was already burning in the campfire. Her day's work had yielded a clean hundred. One unit of wood burned for one hour. Riley looked at the flames dancing in front of her. Felt the heat on her face. Let herself smile, wide and real. "One hundred hours." Four full days. While everyone else was probably still panicking. Crying. Begging. Trying to figure out how to survive their first night in this frozen nightmare... She, Riley, had enough fuel stockpiled to last four days. Which meant: for the next ninety-six hours, unless she actively chose to die, nobody and nothing could put her fire out. She pulled the half-empty water bottle from Inventory. The space must have been insulated somehow—the water was still warm. Almost body temperature. She sipped it. Tasted sweet, even though it was just tap water. "Okay. Next step." Her gaze settled on the "Upgrade" button on the campfire panel. This open-air setup was fine for now. But if she was going to survive long-term, she needed something better. A real shelter. All she needed was a little stone. Some coal. Some steel. Then she could build something worth calling home. Chapter 3 The Trading Game The blizzard howled outside, but within the six-foot radius of the campfire, the air stayed surprisingly warm—like the wind had hit an invisible wall and just couldn't reach. Riley leaned back against the dusty wooden crate, holding the half-empty water bottle in her hand. She stared into the flames for a moment, then focused her attention inward. The pale blue system panel unfolded in front of her eyes again. Now that the immediate crisis was handled, she finally had time to sit quietly and really explore this so-called "Survival System". Beyond the personal stats and inventory, the bottom of the panel had a row of function icons: Server Channel, Friends List, Trading Market, and Crafting Manual. Friends List was empty. No surprise there. She hadn't exactly been a social butterfly back in the old world, and she sure as hell wasn't going to make friends easily in a frozen hellscape where everyone was fighting for their next breath. She tapped into the "Server Channel". A line of numbers appeared in the top left. "Server: US-008 "Current Online: 9911/10000" Ten thousand people started. Less than ten hours in, eighty-nine were already gone. "That doesn't add up." Everyone's starter crate came with a rusty iron axe and five units of wood. Plus the initial fuel the campfire had when they arrived—that alone bought them ten hours minimum, even if they just sat there doing nothing. What the hell did those people do to get eliminated so fast? The channel was moving fast, messages scrolling by every second. Desperation dripped from every line. "Someone help, I'm freezing my ass off out here. This stupid axe can't cut sh*t—every swing just bounces off and rattles my whole arm. Can anyone spare a couple logs? My dad's a senior VP at Walker Group. I'll wire you a million dollars when we get back, I swear." "Wake up, buddy. If your dad's still alive, he's out there chopping trees right now too." "Don't even talk to me. I spotted a wooden crate in the snow earlier, got all excited, ran over—and before I got within ten feet, some white rabbit thing jumped out of a drift. Teeth like needles. Almost took a chunk out of my leg. Missed the crate, wasted all that energy for nothing." "I saw that too! Random crates spawn in the wild. I opened a wooden one and got two chocolate bars and some coal." Reading through the chaos, Riley picked out two keywords, "Random Reward Crates" and "Dangerous Creatures". So this world was deeper than she thought. Wooden crates, copper crates—these randomly spawning resource points were the real way to get ahead. Coal came from crates. That was useful to know. And if coal was in crates, steel probably was too. But something bothered her. According to what people were saying, reward crates weren't exactly rare. So why hadn't she found a single one during her lumber run? She doubted it was just bad luck. Riley exited chat and tapped into the "Trading Market". "Seller: MountainMan88 Item: Stone x2 Wants: White Bread x5" "Seller: LoneWolf_21 Item: Cotton Cloth Wants: Clean Water" "Seller: NotDeadYet Item: Wood x3 Wants: Anything edible" Most people were trading for food and wood. The stuff that kept you alive right now. Things like stone and cloth were getting dumped cheap—nobody had the luxury of thinking long-term. Riley looked at her own inventory. Eighty units of wood staring back at her. Her heart beat a little faster. In this opening phase, where wood literally meant the difference between life and death, the resources in her hands were basically gold bars. "Time to trade," she muttered to herself. "Coal, steel—can't get those from chopping trees. And right now, wood's at maximum value. If I wait, the exchange rate shifts." Even with the chainsaw dead, she still had the handsaw. Less efficient, sure, but she could gather more wood if she needed it. Short-term, she wasn't going to run out. She clicked to post a message in the channel. "System Prompt: Detected that you have not set a virtual ID. Please enter your nickname (cannot be changed after setting)." Riley stared at the blank input box. Naming things was the worst. She sat there for a long time, nothing coming to mind. Finally, she gave up. Couldn't think of anything cool or clever, so she'd just go with something random. Her fingers tapped across the virtual keyboard—SpicyBurger. "Setting successful. ID locked." The prompt closed. Riley posted her message. "SpicyBurger: Selling wood in bulk. Looking for: Coal, Steel, High-calorie food. DM me with offers—what you have and your rate. Good deals go fast, don't sleep on this." For three seconds after the message appeared, the channel went dead silent. Then it exploded. "SpicyBurger? That name's making me hungry, what the hell." "Never mind the name—'wood in bulk'! We got a whale in here! Everyone else is stressing about the next hour and this person's already running a business?" "I need some! My campfire's down to like two hours. I don't know if I actually die when it hits zero but I don't wanna find out." Suddenly, half the channel was scrambling for wood. But then the skeptics crawled out. "Hang on. Everyone started with the same rusty axe. Chopping a tree in this weather takes twenty, thirty minutes minimum. Where's she getting 'bulk' wood from? Sounds like a scam." "InvincibleWarrior: Everybody chill. Look at that ID—sounds like a girl's handle. I'm a grown man, been busting my ass, and I've only got like ten logs saved up. My hands are shredded. Some girl with a food name claims she's got bulk? She's trying to run a game. Scam people out of their stuff." "Iron_Tough: Agreed. Scammers made it through the apocalypse too, I guess. My advice: ignore her. Don't get played. How much wood can a woman chop anyway? Probably can't even lift the axe right, lol." Riley scrolled through the messages, expression flat. She almost laughed. But some people pushed back. "FishHater44: How is it a scam? If she doesn't deliver, you don't complete the trade. Just 'cause you can't chop that much wood doesn't mean nobody can." Riley nodded slightly. That one had a point. But she didn't waste energy arguing in the channel. Instead, she flipped on Do Not Disturb for private messages—only allowing chat requests that included a trade offer. Some people didn't actually care whether she had wood. They just couldn't stand seeing someone else do well. "Ding. Ding. Ding." Private messages started pouring in like rain. Most players weren't idiots. Faced with the very real threat of freezing to death, they'd try anything for a chance. Riley opened the first one. "Windwalker: I got "Coal x3" from a crate. How much wood can I get for it? I can't chop anymore. The wind out here is insane. I tried to throw the coal in my fire but it just kept popping back out. System says my campfire level's too low, won't let me use it. I'm out of wood. My fire's almost dead." Riley thought for a moment. "Three coal for five wood. Deal?" She hadn't known about that restriction. Coal was supposed to be better fuel than wood—didn't expect the game to lock it behind a level gate. The reply came instantly, "Deal. But five wood feels light. It's coal." The guy was conflicted. He knew coal had value, but he was desperate. "I'll make it six. Final offer." Riley wasn't sure about coal's real value yet. Six was her limit. "Fine. Deal." They both dropped their items into the trade window. A moment later, it completed. A flash of white light. Riley's inventory lost six wood. Gained three chunks of coal, each about the size of a small melon. One down. "CrunchyFrog: Hey, I got two "Iron Ingots" from a crate. System calls them "Scrap Steel". Can I get eight wood for them? Trying to stock up enough to sleep through the night." Riley replied, "Sure. Initiate." In just over ten minutes, her wood stockpile dropped significantly. But her inventory filled up with good stuff. "Coal x10 "Stone x23 "Scrap Steel x5 "Raw Meat x2 "White Bread x2 "Basic Torch Blueprint x1" The blueprint was new. The description said it was required for crafting certain items. Seemed useful, so she'd traded for it. Meanwhile, back in the channel, that "InvincibleWarrior" guy who'd been mocking her earlier seemed to notice that people were actually completing trades. His tone got bitter. "InvincibleWarrior: Whatever. She probably got lucky with a high-tier crate. Let's see how long her stock lasts. Once the wood's gone, she'll be begging me to let her join my group." The people who'd successfully traded with Riley popped into the channel to thank her. That might have been fine—except the thanks caused problems. Since Riley had stopped trading for now, most people hadn't gotten anything. And the sky was darkening. Temperature outside the campfire radius was dropping fast. Gathering wood was getting harder. Trading was their only hope. The ones who'd pinned everything on Riley, seeing her stop, started losing it. "You said 'in bulk'! You did like five trades and quit. What are we supposed to do now?" "Keep trading! My fire's almost out. You want us to go chop trees in the dark?" "If you couldn't deliver, why'd you post? Showing off and then hiding." Whether it was coordinated or just genuine rage, the number of people defending Riley in the channel shrank fast. Mostly it was attacks now. Accusations of being irresponsible. Using scarcity tactics. Playing games with people's lives. Riley closed the channel. She couldn't be bothered. In a life-or-death situation like this, people losing it was normal. If she actually had unlimited resources, she'd trade more. But she didn't. And back on Earth, nobody had ever handed her anything out of charity. She wasn't about to start playing savior now. She looked down at the "Basic Torch Blueprint" in her inventory. "Requirements: Wood x10, Kerosene, Scrap Steel x2" Note: Requires Level 2 Workbench to craft." She leaned back against the crate again. Felt the weight of her stockpile pressing back against that lingering sense of unease. In this world, your ID didn't matter. Your gender didn't matter either. What mattered was who held the resources. She looked at what she had left: 36 units of wood. Plus the steel, coal, and stone from trading. Time to plan. Upgrading to a Level 2 campfire required 55 wood. She had all the other materials. For the wood, she'd just have to use the handsaw tomorrow and gather a little more. That settled, she pulled a few more logs from inventory and arranged them on top of the crate, making a small enclosed space. Curled up inside it, she watched the sky outside slowly darken to black. Her eyes grew heavy. She drifted off. Chapter 4 The Culling Riley woke to the kind of soreness that made you reconsider ever moving again. She'd slept like the dead—no dreams, no blizzard, just nothing. When she opened her eyes, the first things she saw were the logs she'd stacked as a windbreak and the steady glow of the campfire. She tried to stretch. Big mistake. Every muscle in her body lit up at once, screaming in protest. "Sh*t." Riley sucked air through her teeth and pressed a hand to her aching shoulder. Her lower back felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to it. Yesterday's work had been too much. She wasn't weak—far from it—but she was still human. The lactic acid had settled in overnight, and now she moved like an arthritic tin man. At least she was alive. She stowed the windbreak logs back in her inventory and looked around. The world hadn't changed. Same dull gray sky. Same swirling snow. Outside the six-foot radius of the fire, the drifts looked deeper than yesterday. The wind had been busy. Riley pulled out the half-empty water bottle and wet her throat. Then she retrieved the white bread she'd traded for yesterday. Compared to that dense, flavorless black bread, this was practically cake. She tore off small pieces, letting the faint sweetness dissolve on her tongue, and habitually opened the "Server Channel". She stopped chewing. The number in the top left hit her like a physical blow. "Current Online Players: 4968/10000" "Five thousand..." Riley's eyes went wide. In a single night, that number had been cut in half. Five thousand people. Gone. Winked out of existence on this frozen ice field while she slept. "Ding." The system notification cut through her thoughts—cold, emotionless, like it was announcing the weather. "Global Announcement: Congratulations to all survivors for successfully surviving the first day. "This was a culling. Last night eliminated those fools who failed to add fuel to their fires or refused to gather wood. Remember: in this place, tears mean nothing. When you die here, you're dead-dead. "You who remain are the lucky ones. "Grace Period: A five-day 'New Player Support Period' now begins. For the next five days, your initial supply crates will refresh daily with a fixed amount of food. "Special Reward: Each survivor receives one pair of "Standard Issue Snow Boots (Common)". Be grateful for this mercy. Enjoy the game." The words sat there on her screen. Fools. Mercy. The system's tone dripped with contempt. The math was simple. Starting package: five hours of fuel. Initial gift: five units of wood, another five hours. Total ten hours, if you did absolutely nothing. The ones who'd frozen to death last night—they were the ones who'd clung to hope. The ones too scared to move. The ones who'd told themselves someone would save them. Five thousand people. One night. Gone. This wasn't a game. It was a slaughter. In the channel, the survivors who'd made it through were clearly rattled by the numbers too. "Holy sh*t... My friend's icon went dark last night. Does that mean he's dead? Actually dead?" "I can't do this. I don't wanna play anymore, I wanna go home. I swear I'll work today. I'll chop wood, I'll do whatever, just please—" "Everyone move! Don't save your strength! If you die, that's it. No respawns!" Panic spread fast. But almost immediately, the tone shifted. The fear found a target. "That SpicyBurger—if she'd shared more wood yesterday, would so many people have died?" "For real. If she had extra, why not just give it away? Why did it have to be trades? She could've at least loaned some out." "This is what happens when people hoard resources and watch others freeze. Remember that name. Don't trade with her. Ever." Riley frowned. Here we go again. She scrolled up. Sure enough, there it was—that familiar ID: "InvincibleWarrior". He was going hard in the channel. "She's profiting off suffering. That's what some people do. Women like that are the worst—hoarding supplies while people die around them. Wait and see. Someone like her won't last." Riley laughed. Actually laughed out loud. Moral blackmail. In the apocalypse. She typed, "If you want wood, go cut it yourself. I'm not your mommy. No amount of crying in chat is gonna put logs in your inventory. You'd get more done if you just picked up your d*mn axe." The channel went quiet for a second. Then the reasonable voices piped up. "She's right. Nobody owes you anything. Work for it." "Exactly. Just 'cause someone's quiet doesn't mean they're an easy target." In a world where staying alive took everything you had, expecting charity was the dumbest move of all. Riley didn't waste more energy on it. People like that—the more you engaged, the more they thrived. Let him run his mouth. She had bigger things to worry about. She closed the channel and turned to the big wooden crate—her initial supply point. Sure enough, new items had materialized inside. "Bottled Water x3 "White Bread x3 "Fresh Orange Juice x1 "Standard Snow Boots x1" "Orange juice?" Riley picked up the bottle, genuinely surprised. The orange liquid inside sloshed gently. Vitamins. The system was actually giving them vitamins. She pulled off her old shoes—already damp and cold—and swapped into the new boots. They were clunky, sure. But they gripped the snow, and the insulation was real. The chill that had been seeping up through her soles disappeared instantly. Next, she opened her toolbox. Goggles on. Thick cut-resistant gloves. Head-to-toe gear. "Time to work." The channel noise faded from her mind. She had one priority today, and it wasn't arguing with idiots. She picked up the chainsaw and headed back to the tree line. The cold played tricks on batteries. She'd known that, intellectually. But knowing it and feeling it were different things. After just eight trees, the last spare battery gave out. The chainsaw stuttered, died, and went silent in her hands. Riley stared at it. "Son of a b*tch." Chapter 5 Dead Battery Riley stared at the dead chainsaw in her hands and shook her head. Without power, it was just an expensive paperweight. If she wanted more wood, she'd have to do it the old-fashioned way—pick up the axe or the manual handsaw from the toolbox and go to war with frozen timber. But eight more trees were eight more trees. Her stockpile was looking healthy. "First things first. Get these back." She sucked it up, stowed the chainsaw in her inventory, and started hauling. Her body screamed even louder than yesterday. Every muscle felt like it had been replaced with concrete. She dragged each log back one at a time, moving like a zombie. Drag. Rest two minutes. Drag again. The wind howled in her ears. Riley lost track of time, lost track of everything except the mechanical rhythm of work. By the time the sun was high—not that you could really see it through the clouds—she dragged the last log into the campfire's radius. It dissolved into light, absorbed by the system. Riley all but collapsed into the snow. "Acquired: Wood x40" She lay there for a moment, chest heaving, staring at the number in her inventory. A tired smile crept across her face. She had enough. Combined with the coal and steel from yesterday's trades, she had everything she needed for the upgrade. Riley forced herself upright and walked to the campfire. On the floating translucent panel, the "Upgrade" button glowed that tempting gold. "Upgrade Primitive Shelter to Lv.2? "Cost: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Scrap Steel x5 "Remaining after upgrade: Wood x16, Stone x3, Coal x0, Steel x0" "Upgrade." Riley took a breath and pressed it. "Hmmmm—!" A blinding white light erupted from the heart of the campfire, swallowing everything. Riley squeezed her eyes shut. No explosion. No thunder. Just a sound like Legos snapping together. A few seconds later, the light faded. Riley opened her eyes. And stopped breathing. The campfire wasn't just a campfire anymore. The rough stone ring had transformed into something neat and intentional—a proper firepit with a stone border for insulation, a place to set things, even a simple steel grate attached to the side. But that wasn't the big news. The heat that used to push back the cold within a six-foot radius now stretched a full fifteen feet. Inside that circle, snow was actively melting, revealing dark frozen soil underneath. In one corner, she spotted a patch of moss stubbornly poking through. Riley spun around. Behind the big wooden crate, a small log cabin stood waiting. It wasn't much—maybe forty feet square, built from rough-hewn logs. Nothing fancy. But it was solid. Four walls and a roof, blocking wind and snow completely. Riley walked over and pushed open the heavy wooden door. Warm air hit her face. Inside was simple: a wooden bed frame piled with dry grass, a crude workbench, a chair, and a small fireplace connected to a chimney that ran up through the roof. Rustic. But right now, it was heaven. Wood and fire. Four walls. A roof. Home. Riley ran her hand along the rough wall. Her eyes stung a little. She wouldn't have to sleep in the open anymore. Wouldn't have to wake up every few hours to check the fire. Wouldn't have to worry about freezing to death in her sleep. Right on cue, the server announcement chimed. Gold text this time, blazing right in the center of everyone's vision. "Server Announcement: Congratulations to player SpicyBurger for being the first to achieve "Level 2 Shelter". Rewards have been distributed." The chat channel, which had been wallowing in fear and despair, exploded. "Holy sh*t? Level 2 already? What does Level 2 unlock? Can you post pics, big shot?" "That's the wood seller from yesterday? No way. Absolute legend." "Carry me please! SpicyBurger, I'll be your loyal follower. I can cook, I can clean, I can—" "Teach us, master! How'd you gather materials so fast? What's your secret?" Compliments. Pleas. Desperate attempts to get noticed. And then, of course, the sour grapes. "InvincibleWarrior: Big deal. Just profiteering off everyone else's suffering. If she'd shared that wood instead of selling it, maybe those five thousand people would still be alive. How does it feel to climb on corpses?" "GodLovesMeFirst: Seriously. Building your success on other people's deaths. Karma's real. She'll get hers." Riley's jaw tightened. If InvincibleWarrior had been standing in front of her right now, she'd have knocked his teeth out. Guys like him—useless themselves, but always ready to tear down anyone who actually accomplished something. Sewer rats. Her private messages exploded too. She'd set it to only accept trade offers, but people had found a workaround—using the "trade note" function to send spam. "Hey beautiful, I'm a personal trainer. Great shape. Wanna see? Hit me with some wood and I'll do a voice call with you!" A photo of some guy flexing in a mirror, shirt off. Riley glanced at it, unimpressed. Decent abs. Pathetic attitude. Dude was clearly strong enough to chop wood—why was he wasting time on this? She'd never mentioned her gender, so most people probably assumed anyone who'd gathered that much wood must be a guy. The messages reflected that assumption. Some women sent selfies too, trying to flirt their way into favor. Didn't matter. Shameless cut across all demographics. From the backgrounds in the photos, everyone seemed to be in different locations. But one thing was consistent: they all had trees nearby. The system must have arranged that—a new player perk. "A bunch of degenerates." Riley's face went cold. She changed her privacy settings to "Friends Only". Then she added a line to her trading post description. "No spam. Send junk, get blocked." Silence. Blessed silence. She took a breath, let the noise drain away, and focused on what mattered. "First-place upgrade reward..." She opened her inventory. Sitting there, glowing faintly purple, was a gift box. For more exciting content, please download the "JoyRead" app to continue reading.
Chapter 1 The Countdown Ends It was the year 2027, and the end of the world was now less than an hour away. "00:59:23" Riley Carter stood on a ladder with a screw clenched between her teeth, an impact driver in her hand, securing the last window panel in place. A month ago, that timer had just appeared out of nowhere, hanging in the corner of everyone's vision like it had always been there. At first, people wrote it off as some kind of mass hacker prank. The government fed the media soothing statements in an attempt to keep things calm, but there was no way to talk down the panic as prices kept rising and supplies were held in a monopoly in real time. News outlets might spin whatever narrative they wanted, but no one could argue with the price of eggs. For a while, it was a frenzy. People cleaned out grocery stores like locusts. The government did what they could—price caps, purchase limits, reassurances from the podium—but none of it mattered. The cost of living kept climbing, and bit by bit, the country started coming apart at the seams. Online, it was a circus. Some people posted doom-laden predictions. Others openly celebrated the thought of the world finally burning. A few just seemed relieved they wouldn't have to clock in on Monday. In that final hour, things got truly ugly. Both on the streets and on social media, it was chaos. Some people figured why not went out with a bang? If the world was ending, they'd spend their last hours doing every reckless thing they'd ever fantasized about. Others, paralyzed by fear of whatever was coming, scrambled for anything they could hoard. Supplies. Weapons. Gasoline. Didn't matter what, as long as they had more of it than the next guy. Most people just wanted to be with the ones they loved. Riley didn't have that luxury anymore. Fresh out of community college, she'd lost both her parents in a highway pileup eighteen months back. The only thing they'd left her was the family hardware store, a cramped little place wedged between a laundromat and a taqueria. She'd been running it solo for just over a year when that d*mn countdown appeared overhead. At first, she'd thought maybe an apocalypse wouldn't be the worst thing. Maybe there'd be something on the other side. A reunion. But then she thought about her folks. They'd doted on her. Made her feel like the center of their world. And even though she'd grown a thick skin since going it alone, feeling indifferent to the world, she knew what they'd want. They'd want her to fight. To stay. She was the only piece of them still left in this world. People always say you aren't really gone until the last person forgets your name. As long as she kept breathing, kept carrying them with her another day, they weren't truly dead. Riley spat the screw into her palm, face calm, the impact driver whirring as she sank another fastener into the reinforced frame. "Flour's three hundred a pound now, and you can't even buy it straight—they make you tack on a bunch of other junk you don't need just to get it," she muttered to herself, shaking her head. When that timer first flickered into existence, Riley had done something smart. She'd liquidated everything. Converted every dollar she could scrape together into supplies. Unfortunately, by the time she hit the stores, inflation had already done its damage. Her savings didn't go nearly as far as they should have. Any cash that was left went toward tools. If the world was ending, she thought they could be useful. Riley pressed the last sheet of thick insulation foam into the window frame, seating it flush against the reinforced plywood beneath. The impact driver snarled as she buried the screws. Then she reached for her pneumatic glue gun—a satisfying pfft as the sealant filled the final gap. She wiped sweat from her forehead and climbed down off the ladder. Stepped back to admire her work. The little apartment was a fortress now. Doors reinforced. Windows barricaded. Every interior wall lined with an extra layer of insulation. She glanced down at herself. Custom-fit heavy-duty workwear. Slash-resistant fabric. More pockets than she'd ever need. Reinforced padding at the knees and elbows. It wasn't fashionable, but it was practical. And her real treasure: tools. A chainsaw. A reciprocating saw. The impact driver in her hand. A multi-bit screwdriver that had cost more than she wanted to admit. She'd brought everything usable from the shop back here, consolidated it into three massive toolboxes. She'd also grabbed some stuff like an air purifier and some spare filters—anything that might matter when civilization took a vacation. She didn't know what the countdown would bring. Some folks online predicted zombies. Others said asteroid impact. Volcanic winter. Alien invasion. Take your pick. Food. Tools. Shelter. She'd even started working out, building strength she'd never needed before. She'd done everything she could think of to prepare. Whatever was coming, she figured she'd last longer than most. With nothing left to do, she dropped onto one of the big toolboxes laid flat on the floor, wiped her forehead again, and pulled out her phone. Most news apps had crashed. The only things still loading were comment sections, and they were going crazy. [Anyone got rice? I'll pay eight grand for a bag. Please, we got nothing left.] [Forget it, man. Money's toilet paper now. Saw it with my own eyes—some rich assholes cleared out the Costco warehouse last week. All that 'purchase limit' crap was just theater. Shelves were empty 'cause the stock never made it there. It's all sitting in some hedge fund guy's basement.] [No kidding? Same thing happened to me! Store manager kept telling me, 'We're limiting purchases, come back next week, we'll put your name on the list.' So the whole time the back room was empty? They were just jerking us around?] [Of course they were. Rich people cornered the market on everything. So what are normal people supposed to do? Just sit here and die?] [Anyone know what actually happens when the clock hits zero? Like, is it nukes? That virus thing from that old video game?] Riley locked her phone. Tucked it away. She didn't have anything to add to that conversation. A month ago, when the countdown first showed up, prices had spiked instantly. A fifty-pound bag of rice that normally went for thirty bucks jumped to eight hundred overnight. By yesterday, it was breaking two grand. The wealthy had rolled up with trucks and cleaned out supermarkets. Riley had been smart—she'd gone early, bought stuff that would keep, stuff that was calorie-dense and cheap. Chocolate. Survival biscuits. Canned goods. It wasn't much, but it was enough for one person, at least for a while. She took a deep breath and glanced at the timer. "00:01:10" Just over a minute. Riley gripped the toolbox beneath her. Knuckles white. Who knew what would happen when that thing hit zero? Maybe it'd be like 2012—all hype, nothing real. In that last minute, her life flickered past. Her parents' faces. The hardware store. The lonely months since. "00:00:00" The countdown ended. Riley had just started to breathe a sigh of relief—nothing happened, maybe it really was nothing—when the world lurched beneath her. A dizzying weightlessness. A sensation of falling. Everything spun. ***** She didn't know how long she was out. "Whew." A wind like a knife blade sliced across her face. Riley's eyes snapped open. Her warm apartment was gone. In its place, an endless white expanse stretched in every direction. Snow whipped through the air. Wind howled like a wounded animal. And at her feet, a small campfire guttered in the gale, threatening to die at any second. "What the—" Before she could process, a chime rang directly in her skull. Not heard. Known. "Welcome to the Extreme Cold Survival Game. "Earth no longer exists. This is your new home. This is your grave. "Survival rules are as follows. "1. Each player begins with one campfire. It is your only defense against the cold. If the campfire dies, you will be judged deceased by the system. Not that it matters—without the fire, you won't last anyway. "2. This is a real world. You can die from hunger. From exposure. From animal attack. "3. Supplies stockpiled in your previous world do not carry over. Only items on your person, or in direct physical contact at the moment of transfer, are retained. "4. Struggle to survive. It is your only hope." Riley's heart slammed against her ribs. Supplies didn't carry over? Her mind flashed to those wealthy forum posters bragging about their warehouse stockpiles. And then she looked down at herself. Workwear. Intact. And— She was still sitting on the three giant toolboxes. They sat solidly in the snow, dusted with powder, unmistakably here. "Whew." Riley let out a long breath. A white cloud dispersed in front of her face. Pity, though. During her renovations, she'd stocked those boxes with a lot of power tools. The expensive impact driver. The reciprocating saw. In a world with no electrical outlets, once those batteries died, they were just dead weight. But even so. The hand tools. The consumables. The sheer volume of stuff in those boxes—it was a treasure beyond measure in a place like this. Riley forced herself to calm down. She was here. She'd deal with it. Something new lived in her mind now. She concentrated, and a translucent pale-blue screen materialized in front of her eyes. Looked just like a video game HUD. "Personal Panel "Name: Riley Carter "ID: 1120-US "Level: 1 (Standard Survivor) "Strength: 8 (Years of manual labor have made you stronger than average) "Agility: 8 (You've got quick reflexes) "Constitution: 6 (You've been skipping meals lately) "Spirit: 9 (You keep your head when others panic) "Inventory: 16/16 slots (Base capacity)" "Inventory?" Riley studied the sixteen empty squares at the bottom of the display. She reached out, touched one of the toolboxes, and thought the word, "Store." Whoosh. The heavy box vanished. In its place, a tiny icon appeared in the first inventory slot, a miniature "x1" in the corner. "It actually worked." For the first time since arriving, a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. Retrieve. Thud. The toolbox landed back in the snow, puffing up powder. No energy cost. No sense of weight. And in that inventory, she could carry anything, regardless of how heavy it was. Later on, when she went scavenging, that would make all the difference. Riley rubbed her stiff, freezing hands together and turned her attention to the campfire at her feet. It was the only warmth in this frozen wasteland. Hovering above the flames, visible only to her, were a few lines of glowing text. "Basic Campfire (Lv.1) "Remaining Burn Time: 05:28:00 "Current Coverage: Radius six feet (Blocks wind and snow) "Upgrade Requirements: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Steel x5 "Description: This is your life. Do not let it die. Upgrading expands your safe zone and unlocks additional construction options." "Needs upgrading." Riley frowned. Wood and stone she could probably find. But coal? Steel? Out here in the middle of nowhere? A flash of movement caught her eye. A small wooden box, half-buried in the snow not far from the fire. The starter crate. Had to be. Riley didn't rush. First, she pulled the claw hammer from her belt—the one she always kept there, habit from years of work—and gripped it tight. She scanned the tree line. Listened past the wind. Nothing moved. No sounds but the storm. She walked over quickly, crouched by the box. No lock. She pried the lid open with the claw end of her hammer. Inside, a handful of items. "Obtained: Iron Axe x1 "Obtained: Stale Dark Bread x2 "Obtained: 500ml Bottled Water x1 "Obtained: Kindling x5 "Obtained: Insulated Field Jacket x1 "Obtained: Utility Rope (25ft) "Obtained: Thermal Underwear (Set) x2 Not much. Barely anything. Riley picked up one of the dark loaves. It was rock hard. She examined the jacket—basic, but warm-looking. "So this is what a standard survivor starts with." At least the system had thought of everything. Including the underwear. She'd half-expected to wake up naked in the snow; at least she didn't have to worry about that. She stored everything in her inventory, then shrugged on the field jacket. The temperature shift was brutal. Even those few seconds exposed had left her hands numb. Hypothermia would set in fast out here. Jacket on, she hurried back to the campfire. She pulled the five units of Kindling from her inventory and tossed them onto the flames. The fire roared higher. Warmth flooded over her. "Fuel added. Remaining Burn Time: 10:28:00" Ten hours. If she didn't move fast, in ten hours she'd freeze to death on this ice field. And the game had made it clear—if the fire died, the system would judge her dead. Whether she actually froze or not. Riley lifted her head and scanned the landscape. She was in a sparse coniferous forest. Barely alive trees, crusted with frost, dotted the area not far from her position. "Wood." A slow smile spread across her face. She patted the toolbox beside her. "Other people might have axes. But felling a tree with just an axe takes hours. Exhausts you." She unlatched the box. Pulled out the chainsaw. Checked the battery gauge—full. "I've got a handsaw in here too. And a chainsaw with a full charge." The battery wouldn't last forever. But it would last long enough to give her a massive head start. In this race for survival, that was everything. Chapter 2 The Chainsaw The wind screamed across the open ground, picking up loose snow and flinging it against her goggles like sand. It sounded like static. Riley had pulled her basic work gear from the toolbox before heading out. Now she stood in the snow, surrounded by clusters of thin conifers that looked half-dead already. She took a breath. The air burned going down. "Zzzzzzz—!!!" She squeezed the trigger. The orange-and-black lithium-ion chainsaw in her hands roared to life, the chain spinning so fast it blurred. She buried the teeth in the nearest pine trunk. Wood chips exploded everywhere. Fragrant shavings—still wet with resin—scattered across the pristine snow, stark and yellow against all that white. Five seconds. Crack. The pine tree, thick as her arm, groaned and tilted. Then it fell slow and heavy into a drift, sending up a puff of powder. "God bless modern technology." Riley shook out her wrist—the vibration had numbed her fingers—and allowed herself a small smile. Without that chainsaw, with just the basic iron axe the system had given her, felling a tree frozen solid like this would have taken twenty minutes minimum. And it would have left her soaked with sweat. In subzero temps, sweat was a death sentence. Once your base layers got wet, the moment you stopped moving, your body temperature would plummet. Hypothermia would follow fast. Riley didn't waste time celebrating. She knew the saw in her hands was a hungry machine. She'd brought two spare high-capacity batteries, sure, but until she found a way to recharge them, every second the motor ran was borrowed time. She had to gather as much wood as possible before the batteries gave out. "Zzzzz—Zzzzz—" At the edge of the forest, the chainsaw's snarl rose and fell, shattering the frozen silence. Riley worked like she was possessed. Fell a tree. Move to the next. Fell another. But she had to stay alert—watch for hidden snow pits underfoot, keep adjusting her collar against the wind that kept finding its way down her neck. Her stamina drained faster than she'd anticipated. In extreme cold, body burned through calories just to stay alive. Added walking through knee-deep snow, where every step took three times the energy of walking on pavement, and the math got ugly fast. Pretty soon, Riley was breathing hard. Her breath fogged the inside of her goggles, and she had to keep wiping them clear. "Zzzzz..." She was mid-cut on a tree—didn't even know which number anymore—when the chainsaw's roar stuttered. Died. The chain jammed solid in the wood. A red light blinked at her. Dead battery. Riley yanked the saw free and patted its housing. "Good work, buddy." Genuine regret in her voice. She straightened up and looked around. Pine trunks lay scattered across the snow in every direction. A decent haul. She counted silently. "Twenty-three total." Then the next problem hit her. According to the system, until she actually possessed these logs, they were still just natural resources. That meant they didn't qualify for Inventory storage. She couldn't just snap her fingers and make them disappear. She had to drag them back to camp. Riley grabbed the nearest pine and tried to pull. Heavy. Like, unreasonably heavy. Fresh-cut wood was full of moisture. Add the branches catching in the snow, dragging like anchors, and she felt like she was hauling a dead body through mud. "Huff... huff..." She gritted her teeth, looped rope around the trunk, slung it over her shoulder, leaned forward, and started walking. Inch by inch. The tree line to her campfire was maybe fifty yards. Right now, it felt like fifty miles. By the time she'd wrestled the fourth tree back into the fire's warm radius, she was wrecked. Her legs felt like someone had filled them with concrete. Her lungs burned from hauling freezing air through them. "Can't... can't do more." Riley made the call. She stopped. Those nineteen trees still out there in the snow—they called to her. Tempted her. But if she kept pushing without rest, without fuel for herself, she'd collapse out there. And out there, collapse meant death. She dropped down next to the big wooden crate that had held her starter supplies. It was less than three feet from the campfire. The flames danced orange and red, pumping out heat that felt like heaven. The shift from frozen to warm made her shiver violently. She pulled off her goggles and thick gloves, set them near the fire to warm up, then—still shaking—pulled the half-empty water bottle from her Inventory. Took a small sip. Then the bread. Two black bricks that looked more like construction material than food. "Crunch." Riley bit off a piece with effort. It was coarse. Tasted like sawdust with a hint of burnt toast. Bitter. But it was calories. Carbs. Fuel for her own fire. She forced herself to chew, swallow. When the food hit her stomach, warmth finally started spreading through her core. The uncontrollable shaking eased. After half a loaf, Riley leaned back against the crate. Her eyelids drooped. Post-exhaustion crash hit her like a wave. The campfire crackled. The wind seemed farther away now. Muffled. She really wanted to sleep... Her head nodded. Her body started sliding sideways. "Wait—" Some animal instinct jolted her awake just before she went under. She pinched her thigh. Hard. Then looked up at the timer floating above the flames. "Shelter Level 1 "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 06:28:00" Six and a half hours. If she slept too deep, too long, and that fire went out—what then? Even ignoring the obvious—that she'd freeze to death in this hellhole without a heat source—the game rules were clear. When the campfire hits zero, it's game over. "No sleeping. Not allowed." Riley slapped her own cheeks, forced herself upright. She stayed near the fire, but she didn't take off her heavy work clothes. She remembered reading something once, a survival article. "In the late stages of hypothermia, your hypothalamus malfunctions. You get a false sensation of heat. It's called "paradoxical undressing"—people strip down right before they freeze to death." "Okay. Process these four. Keep the fire fed." She pulled a traditional handsaw from the toolbox. Looking at the four thick pine logs on the ground, she almost laughed. Without power tools, breaking these down into burnable pieces would take at least half an hour. Burn the little energy she had left. But what choice did she have? Riley knelt in the snow, positioned the blade against the trunk, and was about to start cutting— A soft white light shot out from the system panel on her chest. It washed over the logs. "Ding! "Detected felled, intact logs within shelter range. "Perform quick recovery?" Riley's hand froze mid-saw. Quick recovery? It took her a second to process. Then relief flooded through her so hard she almost cried. "Yes! Recover!" She didn't hesitate. The next moment, something impossible happened. The four pine trunks—the ones she'd have to saw and split by hand, the ones that represented hours of brutal labor—dissolved into pale blue light particles. Not into dust. Into neat, uniform logs that stacked themselves automatically in her Inventory. The branches, the needles, all the useless parts—purified out of existence. "Recovery successful! "Obtained: Common Wood x20" Riley's eyes went wide, staring at the perfect lumber in her inventory display. Looked like it came straight from a hardware store. "One tree gives five units of wood? "And I don't have to cut it myself?" This changed everything. It meant she only had to handle the felling and the dragging. Once a log crossed into her camp's boundary, the system recognized it as hers. The most time-consuming part—the processing—just... didn't exist anymore. Riley immediately grabbed five units of wood and fed them to the fire. Whoosh. The flames leaped, hungry and grateful. "Fuel added. "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 12:20:00" "Five logs, five hours..." She did the math fast, looking at the fifteen units still on the ground. If she threw all of those in, that'd be another fifteen hours. Total of twenty-seven. She could sleep like the dead right now, and that fire would still be burning when she woke up. Security. For the first time since the world ended, Riley felt something like security. She selected the remaining wood. Deposited it all. Watched the countdown tick up to a very comfortable "27:20:00". Then her nerves finally let go. She dragged one of the toolboxes into position to block the wind, wrapped the field jacket tight around herself, pulled her hat down over her eyes, leaned back against the warm crate, and let the crackle of the fire pull her under. ***** She didn't sleep long. When she opened her eyes again, the sky was still that same dull gray-white. Impossible to tell if it was morning or afternoon. System clock said three hours. Her body ached. Shoulders and arms especially—felt like she'd gone ten rounds with someone. But her head was clear. She stretched her stiff neck and stood up. The snow seemed lighter. The feathery flakes had tapered off into sporadic icy grains. Riley ate a little more, got some fuel back in the tank, then stepped outside the campfire's warmth. The fire's effect wasn't what she'd expected. It wasn't that the temperature gradually dropped as you moved away. It was sharper than that. Like there was an invisible barrier around the flames. Inside, livable. Outside, the cold hit you like a wall. She wandered a little way off. The cold found every gap in her clothing. She thought about going farther, exploring. But there was nothing visible except that stand of trees she'd already worked. Maybe stuff was buried under the snow, but she couldn't see it. "No proper snow boots. Not going far." Riley glanced at the endless white distance with real regret. "Don't get greedy. Get those nineteen trees first." She turned. Looked at the woods. Her loot was still out there. And now she knew: if she could drag them back into the campfire's circle, the system would cash them out automatically. "Time to work." Riley rubbed her hands together. Let the motivation build. For the next few hours, she became a machine. Drag a tree to camp. Recover it. Go back for another. Repeat. It was boring. Exhausting. But watching those logs turn into numbers in her inventory—that feeling was hard to describe. Satisfying, in a way nothing had been satisfying in a long time. When the last pine trunk crossed into the light and dissolved into particles, Riley just collapsed. Lay flat in the snow and stared at the gray sky. She pulled up her Inventory. The once-empty slots were full now. Stack after stack of wood icons. "Item: Common Wood "Quantity: 80 "Description: Basic survival resource. Can be used for fuel or construction." Eighty units. Plus what was already burning in the campfire. Her day's work had yielded a clean hundred. One unit of wood burned for one hour. Riley looked at the flames dancing in front of her. Felt the heat on her face. Let herself smile, wide and real. "One hundred hours." Four full days. While everyone else was probably still panicking. Crying. Begging. Trying to figure out how to survive their first night in this frozen nightmare... She, Riley, had enough fuel stockpiled to last four days. Which meant: for the next ninety-six hours, unless she actively chose to die, nobody and nothing could put her fire out. She pulled the half-empty water bottle from Inventory. The space must have been insulated somehow—the water was still warm. Almost body temperature. She sipped it. Tasted sweet, even though it was just tap water. "Okay. Next step." Her gaze settled on the "Upgrade" button on the campfire panel. This open-air setup was fine for now. But if she was going to survive long-term, she needed something better. A real shelter. All she needed was a little stone. Some coal. Some steel. Then she could build something worth calling home. Chapter 3 The Trading Game The blizzard howled outside, but within the six-foot radius of the campfire, the air stayed surprisingly warm—like the wind had hit an invisible wall and just couldn't reach. Riley leaned back against the dusty wooden crate, holding the half-empty water bottle in her hand. She stared into the flames for a moment, then focused her attention inward. The pale blue system panel unfolded in front of her eyes again. Now that the immediate crisis was handled, she finally had time to sit quietly and really explore this so-called "Survival System". Beyond the personal stats and inventory, the bottom of the panel had a row of function icons: Server Channel, Friends List, Trading Market, and Crafting Manual. Friends List was empty. No surprise there. She hadn't exactly been a social butterfly back in the old world, and she sure as hell wasn't going to make friends easily in a frozen hellscape where everyone was fighting for their next breath. She tapped into the "Server Channel". A line of numbers appeared in the top left. "Server: US-008 "Current Online: 9911/10000" Ten thousand people started. Less than ten hours in, eighty-nine were already gone. "That doesn't add up." Everyone's starter crate came with a rusty iron axe and five units of wood. Plus the initial fuel the campfire had when they arrived—that alone bought them ten hours minimum, even if they just sat there doing nothing. What the hell did those people do to get eliminated so fast? The channel was moving fast, messages scrolling by every second. Desperation dripped from every line. "Someone help, I'm freezing my ass off out here. This stupid axe can't cut sh*t—every swing just bounces off and rattles my whole arm. Can anyone spare a couple logs? My dad's a senior VP at Walker Group. I'll wire you a million dollars when we get back, I swear." "Wake up, buddy. If your dad's still alive, he's out there chopping trees right now too." "Don't even talk to me. I spotted a wooden crate in the snow earlier, got all excited, ran over—and before I got within ten feet, some white rabbit thing jumped out of a drift. Teeth like needles. Almost took a chunk out of my leg. Missed the crate, wasted all that energy for nothing." "I saw that too! Random crates spawn in the wild. I opened a wooden one and got two chocolate bars and some coal." Reading through the chaos, Riley picked out two keywords, "Random Reward Crates" and "Dangerous Creatures". So this world was deeper than she thought. Wooden crates, copper crates—these randomly spawning resource points were the real way to get ahead. Coal came from crates. That was useful to know. And if coal was in crates, steel probably was too. But something bothered her. According to what people were saying, reward crates weren't exactly rare. So why hadn't she found a single one during her lumber run? She doubted it was just bad luck. Riley exited chat and tapped into the "Trading Market". "Seller: MountainMan88 Item: Stone x2 Wants: White Bread x5" "Seller: LoneWolf_21 Item: Cotton Cloth Wants: Clean Water" "Seller: NotDeadYet Item: Wood x3 Wants: Anything edible" Most people were trading for food and wood. The stuff that kept you alive right now. Things like stone and cloth were getting dumped cheap—nobody had the luxury of thinking long-term. Riley looked at her own inventory. Eighty units of wood staring back at her. Her heart beat a little faster. In this opening phase, where wood literally meant the difference between life and death, the resources in her hands were basically gold bars. "Time to trade," she muttered to herself. "Coal, steel—can't get those from chopping trees. And right now, wood's at maximum value. If I wait, the exchange rate shifts." Even with the chainsaw dead, she still had the handsaw. Less efficient, sure, but she could gather more wood if she needed it. Short-term, she wasn't going to run out. She clicked to post a message in the channel. "System Prompt: Detected that you have not set a virtual ID. Please enter your nickname (cannot be changed after setting)." Riley stared at the blank input box. Naming things was the worst. She sat there for a long time, nothing coming to mind. Finally, she gave up. Couldn't think of anything cool or clever, so she'd just go with something random. Her fingers tapped across the virtual keyboard—SpicyBurger. "Setting successful. ID locked." The prompt closed. Riley posted her message. "SpicyBurger: Selling wood in bulk. Looking for: Coal, Steel, High-calorie food. DM me with offers—what you have and your rate. Good deals go fast, don't sleep on this." For three seconds after the message appeared, the channel went dead silent. Then it exploded. "SpicyBurger? That name's making me hungry, what the hell." "Never mind the name—'wood in bulk'! We got a whale in here! Everyone else is stressing about the next hour and this person's already running a business?" "I need some! My campfire's down to like two hours. I don't know if I actually die when it hits zero but I don't wanna find out." Suddenly, half the channel was scrambling for wood. But then the skeptics crawled out. "Hang on. Everyone started with the same rusty axe. Chopping a tree in this weather takes twenty, thirty minutes minimum. Where's she getting 'bulk' wood from? Sounds like a scam." "InvincibleWarrior: Everybody chill. Look at that ID—sounds like a girl's handle. I'm a grown man, been busting my ass, and I've only got like ten logs saved up. My hands are shredded. Some girl with a food name claims she's got bulk? She's trying to run a game. Scam people out of their stuff." "Iron_Tough: Agreed. Scammers made it through the apocalypse too, I guess. My advice: ignore her. Don't get played. How much wood can a woman chop anyway? Probably can't even lift the axe right, lol." Riley scrolled through the messages, expression flat. She almost laughed. But some people pushed back. "FishHater44: How is it a scam? If she doesn't deliver, you don't complete the trade. Just 'cause you can't chop that much wood doesn't mean nobody can." Riley nodded slightly. That one had a point. But she didn't waste energy arguing in the channel. Instead, she flipped on Do Not Disturb for private messages—only allowing chat requests that included a trade offer. Some people didn't actually care whether she had wood. They just couldn't stand seeing someone else do well. "Ding. Ding. Ding." Private messages started pouring in like rain. Most players weren't idiots. Faced with the very real threat of freezing to death, they'd try anything for a chance. Riley opened the first one. "Windwalker: I got "Coal x3" from a crate. How much wood can I get for it? I can't chop anymore. The wind out here is insane. I tried to throw the coal in my fire but it just kept popping back out. System says my campfire level's too low, won't let me use it. I'm out of wood. My fire's almost dead." Riley thought for a moment. "Three coal for five wood. Deal?" She hadn't known about that restriction. Coal was supposed to be better fuel than wood—didn't expect the game to lock it behind a level gate. The reply came instantly, "Deal. But five wood feels light. It's coal." The guy was conflicted. He knew coal had value, but he was desperate. "I'll make it six. Final offer." Riley wasn't sure about coal's real value yet. Six was her limit. "Fine. Deal." They both dropped their items into the trade window. A moment later, it completed. A flash of white light. Riley's inventory lost six wood. Gained three chunks of coal, each about the size of a small melon. One down. "CrunchyFrog: Hey, I got two "Iron Ingots" from a crate. System calls them "Scrap Steel". Can I get eight wood for them? Trying to stock up enough to sleep through the night." Riley replied, "Sure. Initiate." In just over ten minutes, her wood stockpile dropped significantly. But her inventory filled up with good stuff. "Coal x10 "Stone x23 "Scrap Steel x5 "Raw Meat x2 "White Bread x2 "Basic Torch Blueprint x1" The blueprint was new. The description said it was required for crafting certain items. Seemed useful, so she'd traded for it. Meanwhile, back in the channel, that "InvincibleWarrior" guy who'd been mocking her earlier seemed to notice that people were actually completing trades. His tone got bitter. "InvincibleWarrior: Whatever. She probably got lucky with a high-tier crate. Let's see how long her stock lasts. Once the wood's gone, she'll be begging me to let her join my group." The people who'd successfully traded with Riley popped into the channel to thank her. That might have been fine—except the thanks caused problems. Since Riley had stopped trading for now, most people hadn't gotten anything. And the sky was darkening. Temperature outside the campfire radius was dropping fast. Gathering wood was getting harder. Trading was their only hope. The ones who'd pinned everything on Riley, seeing her stop, started losing it. "You said 'in bulk'! You did like five trades and quit. What are we supposed to do now?" "Keep trading! My fire's almost out. You want us to go chop trees in the dark?" "If you couldn't deliver, why'd you post? Showing off and then hiding." Whether it was coordinated or just genuine rage, the number of people defending Riley in the channel shrank fast. Mostly it was attacks now. Accusations of being irresponsible. Using scarcity tactics. Playing games with people's lives. Riley closed the channel. She couldn't be bothered. In a life-or-death situation like this, people losing it was normal. If she actually had unlimited resources, she'd trade more. But she didn't. And back on Earth, nobody had ever handed her anything out of charity. She wasn't about to start playing savior now. She looked down at the "Basic Torch Blueprint" in her inventory. "Requirements: Wood x10, Kerosene, Scrap Steel x2" Note: Requires Level 2 Workbench to craft." She leaned back against the crate again. Felt the weight of her stockpile pressing back against that lingering sense of unease. In this world, your ID didn't matter. Your gender didn't matter either. What mattered was who held the resources. She looked at what she had left: 36 units of wood. Plus the steel, coal, and stone from trading. Time to plan. Upgrading to a Level 2 campfire required 55 wood. She had all the other materials. For the wood, she'd just have to use the handsaw tomorrow and gather a little more. That settled, she pulled a few more logs from inventory and arranged them on top of the crate, making a small enclosed space. Curled up inside it, she watched the sky outside slowly darken to black. Her eyes grew heavy. She drifted off. Chapter 4 The Culling Riley woke to the kind of soreness that made you reconsider ever moving again. She'd slept like the dead—no dreams, no blizzard, just nothing. When she opened her eyes, the first things she saw were the logs she'd stacked as a windbreak and the steady glow of the campfire. She tried to stretch. Big mistake. Every muscle in her body lit up at once, screaming in protest. "Sh*t." Riley sucked air through her teeth and pressed a hand to her aching shoulder. Her lower back felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to it. Yesterday's work had been too much. She wasn't weak—far from it—but she was still human. The lactic acid had settled in overnight, and now she moved like an arthritic tin man. At least she was alive. She stowed the windbreak logs back in her inventory and looked around. The world hadn't changed. Same dull gray sky. Same swirling snow. Outside the six-foot radius of the fire, the drifts looked deeper than yesterday. The wind had been busy. Riley pulled out the half-empty water bottle and wet her throat. Then she retrieved the white bread she'd traded for yesterday. Compared to that dense, flavorless black bread, this was practically cake. She tore off small pieces, letting the faint sweetness dissolve on her tongue, and habitually opened the "Server Channel". She stopped chewing. The number in the top left hit her like a physical blow. "Current Online Players: 4968/10000" "Five thousand..." Riley's eyes went wide. In a single night, that number had been cut in half. Five thousand people. Gone. Winked out of existence on this frozen ice field while she slept. "Ding." The system notification cut through her thoughts—cold, emotionless, like it was announcing the weather. "Global Announcement: Congratulations to all survivors for successfully surviving the first day. "This was a culling. Last night eliminated those fools who failed to add fuel to their fires or refused to gather wood. Remember: in this place, tears mean nothing. When you die here, you're dead-dead. "You who remain are the lucky ones. "Grace Period: A five-day 'New Player Support Period' now begins. For the next five days, your initial supply crates will refresh daily with a fixed amount of food. "Special Reward: Each survivor receives one pair of "Standard Issue Snow Boots (Common)". Be grateful for this mercy. Enjoy the game." The words sat there on her screen. Fools. Mercy. The system's tone dripped with contempt. The math was simple. Starting package: five hours of fuel. Initial gift: five units of wood, another five hours. Total ten hours, if you did absolutely nothing. The ones who'd frozen to death last night—they were the ones who'd clung to hope. The ones too scared to move. The ones who'd told themselves someone would save them. Five thousand people. One night. Gone. This wasn't a game. It was a slaughter. In the channel, the survivors who'd made it through were clearly rattled by the numbers too. "Holy sh*t... My friend's icon went dark last night. Does that mean he's dead? Actually dead?" "I can't do this. I don't wanna play anymore, I wanna go home. I swear I'll work today. I'll chop wood, I'll do whatever, just please—" "Everyone move! Don't save your strength! If you die, that's it. No respawns!" Panic spread fast. But almost immediately, the tone shifted. The fear found a target. "That SpicyBurger—if she'd shared more wood yesterday, would so many people have died?" "For real. If she had extra, why not just give it away? Why did it have to be trades? She could've at least loaned some out." "This is what happens when people hoard resources and watch others freeze. Remember that name. Don't trade with her. Ever." Riley frowned. Here we go again. She scrolled up. Sure enough, there it was—that familiar ID: "InvincibleWarrior". He was going hard in the channel. "She's profiting off suffering. That's what some people do. Women like that are the worst—hoarding supplies while people die around them. Wait and see. Someone like her won't last." Riley laughed. Actually laughed out loud. Moral blackmail. In the apocalypse. She typed, "If you want wood, go cut it yourself. I'm not your mommy. No amount of crying in chat is gonna put logs in your inventory. You'd get more done if you just picked up your d*mn axe." The channel went quiet for a second. Then the reasonable voices piped up. "She's right. Nobody owes you anything. Work for it." "Exactly. Just 'cause someone's quiet doesn't mean they're an easy target." In a world where staying alive took everything you had, expecting charity was the dumbest move of all. Riley didn't waste more energy on it. People like that—the more you engaged, the more they thrived. Let him run his mouth. She had bigger things to worry about. She closed the channel and turned to the big wooden crate—her initial supply point. Sure enough, new items had materialized inside. "Bottled Water x3 "White Bread x3 "Fresh Orange Juice x1 "Standard Snow Boots x1" "Orange juice?" Riley picked up the bottle, genuinely surprised. The orange liquid inside sloshed gently. Vitamins. The system was actually giving them vitamins. She pulled off her old shoes—already damp and cold—and swapped into the new boots. They were clunky, sure. But they gripped the snow, and the insulation was real. The chill that had been seeping up through her soles disappeared instantly. Next, she opened her toolbox. Goggles on. Thick cut-resistant gloves. Head-to-toe gear. "Time to work." The channel noise faded from her mind. She had one priority today, and it wasn't arguing with idiots. She picked up the chainsaw and headed back to the tree line. The cold played tricks on batteries. She'd known that, intellectually. But knowing it and feeling it were different things. After just eight trees, the last spare battery gave out. The chainsaw stuttered, died, and went silent in her hands. Riley stared at it. "Son of a b*tch." Chapter 5 Dead Battery Riley stared at the dead chainsaw in her hands and shook her head. Without power, it was just an expensive paperweight. If she wanted more wood, she'd have to do it the old-fashioned way—pick up the axe or the manual handsaw from the toolbox and go to war with frozen timber. But eight more trees were eight more trees. Her stockpile was looking healthy. "First things first. Get these back." She sucked it up, stowed the chainsaw in her inventory, and started hauling. Her body screamed even louder than yesterday. Every muscle felt like it had been replaced with concrete. She dragged each log back one at a time, moving like a zombie. Drag. Rest two minutes. Drag again. The wind howled in her ears. Riley lost track of time, lost track of everything except the mechanical rhythm of work. By the time the sun was high—not that you could really see it through the clouds—she dragged the last log into the campfire's radius. It dissolved into light, absorbed by the system. Riley all but collapsed into the snow. "Acquired: Wood x40" She lay there for a moment, chest heaving, staring at the number in her inventory. A tired smile crept across her face. She had enough. Combined with the coal and steel from yesterday's trades, she had everything she needed for the upgrade. Riley forced herself upright and walked to the campfire. On the floating translucent panel, the "Upgrade" button glowed that tempting gold. "Upgrade Primitive Shelter to Lv.2? "Cost: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Scrap Steel x5 "Remaining after upgrade: Wood x16, Stone x3, Coal x0, Steel x0" "Upgrade." Riley took a breath and pressed it. "Hmmmm—!" A blinding white light erupted from the heart of the campfire, swallowing everything. Riley squeezed her eyes shut. No explosion. No thunder. Just a sound like Legos snapping together. A few seconds later, the light faded. Riley opened her eyes. And stopped breathing. The campfire wasn't just a campfire anymore. The rough stone ring had transformed into something neat and intentional—a proper firepit with a stone border for insulation, a place to set things, even a simple steel grate attached to the side. But that wasn't the big news. The heat that used to push back the cold within a six-foot radius now stretched a full fifteen feet. Inside that circle, snow was actively melting, revealing dark frozen soil underneath. In one corner, she spotted a patch of moss stubbornly poking through. Riley spun around. Behind the big wooden crate, a small log cabin stood waiting. It wasn't much—maybe forty feet square, built from rough-hewn logs. Nothing fancy. But it was solid. Four walls and a roof, blocking wind and snow completely. Riley walked over and pushed open the heavy wooden door. Warm air hit her face. Inside was simple: a wooden bed frame piled with dry grass, a crude workbench, a chair, and a small fireplace connected to a chimney that ran up through the roof. Rustic. But right now, it was heaven. Wood and fire. Four walls. A roof. Home. Riley ran her hand along the rough wall. Her eyes stung a little. She wouldn't have to sleep in the open anymore. Wouldn't have to wake up every few hours to check the fire. Wouldn't have to worry about freezing to death in her sleep. Right on cue, the server announcement chimed. Gold text this time, blazing right in the center of everyone's vision. "Server Announcement: Congratulations to player SpicyBurger for being the first to achieve "Level 2 Shelter". Rewards have been distributed." The chat channel, which had been wallowing in fear and despair, exploded. "Holy sh*t? Level 2 already? What does Level 2 unlock? Can you post pics, big shot?" "That's the wood seller from yesterday? No way. Absolute legend." "Carry me please! SpicyBurger, I'll be your loyal follower. I can cook, I can clean, I can—" "Teach us, master! How'd you gather materials so fast? What's your secret?" Compliments. Pleas. Desperate attempts to get noticed. And then, of course, the sour grapes. "InvincibleWarrior: Big deal. Just profiteering off everyone else's suffering. If she'd shared that wood instead of selling it, maybe those five thousand people would still be alive. How does it feel to climb on corpses?" "GodLovesMeFirst: Seriously. Building your success on other people's deaths. Karma's real. She'll get hers." Riley's jaw tightened. If InvincibleWarrior had been standing in front of her right now, she'd have knocked his teeth out. Guys like him—useless themselves, but always ready to tear down anyone who actually accomplished something. Sewer rats. Her private messages exploded too. She'd set it to only accept trade offers, but people had found a workaround—using the "trade note" function to send spam. "Hey beautiful, I'm a personal trainer. Great shape. Wanna see? Hit me with some wood and I'll do a voice call with you!" A photo of some guy flexing in a mirror, shirt off. Riley glanced at it, unimpressed. Decent abs. Pathetic attitude. Dude was clearly strong enough to chop wood—why was he wasting time on this? She'd never mentioned her gender, so most people probably assumed anyone who'd gathered that much wood must be a guy. The messages reflected that assumption. Some women sent selfies too, trying to flirt their way into favor. Didn't matter. Shameless cut across all demographics. From the backgrounds in the photos, everyone seemed to be in different locations. But one thing was consistent: they all had trees nearby. The system must have arranged that—a new player perk. "A bunch of degenerates." Riley's face went cold. She changed her privacy settings to "Friends Only". Then she added a line to her trading post description. "No spam. Send junk, get blocked." Silence. Blessed silence. She took a breath, let the noise drain away, and focused on what mattered. "First-place upgrade reward..." She opened her inventory. Sitting there, glowing faintly purple, was a gift box. For more exciting content, please download the "JoyRead" app to continue reading.
Chapter 1 The Countdown Ends It was the year 2027, and the end of the world was now less than an hour away. "00:59:23" Riley Carter stood on a ladder with a screw clenched between her teeth, an impact driver in her hand, securing the last window panel in place. A month ago, that timer had just appeared out of nowhere, hanging in the corner of everyone's vision like it had always been there. At first, people wrote it off as some kind of mass hacker prank. The government fed the media soothing statements in an attempt to keep things calm, but there was no way to talk down the panic as prices kept rising and supplies were held in a monopoly in real time. News outlets might spin whatever narrative they wanted, but no one could argue with the price of eggs. For a while, it was a frenzy. People cleaned out grocery stores like locusts. The government did what they could—price caps, purchase limits, reassurances from the podium—but none of it mattered. The cost of living kept climbing, and bit by bit, the country started coming apart at the seams. Online, it was a circus. Some people posted doom-laden predictions. Others openly celebrated the thought of the world finally burning. A few just seemed relieved they wouldn't have to clock in on Monday. In that final hour, things got truly ugly. Both on the streets and on social media, it was chaos. Some people figured why not went out with a bang? If the world was ending, they'd spend their last hours doing every reckless thing they'd ever fantasized about. Others, paralyzed by fear of whatever was coming, scrambled for anything they could hoard. Supplies. Weapons. Gasoline. Didn't matter what, as long as they had more of it than the next guy. Most people just wanted to be with the ones they loved. Riley didn't have that luxury anymore. Fresh out of community college, she'd lost both her parents in a highway pileup eighteen months back. The only thing they'd left her was the family hardware store, a cramped little place wedged between a laundromat and a taqueria. She'd been running it solo for just over a year when that d*mn countdown appeared overhead. At first, she'd thought maybe an apocalypse wouldn't be the worst thing. Maybe there'd be something on the other side. A reunion. But then she thought about her folks. They'd doted on her. Made her feel like the center of their world. And even though she'd grown a thick skin since going it alone, feeling indifferent to the world, she knew what they'd want. They'd want her to fight. To stay. She was the only piece of them still left in this world. People always say you aren't really gone until the last person forgets your name. As long as she kept breathing, kept carrying them with her another day, they weren't truly dead. Riley spat the screw into her palm, face calm, the impact driver whirring as she sank another fastener into the reinforced frame. "Flour's three hundred a pound now, and you can't even buy it straight—they make you tack on a bunch of other junk you don't need just to get it," she muttered to herself, shaking her head. When that timer first flickered into existence, Riley had done something smart. She'd liquidated everything. Converted every dollar she could scrape together into supplies. Unfortunately, by the time she hit the stores, inflation had already done its damage. Her savings didn't go nearly as far as they should have. Any cash that was left went toward tools. If the world was ending, she thought they could be useful. Riley pressed the last sheet of thick insulation foam into the window frame, seating it flush against the reinforced plywood beneath. The impact driver snarled as she buried the screws. Then she reached for her pneumatic glue gun—a satisfying pfft as the sealant filled the final gap. She wiped sweat from her forehead and climbed down off the ladder. Stepped back to admire her work. The little apartment was a fortress now. Doors reinforced. Windows barricaded. Every interior wall lined with an extra layer of insulation. She glanced down at herself. Custom-fit heavy-duty workwear. Slash-resistant fabric. More pockets than she'd ever need. Reinforced padding at the knees and elbows. It wasn't fashionable, but it was practical. And her real treasure: tools. A chainsaw. A reciprocating saw. The impact driver in her hand. A multi-bit screwdriver that had cost more than she wanted to admit. She'd brought everything usable from the shop back here, consolidated it into three massive toolboxes. She'd also grabbed some stuff like an air purifier and some spare filters—anything that might matter when civilization took a vacation. She didn't know what the countdown would bring. Some folks online predicted zombies. Others said asteroid impact. Volcanic winter. Alien invasion. Take your pick. Food. Tools. Shelter. She'd even started working out, building strength she'd never needed before. She'd done everything she could think of to prepare. Whatever was coming, she figured she'd last longer than most. With nothing left to do, she dropped onto one of the big toolboxes laid flat on the floor, wiped her forehead again, and pulled out her phone. Most news apps had crashed. The only things still loading were comment sections, and they were going crazy. [Anyone got rice? I'll pay eight grand for a bag. Please, we got nothing left.] [Forget it, man. Money's toilet paper now. Saw it with my own eyes—some rich assholes cleared out the Costco warehouse last week. All that 'purchase limit' crap was just theater. Shelves were empty 'cause the stock never made it there. It's all sitting in some hedge fund guy's basement.] [No kidding? Same thing happened to me! Store manager kept telling me, 'We're limiting purchases, come back next week, we'll put your name on the list.' So the whole time the back room was empty? They were just jerking us around?] [Of course they were. Rich people cornered the market on everything. So what are normal people supposed to do? Just sit here and die?] [Anyone know what actually happens when the clock hits zero? Like, is it nukes? That virus thing from that old video game?] Riley locked her phone. Tucked it away. She didn't have anything to add to that conversation. A month ago, when the countdown first showed up, prices had spiked instantly. A fifty-pound bag of rice that normally went for thirty bucks jumped to eight hundred overnight. By yesterday, it was breaking two grand. The wealthy had rolled up with trucks and cleaned out supermarkets. Riley had been smart—she'd gone early, bought stuff that would keep, stuff that was calorie-dense and cheap. Chocolate. Survival biscuits. Canned goods. It wasn't much, but it was enough for one person, at least for a while. She took a deep breath and glanced at the timer. "00:01:10" Just over a minute. Riley gripped the toolbox beneath her. Knuckles white. Who knew what would happen when that thing hit zero? Maybe it'd be like 2012—all hype, nothing real. In that last minute, her life flickered past. Her parents' faces. The hardware store. The lonely months since. "00:00:00" The countdown ended. Riley had just started to breathe a sigh of relief—nothing happened, maybe it really was nothing—when the world lurched beneath her. A dizzying weightlessness. A sensation of falling. Everything spun. ***** She didn't know how long she was out. "Whew." A wind like a knife blade sliced across her face. Riley's eyes snapped open. Her warm apartment was gone. In its place, an endless white expanse stretched in every direction. Snow whipped through the air. Wind howled like a wounded animal. And at her feet, a small campfire guttered in the gale, threatening to die at any second. "What the—" Before she could process, a chime rang directly in her skull. Not heard. Known. "Welcome to the Extreme Cold Survival Game. "Earth no longer exists. This is your new home. This is your grave. "Survival rules are as follows. "1. Each player begins with one campfire. It is your only defense against the cold. If the campfire dies, you will be judged deceased by the system. Not that it matters—without the fire, you won't last anyway. "2. This is a real world. You can die from hunger. From exposure. From animal attack. "3. Supplies stockpiled in your previous world do not carry over. Only items on your person, or in direct physical contact at the moment of transfer, are retained. "4. Struggle to survive. It is your only hope." Riley's heart slammed against her ribs. Supplies didn't carry over? Her mind flashed to those wealthy forum posters bragging about their warehouse stockpiles. And then she looked down at herself. Workwear. Intact. And— She was still sitting on the three giant toolboxes. They sat solidly in the snow, dusted with powder, unmistakably here. "Whew." Riley let out a long breath. A white cloud dispersed in front of her face. Pity, though. During her renovations, she'd stocked those boxes with a lot of power tools. The expensive impact driver. The reciprocating saw. In a world with no electrical outlets, once those batteries died, they were just dead weight. But even so. The hand tools. The consumables. The sheer volume of stuff in those boxes—it was a treasure beyond measure in a place like this. Riley forced herself to calm down. She was here. She'd deal with it. Something new lived in her mind now. She concentrated, and a translucent pale-blue screen materialized in front of her eyes. Looked just like a video game HUD. "Personal Panel "Name: Riley Carter "ID: 1120-US "Level: 1 (Standard Survivor) "Strength: 8 (Years of manual labor have made you stronger than average) "Agility: 8 (You've got quick reflexes) "Constitution: 6 (You've been skipping meals lately) "Spirit: 9 (You keep your head when others panic) "Inventory: 16/16 slots (Base capacity)" "Inventory?" Riley studied the sixteen empty squares at the bottom of the display. She reached out, touched one of the toolboxes, and thought the word, "Store." Whoosh. The heavy box vanished. In its place, a tiny icon appeared in the first inventory slot, a miniature "x1" in the corner. "It actually worked." For the first time since arriving, a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. Retrieve. Thud. The toolbox landed back in the snow, puffing up powder. No energy cost. No sense of weight. And in that inventory, she could carry anything, regardless of how heavy it was. Later on, when she went scavenging, that would make all the difference. Riley rubbed her stiff, freezing hands together and turned her attention to the campfire at her feet. It was the only warmth in this frozen wasteland. Hovering above the flames, visible only to her, were a few lines of glowing text. "Basic Campfire (Lv.1) "Remaining Burn Time: 05:28:00 "Current Coverage: Radius six feet (Blocks wind and snow) "Upgrade Requirements: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Steel x5 "Description: This is your life. Do not let it die. Upgrading expands your safe zone and unlocks additional construction options." "Needs upgrading." Riley frowned. Wood and stone she could probably find. But coal? Steel? Out here in the middle of nowhere? A flash of movement caught her eye. A small wooden box, half-buried in the snow not far from the fire. The starter crate. Had to be. Riley didn't rush. First, she pulled the claw hammer from her belt—the one she always kept there, habit from years of work—and gripped it tight. She scanned the tree line. Listened past the wind. Nothing moved. No sounds but the storm. She walked over quickly, crouched by the box. No lock. She pried the lid open with the claw end of her hammer. Inside, a handful of items. "Obtained: Iron Axe x1 "Obtained: Stale Dark Bread x2 "Obtained: 500ml Bottled Water x1 "Obtained: Kindling x5 "Obtained: Insulated Field Jacket x1 "Obtained: Utility Rope (25ft) "Obtained: Thermal Underwear (Set) x2 Not much. Barely anything. Riley picked up one of the dark loaves. It was rock hard. She examined the jacket—basic, but warm-looking. "So this is what a standard survivor starts with." At least the system had thought of everything. Including the underwear. She'd half-expected to wake up naked in the snow; at least she didn't have to worry about that. She stored everything in her inventory, then shrugged on the field jacket. The temperature shift was brutal. Even those few seconds exposed had left her hands numb. Hypothermia would set in fast out here. Jacket on, she hurried back to the campfire. She pulled the five units of Kindling from her inventory and tossed them onto the flames. The fire roared higher. Warmth flooded over her. "Fuel added. Remaining Burn Time: 10:28:00" Ten hours. If she didn't move fast, in ten hours she'd freeze to death on this ice field. And the game had made it clear—if the fire died, the system would judge her dead. Whether she actually froze or not. Riley lifted her head and scanned the landscape. She was in a sparse coniferous forest. Barely alive trees, crusted with frost, dotted the area not far from her position. "Wood." A slow smile spread across her face. She patted the toolbox beside her. "Other people might have axes. But felling a tree with just an axe takes hours. Exhausts you." She unlatched the box. Pulled out the chainsaw. Checked the battery gauge—full. "I've got a handsaw in here too. And a chainsaw with a full charge." The battery wouldn't last forever. But it would last long enough to give her a massive head start. In this race for survival, that was everything. Chapter 2 The Chainsaw The wind screamed across the open ground, picking up loose snow and flinging it against her goggles like sand. It sounded like static. Riley had pulled her basic work gear from the toolbox before heading out. Now she stood in the snow, surrounded by clusters of thin conifers that looked half-dead already. She took a breath. The air burned going down. "Zzzzzzz—!!!" She squeezed the trigger. The orange-and-black lithium-ion chainsaw in her hands roared to life, the chain spinning so fast it blurred. She buried the teeth in the nearest pine trunk. Wood chips exploded everywhere. Fragrant shavings—still wet with resin—scattered across the pristine snow, stark and yellow against all that white. Five seconds. Crack. The pine tree, thick as her arm, groaned and tilted. Then it fell slow and heavy into a drift, sending up a puff of powder. "God bless modern technology." Riley shook out her wrist—the vibration had numbed her fingers—and allowed herself a small smile. Without that chainsaw, with just the basic iron axe the system had given her, felling a tree frozen solid like this would have taken twenty minutes minimum. And it would have left her soaked with sweat. In subzero temps, sweat was a death sentence. Once your base layers got wet, the moment you stopped moving, your body temperature would plummet. Hypothermia would follow fast. Riley didn't waste time celebrating. She knew the saw in her hands was a hungry machine. She'd brought two spare high-capacity batteries, sure, but until she found a way to recharge them, every second the motor ran was borrowed time. She had to gather as much wood as possible before the batteries gave out. "Zzzzz—Zzzzz—" At the edge of the forest, the chainsaw's snarl rose and fell, shattering the frozen silence. Riley worked like she was possessed. Fell a tree. Move to the next. Fell another. But she had to stay alert—watch for hidden snow pits underfoot, keep adjusting her collar against the wind that kept finding its way down her neck. Her stamina drained faster than she'd anticipated. In extreme cold, body burned through calories just to stay alive. Added walking through knee-deep snow, where every step took three times the energy of walking on pavement, and the math got ugly fast. Pretty soon, Riley was breathing hard. Her breath fogged the inside of her goggles, and she had to keep wiping them clear. "Zzzzz..." She was mid-cut on a tree—didn't even know which number anymore—when the chainsaw's roar stuttered. Died. The chain jammed solid in the wood. A red light blinked at her. Dead battery. Riley yanked the saw free and patted its housing. "Good work, buddy." Genuine regret in her voice. She straightened up and looked around. Pine trunks lay scattered across the snow in every direction. A decent haul. She counted silently. "Twenty-three total." Then the next problem hit her. According to the system, until she actually possessed these logs, they were still just natural resources. That meant they didn't qualify for Inventory storage. She couldn't just snap her fingers and make them disappear. She had to drag them back to camp. Riley grabbed the nearest pine and tried to pull. Heavy. Like, unreasonably heavy. Fresh-cut wood was full of moisture. Add the branches catching in the snow, dragging like anchors, and she felt like she was hauling a dead body through mud. "Huff... huff..." She gritted her teeth, looped rope around the trunk, slung it over her shoulder, leaned forward, and started walking. Inch by inch. The tree line to her campfire was maybe fifty yards. Right now, it felt like fifty miles. By the time she'd wrestled the fourth tree back into the fire's warm radius, she was wrecked. Her legs felt like someone had filled them with concrete. Her lungs burned from hauling freezing air through them. "Can't... can't do more." Riley made the call. She stopped. Those nineteen trees still out there in the snow—they called to her. Tempted her. But if she kept pushing without rest, without fuel for herself, she'd collapse out there. And out there, collapse meant death. She dropped down next to the big wooden crate that had held her starter supplies. It was less than three feet from the campfire. The flames danced orange and red, pumping out heat that felt like heaven. The shift from frozen to warm made her shiver violently. She pulled off her goggles and thick gloves, set them near the fire to warm up, then—still shaking—pulled the half-empty water bottle from her Inventory. Took a small sip. Then the bread. Two black bricks that looked more like construction material than food. "Crunch." Riley bit off a piece with effort. It was coarse. Tasted like sawdust with a hint of burnt toast. Bitter. But it was calories. Carbs. Fuel for her own fire. She forced herself to chew, swallow. When the food hit her stomach, warmth finally started spreading through her core. The uncontrollable shaking eased. After half a loaf, Riley leaned back against the crate. Her eyelids drooped. Post-exhaustion crash hit her like a wave. The campfire crackled. The wind seemed farther away now. Muffled. She really wanted to sleep... Her head nodded. Her body started sliding sideways. "Wait—" Some animal instinct jolted her awake just before she went under. She pinched her thigh. Hard. Then looked up at the timer floating above the flames. "Shelter Level 1 "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 06:28:00" Six and a half hours. If she slept too deep, too long, and that fire went out—what then? Even ignoring the obvious—that she'd freeze to death in this hellhole without a heat source—the game rules were clear. When the campfire hits zero, it's game over. "No sleeping. Not allowed." Riley slapped her own cheeks, forced herself upright. She stayed near the fire, but she didn't take off her heavy work clothes. She remembered reading something once, a survival article. "In the late stages of hypothermia, your hypothalamus malfunctions. You get a false sensation of heat. It's called "paradoxical undressing"—people strip down right before they freeze to death." "Okay. Process these four. Keep the fire fed." She pulled a traditional handsaw from the toolbox. Looking at the four thick pine logs on the ground, she almost laughed. Without power tools, breaking these down into burnable pieces would take at least half an hour. Burn the little energy she had left. But what choice did she have? Riley knelt in the snow, positioned the blade against the trunk, and was about to start cutting— A soft white light shot out from the system panel on her chest. It washed over the logs. "Ding! "Detected felled, intact logs within shelter range. "Perform quick recovery?" Riley's hand froze mid-saw. Quick recovery? It took her a second to process. Then relief flooded through her so hard she almost cried. "Yes! Recover!" She didn't hesitate. The next moment, something impossible happened. The four pine trunks—the ones she'd have to saw and split by hand, the ones that represented hours of brutal labor—dissolved into pale blue light particles. Not into dust. Into neat, uniform logs that stacked themselves automatically in her Inventory. The branches, the needles, all the useless parts—purified out of existence. "Recovery successful! "Obtained: Common Wood x20" Riley's eyes went wide, staring at the perfect lumber in her inventory display. Looked like it came straight from a hardware store. "One tree gives five units of wood? "And I don't have to cut it myself?" This changed everything. It meant she only had to handle the felling and the dragging. Once a log crossed into her camp's boundary, the system recognized it as hers. The most time-consuming part—the processing—just... didn't exist anymore. Riley immediately grabbed five units of wood and fed them to the fire. Whoosh. The flames leaped, hungry and grateful. "Fuel added. "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 12:20:00" "Five logs, five hours..." She did the math fast, looking at the fifteen units still on the ground. If she threw all of those in, that'd be another fifteen hours. Total of twenty-seven. She could sleep like the dead right now, and that fire would still be burning when she woke up. Security. For the first time since the world ended, Riley felt something like security. She selected the remaining wood. Deposited it all. Watched the countdown tick up to a very comfortable "27:20:00". Then her nerves finally let go. She dragged one of the toolboxes into position to block the wind, wrapped the field jacket tight around herself, pulled her hat down over her eyes, leaned back against the warm crate, and let the crackle of the fire pull her under. ***** She didn't sleep long. When she opened her eyes again, the sky was still that same dull gray-white. Impossible to tell if it was morning or afternoon. System clock said three hours. Her body ached. Shoulders and arms especially—felt like she'd gone ten rounds with someone. But her head was clear. She stretched her stiff neck and stood up. The snow seemed lighter. The feathery flakes had tapered off into sporadic icy grains. Riley ate a little more, got some fuel back in the tank, then stepped outside the campfire's warmth. The fire's effect wasn't what she'd expected. It wasn't that the temperature gradually dropped as you moved away. It was sharper than that. Like there was an invisible barrier around the flames. Inside, livable. Outside, the cold hit you like a wall. She wandered a little way off. The cold found every gap in her clothing. She thought about going farther, exploring. But there was nothing visible except that stand of trees she'd already worked. Maybe stuff was buried under the snow, but she couldn't see it. "No proper snow boots. Not going far." Riley glanced at the endless white distance with real regret. "Don't get greedy. Get those nineteen trees first." She turned. Looked at the woods. Her loot was still out there. And now she knew: if she could drag them back into the campfire's circle, the system would cash them out automatically. "Time to work." Riley rubbed her hands together. Let the motivation build. For the next few hours, she became a machine. Drag a tree to camp. Recover it. Go back for another. Repeat. It was boring. Exhausting. But watching those logs turn into numbers in her inventory—that feeling was hard to describe. Satisfying, in a way nothing had been satisfying in a long time. When the last pine trunk crossed into the light and dissolved into particles, Riley just collapsed. Lay flat in the snow and stared at the gray sky. She pulled up her Inventory. The once-empty slots were full now. Stack after stack of wood icons. "Item: Common Wood "Quantity: 80 "Description: Basic survival resource. Can be used for fuel or construction." Eighty units. Plus what was already burning in the campfire. Her day's work had yielded a clean hundred. One unit of wood burned for one hour. Riley looked at the flames dancing in front of her. Felt the heat on her face. Let herself smile, wide and real. "One hundred hours." Four full days. While everyone else was probably still panicking. Crying. Begging. Trying to figure out how to survive their first night in this frozen nightmare... She, Riley, had enough fuel stockpiled to last four days. Which meant: for the next ninety-six hours, unless she actively chose to die, nobody and nothing could put her fire out. She pulled the half-empty water bottle from Inventory. The space must have been insulated somehow—the water was still warm. Almost body temperature. She sipped it. Tasted sweet, even though it was just tap water. "Okay. Next step." Her gaze settled on the "Upgrade" button on the campfire panel. This open-air setup was fine for now. But if she was going to survive long-term, she needed something better. A real shelter. All she needed was a little stone. Some coal. Some steel. Then she could build something worth calling home. Chapter 3 The Trading Game The blizzard howled outside, but within the six-foot radius of the campfire, the air stayed surprisingly warm—like the wind had hit an invisible wall and just couldn't reach. Riley leaned back against the dusty wooden crate, holding the half-empty water bottle in her hand. She stared into the flames for a moment, then focused her attention inward. The pale blue system panel unfolded in front of her eyes again. Now that the immediate crisis was handled, she finally had time to sit quietly and really explore this so-called "Survival System". Beyond the personal stats and inventory, the bottom of the panel had a row of function icons: Server Channel, Friends List, Trading Market, and Crafting Manual. Friends List was empty. No surprise there. She hadn't exactly been a social butterfly back in the old world, and she sure as hell wasn't going to make friends easily in a frozen hellscape where everyone was fighting for their next breath. She tapped into the "Server Channel". A line of numbers appeared in the top left. "Server: US-008 "Current Online: 9911/10000" Ten thousand people started. Less than ten hours in, eighty-nine were already gone. "That doesn't add up." Everyone's starter crate came with a rusty iron axe and five units of wood. Plus the initial fuel the campfire had when they arrived—that alone bought them ten hours minimum, even if they just sat there doing nothing. What the hell did those people do to get eliminated so fast? The channel was moving fast, messages scrolling by every second. Desperation dripped from every line. "Someone help, I'm freezing my ass off out here. This stupid axe can't cut sh*t—every swing just bounces off and rattles my whole arm. Can anyone spare a couple logs? My dad's a senior VP at Walker Group. I'll wire you a million dollars when we get back, I swear." "Wake up, buddy. If your dad's still alive, he's out there chopping trees right now too." "Don't even talk to me. I spotted a wooden crate in the snow earlier, got all excited, ran over—and before I got within ten feet, some white rabbit thing jumped out of a drift. Teeth like needles. Almost took a chunk out of my leg. Missed the crate, wasted all that energy for nothing." "I saw that too! Random crates spawn in the wild. I opened a wooden one and got two chocolate bars and some coal." Reading through the chaos, Riley picked out two keywords, "Random Reward Crates" and "Dangerous Creatures". So this world was deeper than she thought. Wooden crates, copper crates—these randomly spawning resource points were the real way to get ahead. Coal came from crates. That was useful to know. And if coal was in crates, steel probably was too. But something bothered her. According to what people were saying, reward crates weren't exactly rare. So why hadn't she found a single one during her lumber run? She doubted it was just bad luck. Riley exited chat and tapped into the "Trading Market". "Seller: MountainMan88 Item: Stone x2 Wants: White Bread x5" "Seller: LoneWolf_21 Item: Cotton Cloth Wants: Clean Water" "Seller: NotDeadYet Item: Wood x3 Wants: Anything edible" Most people were trading for food and wood. The stuff that kept you alive right now. Things like stone and cloth were getting dumped cheap—nobody had the luxury of thinking long-term. Riley looked at her own inventory. Eighty units of wood staring back at her. Her heart beat a little faster. In this opening phase, where wood literally meant the difference between life and death, the resources in her hands were basically gold bars. "Time to trade," she muttered to herself. "Coal, steel—can't get those from chopping trees. And right now, wood's at maximum value. If I wait, the exchange rate shifts." Even with the chainsaw dead, she still had the handsaw. Less efficient, sure, but she could gather more wood if she needed it. Short-term, she wasn't going to run out. She clicked to post a message in the channel. "System Prompt: Detected that you have not set a virtual ID. Please enter your nickname (cannot be changed after setting)." Riley stared at the blank input box. Naming things was the worst. She sat there for a long time, nothing coming to mind. Finally, she gave up. Couldn't think of anything cool or clever, so she'd just go with something random. Her fingers tapped across the virtual keyboard—SpicyBurger. "Setting successful. ID locked." The prompt closed. Riley posted her message. "SpicyBurger: Selling wood in bulk. Looking for: Coal, Steel, High-calorie food. DM me with offers—what you have and your rate. Good deals go fast, don't sleep on this." For three seconds after the message appeared, the channel went dead silent. Then it exploded. "SpicyBurger? That name's making me hungry, what the hell." "Never mind the name—'wood in bulk'! We got a whale in here! Everyone else is stressing about the next hour and this person's already running a business?" "I need some! My campfire's down to like two hours. I don't know if I actually die when it hits zero but I don't wanna find out." Suddenly, half the channel was scrambling for wood. But then the skeptics crawled out. "Hang on. Everyone started with the same rusty axe. Chopping a tree in this weather takes twenty, thirty minutes minimum. Where's she getting 'bulk' wood from? Sounds like a scam." "InvincibleWarrior: Everybody chill. Look at that ID—sounds like a girl's handle. I'm a grown man, been busting my ass, and I've only got like ten logs saved up. My hands are shredded. Some girl with a food name claims she's got bulk? She's trying to run a game. Scam people out of their stuff." "Iron_Tough: Agreed. Scammers made it through the apocalypse too, I guess. My advice: ignore her. Don't get played. How much wood can a woman chop anyway? Probably can't even lift the axe right, lol." Riley scrolled through the messages, expression flat. She almost laughed. But some people pushed back. "FishHater44: How is it a scam? If she doesn't deliver, you don't complete the trade. Just 'cause you can't chop that much wood doesn't mean nobody can." Riley nodded slightly. That one had a point. But she didn't waste energy arguing in the channel. Instead, she flipped on Do Not Disturb for private messages—only allowing chat requests that included a trade offer. Some people didn't actually care whether she had wood. They just couldn't stand seeing someone else do well. "Ding. Ding. Ding." Private messages started pouring in like rain. Most players weren't idiots. Faced with the very real threat of freezing to death, they'd try anything for a chance. Riley opened the first one. "Windwalker: I got "Coal x3" from a crate. How much wood can I get for it? I can't chop anymore. The wind out here is insane. I tried to throw the coal in my fire but it just kept popping back out. System says my campfire level's too low, won't let me use it. I'm out of wood. My fire's almost dead." Riley thought for a moment. "Three coal for five wood. Deal?" She hadn't known about that restriction. Coal was supposed to be better fuel than wood—didn't expect the game to lock it behind a level gate. The reply came instantly, "Deal. But five wood feels light. It's coal." The guy was conflicted. He knew coal had value, but he was desperate. "I'll make it six. Final offer." Riley wasn't sure about coal's real value yet. Six was her limit. "Fine. Deal." They both dropped their items into the trade window. A moment later, it completed. A flash of white light. Riley's inventory lost six wood. Gained three chunks of coal, each about the size of a small melon. One down. "CrunchyFrog: Hey, I got two "Iron Ingots" from a crate. System calls them "Scrap Steel". Can I get eight wood for them? Trying to stock up enough to sleep through the night." Riley replied, "Sure. Initiate." In just over ten minutes, her wood stockpile dropped significantly. But her inventory filled up with good stuff. "Coal x10 "Stone x23 "Scrap Steel x5 "Raw Meat x2 "White Bread x2 "Basic Torch Blueprint x1" The blueprint was new. The description said it was required for crafting certain items. Seemed useful, so she'd traded for it. Meanwhile, back in the channel, that "InvincibleWarrior" guy who'd been mocking her earlier seemed to notice that people were actually completing trades. His tone got bitter. "InvincibleWarrior: Whatever. She probably got lucky with a high-tier crate. Let's see how long her stock lasts. Once the wood's gone, she'll be begging me to let her join my group." The people who'd successfully traded with Riley popped into the channel to thank her. That might have been fine—except the thanks caused problems. Since Riley had stopped trading for now, most people hadn't gotten anything. And the sky was darkening. Temperature outside the campfire radius was dropping fast. Gathering wood was getting harder. Trading was their only hope. The ones who'd pinned everything on Riley, seeing her stop, started losing it. "You said 'in bulk'! You did like five trades and quit. What are we supposed to do now?" "Keep trading! My fire's almost out. You want us to go chop trees in the dark?" "If you couldn't deliver, why'd you post? Showing off and then hiding." Whether it was coordinated or just genuine rage, the number of people defending Riley in the channel shrank fast. Mostly it was attacks now. Accusations of being irresponsible. Using scarcity tactics. Playing games with people's lives. Riley closed the channel. She couldn't be bothered. In a life-or-death situation like this, people losing it was normal. If she actually had unlimited resources, she'd trade more. But she didn't. And back on Earth, nobody had ever handed her anything out of charity. She wasn't about to start playing savior now. She looked down at the "Basic Torch Blueprint" in her inventory. "Requirements: Wood x10, Kerosene, Scrap Steel x2" Note: Requires Level 2 Workbench to craft." She leaned back against the crate again. Felt the weight of her stockpile pressing back against that lingering sense of unease. In this world, your ID didn't matter. Your gender didn't matter either. What mattered was who held the resources. She looked at what she had left: 36 units of wood. Plus the steel, coal, and stone from trading. Time to plan. Upgrading to a Level 2 campfire required 55 wood. She had all the other materials. For the wood, she'd just have to use the handsaw tomorrow and gather a little more. That settled, she pulled a few more logs from inventory and arranged them on top of the crate, making a small enclosed space. Curled up inside it, she watched the sky outside slowly darken to black. Her eyes grew heavy. She drifted off. Chapter 4 The Culling Riley woke to the kind of soreness that made you reconsider ever moving again. She'd slept like the dead—no dreams, no blizzard, just nothing. When she opened her eyes, the first things she saw were the logs she'd stacked as a windbreak and the steady glow of the campfire. She tried to stretch. Big mistake. Every muscle in her body lit up at once, screaming in protest. "Sh*t." Riley sucked air through her teeth and pressed a hand to her aching shoulder. Her lower back felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to it. Yesterday's work had been too much. She wasn't weak—far from it—but she was still human. The lactic acid had settled in overnight, and now she moved like an arthritic tin man. At least she was alive. She stowed the windbreak logs back in her inventory and looked around. The world hadn't changed. Same dull gray sky. Same swirling snow. Outside the six-foot radius of the fire, the drifts looked deeper than yesterday. The wind had been busy. Riley pulled out the half-empty water bottle and wet her throat. Then she retrieved the white bread she'd traded for yesterday. Compared to that dense, flavorless black bread, this was practically cake. She tore off small pieces, letting the faint sweetness dissolve on her tongue, and habitually opened the "Server Channel". She stopped chewing. The number in the top left hit her like a physical blow. "Current Online Players: 4968/10000" "Five thousand..." Riley's eyes went wide. In a single night, that number had been cut in half. Five thousand people. Gone. Winked out of existence on this frozen ice field while she slept. "Ding." The system notification cut through her thoughts—cold, emotionless, like it was announcing the weather. "Global Announcement: Congratulations to all survivors for successfully surviving the first day. "This was a culling. Last night eliminated those fools who failed to add fuel to their fires or refused to gather wood. Remember: in this place, tears mean nothing. When you die here, you're dead-dead. "You who remain are the lucky ones. "Grace Period: A five-day 'New Player Support Period' now begins. For the next five days, your initial supply crates will refresh daily with a fixed amount of food. "Special Reward: Each survivor receives one pair of "Standard Issue Snow Boots (Common)". Be grateful for this mercy. Enjoy the game." The words sat there on her screen. Fools. Mercy. The system's tone dripped with contempt. The math was simple. Starting package: five hours of fuel. Initial gift: five units of wood, another five hours. Total ten hours, if you did absolutely nothing. The ones who'd frozen to death last night—they were the ones who'd clung to hope. The ones too scared to move. The ones who'd told themselves someone would save them. Five thousand people. One night. Gone. This wasn't a game. It was a slaughter. In the channel, the survivors who'd made it through were clearly rattled by the numbers too. "Holy sh*t... My friend's icon went dark last night. Does that mean he's dead? Actually dead?" "I can't do this. I don't wanna play anymore, I wanna go home. I swear I'll work today. I'll chop wood, I'll do whatever, just please—" "Everyone move! Don't save your strength! If you die, that's it. No respawns!" Panic spread fast. But almost immediately, the tone shifted. The fear found a target. "That SpicyBurger—if she'd shared more wood yesterday, would so many people have died?" "For real. If she had extra, why not just give it away? Why did it have to be trades? She could've at least loaned some out." "This is what happens when people hoard resources and watch others freeze. Remember that name. Don't trade with her. Ever." Riley frowned. Here we go again. She scrolled up. Sure enough, there it was—that familiar ID: "InvincibleWarrior". He was going hard in the channel. "She's profiting off suffering. That's what some people do. Women like that are the worst—hoarding supplies while people die around them. Wait and see. Someone like her won't last." Riley laughed. Actually laughed out loud. Moral blackmail. In the apocalypse. She typed, "If you want wood, go cut it yourself. I'm not your mommy. No amount of crying in chat is gonna put logs in your inventory. You'd get more done if you just picked up your d*mn axe." The channel went quiet for a second. Then the reasonable voices piped up. "She's right. Nobody owes you anything. Work for it." "Exactly. Just 'cause someone's quiet doesn't mean they're an easy target." In a world where staying alive took everything you had, expecting charity was the dumbest move of all. Riley didn't waste more energy on it. People like that—the more you engaged, the more they thrived. Let him run his mouth. She had bigger things to worry about. She closed the channel and turned to the big wooden crate—her initial supply point. Sure enough, new items had materialized inside. "Bottled Water x3 "White Bread x3 "Fresh Orange Juice x1 "Standard Snow Boots x1" "Orange juice?" Riley picked up the bottle, genuinely surprised. The orange liquid inside sloshed gently. Vitamins. The system was actually giving them vitamins. She pulled off her old shoes—already damp and cold—and swapped into the new boots. They were clunky, sure. But they gripped the snow, and the insulation was real. The chill that had been seeping up through her soles disappeared instantly. Next, she opened her toolbox. Goggles on. Thick cut-resistant gloves. Head-to-toe gear. "Time to work." The channel noise faded from her mind. She had one priority today, and it wasn't arguing with idiots. She picked up the chainsaw and headed back to the tree line. The cold played tricks on batteries. She'd known that, intellectually. But knowing it and feeling it were different things. After just eight trees, the last spare battery gave out. The chainsaw stuttered, died, and went silent in her hands. Riley stared at it. "Son of a b*tch." Chapter 5 Dead Battery Riley stared at the dead chainsaw in her hands and shook her head. Without power, it was just an expensive paperweight. If she wanted more wood, she'd have to do it the old-fashioned way—pick up the axe or the manual handsaw from the toolbox and go to war with frozen timber. But eight more trees were eight more trees. Her stockpile was looking healthy. "First things first. Get these back." She sucked it up, stowed the chainsaw in her inventory, and started hauling. Her body screamed even louder than yesterday. Every muscle felt like it had been replaced with concrete. She dragged each log back one at a time, moving like a zombie. Drag. Rest two minutes. Drag again. The wind howled in her ears. Riley lost track of time, lost track of everything except the mechanical rhythm of work. By the time the sun was high—not that you could really see it through the clouds—she dragged the last log into the campfire's radius. It dissolved into light, absorbed by the system. Riley all but collapsed into the snow. "Acquired: Wood x40" She lay there for a moment, chest heaving, staring at the number in her inventory. A tired smile crept across her face. She had enough. Combined with the coal and steel from yesterday's trades, she had everything she needed for the upgrade. Riley forced herself upright and walked to the campfire. On the floating translucent panel, the "Upgrade" button glowed that tempting gold. "Upgrade Primitive Shelter to Lv.2? "Cost: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Scrap Steel x5 "Remaining after upgrade: Wood x16, Stone x3, Coal x0, Steel x0" "Upgrade." Riley took a breath and pressed it. "Hmmmm—!" A blinding white light erupted from the heart of the campfire, swallowing everything. Riley squeezed her eyes shut. No explosion. No thunder. Just a sound like Legos snapping together. A few seconds later, the light faded. Riley opened her eyes. And stopped breathing. The campfire wasn't just a campfire anymore. The rough stone ring had transformed into something neat and intentional—a proper firepit with a stone border for insulation, a place to set things, even a simple steel grate attached to the side. But that wasn't the big news. The heat that used to push back the cold within a six-foot radius now stretched a full fifteen feet. Inside that circle, snow was actively melting, revealing dark frozen soil underneath. In one corner, she spotted a patch of moss stubbornly poking through. Riley spun around. Behind the big wooden crate, a small log cabin stood waiting. It wasn't much—maybe forty feet square, built from rough-hewn logs. Nothing fancy. But it was solid. Four walls and a roof, blocking wind and snow completely. Riley walked over and pushed open the heavy wooden door. Warm air hit her face. Inside was simple: a wooden bed frame piled with dry grass, a crude workbench, a chair, and a small fireplace connected to a chimney that ran up through the roof. Rustic. But right now, it was heaven. Wood and fire. Four walls. A roof. Home. Riley ran her hand along the rough wall. Her eyes stung a little. She wouldn't have to sleep in the open anymore. Wouldn't have to wake up every few hours to check the fire. Wouldn't have to worry about freezing to death in her sleep. Right on cue, the server announcement chimed. Gold text this time, blazing right in the center of everyone's vision. "Server Announcement: Congratulations to player SpicyBurger for being the first to achieve "Level 2 Shelter". Rewards have been distributed." The chat channel, which had been wallowing in fear and despair, exploded. "Holy sh*t? Level 2 already? What does Level 2 unlock? Can you post pics, big shot?" "That's the wood seller from yesterday? No way. Absolute legend." "Carry me please! SpicyBurger, I'll be your loyal follower. I can cook, I can clean, I can—" "Teach us, master! How'd you gather materials so fast? What's your secret?" Compliments. Pleas. Desperate attempts to get noticed. And then, of course, the sour grapes. "InvincibleWarrior: Big deal. Just profiteering off everyone else's suffering. If she'd shared that wood instead of selling it, maybe those five thousand people would still be alive. How does it feel to climb on corpses?" "GodLovesMeFirst: Seriously. Building your success on other people's deaths. Karma's real. She'll get hers." Riley's jaw tightened. If InvincibleWarrior had been standing in front of her right now, she'd have knocked his teeth out. Guys like him—useless themselves, but always ready to tear down anyone who actually accomplished something. Sewer rats. Her private messages exploded too. She'd set it to only accept trade offers, but people had found a workaround—using the "trade note" function to send spam. "Hey beautiful, I'm a personal trainer. Great shape. Wanna see? Hit me with some wood and I'll do a voice call with you!" A photo of some guy flexing in a mirror, shirt off. Riley glanced at it, unimpressed. Decent abs. Pathetic attitude. Dude was clearly strong enough to chop wood—why was he wasting time on this? She'd never mentioned her gender, so most people probably assumed anyone who'd gathered that much wood must be a guy. The messages reflected that assumption. Some women sent selfies too, trying to flirt their way into favor. Didn't matter. Shameless cut across all demographics. From the backgrounds in the photos, everyone seemed to be in different locations. But one thing was consistent: they all had trees nearby. The system must have arranged that—a new player perk. "A bunch of degenerates." Riley's face went cold. She changed her privacy settings to "Friends Only". Then she added a line to her trading post description. "No spam. Send junk, get blocked." Silence. Blessed silence. She took a breath, let the noise drain away, and focused on what mattered. "First-place upgrade reward..." She opened her inventory. Sitting there, glowing faintly purple, was a gift box. For more exciting content, please download the "JoyRead" app to continue reading.
Chapter 1 The Countdown Ends It was the year 2027, and the end of the world was now less than an hour away. "00:59:23" Riley Carter stood on a ladder with a screw clenched between her teeth, an impact driver in her hand, securing the last window panel in place. A month ago, that timer had just appeared out of nowhere, hanging in the corner of everyone's vision like it had always been there. At first, people wrote it off as some kind of mass hacker prank. The government fed the media soothing statements in an attempt to keep things calm, but there was no way to talk down the panic as prices kept rising and supplies were held in a monopoly in real time. News outlets might spin whatever narrative they wanted, but no one could argue with the price of eggs. For a while, it was a frenzy. People cleaned out grocery stores like locusts. The government did what they could—price caps, purchase limits, reassurances from the podium—but none of it mattered. The cost of living kept climbing, and bit by bit, the country started coming apart at the seams. Online, it was a circus. Some people posted doom-laden predictions. Others openly celebrated the thought of the world finally burning. A few just seemed relieved they wouldn't have to clock in on Monday. In that final hour, things got truly ugly. Both on the streets and on social media, it was chaos. Some people figured why not went out with a bang? If the world was ending, they'd spend their last hours doing every reckless thing they'd ever fantasized about. Others, paralyzed by fear of whatever was coming, scrambled for anything they could hoard. Supplies. Weapons. Gasoline. Didn't matter what, as long as they had more of it than the next guy. Most people just wanted to be with the ones they loved. Riley didn't have that luxury anymore. Fresh out of community college, she'd lost both her parents in a highway pileup eighteen months back. The only thing they'd left her was the family hardware store, a cramped little place wedged between a laundromat and a taqueria. She'd been running it solo for just over a year when that d*mn countdown appeared overhead. At first, she'd thought maybe an apocalypse wouldn't be the worst thing. Maybe there'd be something on the other side. A reunion. But then she thought about her folks. They'd doted on her. Made her feel like the center of their world. And even though she'd grown a thick skin since going it alone, feeling indifferent to the world, she knew what they'd want. They'd want her to fight. To stay. She was the only piece of them still left in this world. People always say you aren't really gone until the last person forgets your name. As long as she kept breathing, kept carrying them with her another day, they weren't truly dead. Riley spat the screw into her palm, face calm, the impact driver whirring as she sank another fastener into the reinforced frame. "Flour's three hundred a pound now, and you can't even buy it straight—they make you tack on a bunch of other junk you don't need just to get it," she muttered to herself, shaking her head. When that timer first flickered into existence, Riley had done something smart. She'd liquidated everything. Converted every dollar she could scrape together into supplies. Unfortunately, by the time she hit the stores, inflation had already done its damage. Her savings didn't go nearly as far as they should have. Any cash that was left went toward tools. If the world was ending, she thought they could be useful. Riley pressed the last sheet of thick insulation foam into the window frame, seating it flush against the reinforced plywood beneath. The impact driver snarled as she buried the screws. Then she reached for her pneumatic glue gun—a satisfying pfft as the sealant filled the final gap. She wiped sweat from her forehead and climbed down off the ladder. Stepped back to admire her work. The little apartment was a fortress now. Doors reinforced. Windows barricaded. Every interior wall lined with an extra layer of insulation. She glanced down at herself. Custom-fit heavy-duty workwear. Slash-resistant fabric. More pockets than she'd ever need. Reinforced padding at the knees and elbows. It wasn't fashionable, but it was practical. And her real treasure: tools. A chainsaw. A reciprocating saw. The impact driver in her hand. A multi-bit screwdriver that had cost more than she wanted to admit. She'd brought everything usable from the shop back here, consolidated it into three massive toolboxes. She'd also grabbed some stuff like an air purifier and some spare filters—anything that might matter when civilization took a vacation. She didn't know what the countdown would bring. Some folks online predicted zombies. Others said asteroid impact. Volcanic winter. Alien invasion. Take your pick. Food. Tools. Shelter. She'd even started working out, building strength she'd never needed before. She'd done everything she could think of to prepare. Whatever was coming, she figured she'd last longer than most. With nothing left to do, she dropped onto one of the big toolboxes laid flat on the floor, wiped her forehead again, and pulled out her phone. Most news apps had crashed. The only things still loading were comment sections, and they were going crazy. [Anyone got rice? I'll pay eight grand for a bag. Please, we got nothing left.] [Forget it, man. Money's toilet paper now. Saw it with my own eyes—some rich assholes cleared out the Costco warehouse last week. All that 'purchase limit' crap was just theater. Shelves were empty 'cause the stock never made it there. It's all sitting in some hedge fund guy's basement.] [No kidding? Same thing happened to me! Store manager kept telling me, 'We're limiting purchases, come back next week, we'll put your name on the list.' So the whole time the back room was empty? They were just jerking us around?] [Of course they were. Rich people cornered the market on everything. So what are normal people supposed to do? Just sit here and die?] [Anyone know what actually happens when the clock hits zero? Like, is it nukes? That virus thing from that old video game?] Riley locked her phone. Tucked it away. She didn't have anything to add to that conversation. A month ago, when the countdown first showed up, prices had spiked instantly. A fifty-pound bag of rice that normally went for thirty bucks jumped to eight hundred overnight. By yesterday, it was breaking two grand. The wealthy had rolled up with trucks and cleaned out supermarkets. Riley had been smart—she'd gone early, bought stuff that would keep, stuff that was calorie-dense and cheap. Chocolate. Survival biscuits. Canned goods. It wasn't much, but it was enough for one person, at least for a while. She took a deep breath and glanced at the timer. "00:01:10" Just over a minute. Riley gripped the toolbox beneath her. Knuckles white. Who knew what would happen when that thing hit zero? Maybe it'd be like 2012—all hype, nothing real. In that last minute, her life flickered past. Her parents' faces. The hardware store. The lonely months since. "00:00:00" The countdown ended. Riley had just started to breathe a sigh of relief—nothing happened, maybe it really was nothing—when the world lurched beneath her. A dizzying weightlessness. A sensation of falling. Everything spun. ***** She didn't know how long she was out. "Whew." A wind like a knife blade sliced across her face. Riley's eyes snapped open. Her warm apartment was gone. In its place, an endless white expanse stretched in every direction. Snow whipped through the air. Wind howled like a wounded animal. And at her feet, a small campfire guttered in the gale, threatening to die at any second. "What the—" Before she could process, a chime rang directly in her skull. Not heard. Known. "Welcome to the Extreme Cold Survival Game. "Earth no longer exists. This is your new home. This is your grave. "Survival rules are as follows. "1. Each player begins with one campfire. It is your only defense against the cold. If the campfire dies, you will be judged deceased by the system. Not that it matters—without the fire, you won't last anyway. "2. This is a real world. You can die from hunger. From exposure. From animal attack. "3. Supplies stockpiled in your previous world do not carry over. Only items on your person, or in direct physical contact at the moment of transfer, are retained. "4. Struggle to survive. It is your only hope." Riley's heart slammed against her ribs. Supplies didn't carry over? Her mind flashed to those wealthy forum posters bragging about their warehouse stockpiles. And then she looked down at herself. Workwear. Intact. And— She was still sitting on the three giant toolboxes. They sat solidly in the snow, dusted with powder, unmistakably here. "Whew." Riley let out a long breath. A white cloud dispersed in front of her face. Pity, though. During her renovations, she'd stocked those boxes with a lot of power tools. The expensive impact driver. The reciprocating saw. In a world with no electrical outlets, once those batteries died, they were just dead weight. But even so. The hand tools. The consumables. The sheer volume of stuff in those boxes—it was a treasure beyond measure in a place like this. Riley forced herself to calm down. She was here. She'd deal with it. Something new lived in her mind now. She concentrated, and a translucent pale-blue screen materialized in front of her eyes. Looked just like a video game HUD. "Personal Panel "Name: Riley Carter "ID: 1120-US "Level: 1 (Standard Survivor) "Strength: 8 (Years of manual labor have made you stronger than average) "Agility: 8 (You've got quick reflexes) "Constitution: 6 (You've been skipping meals lately) "Spirit: 9 (You keep your head when others panic) "Inventory: 16/16 slots (Base capacity)" "Inventory?" Riley studied the sixteen empty squares at the bottom of the display. She reached out, touched one of the toolboxes, and thought the word, "Store." Whoosh. The heavy box vanished. In its place, a tiny icon appeared in the first inventory slot, a miniature "x1" in the corner. "It actually worked." For the first time since arriving, a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. Retrieve. Thud. The toolbox landed back in the snow, puffing up powder. No energy cost. No sense of weight. And in that inventory, she could carry anything, regardless of how heavy it was. Later on, when she went scavenging, that would make all the difference. Riley rubbed her stiff, freezing hands together and turned her attention to the campfire at her feet. It was the only warmth in this frozen wasteland. Hovering above the flames, visible only to her, were a few lines of glowing text. "Basic Campfire (Lv.1) "Remaining Burn Time: 05:28:00 "Current Coverage: Radius six feet (Blocks wind and snow) "Upgrade Requirements: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Steel x5 "Description: This is your life. Do not let it die. Upgrading expands your safe zone and unlocks additional construction options." "Needs upgrading." Riley frowned. Wood and stone she could probably find. But coal? Steel? Out here in the middle of nowhere? A flash of movement caught her eye. A small wooden box, half-buried in the snow not far from the fire. The starter crate. Had to be. Riley didn't rush. First, she pulled the claw hammer from her belt—the one she always kept there, habit from years of work—and gripped it tight. She scanned the tree line. Listened past the wind. Nothing moved. No sounds but the storm. She walked over quickly, crouched by the box. No lock. She pried the lid open with the claw end of her hammer. Inside, a handful of items. "Obtained: Iron Axe x1 "Obtained: Stale Dark Bread x2 "Obtained: 500ml Bottled Water x1 "Obtained: Kindling x5 "Obtained: Insulated Field Jacket x1 "Obtained: Utility Rope (25ft) "Obtained: Thermal Underwear (Set) x2 Not much. Barely anything. Riley picked up one of the dark loaves. It was rock hard. She examined the jacket—basic, but warm-looking. "So this is what a standard survivor starts with." At least the system had thought of everything. Including the underwear. She'd half-expected to wake up naked in the snow; at least she didn't have to worry about that. She stored everything in her inventory, then shrugged on the field jacket. The temperature shift was brutal. Even those few seconds exposed had left her hands numb. Hypothermia would set in fast out here. Jacket on, she hurried back to the campfire. She pulled the five units of Kindling from her inventory and tossed them onto the flames. The fire roared higher. Warmth flooded over her. "Fuel added. Remaining Burn Time: 10:28:00" Ten hours. If she didn't move fast, in ten hours she'd freeze to death on this ice field. And the game had made it clear—if the fire died, the system would judge her dead. Whether she actually froze or not. Riley lifted her head and scanned the landscape. She was in a sparse coniferous forest. Barely alive trees, crusted with frost, dotted the area not far from her position. "Wood." A slow smile spread across her face. She patted the toolbox beside her. "Other people might have axes. But felling a tree with just an axe takes hours. Exhausts you." She unlatched the box. Pulled out the chainsaw. Checked the battery gauge—full. "I've got a handsaw in here too. And a chainsaw with a full charge." The battery wouldn't last forever. But it would last long enough to give her a massive head start. In this race for survival, that was everything. Chapter 2 The Chainsaw The wind screamed across the open ground, picking up loose snow and flinging it against her goggles like sand. It sounded like static. Riley had pulled her basic work gear from the toolbox before heading out. Now she stood in the snow, surrounded by clusters of thin conifers that looked half-dead already. She took a breath. The air burned going down. "Zzzzzzz—!!!" She squeezed the trigger. The orange-and-black lithium-ion chainsaw in her hands roared to life, the chain spinning so fast it blurred. She buried the teeth in the nearest pine trunk. Wood chips exploded everywhere. Fragrant shavings—still wet with resin—scattered across the pristine snow, stark and yellow against all that white. Five seconds. Crack. The pine tree, thick as her arm, groaned and tilted. Then it fell slow and heavy into a drift, sending up a puff of powder. "God bless modern technology." Riley shook out her wrist—the vibration had numbed her fingers—and allowed herself a small smile. Without that chainsaw, with just the basic iron axe the system had given her, felling a tree frozen solid like this would have taken twenty minutes minimum. And it would have left her soaked with sweat. In subzero temps, sweat was a death sentence. Once your base layers got wet, the moment you stopped moving, your body temperature would plummet. Hypothermia would follow fast. Riley didn't waste time celebrating. She knew the saw in her hands was a hungry machine. She'd brought two spare high-capacity batteries, sure, but until she found a way to recharge them, every second the motor ran was borrowed time. She had to gather as much wood as possible before the batteries gave out. "Zzzzz—Zzzzz—" At the edge of the forest, the chainsaw's snarl rose and fell, shattering the frozen silence. Riley worked like she was possessed. Fell a tree. Move to the next. Fell another. But she had to stay alert—watch for hidden snow pits underfoot, keep adjusting her collar against the wind that kept finding its way down her neck. Her stamina drained faster than she'd anticipated. In extreme cold, body burned through calories just to stay alive. Added walking through knee-deep snow, where every step took three times the energy of walking on pavement, and the math got ugly fast. Pretty soon, Riley was breathing hard. Her breath fogged the inside of her goggles, and she had to keep wiping them clear. "Zzzzz..." She was mid-cut on a tree—didn't even know which number anymore—when the chainsaw's roar stuttered. Died. The chain jammed solid in the wood. A red light blinked at her. Dead battery. Riley yanked the saw free and patted its housing. "Good work, buddy." Genuine regret in her voice. She straightened up and looked around. Pine trunks lay scattered across the snow in every direction. A decent haul. She counted silently. "Twenty-three total." Then the next problem hit her. According to the system, until she actually possessed these logs, they were still just natural resources. That meant they didn't qualify for Inventory storage. She couldn't just snap her fingers and make them disappear. She had to drag them back to camp. Riley grabbed the nearest pine and tried to pull. Heavy. Like, unreasonably heavy. Fresh-cut wood was full of moisture. Add the branches catching in the snow, dragging like anchors, and she felt like she was hauling a dead body through mud. "Huff... huff..." She gritted her teeth, looped rope around the trunk, slung it over her shoulder, leaned forward, and started walking. Inch by inch. The tree line to her campfire was maybe fifty yards. Right now, it felt like fifty miles. By the time she'd wrestled the fourth tree back into the fire's warm radius, she was wrecked. Her legs felt like someone had filled them with concrete. Her lungs burned from hauling freezing air through them. "Can't... can't do more." Riley made the call. She stopped. Those nineteen trees still out there in the snow—they called to her. Tempted her. But if she kept pushing without rest, without fuel for herself, she'd collapse out there. And out there, collapse meant death. She dropped down next to the big wooden crate that had held her starter supplies. It was less than three feet from the campfire. The flames danced orange and red, pumping out heat that felt like heaven. The shift from frozen to warm made her shiver violently. She pulled off her goggles and thick gloves, set them near the fire to warm up, then—still shaking—pulled the half-empty water bottle from her Inventory. Took a small sip. Then the bread. Two black bricks that looked more like construction material than food. "Crunch." Riley bit off a piece with effort. It was coarse. Tasted like sawdust with a hint of burnt toast. Bitter. But it was calories. Carbs. Fuel for her own fire. She forced herself to chew, swallow. When the food hit her stomach, warmth finally started spreading through her core. The uncontrollable shaking eased. After half a loaf, Riley leaned back against the crate. Her eyelids drooped. Post-exhaustion crash hit her like a wave. The campfire crackled. The wind seemed farther away now. Muffled. She really wanted to sleep... Her head nodded. Her body started sliding sideways. "Wait—" Some animal instinct jolted her awake just before she went under. She pinched her thigh. Hard. Then looked up at the timer floating above the flames. "Shelter Level 1 "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 06:28:00" Six and a half hours. If she slept too deep, too long, and that fire went out—what then? Even ignoring the obvious—that she'd freeze to death in this hellhole without a heat source—the game rules were clear. When the campfire hits zero, it's game over. "No sleeping. Not allowed." Riley slapped her own cheeks, forced herself upright. She stayed near the fire, but she didn't take off her heavy work clothes. She remembered reading something once, a survival article. "In the late stages of hypothermia, your hypothalamus malfunctions. You get a false sensation of heat. It's called "paradoxical undressing"—people strip down right before they freeze to death." "Okay. Process these four. Keep the fire fed." She pulled a traditional handsaw from the toolbox. Looking at the four thick pine logs on the ground, she almost laughed. Without power tools, breaking these down into burnable pieces would take at least half an hour. Burn the little energy she had left. But what choice did she have? Riley knelt in the snow, positioned the blade against the trunk, and was about to start cutting— A soft white light shot out from the system panel on her chest. It washed over the logs. "Ding! "Detected felled, intact logs within shelter range. "Perform quick recovery?" Riley's hand froze mid-saw. Quick recovery? It took her a second to process. Then relief flooded through her so hard she almost cried. "Yes! Recover!" She didn't hesitate. The next moment, something impossible happened. The four pine trunks—the ones she'd have to saw and split by hand, the ones that represented hours of brutal labor—dissolved into pale blue light particles. Not into dust. Into neat, uniform logs that stacked themselves automatically in her Inventory. The branches, the needles, all the useless parts—purified out of existence. "Recovery successful! "Obtained: Common Wood x20" Riley's eyes went wide, staring at the perfect lumber in her inventory display. Looked like it came straight from a hardware store. "One tree gives five units of wood? "And I don't have to cut it myself?" This changed everything. It meant she only had to handle the felling and the dragging. Once a log crossed into her camp's boundary, the system recognized it as hers. The most time-consuming part—the processing—just... didn't exist anymore. Riley immediately grabbed five units of wood and fed them to the fire. Whoosh. The flames leaped, hungry and grateful. "Fuel added. "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 12:20:00" "Five logs, five hours..." She did the math fast, looking at the fifteen units still on the ground. If she threw all of those in, that'd be another fifteen hours. Total of twenty-seven. She could sleep like the dead right now, and that fire would still be burning when she woke up. Security. For the first time since the world ended, Riley felt something like security. She selected the remaining wood. Deposited it all. Watched the countdown tick up to a very comfortable "27:20:00". Then her nerves finally let go. She dragged one of the toolboxes into position to block the wind, wrapped the field jacket tight around herself, pulled her hat down over her eyes, leaned back against the warm crate, and let the crackle of the fire pull her under. ***** She didn't sleep long. When she opened her eyes again, the sky was still that same dull gray-white. Impossible to tell if it was morning or afternoon. System clock said three hours. Her body ached. Shoulders and arms especially—felt like she'd gone ten rounds with someone. But her head was clear. She stretched her stiff neck and stood up. The snow seemed lighter. The feathery flakes had tapered off into sporadic icy grains. Riley ate a little more, got some fuel back in the tank, then stepped outside the campfire's warmth. The fire's effect wasn't what she'd expected. It wasn't that the temperature gradually dropped as you moved away. It was sharper than that. Like there was an invisible barrier around the flames. Inside, livable. Outside, the cold hit you like a wall. She wandered a little way off. The cold found every gap in her clothing. She thought about going farther, exploring. But there was nothing visible except that stand of trees she'd already worked. Maybe stuff was buried under the snow, but she couldn't see it. "No proper snow boots. Not going far." Riley glanced at the endless white distance with real regret. "Don't get greedy. Get those nineteen trees first." She turned. Looked at the woods. Her loot was still out there. And now she knew: if she could drag them back into the campfire's circle, the system would cash them out automatically. "Time to work." Riley rubbed her hands together. Let the motivation build. For the next few hours, she became a machine. Drag a tree to camp. Recover it. Go back for another. Repeat. It was boring. Exhausting. But watching those logs turn into numbers in her inventory—that feeling was hard to describe. Satisfying, in a way nothing had been satisfying in a long time. When the last pine trunk crossed into the light and dissolved into particles, Riley just collapsed. Lay flat in the snow and stared at the gray sky. She pulled up her Inventory. The once-empty slots were full now. Stack after stack of wood icons. "Item: Common Wood "Quantity: 80 "Description: Basic survival resource. Can be used for fuel or construction." Eighty units. Plus what was already burning in the campfire. Her day's work had yielded a clean hundred. One unit of wood burned for one hour. Riley looked at the flames dancing in front of her. Felt the heat on her face. Let herself smile, wide and real. "One hundred hours." Four full days. While everyone else was probably still panicking. Crying. Begging. Trying to figure out how to survive their first night in this frozen nightmare... She, Riley, had enough fuel stockpiled to last four days. Which meant: for the next ninety-six hours, unless she actively chose to die, nobody and nothing could put her fire out. She pulled the half-empty water bottle from Inventory. The space must have been insulated somehow—the water was still warm. Almost body temperature. She sipped it. Tasted sweet, even though it was just tap water. "Okay. Next step." Her gaze settled on the "Upgrade" button on the campfire panel. This open-air setup was fine for now. But if she was going to survive long-term, she needed something better. A real shelter. All she needed was a little stone. Some coal. Some steel. Then she could build something worth calling home. Chapter 3 The Trading Game The blizzard howled outside, but within the six-foot radius of the campfire, the air stayed surprisingly warm—like the wind had hit an invisible wall and just couldn't reach. Riley leaned back against the dusty wooden crate, holding the half-empty water bottle in her hand. She stared into the flames for a moment, then focused her attention inward. The pale blue system panel unfolded in front of her eyes again. Now that the immediate crisis was handled, she finally had time to sit quietly and really explore this so-called "Survival System". Beyond the personal stats and inventory, the bottom of the panel had a row of function icons: Server Channel, Friends List, Trading Market, and Crafting Manual. Friends List was empty. No surprise there. She hadn't exactly been a social butterfly back in the old world, and she sure as hell wasn't going to make friends easily in a frozen hellscape where everyone was fighting for their next breath. She tapped into the "Server Channel". A line of numbers appeared in the top left. "Server: US-008 "Current Online: 9911/10000" Ten thousand people started. Less than ten hours in, eighty-nine were already gone. "That doesn't add up." Everyone's starter crate came with a rusty iron axe and five units of wood. Plus the initial fuel the campfire had when they arrived—that alone bought them ten hours minimum, even if they just sat there doing nothing. What the hell did those people do to get eliminated so fast? The channel was moving fast, messages scrolling by every second. Desperation dripped from every line. "Someone help, I'm freezing my ass off out here. This stupid axe can't cut sh*t—every swing just bounces off and rattles my whole arm. Can anyone spare a couple logs? My dad's a senior VP at Walker Group. I'll wire you a million dollars when we get back, I swear." "Wake up, buddy. If your dad's still alive, he's out there chopping trees right now too." "Don't even talk to me. I spotted a wooden crate in the snow earlier, got all excited, ran over—and before I got within ten feet, some white rabbit thing jumped out of a drift. Teeth like needles. Almost took a chunk out of my leg. Missed the crate, wasted all that energy for nothing." "I saw that too! Random crates spawn in the wild. I opened a wooden one and got two chocolate bars and some coal." Reading through the chaos, Riley picked out two keywords, "Random Reward Crates" and "Dangerous Creatures". So this world was deeper than she thought. Wooden crates, copper crates—these randomly spawning resource points were the real way to get ahead. Coal came from crates. That was useful to know. And if coal was in crates, steel probably was too. But something bothered her. According to what people were saying, reward crates weren't exactly rare. So why hadn't she found a single one during her lumber run? She doubted it was just bad luck. Riley exited chat and tapped into the "Trading Market". "Seller: MountainMan88 Item: Stone x2 Wants: White Bread x5" "Seller: LoneWolf_21 Item: Cotton Cloth Wants: Clean Water" "Seller: NotDeadYet Item: Wood x3 Wants: Anything edible" Most people were trading for food and wood. The stuff that kept you alive right now. Things like stone and cloth were getting dumped cheap—nobody had the luxury of thinking long-term. Riley looked at her own inventory. Eighty units of wood staring back at her. Her heart beat a little faster. In this opening phase, where wood literally meant the difference between life and death, the resources in her hands were basically gold bars. "Time to trade," she muttered to herself. "Coal, steel—can't get those from chopping trees. And right now, wood's at maximum value. If I wait, the exchange rate shifts." Even with the chainsaw dead, she still had the handsaw. Less efficient, sure, but she could gather more wood if she needed it. Short-term, she wasn't going to run out. She clicked to post a message in the channel. "System Prompt: Detected that you have not set a virtual ID. Please enter your nickname (cannot be changed after setting)." Riley stared at the blank input box. Naming things was the worst. She sat there for a long time, nothing coming to mind. Finally, she gave up. Couldn't think of anything cool or clever, so she'd just go with something random. Her fingers tapped across the virtual keyboard—SpicyBurger. "Setting successful. ID locked." The prompt closed. Riley posted her message. "SpicyBurger: Selling wood in bulk. Looking for: Coal, Steel, High-calorie food. DM me with offers—what you have and your rate. Good deals go fast, don't sleep on this." For three seconds after the message appeared, the channel went dead silent. Then it exploded. "SpicyBurger? That name's making me hungry, what the hell." "Never mind the name—'wood in bulk'! We got a whale in here! Everyone else is stressing about the next hour and this person's already running a business?" "I need some! My campfire's down to like two hours. I don't know if I actually die when it hits zero but I don't wanna find out." Suddenly, half the channel was scrambling for wood. But then the skeptics crawled out. "Hang on. Everyone started with the same rusty axe. Chopping a tree in this weather takes twenty, thirty minutes minimum. Where's she getting 'bulk' wood from? Sounds like a scam." "InvincibleWarrior: Everybody chill. Look at that ID—sounds like a girl's handle. I'm a grown man, been busting my ass, and I've only got like ten logs saved up. My hands are shredded. Some girl with a food name claims she's got bulk? She's trying to run a game. Scam people out of their stuff." "Iron_Tough: Agreed. Scammers made it through the apocalypse too, I guess. My advice: ignore her. Don't get played. How much wood can a woman chop anyway? Probably can't even lift the axe right, lol." Riley scrolled through the messages, expression flat. She almost laughed. But some people pushed back. "FishHater44: How is it a scam? If she doesn't deliver, you don't complete the trade. Just 'cause you can't chop that much wood doesn't mean nobody can." Riley nodded slightly. That one had a point. But she didn't waste energy arguing in the channel. Instead, she flipped on Do Not Disturb for private messages—only allowing chat requests that included a trade offer. Some people didn't actually care whether she had wood. They just couldn't stand seeing someone else do well. "Ding. Ding. Ding." Private messages started pouring in like rain. Most players weren't idiots. Faced with the very real threat of freezing to death, they'd try anything for a chance. Riley opened the first one. "Windwalker: I got "Coal x3" from a crate. How much wood can I get for it? I can't chop anymore. The wind out here is insane. I tried to throw the coal in my fire but it just kept popping back out. System says my campfire level's too low, won't let me use it. I'm out of wood. My fire's almost dead." Riley thought for a moment. "Three coal for five wood. Deal?" She hadn't known about that restriction. Coal was supposed to be better fuel than wood—didn't expect the game to lock it behind a level gate. The reply came instantly, "Deal. But five wood feels light. It's coal." The guy was conflicted. He knew coal had value, but he was desperate. "I'll make it six. Final offer." Riley wasn't sure about coal's real value yet. Six was her limit. "Fine. Deal." They both dropped their items into the trade window. A moment later, it completed. A flash of white light. Riley's inventory lost six wood. Gained three chunks of coal, each about the size of a small melon. One down. "CrunchyFrog: Hey, I got two "Iron Ingots" from a crate. System calls them "Scrap Steel". Can I get eight wood for them? Trying to stock up enough to sleep through the night." Riley replied, "Sure. Initiate." In just over ten minutes, her wood stockpile dropped significantly. But her inventory filled up with good stuff. "Coal x10 "Stone x23 "Scrap Steel x5 "Raw Meat x2 "White Bread x2 "Basic Torch Blueprint x1" The blueprint was new. The description said it was required for crafting certain items. Seemed useful, so she'd traded for it. Meanwhile, back in the channel, that "InvincibleWarrior" guy who'd been mocking her earlier seemed to notice that people were actually completing trades. His tone got bitter. "InvincibleWarrior: Whatever. She probably got lucky with a high-tier crate. Let's see how long her stock lasts. Once the wood's gone, she'll be begging me to let her join my group." The people who'd successfully traded with Riley popped into the channel to thank her. That might have been fine—except the thanks caused problems. Since Riley had stopped trading for now, most people hadn't gotten anything. And the sky was darkening. Temperature outside the campfire radius was dropping fast. Gathering wood was getting harder. Trading was their only hope. The ones who'd pinned everything on Riley, seeing her stop, started losing it. "You said 'in bulk'! You did like five trades and quit. What are we supposed to do now?" "Keep trading! My fire's almost out. You want us to go chop trees in the dark?" "If you couldn't deliver, why'd you post? Showing off and then hiding." Whether it was coordinated or just genuine rage, the number of people defending Riley in the channel shrank fast. Mostly it was attacks now. Accusations of being irresponsible. Using scarcity tactics. Playing games with people's lives. Riley closed the channel. She couldn't be bothered. In a life-or-death situation like this, people losing it was normal. If she actually had unlimited resources, she'd trade more. But she didn't. And back on Earth, nobody had ever handed her anything out of charity. She wasn't about to start playing savior now. She looked down at the "Basic Torch Blueprint" in her inventory. "Requirements: Wood x10, Kerosene, Scrap Steel x2" Note: Requires Level 2 Workbench to craft." She leaned back against the crate again. Felt the weight of her stockpile pressing back against that lingering sense of unease. In this world, your ID didn't matter. Your gender didn't matter either. What mattered was who held the resources. She looked at what she had left: 36 units of wood. Plus the steel, coal, and stone from trading. Time to plan. Upgrading to a Level 2 campfire required 55 wood. She had all the other materials. For the wood, she'd just have to use the handsaw tomorrow and gather a little more. That settled, she pulled a few more logs from inventory and arranged them on top of the crate, making a small enclosed space. Curled up inside it, she watched the sky outside slowly darken to black. Her eyes grew heavy. She drifted off. Chapter 4 The Culling Riley woke to the kind of soreness that made you reconsider ever moving again. She'd slept like the dead—no dreams, no blizzard, just nothing. When she opened her eyes, the first things she saw were the logs she'd stacked as a windbreak and the steady glow of the campfire. She tried to stretch. Big mistake. Every muscle in her body lit up at once, screaming in protest. "Sh*t." Riley sucked air through her teeth and pressed a hand to her aching shoulder. Her lower back felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to it. Yesterday's work had been too much. She wasn't weak—far from it—but she was still human. The lactic acid had settled in overnight, and now she moved like an arthritic tin man. At least she was alive. She stowed the windbreak logs back in her inventory and looked around. The world hadn't changed. Same dull gray sky. Same swirling snow. Outside the six-foot radius of the fire, the drifts looked deeper than yesterday. The wind had been busy. Riley pulled out the half-empty water bottle and wet her throat. Then she retrieved the white bread she'd traded for yesterday. Compared to that dense, flavorless black bread, this was practically cake. She tore off small pieces, letting the faint sweetness dissolve on her tongue, and habitually opened the "Server Channel". She stopped chewing. The number in the top left hit her like a physical blow. "Current Online Players: 4968/10000" "Five thousand..." Riley's eyes went wide. In a single night, that number had been cut in half. Five thousand people. Gone. Winked out of existence on this frozen ice field while she slept. "Ding." The system notification cut through her thoughts—cold, emotionless, like it was announcing the weather. "Global Announcement: Congratulations to all survivors for successfully surviving the first day. "This was a culling. Last night eliminated those fools who failed to add fuel to their fires or refused to gather wood. Remember: in this place, tears mean nothing. When you die here, you're dead-dead. "You who remain are the lucky ones. "Grace Period: A five-day 'New Player Support Period' now begins. For the next five days, your initial supply crates will refresh daily with a fixed amount of food. "Special Reward: Each survivor receives one pair of "Standard Issue Snow Boots (Common)". Be grateful for this mercy. Enjoy the game." The words sat there on her screen. Fools. Mercy. The system's tone dripped with contempt. The math was simple. Starting package: five hours of fuel. Initial gift: five units of wood, another five hours. Total ten hours, if you did absolutely nothing. The ones who'd frozen to death last night—they were the ones who'd clung to hope. The ones too scared to move. The ones who'd told themselves someone would save them. Five thousand people. One night. Gone. This wasn't a game. It was a slaughter. In the channel, the survivors who'd made it through were clearly rattled by the numbers too. "Holy sh*t... My friend's icon went dark last night. Does that mean he's dead? Actually dead?" "I can't do this. I don't wanna play anymore, I wanna go home. I swear I'll work today. I'll chop wood, I'll do whatever, just please—" "Everyone move! Don't save your strength! If you die, that's it. No respawns!" Panic spread fast. But almost immediately, the tone shifted. The fear found a target. "That SpicyBurger—if she'd shared more wood yesterday, would so many people have died?" "For real. If she had extra, why not just give it away? Why did it have to be trades? She could've at least loaned some out." "This is what happens when people hoard resources and watch others freeze. Remember that name. Don't trade with her. Ever." Riley frowned. Here we go again. She scrolled up. Sure enough, there it was—that familiar ID: "InvincibleWarrior". He was going hard in the channel. "She's profiting off suffering. That's what some people do. Women like that are the worst—hoarding supplies while people die around them. Wait and see. Someone like her won't last." Riley laughed. Actually laughed out loud. Moral blackmail. In the apocalypse. She typed, "If you want wood, go cut it yourself. I'm not your mommy. No amount of crying in chat is gonna put logs in your inventory. You'd get more done if you just picked up your d*mn axe." The channel went quiet for a second. Then the reasonable voices piped up. "She's right. Nobody owes you anything. Work for it." "Exactly. Just 'cause someone's quiet doesn't mean they're an easy target." In a world where staying alive took everything you had, expecting charity was the dumbest move of all. Riley didn't waste more energy on it. People like that—the more you engaged, the more they thrived. Let him run his mouth. She had bigger things to worry about. She closed the channel and turned to the big wooden crate—her initial supply point. Sure enough, new items had materialized inside. "Bottled Water x3 "White Bread x3 "Fresh Orange Juice x1 "Standard Snow Boots x1" "Orange juice?" Riley picked up the bottle, genuinely surprised. The orange liquid inside sloshed gently. Vitamins. The system was actually giving them vitamins. She pulled off her old shoes—already damp and cold—and swapped into the new boots. They were clunky, sure. But they gripped the snow, and the insulation was real. The chill that had been seeping up through her soles disappeared instantly. Next, she opened her toolbox. Goggles on. Thick cut-resistant gloves. Head-to-toe gear. "Time to work." The channel noise faded from her mind. She had one priority today, and it wasn't arguing with idiots. She picked up the chainsaw and headed back to the tree line. The cold played tricks on batteries. She'd known that, intellectually. But knowing it and feeling it were different things. After just eight trees, the last spare battery gave out. The chainsaw stuttered, died, and went silent in her hands. Riley stared at it. "Son of a b*tch." Chapter 5 Dead Battery Riley stared at the dead chainsaw in her hands and shook her head. Without power, it was just an expensive paperweight. If she wanted more wood, she'd have to do it the old-fashioned way—pick up the axe or the manual handsaw from the toolbox and go to war with frozen timber. But eight more trees were eight more trees. Her stockpile was looking healthy. "First things first. Get these back." She sucked it up, stowed the chainsaw in her inventory, and started hauling. Her body screamed even louder than yesterday. Every muscle felt like it had been replaced with concrete. She dragged each log back one at a time, moving like a zombie. Drag. Rest two minutes. Drag again. The wind howled in her ears. Riley lost track of time, lost track of everything except the mechanical rhythm of work. By the time the sun was high—not that you could really see it through the clouds—she dragged the last log into the campfire's radius. It dissolved into light, absorbed by the system. Riley all but collapsed into the snow. "Acquired: Wood x40" She lay there for a moment, chest heaving, staring at the number in her inventory. A tired smile crept across her face. She had enough. Combined with the coal and steel from yesterday's trades, she had everything she needed for the upgrade. Riley forced herself upright and walked to the campfire. On the floating translucent panel, the "Upgrade" button glowed that tempting gold. "Upgrade Primitive Shelter to Lv.2? "Cost: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Scrap Steel x5 "Remaining after upgrade: Wood x16, Stone x3, Coal x0, Steel x0" "Upgrade." Riley took a breath and pressed it. "Hmmmm—!" A blinding white light erupted from the heart of the campfire, swallowing everything. Riley squeezed her eyes shut. No explosion. No thunder. Just a sound like Legos snapping together. A few seconds later, the light faded. Riley opened her eyes. And stopped breathing. The campfire wasn't just a campfire anymore. The rough stone ring had transformed into something neat and intentional—a proper firepit with a stone border for insulation, a place to set things, even a simple steel grate attached to the side. But that wasn't the big news. The heat that used to push back the cold within a six-foot radius now stretched a full fifteen feet. Inside that circle, snow was actively melting, revealing dark frozen soil underneath. In one corner, she spotted a patch of moss stubbornly poking through. Riley spun around. Behind the big wooden crate, a small log cabin stood waiting. It wasn't much—maybe forty feet square, built from rough-hewn logs. Nothing fancy. But it was solid. Four walls and a roof, blocking wind and snow completely. Riley walked over and pushed open the heavy wooden door. Warm air hit her face. Inside was simple: a wooden bed frame piled with dry grass, a crude workbench, a chair, and a small fireplace connected to a chimney that ran up through the roof. Rustic. But right now, it was heaven. Wood and fire. Four walls. A roof. Home. Riley ran her hand along the rough wall. Her eyes stung a little. She wouldn't have to sleep in the open anymore. Wouldn't have to wake up every few hours to check the fire. Wouldn't have to worry about freezing to death in her sleep. Right on cue, the server announcement chimed. Gold text this time, blazing right in the center of everyone's vision. "Server Announcement: Congratulations to player SpicyBurger for being the first to achieve "Level 2 Shelter". Rewards have been distributed." The chat channel, which had been wallowing in fear and despair, exploded. "Holy sh*t? Level 2 already? What does Level 2 unlock? Can you post pics, big shot?" "That's the wood seller from yesterday? No way. Absolute legend." "Carry me please! SpicyBurger, I'll be your loyal follower. I can cook, I can clean, I can—" "Teach us, master! How'd you gather materials so fast? What's your secret?" Compliments. Pleas. Desperate attempts to get noticed. And then, of course, the sour grapes. "InvincibleWarrior: Big deal. Just profiteering off everyone else's suffering. If she'd shared that wood instead of selling it, maybe those five thousand people would still be alive. How does it feel to climb on corpses?" "GodLovesMeFirst: Seriously. Building your success on other people's deaths. Karma's real. She'll get hers." Riley's jaw tightened. If InvincibleWarrior had been standing in front of her right now, she'd have knocked his teeth out. Guys like him—useless themselves, but always ready to tear down anyone who actually accomplished something. Sewer rats. Her private messages exploded too. She'd set it to only accept trade offers, but people had found a workaround—using the "trade note" function to send spam. "Hey beautiful, I'm a personal trainer. Great shape. Wanna see? Hit me with some wood and I'll do a voice call with you!" A photo of some guy flexing in a mirror, shirt off. Riley glanced at it, unimpressed. Decent abs. Pathetic attitude. Dude was clearly strong enough to chop wood—why was he wasting time on this? She'd never mentioned her gender, so most people probably assumed anyone who'd gathered that much wood must be a guy. The messages reflected that assumption. Some women sent selfies too, trying to flirt their way into favor. Didn't matter. Shameless cut across all demographics. From the backgrounds in the photos, everyone seemed to be in different locations. But one thing was consistent: they all had trees nearby. The system must have arranged that—a new player perk. "A bunch of degenerates." Riley's face went cold. She changed her privacy settings to "Friends Only". Then she added a line to her trading post description. "No spam. Send junk, get blocked." Silence. Blessed silence. She took a breath, let the noise drain away, and focused on what mattered. "First-place upgrade reward..." She opened her inventory. Sitting there, glowing faintly purple, was a gift box. For more exciting content, please download the "JoyRead" app to continue reading.
Chapter 1 The Countdown Ends It was the year 2027, and the end of the world was now less than an hour away. "00:59:23" Riley Carter stood on a ladder with a screw clenched between her teeth, an impact driver in her hand, securing the last window panel in place. A month ago, that timer had just appeared out of nowhere, hanging in the corner of everyone's vision like it had always been there. At first, people wrote it off as some kind of mass hacker prank. The government fed the media soothing statements in an attempt to keep things calm, but there was no way to talk down the panic as prices kept rising and supplies were held in a monopoly in real time. News outlets might spin whatever narrative they wanted, but no one could argue with the price of eggs. For a while, it was a frenzy. People cleaned out grocery stores like locusts. The government did what they could—price caps, purchase limits, reassurances from the podium—but none of it mattered. The cost of living kept climbing, and bit by bit, the country started coming apart at the seams. Online, it was a circus. Some people posted doom-laden predictions. Others openly celebrated the thought of the world finally burning. A few just seemed relieved they wouldn't have to clock in on Monday. In that final hour, things got truly ugly. Both on the streets and on social media, it was chaos. Some people figured why not went out with a bang? If the world was ending, they'd spend their last hours doing every reckless thing they'd ever fantasized about. Others, paralyzed by fear of whatever was coming, scrambled for anything they could hoard. Supplies. Weapons. Gasoline. Didn't matter what, as long as they had more of it than the next guy. Most people just wanted to be with the ones they loved. Riley didn't have that luxury anymore. Fresh out of community college, she'd lost both her parents in a highway pileup eighteen months back. The only thing they'd left her was the family hardware store, a cramped little place wedged between a laundromat and a taqueria. She'd been running it solo for just over a year when that d*mn countdown appeared overhead. At first, she'd thought maybe an apocalypse wouldn't be the worst thing. Maybe there'd be something on the other side. A reunion. But then she thought about her folks. They'd doted on her. Made her feel like the center of their world. And even though she'd grown a thick skin since going it alone, feeling indifferent to the world, she knew what they'd want. They'd want her to fight. To stay. She was the only piece of them still left in this world. People always say you aren't really gone until the last person forgets your name. As long as she kept breathing, kept carrying them with her another day, they weren't truly dead. Riley spat the screw into her palm, face calm, the impact driver whirring as she sank another fastener into the reinforced frame. "Flour's three hundred a pound now, and you can't even buy it straight—they make you tack on a bunch of other junk you don't need just to get it," she muttered to herself, shaking her head. When that timer first flickered into existence, Riley had done something smart. She'd liquidated everything. Converted every dollar she could scrape together into supplies. Unfortunately, by the time she hit the stores, inflation had already done its damage. Her savings didn't go nearly as far as they should have. Any cash that was left went toward tools. If the world was ending, she thought they could be useful. Riley pressed the last sheet of thick insulation foam into the window frame, seating it flush against the reinforced plywood beneath. The impact driver snarled as she buried the screws. Then she reached for her pneumatic glue gun—a satisfying pfft as the sealant filled the final gap. She wiped sweat from her forehead and climbed down off the ladder. Stepped back to admire her work. The little apartment was a fortress now. Doors reinforced. Windows barricaded. Every interior wall lined with an extra layer of insulation. She glanced down at herself. Custom-fit heavy-duty workwear. Slash-resistant fabric. More pockets than she'd ever need. Reinforced padding at the knees and elbows. It wasn't fashionable, but it was practical. And her real treasure: tools. A chainsaw. A reciprocating saw. The impact driver in her hand. A multi-bit screwdriver that had cost more than she wanted to admit. She'd brought everything usable from the shop back here, consolidated it into three massive toolboxes. She'd also grabbed some stuff like an air purifier and some spare filters—anything that might matter when civilization took a vacation. She didn't know what the countdown would bring. Some folks online predicted zombies. Others said asteroid impact. Volcanic winter. Alien invasion. Take your pick. Food. Tools. Shelter. She'd even started working out, building strength she'd never needed before. She'd done everything she could think of to prepare. Whatever was coming, she figured she'd last longer than most. With nothing left to do, she dropped onto one of the big toolboxes laid flat on the floor, wiped her forehead again, and pulled out her phone. Most news apps had crashed. The only things still loading were comment sections, and they were going crazy. [Anyone got rice? I'll pay eight grand for a bag. Please, we got nothing left.] [Forget it, man. Money's toilet paper now. Saw it with my own eyes—some rich assholes cleared out the Costco warehouse last week. All that 'purchase limit' crap was just theater. Shelves were empty 'cause the stock never made it there. It's all sitting in some hedge fund guy's basement.] [No kidding? Same thing happened to me! Store manager kept telling me, 'We're limiting purchases, come back next week, we'll put your name on the list.' So the whole time the back room was empty? They were just jerking us around?] [Of course they were. Rich people cornered the market on everything. So what are normal people supposed to do? Just sit here and die?] [Anyone know what actually happens when the clock hits zero? Like, is it nukes? That virus thing from that old video game?] Riley locked her phone. Tucked it away. She didn't have anything to add to that conversation. A month ago, when the countdown first showed up, prices had spiked instantly. A fifty-pound bag of rice that normally went for thirty bucks jumped to eight hundred overnight. By yesterday, it was breaking two grand. The wealthy had rolled up with trucks and cleaned out supermarkets. Riley had been smart—she'd gone early, bought stuff that would keep, stuff that was calorie-dense and cheap. Chocolate. Survival biscuits. Canned goods. It wasn't much, but it was enough for one person, at least for a while. She took a deep breath and glanced at the timer. "00:01:10" Just over a minute. Riley gripped the toolbox beneath her. Knuckles white. Who knew what would happen when that thing hit zero? Maybe it'd be like 2012—all hype, nothing real. In that last minute, her life flickered past. Her parents' faces. The hardware store. The lonely months since. "00:00:00" The countdown ended. Riley had just started to breathe a sigh of relief—nothing happened, maybe it really was nothing—when the world lurched beneath her. A dizzying weightlessness. A sensation of falling. Everything spun. ***** She didn't know how long she was out. "Whew." A wind like a knife blade sliced across her face. Riley's eyes snapped open. Her warm apartment was gone. In its place, an endless white expanse stretched in every direction. Snow whipped through the air. Wind howled like a wounded animal. And at her feet, a small campfire guttered in the gale, threatening to die at any second. "What the—" Before she could process, a chime rang directly in her skull. Not heard. Known. "Welcome to the Extreme Cold Survival Game. "Earth no longer exists. This is your new home. This is your grave. "Survival rules are as follows. "1. Each player begins with one campfire. It is your only defense against the cold. If the campfire dies, you will be judged deceased by the system. Not that it matters—without the fire, you won't last anyway. "2. This is a real world. You can die from hunger. From exposure. From animal attack. "3. Supplies stockpiled in your previous world do not carry over. Only items on your person, or in direct physical contact at the moment of transfer, are retained. "4. Struggle to survive. It is your only hope." Riley's heart slammed against her ribs. Supplies didn't carry over? Her mind flashed to those wealthy forum posters bragging about their warehouse stockpiles. And then she looked down at herself. Workwear. Intact. And— She was still sitting on the three giant toolboxes. They sat solidly in the snow, dusted with powder, unmistakably here. "Whew." Riley let out a long breath. A white cloud dispersed in front of her face. Pity, though. During her renovations, she'd stocked those boxes with a lot of power tools. The expensive impact driver. The reciprocating saw. In a world with no electrical outlets, once those batteries died, they were just dead weight. But even so. The hand tools. The consumables. The sheer volume of stuff in those boxes—it was a treasure beyond measure in a place like this. Riley forced herself to calm down. She was here. She'd deal with it. Something new lived in her mind now. She concentrated, and a translucent pale-blue screen materialized in front of her eyes. Looked just like a video game HUD. "Personal Panel "Name: Riley Carter "ID: 1120-US "Level: 1 (Standard Survivor) "Strength: 8 (Years of manual labor have made you stronger than average) "Agility: 8 (You've got quick reflexes) "Constitution: 6 (You've been skipping meals lately) "Spirit: 9 (You keep your head when others panic) "Inventory: 16/16 slots (Base capacity)" "Inventory?" Riley studied the sixteen empty squares at the bottom of the display. She reached out, touched one of the toolboxes, and thought the word, "Store." Whoosh. The heavy box vanished. In its place, a tiny icon appeared in the first inventory slot, a miniature "x1" in the corner. "It actually worked." For the first time since arriving, a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. Retrieve. Thud. The toolbox landed back in the snow, puffing up powder. No energy cost. No sense of weight. And in that inventory, she could carry anything, regardless of how heavy it was. Later on, when she went scavenging, that would make all the difference. Riley rubbed her stiff, freezing hands together and turned her attention to the campfire at her feet. It was the only warmth in this frozen wasteland. Hovering above the flames, visible only to her, were a few lines of glowing text. "Basic Campfire (Lv.1) "Remaining Burn Time: 05:28:00 "Current Coverage: Radius six feet (Blocks wind and snow) "Upgrade Requirements: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Steel x5 "Description: This is your life. Do not let it die. Upgrading expands your safe zone and unlocks additional construction options." "Needs upgrading." Riley frowned. Wood and stone she could probably find. But coal? Steel? Out here in the middle of nowhere? A flash of movement caught her eye. A small wooden box, half-buried in the snow not far from the fire. The starter crate. Had to be. Riley didn't rush. First, she pulled the claw hammer from her belt—the one she always kept there, habit from years of work—and gripped it tight. She scanned the tree line. Listened past the wind. Nothing moved. No sounds but the storm. She walked over quickly, crouched by the box. No lock. She pried the lid open with the claw end of her hammer. Inside, a handful of items. "Obtained: Iron Axe x1 "Obtained: Stale Dark Bread x2 "Obtained: 500ml Bottled Water x1 "Obtained: Kindling x5 "Obtained: Insulated Field Jacket x1 "Obtained: Utility Rope (25ft) "Obtained: Thermal Underwear (Set) x2 Not much. Barely anything. Riley picked up one of the dark loaves. It was rock hard. She examined the jacket—basic, but warm-looking. "So this is what a standard survivor starts with." At least the system had thought of everything. Including the underwear. She'd half-expected to wake up naked in the snow; at least she didn't have to worry about that. She stored everything in her inventory, then shrugged on the field jacket. The temperature shift was brutal. Even those few seconds exposed had left her hands numb. Hypothermia would set in fast out here. Jacket on, she hurried back to the campfire. She pulled the five units of Kindling from her inventory and tossed them onto the flames. The fire roared higher. Warmth flooded over her. "Fuel added. Remaining Burn Time: 10:28:00" Ten hours. If she didn't move fast, in ten hours she'd freeze to death on this ice field. And the game had made it clear—if the fire died, the system would judge her dead. Whether she actually froze or not. Riley lifted her head and scanned the landscape. She was in a sparse coniferous forest. Barely alive trees, crusted with frost, dotted the area not far from her position. "Wood." A slow smile spread across her face. She patted the toolbox beside her. "Other people might have axes. But felling a tree with just an axe takes hours. Exhausts you." She unlatched the box. Pulled out the chainsaw. Checked the battery gauge—full. "I've got a handsaw in here too. And a chainsaw with a full charge." The battery wouldn't last forever. But it would last long enough to give her a massive head start. In this race for survival, that was everything. Chapter 2 The Chainsaw The wind screamed across the open ground, picking up loose snow and flinging it against her goggles like sand. It sounded like static. Riley had pulled her basic work gear from the toolbox before heading out. Now she stood in the snow, surrounded by clusters of thin conifers that looked half-dead already. She took a breath. The air burned going down. "Zzzzzzz—!!!" She squeezed the trigger. The orange-and-black lithium-ion chainsaw in her hands roared to life, the chain spinning so fast it blurred. She buried the teeth in the nearest pine trunk. Wood chips exploded everywhere. Fragrant shavings—still wet with resin—scattered across the pristine snow, stark and yellow against all that white. Five seconds. Crack. The pine tree, thick as her arm, groaned and tilted. Then it fell slow and heavy into a drift, sending up a puff of powder. "God bless modern technology." Riley shook out her wrist—the vibration had numbed her fingers—and allowed herself a small smile. Without that chainsaw, with just the basic iron axe the system had given her, felling a tree frozen solid like this would have taken twenty minutes minimum. And it would have left her soaked with sweat. In subzero temps, sweat was a death sentence. Once your base layers got wet, the moment you stopped moving, your body temperature would plummet. Hypothermia would follow fast. Riley didn't waste time celebrating. She knew the saw in her hands was a hungry machine. She'd brought two spare high-capacity batteries, sure, but until she found a way to recharge them, every second the motor ran was borrowed time. She had to gather as much wood as possible before the batteries gave out. "Zzzzz—Zzzzz—" At the edge of the forest, the chainsaw's snarl rose and fell, shattering the frozen silence. Riley worked like she was possessed. Fell a tree. Move to the next. Fell another. But she had to stay alert—watch for hidden snow pits underfoot, keep adjusting her collar against the wind that kept finding its way down her neck. Her stamina drained faster than she'd anticipated. In extreme cold, body burned through calories just to stay alive. Added walking through knee-deep snow, where every step took three times the energy of walking on pavement, and the math got ugly fast. Pretty soon, Riley was breathing hard. Her breath fogged the inside of her goggles, and she had to keep wiping them clear. "Zzzzz..." She was mid-cut on a tree—didn't even know which number anymore—when the chainsaw's roar stuttered. Died. The chain jammed solid in the wood. A red light blinked at her. Dead battery. Riley yanked the saw free and patted its housing. "Good work, buddy." Genuine regret in her voice. She straightened up and looked around. Pine trunks lay scattered across the snow in every direction. A decent haul. She counted silently. "Twenty-three total." Then the next problem hit her. According to the system, until she actually possessed these logs, they were still just natural resources. That meant they didn't qualify for Inventory storage. She couldn't just snap her fingers and make them disappear. She had to drag them back to camp. Riley grabbed the nearest pine and tried to pull. Heavy. Like, unreasonably heavy. Fresh-cut wood was full of moisture. Add the branches catching in the snow, dragging like anchors, and she felt like she was hauling a dead body through mud. "Huff... huff..." She gritted her teeth, looped rope around the trunk, slung it over her shoulder, leaned forward, and started walking. Inch by inch. The tree line to her campfire was maybe fifty yards. Right now, it felt like fifty miles. By the time she'd wrestled the fourth tree back into the fire's warm radius, she was wrecked. Her legs felt like someone had filled them with concrete. Her lungs burned from hauling freezing air through them. "Can't... can't do more." Riley made the call. She stopped. Those nineteen trees still out there in the snow—they called to her. Tempted her. But if she kept pushing without rest, without fuel for herself, she'd collapse out there. And out there, collapse meant death. She dropped down next to the big wooden crate that had held her starter supplies. It was less than three feet from the campfire. The flames danced orange and red, pumping out heat that felt like heaven. The shift from frozen to warm made her shiver violently. She pulled off her goggles and thick gloves, set them near the fire to warm up, then—still shaking—pulled the half-empty water bottle from her Inventory. Took a small sip. Then the bread. Two black bricks that looked more like construction material than food. "Crunch." Riley bit off a piece with effort. It was coarse. Tasted like sawdust with a hint of burnt toast. Bitter. But it was calories. Carbs. Fuel for her own fire. She forced herself to chew, swallow. When the food hit her stomach, warmth finally started spreading through her core. The uncontrollable shaking eased. After half a loaf, Riley leaned back against the crate. Her eyelids drooped. Post-exhaustion crash hit her like a wave. The campfire crackled. The wind seemed farther away now. Muffled. She really wanted to sleep... Her head nodded. Her body started sliding sideways. "Wait—" Some animal instinct jolted her awake just before she went under. She pinched her thigh. Hard. Then looked up at the timer floating above the flames. "Shelter Level 1 "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 06:28:00" Six and a half hours. If she slept too deep, too long, and that fire went out—what then? Even ignoring the obvious—that she'd freeze to death in this hellhole without a heat source—the game rules were clear. When the campfire hits zero, it's game over. "No sleeping. Not allowed." Riley slapped her own cheeks, forced herself upright. She stayed near the fire, but she didn't take off her heavy work clothes. She remembered reading something once, a survival article. "In the late stages of hypothermia, your hypothalamus malfunctions. You get a false sensation of heat. It's called "paradoxical undressing"—people strip down right before they freeze to death." "Okay. Process these four. Keep the fire fed." She pulled a traditional handsaw from the toolbox. Looking at the four thick pine logs on the ground, she almost laughed. Without power tools, breaking these down into burnable pieces would take at least half an hour. Burn the little energy she had left. But what choice did she have? Riley knelt in the snow, positioned the blade against the trunk, and was about to start cutting— A soft white light shot out from the system panel on her chest. It washed over the logs. "Ding! "Detected felled, intact logs within shelter range. "Perform quick recovery?" Riley's hand froze mid-saw. Quick recovery? It took her a second to process. Then relief flooded through her so hard she almost cried. "Yes! Recover!" She didn't hesitate. The next moment, something impossible happened. The four pine trunks—the ones she'd have to saw and split by hand, the ones that represented hours of brutal labor—dissolved into pale blue light particles. Not into dust. Into neat, uniform logs that stacked themselves automatically in her Inventory. The branches, the needles, all the useless parts—purified out of existence. "Recovery successful! "Obtained: Common Wood x20" Riley's eyes went wide, staring at the perfect lumber in her inventory display. Looked like it came straight from a hardware store. "One tree gives five units of wood? "And I don't have to cut it myself?" This changed everything. It meant she only had to handle the felling and the dragging. Once a log crossed into her camp's boundary, the system recognized it as hers. The most time-consuming part—the processing—just... didn't exist anymore. Riley immediately grabbed five units of wood and fed them to the fire. Whoosh. The flames leaped, hungry and grateful. "Fuel added. "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 12:20:00" "Five logs, five hours..." She did the math fast, looking at the fifteen units still on the ground. If she threw all of those in, that'd be another fifteen hours. Total of twenty-seven. She could sleep like the dead right now, and that fire would still be burning when she woke up. Security. For the first time since the world ended, Riley felt something like security. She selected the remaining wood. Deposited it all. Watched the countdown tick up to a very comfortable "27:20:00". Then her nerves finally let go. She dragged one of the toolboxes into position to block the wind, wrapped the field jacket tight around herself, pulled her hat down over her eyes, leaned back against the warm crate, and let the crackle of the fire pull her under. ***** She didn't sleep long. When she opened her eyes again, the sky was still that same dull gray-white. Impossible to tell if it was morning or afternoon. System clock said three hours. Her body ached. Shoulders and arms especially—felt like she'd gone ten rounds with someone. But her head was clear. She stretched her stiff neck and stood up. The snow seemed lighter. The feathery flakes had tapered off into sporadic icy grains. Riley ate a little more, got some fuel back in the tank, then stepped outside the campfire's warmth. The fire's effect wasn't what she'd expected. It wasn't that the temperature gradually dropped as you moved away. It was sharper than that. Like there was an invisible barrier around the flames. Inside, livable. Outside, the cold hit you like a wall. She wandered a little way off. The cold found every gap in her clothing. She thought about going farther, exploring. But there was nothing visible except that stand of trees she'd already worked. Maybe stuff was buried under the snow, but she couldn't see it. "No proper snow boots. Not going far." Riley glanced at the endless white distance with real regret. "Don't get greedy. Get those nineteen trees first." She turned. Looked at the woods. Her loot was still out there. And now she knew: if she could drag them back into the campfire's circle, the system would cash them out automatically. "Time to work." Riley rubbed her hands together. Let the motivation build. For the next few hours, she became a machine. Drag a tree to camp. Recover it. Go back for another. Repeat. It was boring. Exhausting. But watching those logs turn into numbers in her inventory—that feeling was hard to describe. Satisfying, in a way nothing had been satisfying in a long time. When the last pine trunk crossed into the light and dissolved into particles, Riley just collapsed. Lay flat in the snow and stared at the gray sky. She pulled up her Inventory. The once-empty slots were full now. Stack after stack of wood icons. "Item: Common Wood "Quantity: 80 "Description: Basic survival resource. Can be used for fuel or construction." Eighty units. Plus what was already burning in the campfire. Her day's work had yielded a clean hundred. One unit of wood burned for one hour. Riley looked at the flames dancing in front of her. Felt the heat on her face. Let herself smile, wide and real. "One hundred hours." Four full days. While everyone else was probably still panicking. Crying. Begging. Trying to figure out how to survive their first night in this frozen nightmare... She, Riley, had enough fuel stockpiled to last four days. Which meant: for the next ninety-six hours, unless she actively chose to die, nobody and nothing could put her fire out. She pulled the half-empty water bottle from Inventory. The space must have been insulated somehow—the water was still warm. Almost body temperature. She sipped it. Tasted sweet, even though it was just tap water. "Okay. Next step." Her gaze settled on the "Upgrade" button on the campfire panel. This open-air setup was fine for now. But if she was going to survive long-term, she needed something better. A real shelter. All she needed was a little stone. Some coal. Some steel. Then she could build something worth calling home. Chapter 3 The Trading Game The blizzard howled outside, but within the six-foot radius of the campfire, the air stayed surprisingly warm—like the wind had hit an invisible wall and just couldn't reach. Riley leaned back against the dusty wooden crate, holding the half-empty water bottle in her hand. She stared into the flames for a moment, then focused her attention inward. The pale blue system panel unfolded in front of her eyes again. Now that the immediate crisis was handled, she finally had time to sit quietly and really explore this so-called "Survival System". Beyond the personal stats and inventory, the bottom of the panel had a row of function icons: Server Channel, Friends List, Trading Market, and Crafting Manual. Friends List was empty. No surprise there. She hadn't exactly been a social butterfly back in the old world, and she sure as hell wasn't going to make friends easily in a frozen hellscape where everyone was fighting for their next breath. She tapped into the "Server Channel". A line of numbers appeared in the top left. "Server: US-008 "Current Online: 9911/10000" Ten thousand people started. Less than ten hours in, eighty-nine were already gone. "That doesn't add up." Everyone's starter crate came with a rusty iron axe and five units of wood. Plus the initial fuel the campfire had when they arrived—that alone bought them ten hours minimum, even if they just sat there doing nothing. What the hell did those people do to get eliminated so fast? The channel was moving fast, messages scrolling by every second. Desperation dripped from every line. "Someone help, I'm freezing my ass off out here. This stupid axe can't cut sh*t—every swing just bounces off and rattles my whole arm. Can anyone spare a couple logs? My dad's a senior VP at Walker Group. I'll wire you a million dollars when we get back, I swear." "Wake up, buddy. If your dad's still alive, he's out there chopping trees right now too." "Don't even talk to me. I spotted a wooden crate in the snow earlier, got all excited, ran over—and before I got within ten feet, some white rabbit thing jumped out of a drift. Teeth like needles. Almost took a chunk out of my leg. Missed the crate, wasted all that energy for nothing." "I saw that too! Random crates spawn in the wild. I opened a wooden one and got two chocolate bars and some coal." Reading through the chaos, Riley picked out two keywords, "Random Reward Crates" and "Dangerous Creatures". So this world was deeper than she thought. Wooden crates, copper crates—these randomly spawning resource points were the real way to get ahead. Coal came from crates. That was useful to know. And if coal was in crates, steel probably was too. But something bothered her. According to what people were saying, reward crates weren't exactly rare. So why hadn't she found a single one during her lumber run? She doubted it was just bad luck. Riley exited chat and tapped into the "Trading Market". "Seller: MountainMan88 Item: Stone x2 Wants: White Bread x5" "Seller: LoneWolf_21 Item: Cotton Cloth Wants: Clean Water" "Seller: NotDeadYet Item: Wood x3 Wants: Anything edible" Most people were trading for food and wood. The stuff that kept you alive right now. Things like stone and cloth were getting dumped cheap—nobody had the luxury of thinking long-term. Riley looked at her own inventory. Eighty units of wood staring back at her. Her heart beat a little faster. In this opening phase, where wood literally meant the difference between life and death, the resources in her hands were basically gold bars. "Time to trade," she muttered to herself. "Coal, steel—can't get those from chopping trees. And right now, wood's at maximum value. If I wait, the exchange rate shifts." Even with the chainsaw dead, she still had the handsaw. Less efficient, sure, but she could gather more wood if she needed it. Short-term, she wasn't going to run out. She clicked to post a message in the channel. "System Prompt: Detected that you have not set a virtual ID. Please enter your nickname (cannot be changed after setting)." Riley stared at the blank input box. Naming things was the worst. She sat there for a long time, nothing coming to mind. Finally, she gave up. Couldn't think of anything cool or clever, so she'd just go with something random. Her fingers tapped across the virtual keyboard—SpicyBurger. "Setting successful. ID locked." The prompt closed. Riley posted her message. "SpicyBurger: Selling wood in bulk. Looking for: Coal, Steel, High-calorie food. DM me with offers—what you have and your rate. Good deals go fast, don't sleep on this." For three seconds after the message appeared, the channel went dead silent. Then it exploded. "SpicyBurger? That name's making me hungry, what the hell." "Never mind the name—'wood in bulk'! We got a whale in here! Everyone else is stressing about the next hour and this person's already running a business?" "I need some! My campfire's down to like two hours. I don't know if I actually die when it hits zero but I don't wanna find out." Suddenly, half the channel was scrambling for wood. But then the skeptics crawled out. "Hang on. Everyone started with the same rusty axe. Chopping a tree in this weather takes twenty, thirty minutes minimum. Where's she getting 'bulk' wood from? Sounds like a scam." "InvincibleWarrior: Everybody chill. Look at that ID—sounds like a girl's handle. I'm a grown man, been busting my ass, and I've only got like ten logs saved up. My hands are shredded. Some girl with a food name claims she's got bulk? She's trying to run a game. Scam people out of their stuff." "Iron_Tough: Agreed. Scammers made it through the apocalypse too, I guess. My advice: ignore her. Don't get played. How much wood can a woman chop anyway? Probably can't even lift the axe right, lol." Riley scrolled through the messages, expression flat. She almost laughed. But some people pushed back. "FishHater44: How is it a scam? If she doesn't deliver, you don't complete the trade. Just 'cause you can't chop that much wood doesn't mean nobody can." Riley nodded slightly. That one had a point. But she didn't waste energy arguing in the channel. Instead, she flipped on Do Not Disturb for private messages—only allowing chat requests that included a trade offer. Some people didn't actually care whether she had wood. They just couldn't stand seeing someone else do well. "Ding. Ding. Ding." Private messages started pouring in like rain. Most players weren't idiots. Faced with the very real threat of freezing to death, they'd try anything for a chance. Riley opened the first one. "Windwalker: I got "Coal x3" from a crate. How much wood can I get for it? I can't chop anymore. The wind out here is insane. I tried to throw the coal in my fire but it just kept popping back out. System says my campfire level's too low, won't let me use it. I'm out of wood. My fire's almost dead." Riley thought for a moment. "Three coal for five wood. Deal?" She hadn't known about that restriction. Coal was supposed to be better fuel than wood—didn't expect the game to lock it behind a level gate. The reply came instantly, "Deal. But five wood feels light. It's coal." The guy was conflicted. He knew coal had value, but he was desperate. "I'll make it six. Final offer." Riley wasn't sure about coal's real value yet. Six was her limit. "Fine. Deal." They both dropped their items into the trade window. A moment later, it completed. A flash of white light. Riley's inventory lost six wood. Gained three chunks of coal, each about the size of a small melon. One down. "CrunchyFrog: Hey, I got two "Iron Ingots" from a crate. System calls them "Scrap Steel". Can I get eight wood for them? Trying to stock up enough to sleep through the night." Riley replied, "Sure. Initiate." In just over ten minutes, her wood stockpile dropped significantly. But her inventory filled up with good stuff. "Coal x10 "Stone x23 "Scrap Steel x5 "Raw Meat x2 "White Bread x2 "Basic Torch Blueprint x1" The blueprint was new. The description said it was required for crafting certain items. Seemed useful, so she'd traded for it. Meanwhile, back in the channel, that "InvincibleWarrior" guy who'd been mocking her earlier seemed to notice that people were actually completing trades. His tone got bitter. "InvincibleWarrior: Whatever. She probably got lucky with a high-tier crate. Let's see how long her stock lasts. Once the wood's gone, she'll be begging me to let her join my group." The people who'd successfully traded with Riley popped into the channel to thank her. That might have been fine—except the thanks caused problems. Since Riley had stopped trading for now, most people hadn't gotten anything. And the sky was darkening. Temperature outside the campfire radius was dropping fast. Gathering wood was getting harder. Trading was their only hope. The ones who'd pinned everything on Riley, seeing her stop, started losing it. "You said 'in bulk'! You did like five trades and quit. What are we supposed to do now?" "Keep trading! My fire's almost out. You want us to go chop trees in the dark?" "If you couldn't deliver, why'd you post? Showing off and then hiding." Whether it was coordinated or just genuine rage, the number of people defending Riley in the channel shrank fast. Mostly it was attacks now. Accusations of being irresponsible. Using scarcity tactics. Playing games with people's lives. Riley closed the channel. She couldn't be bothered. In a life-or-death situation like this, people losing it was normal. If she actually had unlimited resources, she'd trade more. But she didn't. And back on Earth, nobody had ever handed her anything out of charity. She wasn't about to start playing savior now. She looked down at the "Basic Torch Blueprint" in her inventory. "Requirements: Wood x10, Kerosene, Scrap Steel x2" Note: Requires Level 2 Workbench to craft." She leaned back against the crate again. Felt the weight of her stockpile pressing back against that lingering sense of unease. In this world, your ID didn't matter. Your gender didn't matter either. What mattered was who held the resources. She looked at what she had left: 36 units of wood. Plus the steel, coal, and stone from trading. Time to plan. Upgrading to a Level 2 campfire required 55 wood. She had all the other materials. For the wood, she'd just have to use the handsaw tomorrow and gather a little more. That settled, she pulled a few more logs from inventory and arranged them on top of the crate, making a small enclosed space. Curled up inside it, she watched the sky outside slowly darken to black. Her eyes grew heavy. She drifted off. Chapter 4 The Culling Riley woke to the kind of soreness that made you reconsider ever moving again. She'd slept like the dead—no dreams, no blizzard, just nothing. When she opened her eyes, the first things she saw were the logs she'd stacked as a windbreak and the steady glow of the campfire. She tried to stretch. Big mistake. Every muscle in her body lit up at once, screaming in protest. "Sh*t." Riley sucked air through her teeth and pressed a hand to her aching shoulder. Her lower back felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to it. Yesterday's work had been too much. She wasn't weak—far from it—but she was still human. The lactic acid had settled in overnight, and now she moved like an arthritic tin man. At least she was alive. She stowed the windbreak logs back in her inventory and looked around. The world hadn't changed. Same dull gray sky. Same swirling snow. Outside the six-foot radius of the fire, the drifts looked deeper than yesterday. The wind had been busy. Riley pulled out the half-empty water bottle and wet her throat. Then she retrieved the white bread she'd traded for yesterday. Compared to that dense, flavorless black bread, this was practically cake. She tore off small pieces, letting the faint sweetness dissolve on her tongue, and habitually opened the "Server Channel". She stopped chewing. The number in the top left hit her like a physical blow. "Current Online Players: 4968/10000" "Five thousand..." Riley's eyes went wide. In a single night, that number had been cut in half. Five thousand people. Gone. Winked out of existence on this frozen ice field while she slept. "Ding." The system notification cut through her thoughts—cold, emotionless, like it was announcing the weather. "Global Announcement: Congratulations to all survivors for successfully surviving the first day. "This was a culling. Last night eliminated those fools who failed to add fuel to their fires or refused to gather wood. Remember: in this place, tears mean nothing. When you die here, you're dead-dead. "You who remain are the lucky ones. "Grace Period: A five-day 'New Player Support Period' now begins. For the next five days, your initial supply crates will refresh daily with a fixed amount of food. "Special Reward: Each survivor receives one pair of "Standard Issue Snow Boots (Common)". Be grateful for this mercy. Enjoy the game." The words sat there on her screen. Fools. Mercy. The system's tone dripped with contempt. The math was simple. Starting package: five hours of fuel. Initial gift: five units of wood, another five hours. Total ten hours, if you did absolutely nothing. The ones who'd frozen to death last night—they were the ones who'd clung to hope. The ones too scared to move. The ones who'd told themselves someone would save them. Five thousand people. One night. Gone. This wasn't a game. It was a slaughter. In the channel, the survivors who'd made it through were clearly rattled by the numbers too. "Holy sh*t... My friend's icon went dark last night. Does that mean he's dead? Actually dead?" "I can't do this. I don't wanna play anymore, I wanna go home. I swear I'll work today. I'll chop wood, I'll do whatever, just please—" "Everyone move! Don't save your strength! If you die, that's it. No respawns!" Panic spread fast. But almost immediately, the tone shifted. The fear found a target. "That SpicyBurger—if she'd shared more wood yesterday, would so many people have died?" "For real. If she had extra, why not just give it away? Why did it have to be trades? She could've at least loaned some out." "This is what happens when people hoard resources and watch others freeze. Remember that name. Don't trade with her. Ever." Riley frowned. Here we go again. She scrolled up. Sure enough, there it was—that familiar ID: "InvincibleWarrior". He was going hard in the channel. "She's profiting off suffering. That's what some people do. Women like that are the worst—hoarding supplies while people die around them. Wait and see. Someone like her won't last." Riley laughed. Actually laughed out loud. Moral blackmail. In the apocalypse. She typed, "If you want wood, go cut it yourself. I'm not your mommy. No amount of crying in chat is gonna put logs in your inventory. You'd get more done if you just picked up your d*mn axe." The channel went quiet for a second. Then the reasonable voices piped up. "She's right. Nobody owes you anything. Work for it." "Exactly. Just 'cause someone's quiet doesn't mean they're an easy target." In a world where staying alive took everything you had, expecting charity was the dumbest move of all. Riley didn't waste more energy on it. People like that—the more you engaged, the more they thrived. Let him run his mouth. She had bigger things to worry about. She closed the channel and turned to the big wooden crate—her initial supply point. Sure enough, new items had materialized inside. "Bottled Water x3 "White Bread x3 "Fresh Orange Juice x1 "Standard Snow Boots x1" "Orange juice?" Riley picked up the bottle, genuinely surprised. The orange liquid inside sloshed gently. Vitamins. The system was actually giving them vitamins. She pulled off her old shoes—already damp and cold—and swapped into the new boots. They were clunky, sure. But they gripped the snow, and the insulation was real. The chill that had been seeping up through her soles disappeared instantly. Next, she opened her toolbox. Goggles on. Thick cut-resistant gloves. Head-to-toe gear. "Time to work." The channel noise faded from her mind. She had one priority today, and it wasn't arguing with idiots. She picked up the chainsaw and headed back to the tree line. The cold played tricks on batteries. She'd known that, intellectually. But knowing it and feeling it were different things. After just eight trees, the last spare battery gave out. The chainsaw stuttered, died, and went silent in her hands. Riley stared at it. "Son of a b*tch." Chapter 5 Dead Battery Riley stared at the dead chainsaw in her hands and shook her head. Without power, it was just an expensive paperweight. If she wanted more wood, she'd have to do it the old-fashioned way—pick up the axe or the manual handsaw from the toolbox and go to war with frozen timber. But eight more trees were eight more trees. Her stockpile was looking healthy. "First things first. Get these back." She sucked it up, stowed the chainsaw in her inventory, and started hauling. Her body screamed even louder than yesterday. Every muscle felt like it had been replaced with concrete. She dragged each log back one at a time, moving like a zombie. Drag. Rest two minutes. Drag again. The wind howled in her ears. Riley lost track of time, lost track of everything except the mechanical rhythm of work. By the time the sun was high—not that you could really see it through the clouds—she dragged the last log into the campfire's radius. It dissolved into light, absorbed by the system. Riley all but collapsed into the snow. "Acquired: Wood x40" She lay there for a moment, chest heaving, staring at the number in her inventory. A tired smile crept across her face. She had enough. Combined with the coal and steel from yesterday's trades, she had everything she needed for the upgrade. Riley forced herself upright and walked to the campfire. On the floating translucent panel, the "Upgrade" button glowed that tempting gold. "Upgrade Primitive Shelter to Lv.2? "Cost: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Scrap Steel x5 "Remaining after upgrade: Wood x16, Stone x3, Coal x0, Steel x0" "Upgrade." Riley took a breath and pressed it. "Hmmmm—!" A blinding white light erupted from the heart of the campfire, swallowing everything. Riley squeezed her eyes shut. No explosion. No thunder. Just a sound like Legos snapping together. A few seconds later, the light faded. Riley opened her eyes. And stopped breathing. The campfire wasn't just a campfire anymore. The rough stone ring had transformed into something neat and intentional—a proper firepit with a stone border for insulation, a place to set things, even a simple steel grate attached to the side. But that wasn't the big news. The heat that used to push back the cold within a six-foot radius now stretched a full fifteen feet. Inside that circle, snow was actively melting, revealing dark frozen soil underneath. In one corner, she spotted a patch of moss stubbornly poking through. Riley spun around. Behind the big wooden crate, a small log cabin stood waiting. It wasn't much—maybe forty feet square, built from rough-hewn logs. Nothing fancy. But it was solid. Four walls and a roof, blocking wind and snow completely. Riley walked over and pushed open the heavy wooden door. Warm air hit her face. Inside was simple: a wooden bed frame piled with dry grass, a crude workbench, a chair, and a small fireplace connected to a chimney that ran up through the roof. Rustic. But right now, it was heaven. Wood and fire. Four walls. A roof. Home. Riley ran her hand along the rough wall. Her eyes stung a little. She wouldn't have to sleep in the open anymore. Wouldn't have to wake up every few hours to check the fire. Wouldn't have to worry about freezing to death in her sleep. Right on cue, the server announcement chimed. Gold text this time, blazing right in the center of everyone's vision. "Server Announcement: Congratulations to player SpicyBurger for being the first to achieve "Level 2 Shelter". Rewards have been distributed." The chat channel, which had been wallowing in fear and despair, exploded. "Holy sh*t? Level 2 already? What does Level 2 unlock? Can you post pics, big shot?" "That's the wood seller from yesterday? No way. Absolute legend." "Carry me please! SpicyBurger, I'll be your loyal follower. I can cook, I can clean, I can—" "Teach us, master! How'd you gather materials so fast? What's your secret?" Compliments. Pleas. Desperate attempts to get noticed. And then, of course, the sour grapes. "InvincibleWarrior: Big deal. Just profiteering off everyone else's suffering. If she'd shared that wood instead of selling it, maybe those five thousand people would still be alive. How does it feel to climb on corpses?" "GodLovesMeFirst: Seriously. Building your success on other people's deaths. Karma's real. She'll get hers." Riley's jaw tightened. If InvincibleWarrior had been standing in front of her right now, she'd have knocked his teeth out. Guys like him—useless themselves, but always ready to tear down anyone who actually accomplished something. Sewer rats. Her private messages exploded too. She'd set it to only accept trade offers, but people had found a workaround—using the "trade note" function to send spam. "Hey beautiful, I'm a personal trainer. Great shape. Wanna see? Hit me with some wood and I'll do a voice call with you!" A photo of some guy flexing in a mirror, shirt off. Riley glanced at it, unimpressed. Decent abs. Pathetic attitude. Dude was clearly strong enough to chop wood—why was he wasting time on this? She'd never mentioned her gender, so most people probably assumed anyone who'd gathered that much wood must be a guy. The messages reflected that assumption. Some women sent selfies too, trying to flirt their way into favor. Didn't matter. Shameless cut across all demographics. From the backgrounds in the photos, everyone seemed to be in different locations. But one thing was consistent: they all had trees nearby. The system must have arranged that—a new player perk. "A bunch of degenerates." Riley's face went cold. She changed her privacy settings to "Friends Only". Then she added a line to her trading post description. "No spam. Send junk, get blocked." Silence. Blessed silence. She took a breath, let the noise drain away, and focused on what mattered. "First-place upgrade reward..." She opened her inventory. Sitting there, glowing faintly purple, was a gift box. For more exciting content, please download the "JoyRead" app to continue reading.
Chapter 1 The Countdown Ends It was the year 2027, and the end of the world was now less than an hour away. "00:59:23" Riley Carter stood on a ladder with a screw clenched between her teeth, an impact driver in her hand, securing the last window panel in place. A month ago, that timer had just appeared out of nowhere, hanging in the corner of everyone's vision like it had always been there. At first, people wrote it off as some kind of mass hacker prank. The government fed the media soothing statements in an attempt to keep things calm, but there was no way to talk down the panic as prices kept rising and supplies were held in a monopoly in real time. News outlets might spin whatever narrative they wanted, but no one could argue with the price of eggs. For a while, it was a frenzy. People cleaned out grocery stores like locusts. The government did what they could—price caps, purchase limits, reassurances from the podium—but none of it mattered. The cost of living kept climbing, and bit by bit, the country started coming apart at the seams. Online, it was a circus. Some people posted doom-laden predictions. Others openly celebrated the thought of the world finally burning. A few just seemed relieved they wouldn't have to clock in on Monday. In that final hour, things got truly ugly. Both on the streets and on social media, it was chaos. Some people figured why not went out with a bang? If the world was ending, they'd spend their last hours doing every reckless thing they'd ever fantasized about. Others, paralyzed by fear of whatever was coming, scrambled for anything they could hoard. Supplies. Weapons. Gasoline. Didn't matter what, as long as they had more of it than the next guy. Most people just wanted to be with the ones they loved. Riley didn't have that luxury anymore. Fresh out of community college, she'd lost both her parents in a highway pileup eighteen months back. The only thing they'd left her was the family hardware store, a cramped little place wedged between a laundromat and a taqueria. She'd been running it solo for just over a year when that d*mn countdown appeared overhead. At first, she'd thought maybe an apocalypse wouldn't be the worst thing. Maybe there'd be something on the other side. A reunion. But then she thought about her folks. They'd doted on her. Made her feel like the center of their world. And even though she'd grown a thick skin since going it alone, feeling indifferent to the world, she knew what they'd want. They'd want her to fight. To stay. She was the only piece of them still left in this world. People always say you aren't really gone until the last person forgets your name. As long as she kept breathing, kept carrying them with her another day, they weren't truly dead. Riley spat the screw into her palm, face calm, the impact driver whirring as she sank another fastener into the reinforced frame. "Flour's three hundred a pound now, and you can't even buy it straight—they make you tack on a bunch of other junk you don't need just to get it," she muttered to herself, shaking her head. When that timer first flickered into existence, Riley had done something smart. She'd liquidated everything. Converted every dollar she could scrape together into supplies. Unfortunately, by the time she hit the stores, inflation had already done its damage. Her savings didn't go nearly as far as they should have. Any cash that was left went toward tools. If the world was ending, she thought they could be useful. Riley pressed the last sheet of thick insulation foam into the window frame, seating it flush against the reinforced plywood beneath. The impact driver snarled as she buried the screws. Then she reached for her pneumatic glue gun—a satisfying pfft as the sealant filled the final gap. She wiped sweat from her forehead and climbed down off the ladder. Stepped back to admire her work. The little apartment was a fortress now. Doors reinforced. Windows barricaded. Every interior wall lined with an extra layer of insulation. She glanced down at herself. Custom-fit heavy-duty workwear. Slash-resistant fabric. More pockets than she'd ever need. Reinforced padding at the knees and elbows. It wasn't fashionable, but it was practical. And her real treasure: tools. A chainsaw. A reciprocating saw. The impact driver in her hand. A multi-bit screwdriver that had cost more than she wanted to admit. She'd brought everything usable from the shop back here, consolidated it into three massive toolboxes. She'd also grabbed some stuff like an air purifier and some spare filters—anything that might matter when civilization took a vacation. She didn't know what the countdown would bring. Some folks online predicted zombies. Others said asteroid impact. Volcanic winter. Alien invasion. Take your pick. Food. Tools. Shelter. She'd even started working out, building strength she'd never needed before. She'd done everything she could think of to prepare. Whatever was coming, she figured she'd last longer than most. With nothing left to do, she dropped onto one of the big toolboxes laid flat on the floor, wiped her forehead again, and pulled out her phone. Most news apps had crashed. The only things still loading were comment sections, and they were going crazy. [Anyone got rice? I'll pay eight grand for a bag. Please, we got nothing left.] [Forget it, man. Money's toilet paper now. Saw it with my own eyes—some rich assholes cleared out the Costco warehouse last week. All that 'purchase limit' crap was just theater. Shelves were empty 'cause the stock never made it there. It's all sitting in some hedge fund guy's basement.] [No kidding? Same thing happened to me! Store manager kept telling me, 'We're limiting purchases, come back next week, we'll put your name on the list.' So the whole time the back room was empty? They were just jerking us around?] [Of course they were. Rich people cornered the market on everything. So what are normal people supposed to do? Just sit here and die?] [Anyone know what actually happens when the clock hits zero? Like, is it nukes? That virus thing from that old video game?] Riley locked her phone. Tucked it away. She didn't have anything to add to that conversation. A month ago, when the countdown first showed up, prices had spiked instantly. A fifty-pound bag of rice that normally went for thirty bucks jumped to eight hundred overnight. By yesterday, it was breaking two grand. The wealthy had rolled up with trucks and cleaned out supermarkets. Riley had been smart—she'd gone early, bought stuff that would keep, stuff that was calorie-dense and cheap. Chocolate. Survival biscuits. Canned goods. It wasn't much, but it was enough for one person, at least for a while. She took a deep breath and glanced at the timer. "00:01:10" Just over a minute. Riley gripped the toolbox beneath her. Knuckles white. Who knew what would happen when that thing hit zero? Maybe it'd be like 2012—all hype, nothing real. In that last minute, her life flickered past. Her parents' faces. The hardware store. The lonely months since. "00:00:00" The countdown ended. Riley had just started to breathe a sigh of relief—nothing happened, maybe it really was nothing—when the world lurched beneath her. A dizzying weightlessness. A sensation of falling. Everything spun. ***** She didn't know how long she was out. "Whew." A wind like a knife blade sliced across her face. Riley's eyes snapped open. Her warm apartment was gone. In its place, an endless white expanse stretched in every direction. Snow whipped through the air. Wind howled like a wounded animal. And at her feet, a small campfire guttered in the gale, threatening to die at any second. "What the—" Before she could process, a chime rang directly in her skull. Not heard. Known. "Welcome to the Extreme Cold Survival Game. "Earth no longer exists. This is your new home. This is your grave. "Survival rules are as follows. "1. Each player begins with one campfire. It is your only defense against the cold. If the campfire dies, you will be judged deceased by the system. Not that it matters—without the fire, you won't last anyway. "2. This is a real world. You can die from hunger. From exposure. From animal attack. "3. Supplies stockpiled in your previous world do not carry over. Only items on your person, or in direct physical contact at the moment of transfer, are retained. "4. Struggle to survive. It is your only hope." Riley's heart slammed against her ribs. Supplies didn't carry over? Her mind flashed to those wealthy forum posters bragging about their warehouse stockpiles. And then she looked down at herself. Workwear. Intact. And— She was still sitting on the three giant toolboxes. They sat solidly in the snow, dusted with powder, unmistakably here. "Whew." Riley let out a long breath. A white cloud dispersed in front of her face. Pity, though. During her renovations, she'd stocked those boxes with a lot of power tools. The expensive impact driver. The reciprocating saw. In a world with no electrical outlets, once those batteries died, they were just dead weight. But even so. The hand tools. The consumables. The sheer volume of stuff in those boxes—it was a treasure beyond measure in a place like this. Riley forced herself to calm down. She was here. She'd deal with it. Something new lived in her mind now. She concentrated, and a translucent pale-blue screen materialized in front of her eyes. Looked just like a video game HUD. "Personal Panel "Name: Riley Carter "ID: 1120-US "Level: 1 (Standard Survivor) "Strength: 8 (Years of manual labor have made you stronger than average) "Agility: 8 (You've got quick reflexes) "Constitution: 6 (You've been skipping meals lately) "Spirit: 9 (You keep your head when others panic) "Inventory: 16/16 slots (Base capacity)" "Inventory?" Riley studied the sixteen empty squares at the bottom of the display. She reached out, touched one of the toolboxes, and thought the word, "Store." Whoosh. The heavy box vanished. In its place, a tiny icon appeared in the first inventory slot, a miniature "x1" in the corner. "It actually worked." For the first time since arriving, a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. Retrieve. Thud. The toolbox landed back in the snow, puffing up powder. No energy cost. No sense of weight. And in that inventory, she could carry anything, regardless of how heavy it was. Later on, when she went scavenging, that would make all the difference. Riley rubbed her stiff, freezing hands together and turned her attention to the campfire at her feet. It was the only warmth in this frozen wasteland. Hovering above the flames, visible only to her, were a few lines of glowing text. "Basic Campfire (Lv.1) "Remaining Burn Time: 05:28:00 "Current Coverage: Radius six feet (Blocks wind and snow) "Upgrade Requirements: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Steel x5 "Description: This is your life. Do not let it die. Upgrading expands your safe zone and unlocks additional construction options." "Needs upgrading." Riley frowned. Wood and stone she could probably find. But coal? Steel? Out here in the middle of nowhere? A flash of movement caught her eye. A small wooden box, half-buried in the snow not far from the fire. The starter crate. Had to be. Riley didn't rush. First, she pulled the claw hammer from her belt—the one she always kept there, habit from years of work—and gripped it tight. She scanned the tree line. Listened past the wind. Nothing moved. No sounds but the storm. She walked over quickly, crouched by the box. No lock. She pried the lid open with the claw end of her hammer. Inside, a handful of items. "Obtained: Iron Axe x1 "Obtained: Stale Dark Bread x2 "Obtained: 500ml Bottled Water x1 "Obtained: Kindling x5 "Obtained: Insulated Field Jacket x1 "Obtained: Utility Rope (25ft) "Obtained: Thermal Underwear (Set) x2 Not much. Barely anything. Riley picked up one of the dark loaves. It was rock hard. She examined the jacket—basic, but warm-looking. "So this is what a standard survivor starts with." At least the system had thought of everything. Including the underwear. She'd half-expected to wake up naked in the snow; at least she didn't have to worry about that. She stored everything in her inventory, then shrugged on the field jacket. The temperature shift was brutal. Even those few seconds exposed had left her hands numb. Hypothermia would set in fast out here. Jacket on, she hurried back to the campfire. She pulled the five units of Kindling from her inventory and tossed them onto the flames. The fire roared higher. Warmth flooded over her. "Fuel added. Remaining Burn Time: 10:28:00" Ten hours. If she didn't move fast, in ten hours she'd freeze to death on this ice field. And the game had made it clear—if the fire died, the system would judge her dead. Whether she actually froze or not. Riley lifted her head and scanned the landscape. She was in a sparse coniferous forest. Barely alive trees, crusted with frost, dotted the area not far from her position. "Wood." A slow smile spread across her face. She patted the toolbox beside her. "Other people might have axes. But felling a tree with just an axe takes hours. Exhausts you." She unlatched the box. Pulled out the chainsaw. Checked the battery gauge—full. "I've got a handsaw in here too. And a chainsaw with a full charge." The battery wouldn't last forever. But it would last long enough to give her a massive head start. In this race for survival, that was everything. Chapter 2 The Chainsaw The wind screamed across the open ground, picking up loose snow and flinging it against her goggles like sand. It sounded like static. Riley had pulled her basic work gear from the toolbox before heading out. Now she stood in the snow, surrounded by clusters of thin conifers that looked half-dead already. She took a breath. The air burned going down. "Zzzzzzz—!!!" She squeezed the trigger. The orange-and-black lithium-ion chainsaw in her hands roared to life, the chain spinning so fast it blurred. She buried the teeth in the nearest pine trunk. Wood chips exploded everywhere. Fragrant shavings—still wet with resin—scattered across the pristine snow, stark and yellow against all that white. Five seconds. Crack. The pine tree, thick as her arm, groaned and tilted. Then it fell slow and heavy into a drift, sending up a puff of powder. "God bless modern technology." Riley shook out her wrist—the vibration had numbed her fingers—and allowed herself a small smile. Without that chainsaw, with just the basic iron axe the system had given her, felling a tree frozen solid like this would have taken twenty minutes minimum. And it would have left her soaked with sweat. In subzero temps, sweat was a death sentence. Once your base layers got wet, the moment you stopped moving, your body temperature would plummet. Hypothermia would follow fast. Riley didn't waste time celebrating. She knew the saw in her hands was a hungry machine. She'd brought two spare high-capacity batteries, sure, but until she found a way to recharge them, every second the motor ran was borrowed time. She had to gather as much wood as possible before the batteries gave out. "Zzzzz—Zzzzz—" At the edge of the forest, the chainsaw's snarl rose and fell, shattering the frozen silence. Riley worked like she was possessed. Fell a tree. Move to the next. Fell another. But she had to stay alert—watch for hidden snow pits underfoot, keep adjusting her collar against the wind that kept finding its way down her neck. Her stamina drained faster than she'd anticipated. In extreme cold, body burned through calories just to stay alive. Added walking through knee-deep snow, where every step took three times the energy of walking on pavement, and the math got ugly fast. Pretty soon, Riley was breathing hard. Her breath fogged the inside of her goggles, and she had to keep wiping them clear. "Zzzzz..." She was mid-cut on a tree—didn't even know which number anymore—when the chainsaw's roar stuttered. Died. The chain jammed solid in the wood. A red light blinked at her. Dead battery. Riley yanked the saw free and patted its housing. "Good work, buddy." Genuine regret in her voice. She straightened up and looked around. Pine trunks lay scattered across the snow in every direction. A decent haul. She counted silently. "Twenty-three total." Then the next problem hit her. According to the system, until she actually possessed these logs, they were still just natural resources. That meant they didn't qualify for Inventory storage. She couldn't just snap her fingers and make them disappear. She had to drag them back to camp. Riley grabbed the nearest pine and tried to pull. Heavy. Like, unreasonably heavy. Fresh-cut wood was full of moisture. Add the branches catching in the snow, dragging like anchors, and she felt like she was hauling a dead body through mud. "Huff... huff..." She gritted her teeth, looped rope around the trunk, slung it over her shoulder, leaned forward, and started walking. Inch by inch. The tree line to her campfire was maybe fifty yards. Right now, it felt like fifty miles. By the time she'd wrestled the fourth tree back into the fire's warm radius, she was wrecked. Her legs felt like someone had filled them with concrete. Her lungs burned from hauling freezing air through them. "Can't... can't do more." Riley made the call. She stopped. Those nineteen trees still out there in the snow—they called to her. Tempted her. But if she kept pushing without rest, without fuel for herself, she'd collapse out there. And out there, collapse meant death. She dropped down next to the big wooden crate that had held her starter supplies. It was less than three feet from the campfire. The flames danced orange and red, pumping out heat that felt like heaven. The shift from frozen to warm made her shiver violently. She pulled off her goggles and thick gloves, set them near the fire to warm up, then—still shaking—pulled the half-empty water bottle from her Inventory. Took a small sip. Then the bread. Two black bricks that looked more like construction material than food. "Crunch." Riley bit off a piece with effort. It was coarse. Tasted like sawdust with a hint of burnt toast. Bitter. But it was calories. Carbs. Fuel for her own fire. She forced herself to chew, swallow. When the food hit her stomach, warmth finally started spreading through her core. The uncontrollable shaking eased. After half a loaf, Riley leaned back against the crate. Her eyelids drooped. Post-exhaustion crash hit her like a wave. The campfire crackled. The wind seemed farther away now. Muffled. She really wanted to sleep... Her head nodded. Her body started sliding sideways. "Wait—" Some animal instinct jolted her awake just before she went under. She pinched her thigh. Hard. Then looked up at the timer floating above the flames. "Shelter Level 1 "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 06:28:00" Six and a half hours. If she slept too deep, too long, and that fire went out—what then? Even ignoring the obvious—that she'd freeze to death in this hellhole without a heat source—the game rules were clear. When the campfire hits zero, it's game over. "No sleeping. Not allowed." Riley slapped her own cheeks, forced herself upright. She stayed near the fire, but she didn't take off her heavy work clothes. She remembered reading something once, a survival article. "In the late stages of hypothermia, your hypothalamus malfunctions. You get a false sensation of heat. It's called "paradoxical undressing"—people strip down right before they freeze to death." "Okay. Process these four. Keep the fire fed." She pulled a traditional handsaw from the toolbox. Looking at the four thick pine logs on the ground, she almost laughed. Without power tools, breaking these down into burnable pieces would take at least half an hour. Burn the little energy she had left. But what choice did she have? Riley knelt in the snow, positioned the blade against the trunk, and was about to start cutting— A soft white light shot out from the system panel on her chest. It washed over the logs. "Ding! "Detected felled, intact logs within shelter range. "Perform quick recovery?" Riley's hand froze mid-saw. Quick recovery? It took her a second to process. Then relief flooded through her so hard she almost cried. "Yes! Recover!" She didn't hesitate. The next moment, something impossible happened. The four pine trunks—the ones she'd have to saw and split by hand, the ones that represented hours of brutal labor—dissolved into pale blue light particles. Not into dust. Into neat, uniform logs that stacked themselves automatically in her Inventory. The branches, the needles, all the useless parts—purified out of existence. "Recovery successful! "Obtained: Common Wood x20" Riley's eyes went wide, staring at the perfect lumber in her inventory display. Looked like it came straight from a hardware store. "One tree gives five units of wood? "And I don't have to cut it myself?" This changed everything. It meant she only had to handle the felling and the dragging. Once a log crossed into her camp's boundary, the system recognized it as hers. The most time-consuming part—the processing—just... didn't exist anymore. Riley immediately grabbed five units of wood and fed them to the fire. Whoosh. The flames leaped, hungry and grateful. "Fuel added. "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 12:20:00" "Five logs, five hours..." She did the math fast, looking at the fifteen units still on the ground. If she threw all of those in, that'd be another fifteen hours. Total of twenty-seven. She could sleep like the dead right now, and that fire would still be burning when she woke up. Security. For the first time since the world ended, Riley felt something like security. She selected the remaining wood. Deposited it all. Watched the countdown tick up to a very comfortable "27:20:00". Then her nerves finally let go. She dragged one of the toolboxes into position to block the wind, wrapped the field jacket tight around herself, pulled her hat down over her eyes, leaned back against the warm crate, and let the crackle of the fire pull her under. ***** She didn't sleep long. When she opened her eyes again, the sky was still that same dull gray-white. Impossible to tell if it was morning or afternoon. System clock said three hours. Her body ached. Shoulders and arms especially—felt like she'd gone ten rounds with someone. But her head was clear. She stretched her stiff neck and stood up. The snow seemed lighter. The feathery flakes had tapered off into sporadic icy grains. Riley ate a little more, got some fuel back in the tank, then stepped outside the campfire's warmth. The fire's effect wasn't what she'd expected. It wasn't that the temperature gradually dropped as you moved away. It was sharper than that. Like there was an invisible barrier around the flames. Inside, livable. Outside, the cold hit you like a wall. She wandered a little way off. The cold found every gap in her clothing. She thought about going farther, exploring. But there was nothing visible except that stand of trees she'd already worked. Maybe stuff was buried under the snow, but she couldn't see it. "No proper snow boots. Not going far." Riley glanced at the endless white distance with real regret. "Don't get greedy. Get those nineteen trees first." She turned. Looked at the woods. Her loot was still out there. And now she knew: if she could drag them back into the campfire's circle, the system would cash them out automatically. "Time to work." Riley rubbed her hands together. Let the motivation build. For the next few hours, she became a machine. Drag a tree to camp. Recover it. Go back for another. Repeat. It was boring. Exhausting. But watching those logs turn into numbers in her inventory—that feeling was hard to describe. Satisfying, in a way nothing had been satisfying in a long time. When the last pine trunk crossed into the light and dissolved into particles, Riley just collapsed. Lay flat in the snow and stared at the gray sky. She pulled up her Inventory. The once-empty slots were full now. Stack after stack of wood icons. "Item: Common Wood "Quantity: 80 "Description: Basic survival resource. Can be used for fuel or construction." Eighty units. Plus what was already burning in the campfire. Her day's work had yielded a clean hundred. One unit of wood burned for one hour. Riley looked at the flames dancing in front of her. Felt the heat on her face. Let herself smile, wide and real. "One hundred hours." Four full days. While everyone else was probably still panicking. Crying. Begging. Trying to figure out how to survive their first night in this frozen nightmare... She, Riley, had enough fuel stockpiled to last four days. Which meant: for the next ninety-six hours, unless she actively chose to die, nobody and nothing could put her fire out. She pulled the half-empty water bottle from Inventory. The space must have been insulated somehow—the water was still warm. Almost body temperature. She sipped it. Tasted sweet, even though it was just tap water. "Okay. Next step." Her gaze settled on the "Upgrade" button on the campfire panel. This open-air setup was fine for now. But if she was going to survive long-term, she needed something better. A real shelter. All she needed was a little stone. Some coal. Some steel. Then she could build something worth calling home. Chapter 3 The Trading Game The blizzard howled outside, but within the six-foot radius of the campfire, the air stayed surprisingly warm—like the wind had hit an invisible wall and just couldn't reach. Riley leaned back against the dusty wooden crate, holding the half-empty water bottle in her hand. She stared into the flames for a moment, then focused her attention inward. The pale blue system panel unfolded in front of her eyes again. Now that the immediate crisis was handled, she finally had time to sit quietly and really explore this so-called "Survival System". Beyond the personal stats and inventory, the bottom of the panel had a row of function icons: Server Channel, Friends List, Trading Market, and Crafting Manual. Friends List was empty. No surprise there. She hadn't exactly been a social butterfly back in the old world, and she sure as hell wasn't going to make friends easily in a frozen hellscape where everyone was fighting for their next breath. She tapped into the "Server Channel". A line of numbers appeared in the top left. "Server: US-008 "Current Online: 9911/10000" Ten thousand people started. Less than ten hours in, eighty-nine were already gone. "That doesn't add up." Everyone's starter crate came with a rusty iron axe and five units of wood. Plus the initial fuel the campfire had when they arrived—that alone bought them ten hours minimum, even if they just sat there doing nothing. What the hell did those people do to get eliminated so fast? The channel was moving fast, messages scrolling by every second. Desperation dripped from every line. "Someone help, I'm freezing my ass off out here. This stupid axe can't cut sh*t—every swing just bounces off and rattles my whole arm. Can anyone spare a couple logs? My dad's a senior VP at Walker Group. I'll wire you a million dollars when we get back, I swear." "Wake up, buddy. If your dad's still alive, he's out there chopping trees right now too." "Don't even talk to me. I spotted a wooden crate in the snow earlier, got all excited, ran over—and before I got within ten feet, some white rabbit thing jumped out of a drift. Teeth like needles. Almost took a chunk out of my leg. Missed the crate, wasted all that energy for nothing." "I saw that too! Random crates spawn in the wild. I opened a wooden one and got two chocolate bars and some coal." Reading through the chaos, Riley picked out two keywords, "Random Reward Crates" and "Dangerous Creatures". So this world was deeper than she thought. Wooden crates, copper crates—these randomly spawning resource points were the real way to get ahead. Coal came from crates. That was useful to know. And if coal was in crates, steel probably was too. But something bothered her. According to what people were saying, reward crates weren't exactly rare. So why hadn't she found a single one during her lumber run? She doubted it was just bad luck. Riley exited chat and tapped into the "Trading Market". "Seller: MountainMan88 Item: Stone x2 Wants: White Bread x5" "Seller: LoneWolf_21 Item: Cotton Cloth Wants: Clean Water" "Seller: NotDeadYet Item: Wood x3 Wants: Anything edible" Most people were trading for food and wood. The stuff that kept you alive right now. Things like stone and cloth were getting dumped cheap—nobody had the luxury of thinking long-term. Riley looked at her own inventory. Eighty units of wood staring back at her. Her heart beat a little faster. In this opening phase, where wood literally meant the difference between life and death, the resources in her hands were basically gold bars. "Time to trade," she muttered to herself. "Coal, steel—can't get those from chopping trees. And right now, wood's at maximum value. If I wait, the exchange rate shifts." Even with the chainsaw dead, she still had the handsaw. Less efficient, sure, but she could gather more wood if she needed it. Short-term, she wasn't going to run out. She clicked to post a message in the channel. "System Prompt: Detected that you have not set a virtual ID. Please enter your nickname (cannot be changed after setting)." Riley stared at the blank input box. Naming things was the worst. She sat there for a long time, nothing coming to mind. Finally, she gave up. Couldn't think of anything cool or clever, so she'd just go with something random. Her fingers tapped across the virtual keyboard—SpicyBurger. "Setting successful. ID locked." The prompt closed. Riley posted her message. "SpicyBurger: Selling wood in bulk. Looking for: Coal, Steel, High-calorie food. DM me with offers—what you have and your rate. Good deals go fast, don't sleep on this." For three seconds after the message appeared, the channel went dead silent. Then it exploded. "SpicyBurger? That name's making me hungry, what the hell." "Never mind the name—'wood in bulk'! We got a whale in here! Everyone else is stressing about the next hour and this person's already running a business?" "I need some! My campfire's down to like two hours. I don't know if I actually die when it hits zero but I don't wanna find out." Suddenly, half the channel was scrambling for wood. But then the skeptics crawled out. "Hang on. Everyone started with the same rusty axe. Chopping a tree in this weather takes twenty, thirty minutes minimum. Where's she getting 'bulk' wood from? Sounds like a scam." "InvincibleWarrior: Everybody chill. Look at that ID—sounds like a girl's handle. I'm a grown man, been busting my ass, and I've only got like ten logs saved up. My hands are shredded. Some girl with a food name claims she's got bulk? She's trying to run a game. Scam people out of their stuff." "Iron_Tough: Agreed. Scammers made it through the apocalypse too, I guess. My advice: ignore her. Don't get played. How much wood can a woman chop anyway? Probably can't even lift the axe right, lol." Riley scrolled through the messages, expression flat. She almost laughed. But some people pushed back. "FishHater44: How is it a scam? If she doesn't deliver, you don't complete the trade. Just 'cause you can't chop that much wood doesn't mean nobody can." Riley nodded slightly. That one had a point. But she didn't waste energy arguing in the channel. Instead, she flipped on Do Not Disturb for private messages—only allowing chat requests that included a trade offer. Some people didn't actually care whether she had wood. They just couldn't stand seeing someone else do well. "Ding. Ding. Ding." Private messages started pouring in like rain. Most players weren't idiots. Faced with the very real threat of freezing to death, they'd try anything for a chance. Riley opened the first one. "Windwalker: I got "Coal x3" from a crate. How much wood can I get for it? I can't chop anymore. The wind out here is insane. I tried to throw the coal in my fire but it just kept popping back out. System says my campfire level's too low, won't let me use it. I'm out of wood. My fire's almost dead." Riley thought for a moment. "Three coal for five wood. Deal?" She hadn't known about that restriction. Coal was supposed to be better fuel than wood—didn't expect the game to lock it behind a level gate. The reply came instantly, "Deal. But five wood feels light. It's coal." The guy was conflicted. He knew coal had value, but he was desperate. "I'll make it six. Final offer." Riley wasn't sure about coal's real value yet. Six was her limit. "Fine. Deal." They both dropped their items into the trade window. A moment later, it completed. A flash of white light. Riley's inventory lost six wood. Gained three chunks of coal, each about the size of a small melon. One down. "CrunchyFrog: Hey, I got two "Iron Ingots" from a crate. System calls them "Scrap Steel". Can I get eight wood for them? Trying to stock up enough to sleep through the night." Riley replied, "Sure. Initiate." In just over ten minutes, her wood stockpile dropped significantly. But her inventory filled up with good stuff. "Coal x10 "Stone x23 "Scrap Steel x5 "Raw Meat x2 "White Bread x2 "Basic Torch Blueprint x1" The blueprint was new. The description said it was required for crafting certain items. Seemed useful, so she'd traded for it. Meanwhile, back in the channel, that "InvincibleWarrior" guy who'd been mocking her earlier seemed to notice that people were actually completing trades. His tone got bitter. "InvincibleWarrior: Whatever. She probably got lucky with a high-tier crate. Let's see how long her stock lasts. Once the wood's gone, she'll be begging me to let her join my group." The people who'd successfully traded with Riley popped into the channel to thank her. That might have been fine—except the thanks caused problems. Since Riley had stopped trading for now, most people hadn't gotten anything. And the sky was darkening. Temperature outside the campfire radius was dropping fast. Gathering wood was getting harder. Trading was their only hope. The ones who'd pinned everything on Riley, seeing her stop, started losing it. "You said 'in bulk'! You did like five trades and quit. What are we supposed to do now?" "Keep trading! My fire's almost out. You want us to go chop trees in the dark?" "If you couldn't deliver, why'd you post? Showing off and then hiding." Whether it was coordinated or just genuine rage, the number of people defending Riley in the channel shrank fast. Mostly it was attacks now. Accusations of being irresponsible. Using scarcity tactics. Playing games with people's lives. Riley closed the channel. She couldn't be bothered. In a life-or-death situation like this, people losing it was normal. If she actually had unlimited resources, she'd trade more. But she didn't. And back on Earth, nobody had ever handed her anything out of charity. She wasn't about to start playing savior now. She looked down at the "Basic Torch Blueprint" in her inventory. "Requirements: Wood x10, Kerosene, Scrap Steel x2" Note: Requires Level 2 Workbench to craft." She leaned back against the crate again. Felt the weight of her stockpile pressing back against that lingering sense of unease. In this world, your ID didn't matter. Your gender didn't matter either. What mattered was who held the resources. She looked at what she had left: 36 units of wood. Plus the steel, coal, and stone from trading. Time to plan. Upgrading to a Level 2 campfire required 55 wood. She had all the other materials. For the wood, she'd just have to use the handsaw tomorrow and gather a little more. That settled, she pulled a few more logs from inventory and arranged them on top of the crate, making a small enclosed space. Curled up inside it, she watched the sky outside slowly darken to black. Her eyes grew heavy. She drifted off. Chapter 4 The Culling Riley woke to the kind of soreness that made you reconsider ever moving again. She'd slept like the dead—no dreams, no blizzard, just nothing. When she opened her eyes, the first things she saw were the logs she'd stacked as a windbreak and the steady glow of the campfire. She tried to stretch. Big mistake. Every muscle in her body lit up at once, screaming in protest. "Sh*t." Riley sucked air through her teeth and pressed a hand to her aching shoulder. Her lower back felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to it. Yesterday's work had been too much. She wasn't weak—far from it—but she was still human. The lactic acid had settled in overnight, and now she moved like an arthritic tin man. At least she was alive. She stowed the windbreak logs back in her inventory and looked around. The world hadn't changed. Same dull gray sky. Same swirling snow. Outside the six-foot radius of the fire, the drifts looked deeper than yesterday. The wind had been busy. Riley pulled out the half-empty water bottle and wet her throat. Then she retrieved the white bread she'd traded for yesterday. Compared to that dense, flavorless black bread, this was practically cake. She tore off small pieces, letting the faint sweetness dissolve on her tongue, and habitually opened the "Server Channel". She stopped chewing. The number in the top left hit her like a physical blow. "Current Online Players: 4968/10000" "Five thousand..." Riley's eyes went wide. In a single night, that number had been cut in half. Five thousand people. Gone. Winked out of existence on this frozen ice field while she slept. "Ding." The system notification cut through her thoughts—cold, emotionless, like it was announcing the weather. "Global Announcement: Congratulations to all survivors for successfully surviving the first day. "This was a culling. Last night eliminated those fools who failed to add fuel to their fires or refused to gather wood. Remember: in this place, tears mean nothing. When you die here, you're dead-dead. "You who remain are the lucky ones. "Grace Period: A five-day 'New Player Support Period' now begins. For the next five days, your initial supply crates will refresh daily with a fixed amount of food. "Special Reward: Each survivor receives one pair of "Standard Issue Snow Boots (Common)". Be grateful for this mercy. Enjoy the game." The words sat there on her screen. Fools. Mercy. The system's tone dripped with contempt. The math was simple. Starting package: five hours of fuel. Initial gift: five units of wood, another five hours. Total ten hours, if you did absolutely nothing. The ones who'd frozen to death last night—they were the ones who'd clung to hope. The ones too scared to move. The ones who'd told themselves someone would save them. Five thousand people. One night. Gone. This wasn't a game. It was a slaughter. In the channel, the survivors who'd made it through were clearly rattled by the numbers too. "Holy sh*t... My friend's icon went dark last night. Does that mean he's dead? Actually dead?" "I can't do this. I don't wanna play anymore, I wanna go home. I swear I'll work today. I'll chop wood, I'll do whatever, just please—" "Everyone move! Don't save your strength! If you die, that's it. No respawns!" Panic spread fast. But almost immediately, the tone shifted. The fear found a target. "That SpicyBurger—if she'd shared more wood yesterday, would so many people have died?" "For real. If she had extra, why not just give it away? Why did it have to be trades? She could've at least loaned some out." "This is what happens when people hoard resources and watch others freeze. Remember that name. Don't trade with her. Ever." Riley frowned. Here we go again. She scrolled up. Sure enough, there it was—that familiar ID: "InvincibleWarrior". He was going hard in the channel. "She's profiting off suffering. That's what some people do. Women like that are the worst—hoarding supplies while people die around them. Wait and see. Someone like her won't last." Riley laughed. Actually laughed out loud. Moral blackmail. In the apocalypse. She typed, "If you want wood, go cut it yourself. I'm not your mommy. No amount of crying in chat is gonna put logs in your inventory. You'd get more done if you just picked up your d*mn axe." The channel went quiet for a second. Then the reasonable voices piped up. "She's right. Nobody owes you anything. Work for it." "Exactly. Just 'cause someone's quiet doesn't mean they're an easy target." In a world where staying alive took everything you had, expecting charity was the dumbest move of all. Riley didn't waste more energy on it. People like that—the more you engaged, the more they thrived. Let him run his mouth. She had bigger things to worry about. She closed the channel and turned to the big wooden crate—her initial supply point. Sure enough, new items had materialized inside. "Bottled Water x3 "White Bread x3 "Fresh Orange Juice x1 "Standard Snow Boots x1" "Orange juice?" Riley picked up the bottle, genuinely surprised. The orange liquid inside sloshed gently. Vitamins. The system was actually giving them vitamins. She pulled off her old shoes—already damp and cold—and swapped into the new boots. They were clunky, sure. But they gripped the snow, and the insulation was real. The chill that had been seeping up through her soles disappeared instantly. Next, she opened her toolbox. Goggles on. Thick cut-resistant gloves. Head-to-toe gear. "Time to work." The channel noise faded from her mind. She had one priority today, and it wasn't arguing with idiots. She picked up the chainsaw and headed back to the tree line. The cold played tricks on batteries. She'd known that, intellectually. But knowing it and feeling it were different things. After just eight trees, the last spare battery gave out. The chainsaw stuttered, died, and went silent in her hands. Riley stared at it. "Son of a b*tch." Chapter 5 Dead Battery Riley stared at the dead chainsaw in her hands and shook her head. Without power, it was just an expensive paperweight. If she wanted more wood, she'd have to do it the old-fashioned way—pick up the axe or the manual handsaw from the toolbox and go to war with frozen timber. But eight more trees were eight more trees. Her stockpile was looking healthy. "First things first. Get these back." She sucked it up, stowed the chainsaw in her inventory, and started hauling. Her body screamed even louder than yesterday. Every muscle felt like it had been replaced with concrete. She dragged each log back one at a time, moving like a zombie. Drag. Rest two minutes. Drag again. The wind howled in her ears. Riley lost track of time, lost track of everything except the mechanical rhythm of work. By the time the sun was high—not that you could really see it through the clouds—she dragged the last log into the campfire's radius. It dissolved into light, absorbed by the system. Riley all but collapsed into the snow. "Acquired: Wood x40" She lay there for a moment, chest heaving, staring at the number in her inventory. A tired smile crept across her face. She had enough. Combined with the coal and steel from yesterday's trades, she had everything she needed for the upgrade. Riley forced herself upright and walked to the campfire. On the floating translucent panel, the "Upgrade" button glowed that tempting gold. "Upgrade Primitive Shelter to Lv.2? "Cost: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Scrap Steel x5 "Remaining after upgrade: Wood x16, Stone x3, Coal x0, Steel x0" "Upgrade." Riley took a breath and pressed it. "Hmmmm—!" A blinding white light erupted from the heart of the campfire, swallowing everything. Riley squeezed her eyes shut. No explosion. No thunder. Just a sound like Legos snapping together. A few seconds later, the light faded. Riley opened her eyes. And stopped breathing. The campfire wasn't just a campfire anymore. The rough stone ring had transformed into something neat and intentional—a proper firepit with a stone border for insulation, a place to set things, even a simple steel grate attached to the side. But that wasn't the big news. The heat that used to push back the cold within a six-foot radius now stretched a full fifteen feet. Inside that circle, snow was actively melting, revealing dark frozen soil underneath. In one corner, she spotted a patch of moss stubbornly poking through. Riley spun around. Behind the big wooden crate, a small log cabin stood waiting. It wasn't much—maybe forty feet square, built from rough-hewn logs. Nothing fancy. But it was solid. Four walls and a roof, blocking wind and snow completely. Riley walked over and pushed open the heavy wooden door. Warm air hit her face. Inside was simple: a wooden bed frame piled with dry grass, a crude workbench, a chair, and a small fireplace connected to a chimney that ran up through the roof. Rustic. But right now, it was heaven. Wood and fire. Four walls. A roof. Home. Riley ran her hand along the rough wall. Her eyes stung a little. She wouldn't have to sleep in the open anymore. Wouldn't have to wake up every few hours to check the fire. Wouldn't have to worry about freezing to death in her sleep. Right on cue, the server announcement chimed. Gold text this time, blazing right in the center of everyone's vision. "Server Announcement: Congratulations to player SpicyBurger for being the first to achieve "Level 2 Shelter". Rewards have been distributed." The chat channel, which had been wallowing in fear and despair, exploded. "Holy sh*t? Level 2 already? What does Level 2 unlock? Can you post pics, big shot?" "That's the wood seller from yesterday? No way. Absolute legend." "Carry me please! SpicyBurger, I'll be your loyal follower. I can cook, I can clean, I can—" "Teach us, master! How'd you gather materials so fast? What's your secret?" Compliments. Pleas. Desperate attempts to get noticed. And then, of course, the sour grapes. "InvincibleWarrior: Big deal. Just profiteering off everyone else's suffering. If she'd shared that wood instead of selling it, maybe those five thousand people would still be alive. How does it feel to climb on corpses?" "GodLovesMeFirst: Seriously. Building your success on other people's deaths. Karma's real. She'll get hers." Riley's jaw tightened. If InvincibleWarrior had been standing in front of her right now, she'd have knocked his teeth out. Guys like him—useless themselves, but always ready to tear down anyone who actually accomplished something. Sewer rats. Her private messages exploded too. She'd set it to only accept trade offers, but people had found a workaround—using the "trade note" function to send spam. "Hey beautiful, I'm a personal trainer. Great shape. Wanna see? Hit me with some wood and I'll do a voice call with you!" A photo of some guy flexing in a mirror, shirt off. Riley glanced at it, unimpressed. Decent abs. Pathetic attitude. Dude was clearly strong enough to chop wood—why was he wasting time on this? She'd never mentioned her gender, so most people probably assumed anyone who'd gathered that much wood must be a guy. The messages reflected that assumption. Some women sent selfies too, trying to flirt their way into favor. Didn't matter. Shameless cut across all demographics. From the backgrounds in the photos, everyone seemed to be in different locations. But one thing was consistent: they all had trees nearby. The system must have arranged that—a new player perk. "A bunch of degenerates." Riley's face went cold. She changed her privacy settings to "Friends Only". Then she added a line to her trading post description. "No spam. Send junk, get blocked." Silence. Blessed silence. She took a breath, let the noise drain away, and focused on what mattered. "First-place upgrade reward..." She opened her inventory. Sitting there, glowing faintly purple, was a gift box. For more exciting content, please download the "JoyRead" app to continue reading.
Chapter 1 The Countdown Ends It was the year 2027, and the end of the world was now less than an hour away. "00:59:23" Riley Carter stood on a ladder with a screw clenched between her teeth, an impact driver in her hand, securing the last window panel in place. A month ago, that timer had just appeared out of nowhere, hanging in the corner of everyone's vision like it had always been there. At first, people wrote it off as some kind of mass hacker prank. The government fed the media soothing statements in an attempt to keep things calm, but there was no way to talk down the panic as prices kept rising and supplies were held in a monopoly in real time. News outlets might spin whatever narrative they wanted, but no one could argue with the price of eggs. For a while, it was a frenzy. People cleaned out grocery stores like locusts. The government did what they could—price caps, purchase limits, reassurances from the podium—but none of it mattered. The cost of living kept climbing, and bit by bit, the country started coming apart at the seams. Online, it was a circus. Some people posted doom-laden predictions. Others openly celebrated the thought of the world finally burning. A few just seemed relieved they wouldn't have to clock in on Monday. In that final hour, things got truly ugly. Both on the streets and on social media, it was chaos. Some people figured why not went out with a bang? If the world was ending, they'd spend their last hours doing every reckless thing they'd ever fantasized about. Others, paralyzed by fear of whatever was coming, scrambled for anything they could hoard. Supplies. Weapons. Gasoline. Didn't matter what, as long as they had more of it than the next guy. Most people just wanted to be with the ones they loved. Riley didn't have that luxury anymore. Fresh out of community college, she'd lost both her parents in a highway pileup eighteen months back. The only thing they'd left her was the family hardware store, a cramped little place wedged between a laundromat and a taqueria. She'd been running it solo for just over a year when that d*mn countdown appeared overhead. At first, she'd thought maybe an apocalypse wouldn't be the worst thing. Maybe there'd be something on the other side. A reunion. But then she thought about her folks. They'd doted on her. Made her feel like the center of their world. And even though she'd grown a thick skin since going it alone, feeling indifferent to the world, she knew what they'd want. They'd want her to fight. To stay. She was the only piece of them still left in this world. People always say you aren't really gone until the last person forgets your name. As long as she kept breathing, kept carrying them with her another day, they weren't truly dead. Riley spat the screw into her palm, face calm, the impact driver whirring as she sank another fastener into the reinforced frame. "Flour's three hundred a pound now, and you can't even buy it straight—they make you tack on a bunch of other junk you don't need just to get it," she muttered to herself, shaking her head. When that timer first flickered into existence, Riley had done something smart. She'd liquidated everything. Converted every dollar she could scrape together into supplies. Unfortunately, by the time she hit the stores, inflation had already done its damage. Her savings didn't go nearly as far as they should have. Any cash that was left went toward tools. If the world was ending, she thought they could be useful. Riley pressed the last sheet of thick insulation foam into the window frame, seating it flush against the reinforced plywood beneath. The impact driver snarled as she buried the screws. Then she reached for her pneumatic glue gun—a satisfying pfft as the sealant filled the final gap. She wiped sweat from her forehead and climbed down off the ladder. Stepped back to admire her work. The little apartment was a fortress now. Doors reinforced. Windows barricaded. Every interior wall lined with an extra layer of insulation. She glanced down at herself. Custom-fit heavy-duty workwear. Slash-resistant fabric. More pockets than she'd ever need. Reinforced padding at the knees and elbows. It wasn't fashionable, but it was practical. And her real treasure: tools. A chainsaw. A reciprocating saw. The impact driver in her hand. A multi-bit screwdriver that had cost more than she wanted to admit. She'd brought everything usable from the shop back here, consolidated it into three massive toolboxes. She'd also grabbed some stuff like an air purifier and some spare filters—anything that might matter when civilization took a vacation. She didn't know what the countdown would bring. Some folks online predicted zombies. Others said asteroid impact. Volcanic winter. Alien invasion. Take your pick. Food. Tools. Shelter. She'd even started working out, building strength she'd never needed before. She'd done everything she could think of to prepare. Whatever was coming, she figured she'd last longer than most. With nothing left to do, she dropped onto one of the big toolboxes laid flat on the floor, wiped her forehead again, and pulled out her phone. Most news apps had crashed. The only things still loading were comment sections, and they were going crazy. [Anyone got rice? I'll pay eight grand for a bag. Please, we got nothing left.] [Forget it, man. Money's toilet paper now. Saw it with my own eyes—some rich assholes cleared out the Costco warehouse last week. All that 'purchase limit' crap was just theater. Shelves were empty 'cause the stock never made it there. It's all sitting in some hedge fund guy's basement.] [No kidding? Same thing happened to me! Store manager kept telling me, 'We're limiting purchases, come back next week, we'll put your name on the list.' So the whole time the back room was empty? They were just jerking us around?] [Of course they were. Rich people cornered the market on everything. So what are normal people supposed to do? Just sit here and die?] [Anyone know what actually happens when the clock hits zero? Like, is it nukes? That virus thing from that old video game?] Riley locked her phone. Tucked it away. She didn't have anything to add to that conversation. A month ago, when the countdown first showed up, prices had spiked instantly. A fifty-pound bag of rice that normally went for thirty bucks jumped to eight hundred overnight. By yesterday, it was breaking two grand. The wealthy had rolled up with trucks and cleaned out supermarkets. Riley had been smart—she'd gone early, bought stuff that would keep, stuff that was calorie-dense and cheap. Chocolate. Survival biscuits. Canned goods. It wasn't much, but it was enough for one person, at least for a while. She took a deep breath and glanced at the timer. "00:01:10" Just over a minute. Riley gripped the toolbox beneath her. Knuckles white. Who knew what would happen when that thing hit zero? Maybe it'd be like 2012—all hype, nothing real. In that last minute, her life flickered past. Her parents' faces. The hardware store. The lonely months since. "00:00:00" The countdown ended. Riley had just started to breathe a sigh of relief—nothing happened, maybe it really was nothing—when the world lurched beneath her. A dizzying weightlessness. A sensation of falling. Everything spun. ***** She didn't know how long she was out. "Whew." A wind like a knife blade sliced across her face. Riley's eyes snapped open. Her warm apartment was gone. In its place, an endless white expanse stretched in every direction. Snow whipped through the air. Wind howled like a wounded animal. And at her feet, a small campfire guttered in the gale, threatening to die at any second. "What the—" Before she could process, a chime rang directly in her skull. Not heard. Known. "Welcome to the Extreme Cold Survival Game. "Earth no longer exists. This is your new home. This is your grave. "Survival rules are as follows. "1. Each player begins with one campfire. It is your only defense against the cold. If the campfire dies, you will be judged deceased by the system. Not that it matters—without the fire, you won't last anyway. "2. This is a real world. You can die from hunger. From exposure. From animal attack. "3. Supplies stockpiled in your previous world do not carry over. Only items on your person, or in direct physical contact at the moment of transfer, are retained. "4. Struggle to survive. It is your only hope." Riley's heart slammed against her ribs. Supplies didn't carry over? Her mind flashed to those wealthy forum posters bragging about their warehouse stockpiles. And then she looked down at herself. Workwear. Intact. And— She was still sitting on the three giant toolboxes. They sat solidly in the snow, dusted with powder, unmistakably here. "Whew." Riley let out a long breath. A white cloud dispersed in front of her face. Pity, though. During her renovations, she'd stocked those boxes with a lot of power tools. The expensive impact driver. The reciprocating saw. In a world with no electrical outlets, once those batteries died, they were just dead weight. But even so. The hand tools. The consumables. The sheer volume of stuff in those boxes—it was a treasure beyond measure in a place like this. Riley forced herself to calm down. She was here. She'd deal with it. Something new lived in her mind now. She concentrated, and a translucent pale-blue screen materialized in front of her eyes. Looked just like a video game HUD. "Personal Panel "Name: Riley Carter "ID: 1120-US "Level: 1 (Standard Survivor) "Strength: 8 (Years of manual labor have made you stronger than average) "Agility: 8 (You've got quick reflexes) "Constitution: 6 (You've been skipping meals lately) "Spirit: 9 (You keep your head when others panic) "Inventory: 16/16 slots (Base capacity)" "Inventory?" Riley studied the sixteen empty squares at the bottom of the display. She reached out, touched one of the toolboxes, and thought the word, "Store." Whoosh. The heavy box vanished. In its place, a tiny icon appeared in the first inventory slot, a miniature "x1" in the corner. "It actually worked." For the first time since arriving, a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. Retrieve. Thud. The toolbox landed back in the snow, puffing up powder. No energy cost. No sense of weight. And in that inventory, she could carry anything, regardless of how heavy it was. Later on, when she went scavenging, that would make all the difference. Riley rubbed her stiff, freezing hands together and turned her attention to the campfire at her feet. It was the only warmth in this frozen wasteland. Hovering above the flames, visible only to her, were a few lines of glowing text. "Basic Campfire (Lv.1) "Remaining Burn Time: 05:28:00 "Current Coverage: Radius six feet (Blocks wind and snow) "Upgrade Requirements: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Steel x5 "Description: This is your life. Do not let it die. Upgrading expands your safe zone and unlocks additional construction options." "Needs upgrading." Riley frowned. Wood and stone she could probably find. But coal? Steel? Out here in the middle of nowhere? A flash of movement caught her eye. A small wooden box, half-buried in the snow not far from the fire. The starter crate. Had to be. Riley didn't rush. First, she pulled the claw hammer from her belt—the one she always kept there, habit from years of work—and gripped it tight. She scanned the tree line. Listened past the wind. Nothing moved. No sounds but the storm. She walked over quickly, crouched by the box. No lock. She pried the lid open with the claw end of her hammer. Inside, a handful of items. "Obtained: Iron Axe x1 "Obtained: Stale Dark Bread x2 "Obtained: 500ml Bottled Water x1 "Obtained: Kindling x5 "Obtained: Insulated Field Jacket x1 "Obtained: Utility Rope (25ft) "Obtained: Thermal Underwear (Set) x2 Not much. Barely anything. Riley picked up one of the dark loaves. It was rock hard. She examined the jacket—basic, but warm-looking. "So this is what a standard survivor starts with." At least the system had thought of everything. Including the underwear. She'd half-expected to wake up naked in the snow; at least she didn't have to worry about that. She stored everything in her inventory, then shrugged on the field jacket. The temperature shift was brutal. Even those few seconds exposed had left her hands numb. Hypothermia would set in fast out here. Jacket on, she hurried back to the campfire. She pulled the five units of Kindling from her inventory and tossed them onto the flames. The fire roared higher. Warmth flooded over her. "Fuel added. Remaining Burn Time: 10:28:00" Ten hours. If she didn't move fast, in ten hours she'd freeze to death on this ice field. And the game had made it clear—if the fire died, the system would judge her dead. Whether she actually froze or not. Riley lifted her head and scanned the landscape. She was in a sparse coniferous forest. Barely alive trees, crusted with frost, dotted the area not far from her position. "Wood." A slow smile spread across her face. She patted the toolbox beside her. "Other people might have axes. But felling a tree with just an axe takes hours. Exhausts you." She unlatched the box. Pulled out the chainsaw. Checked the battery gauge—full. "I've got a handsaw in here too. And a chainsaw with a full charge." The battery wouldn't last forever. But it would last long enough to give her a massive head start. In this race for survival, that was everything. Chapter 2 The Chainsaw The wind screamed across the open ground, picking up loose snow and flinging it against her goggles like sand. It sounded like static. Riley had pulled her basic work gear from the toolbox before heading out. Now she stood in the snow, surrounded by clusters of thin conifers that looked half-dead already. She took a breath. The air burned going down. "Zzzzzzz—!!!" She squeezed the trigger. The orange-and-black lithium-ion chainsaw in her hands roared to life, the chain spinning so fast it blurred. She buried the teeth in the nearest pine trunk. Wood chips exploded everywhere. Fragrant shavings—still wet with resin—scattered across the pristine snow, stark and yellow against all that white. Five seconds. Crack. The pine tree, thick as her arm, groaned and tilted. Then it fell slow and heavy into a drift, sending up a puff of powder. "God bless modern technology." Riley shook out her wrist—the vibration had numbed her fingers—and allowed herself a small smile. Without that chainsaw, with just the basic iron axe the system had given her, felling a tree frozen solid like this would have taken twenty minutes minimum. And it would have left her soaked with sweat. In subzero temps, sweat was a death sentence. Once your base layers got wet, the moment you stopped moving, your body temperature would plummet. Hypothermia would follow fast. Riley didn't waste time celebrating. She knew the saw in her hands was a hungry machine. She'd brought two spare high-capacity batteries, sure, but until she found a way to recharge them, every second the motor ran was borrowed time. She had to gather as much wood as possible before the batteries gave out. "Zzzzz—Zzzzz—" At the edge of the forest, the chainsaw's snarl rose and fell, shattering the frozen silence. Riley worked like she was possessed. Fell a tree. Move to the next. Fell another. But she had to stay alert—watch for hidden snow pits underfoot, keep adjusting her collar against the wind that kept finding its way down her neck. Her stamina drained faster than she'd anticipated. In extreme cold, body burned through calories just to stay alive. Added walking through knee-deep snow, where every step took three times the energy of walking on pavement, and the math got ugly fast. Pretty soon, Riley was breathing hard. Her breath fogged the inside of her goggles, and she had to keep wiping them clear. "Zzzzz..." She was mid-cut on a tree—didn't even know which number anymore—when the chainsaw's roar stuttered. Died. The chain jammed solid in the wood. A red light blinked at her. Dead battery. Riley yanked the saw free and patted its housing. "Good work, buddy." Genuine regret in her voice. She straightened up and looked around. Pine trunks lay scattered across the snow in every direction. A decent haul. She counted silently. "Twenty-three total." Then the next problem hit her. According to the system, until she actually possessed these logs, they were still just natural resources. That meant they didn't qualify for Inventory storage. She couldn't just snap her fingers and make them disappear. She had to drag them back to camp. Riley grabbed the nearest pine and tried to pull. Heavy. Like, unreasonably heavy. Fresh-cut wood was full of moisture. Add the branches catching in the snow, dragging like anchors, and she felt like she was hauling a dead body through mud. "Huff... huff..." She gritted her teeth, looped rope around the trunk, slung it over her shoulder, leaned forward, and started walking. Inch by inch. The tree line to her campfire was maybe fifty yards. Right now, it felt like fifty miles. By the time she'd wrestled the fourth tree back into the fire's warm radius, she was wrecked. Her legs felt like someone had filled them with concrete. Her lungs burned from hauling freezing air through them. "Can't... can't do more." Riley made the call. She stopped. Those nineteen trees still out there in the snow—they called to her. Tempted her. But if she kept pushing without rest, without fuel for herself, she'd collapse out there. And out there, collapse meant death. She dropped down next to the big wooden crate that had held her starter supplies. It was less than three feet from the campfire. The flames danced orange and red, pumping out heat that felt like heaven. The shift from frozen to warm made her shiver violently. She pulled off her goggles and thick gloves, set them near the fire to warm up, then—still shaking—pulled the half-empty water bottle from her Inventory. Took a small sip. Then the bread. Two black bricks that looked more like construction material than food. "Crunch." Riley bit off a piece with effort. It was coarse. Tasted like sawdust with a hint of burnt toast. Bitter. But it was calories. Carbs. Fuel for her own fire. She forced herself to chew, swallow. When the food hit her stomach, warmth finally started spreading through her core. The uncontrollable shaking eased. After half a loaf, Riley leaned back against the crate. Her eyelids drooped. Post-exhaustion crash hit her like a wave. The campfire crackled. The wind seemed farther away now. Muffled. She really wanted to sleep... Her head nodded. Her body started sliding sideways. "Wait—" Some animal instinct jolted her awake just before she went under. She pinched her thigh. Hard. Then looked up at the timer floating above the flames. "Shelter Level 1 "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 06:28:00" Six and a half hours. If she slept too deep, too long, and that fire went out—what then? Even ignoring the obvious—that she'd freeze to death in this hellhole without a heat source—the game rules were clear. When the campfire hits zero, it's game over. "No sleeping. Not allowed." Riley slapped her own cheeks, forced herself upright. She stayed near the fire, but she didn't take off her heavy work clothes. She remembered reading something once, a survival article. "In the late stages of hypothermia, your hypothalamus malfunctions. You get a false sensation of heat. It's called "paradoxical undressing"—people strip down right before they freeze to death." "Okay. Process these four. Keep the fire fed." She pulled a traditional handsaw from the toolbox. Looking at the four thick pine logs on the ground, she almost laughed. Without power tools, breaking these down into burnable pieces would take at least half an hour. Burn the little energy she had left. But what choice did she have? Riley knelt in the snow, positioned the blade against the trunk, and was about to start cutting— A soft white light shot out from the system panel on her chest. It washed over the logs. "Ding! "Detected felled, intact logs within shelter range. "Perform quick recovery?" Riley's hand froze mid-saw. Quick recovery? It took her a second to process. Then relief flooded through her so hard she almost cried. "Yes! Recover!" She didn't hesitate. The next moment, something impossible happened. The four pine trunks—the ones she'd have to saw and split by hand, the ones that represented hours of brutal labor—dissolved into pale blue light particles. Not into dust. Into neat, uniform logs that stacked themselves automatically in her Inventory. The branches, the needles, all the useless parts—purified out of existence. "Recovery successful! "Obtained: Common Wood x20" Riley's eyes went wide, staring at the perfect lumber in her inventory display. Looked like it came straight from a hardware store. "One tree gives five units of wood? "And I don't have to cut it myself?" This changed everything. It meant she only had to handle the felling and the dragging. Once a log crossed into her camp's boundary, the system recognized it as hers. The most time-consuming part—the processing—just... didn't exist anymore. Riley immediately grabbed five units of wood and fed them to the fire. Whoosh. The flames leaped, hungry and grateful. "Fuel added. "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 12:20:00" "Five logs, five hours..." She did the math fast, looking at the fifteen units still on the ground. If she threw all of those in, that'd be another fifteen hours. Total of twenty-seven. She could sleep like the dead right now, and that fire would still be burning when she woke up. Security. For the first time since the world ended, Riley felt something like security. She selected the remaining wood. Deposited it all. Watched the countdown tick up to a very comfortable "27:20:00". Then her nerves finally let go. She dragged one of the toolboxes into position to block the wind, wrapped the field jacket tight around herself, pulled her hat down over her eyes, leaned back against the warm crate, and let the crackle of the fire pull her under. ***** She didn't sleep long. When she opened her eyes again, the sky was still that same dull gray-white. Impossible to tell if it was morning or afternoon. System clock said three hours. Her body ached. Shoulders and arms especially—felt like she'd gone ten rounds with someone. But her head was clear. She stretched her stiff neck and stood up. The snow seemed lighter. The feathery flakes had tapered off into sporadic icy grains. Riley ate a little more, got some fuel back in the tank, then stepped outside the campfire's warmth. The fire's effect wasn't what she'd expected. It wasn't that the temperature gradually dropped as you moved away. It was sharper than that. Like there was an invisible barrier around the flames. Inside, livable. Outside, the cold hit you like a wall. She wandered a little way off. The cold found every gap in her clothing. She thought about going farther, exploring. But there was nothing visible except that stand of trees she'd already worked. Maybe stuff was buried under the snow, but she couldn't see it. "No proper snow boots. Not going far." Riley glanced at the endless white distance with real regret. "Don't get greedy. Get those nineteen trees first." She turned. Looked at the woods. Her loot was still out there. And now she knew: if she could drag them back into the campfire's circle, the system would cash them out automatically. "Time to work." Riley rubbed her hands together. Let the motivation build. For the next few hours, she became a machine. Drag a tree to camp. Recover it. Go back for another. Repeat. It was boring. Exhausting. But watching those logs turn into numbers in her inventory—that feeling was hard to describe. Satisfying, in a way nothing had been satisfying in a long time. When the last pine trunk crossed into the light and dissolved into particles, Riley just collapsed. Lay flat in the snow and stared at the gray sky. She pulled up her Inventory. The once-empty slots were full now. Stack after stack of wood icons. "Item: Common Wood "Quantity: 80 "Description: Basic survival resource. Can be used for fuel or construction." Eighty units. Plus what was already burning in the campfire. Her day's work had yielded a clean hundred. One unit of wood burned for one hour. Riley looked at the flames dancing in front of her. Felt the heat on her face. Let herself smile, wide and real. "One hundred hours." Four full days. While everyone else was probably still panicking. Crying. Begging. Trying to figure out how to survive their first night in this frozen nightmare... She, Riley, had enough fuel stockpiled to last four days. Which meant: for the next ninety-six hours, unless she actively chose to die, nobody and nothing could put her fire out. She pulled the half-empty water bottle from Inventory. The space must have been insulated somehow—the water was still warm. Almost body temperature. She sipped it. Tasted sweet, even though it was just tap water. "Okay. Next step." Her gaze settled on the "Upgrade" button on the campfire panel. This open-air setup was fine for now. But if she was going to survive long-term, she needed something better. A real shelter. All she needed was a little stone. Some coal. Some steel. Then she could build something worth calling home. Chapter 3 The Trading Game The blizzard howled outside, but within the six-foot radius of the campfire, the air stayed surprisingly warm—like the wind had hit an invisible wall and just couldn't reach. Riley leaned back against the dusty wooden crate, holding the half-empty water bottle in her hand. She stared into the flames for a moment, then focused her attention inward. The pale blue system panel unfolded in front of her eyes again. Now that the immediate crisis was handled, she finally had time to sit quietly and really explore this so-called "Survival System". Beyond the personal stats and inventory, the bottom of the panel had a row of function icons: Server Channel, Friends List, Trading Market, and Crafting Manual. Friends List was empty. No surprise there. She hadn't exactly been a social butterfly back in the old world, and she sure as hell wasn't going to make friends easily in a frozen hellscape where everyone was fighting for their next breath. She tapped into the "Server Channel". A line of numbers appeared in the top left. "Server: US-008 "Current Online: 9911/10000" Ten thousand people started. Less than ten hours in, eighty-nine were already gone. "That doesn't add up." Everyone's starter crate came with a rusty iron axe and five units of wood. Plus the initial fuel the campfire had when they arrived—that alone bought them ten hours minimum, even if they just sat there doing nothing. What the hell did those people do to get eliminated so fast? The channel was moving fast, messages scrolling by every second. Desperation dripped from every line. "Someone help, I'm freezing my ass off out here. This stupid axe can't cut sh*t—every swing just bounces off and rattles my whole arm. Can anyone spare a couple logs? My dad's a senior VP at Walker Group. I'll wire you a million dollars when we get back, I swear." "Wake up, buddy. If your dad's still alive, he's out there chopping trees right now too." "Don't even talk to me. I spotted a wooden crate in the snow earlier, got all excited, ran over—and before I got within ten feet, some white rabbit thing jumped out of a drift. Teeth like needles. Almost took a chunk out of my leg. Missed the crate, wasted all that energy for nothing." "I saw that too! Random crates spawn in the wild. I opened a wooden one and got two chocolate bars and some coal." Reading through the chaos, Riley picked out two keywords, "Random Reward Crates" and "Dangerous Creatures". So this world was deeper than she thought. Wooden crates, copper crates—these randomly spawning resource points were the real way to get ahead. Coal came from crates. That was useful to know. And if coal was in crates, steel probably was too. But something bothered her. According to what people were saying, reward crates weren't exactly rare. So why hadn't she found a single one during her lumber run? She doubted it was just bad luck. Riley exited chat and tapped into the "Trading Market". "Seller: MountainMan88 Item: Stone x2 Wants: White Bread x5" "Seller: LoneWolf_21 Item: Cotton Cloth Wants: Clean Water" "Seller: NotDeadYet Item: Wood x3 Wants: Anything edible" Most people were trading for food and wood. The stuff that kept you alive right now. Things like stone and cloth were getting dumped cheap—nobody had the luxury of thinking long-term. Riley looked at her own inventory. Eighty units of wood staring back at her. Her heart beat a little faster. In this opening phase, where wood literally meant the difference between life and death, the resources in her hands were basically gold bars. "Time to trade," she muttered to herself. "Coal, steel—can't get those from chopping trees. And right now, wood's at maximum value. If I wait, the exchange rate shifts." Even with the chainsaw dead, she still had the handsaw. Less efficient, sure, but she could gather more wood if she needed it. Short-term, she wasn't going to run out. She clicked to post a message in the channel. "System Prompt: Detected that you have not set a virtual ID. Please enter your nickname (cannot be changed after setting)." Riley stared at the blank input box. Naming things was the worst. She sat there for a long time, nothing coming to mind. Finally, she gave up. Couldn't think of anything cool or clever, so she'd just go with something random. Her fingers tapped across the virtual keyboard—SpicyBurger. "Setting successful. ID locked." The prompt closed. Riley posted her message. "SpicyBurger: Selling wood in bulk. Looking for: Coal, Steel, High-calorie food. DM me with offers—what you have and your rate. Good deals go fast, don't sleep on this." For three seconds after the message appeared, the channel went dead silent. Then it exploded. "SpicyBurger? That name's making me hungry, what the hell." "Never mind the name—'wood in bulk'! We got a whale in here! Everyone else is stressing about the next hour and this person's already running a business?" "I need some! My campfire's down to like two hours. I don't know if I actually die when it hits zero but I don't wanna find out." Suddenly, half the channel was scrambling for wood. But then the skeptics crawled out. "Hang on. Everyone started with the same rusty axe. Chopping a tree in this weather takes twenty, thirty minutes minimum. Where's she getting 'bulk' wood from? Sounds like a scam." "InvincibleWarrior: Everybody chill. Look at that ID—sounds like a girl's handle. I'm a grown man, been busting my ass, and I've only got like ten logs saved up. My hands are shredded. Some girl with a food name claims she's got bulk? She's trying to run a game. Scam people out of their stuff." "Iron_Tough: Agreed. Scammers made it through the apocalypse too, I guess. My advice: ignore her. Don't get played. How much wood can a woman chop anyway? Probably can't even lift the axe right, lol." Riley scrolled through the messages, expression flat. She almost laughed. But some people pushed back. "FishHater44: How is it a scam? If she doesn't deliver, you don't complete the trade. Just 'cause you can't chop that much wood doesn't mean nobody can." Riley nodded slightly. That one had a point. But she didn't waste energy arguing in the channel. Instead, she flipped on Do Not Disturb for private messages—only allowing chat requests that included a trade offer. Some people didn't actually care whether she had wood. They just couldn't stand seeing someone else do well. "Ding. Ding. Ding." Private messages started pouring in like rain. Most players weren't idiots. Faced with the very real threat of freezing to death, they'd try anything for a chance. Riley opened the first one. "Windwalker: I got "Coal x3" from a crate. How much wood can I get for it? I can't chop anymore. The wind out here is insane. I tried to throw the coal in my fire but it just kept popping back out. System says my campfire level's too low, won't let me use it. I'm out of wood. My fire's almost dead." Riley thought for a moment. "Three coal for five wood. Deal?" She hadn't known about that restriction. Coal was supposed to be better fuel than wood—didn't expect the game to lock it behind a level gate. The reply came instantly, "Deal. But five wood feels light. It's coal." The guy was conflicted. He knew coal had value, but he was desperate. "I'll make it six. Final offer." Riley wasn't sure about coal's real value yet. Six was her limit. "Fine. Deal." They both dropped their items into the trade window. A moment later, it completed. A flash of white light. Riley's inventory lost six wood. Gained three chunks of coal, each about the size of a small melon. One down. "CrunchyFrog: Hey, I got two "Iron Ingots" from a crate. System calls them "Scrap Steel". Can I get eight wood for them? Trying to stock up enough to sleep through the night." Riley replied, "Sure. Initiate." In just over ten minutes, her wood stockpile dropped significantly. But her inventory filled up with good stuff. "Coal x10 "Stone x23 "Scrap Steel x5 "Raw Meat x2 "White Bread x2 "Basic Torch Blueprint x1" The blueprint was new. The description said it was required for crafting certain items. Seemed useful, so she'd traded for it. Meanwhile, back in the channel, that "InvincibleWarrior" guy who'd been mocking her earlier seemed to notice that people were actually completing trades. His tone got bitter. "InvincibleWarrior: Whatever. She probably got lucky with a high-tier crate. Let's see how long her stock lasts. Once the wood's gone, she'll be begging me to let her join my group." The people who'd successfully traded with Riley popped into the channel to thank her. That might have been fine—except the thanks caused problems. Since Riley had stopped trading for now, most people hadn't gotten anything. And the sky was darkening. Temperature outside the campfire radius was dropping fast. Gathering wood was getting harder. Trading was their only hope. The ones who'd pinned everything on Riley, seeing her stop, started losing it. "You said 'in bulk'! You did like five trades and quit. What are we supposed to do now?" "Keep trading! My fire's almost out. You want us to go chop trees in the dark?" "If you couldn't deliver, why'd you post? Showing off and then hiding." Whether it was coordinated or just genuine rage, the number of people defending Riley in the channel shrank fast. Mostly it was attacks now. Accusations of being irresponsible. Using scarcity tactics. Playing games with people's lives. Riley closed the channel. She couldn't be bothered. In a life-or-death situation like this, people losing it was normal. If she actually had unlimited resources, she'd trade more. But she didn't. And back on Earth, nobody had ever handed her anything out of charity. She wasn't about to start playing savior now. She looked down at the "Basic Torch Blueprint" in her inventory. "Requirements: Wood x10, Kerosene, Scrap Steel x2" Note: Requires Level 2 Workbench to craft." She leaned back against the crate again. Felt the weight of her stockpile pressing back against that lingering sense of unease. In this world, your ID didn't matter. Your gender didn't matter either. What mattered was who held the resources. She looked at what she had left: 36 units of wood. Plus the steel, coal, and stone from trading. Time to plan. Upgrading to a Level 2 campfire required 55 wood. She had all the other materials. For the wood, she'd just have to use the handsaw tomorrow and gather a little more. That settled, she pulled a few more logs from inventory and arranged them on top of the crate, making a small enclosed space. Curled up inside it, she watched the sky outside slowly darken to black. Her eyes grew heavy. She drifted off. Chapter 4 The Culling Riley woke to the kind of soreness that made you reconsider ever moving again. She'd slept like the dead—no dreams, no blizzard, just nothing. When she opened her eyes, the first things she saw were the logs she'd stacked as a windbreak and the steady glow of the campfire. She tried to stretch. Big mistake. Every muscle in her body lit up at once, screaming in protest. "Sh*t." Riley sucked air through her teeth and pressed a hand to her aching shoulder. Her lower back felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to it. Yesterday's work had been too much. She wasn't weak—far from it—but she was still human. The lactic acid had settled in overnight, and now she moved like an arthritic tin man. At least she was alive. She stowed the windbreak logs back in her inventory and looked around. The world hadn't changed. Same dull gray sky. Same swirling snow. Outside the six-foot radius of the fire, the drifts looked deeper than yesterday. The wind had been busy. Riley pulled out the half-empty water bottle and wet her throat. Then she retrieved the white bread she'd traded for yesterday. Compared to that dense, flavorless black bread, this was practically cake. She tore off small pieces, letting the faint sweetness dissolve on her tongue, and habitually opened the "Server Channel". She stopped chewing. The number in the top left hit her like a physical blow. "Current Online Players: 4968/10000" "Five thousand..." Riley's eyes went wide. In a single night, that number had been cut in half. Five thousand people. Gone. Winked out of existence on this frozen ice field while she slept. "Ding." The system notification cut through her thoughts—cold, emotionless, like it was announcing the weather. "Global Announcement: Congratulations to all survivors for successfully surviving the first day. "This was a culling. Last night eliminated those fools who failed to add fuel to their fires or refused to gather wood. Remember: in this place, tears mean nothing. When you die here, you're dead-dead. "You who remain are the lucky ones. "Grace Period: A five-day 'New Player Support Period' now begins. For the next five days, your initial supply crates will refresh daily with a fixed amount of food. "Special Reward: Each survivor receives one pair of "Standard Issue Snow Boots (Common)". Be grateful for this mercy. Enjoy the game." The words sat there on her screen. Fools. Mercy. The system's tone dripped with contempt. The math was simple. Starting package: five hours of fuel. Initial gift: five units of wood, another five hours. Total ten hours, if you did absolutely nothing. The ones who'd frozen to death last night—they were the ones who'd clung to hope. The ones too scared to move. The ones who'd told themselves someone would save them. Five thousand people. One night. Gone. This wasn't a game. It was a slaughter. In the channel, the survivors who'd made it through were clearly rattled by the numbers too. "Holy sh*t... My friend's icon went dark last night. Does that mean he's dead? Actually dead?" "I can't do this. I don't wanna play anymore, I wanna go home. I swear I'll work today. I'll chop wood, I'll do whatever, just please—" "Everyone move! Don't save your strength! If you die, that's it. No respawns!" Panic spread fast. But almost immediately, the tone shifted. The fear found a target. "That SpicyBurger—if she'd shared more wood yesterday, would so many people have died?" "For real. If she had extra, why not just give it away? Why did it have to be trades? She could've at least loaned some out." "This is what happens when people hoard resources and watch others freeze. Remember that name. Don't trade with her. Ever." Riley frowned. Here we go again. She scrolled up. Sure enough, there it was—that familiar ID: "InvincibleWarrior". He was going hard in the channel. "She's profiting off suffering. That's what some people do. Women like that are the worst—hoarding supplies while people die around them. Wait and see. Someone like her won't last." Riley laughed. Actually laughed out loud. Moral blackmail. In the apocalypse. She typed, "If you want wood, go cut it yourself. I'm not your mommy. No amount of crying in chat is gonna put logs in your inventory. You'd get more done if you just picked up your d*mn axe." The channel went quiet for a second. Then the reasonable voices piped up. "She's right. Nobody owes you anything. Work for it." "Exactly. Just 'cause someone's quiet doesn't mean they're an easy target." In a world where staying alive took everything you had, expecting charity was the dumbest move of all. Riley didn't waste more energy on it. People like that—the more you engaged, the more they thrived. Let him run his mouth. She had bigger things to worry about. She closed the channel and turned to the big wooden crate—her initial supply point. Sure enough, new items had materialized inside. "Bottled Water x3 "White Bread x3 "Fresh Orange Juice x1 "Standard Snow Boots x1" "Orange juice?" Riley picked up the bottle, genuinely surprised. The orange liquid inside sloshed gently. Vitamins. The system was actually giving them vitamins. She pulled off her old shoes—already damp and cold—and swapped into the new boots. They were clunky, sure. But they gripped the snow, and the insulation was real. The chill that had been seeping up through her soles disappeared instantly. Next, she opened her toolbox. Goggles on. Thick cut-resistant gloves. Head-to-toe gear. "Time to work." The channel noise faded from her mind. She had one priority today, and it wasn't arguing with idiots. She picked up the chainsaw and headed back to the tree line. The cold played tricks on batteries. She'd known that, intellectually. But knowing it and feeling it were different things. After just eight trees, the last spare battery gave out. The chainsaw stuttered, died, and went silent in her hands. Riley stared at it. "Son of a b*tch." Chapter 5 Dead Battery Riley stared at the dead chainsaw in her hands and shook her head. Without power, it was just an expensive paperweight. If she wanted more wood, she'd have to do it the old-fashioned way—pick up the axe or the manual handsaw from the toolbox and go to war with frozen timber. But eight more trees were eight more trees. Her stockpile was looking healthy. "First things first. Get these back." She sucked it up, stowed the chainsaw in her inventory, and started hauling. Her body screamed even louder than yesterday. Every muscle felt like it had been replaced with concrete. She dragged each log back one at a time, moving like a zombie. Drag. Rest two minutes. Drag again. The wind howled in her ears. Riley lost track of time, lost track of everything except the mechanical rhythm of work. By the time the sun was high—not that you could really see it through the clouds—she dragged the last log into the campfire's radius. It dissolved into light, absorbed by the system. Riley all but collapsed into the snow. "Acquired: Wood x40" She lay there for a moment, chest heaving, staring at the number in her inventory. A tired smile crept across her face. She had enough. Combined with the coal and steel from yesterday's trades, she had everything she needed for the upgrade. Riley forced herself upright and walked to the campfire. On the floating translucent panel, the "Upgrade" button glowed that tempting gold. "Upgrade Primitive Shelter to Lv.2? "Cost: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Scrap Steel x5 "Remaining after upgrade: Wood x16, Stone x3, Coal x0, Steel x0" "Upgrade." Riley took a breath and pressed it. "Hmmmm—!" A blinding white light erupted from the heart of the campfire, swallowing everything. Riley squeezed her eyes shut. No explosion. No thunder. Just a sound like Legos snapping together. A few seconds later, the light faded. Riley opened her eyes. And stopped breathing. The campfire wasn't just a campfire anymore. The rough stone ring had transformed into something neat and intentional—a proper firepit with a stone border for insulation, a place to set things, even a simple steel grate attached to the side. But that wasn't the big news. The heat that used to push back the cold within a six-foot radius now stretched a full fifteen feet. Inside that circle, snow was actively melting, revealing dark frozen soil underneath. In one corner, she spotted a patch of moss stubbornly poking through. Riley spun around. Behind the big wooden crate, a small log cabin stood waiting. It wasn't much—maybe forty feet square, built from rough-hewn logs. Nothing fancy. But it was solid. Four walls and a roof, blocking wind and snow completely. Riley walked over and pushed open the heavy wooden door. Warm air hit her face. Inside was simple: a wooden bed frame piled with dry grass, a crude workbench, a chair, and a small fireplace connected to a chimney that ran up through the roof. Rustic. But right now, it was heaven. Wood and fire. Four walls. A roof. Home. Riley ran her hand along the rough wall. Her eyes stung a little. She wouldn't have to sleep in the open anymore. Wouldn't have to wake up every few hours to check the fire. Wouldn't have to worry about freezing to death in her sleep. Right on cue, the server announcement chimed. Gold text this time, blazing right in the center of everyone's vision. "Server Announcement: Congratulations to player SpicyBurger for being the first to achieve "Level 2 Shelter". Rewards have been distributed." The chat channel, which had been wallowing in fear and despair, exploded. "Holy sh*t? Level 2 already? What does Level 2 unlock? Can you post pics, big shot?" "That's the wood seller from yesterday? No way. Absolute legend." "Carry me please! SpicyBurger, I'll be your loyal follower. I can cook, I can clean, I can—" "Teach us, master! How'd you gather materials so fast? What's your secret?" Compliments. Pleas. Desperate attempts to get noticed. And then, of course, the sour grapes. "InvincibleWarrior: Big deal. Just profiteering off everyone else's suffering. If she'd shared that wood instead of selling it, maybe those five thousand people would still be alive. How does it feel to climb on corpses?" "GodLovesMeFirst: Seriously. Building your success on other people's deaths. Karma's real. She'll get hers." Riley's jaw tightened. If InvincibleWarrior had been standing in front of her right now, she'd have knocked his teeth out. Guys like him—useless themselves, but always ready to tear down anyone who actually accomplished something. Sewer rats. Her private messages exploded too. She'd set it to only accept trade offers, but people had found a workaround—using the "trade note" function to send spam. "Hey beautiful, I'm a personal trainer. Great shape. Wanna see? Hit me with some wood and I'll do a voice call with you!" A photo of some guy flexing in a mirror, shirt off. Riley glanced at it, unimpressed. Decent abs. Pathetic attitude. Dude was clearly strong enough to chop wood—why was he wasting time on this? She'd never mentioned her gender, so most people probably assumed anyone who'd gathered that much wood must be a guy. The messages reflected that assumption. Some women sent selfies too, trying to flirt their way into favor. Didn't matter. Shameless cut across all demographics. From the backgrounds in the photos, everyone seemed to be in different locations. But one thing was consistent: they all had trees nearby. The system must have arranged that—a new player perk. "A bunch of degenerates." Riley's face went cold. She changed her privacy settings to "Friends Only". Then she added a line to her trading post description. "No spam. Send junk, get blocked." Silence. Blessed silence. She took a breath, let the noise drain away, and focused on what mattered. "First-place upgrade reward..." She opened her inventory. Sitting there, glowing faintly purple, was a gift box. For more exciting content, please download the "JoyRead" app to continue reading.
Chapter 1 The Countdown Ends It was the year 2027, and the end of the world was now less than an hour away. "00:59:23" Riley Carter stood on a ladder with a screw clenched between her teeth, an impact driver in her hand, securing the last window panel in place. A month ago, that timer had just appeared out of nowhere, hanging in the corner of everyone's vision like it had always been there. At first, people wrote it off as some kind of mass hacker prank. The government fed the media soothing statements in an attempt to keep things calm, but there was no way to talk down the panic as prices kept rising and supplies were held in a monopoly in real time. News outlets might spin whatever narrative they wanted, but no one could argue with the price of eggs. For a while, it was a frenzy. People cleaned out grocery stores like locusts. The government did what they could—price caps, purchase limits, reassurances from the podium—but none of it mattered. The cost of living kept climbing, and bit by bit, the country started coming apart at the seams. Online, it was a circus. Some people posted doom-laden predictions. Others openly celebrated the thought of the world finally burning. A few just seemed relieved they wouldn't have to clock in on Monday. In that final hour, things got truly ugly. Both on the streets and on social media, it was chaos. Some people figured why not went out with a bang? If the world was ending, they'd spend their last hours doing every reckless thing they'd ever fantasized about. Others, paralyzed by fear of whatever was coming, scrambled for anything they could hoard. Supplies. Weapons. Gasoline. Didn't matter what, as long as they had more of it than the next guy. Most people just wanted to be with the ones they loved. Riley didn't have that luxury anymore. Fresh out of community college, she'd lost both her parents in a highway pileup eighteen months back. The only thing they'd left her was the family hardware store, a cramped little place wedged between a laundromat and a taqueria. She'd been running it solo for just over a year when that d*mn countdown appeared overhead. At first, she'd thought maybe an apocalypse wouldn't be the worst thing. Maybe there'd be something on the other side. A reunion. But then she thought about her folks. They'd doted on her. Made her feel like the center of their world. And even though she'd grown a thick skin since going it alone, feeling indifferent to the world, she knew what they'd want. They'd want her to fight. To stay. She was the only piece of them still left in this world. People always say you aren't really gone until the last person forgets your name. As long as she kept breathing, kept carrying them with her another day, they weren't truly dead. Riley spat the screw into her palm, face calm, the impact driver whirring as she sank another fastener into the reinforced frame. "Flour's three hundred a pound now, and you can't even buy it straight—they make you tack on a bunch of other junk you don't need just to get it," she muttered to herself, shaking her head. When that timer first flickered into existence, Riley had done something smart. She'd liquidated everything. Converted every dollar she could scrape together into supplies. Unfortunately, by the time she hit the stores, inflation had already done its damage. Her savings didn't go nearly as far as they should have. Any cash that was left went toward tools. If the world was ending, she thought they could be useful. Riley pressed the last sheet of thick insulation foam into the window frame, seating it flush against the reinforced plywood beneath. The impact driver snarled as she buried the screws. Then she reached for her pneumatic glue gun—a satisfying pfft as the sealant filled the final gap. She wiped sweat from her forehead and climbed down off the ladder. Stepped back to admire her work. The little apartment was a fortress now. Doors reinforced. Windows barricaded. Every interior wall lined with an extra layer of insulation. She glanced down at herself. Custom-fit heavy-duty workwear. Slash-resistant fabric. More pockets than she'd ever need. Reinforced padding at the knees and elbows. It wasn't fashionable, but it was practical. And her real treasure: tools. A chainsaw. A reciprocating saw. The impact driver in her hand. A multi-bit screwdriver that had cost more than she wanted to admit. She'd brought everything usable from the shop back here, consolidated it into three massive toolboxes. She'd also grabbed some stuff like an air purifier and some spare filters—anything that might matter when civilization took a vacation. She didn't know what the countdown would bring. Some folks online predicted zombies. Others said asteroid impact. Volcanic winter. Alien invasion. Take your pick. Food. Tools. Shelter. She'd even started working out, building strength she'd never needed before. She'd done everything she could think of to prepare. Whatever was coming, she figured she'd last longer than most. With nothing left to do, she dropped onto one of the big toolboxes laid flat on the floor, wiped her forehead again, and pulled out her phone. Most news apps had crashed. The only things still loading were comment sections, and they were going crazy. [Anyone got rice? I'll pay eight grand for a bag. Please, we got nothing left.] [Forget it, man. Money's toilet paper now. Saw it with my own eyes—some rich assholes cleared out the Costco warehouse last week. All that 'purchase limit' crap was just theater. Shelves were empty 'cause the stock never made it there. It's all sitting in some hedge fund guy's basement.] [No kidding? Same thing happened to me! Store manager kept telling me, 'We're limiting purchases, come back next week, we'll put your name on the list.' So the whole time the back room was empty? They were just jerking us around?] [Of course they were. Rich people cornered the market on everything. So what are normal people supposed to do? Just sit here and die?] [Anyone know what actually happens when the clock hits zero? Like, is it nukes? That virus thing from that old video game?] Riley locked her phone. Tucked it away. She didn't have anything to add to that conversation. A month ago, when the countdown first showed up, prices had spiked instantly. A fifty-pound bag of rice that normally went for thirty bucks jumped to eight hundred overnight. By yesterday, it was breaking two grand. The wealthy had rolled up with trucks and cleaned out supermarkets. Riley had been smart—she'd gone early, bought stuff that would keep, stuff that was calorie-dense and cheap. Chocolate. Survival biscuits. Canned goods. It wasn't much, but it was enough for one person, at least for a while. She took a deep breath and glanced at the timer. "00:01:10" Just over a minute. Riley gripped the toolbox beneath her. Knuckles white. Who knew what would happen when that thing hit zero? Maybe it'd be like 2012—all hype, nothing real. In that last minute, her life flickered past. Her parents' faces. The hardware store. The lonely months since. "00:00:00" The countdown ended. Riley had just started to breathe a sigh of relief—nothing happened, maybe it really was nothing—when the world lurched beneath her. A dizzying weightlessness. A sensation of falling. Everything spun. ***** She didn't know how long she was out. "Whew." A wind like a knife blade sliced across her face. Riley's eyes snapped open. Her warm apartment was gone. In its place, an endless white expanse stretched in every direction. Snow whipped through the air. Wind howled like a wounded animal. And at her feet, a small campfire guttered in the gale, threatening to die at any second. "What the—" Before she could process, a chime rang directly in her skull. Not heard. Known. "Welcome to the Extreme Cold Survival Game. "Earth no longer exists. This is your new home. This is your grave. "Survival rules are as follows. "1. Each player begins with one campfire. It is your only defense against the cold. If the campfire dies, you will be judged deceased by the system. Not that it matters—without the fire, you won't last anyway. "2. This is a real world. You can die from hunger. From exposure. From animal attack. "3. Supplies stockpiled in your previous world do not carry over. Only items on your person, or in direct physical contact at the moment of transfer, are retained. "4. Struggle to survive. It is your only hope." Riley's heart slammed against her ribs. Supplies didn't carry over? Her mind flashed to those wealthy forum posters bragging about their warehouse stockpiles. And then she looked down at herself. Workwear. Intact. And— She was still sitting on the three giant toolboxes. They sat solidly in the snow, dusted with powder, unmistakably here. "Whew." Riley let out a long breath. A white cloud dispersed in front of her face. Pity, though. During her renovations, she'd stocked those boxes with a lot of power tools. The expensive impact driver. The reciprocating saw. In a world with no electrical outlets, once those batteries died, they were just dead weight. But even so. The hand tools. The consumables. The sheer volume of stuff in those boxes—it was a treasure beyond measure in a place like this. Riley forced herself to calm down. She was here. She'd deal with it. Something new lived in her mind now. She concentrated, and a translucent pale-blue screen materialized in front of her eyes. Looked just like a video game HUD. "Personal Panel "Name: Riley Carter "ID: 1120-US "Level: 1 (Standard Survivor) "Strength: 8 (Years of manual labor have made you stronger than average) "Agility: 8 (You've got quick reflexes) "Constitution: 6 (You've been skipping meals lately) "Spirit: 9 (You keep your head when others panic) "Inventory: 16/16 slots (Base capacity)" "Inventory?" Riley studied the sixteen empty squares at the bottom of the display. She reached out, touched one of the toolboxes, and thought the word, "Store." Whoosh. The heavy box vanished. In its place, a tiny icon appeared in the first inventory slot, a miniature "x1" in the corner. "It actually worked." For the first time since arriving, a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. Retrieve. Thud. The toolbox landed back in the snow, puffing up powder. No energy cost. No sense of weight. And in that inventory, she could carry anything, regardless of how heavy it was. Later on, when she went scavenging, that would make all the difference. Riley rubbed her stiff, freezing hands together and turned her attention to the campfire at her feet. It was the only warmth in this frozen wasteland. Hovering above the flames, visible only to her, were a few lines of glowing text. "Basic Campfire (Lv.1) "Remaining Burn Time: 05:28:00 "Current Coverage: Radius six feet (Blocks wind and snow) "Upgrade Requirements: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Steel x5 "Description: This is your life. Do not let it die. Upgrading expands your safe zone and unlocks additional construction options." "Needs upgrading." Riley frowned. Wood and stone she could probably find. But coal? Steel? Out here in the middle of nowhere? A flash of movement caught her eye. A small wooden box, half-buried in the snow not far from the fire. The starter crate. Had to be. Riley didn't rush. First, she pulled the claw hammer from her belt—the one she always kept there, habit from years of work—and gripped it tight. She scanned the tree line. Listened past the wind. Nothing moved. No sounds but the storm. She walked over quickly, crouched by the box. No lock. She pried the lid open with the claw end of her hammer. Inside, a handful of items. "Obtained: Iron Axe x1 "Obtained: Stale Dark Bread x2 "Obtained: 500ml Bottled Water x1 "Obtained: Kindling x5 "Obtained: Insulated Field Jacket x1 "Obtained: Utility Rope (25ft) "Obtained: Thermal Underwear (Set) x2 Not much. Barely anything. Riley picked up one of the dark loaves. It was rock hard. She examined the jacket—basic, but warm-looking. "So this is what a standard survivor starts with." At least the system had thought of everything. Including the underwear. She'd half-expected to wake up naked in the snow; at least she didn't have to worry about that. She stored everything in her inventory, then shrugged on the field jacket. The temperature shift was brutal. Even those few seconds exposed had left her hands numb. Hypothermia would set in fast out here. Jacket on, she hurried back to the campfire. She pulled the five units of Kindling from her inventory and tossed them onto the flames. The fire roared higher. Warmth flooded over her. "Fuel added. Remaining Burn Time: 10:28:00" Ten hours. If she didn't move fast, in ten hours she'd freeze to death on this ice field. And the game had made it clear—if the fire died, the system would judge her dead. Whether she actually froze or not. Riley lifted her head and scanned the landscape. She was in a sparse coniferous forest. Barely alive trees, crusted with frost, dotted the area not far from her position. "Wood." A slow smile spread across her face. She patted the toolbox beside her. "Other people might have axes. But felling a tree with just an axe takes hours. Exhausts you." She unlatched the box. Pulled out the chainsaw. Checked the battery gauge—full. "I've got a handsaw in here too. And a chainsaw with a full charge." The battery wouldn't last forever. But it would last long enough to give her a massive head start. In this race for survival, that was everything. Chapter 2 The Chainsaw The wind screamed across the open ground, picking up loose snow and flinging it against her goggles like sand. It sounded like static. Riley had pulled her basic work gear from the toolbox before heading out. Now she stood in the snow, surrounded by clusters of thin conifers that looked half-dead already. She took a breath. The air burned going down. "Zzzzzzz—!!!" She squeezed the trigger. The orange-and-black lithium-ion chainsaw in her hands roared to life, the chain spinning so fast it blurred. She buried the teeth in the nearest pine trunk. Wood chips exploded everywhere. Fragrant shavings—still wet with resin—scattered across the pristine snow, stark and yellow against all that white. Five seconds. Crack. The pine tree, thick as her arm, groaned and tilted. Then it fell slow and heavy into a drift, sending up a puff of powder. "God bless modern technology." Riley shook out her wrist—the vibration had numbed her fingers—and allowed herself a small smile. Without that chainsaw, with just the basic iron axe the system had given her, felling a tree frozen solid like this would have taken twenty minutes minimum. And it would have left her soaked with sweat. In subzero temps, sweat was a death sentence. Once your base layers got wet, the moment you stopped moving, your body temperature would plummet. Hypothermia would follow fast. Riley didn't waste time celebrating. She knew the saw in her hands was a hungry machine. She'd brought two spare high-capacity batteries, sure, but until she found a way to recharge them, every second the motor ran was borrowed time. She had to gather as much wood as possible before the batteries gave out. "Zzzzz—Zzzzz—" At the edge of the forest, the chainsaw's snarl rose and fell, shattering the frozen silence. Riley worked like she was possessed. Fell a tree. Move to the next. Fell another. But she had to stay alert—watch for hidden snow pits underfoot, keep adjusting her collar against the wind that kept finding its way down her neck. Her stamina drained faster than she'd anticipated. In extreme cold, body burned through calories just to stay alive. Added walking through knee-deep snow, where every step took three times the energy of walking on pavement, and the math got ugly fast. Pretty soon, Riley was breathing hard. Her breath fogged the inside of her goggles, and she had to keep wiping them clear. "Zzzzz..." She was mid-cut on a tree—didn't even know which number anymore—when the chainsaw's roar stuttered. Died. The chain jammed solid in the wood. A red light blinked at her. Dead battery. Riley yanked the saw free and patted its housing. "Good work, buddy." Genuine regret in her voice. She straightened up and looked around. Pine trunks lay scattered across the snow in every direction. A decent haul. She counted silently. "Twenty-three total." Then the next problem hit her. According to the system, until she actually possessed these logs, they were still just natural resources. That meant they didn't qualify for Inventory storage. She couldn't just snap her fingers and make them disappear. She had to drag them back to camp. Riley grabbed the nearest pine and tried to pull. Heavy. Like, unreasonably heavy. Fresh-cut wood was full of moisture. Add the branches catching in the snow, dragging like anchors, and she felt like she was hauling a dead body through mud. "Huff... huff..." She gritted her teeth, looped rope around the trunk, slung it over her shoulder, leaned forward, and started walking. Inch by inch. The tree line to her campfire was maybe fifty yards. Right now, it felt like fifty miles. By the time she'd wrestled the fourth tree back into the fire's warm radius, she was wrecked. Her legs felt like someone had filled them with concrete. Her lungs burned from hauling freezing air through them. "Can't... can't do more." Riley made the call. She stopped. Those nineteen trees still out there in the snow—they called to her. Tempted her. But if she kept pushing without rest, without fuel for herself, she'd collapse out there. And out there, collapse meant death. She dropped down next to the big wooden crate that had held her starter supplies. It was less than three feet from the campfire. The flames danced orange and red, pumping out heat that felt like heaven. The shift from frozen to warm made her shiver violently. She pulled off her goggles and thick gloves, set them near the fire to warm up, then—still shaking—pulled the half-empty water bottle from her Inventory. Took a small sip. Then the bread. Two black bricks that looked more like construction material than food. "Crunch." Riley bit off a piece with effort. It was coarse. Tasted like sawdust with a hint of burnt toast. Bitter. But it was calories. Carbs. Fuel for her own fire. She forced herself to chew, swallow. When the food hit her stomach, warmth finally started spreading through her core. The uncontrollable shaking eased. After half a loaf, Riley leaned back against the crate. Her eyelids drooped. Post-exhaustion crash hit her like a wave. The campfire crackled. The wind seemed farther away now. Muffled. She really wanted to sleep... Her head nodded. Her body started sliding sideways. "Wait—" Some animal instinct jolted her awake just before she went under. She pinched her thigh. Hard. Then looked up at the timer floating above the flames. "Shelter Level 1 "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 06:28:00" Six and a half hours. If she slept too deep, too long, and that fire went out—what then? Even ignoring the obvious—that she'd freeze to death in this hellhole without a heat source—the game rules were clear. When the campfire hits zero, it's game over. "No sleeping. Not allowed." Riley slapped her own cheeks, forced herself upright. She stayed near the fire, but she didn't take off her heavy work clothes. She remembered reading something once, a survival article. "In the late stages of hypothermia, your hypothalamus malfunctions. You get a false sensation of heat. It's called "paradoxical undressing"—people strip down right before they freeze to death." "Okay. Process these four. Keep the fire fed." She pulled a traditional handsaw from the toolbox. Looking at the four thick pine logs on the ground, she almost laughed. Without power tools, breaking these down into burnable pieces would take at least half an hour. Burn the little energy she had left. But what choice did she have? Riley knelt in the snow, positioned the blade against the trunk, and was about to start cutting— A soft white light shot out from the system panel on her chest. It washed over the logs. "Ding! "Detected felled, intact logs within shelter range. "Perform quick recovery?" Riley's hand froze mid-saw. Quick recovery? It took her a second to process. Then relief flooded through her so hard she almost cried. "Yes! Recover!" She didn't hesitate. The next moment, something impossible happened. The four pine trunks—the ones she'd have to saw and split by hand, the ones that represented hours of brutal labor—dissolved into pale blue light particles. Not into dust. Into neat, uniform logs that stacked themselves automatically in her Inventory. The branches, the needles, all the useless parts—purified out of existence. "Recovery successful! "Obtained: Common Wood x20" Riley's eyes went wide, staring at the perfect lumber in her inventory display. Looked like it came straight from a hardware store. "One tree gives five units of wood? "And I don't have to cut it myself?" This changed everything. It meant she only had to handle the felling and the dragging. Once a log crossed into her camp's boundary, the system recognized it as hers. The most time-consuming part—the processing—just... didn't exist anymore. Riley immediately grabbed five units of wood and fed them to the fire. Whoosh. The flames leaped, hungry and grateful. "Fuel added. "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 12:20:00" "Five logs, five hours..." She did the math fast, looking at the fifteen units still on the ground. If she threw all of those in, that'd be another fifteen hours. Total of twenty-seven. She could sleep like the dead right now, and that fire would still be burning when she woke up. Security. For the first time since the world ended, Riley felt something like security. She selected the remaining wood. Deposited it all. Watched the countdown tick up to a very comfortable "27:20:00". Then her nerves finally let go. She dragged one of the toolboxes into position to block the wind, wrapped the field jacket tight around herself, pulled her hat down over her eyes, leaned back against the warm crate, and let the crackle of the fire pull her under. ***** She didn't sleep long. When she opened her eyes again, the sky was still that same dull gray-white. Impossible to tell if it was morning or afternoon. System clock said three hours. Her body ached. Shoulders and arms especially—felt like she'd gone ten rounds with someone. But her head was clear. She stretched her stiff neck and stood up. The snow seemed lighter. The feathery flakes had tapered off into sporadic icy grains. Riley ate a little more, got some fuel back in the tank, then stepped outside the campfire's warmth. The fire's effect wasn't what she'd expected. It wasn't that the temperature gradually dropped as you moved away. It was sharper than that. Like there was an invisible barrier around the flames. Inside, livable. Outside, the cold hit you like a wall. She wandered a little way off. The cold found every gap in her clothing. She thought about going farther, exploring. But there was nothing visible except that stand of trees she'd already worked. Maybe stuff was buried under the snow, but she couldn't see it. "No proper snow boots. Not going far." Riley glanced at the endless white distance with real regret. "Don't get greedy. Get those nineteen trees first." She turned. Looked at the woods. Her loot was still out there. And now she knew: if she could drag them back into the campfire's circle, the system would cash them out automatically. "Time to work." Riley rubbed her hands together. Let the motivation build. For the next few hours, she became a machine. Drag a tree to camp. Recover it. Go back for another. Repeat. It was boring. Exhausting. But watching those logs turn into numbers in her inventory—that feeling was hard to describe. Satisfying, in a way nothing had been satisfying in a long time. When the last pine trunk crossed into the light and dissolved into particles, Riley just collapsed. Lay flat in the snow and stared at the gray sky. She pulled up her Inventory. The once-empty slots were full now. Stack after stack of wood icons. "Item: Common Wood "Quantity: 80 "Description: Basic survival resource. Can be used for fuel or construction." Eighty units. Plus what was already burning in the campfire. Her day's work had yielded a clean hundred. One unit of wood burned for one hour. Riley looked at the flames dancing in front of her. Felt the heat on her face. Let herself smile, wide and real. "One hundred hours." Four full days. While everyone else was probably still panicking. Crying. Begging. Trying to figure out how to survive their first night in this frozen nightmare... She, Riley, had enough fuel stockpiled to last four days. Which meant: for the next ninety-six hours, unless she actively chose to die, nobody and nothing could put her fire out. She pulled the half-empty water bottle from Inventory. The space must have been insulated somehow—the water was still warm. Almost body temperature. She sipped it. Tasted sweet, even though it was just tap water. "Okay. Next step." Her gaze settled on the "Upgrade" button on the campfire panel. This open-air setup was fine for now. But if she was going to survive long-term, she needed something better. A real shelter. All she needed was a little stone. Some coal. Some steel. Then she could build something worth calling home. Chapter 3 The Trading Game The blizzard howled outside, but within the six-foot radius of the campfire, the air stayed surprisingly warm—like the wind had hit an invisible wall and just couldn't reach. Riley leaned back against the dusty wooden crate, holding the half-empty water bottle in her hand. She stared into the flames for a moment, then focused her attention inward. The pale blue system panel unfolded in front of her eyes again. Now that the immediate crisis was handled, she finally had time to sit quietly and really explore this so-called "Survival System". Beyond the personal stats and inventory, the bottom of the panel had a row of function icons: Server Channel, Friends List, Trading Market, and Crafting Manual. Friends List was empty. No surprise there. She hadn't exactly been a social butterfly back in the old world, and she sure as hell wasn't going to make friends easily in a frozen hellscape where everyone was fighting for their next breath. She tapped into the "Server Channel". A line of numbers appeared in the top left. "Server: US-008 "Current Online: 9911/10000" Ten thousand people started. Less than ten hours in, eighty-nine were already gone. "That doesn't add up." Everyone's starter crate came with a rusty iron axe and five units of wood. Plus the initial fuel the campfire had when they arrived—that alone bought them ten hours minimum, even if they just sat there doing nothing. What the hell did those people do to get eliminated so fast? The channel was moving fast, messages scrolling by every second. Desperation dripped from every line. "Someone help, I'm freezing my ass off out here. This stupid axe can't cut sh*t—every swing just bounces off and rattles my whole arm. Can anyone spare a couple logs? My dad's a senior VP at Walker Group. I'll wire you a million dollars when we get back, I swear." "Wake up, buddy. If your dad's still alive, he's out there chopping trees right now too." "Don't even talk to me. I spotted a wooden crate in the snow earlier, got all excited, ran over—and before I got within ten feet, some white rabbit thing jumped out of a drift. Teeth like needles. Almost took a chunk out of my leg. Missed the crate, wasted all that energy for nothing." "I saw that too! Random crates spawn in the wild. I opened a wooden one and got two chocolate bars and some coal." Reading through the chaos, Riley picked out two keywords, "Random Reward Crates" and "Dangerous Creatures". So this world was deeper than she thought. Wooden crates, copper crates—these randomly spawning resource points were the real way to get ahead. Coal came from crates. That was useful to know. And if coal was in crates, steel probably was too. But something bothered her. According to what people were saying, reward crates weren't exactly rare. So why hadn't she found a single one during her lumber run? She doubted it was just bad luck. Riley exited chat and tapped into the "Trading Market". "Seller: MountainMan88 Item: Stone x2 Wants: White Bread x5" "Seller: LoneWolf_21 Item: Cotton Cloth Wants: Clean Water" "Seller: NotDeadYet Item: Wood x3 Wants: Anything edible" Most people were trading for food and wood. The stuff that kept you alive right now. Things like stone and cloth were getting dumped cheap—nobody had the luxury of thinking long-term. Riley looked at her own inventory. Eighty units of wood staring back at her. Her heart beat a little faster. In this opening phase, where wood literally meant the difference between life and death, the resources in her hands were basically gold bars. "Time to trade," she muttered to herself. "Coal, steel—can't get those from chopping trees. And right now, wood's at maximum value. If I wait, the exchange rate shifts." Even with the chainsaw dead, she still had the handsaw. Less efficient, sure, but she could gather more wood if she needed it. Short-term, she wasn't going to run out. She clicked to post a message in the channel. "System Prompt: Detected that you have not set a virtual ID. Please enter your nickname (cannot be changed after setting)." Riley stared at the blank input box. Naming things was the worst. She sat there for a long time, nothing coming to mind. Finally, she gave up. Couldn't think of anything cool or clever, so she'd just go with something random. Her fingers tapped across the virtual keyboard—SpicyBurger. "Setting successful. ID locked." The prompt closed. Riley posted her message. "SpicyBurger: Selling wood in bulk. Looking for: Coal, Steel, High-calorie food. DM me with offers—what you have and your rate. Good deals go fast, don't sleep on this." For three seconds after the message appeared, the channel went dead silent. Then it exploded. "SpicyBurger? That name's making me hungry, what the hell." "Never mind the name—'wood in bulk'! We got a whale in here! Everyone else is stressing about the next hour and this person's already running a business?" "I need some! My campfire's down to like two hours. I don't know if I actually die when it hits zero but I don't wanna find out." Suddenly, half the channel was scrambling for wood. But then the skeptics crawled out. "Hang on. Everyone started with the same rusty axe. Chopping a tree in this weather takes twenty, thirty minutes minimum. Where's she getting 'bulk' wood from? Sounds like a scam." "InvincibleWarrior: Everybody chill. Look at that ID—sounds like a girl's handle. I'm a grown man, been busting my ass, and I've only got like ten logs saved up. My hands are shredded. Some girl with a food name claims she's got bulk? She's trying to run a game. Scam people out of their stuff." "Iron_Tough: Agreed. Scammers made it through the apocalypse too, I guess. My advice: ignore her. Don't get played. How much wood can a woman chop anyway? Probably can't even lift the axe right, lol." Riley scrolled through the messages, expression flat. She almost laughed. But some people pushed back. "FishHater44: How is it a scam? If she doesn't deliver, you don't complete the trade. Just 'cause you can't chop that much wood doesn't mean nobody can." Riley nodded slightly. That one had a point. But she didn't waste energy arguing in the channel. Instead, she flipped on Do Not Disturb for private messages—only allowing chat requests that included a trade offer. Some people didn't actually care whether she had wood. They just couldn't stand seeing someone else do well. "Ding. Ding. Ding." Private messages started pouring in like rain. Most players weren't idiots. Faced with the very real threat of freezing to death, they'd try anything for a chance. Riley opened the first one. "Windwalker: I got "Coal x3" from a crate. How much wood can I get for it? I can't chop anymore. The wind out here is insane. I tried to throw the coal in my fire but it just kept popping back out. System says my campfire level's too low, won't let me use it. I'm out of wood. My fire's almost dead." Riley thought for a moment. "Three coal for five wood. Deal?" She hadn't known about that restriction. Coal was supposed to be better fuel than wood—didn't expect the game to lock it behind a level gate. The reply came instantly, "Deal. But five wood feels light. It's coal." The guy was conflicted. He knew coal had value, but he was desperate. "I'll make it six. Final offer." Riley wasn't sure about coal's real value yet. Six was her limit. "Fine. Deal." They both dropped their items into the trade window. A moment later, it completed. A flash of white light. Riley's inventory lost six wood. Gained three chunks of coal, each about the size of a small melon. One down. "CrunchyFrog: Hey, I got two "Iron Ingots" from a crate. System calls them "Scrap Steel". Can I get eight wood for them? Trying to stock up enough to sleep through the night." Riley replied, "Sure. Initiate." In just over ten minutes, her wood stockpile dropped significantly. But her inventory filled up with good stuff. "Coal x10 "Stone x23 "Scrap Steel x5 "Raw Meat x2 "White Bread x2 "Basic Torch Blueprint x1" The blueprint was new. The description said it was required for crafting certain items. Seemed useful, so she'd traded for it. Meanwhile, back in the channel, that "InvincibleWarrior" guy who'd been mocking her earlier seemed to notice that people were actually completing trades. His tone got bitter. "InvincibleWarrior: Whatever. She probably got lucky with a high-tier crate. Let's see how long her stock lasts. Once the wood's gone, she'll be begging me to let her join my group." The people who'd successfully traded with Riley popped into the channel to thank her. That might have been fine—except the thanks caused problems. Since Riley had stopped trading for now, most people hadn't gotten anything. And the sky was darkening. Temperature outside the campfire radius was dropping fast. Gathering wood was getting harder. Trading was their only hope. The ones who'd pinned everything on Riley, seeing her stop, started losing it. "You said 'in bulk'! You did like five trades and quit. What are we supposed to do now?" "Keep trading! My fire's almost out. You want us to go chop trees in the dark?" "If you couldn't deliver, why'd you post? Showing off and then hiding." Whether it was coordinated or just genuine rage, the number of people defending Riley in the channel shrank fast. Mostly it was attacks now. Accusations of being irresponsible. Using scarcity tactics. Playing games with people's lives. Riley closed the channel. She couldn't be bothered. In a life-or-death situation like this, people losing it was normal. If she actually had unlimited resources, she'd trade more. But she didn't. And back on Earth, nobody had ever handed her anything out of charity. She wasn't about to start playing savior now. She looked down at the "Basic Torch Blueprint" in her inventory. "Requirements: Wood x10, Kerosene, Scrap Steel x2" Note: Requires Level 2 Workbench to craft." She leaned back against the crate again. Felt the weight of her stockpile pressing back against that lingering sense of unease. In this world, your ID didn't matter. Your gender didn't matter either. What mattered was who held the resources. She looked at what she had left: 36 units of wood. Plus the steel, coal, and stone from trading. Time to plan. Upgrading to a Level 2 campfire required 55 wood. She had all the other materials. For the wood, she'd just have to use the handsaw tomorrow and gather a little more. That settled, she pulled a few more logs from inventory and arranged them on top of the crate, making a small enclosed space. Curled up inside it, she watched the sky outside slowly darken to black. Her eyes grew heavy. She drifted off. Chapter 4 The Culling Riley woke to the kind of soreness that made you reconsider ever moving again. She'd slept like the dead—no dreams, no blizzard, just nothing. When she opened her eyes, the first things she saw were the logs she'd stacked as a windbreak and the steady glow of the campfire. She tried to stretch. Big mistake. Every muscle in her body lit up at once, screaming in protest. "Sh*t." Riley sucked air through her teeth and pressed a hand to her aching shoulder. Her lower back felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to it. Yesterday's work had been too much. She wasn't weak—far from it—but she was still human. The lactic acid had settled in overnight, and now she moved like an arthritic tin man. At least she was alive. She stowed the windbreak logs back in her inventory and looked around. The world hadn't changed. Same dull gray sky. Same swirling snow. Outside the six-foot radius of the fire, the drifts looked deeper than yesterday. The wind had been busy. Riley pulled out the half-empty water bottle and wet her throat. Then she retrieved the white bread she'd traded for yesterday. Compared to that dense, flavorless black bread, this was practically cake. She tore off small pieces, letting the faint sweetness dissolve on her tongue, and habitually opened the "Server Channel". She stopped chewing. The number in the top left hit her like a physical blow. "Current Online Players: 4968/10000" "Five thousand..." Riley's eyes went wide. In a single night, that number had been cut in half. Five thousand people. Gone. Winked out of existence on this frozen ice field while she slept. "Ding." The system notification cut through her thoughts—cold, emotionless, like it was announcing the weather. "Global Announcement: Congratulations to all survivors for successfully surviving the first day. "This was a culling. Last night eliminated those fools who failed to add fuel to their fires or refused to gather wood. Remember: in this place, tears mean nothing. When you die here, you're dead-dead. "You who remain are the lucky ones. "Grace Period: A five-day 'New Player Support Period' now begins. For the next five days, your initial supply crates will refresh daily with a fixed amount of food. "Special Reward: Each survivor receives one pair of "Standard Issue Snow Boots (Common)". Be grateful for this mercy. Enjoy the game." The words sat there on her screen. Fools. Mercy. The system's tone dripped with contempt. The math was simple. Starting package: five hours of fuel. Initial gift: five units of wood, another five hours. Total ten hours, if you did absolutely nothing. The ones who'd frozen to death last night—they were the ones who'd clung to hope. The ones too scared to move. The ones who'd told themselves someone would save them. Five thousand people. One night. Gone. This wasn't a game. It was a slaughter. In the channel, the survivors who'd made it through were clearly rattled by the numbers too. "Holy sh*t... My friend's icon went dark last night. Does that mean he's dead? Actually dead?" "I can't do this. I don't wanna play anymore, I wanna go home. I swear I'll work today. I'll chop wood, I'll do whatever, just please—" "Everyone move! Don't save your strength! If you die, that's it. No respawns!" Panic spread fast. But almost immediately, the tone shifted. The fear found a target. "That SpicyBurger—if she'd shared more wood yesterday, would so many people have died?" "For real. If she had extra, why not just give it away? Why did it have to be trades? She could've at least loaned some out." "This is what happens when people hoard resources and watch others freeze. Remember that name. Don't trade with her. Ever." Riley frowned. Here we go again. She scrolled up. Sure enough, there it was—that familiar ID: "InvincibleWarrior". He was going hard in the channel. "She's profiting off suffering. That's what some people do. Women like that are the worst—hoarding supplies while people die around them. Wait and see. Someone like her won't last." Riley laughed. Actually laughed out loud. Moral blackmail. In the apocalypse. She typed, "If you want wood, go cut it yourself. I'm not your mommy. No amount of crying in chat is gonna put logs in your inventory. You'd get more done if you just picked up your d*mn axe." The channel went quiet for a second. Then the reasonable voices piped up. "She's right. Nobody owes you anything. Work for it." "Exactly. Just 'cause someone's quiet doesn't mean they're an easy target." In a world where staying alive took everything you had, expecting charity was the dumbest move of all. Riley didn't waste more energy on it. People like that—the more you engaged, the more they thrived. Let him run his mouth. She had bigger things to worry about. She closed the channel and turned to the big wooden crate—her initial supply point. Sure enough, new items had materialized inside. "Bottled Water x3 "White Bread x3 "Fresh Orange Juice x1 "Standard Snow Boots x1" "Orange juice?" Riley picked up the bottle, genuinely surprised. The orange liquid inside sloshed gently. Vitamins. The system was actually giving them vitamins. She pulled off her old shoes—already damp and cold—and swapped into the new boots. They were clunky, sure. But they gripped the snow, and the insulation was real. The chill that had been seeping up through her soles disappeared instantly. Next, she opened her toolbox. Goggles on. Thick cut-resistant gloves. Head-to-toe gear. "Time to work." The channel noise faded from her mind. She had one priority today, and it wasn't arguing with idiots. She picked up the chainsaw and headed back to the tree line. The cold played tricks on batteries. She'd known that, intellectually. But knowing it and feeling it were different things. After just eight trees, the last spare battery gave out. The chainsaw stuttered, died, and went silent in her hands. Riley stared at it. "Son of a b*tch." Chapter 5 Dead Battery Riley stared at the dead chainsaw in her hands and shook her head. Without power, it was just an expensive paperweight. If she wanted more wood, she'd have to do it the old-fashioned way—pick up the axe or the manual handsaw from the toolbox and go to war with frozen timber. But eight more trees were eight more trees. Her stockpile was looking healthy. "First things first. Get these back." She sucked it up, stowed the chainsaw in her inventory, and started hauling. Her body screamed even louder than yesterday. Every muscle felt like it had been replaced with concrete. She dragged each log back one at a time, moving like a zombie. Drag. Rest two minutes. Drag again. The wind howled in her ears. Riley lost track of time, lost track of everything except the mechanical rhythm of work. By the time the sun was high—not that you could really see it through the clouds—she dragged the last log into the campfire's radius. It dissolved into light, absorbed by the system. Riley all but collapsed into the snow. "Acquired: Wood x40" She lay there for a moment, chest heaving, staring at the number in her inventory. A tired smile crept across her face. She had enough. Combined with the coal and steel from yesterday's trades, she had everything she needed for the upgrade. Riley forced herself upright and walked to the campfire. On the floating translucent panel, the "Upgrade" button glowed that tempting gold. "Upgrade Primitive Shelter to Lv.2? "Cost: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Scrap Steel x5 "Remaining after upgrade: Wood x16, Stone x3, Coal x0, Steel x0" "Upgrade." Riley took a breath and pressed it. "Hmmmm—!" A blinding white light erupted from the heart of the campfire, swallowing everything. Riley squeezed her eyes shut. No explosion. No thunder. Just a sound like Legos snapping together. A few seconds later, the light faded. Riley opened her eyes. And stopped breathing. The campfire wasn't just a campfire anymore. The rough stone ring had transformed into something neat and intentional—a proper firepit with a stone border for insulation, a place to set things, even a simple steel grate attached to the side. But that wasn't the big news. The heat that used to push back the cold within a six-foot radius now stretched a full fifteen feet. Inside that circle, snow was actively melting, revealing dark frozen soil underneath. In one corner, she spotted a patch of moss stubbornly poking through. Riley spun around. Behind the big wooden crate, a small log cabin stood waiting. It wasn't much—maybe forty feet square, built from rough-hewn logs. Nothing fancy. But it was solid. Four walls and a roof, blocking wind and snow completely. Riley walked over and pushed open the heavy wooden door. Warm air hit her face. Inside was simple: a wooden bed frame piled with dry grass, a crude workbench, a chair, and a small fireplace connected to a chimney that ran up through the roof. Rustic. But right now, it was heaven. Wood and fire. Four walls. A roof. Home. Riley ran her hand along the rough wall. Her eyes stung a little. She wouldn't have to sleep in the open anymore. Wouldn't have to wake up every few hours to check the fire. Wouldn't have to worry about freezing to death in her sleep. Right on cue, the server announcement chimed. Gold text this time, blazing right in the center of everyone's vision. "Server Announcement: Congratulations to player SpicyBurger for being the first to achieve "Level 2 Shelter". Rewards have been distributed." The chat channel, which had been wallowing in fear and despair, exploded. "Holy sh*t? Level 2 already? What does Level 2 unlock? Can you post pics, big shot?" "That's the wood seller from yesterday? No way. Absolute legend." "Carry me please! SpicyBurger, I'll be your loyal follower. I can cook, I can clean, I can—" "Teach us, master! How'd you gather materials so fast? What's your secret?" Compliments. Pleas. Desperate attempts to get noticed. And then, of course, the sour grapes. "InvincibleWarrior: Big deal. Just profiteering off everyone else's suffering. If she'd shared that wood instead of selling it, maybe those five thousand people would still be alive. How does it feel to climb on corpses?" "GodLovesMeFirst: Seriously. Building your success on other people's deaths. Karma's real. She'll get hers." Riley's jaw tightened. If InvincibleWarrior had been standing in front of her right now, she'd have knocked his teeth out. Guys like him—useless themselves, but always ready to tear down anyone who actually accomplished something. Sewer rats. Her private messages exploded too. She'd set it to only accept trade offers, but people had found a workaround—using the "trade note" function to send spam. "Hey beautiful, I'm a personal trainer. Great shape. Wanna see? Hit me with some wood and I'll do a voice call with you!" A photo of some guy flexing in a mirror, shirt off. Riley glanced at it, unimpressed. Decent abs. Pathetic attitude. Dude was clearly strong enough to chop wood—why was he wasting time on this? She'd never mentioned her gender, so most people probably assumed anyone who'd gathered that much wood must be a guy. The messages reflected that assumption. Some women sent selfies too, trying to flirt their way into favor. Didn't matter. Shameless cut across all demographics. From the backgrounds in the photos, everyone seemed to be in different locations. But one thing was consistent: they all had trees nearby. The system must have arranged that—a new player perk. "A bunch of degenerates." Riley's face went cold. She changed her privacy settings to "Friends Only". Then she added a line to her trading post description. "No spam. Send junk, get blocked." Silence. Blessed silence. She took a breath, let the noise drain away, and focused on what mattered. "First-place upgrade reward..." She opened her inventory. Sitting there, glowing faintly purple, was a gift box. For more exciting content, please download the "JoyRead" app to continue reading.
Chapter 1 The Countdown Ends It was the year 2027, and the end of the world was now less than an hour away. "00:59:23" Riley Carter stood on a ladder with a screw clenched between her teeth, an impact driver in her hand, securing the last window panel in place. A month ago, that timer had just appeared out of nowhere, hanging in the corner of everyone's vision like it had always been there. At first, people wrote it off as some kind of mass hacker prank. The government fed the media soothing statements in an attempt to keep things calm, but there was no way to talk down the panic as prices kept rising and supplies were held in a monopoly in real time. News outlets might spin whatever narrative they wanted, but no one could argue with the price of eggs. For a while, it was a frenzy. People cleaned out grocery stores like locusts. The government did what they could—price caps, purchase limits, reassurances from the podium—but none of it mattered. The cost of living kept climbing, and bit by bit, the country started coming apart at the seams. Online, it was a circus. Some people posted doom-laden predictions. Others openly celebrated the thought of the world finally burning. A few just seemed relieved they wouldn't have to clock in on Monday. In that final hour, things got truly ugly. Both on the streets and on social media, it was chaos. Some people figured why not went out with a bang? If the world was ending, they'd spend their last hours doing every reckless thing they'd ever fantasized about. Others, paralyzed by fear of whatever was coming, scrambled for anything they could hoard. Supplies. Weapons. Gasoline. Didn't matter what, as long as they had more of it than the next guy. Most people just wanted to be with the ones they loved. Riley didn't have that luxury anymore. Fresh out of community college, she'd lost both her parents in a highway pileup eighteen months back. The only thing they'd left her was the family hardware store, a cramped little place wedged between a laundromat and a taqueria. She'd been running it solo for just over a year when that d*mn countdown appeared overhead. At first, she'd thought maybe an apocalypse wouldn't be the worst thing. Maybe there'd be something on the other side. A reunion. But then she thought about her folks. They'd doted on her. Made her feel like the center of their world. And even though she'd grown a thick skin since going it alone, feeling indifferent to the world, she knew what they'd want. They'd want her to fight. To stay. She was the only piece of them still left in this world. People always say you aren't really gone until the last person forgets your name. As long as she kept breathing, kept carrying them with her another day, they weren't truly dead. Riley spat the screw into her palm, face calm, the impact driver whirring as she sank another fastener into the reinforced frame. "Flour's three hundred a pound now, and you can't even buy it straight—they make you tack on a bunch of other junk you don't need just to get it," she muttered to herself, shaking her head. When that timer first flickered into existence, Riley had done something smart. She'd liquidated everything. Converted every dollar she could scrape together into supplies. Unfortunately, by the time she hit the stores, inflation had already done its damage. Her savings didn't go nearly as far as they should have. Any cash that was left went toward tools. If the world was ending, she thought they could be useful. Riley pressed the last sheet of thick insulation foam into the window frame, seating it flush against the reinforced plywood beneath. The impact driver snarled as she buried the screws. Then she reached for her pneumatic glue gun—a satisfying pfft as the sealant filled the final gap. She wiped sweat from her forehead and climbed down off the ladder. Stepped back to admire her work. The little apartment was a fortress now. Doors reinforced. Windows barricaded. Every interior wall lined with an extra layer of insulation. She glanced down at herself. Custom-fit heavy-duty workwear. Slash-resistant fabric. More pockets than she'd ever need. Reinforced padding at the knees and elbows. It wasn't fashionable, but it was practical. And her real treasure: tools. A chainsaw. A reciprocating saw. The impact driver in her hand. A multi-bit screwdriver that had cost more than she wanted to admit. She'd brought everything usable from the shop back here, consolidated it into three massive toolboxes. She'd also grabbed some stuff like an air purifier and some spare filters—anything that might matter when civilization took a vacation. She didn't know what the countdown would bring. Some folks online predicted zombies. Others said asteroid impact. Volcanic winter. Alien invasion. Take your pick. Food. Tools. Shelter. She'd even started working out, building strength she'd never needed before. She'd done everything she could think of to prepare. Whatever was coming, she figured she'd last longer than most. With nothing left to do, she dropped onto one of the big toolboxes laid flat on the floor, wiped her forehead again, and pulled out her phone. Most news apps had crashed. The only things still loading were comment sections, and they were going crazy. [Anyone got rice? I'll pay eight grand for a bag. Please, we got nothing left.] [Forget it, man. Money's toilet paper now. Saw it with my own eyes—some rich assholes cleared out the Costco warehouse last week. All that 'purchase limit' crap was just theater. Shelves were empty 'cause the stock never made it there. It's all sitting in some hedge fund guy's basement.] [No kidding? Same thing happened to me! Store manager kept telling me, 'We're limiting purchases, come back next week, we'll put your name on the list.' So the whole time the back room was empty? They were just jerking us around?] [Of course they were. Rich people cornered the market on everything. So what are normal people supposed to do? Just sit here and die?] [Anyone know what actually happens when the clock hits zero? Like, is it nukes? That virus thing from that old video game?] Riley locked her phone. Tucked it away. She didn't have anything to add to that conversation. A month ago, when the countdown first showed up, prices had spiked instantly. A fifty-pound bag of rice that normally went for thirty bucks jumped to eight hundred overnight. By yesterday, it was breaking two grand. The wealthy had rolled up with trucks and cleaned out supermarkets. Riley had been smart—she'd gone early, bought stuff that would keep, stuff that was calorie-dense and cheap. Chocolate. Survival biscuits. Canned goods. It wasn't much, but it was enough for one person, at least for a while. She took a deep breath and glanced at the timer. "00:01:10" Just over a minute. Riley gripped the toolbox beneath her. Knuckles white. Who knew what would happen when that thing hit zero? Maybe it'd be like 2012—all hype, nothing real. In that last minute, her life flickered past. Her parents' faces. The hardware store. The lonely months since. "00:00:00" The countdown ended. Riley had just started to breathe a sigh of relief—nothing happened, maybe it really was nothing—when the world lurched beneath her. A dizzying weightlessness. A sensation of falling. Everything spun. ***** She didn't know how long she was out. "Whew." A wind like a knife blade sliced across her face. Riley's eyes snapped open. Her warm apartment was gone. In its place, an endless white expanse stretched in every direction. Snow whipped through the air. Wind howled like a wounded animal. And at her feet, a small campfire guttered in the gale, threatening to die at any second. "What the—" Before she could process, a chime rang directly in her skull. Not heard. Known. "Welcome to the Extreme Cold Survival Game. "Earth no longer exists. This is your new home. This is your grave. "Survival rules are as follows. "1. Each player begins with one campfire. It is your only defense against the cold. If the campfire dies, you will be judged deceased by the system. Not that it matters—without the fire, you won't last anyway. "2. This is a real world. You can die from hunger. From exposure. From animal attack. "3. Supplies stockpiled in your previous world do not carry over. Only items on your person, or in direct physical contact at the moment of transfer, are retained. "4. Struggle to survive. It is your only hope." Riley's heart slammed against her ribs. Supplies didn't carry over? Her mind flashed to those wealthy forum posters bragging about their warehouse stockpiles. And then she looked down at herself. Workwear. Intact. And— She was still sitting on the three giant toolboxes. They sat solidly in the snow, dusted with powder, unmistakably here. "Whew." Riley let out a long breath. A white cloud dispersed in front of her face. Pity, though. During her renovations, she'd stocked those boxes with a lot of power tools. The expensive impact driver. The reciprocating saw. In a world with no electrical outlets, once those batteries died, they were just dead weight. But even so. The hand tools. The consumables. The sheer volume of stuff in those boxes—it was a treasure beyond measure in a place like this. Riley forced herself to calm down. She was here. She'd deal with it. Something new lived in her mind now. She concentrated, and a translucent pale-blue screen materialized in front of her eyes. Looked just like a video game HUD. "Personal Panel "Name: Riley Carter "ID: 1120-US "Level: 1 (Standard Survivor) "Strength: 8 (Years of manual labor have made you stronger than average) "Agility: 8 (You've got quick reflexes) "Constitution: 6 (You've been skipping meals lately) "Spirit: 9 (You keep your head when others panic) "Inventory: 16/16 slots (Base capacity)" "Inventory?" Riley studied the sixteen empty squares at the bottom of the display. She reached out, touched one of the toolboxes, and thought the word, "Store." Whoosh. The heavy box vanished. In its place, a tiny icon appeared in the first inventory slot, a miniature "x1" in the corner. "It actually worked." For the first time since arriving, a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. Retrieve. Thud. The toolbox landed back in the snow, puffing up powder. No energy cost. No sense of weight. And in that inventory, she could carry anything, regardless of how heavy it was. Later on, when she went scavenging, that would make all the difference. Riley rubbed her stiff, freezing hands together and turned her attention to the campfire at her feet. It was the only warmth in this frozen wasteland. Hovering above the flames, visible only to her, were a few lines of glowing text. "Basic Campfire (Lv.1) "Remaining Burn Time: 05:28:00 "Current Coverage: Radius six feet (Blocks wind and snow) "Upgrade Requirements: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Steel x5 "Description: This is your life. Do not let it die. Upgrading expands your safe zone and unlocks additional construction options." "Needs upgrading." Riley frowned. Wood and stone she could probably find. But coal? Steel? Out here in the middle of nowhere? A flash of movement caught her eye. A small wooden box, half-buried in the snow not far from the fire. The starter crate. Had to be. Riley didn't rush. First, she pulled the claw hammer from her belt—the one she always kept there, habit from years of work—and gripped it tight. She scanned the tree line. Listened past the wind. Nothing moved. No sounds but the storm. She walked over quickly, crouched by the box. No lock. She pried the lid open with the claw end of her hammer. Inside, a handful of items. "Obtained: Iron Axe x1 "Obtained: Stale Dark Bread x2 "Obtained: 500ml Bottled Water x1 "Obtained: Kindling x5 "Obtained: Insulated Field Jacket x1 "Obtained: Utility Rope (25ft) "Obtained: Thermal Underwear (Set) x2 Not much. Barely anything. Riley picked up one of the dark loaves. It was rock hard. She examined the jacket—basic, but warm-looking. "So this is what a standard survivor starts with." At least the system had thought of everything. Including the underwear. She'd half-expected to wake up naked in the snow; at least she didn't have to worry about that. She stored everything in her inventory, then shrugged on the field jacket. The temperature shift was brutal. Even those few seconds exposed had left her hands numb. Hypothermia would set in fast out here. Jacket on, she hurried back to the campfire. She pulled the five units of Kindling from her inventory and tossed them onto the flames. The fire roared higher. Warmth flooded over her. "Fuel added. Remaining Burn Time: 10:28:00" Ten hours. If she didn't move fast, in ten hours she'd freeze to death on this ice field. And the game had made it clear—if the fire died, the system would judge her dead. Whether she actually froze or not. Riley lifted her head and scanned the landscape. She was in a sparse coniferous forest. Barely alive trees, crusted with frost, dotted the area not far from her position. "Wood." A slow smile spread across her face. She patted the toolbox beside her. "Other people might have axes. But felling a tree with just an axe takes hours. Exhausts you." She unlatched the box. Pulled out the chainsaw. Checked the battery gauge—full. "I've got a handsaw in here too. And a chainsaw with a full charge." The battery wouldn't last forever. But it would last long enough to give her a massive head start. In this race for survival, that was everything. Chapter 2 The Chainsaw The wind screamed across the open ground, picking up loose snow and flinging it against her goggles like sand. It sounded like static. Riley had pulled her basic work gear from the toolbox before heading out. Now she stood in the snow, surrounded by clusters of thin conifers that looked half-dead already. She took a breath. The air burned going down. "Zzzzzzz—!!!" She squeezed the trigger. The orange-and-black lithium-ion chainsaw in her hands roared to life, the chain spinning so fast it blurred. She buried the teeth in the nearest pine trunk. Wood chips exploded everywhere. Fragrant shavings—still wet with resin—scattered across the pristine snow, stark and yellow against all that white. Five seconds. Crack. The pine tree, thick as her arm, groaned and tilted. Then it fell slow and heavy into a drift, sending up a puff of powder. "God bless modern technology." Riley shook out her wrist—the vibration had numbed her fingers—and allowed herself a small smile. Without that chainsaw, with just the basic iron axe the system had given her, felling a tree frozen solid like this would have taken twenty minutes minimum. And it would have left her soaked with sweat. In subzero temps, sweat was a death sentence. Once your base layers got wet, the moment you stopped moving, your body temperature would plummet. Hypothermia would follow fast. Riley didn't waste time celebrating. She knew the saw in her hands was a hungry machine. She'd brought two spare high-capacity batteries, sure, but until she found a way to recharge them, every second the motor ran was borrowed time. She had to gather as much wood as possible before the batteries gave out. "Zzzzz—Zzzzz—" At the edge of the forest, the chainsaw's snarl rose and fell, shattering the frozen silence. Riley worked like she was possessed. Fell a tree. Move to the next. Fell another. But she had to stay alert—watch for hidden snow pits underfoot, keep adjusting her collar against the wind that kept finding its way down her neck. Her stamina drained faster than she'd anticipated. In extreme cold, body burned through calories just to stay alive. Added walking through knee-deep snow, where every step took three times the energy of walking on pavement, and the math got ugly fast. Pretty soon, Riley was breathing hard. Her breath fogged the inside of her goggles, and she had to keep wiping them clear. "Zzzzz..." She was mid-cut on a tree—didn't even know which number anymore—when the chainsaw's roar stuttered. Died. The chain jammed solid in the wood. A red light blinked at her. Dead battery. Riley yanked the saw free and patted its housing. "Good work, buddy." Genuine regret in her voice. She straightened up and looked around. Pine trunks lay scattered across the snow in every direction. A decent haul. She counted silently. "Twenty-three total." Then the next problem hit her. According to the system, until she actually possessed these logs, they were still just natural resources. That meant they didn't qualify for Inventory storage. She couldn't just snap her fingers and make them disappear. She had to drag them back to camp. Riley grabbed the nearest pine and tried to pull. Heavy. Like, unreasonably heavy. Fresh-cut wood was full of moisture. Add the branches catching in the snow, dragging like anchors, and she felt like she was hauling a dead body through mud. "Huff... huff..." She gritted her teeth, looped rope around the trunk, slung it over her shoulder, leaned forward, and started walking. Inch by inch. The tree line to her campfire was maybe fifty yards. Right now, it felt like fifty miles. By the time she'd wrestled the fourth tree back into the fire's warm radius, she was wrecked. Her legs felt like someone had filled them with concrete. Her lungs burned from hauling freezing air through them. "Can't... can't do more." Riley made the call. She stopped. Those nineteen trees still out there in the snow—they called to her. Tempted her. But if she kept pushing without rest, without fuel for herself, she'd collapse out there. And out there, collapse meant death. She dropped down next to the big wooden crate that had held her starter supplies. It was less than three feet from the campfire. The flames danced orange and red, pumping out heat that felt like heaven. The shift from frozen to warm made her shiver violently. She pulled off her goggles and thick gloves, set them near the fire to warm up, then—still shaking—pulled the half-empty water bottle from her Inventory. Took a small sip. Then the bread. Two black bricks that looked more like construction material than food. "Crunch." Riley bit off a piece with effort. It was coarse. Tasted like sawdust with a hint of burnt toast. Bitter. But it was calories. Carbs. Fuel for her own fire. She forced herself to chew, swallow. When the food hit her stomach, warmth finally started spreading through her core. The uncontrollable shaking eased. After half a loaf, Riley leaned back against the crate. Her eyelids drooped. Post-exhaustion crash hit her like a wave. The campfire crackled. The wind seemed farther away now. Muffled. She really wanted to sleep... Her head nodded. Her body started sliding sideways. "Wait—" Some animal instinct jolted her awake just before she went under. She pinched her thigh. Hard. Then looked up at the timer floating above the flames. "Shelter Level 1 "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 06:28:00" Six and a half hours. If she slept too deep, too long, and that fire went out—what then? Even ignoring the obvious—that she'd freeze to death in this hellhole without a heat source—the game rules were clear. When the campfire hits zero, it's game over. "No sleeping. Not allowed." Riley slapped her own cheeks, forced herself upright. She stayed near the fire, but she didn't take off her heavy work clothes. She remembered reading something once, a survival article. "In the late stages of hypothermia, your hypothalamus malfunctions. You get a false sensation of heat. It's called "paradoxical undressing"—people strip down right before they freeze to death." "Okay. Process these four. Keep the fire fed." She pulled a traditional handsaw from the toolbox. Looking at the four thick pine logs on the ground, she almost laughed. Without power tools, breaking these down into burnable pieces would take at least half an hour. Burn the little energy she had left. But what choice did she have? Riley knelt in the snow, positioned the blade against the trunk, and was about to start cutting— A soft white light shot out from the system panel on her chest. It washed over the logs. "Ding! "Detected felled, intact logs within shelter range. "Perform quick recovery?" Riley's hand froze mid-saw. Quick recovery? It took her a second to process. Then relief flooded through her so hard she almost cried. "Yes! Recover!" She didn't hesitate. The next moment, something impossible happened. The four pine trunks—the ones she'd have to saw and split by hand, the ones that represented hours of brutal labor—dissolved into pale blue light particles. Not into dust. Into neat, uniform logs that stacked themselves automatically in her Inventory. The branches, the needles, all the useless parts—purified out of existence. "Recovery successful! "Obtained: Common Wood x20" Riley's eyes went wide, staring at the perfect lumber in her inventory display. Looked like it came straight from a hardware store. "One tree gives five units of wood? "And I don't have to cut it myself?" This changed everything. It meant she only had to handle the felling and the dragging. Once a log crossed into her camp's boundary, the system recognized it as hers. The most time-consuming part—the processing—just... didn't exist anymore. Riley immediately grabbed five units of wood and fed them to the fire. Whoosh. The flames leaped, hungry and grateful. "Fuel added. "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 12:20:00" "Five logs, five hours..." She did the math fast, looking at the fifteen units still on the ground. If she threw all of those in, that'd be another fifteen hours. Total of twenty-seven. She could sleep like the dead right now, and that fire would still be burning when she woke up. Security. For the first time since the world ended, Riley felt something like security. She selected the remaining wood. Deposited it all. Watched the countdown tick up to a very comfortable "27:20:00". Then her nerves finally let go. She dragged one of the toolboxes into position to block the wind, wrapped the field jacket tight around herself, pulled her hat down over her eyes, leaned back against the warm crate, and let the crackle of the fire pull her under. ***** She didn't sleep long. When she opened her eyes again, the sky was still that same dull gray-white. Impossible to tell if it was morning or afternoon. System clock said three hours. Her body ached. Shoulders and arms especially—felt like she'd gone ten rounds with someone. But her head was clear. She stretched her stiff neck and stood up. The snow seemed lighter. The feathery flakes had tapered off into sporadic icy grains. Riley ate a little more, got some fuel back in the tank, then stepped outside the campfire's warmth. The fire's effect wasn't what she'd expected. It wasn't that the temperature gradually dropped as you moved away. It was sharper than that. Like there was an invisible barrier around the flames. Inside, livable. Outside, the cold hit you like a wall. She wandered a little way off. The cold found every gap in her clothing. She thought about going farther, exploring. But there was nothing visible except that stand of trees she'd already worked. Maybe stuff was buried under the snow, but she couldn't see it. "No proper snow boots. Not going far." Riley glanced at the endless white distance with real regret. "Don't get greedy. Get those nineteen trees first." She turned. Looked at the woods. Her loot was still out there. And now she knew: if she could drag them back into the campfire's circle, the system would cash them out automatically. "Time to work." Riley rubbed her hands together. Let the motivation build. For the next few hours, she became a machine. Drag a tree to camp. Recover it. Go back for another. Repeat. It was boring. Exhausting. But watching those logs turn into numbers in her inventory—that feeling was hard to describe. Satisfying, in a way nothing had been satisfying in a long time. When the last pine trunk crossed into the light and dissolved into particles, Riley just collapsed. Lay flat in the snow and stared at the gray sky. She pulled up her Inventory. The once-empty slots were full now. Stack after stack of wood icons. "Item: Common Wood "Quantity: 80 "Description: Basic survival resource. Can be used for fuel or construction." Eighty units. Plus what was already burning in the campfire. Her day's work had yielded a clean hundred. One unit of wood burned for one hour. Riley looked at the flames dancing in front of her. Felt the heat on her face. Let herself smile, wide and real. "One hundred hours." Four full days. While everyone else was probably still panicking. Crying. Begging. Trying to figure out how to survive their first night in this frozen nightmare... She, Riley, had enough fuel stockpiled to last four days. Which meant: for the next ninety-six hours, unless she actively chose to die, nobody and nothing could put her fire out. She pulled the half-empty water bottle from Inventory. The space must have been insulated somehow—the water was still warm. Almost body temperature. She sipped it. Tasted sweet, even though it was just tap water. "Okay. Next step." Her gaze settled on the "Upgrade" button on the campfire panel. This open-air setup was fine for now. But if she was going to survive long-term, she needed something better. A real shelter. All she needed was a little stone. Some coal. Some steel. Then she could build something worth calling home. Chapter 3 The Trading Game The blizzard howled outside, but within the six-foot radius of the campfire, the air stayed surprisingly warm—like the wind had hit an invisible wall and just couldn't reach. Riley leaned back against the dusty wooden crate, holding the half-empty water bottle in her hand. She stared into the flames for a moment, then focused her attention inward. The pale blue system panel unfolded in front of her eyes again. Now that the immediate crisis was handled, she finally had time to sit quietly and really explore this so-called "Survival System". Beyond the personal stats and inventory, the bottom of the panel had a row of function icons: Server Channel, Friends List, Trading Market, and Crafting Manual. Friends List was empty. No surprise there. She hadn't exactly been a social butterfly back in the old world, and she sure as hell wasn't going to make friends easily in a frozen hellscape where everyone was fighting for their next breath. She tapped into the "Server Channel". A line of numbers appeared in the top left. "Server: US-008 "Current Online: 9911/10000" Ten thousand people started. Less than ten hours in, eighty-nine were already gone. "That doesn't add up." Everyone's starter crate came with a rusty iron axe and five units of wood. Plus the initial fuel the campfire had when they arrived—that alone bought them ten hours minimum, even if they just sat there doing nothing. What the hell did those people do to get eliminated so fast? The channel was moving fast, messages scrolling by every second. Desperation dripped from every line. "Someone help, I'm freezing my ass off out here. This stupid axe can't cut sh*t—every swing just bounces off and rattles my whole arm. Can anyone spare a couple logs? My dad's a senior VP at Walker Group. I'll wire you a million dollars when we get back, I swear." "Wake up, buddy. If your dad's still alive, he's out there chopping trees right now too." "Don't even talk to me. I spotted a wooden crate in the snow earlier, got all excited, ran over—and before I got within ten feet, some white rabbit thing jumped out of a drift. Teeth like needles. Almost took a chunk out of my leg. Missed the crate, wasted all that energy for nothing." "I saw that too! Random crates spawn in the wild. I opened a wooden one and got two chocolate bars and some coal." Reading through the chaos, Riley picked out two keywords, "Random Reward Crates" and "Dangerous Creatures". So this world was deeper than she thought. Wooden crates, copper crates—these randomly spawning resource points were the real way to get ahead. Coal came from crates. That was useful to know. And if coal was in crates, steel probably was too. But something bothered her. According to what people were saying, reward crates weren't exactly rare. So why hadn't she found a single one during her lumber run? She doubted it was just bad luck. Riley exited chat and tapped into the "Trading Market". "Seller: MountainMan88 Item: Stone x2 Wants: White Bread x5" "Seller: LoneWolf_21 Item: Cotton Cloth Wants: Clean Water" "Seller: NotDeadYet Item: Wood x3 Wants: Anything edible" Most people were trading for food and wood. The stuff that kept you alive right now. Things like stone and cloth were getting dumped cheap—nobody had the luxury of thinking long-term. Riley looked at her own inventory. Eighty units of wood staring back at her. Her heart beat a little faster. In this opening phase, where wood literally meant the difference between life and death, the resources in her hands were basically gold bars. "Time to trade," she muttered to herself. "Coal, steel—can't get those from chopping trees. And right now, wood's at maximum value. If I wait, the exchange rate shifts." Even with the chainsaw dead, she still had the handsaw. Less efficient, sure, but she could gather more wood if she needed it. Short-term, she wasn't going to run out. She clicked to post a message in the channel. "System Prompt: Detected that you have not set a virtual ID. Please enter your nickname (cannot be changed after setting)." Riley stared at the blank input box. Naming things was the worst. She sat there for a long time, nothing coming to mind. Finally, she gave up. Couldn't think of anything cool or clever, so she'd just go with something random. Her fingers tapped across the virtual keyboard—SpicyBurger. "Setting successful. ID locked." The prompt closed. Riley posted her message. "SpicyBurger: Selling wood in bulk. Looking for: Coal, Steel, High-calorie food. DM me with offers—what you have and your rate. Good deals go fast, don't sleep on this." For three seconds after the message appeared, the channel went dead silent. Then it exploded. "SpicyBurger? That name's making me hungry, what the hell." "Never mind the name—'wood in bulk'! We got a whale in here! Everyone else is stressing about the next hour and this person's already running a business?" "I need some! My campfire's down to like two hours. I don't know if I actually die when it hits zero but I don't wanna find out." Suddenly, half the channel was scrambling for wood. But then the skeptics crawled out. "Hang on. Everyone started with the same rusty axe. Chopping a tree in this weather takes twenty, thirty minutes minimum. Where's she getting 'bulk' wood from? Sounds like a scam." "InvincibleWarrior: Everybody chill. Look at that ID—sounds like a girl's handle. I'm a grown man, been busting my ass, and I've only got like ten logs saved up. My hands are shredded. Some girl with a food name claims she's got bulk? She's trying to run a game. Scam people out of their stuff." "Iron_Tough: Agreed. Scammers made it through the apocalypse too, I guess. My advice: ignore her. Don't get played. How much wood can a woman chop anyway? Probably can't even lift the axe right, lol." Riley scrolled through the messages, expression flat. She almost laughed. But some people pushed back. "FishHater44: How is it a scam? If she doesn't deliver, you don't complete the trade. Just 'cause you can't chop that much wood doesn't mean nobody can." Riley nodded slightly. That one had a point. But she didn't waste energy arguing in the channel. Instead, she flipped on Do Not Disturb for private messages—only allowing chat requests that included a trade offer. Some people didn't actually care whether she had wood. They just couldn't stand seeing someone else do well. "Ding. Ding. Ding." Private messages started pouring in like rain. Most players weren't idiots. Faced with the very real threat of freezing to death, they'd try anything for a chance. Riley opened the first one. "Windwalker: I got "Coal x3" from a crate. How much wood can I get for it? I can't chop anymore. The wind out here is insane. I tried to throw the coal in my fire but it just kept popping back out. System says my campfire level's too low, won't let me use it. I'm out of wood. My fire's almost dead." Riley thought for a moment. "Three coal for five wood. Deal?" She hadn't known about that restriction. Coal was supposed to be better fuel than wood—didn't expect the game to lock it behind a level gate. The reply came instantly, "Deal. But five wood feels light. It's coal." The guy was conflicted. He knew coal had value, but he was desperate. "I'll make it six. Final offer." Riley wasn't sure about coal's real value yet. Six was her limit. "Fine. Deal." They both dropped their items into the trade window. A moment later, it completed. A flash of white light. Riley's inventory lost six wood. Gained three chunks of coal, each about the size of a small melon. One down. "CrunchyFrog: Hey, I got two "Iron Ingots" from a crate. System calls them "Scrap Steel". Can I get eight wood for them? Trying to stock up enough to sleep through the night." Riley replied, "Sure. Initiate." In just over ten minutes, her wood stockpile dropped significantly. But her inventory filled up with good stuff. "Coal x10 "Stone x23 "Scrap Steel x5 "Raw Meat x2 "White Bread x2 "Basic Torch Blueprint x1" The blueprint was new. The description said it was required for crafting certain items. Seemed useful, so she'd traded for it. Meanwhile, back in the channel, that "InvincibleWarrior" guy who'd been mocking her earlier seemed to notice that people were actually completing trades. His tone got bitter. "InvincibleWarrior: Whatever. She probably got lucky with a high-tier crate. Let's see how long her stock lasts. Once the wood's gone, she'll be begging me to let her join my group." The people who'd successfully traded with Riley popped into the channel to thank her. That might have been fine—except the thanks caused problems. Since Riley had stopped trading for now, most people hadn't gotten anything. And the sky was darkening. Temperature outside the campfire radius was dropping fast. Gathering wood was getting harder. Trading was their only hope. The ones who'd pinned everything on Riley, seeing her stop, started losing it. "You said 'in bulk'! You did like five trades and quit. What are we supposed to do now?" "Keep trading! My fire's almost out. You want us to go chop trees in the dark?" "If you couldn't deliver, why'd you post? Showing off and then hiding." Whether it was coordinated or just genuine rage, the number of people defending Riley in the channel shrank fast. Mostly it was attacks now. Accusations of being irresponsible. Using scarcity tactics. Playing games with people's lives. Riley closed the channel. She couldn't be bothered. In a life-or-death situation like this, people losing it was normal. If she actually had unlimited resources, she'd trade more. But she didn't. And back on Earth, nobody had ever handed her anything out of charity. She wasn't about to start playing savior now. She looked down at the "Basic Torch Blueprint" in her inventory. "Requirements: Wood x10, Kerosene, Scrap Steel x2" Note: Requires Level 2 Workbench to craft." She leaned back against the crate again. Felt the weight of her stockpile pressing back against that lingering sense of unease. In this world, your ID didn't matter. Your gender didn't matter either. What mattered was who held the resources. She looked at what she had left: 36 units of wood. Plus the steel, coal, and stone from trading. Time to plan. Upgrading to a Level 2 campfire required 55 wood. She had all the other materials. For the wood, she'd just have to use the handsaw tomorrow and gather a little more. That settled, she pulled a few more logs from inventory and arranged them on top of the crate, making a small enclosed space. Curled up inside it, she watched the sky outside slowly darken to black. Her eyes grew heavy. She drifted off. Chapter 4 The Culling Riley woke to the kind of soreness that made you reconsider ever moving again. She'd slept like the dead—no dreams, no blizzard, just nothing. When she opened her eyes, the first things she saw were the logs she'd stacked as a windbreak and the steady glow of the campfire. She tried to stretch. Big mistake. Every muscle in her body lit up at once, screaming in protest. "Sh*t." Riley sucked air through her teeth and pressed a hand to her aching shoulder. Her lower back felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to it. Yesterday's work had been too much. She wasn't weak—far from it—but she was still human. The lactic acid had settled in overnight, and now she moved like an arthritic tin man. At least she was alive. She stowed the windbreak logs back in her inventory and looked around. The world hadn't changed. Same dull gray sky. Same swirling snow. Outside the six-foot radius of the fire, the drifts looked deeper than yesterday. The wind had been busy. Riley pulled out the half-empty water bottle and wet her throat. Then she retrieved the white bread she'd traded for yesterday. Compared to that dense, flavorless black bread, this was practically cake. She tore off small pieces, letting the faint sweetness dissolve on her tongue, and habitually opened the "Server Channel". She stopped chewing. The number in the top left hit her like a physical blow. "Current Online Players: 4968/10000" "Five thousand..." Riley's eyes went wide. In a single night, that number had been cut in half. Five thousand people. Gone. Winked out of existence on this frozen ice field while she slept. "Ding." The system notification cut through her thoughts—cold, emotionless, like it was announcing the weather. "Global Announcement: Congratulations to all survivors for successfully surviving the first day. "This was a culling. Last night eliminated those fools who failed to add fuel to their fires or refused to gather wood. Remember: in this place, tears mean nothing. When you die here, you're dead-dead. "You who remain are the lucky ones. "Grace Period: A five-day 'New Player Support Period' now begins. For the next five days, your initial supply crates will refresh daily with a fixed amount of food. "Special Reward: Each survivor receives one pair of "Standard Issue Snow Boots (Common)". Be grateful for this mercy. Enjoy the game." The words sat there on her screen. Fools. Mercy. The system's tone dripped with contempt. The math was simple. Starting package: five hours of fuel. Initial gift: five units of wood, another five hours. Total ten hours, if you did absolutely nothing. The ones who'd frozen to death last night—they were the ones who'd clung to hope. The ones too scared to move. The ones who'd told themselves someone would save them. Five thousand people. One night. Gone. This wasn't a game. It was a slaughter. In the channel, the survivors who'd made it through were clearly rattled by the numbers too. "Holy sh*t... My friend's icon went dark last night. Does that mean he's dead? Actually dead?" "I can't do this. I don't wanna play anymore, I wanna go home. I swear I'll work today. I'll chop wood, I'll do whatever, just please—" "Everyone move! Don't save your strength! If you die, that's it. No respawns!" Panic spread fast. But almost immediately, the tone shifted. The fear found a target. "That SpicyBurger—if she'd shared more wood yesterday, would so many people have died?" "For real. If she had extra, why not just give it away? Why did it have to be trades? She could've at least loaned some out." "This is what happens when people hoard resources and watch others freeze. Remember that name. Don't trade with her. Ever." Riley frowned. Here we go again. She scrolled up. Sure enough, there it was—that familiar ID: "InvincibleWarrior". He was going hard in the channel. "She's profiting off suffering. That's what some people do. Women like that are the worst—hoarding supplies while people die around them. Wait and see. Someone like her won't last." Riley laughed. Actually laughed out loud. Moral blackmail. In the apocalypse. She typed, "If you want wood, go cut it yourself. I'm not your mommy. No amount of crying in chat is gonna put logs in your inventory. You'd get more done if you just picked up your d*mn axe." The channel went quiet for a second. Then the reasonable voices piped up. "She's right. Nobody owes you anything. Work for it." "Exactly. Just 'cause someone's quiet doesn't mean they're an easy target." In a world where staying alive took everything you had, expecting charity was the dumbest move of all. Riley didn't waste more energy on it. People like that—the more you engaged, the more they thrived. Let him run his mouth. She had bigger things to worry about. She closed the channel and turned to the big wooden crate—her initial supply point. Sure enough, new items had materialized inside. "Bottled Water x3 "White Bread x3 "Fresh Orange Juice x1 "Standard Snow Boots x1" "Orange juice?" Riley picked up the bottle, genuinely surprised. The orange liquid inside sloshed gently. Vitamins. The system was actually giving them vitamins. She pulled off her old shoes—already damp and cold—and swapped into the new boots. They were clunky, sure. But they gripped the snow, and the insulation was real. The chill that had been seeping up through her soles disappeared instantly. Next, she opened her toolbox. Goggles on. Thick cut-resistant gloves. Head-to-toe gear. "Time to work." The channel noise faded from her mind. She had one priority today, and it wasn't arguing with idiots. She picked up the chainsaw and headed back to the tree line. The cold played tricks on batteries. She'd known that, intellectually. But knowing it and feeling it were different things. After just eight trees, the last spare battery gave out. The chainsaw stuttered, died, and went silent in her hands. Riley stared at it. "Son of a b*tch." Chapter 5 Dead Battery Riley stared at the dead chainsaw in her hands and shook her head. Without power, it was just an expensive paperweight. If she wanted more wood, she'd have to do it the old-fashioned way—pick up the axe or the manual handsaw from the toolbox and go to war with frozen timber. But eight more trees were eight more trees. Her stockpile was looking healthy. "First things first. Get these back." She sucked it up, stowed the chainsaw in her inventory, and started hauling. Her body screamed even louder than yesterday. Every muscle felt like it had been replaced with concrete. She dragged each log back one at a time, moving like a zombie. Drag. Rest two minutes. Drag again. The wind howled in her ears. Riley lost track of time, lost track of everything except the mechanical rhythm of work. By the time the sun was high—not that you could really see it through the clouds—she dragged the last log into the campfire's radius. It dissolved into light, absorbed by the system. Riley all but collapsed into the snow. "Acquired: Wood x40" She lay there for a moment, chest heaving, staring at the number in her inventory. A tired smile crept across her face. She had enough. Combined with the coal and steel from yesterday's trades, she had everything she needed for the upgrade. Riley forced herself upright and walked to the campfire. On the floating translucent panel, the "Upgrade" button glowed that tempting gold. "Upgrade Primitive Shelter to Lv.2? "Cost: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Scrap Steel x5 "Remaining after upgrade: Wood x16, Stone x3, Coal x0, Steel x0" "Upgrade." Riley took a breath and pressed it. "Hmmmm—!" A blinding white light erupted from the heart of the campfire, swallowing everything. Riley squeezed her eyes shut. No explosion. No thunder. Just a sound like Legos snapping together. A few seconds later, the light faded. Riley opened her eyes. And stopped breathing. The campfire wasn't just a campfire anymore. The rough stone ring had transformed into something neat and intentional—a proper firepit with a stone border for insulation, a place to set things, even a simple steel grate attached to the side. But that wasn't the big news. The heat that used to push back the cold within a six-foot radius now stretched a full fifteen feet. Inside that circle, snow was actively melting, revealing dark frozen soil underneath. In one corner, she spotted a patch of moss stubbornly poking through. Riley spun around. Behind the big wooden crate, a small log cabin stood waiting. It wasn't much—maybe forty feet square, built from rough-hewn logs. Nothing fancy. But it was solid. Four walls and a roof, blocking wind and snow completely. Riley walked over and pushed open the heavy wooden door. Warm air hit her face. Inside was simple: a wooden bed frame piled with dry grass, a crude workbench, a chair, and a small fireplace connected to a chimney that ran up through the roof. Rustic. But right now, it was heaven. Wood and fire. Four walls. A roof. Home. Riley ran her hand along the rough wall. Her eyes stung a little. She wouldn't have to sleep in the open anymore. Wouldn't have to wake up every few hours to check the fire. Wouldn't have to worry about freezing to death in her sleep. Right on cue, the server announcement chimed. Gold text this time, blazing right in the center of everyone's vision. "Server Announcement: Congratulations to player SpicyBurger for being the first to achieve "Level 2 Shelter". Rewards have been distributed." The chat channel, which had been wallowing in fear and despair, exploded. "Holy sh*t? Level 2 already? What does Level 2 unlock? Can you post pics, big shot?" "That's the wood seller from yesterday? No way. Absolute legend." "Carry me please! SpicyBurger, I'll be your loyal follower. I can cook, I can clean, I can—" "Teach us, master! How'd you gather materials so fast? What's your secret?" Compliments. Pleas. Desperate attempts to get noticed. And then, of course, the sour grapes. "InvincibleWarrior: Big deal. Just profiteering off everyone else's suffering. If she'd shared that wood instead of selling it, maybe those five thousand people would still be alive. How does it feel to climb on corpses?" "GodLovesMeFirst: Seriously. Building your success on other people's deaths. Karma's real. She'll get hers." Riley's jaw tightened. If InvincibleWarrior had been standing in front of her right now, she'd have knocked his teeth out. Guys like him—useless themselves, but always ready to tear down anyone who actually accomplished something. Sewer rats. Her private messages exploded too. She'd set it to only accept trade offers, but people had found a workaround—using the "trade note" function to send spam. "Hey beautiful, I'm a personal trainer. Great shape. Wanna see? Hit me with some wood and I'll do a voice call with you!" A photo of some guy flexing in a mirror, shirt off. Riley glanced at it, unimpressed. Decent abs. Pathetic attitude. Dude was clearly strong enough to chop wood—why was he wasting time on this? She'd never mentioned her gender, so most people probably assumed anyone who'd gathered that much wood must be a guy. The messages reflected that assumption. Some women sent selfies too, trying to flirt their way into favor. Didn't matter. Shameless cut across all demographics. From the backgrounds in the photos, everyone seemed to be in different locations. But one thing was consistent: they all had trees nearby. The system must have arranged that—a new player perk. "A bunch of degenerates." Riley's face went cold. She changed her privacy settings to "Friends Only". Then she added a line to her trading post description. "No spam. Send junk, get blocked." Silence. Blessed silence. She took a breath, let the noise drain away, and focused on what mattered. "First-place upgrade reward..." She opened her inventory. Sitting there, glowing faintly purple, was a gift box. For more exciting content, please download the "JoyRead" app to continue reading.
Chapter 1 The Countdown Ends It was the year 2027, and the end of the world was now less than an hour away. "00:59:23" Riley Carter stood on a ladder with a screw clenched between her teeth, an impact driver in her hand, securing the last window panel in place. A month ago, that timer had just appeared out of nowhere, hanging in the corner of everyone's vision like it had always been there. At first, people wrote it off as some kind of mass hacker prank. The government fed the media soothing statements in an attempt to keep things calm, but there was no way to talk down the panic as prices kept rising and supplies were held in a monopoly in real time. News outlets might spin whatever narrative they wanted, but no one could argue with the price of eggs. For a while, it was a frenzy. People cleaned out grocery stores like locusts. The government did what they could—price caps, purchase limits, reassurances from the podium—but none of it mattered. The cost of living kept climbing, and bit by bit, the country started coming apart at the seams. Online, it was a circus. Some people posted doom-laden predictions. Others openly celebrated the thought of the world finally burning. A few just seemed relieved they wouldn't have to clock in on Monday. In that final hour, things got truly ugly. Both on the streets and on social media, it was chaos. Some people figured why not went out with a bang? If the world was ending, they'd spend their last hours doing every reckless thing they'd ever fantasized about. Others, paralyzed by fear of whatever was coming, scrambled for anything they could hoard. Supplies. Weapons. Gasoline. Didn't matter what, as long as they had more of it than the next guy. Most people just wanted to be with the ones they loved. Riley didn't have that luxury anymore. Fresh out of community college, she'd lost both her parents in a highway pileup eighteen months back. The only thing they'd left her was the family hardware store, a cramped little place wedged between a laundromat and a taqueria. She'd been running it solo for just over a year when that d*mn countdown appeared overhead. At first, she'd thought maybe an apocalypse wouldn't be the worst thing. Maybe there'd be something on the other side. A reunion. But then she thought about her folks. They'd doted on her. Made her feel like the center of their world. And even though she'd grown a thick skin since going it alone, feeling indifferent to the world, she knew what they'd want. They'd want her to fight. To stay. She was the only piece of them still left in this world. People always say you aren't really gone until the last person forgets your name. As long as she kept breathing, kept carrying them with her another day, they weren't truly dead. Riley spat the screw into her palm, face calm, the impact driver whirring as she sank another fastener into the reinforced frame. "Flour's three hundred a pound now, and you can't even buy it straight—they make you tack on a bunch of other junk you don't need just to get it," she muttered to herself, shaking her head. When that timer first flickered into existence, Riley had done something smart. She'd liquidated everything. Converted every dollar she could scrape together into supplies. Unfortunately, by the time she hit the stores, inflation had already done its damage. Her savings didn't go nearly as far as they should have. Any cash that was left went toward tools. If the world was ending, she thought they could be useful. Riley pressed the last sheet of thick insulation foam into the window frame, seating it flush against the reinforced plywood beneath. The impact driver snarled as she buried the screws. Then she reached for her pneumatic glue gun—a satisfying pfft as the sealant filled the final gap. She wiped sweat from her forehead and climbed down off the ladder. Stepped back to admire her work. The little apartment was a fortress now. Doors reinforced. Windows barricaded. Every interior wall lined with an extra layer of insulation. She glanced down at herself. Custom-fit heavy-duty workwear. Slash-resistant fabric. More pockets than she'd ever need. Reinforced padding at the knees and elbows. It wasn't fashionable, but it was practical. And her real treasure: tools. A chainsaw. A reciprocating saw. The impact driver in her hand. A multi-bit screwdriver that had cost more than she wanted to admit. She'd brought everything usable from the shop back here, consolidated it into three massive toolboxes. She'd also grabbed some stuff like an air purifier and some spare filters—anything that might matter when civilization took a vacation. She didn't know what the countdown would bring. Some folks online predicted zombies. Others said asteroid impact. Volcanic winter. Alien invasion. Take your pick. Food. Tools. Shelter. She'd even started working out, building strength she'd never needed before. She'd done everything she could think of to prepare. Whatever was coming, she figured she'd last longer than most. With nothing left to do, she dropped onto one of the big toolboxes laid flat on the floor, wiped her forehead again, and pulled out her phone. Most news apps had crashed. The only things still loading were comment sections, and they were going crazy. [Anyone got rice? I'll pay eight grand for a bag. Please, we got nothing left.] [Forget it, man. Money's toilet paper now. Saw it with my own eyes—some rich assholes cleared out the Costco warehouse last week. All that 'purchase limit' crap was just theater. Shelves were empty 'cause the stock never made it there. It's all sitting in some hedge fund guy's basement.] [No kidding? Same thing happened to me! Store manager kept telling me, 'We're limiting purchases, come back next week, we'll put your name on the list.' So the whole time the back room was empty? They were just jerking us around?] [Of course they were. Rich people cornered the market on everything. So what are normal people supposed to do? Just sit here and die?] [Anyone know what actually happens when the clock hits zero? Like, is it nukes? That virus thing from that old video game?] Riley locked her phone. Tucked it away. She didn't have anything to add to that conversation. A month ago, when the countdown first showed up, prices had spiked instantly. A fifty-pound bag of rice that normally went for thirty bucks jumped to eight hundred overnight. By yesterday, it was breaking two grand. The wealthy had rolled up with trucks and cleaned out supermarkets. Riley had been smart—she'd gone early, bought stuff that would keep, stuff that was calorie-dense and cheap. Chocolate. Survival biscuits. Canned goods. It wasn't much, but it was enough for one person, at least for a while. She took a deep breath and glanced at the timer. "00:01:10" Just over a minute. Riley gripped the toolbox beneath her. Knuckles white. Who knew what would happen when that thing hit zero? Maybe it'd be like 2012—all hype, nothing real. In that last minute, her life flickered past. Her parents' faces. The hardware store. The lonely months since. "00:00:00" The countdown ended. Riley had just started to breathe a sigh of relief—nothing happened, maybe it really was nothing—when the world lurched beneath her. A dizzying weightlessness. A sensation of falling. Everything spun. ***** She didn't know how long she was out. "Whew." A wind like a knife blade sliced across her face. Riley's eyes snapped open. Her warm apartment was gone. In its place, an endless white expanse stretched in every direction. Snow whipped through the air. Wind howled like a wounded animal. And at her feet, a small campfire guttered in the gale, threatening to die at any second. "What the—" Before she could process, a chime rang directly in her skull. Not heard. Known. "Welcome to the Extreme Cold Survival Game. "Earth no longer exists. This is your new home. This is your grave. "Survival rules are as follows. "1. Each player begins with one campfire. It is your only defense against the cold. If the campfire dies, you will be judged deceased by the system. Not that it matters—without the fire, you won't last anyway. "2. This is a real world. You can die from hunger. From exposure. From animal attack. "3. Supplies stockpiled in your previous world do not carry over. Only items on your person, or in direct physical contact at the moment of transfer, are retained. "4. Struggle to survive. It is your only hope." Riley's heart slammed against her ribs. Supplies didn't carry over? Her mind flashed to those wealthy forum posters bragging about their warehouse stockpiles. And then she looked down at herself. Workwear. Intact. And— She was still sitting on the three giant toolboxes. They sat solidly in the snow, dusted with powder, unmistakably here. "Whew." Riley let out a long breath. A white cloud dispersed in front of her face. Pity, though. During her renovations, she'd stocked those boxes with a lot of power tools. The expensive impact driver. The reciprocating saw. In a world with no electrical outlets, once those batteries died, they were just dead weight. But even so. The hand tools. The consumables. The sheer volume of stuff in those boxes—it was a treasure beyond measure in a place like this. Riley forced herself to calm down. She was here. She'd deal with it. Something new lived in her mind now. She concentrated, and a translucent pale-blue screen materialized in front of her eyes. Looked just like a video game HUD. "Personal Panel "Name: Riley Carter "ID: 1120-US "Level: 1 (Standard Survivor) "Strength: 8 (Years of manual labor have made you stronger than average) "Agility: 8 (You've got quick reflexes) "Constitution: 6 (You've been skipping meals lately) "Spirit: 9 (You keep your head when others panic) "Inventory: 16/16 slots (Base capacity)" "Inventory?" Riley studied the sixteen empty squares at the bottom of the display. She reached out, touched one of the toolboxes, and thought the word, "Store." Whoosh. The heavy box vanished. In its place, a tiny icon appeared in the first inventory slot, a miniature "x1" in the corner. "It actually worked." For the first time since arriving, a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. Retrieve. Thud. The toolbox landed back in the snow, puffing up powder. No energy cost. No sense of weight. And in that inventory, she could carry anything, regardless of how heavy it was. Later on, when she went scavenging, that would make all the difference. Riley rubbed her stiff, freezing hands together and turned her attention to the campfire at her feet. It was the only warmth in this frozen wasteland. Hovering above the flames, visible only to her, were a few lines of glowing text. "Basic Campfire (Lv.1) "Remaining Burn Time: 05:28:00 "Current Coverage: Radius six feet (Blocks wind and snow) "Upgrade Requirements: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Steel x5 "Description: This is your life. Do not let it die. Upgrading expands your safe zone and unlocks additional construction options." "Needs upgrading." Riley frowned. Wood and stone she could probably find. But coal? Steel? Out here in the middle of nowhere? A flash of movement caught her eye. A small wooden box, half-buried in the snow not far from the fire. The starter crate. Had to be. Riley didn't rush. First, she pulled the claw hammer from her belt—the one she always kept there, habit from years of work—and gripped it tight. She scanned the tree line. Listened past the wind. Nothing moved. No sounds but the storm. She walked over quickly, crouched by the box. No lock. She pried the lid open with the claw end of her hammer. Inside, a handful of items. "Obtained: Iron Axe x1 "Obtained: Stale Dark Bread x2 "Obtained: 500ml Bottled Water x1 "Obtained: Kindling x5 "Obtained: Insulated Field Jacket x1 "Obtained: Utility Rope (25ft) "Obtained: Thermal Underwear (Set) x2 Not much. Barely anything. Riley picked up one of the dark loaves. It was rock hard. She examined the jacket—basic, but warm-looking. "So this is what a standard survivor starts with." At least the system had thought of everything. Including the underwear. She'd half-expected to wake up naked in the snow; at least she didn't have to worry about that. She stored everything in her inventory, then shrugged on the field jacket. The temperature shift was brutal. Even those few seconds exposed had left her hands numb. Hypothermia would set in fast out here. Jacket on, she hurried back to the campfire. She pulled the five units of Kindling from her inventory and tossed them onto the flames. The fire roared higher. Warmth flooded over her. "Fuel added. Remaining Burn Time: 10:28:00" Ten hours. If she didn't move fast, in ten hours she'd freeze to death on this ice field. And the game had made it clear—if the fire died, the system would judge her dead. Whether she actually froze or not. Riley lifted her head and scanned the landscape. She was in a sparse coniferous forest. Barely alive trees, crusted with frost, dotted the area not far from her position. "Wood." A slow smile spread across her face. She patted the toolbox beside her. "Other people might have axes. But felling a tree with just an axe takes hours. Exhausts you." She unlatched the box. Pulled out the chainsaw. Checked the battery gauge—full. "I've got a handsaw in here too. And a chainsaw with a full charge." The battery wouldn't last forever. But it would last long enough to give her a massive head start. In this race for survival, that was everything. Chapter 2 The Chainsaw The wind screamed across the open ground, picking up loose snow and flinging it against her goggles like sand. It sounded like static. Riley had pulled her basic work gear from the toolbox before heading out. Now she stood in the snow, surrounded by clusters of thin conifers that looked half-dead already. She took a breath. The air burned going down. "Zzzzzzz—!!!" She squeezed the trigger. The orange-and-black lithium-ion chainsaw in her hands roared to life, the chain spinning so fast it blurred. She buried the teeth in the nearest pine trunk. Wood chips exploded everywhere. Fragrant shavings—still wet with resin—scattered across the pristine snow, stark and yellow against all that white. Five seconds. Crack. The pine tree, thick as her arm, groaned and tilted. Then it fell slow and heavy into a drift, sending up a puff of powder. "God bless modern technology." Riley shook out her wrist—the vibration had numbed her fingers—and allowed herself a small smile. Without that chainsaw, with just the basic iron axe the system had given her, felling a tree frozen solid like this would have taken twenty minutes minimum. And it would have left her soaked with sweat. In subzero temps, sweat was a death sentence. Once your base layers got wet, the moment you stopped moving, your body temperature would plummet. Hypothermia would follow fast. Riley didn't waste time celebrating. She knew the saw in her hands was a hungry machine. She'd brought two spare high-capacity batteries, sure, but until she found a way to recharge them, every second the motor ran was borrowed time. She had to gather as much wood as possible before the batteries gave out. "Zzzzz—Zzzzz—" At the edge of the forest, the chainsaw's snarl rose and fell, shattering the frozen silence. Riley worked like she was possessed. Fell a tree. Move to the next. Fell another. But she had to stay alert—watch for hidden snow pits underfoot, keep adjusting her collar against the wind that kept finding its way down her neck. Her stamina drained faster than she'd anticipated. In extreme cold, body burned through calories just to stay alive. Added walking through knee-deep snow, where every step took three times the energy of walking on pavement, and the math got ugly fast. Pretty soon, Riley was breathing hard. Her breath fogged the inside of her goggles, and she had to keep wiping them clear. "Zzzzz..." She was mid-cut on a tree—didn't even know which number anymore—when the chainsaw's roar stuttered. Died. The chain jammed solid in the wood. A red light blinked at her. Dead battery. Riley yanked the saw free and patted its housing. "Good work, buddy." Genuine regret in her voice. She straightened up and looked around. Pine trunks lay scattered across the snow in every direction. A decent haul. She counted silently. "Twenty-three total." Then the next problem hit her. According to the system, until she actually possessed these logs, they were still just natural resources. That meant they didn't qualify for Inventory storage. She couldn't just snap her fingers and make them disappear. She had to drag them back to camp. Riley grabbed the nearest pine and tried to pull. Heavy. Like, unreasonably heavy. Fresh-cut wood was full of moisture. Add the branches catching in the snow, dragging like anchors, and she felt like she was hauling a dead body through mud. "Huff... huff..." She gritted her teeth, looped rope around the trunk, slung it over her shoulder, leaned forward, and started walking. Inch by inch. The tree line to her campfire was maybe fifty yards. Right now, it felt like fifty miles. By the time she'd wrestled the fourth tree back into the fire's warm radius, she was wrecked. Her legs felt like someone had filled them with concrete. Her lungs burned from hauling freezing air through them. "Can't... can't do more." Riley made the call. She stopped. Those nineteen trees still out there in the snow—they called to her. Tempted her. But if she kept pushing without rest, without fuel for herself, she'd collapse out there. And out there, collapse meant death. She dropped down next to the big wooden crate that had held her starter supplies. It was less than three feet from the campfire. The flames danced orange and red, pumping out heat that felt like heaven. The shift from frozen to warm made her shiver violently. She pulled off her goggles and thick gloves, set them near the fire to warm up, then—still shaking—pulled the half-empty water bottle from her Inventory. Took a small sip. Then the bread. Two black bricks that looked more like construction material than food. "Crunch." Riley bit off a piece with effort. It was coarse. Tasted like sawdust with a hint of burnt toast. Bitter. But it was calories. Carbs. Fuel for her own fire. She forced herself to chew, swallow. When the food hit her stomach, warmth finally started spreading through her core. The uncontrollable shaking eased. After half a loaf, Riley leaned back against the crate. Her eyelids drooped. Post-exhaustion crash hit her like a wave. The campfire crackled. The wind seemed farther away now. Muffled. She really wanted to sleep... Her head nodded. Her body started sliding sideways. "Wait—" Some animal instinct jolted her awake just before she went under. She pinched her thigh. Hard. Then looked up at the timer floating above the flames. "Shelter Level 1 "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 06:28:00" Six and a half hours. If she slept too deep, too long, and that fire went out—what then? Even ignoring the obvious—that she'd freeze to death in this hellhole without a heat source—the game rules were clear. When the campfire hits zero, it's game over. "No sleeping. Not allowed." Riley slapped her own cheeks, forced herself upright. She stayed near the fire, but she didn't take off her heavy work clothes. She remembered reading something once, a survival article. "In the late stages of hypothermia, your hypothalamus malfunctions. You get a false sensation of heat. It's called "paradoxical undressing"—people strip down right before they freeze to death." "Okay. Process these four. Keep the fire fed." She pulled a traditional handsaw from the toolbox. Looking at the four thick pine logs on the ground, she almost laughed. Without power tools, breaking these down into burnable pieces would take at least half an hour. Burn the little energy she had left. But what choice did she have? Riley knelt in the snow, positioned the blade against the trunk, and was about to start cutting— A soft white light shot out from the system panel on her chest. It washed over the logs. "Ding! "Detected felled, intact logs within shelter range. "Perform quick recovery?" Riley's hand froze mid-saw. Quick recovery? It took her a second to process. Then relief flooded through her so hard she almost cried. "Yes! Recover!" She didn't hesitate. The next moment, something impossible happened. The four pine trunks—the ones she'd have to saw and split by hand, the ones that represented hours of brutal labor—dissolved into pale blue light particles. Not into dust. Into neat, uniform logs that stacked themselves automatically in her Inventory. The branches, the needles, all the useless parts—purified out of existence. "Recovery successful! "Obtained: Common Wood x20" Riley's eyes went wide, staring at the perfect lumber in her inventory display. Looked like it came straight from a hardware store. "One tree gives five units of wood? "And I don't have to cut it myself?" This changed everything. It meant she only had to handle the felling and the dragging. Once a log crossed into her camp's boundary, the system recognized it as hers. The most time-consuming part—the processing—just... didn't exist anymore. Riley immediately grabbed five units of wood and fed them to the fire. Whoosh. The flames leaped, hungry and grateful. "Fuel added. "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 12:20:00" "Five logs, five hours..." She did the math fast, looking at the fifteen units still on the ground. If she threw all of those in, that'd be another fifteen hours. Total of twenty-seven. She could sleep like the dead right now, and that fire would still be burning when she woke up. Security. For the first time since the world ended, Riley felt something like security. She selected the remaining wood. Deposited it all. Watched the countdown tick up to a very comfortable "27:20:00". Then her nerves finally let go. She dragged one of the toolboxes into position to block the wind, wrapped the field jacket tight around herself, pulled her hat down over her eyes, leaned back against the warm crate, and let the crackle of the fire pull her under. ***** She didn't sleep long. When she opened her eyes again, the sky was still that same dull gray-white. Impossible to tell if it was morning or afternoon. System clock said three hours. Her body ached. Shoulders and arms especially—felt like she'd gone ten rounds with someone. But her head was clear. She stretched her stiff neck and stood up. The snow seemed lighter. The feathery flakes had tapered off into sporadic icy grains. Riley ate a little more, got some fuel back in the tank, then stepped outside the campfire's warmth. The fire's effect wasn't what she'd expected. It wasn't that the temperature gradually dropped as you moved away. It was sharper than that. Like there was an invisible barrier around the flames. Inside, livable. Outside, the cold hit you like a wall. She wandered a little way off. The cold found every gap in her clothing. She thought about going farther, exploring. But there was nothing visible except that stand of trees she'd already worked. Maybe stuff was buried under the snow, but she couldn't see it. "No proper snow boots. Not going far." Riley glanced at the endless white distance with real regret. "Don't get greedy. Get those nineteen trees first." She turned. Looked at the woods. Her loot was still out there. And now she knew: if she could drag them back into the campfire's circle, the system would cash them out automatically. "Time to work." Riley rubbed her hands together. Let the motivation build. For the next few hours, she became a machine. Drag a tree to camp. Recover it. Go back for another. Repeat. It was boring. Exhausting. But watching those logs turn into numbers in her inventory—that feeling was hard to describe. Satisfying, in a way nothing had been satisfying in a long time. When the last pine trunk crossed into the light and dissolved into particles, Riley just collapsed. Lay flat in the snow and stared at the gray sky. She pulled up her Inventory. The once-empty slots were full now. Stack after stack of wood icons. "Item: Common Wood "Quantity: 80 "Description: Basic survival resource. Can be used for fuel or construction." Eighty units. Plus what was already burning in the campfire. Her day's work had yielded a clean hundred. One unit of wood burned for one hour. Riley looked at the flames dancing in front of her. Felt the heat on her face. Let herself smile, wide and real. "One hundred hours." Four full days. While everyone else was probably still panicking. Crying. Begging. Trying to figure out how to survive their first night in this frozen nightmare... She, Riley, had enough fuel stockpiled to last four days. Which meant: for the next ninety-six hours, unless she actively chose to die, nobody and nothing could put her fire out. She pulled the half-empty water bottle from Inventory. The space must have been insulated somehow—the water was still warm. Almost body temperature. She sipped it. Tasted sweet, even though it was just tap water. "Okay. Next step." Her gaze settled on the "Upgrade" button on the campfire panel. This open-air setup was fine for now. But if she was going to survive long-term, she needed something better. A real shelter. All she needed was a little stone. Some coal. Some steel. Then she could build something worth calling home. Chapter 3 The Trading Game The blizzard howled outside, but within the six-foot radius of the campfire, the air stayed surprisingly warm—like the wind had hit an invisible wall and just couldn't reach. Riley leaned back against the dusty wooden crate, holding the half-empty water bottle in her hand. She stared into the flames for a moment, then focused her attention inward. The pale blue system panel unfolded in front of her eyes again. Now that the immediate crisis was handled, she finally had time to sit quietly and really explore this so-called "Survival System". Beyond the personal stats and inventory, the bottom of the panel had a row of function icons: Server Channel, Friends List, Trading Market, and Crafting Manual. Friends List was empty. No surprise there. She hadn't exactly been a social butterfly back in the old world, and she sure as hell wasn't going to make friends easily in a frozen hellscape where everyone was fighting for their next breath. She tapped into the "Server Channel". A line of numbers appeared in the top left. "Server: US-008 "Current Online: 9911/10000" Ten thousand people started. Less than ten hours in, eighty-nine were already gone. "That doesn't add up." Everyone's starter crate came with a rusty iron axe and five units of wood. Plus the initial fuel the campfire had when they arrived—that alone bought them ten hours minimum, even if they just sat there doing nothing. What the hell did those people do to get eliminated so fast? The channel was moving fast, messages scrolling by every second. Desperation dripped from every line. "Someone help, I'm freezing my ass off out here. This stupid axe can't cut sh*t—every swing just bounces off and rattles my whole arm. Can anyone spare a couple logs? My dad's a senior VP at Walker Group. I'll wire you a million dollars when we get back, I swear." "Wake up, buddy. If your dad's still alive, he's out there chopping trees right now too." "Don't even talk to me. I spotted a wooden crate in the snow earlier, got all excited, ran over—and before I got within ten feet, some white rabbit thing jumped out of a drift. Teeth like needles. Almost took a chunk out of my leg. Missed the crate, wasted all that energy for nothing." "I saw that too! Random crates spawn in the wild. I opened a wooden one and got two chocolate bars and some coal." Reading through the chaos, Riley picked out two keywords, "Random Reward Crates" and "Dangerous Creatures". So this world was deeper than she thought. Wooden crates, copper crates—these randomly spawning resource points were the real way to get ahead. Coal came from crates. That was useful to know. And if coal was in crates, steel probably was too. But something bothered her. According to what people were saying, reward crates weren't exactly rare. So why hadn't she found a single one during her lumber run? She doubted it was just bad luck. Riley exited chat and tapped into the "Trading Market". "Seller: MountainMan88 Item: Stone x2 Wants: White Bread x5" "Seller: LoneWolf_21 Item: Cotton Cloth Wants: Clean Water" "Seller: NotDeadYet Item: Wood x3 Wants: Anything edible" Most people were trading for food and wood. The stuff that kept you alive right now. Things like stone and cloth were getting dumped cheap—nobody had the luxury of thinking long-term. Riley looked at her own inventory. Eighty units of wood staring back at her. Her heart beat a little faster. In this opening phase, where wood literally meant the difference between life and death, the resources in her hands were basically gold bars. "Time to trade," she muttered to herself. "Coal, steel—can't get those from chopping trees. And right now, wood's at maximum value. If I wait, the exchange rate shifts." Even with the chainsaw dead, she still had the handsaw. Less efficient, sure, but she could gather more wood if she needed it. Short-term, she wasn't going to run out. She clicked to post a message in the channel. "System Prompt: Detected that you have not set a virtual ID. Please enter your nickname (cannot be changed after setting)." Riley stared at the blank input box. Naming things was the worst. She sat there for a long time, nothing coming to mind. Finally, she gave up. Couldn't think of anything cool or clever, so she'd just go with something random. Her fingers tapped across the virtual keyboard—SpicyBurger. "Setting successful. ID locked." The prompt closed. Riley posted her message. "SpicyBurger: Selling wood in bulk. Looking for: Coal, Steel, High-calorie food. DM me with offers—what you have and your rate. Good deals go fast, don't sleep on this." For three seconds after the message appeared, the channel went dead silent. Then it exploded. "SpicyBurger? That name's making me hungry, what the hell." "Never mind the name—'wood in bulk'! We got a whale in here! Everyone else is stressing about the next hour and this person's already running a business?" "I need some! My campfire's down to like two hours. I don't know if I actually die when it hits zero but I don't wanna find out." Suddenly, half the channel was scrambling for wood. But then the skeptics crawled out. "Hang on. Everyone started with the same rusty axe. Chopping a tree in this weather takes twenty, thirty minutes minimum. Where's she getting 'bulk' wood from? Sounds like a scam." "InvincibleWarrior: Everybody chill. Look at that ID—sounds like a girl's handle. I'm a grown man, been busting my ass, and I've only got like ten logs saved up. My hands are shredded. Some girl with a food name claims she's got bulk? She's trying to run a game. Scam people out of their stuff." "Iron_Tough: Agreed. Scammers made it through the apocalypse too, I guess. My advice: ignore her. Don't get played. How much wood can a woman chop anyway? Probably can't even lift the axe right, lol." Riley scrolled through the messages, expression flat. She almost laughed. But some people pushed back. "FishHater44: How is it a scam? If she doesn't deliver, you don't complete the trade. Just 'cause you can't chop that much wood doesn't mean nobody can." Riley nodded slightly. That one had a point. But she didn't waste energy arguing in the channel. Instead, she flipped on Do Not Disturb for private messages—only allowing chat requests that included a trade offer. Some people didn't actually care whether she had wood. They just couldn't stand seeing someone else do well. "Ding. Ding. Ding." Private messages started pouring in like rain. Most players weren't idiots. Faced with the very real threat of freezing to death, they'd try anything for a chance. Riley opened the first one. "Windwalker: I got "Coal x3" from a crate. How much wood can I get for it? I can't chop anymore. The wind out here is insane. I tried to throw the coal in my fire but it just kept popping back out. System says my campfire level's too low, won't let me use it. I'm out of wood. My fire's almost dead." Riley thought for a moment. "Three coal for five wood. Deal?" She hadn't known about that restriction. Coal was supposed to be better fuel than wood—didn't expect the game to lock it behind a level gate. The reply came instantly, "Deal. But five wood feels light. It's coal." The guy was conflicted. He knew coal had value, but he was desperate. "I'll make it six. Final offer." Riley wasn't sure about coal's real value yet. Six was her limit. "Fine. Deal." They both dropped their items into the trade window. A moment later, it completed. A flash of white light. Riley's inventory lost six wood. Gained three chunks of coal, each about the size of a small melon. One down. "CrunchyFrog: Hey, I got two "Iron Ingots" from a crate. System calls them "Scrap Steel". Can I get eight wood for them? Trying to stock up enough to sleep through the night." Riley replied, "Sure. Initiate." In just over ten minutes, her wood stockpile dropped significantly. But her inventory filled up with good stuff. "Coal x10 "Stone x23 "Scrap Steel x5 "Raw Meat x2 "White Bread x2 "Basic Torch Blueprint x1" The blueprint was new. The description said it was required for crafting certain items. Seemed useful, so she'd traded for it. Meanwhile, back in the channel, that "InvincibleWarrior" guy who'd been mocking her earlier seemed to notice that people were actually completing trades. His tone got bitter. "InvincibleWarrior: Whatever. She probably got lucky with a high-tier crate. Let's see how long her stock lasts. Once the wood's gone, she'll be begging me to let her join my group." The people who'd successfully traded with Riley popped into the channel to thank her. That might have been fine—except the thanks caused problems. Since Riley had stopped trading for now, most people hadn't gotten anything. And the sky was darkening. Temperature outside the campfire radius was dropping fast. Gathering wood was getting harder. Trading was their only hope. The ones who'd pinned everything on Riley, seeing her stop, started losing it. "You said 'in bulk'! You did like five trades and quit. What are we supposed to do now?" "Keep trading! My fire's almost out. You want us to go chop trees in the dark?" "If you couldn't deliver, why'd you post? Showing off and then hiding." Whether it was coordinated or just genuine rage, the number of people defending Riley in the channel shrank fast. Mostly it was attacks now. Accusations of being irresponsible. Using scarcity tactics. Playing games with people's lives. Riley closed the channel. She couldn't be bothered. In a life-or-death situation like this, people losing it was normal. If she actually had unlimited resources, she'd trade more. But she didn't. And back on Earth, nobody had ever handed her anything out of charity. She wasn't about to start playing savior now. She looked down at the "Basic Torch Blueprint" in her inventory. "Requirements: Wood x10, Kerosene, Scrap Steel x2" Note: Requires Level 2 Workbench to craft." She leaned back against the crate again. Felt the weight of her stockpile pressing back against that lingering sense of unease. In this world, your ID didn't matter. Your gender didn't matter either. What mattered was who held the resources. She looked at what she had left: 36 units of wood. Plus the steel, coal, and stone from trading. Time to plan. Upgrading to a Level 2 campfire required 55 wood. She had all the other materials. For the wood, she'd just have to use the handsaw tomorrow and gather a little more. That settled, she pulled a few more logs from inventory and arranged them on top of the crate, making a small enclosed space. Curled up inside it, she watched the sky outside slowly darken to black. Her eyes grew heavy. She drifted off. Chapter 4 The Culling Riley woke to the kind of soreness that made you reconsider ever moving again. She'd slept like the dead—no dreams, no blizzard, just nothing. When she opened her eyes, the first things she saw were the logs she'd stacked as a windbreak and the steady glow of the campfire. She tried to stretch. Big mistake. Every muscle in her body lit up at once, screaming in protest. "Sh*t." Riley sucked air through her teeth and pressed a hand to her aching shoulder. Her lower back felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to it. Yesterday's work had been too much. She wasn't weak—far from it—but she was still human. The lactic acid had settled in overnight, and now she moved like an arthritic tin man. At least she was alive. She stowed the windbreak logs back in her inventory and looked around. The world hadn't changed. Same dull gray sky. Same swirling snow. Outside the six-foot radius of the fire, the drifts looked deeper than yesterday. The wind had been busy. Riley pulled out the half-empty water bottle and wet her throat. Then she retrieved the white bread she'd traded for yesterday. Compared to that dense, flavorless black bread, this was practically cake. She tore off small pieces, letting the faint sweetness dissolve on her tongue, and habitually opened the "Server Channel". She stopped chewing. The number in the top left hit her like a physical blow. "Current Online Players: 4968/10000" "Five thousand..." Riley's eyes went wide. In a single night, that number had been cut in half. Five thousand people. Gone. Winked out of existence on this frozen ice field while she slept. "Ding." The system notification cut through her thoughts—cold, emotionless, like it was announcing the weather. "Global Announcement: Congratulations to all survivors for successfully surviving the first day. "This was a culling. Last night eliminated those fools who failed to add fuel to their fires or refused to gather wood. Remember: in this place, tears mean nothing. When you die here, you're dead-dead. "You who remain are the lucky ones. "Grace Period: A five-day 'New Player Support Period' now begins. For the next five days, your initial supply crates will refresh daily with a fixed amount of food. "Special Reward: Each survivor receives one pair of "Standard Issue Snow Boots (Common)". Be grateful for this mercy. Enjoy the game." The words sat there on her screen. Fools. Mercy. The system's tone dripped with contempt. The math was simple. Starting package: five hours of fuel. Initial gift: five units of wood, another five hours. Total ten hours, if you did absolutely nothing. The ones who'd frozen to death last night—they were the ones who'd clung to hope. The ones too scared to move. The ones who'd told themselves someone would save them. Five thousand people. One night. Gone. This wasn't a game. It was a slaughter. In the channel, the survivors who'd made it through were clearly rattled by the numbers too. "Holy sh*t... My friend's icon went dark last night. Does that mean he's dead? Actually dead?" "I can't do this. I don't wanna play anymore, I wanna go home. I swear I'll work today. I'll chop wood, I'll do whatever, just please—" "Everyone move! Don't save your strength! If you die, that's it. No respawns!" Panic spread fast. But almost immediately, the tone shifted. The fear found a target. "That SpicyBurger—if she'd shared more wood yesterday, would so many people have died?" "For real. If she had extra, why not just give it away? Why did it have to be trades? She could've at least loaned some out." "This is what happens when people hoard resources and watch others freeze. Remember that name. Don't trade with her. Ever." Riley frowned. Here we go again. She scrolled up. Sure enough, there it was—that familiar ID: "InvincibleWarrior". He was going hard in the channel. "She's profiting off suffering. That's what some people do. Women like that are the worst—hoarding supplies while people die around them. Wait and see. Someone like her won't last." Riley laughed. Actually laughed out loud. Moral blackmail. In the apocalypse. She typed, "If you want wood, go cut it yourself. I'm not your mommy. No amount of crying in chat is gonna put logs in your inventory. You'd get more done if you just picked up your d*mn axe." The channel went quiet for a second. Then the reasonable voices piped up. "She's right. Nobody owes you anything. Work for it." "Exactly. Just 'cause someone's quiet doesn't mean they're an easy target." In a world where staying alive took everything you had, expecting charity was the dumbest move of all. Riley didn't waste more energy on it. People like that—the more you engaged, the more they thrived. Let him run his mouth. She had bigger things to worry about. She closed the channel and turned to the big wooden crate—her initial supply point. Sure enough, new items had materialized inside. "Bottled Water x3 "White Bread x3 "Fresh Orange Juice x1 "Standard Snow Boots x1" "Orange juice?" Riley picked up the bottle, genuinely surprised. The orange liquid inside sloshed gently. Vitamins. The system was actually giving them vitamins. She pulled off her old shoes—already damp and cold—and swapped into the new boots. They were clunky, sure. But they gripped the snow, and the insulation was real. The chill that had been seeping up through her soles disappeared instantly. Next, she opened her toolbox. Goggles on. Thick cut-resistant gloves. Head-to-toe gear. "Time to work." The channel noise faded from her mind. She had one priority today, and it wasn't arguing with idiots. She picked up the chainsaw and headed back to the tree line. The cold played tricks on batteries. She'd known that, intellectually. But knowing it and feeling it were different things. After just eight trees, the last spare battery gave out. The chainsaw stuttered, died, and went silent in her hands. Riley stared at it. "Son of a b*tch." Chapter 5 Dead Battery Riley stared at the dead chainsaw in her hands and shook her head. Without power, it was just an expensive paperweight. If she wanted more wood, she'd have to do it the old-fashioned way—pick up the axe or the manual handsaw from the toolbox and go to war with frozen timber. But eight more trees were eight more trees. Her stockpile was looking healthy. "First things first. Get these back." She sucked it up, stowed the chainsaw in her inventory, and started hauling. Her body screamed even louder than yesterday. Every muscle felt like it had been replaced with concrete. She dragged each log back one at a time, moving like a zombie. Drag. Rest two minutes. Drag again. The wind howled in her ears. Riley lost track of time, lost track of everything except the mechanical rhythm of work. By the time the sun was high—not that you could really see it through the clouds—she dragged the last log into the campfire's radius. It dissolved into light, absorbed by the system. Riley all but collapsed into the snow. "Acquired: Wood x40" She lay there for a moment, chest heaving, staring at the number in her inventory. A tired smile crept across her face. She had enough. Combined with the coal and steel from yesterday's trades, she had everything she needed for the upgrade. Riley forced herself upright and walked to the campfire. On the floating translucent panel, the "Upgrade" button glowed that tempting gold. "Upgrade Primitive Shelter to Lv.2? "Cost: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Scrap Steel x5 "Remaining after upgrade: Wood x16, Stone x3, Coal x0, Steel x0" "Upgrade." Riley took a breath and pressed it. "Hmmmm—!" A blinding white light erupted from the heart of the campfire, swallowing everything. Riley squeezed her eyes shut. No explosion. No thunder. Just a sound like Legos snapping together. A few seconds later, the light faded. Riley opened her eyes. And stopped breathing. The campfire wasn't just a campfire anymore. The rough stone ring had transformed into something neat and intentional—a proper firepit with a stone border for insulation, a place to set things, even a simple steel grate attached to the side. But that wasn't the big news. The heat that used to push back the cold within a six-foot radius now stretched a full fifteen feet. Inside that circle, snow was actively melting, revealing dark frozen soil underneath. In one corner, she spotted a patch of moss stubbornly poking through. Riley spun around. Behind the big wooden crate, a small log cabin stood waiting. It wasn't much—maybe forty feet square, built from rough-hewn logs. Nothing fancy. But it was solid. Four walls and a roof, blocking wind and snow completely. Riley walked over and pushed open the heavy wooden door. Warm air hit her face. Inside was simple: a wooden bed frame piled with dry grass, a crude workbench, a chair, and a small fireplace connected to a chimney that ran up through the roof. Rustic. But right now, it was heaven. Wood and fire. Four walls. A roof. Home. Riley ran her hand along the rough wall. Her eyes stung a little. She wouldn't have to sleep in the open anymore. Wouldn't have to wake up every few hours to check the fire. Wouldn't have to worry about freezing to death in her sleep. Right on cue, the server announcement chimed. Gold text this time, blazing right in the center of everyone's vision. "Server Announcement: Congratulations to player SpicyBurger for being the first to achieve "Level 2 Shelter". Rewards have been distributed." The chat channel, which had been wallowing in fear and despair, exploded. "Holy sh*t? Level 2 already? What does Level 2 unlock? Can you post pics, big shot?" "That's the wood seller from yesterday? No way. Absolute legend." "Carry me please! SpicyBurger, I'll be your loyal follower. I can cook, I can clean, I can—" "Teach us, master! How'd you gather materials so fast? What's your secret?" Compliments. Pleas. Desperate attempts to get noticed. And then, of course, the sour grapes. "InvincibleWarrior: Big deal. Just profiteering off everyone else's suffering. If she'd shared that wood instead of selling it, maybe those five thousand people would still be alive. How does it feel to climb on corpses?" "GodLovesMeFirst: Seriously. Building your success on other people's deaths. Karma's real. She'll get hers." Riley's jaw tightened. If InvincibleWarrior had been standing in front of her right now, she'd have knocked his teeth out. Guys like him—useless themselves, but always ready to tear down anyone who actually accomplished something. Sewer rats. Her private messages exploded too. She'd set it to only accept trade offers, but people had found a workaround—using the "trade note" function to send spam. "Hey beautiful, I'm a personal trainer. Great shape. Wanna see? Hit me with some wood and I'll do a voice call with you!" A photo of some guy flexing in a mirror, shirt off. Riley glanced at it, unimpressed. Decent abs. Pathetic attitude. Dude was clearly strong enough to chop wood—why was he wasting time on this? She'd never mentioned her gender, so most people probably assumed anyone who'd gathered that much wood must be a guy. The messages reflected that assumption. Some women sent selfies too, trying to flirt their way into favor. Didn't matter. Shameless cut across all demographics. From the backgrounds in the photos, everyone seemed to be in different locations. But one thing was consistent: they all had trees nearby. The system must have arranged that—a new player perk. "A bunch of degenerates." Riley's face went cold. She changed her privacy settings to "Friends Only". Then she added a line to her trading post description. "No spam. Send junk, get blocked." Silence. Blessed silence. She took a breath, let the noise drain away, and focused on what mattered. "First-place upgrade reward..." She opened her inventory. Sitting there, glowing faintly purple, was a gift box. For more exciting content, please download the "JoyRead" app to continue reading.
Chapter 1 The Countdown Ends It was the year 2027, and the end of the world was now less than an hour away. "00:59:23" Riley Carter stood on a ladder with a screw clenched between her teeth, an impact driver in her hand, securing the last window panel in place. A month ago, that timer had just appeared out of nowhere, hanging in the corner of everyone's vision like it had always been there. At first, people wrote it off as some kind of mass hacker prank. The government fed the media soothing statements in an attempt to keep things calm, but there was no way to talk down the panic as prices kept rising and supplies were held in a monopoly in real time. News outlets might spin whatever narrative they wanted, but no one could argue with the price of eggs. For a while, it was a frenzy. People cleaned out grocery stores like locusts. The government did what they could—price caps, purchase limits, reassurances from the podium—but none of it mattered. The cost of living kept climbing, and bit by bit, the country started coming apart at the seams. Online, it was a circus. Some people posted doom-laden predictions. Others openly celebrated the thought of the world finally burning. A few just seemed relieved they wouldn't have to clock in on Monday. In that final hour, things got truly ugly. Both on the streets and on social media, it was chaos. Some people figured why not went out with a bang? If the world was ending, they'd spend their last hours doing every reckless thing they'd ever fantasized about. Others, paralyzed by fear of whatever was coming, scrambled for anything they could hoard. Supplies. Weapons. Gasoline. Didn't matter what, as long as they had more of it than the next guy. Most people just wanted to be with the ones they loved. Riley didn't have that luxury anymore. Fresh out of community college, she'd lost both her parents in a highway pileup eighteen months back. The only thing they'd left her was the family hardware store, a cramped little place wedged between a laundromat and a taqueria. She'd been running it solo for just over a year when that d*mn countdown appeared overhead. At first, she'd thought maybe an apocalypse wouldn't be the worst thing. Maybe there'd be something on the other side. A reunion. But then she thought about her folks. They'd doted on her. Made her feel like the center of their world. And even though she'd grown a thick skin since going it alone, feeling indifferent to the world, she knew what they'd want. They'd want her to fight. To stay. She was the only piece of them still left in this world. People always say you aren't really gone until the last person forgets your name. As long as she kept breathing, kept carrying them with her another day, they weren't truly dead. Riley spat the screw into her palm, face calm, the impact driver whirring as she sank another fastener into the reinforced frame. "Flour's three hundred a pound now, and you can't even buy it straight—they make you tack on a bunch of other junk you don't need just to get it," she muttered to herself, shaking her head. When that timer first flickered into existence, Riley had done something smart. She'd liquidated everything. Converted every dollar she could scrape together into supplies. Unfortunately, by the time she hit the stores, inflation had already done its damage. Her savings didn't go nearly as far as they should have. Any cash that was left went toward tools. If the world was ending, she thought they could be useful. Riley pressed the last sheet of thick insulation foam into the window frame, seating it flush against the reinforced plywood beneath. The impact driver snarled as she buried the screws. Then she reached for her pneumatic glue gun—a satisfying pfft as the sealant filled the final gap. She wiped sweat from her forehead and climbed down off the ladder. Stepped back to admire her work. The little apartment was a fortress now. Doors reinforced. Windows barricaded. Every interior wall lined with an extra layer of insulation. She glanced down at herself. Custom-fit heavy-duty workwear. Slash-resistant fabric. More pockets than she'd ever need. Reinforced padding at the knees and elbows. It wasn't fashionable, but it was practical. And her real treasure: tools. A chainsaw. A reciprocating saw. The impact driver in her hand. A multi-bit screwdriver that had cost more than she wanted to admit. She'd brought everything usable from the shop back here, consolidated it into three massive toolboxes. She'd also grabbed some stuff like an air purifier and some spare filters—anything that might matter when civilization took a vacation. She didn't know what the countdown would bring. Some folks online predicted zombies. Others said asteroid impact. Volcanic winter. Alien invasion. Take your pick. Food. Tools. Shelter. She'd even started working out, building strength she'd never needed before. She'd done everything she could think of to prepare. Whatever was coming, she figured she'd last longer than most. With nothing left to do, she dropped onto one of the big toolboxes laid flat on the floor, wiped her forehead again, and pulled out her phone. Most news apps had crashed. The only things still loading were comment sections, and they were going crazy. [Anyone got rice? I'll pay eight grand for a bag. Please, we got nothing left.] [Forget it, man. Money's toilet paper now. Saw it with my own eyes—some rich assholes cleared out the Costco warehouse last week. All that 'purchase limit' crap was just theater. Shelves were empty 'cause the stock never made it there. It's all sitting in some hedge fund guy's basement.] [No kidding? Same thing happened to me! Store manager kept telling me, 'We're limiting purchases, come back next week, we'll put your name on the list.' So the whole time the back room was empty? They were just jerking us around?] [Of course they were. Rich people cornered the market on everything. So what are normal people supposed to do? Just sit here and die?] [Anyone know what actually happens when the clock hits zero? Like, is it nukes? That virus thing from that old video game?] Riley locked her phone. Tucked it away. She didn't have anything to add to that conversation. A month ago, when the countdown first showed up, prices had spiked instantly. A fifty-pound bag of rice that normally went for thirty bucks jumped to eight hundred overnight. By yesterday, it was breaking two grand. The wealthy had rolled up with trucks and cleaned out supermarkets. Riley had been smart—she'd gone early, bought stuff that would keep, stuff that was calorie-dense and cheap. Chocolate. Survival biscuits. Canned goods. It wasn't much, but it was enough for one person, at least for a while. She took a deep breath and glanced at the timer. "00:01:10" Just over a minute. Riley gripped the toolbox beneath her. Knuckles white. Who knew what would happen when that thing hit zero? Maybe it'd be like 2012—all hype, nothing real. In that last minute, her life flickered past. Her parents' faces. The hardware store. The lonely months since. "00:00:00" The countdown ended. Riley had just started to breathe a sigh of relief—nothing happened, maybe it really was nothing—when the world lurched beneath her. A dizzying weightlessness. A sensation of falling. Everything spun. ***** She didn't know how long she was out. "Whew." A wind like a knife blade sliced across her face. Riley's eyes snapped open. Her warm apartment was gone. In its place, an endless white expanse stretched in every direction. Snow whipped through the air. Wind howled like a wounded animal. And at her feet, a small campfire guttered in the gale, threatening to die at any second. "What the—" Before she could process, a chime rang directly in her skull. Not heard. Known. "Welcome to the Extreme Cold Survival Game. "Earth no longer exists. This is your new home. This is your grave. "Survival rules are as follows. "1. Each player begins with one campfire. It is your only defense against the cold. If the campfire dies, you will be judged deceased by the system. Not that it matters—without the fire, you won't last anyway. "2. This is a real world. You can die from hunger. From exposure. From animal attack. "3. Supplies stockpiled in your previous world do not carry over. Only items on your person, or in direct physical contact at the moment of transfer, are retained. "4. Struggle to survive. It is your only hope." Riley's heart slammed against her ribs. Supplies didn't carry over? Her mind flashed to those wealthy forum posters bragging about their warehouse stockpiles. And then she looked down at herself. Workwear. Intact. And— She was still sitting on the three giant toolboxes. They sat solidly in the snow, dusted with powder, unmistakably here. "Whew." Riley let out a long breath. A white cloud dispersed in front of her face. Pity, though. During her renovations, she'd stocked those boxes with a lot of power tools. The expensive impact driver. The reciprocating saw. In a world with no electrical outlets, once those batteries died, they were just dead weight. But even so. The hand tools. The consumables. The sheer volume of stuff in those boxes—it was a treasure beyond measure in a place like this. Riley forced herself to calm down. She was here. She'd deal with it. Something new lived in her mind now. She concentrated, and a translucent pale-blue screen materialized in front of her eyes. Looked just like a video game HUD. "Personal Panel "Name: Riley Carter "ID: 1120-US "Level: 1 (Standard Survivor) "Strength: 8 (Years of manual labor have made you stronger than average) "Agility: 8 (You've got quick reflexes) "Constitution: 6 (You've been skipping meals lately) "Spirit: 9 (You keep your head when others panic) "Inventory: 16/16 slots (Base capacity)" "Inventory?" Riley studied the sixteen empty squares at the bottom of the display. She reached out, touched one of the toolboxes, and thought the word, "Store." Whoosh. The heavy box vanished. In its place, a tiny icon appeared in the first inventory slot, a miniature "x1" in the corner. "It actually worked." For the first time since arriving, a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. Retrieve. Thud. The toolbox landed back in the snow, puffing up powder. No energy cost. No sense of weight. And in that inventory, she could carry anything, regardless of how heavy it was. Later on, when she went scavenging, that would make all the difference. Riley rubbed her stiff, freezing hands together and turned her attention to the campfire at her feet. It was the only warmth in this frozen wasteland. Hovering above the flames, visible only to her, were a few lines of glowing text. "Basic Campfire (Lv.1) "Remaining Burn Time: 05:28:00 "Current Coverage: Radius six feet (Blocks wind and snow) "Upgrade Requirements: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Steel x5 "Description: This is your life. Do not let it die. Upgrading expands your safe zone and unlocks additional construction options." "Needs upgrading." Riley frowned. Wood and stone she could probably find. But coal? Steel? Out here in the middle of nowhere? A flash of movement caught her eye. A small wooden box, half-buried in the snow not far from the fire. The starter crate. Had to be. Riley didn't rush. First, she pulled the claw hammer from her belt—the one she always kept there, habit from years of work—and gripped it tight. She scanned the tree line. Listened past the wind. Nothing moved. No sounds but the storm. She walked over quickly, crouched by the box. No lock. She pried the lid open with the claw end of her hammer. Inside, a handful of items. "Obtained: Iron Axe x1 "Obtained: Stale Dark Bread x2 "Obtained: 500ml Bottled Water x1 "Obtained: Kindling x5 "Obtained: Insulated Field Jacket x1 "Obtained: Utility Rope (25ft) "Obtained: Thermal Underwear (Set) x2 Not much. Barely anything. Riley picked up one of the dark loaves. It was rock hard. She examined the jacket—basic, but warm-looking. "So this is what a standard survivor starts with." At least the system had thought of everything. Including the underwear. She'd half-expected to wake up naked in the snow; at least she didn't have to worry about that. She stored everything in her inventory, then shrugged on the field jacket. The temperature shift was brutal. Even those few seconds exposed had left her hands numb. Hypothermia would set in fast out here. Jacket on, she hurried back to the campfire. She pulled the five units of Kindling from her inventory and tossed them onto the flames. The fire roared higher. Warmth flooded over her. "Fuel added. Remaining Burn Time: 10:28:00" Ten hours. If she didn't move fast, in ten hours she'd freeze to death on this ice field. And the game had made it clear—if the fire died, the system would judge her dead. Whether she actually froze or not. Riley lifted her head and scanned the landscape. She was in a sparse coniferous forest. Barely alive trees, crusted with frost, dotted the area not far from her position. "Wood." A slow smile spread across her face. She patted the toolbox beside her. "Other people might have axes. But felling a tree with just an axe takes hours. Exhausts you." She unlatched the box. Pulled out the chainsaw. Checked the battery gauge—full. "I've got a handsaw in here too. And a chainsaw with a full charge." The battery wouldn't last forever. But it would last long enough to give her a massive head start. In this race for survival, that was everything. Chapter 2 The Chainsaw The wind screamed across the open ground, picking up loose snow and flinging it against her goggles like sand. It sounded like static. Riley had pulled her basic work gear from the toolbox before heading out. Now she stood in the snow, surrounded by clusters of thin conifers that looked half-dead already. She took a breath. The air burned going down. "Zzzzzzz—!!!" She squeezed the trigger. The orange-and-black lithium-ion chainsaw in her hands roared to life, the chain spinning so fast it blurred. She buried the teeth in the nearest pine trunk. Wood chips exploded everywhere. Fragrant shavings—still wet with resin—scattered across the pristine snow, stark and yellow against all that white. Five seconds. Crack. The pine tree, thick as her arm, groaned and tilted. Then it fell slow and heavy into a drift, sending up a puff of powder. "God bless modern technology." Riley shook out her wrist—the vibration had numbed her fingers—and allowed herself a small smile. Without that chainsaw, with just the basic iron axe the system had given her, felling a tree frozen solid like this would have taken twenty minutes minimum. And it would have left her soaked with sweat. In subzero temps, sweat was a death sentence. Once your base layers got wet, the moment you stopped moving, your body temperature would plummet. Hypothermia would follow fast. Riley didn't waste time celebrating. She knew the saw in her hands was a hungry machine. She'd brought two spare high-capacity batteries, sure, but until she found a way to recharge them, every second the motor ran was borrowed time. She had to gather as much wood as possible before the batteries gave out. "Zzzzz—Zzzzz—" At the edge of the forest, the chainsaw's snarl rose and fell, shattering the frozen silence. Riley worked like she was possessed. Fell a tree. Move to the next. Fell another. But she had to stay alert—watch for hidden snow pits underfoot, keep adjusting her collar against the wind that kept finding its way down her neck. Her stamina drained faster than she'd anticipated. In extreme cold, body burned through calories just to stay alive. Added walking through knee-deep snow, where every step took three times the energy of walking on pavement, and the math got ugly fast. Pretty soon, Riley was breathing hard. Her breath fogged the inside of her goggles, and she had to keep wiping them clear. "Zzzzz..." She was mid-cut on a tree—didn't even know which number anymore—when the chainsaw's roar stuttered. Died. The chain jammed solid in the wood. A red light blinked at her. Dead battery. Riley yanked the saw free and patted its housing. "Good work, buddy." Genuine regret in her voice. She straightened up and looked around. Pine trunks lay scattered across the snow in every direction. A decent haul. She counted silently. "Twenty-three total." Then the next problem hit her. According to the system, until she actually possessed these logs, they were still just natural resources. That meant they didn't qualify for Inventory storage. She couldn't just snap her fingers and make them disappear. She had to drag them back to camp. Riley grabbed the nearest pine and tried to pull. Heavy. Like, unreasonably heavy. Fresh-cut wood was full of moisture. Add the branches catching in the snow, dragging like anchors, and she felt like she was hauling a dead body through mud. "Huff... huff..." She gritted her teeth, looped rope around the trunk, slung it over her shoulder, leaned forward, and started walking. Inch by inch. The tree line to her campfire was maybe fifty yards. Right now, it felt like fifty miles. By the time she'd wrestled the fourth tree back into the fire's warm radius, she was wrecked. Her legs felt like someone had filled them with concrete. Her lungs burned from hauling freezing air through them. "Can't... can't do more." Riley made the call. She stopped. Those nineteen trees still out there in the snow—they called to her. Tempted her. But if she kept pushing without rest, without fuel for herself, she'd collapse out there. And out there, collapse meant death. She dropped down next to the big wooden crate that had held her starter supplies. It was less than three feet from the campfire. The flames danced orange and red, pumping out heat that felt like heaven. The shift from frozen to warm made her shiver violently. She pulled off her goggles and thick gloves, set them near the fire to warm up, then—still shaking—pulled the half-empty water bottle from her Inventory. Took a small sip. Then the bread. Two black bricks that looked more like construction material than food. "Crunch." Riley bit off a piece with effort. It was coarse. Tasted like sawdust with a hint of burnt toast. Bitter. But it was calories. Carbs. Fuel for her own fire. She forced herself to chew, swallow. When the food hit her stomach, warmth finally started spreading through her core. The uncontrollable shaking eased. After half a loaf, Riley leaned back against the crate. Her eyelids drooped. Post-exhaustion crash hit her like a wave. The campfire crackled. The wind seemed farther away now. Muffled. She really wanted to sleep... Her head nodded. Her body started sliding sideways. "Wait—" Some animal instinct jolted her awake just before she went under. She pinched her thigh. Hard. Then looked up at the timer floating above the flames. "Shelter Level 1 "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 06:28:00" Six and a half hours. If she slept too deep, too long, and that fire went out—what then? Even ignoring the obvious—that she'd freeze to death in this hellhole without a heat source—the game rules were clear. When the campfire hits zero, it's game over. "No sleeping. Not allowed." Riley slapped her own cheeks, forced herself upright. She stayed near the fire, but she didn't take off her heavy work clothes. She remembered reading something once, a survival article. "In the late stages of hypothermia, your hypothalamus malfunctions. You get a false sensation of heat. It's called "paradoxical undressing"—people strip down right before they freeze to death." "Okay. Process these four. Keep the fire fed." She pulled a traditional handsaw from the toolbox. Looking at the four thick pine logs on the ground, she almost laughed. Without power tools, breaking these down into burnable pieces would take at least half an hour. Burn the little energy she had left. But what choice did she have? Riley knelt in the snow, positioned the blade against the trunk, and was about to start cutting— A soft white light shot out from the system panel on her chest. It washed over the logs. "Ding! "Detected felled, intact logs within shelter range. "Perform quick recovery?" Riley's hand froze mid-saw. Quick recovery? It took her a second to process. Then relief flooded through her so hard she almost cried. "Yes! Recover!" She didn't hesitate. The next moment, something impossible happened. The four pine trunks—the ones she'd have to saw and split by hand, the ones that represented hours of brutal labor—dissolved into pale blue light particles. Not into dust. Into neat, uniform logs that stacked themselves automatically in her Inventory. The branches, the needles, all the useless parts—purified out of existence. "Recovery successful! "Obtained: Common Wood x20" Riley's eyes went wide, staring at the perfect lumber in her inventory display. Looked like it came straight from a hardware store. "One tree gives five units of wood? "And I don't have to cut it myself?" This changed everything. It meant she only had to handle the felling and the dragging. Once a log crossed into her camp's boundary, the system recognized it as hers. The most time-consuming part—the processing—just... didn't exist anymore. Riley immediately grabbed five units of wood and fed them to the fire. Whoosh. The flames leaped, hungry and grateful. "Fuel added. "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 12:20:00" "Five logs, five hours..." She did the math fast, looking at the fifteen units still on the ground. If she threw all of those in, that'd be another fifteen hours. Total of twenty-seven. She could sleep like the dead right now, and that fire would still be burning when she woke up. Security. For the first time since the world ended, Riley felt something like security. She selected the remaining wood. Deposited it all. Watched the countdown tick up to a very comfortable "27:20:00". Then her nerves finally let go. She dragged one of the toolboxes into position to block the wind, wrapped the field jacket tight around herself, pulled her hat down over her eyes, leaned back against the warm crate, and let the crackle of the fire pull her under. ***** She didn't sleep long. When she opened her eyes again, the sky was still that same dull gray-white. Impossible to tell if it was morning or afternoon. System clock said three hours. Her body ached. Shoulders and arms especially—felt like she'd gone ten rounds with someone. But her head was clear. She stretched her stiff neck and stood up. The snow seemed lighter. The feathery flakes had tapered off into sporadic icy grains. Riley ate a little more, got some fuel back in the tank, then stepped outside the campfire's warmth. The fire's effect wasn't what she'd expected. It wasn't that the temperature gradually dropped as you moved away. It was sharper than that. Like there was an invisible barrier around the flames. Inside, livable. Outside, the cold hit you like a wall. She wandered a little way off. The cold found every gap in her clothing. She thought about going farther, exploring. But there was nothing visible except that stand of trees she'd already worked. Maybe stuff was buried under the snow, but she couldn't see it. "No proper snow boots. Not going far." Riley glanced at the endless white distance with real regret. "Don't get greedy. Get those nineteen trees first." She turned. Looked at the woods. Her loot was still out there. And now she knew: if she could drag them back into the campfire's circle, the system would cash them out automatically. "Time to work." Riley rubbed her hands together. Let the motivation build. For the next few hours, she became a machine. Drag a tree to camp. Recover it. Go back for another. Repeat. It was boring. Exhausting. But watching those logs turn into numbers in her inventory—that feeling was hard to describe. Satisfying, in a way nothing had been satisfying in a long time. When the last pine trunk crossed into the light and dissolved into particles, Riley just collapsed. Lay flat in the snow and stared at the gray sky. She pulled up her Inventory. The once-empty slots were full now. Stack after stack of wood icons. "Item: Common Wood "Quantity: 80 "Description: Basic survival resource. Can be used for fuel or construction." Eighty units. Plus what was already burning in the campfire. Her day's work had yielded a clean hundred. One unit of wood burned for one hour. Riley looked at the flames dancing in front of her. Felt the heat on her face. Let herself smile, wide and real. "One hundred hours." Four full days. While everyone else was probably still panicking. Crying. Begging. Trying to figure out how to survive their first night in this frozen nightmare... She, Riley, had enough fuel stockpiled to last four days. Which meant: for the next ninety-six hours, unless she actively chose to die, nobody and nothing could put her fire out. She pulled the half-empty water bottle from Inventory. The space must have been insulated somehow—the water was still warm. Almost body temperature. She sipped it. Tasted sweet, even though it was just tap water. "Okay. Next step." Her gaze settled on the "Upgrade" button on the campfire panel. This open-air setup was fine for now. But if she was going to survive long-term, she needed something better. A real shelter. All she needed was a little stone. Some coal. Some steel. Then she could build something worth calling home. Chapter 3 The Trading Game The blizzard howled outside, but within the six-foot radius of the campfire, the air stayed surprisingly warm—like the wind had hit an invisible wall and just couldn't reach. Riley leaned back against the dusty wooden crate, holding the half-empty water bottle in her hand. She stared into the flames for a moment, then focused her attention inward. The pale blue system panel unfolded in front of her eyes again. Now that the immediate crisis was handled, she finally had time to sit quietly and really explore this so-called "Survival System". Beyond the personal stats and inventory, the bottom of the panel had a row of function icons: Server Channel, Friends List, Trading Market, and Crafting Manual. Friends List was empty. No surprise there. She hadn't exactly been a social butterfly back in the old world, and she sure as hell wasn't going to make friends easily in a frozen hellscape where everyone was fighting for their next breath. She tapped into the "Server Channel". A line of numbers appeared in the top left. "Server: US-008 "Current Online: 9911/10000" Ten thousand people started. Less than ten hours in, eighty-nine were already gone. "That doesn't add up." Everyone's starter crate came with a rusty iron axe and five units of wood. Plus the initial fuel the campfire had when they arrived—that alone bought them ten hours minimum, even if they just sat there doing nothing. What the hell did those people do to get eliminated so fast? The channel was moving fast, messages scrolling by every second. Desperation dripped from every line. "Someone help, I'm freezing my ass off out here. This stupid axe can't cut sh*t—every swing just bounces off and rattles my whole arm. Can anyone spare a couple logs? My dad's a senior VP at Walker Group. I'll wire you a million dollars when we get back, I swear." "Wake up, buddy. If your dad's still alive, he's out there chopping trees right now too." "Don't even talk to me. I spotted a wooden crate in the snow earlier, got all excited, ran over—and before I got within ten feet, some white rabbit thing jumped out of a drift. Teeth like needles. Almost took a chunk out of my leg. Missed the crate, wasted all that energy for nothing." "I saw that too! Random crates spawn in the wild. I opened a wooden one and got two chocolate bars and some coal." Reading through the chaos, Riley picked out two keywords, "Random Reward Crates" and "Dangerous Creatures". So this world was deeper than she thought. Wooden crates, copper crates—these randomly spawning resource points were the real way to get ahead. Coal came from crates. That was useful to know. And if coal was in crates, steel probably was too. But something bothered her. According to what people were saying, reward crates weren't exactly rare. So why hadn't she found a single one during her lumber run? She doubted it was just bad luck. Riley exited chat and tapped into the "Trading Market". "Seller: MountainMan88 Item: Stone x2 Wants: White Bread x5" "Seller: LoneWolf_21 Item: Cotton Cloth Wants: Clean Water" "Seller: NotDeadYet Item: Wood x3 Wants: Anything edible" Most people were trading for food and wood. The stuff that kept you alive right now. Things like stone and cloth were getting dumped cheap—nobody had the luxury of thinking long-term. Riley looked at her own inventory. Eighty units of wood staring back at her. Her heart beat a little faster. In this opening phase, where wood literally meant the difference between life and death, the resources in her hands were basically gold bars. "Time to trade," she muttered to herself. "Coal, steel—can't get those from chopping trees. And right now, wood's at maximum value. If I wait, the exchange rate shifts." Even with the chainsaw dead, she still had the handsaw. Less efficient, sure, but she could gather more wood if she needed it. Short-term, she wasn't going to run out. She clicked to post a message in the channel. "System Prompt: Detected that you have not set a virtual ID. Please enter your nickname (cannot be changed after setting)." Riley stared at the blank input box. Naming things was the worst. She sat there for a long time, nothing coming to mind. Finally, she gave up. Couldn't think of anything cool or clever, so she'd just go with something random. Her fingers tapped across the virtual keyboard—SpicyBurger. "Setting successful. ID locked." The prompt closed. Riley posted her message. "SpicyBurger: Selling wood in bulk. Looking for: Coal, Steel, High-calorie food. DM me with offers—what you have and your rate. Good deals go fast, don't sleep on this." For three seconds after the message appeared, the channel went dead silent. Then it exploded. "SpicyBurger? That name's making me hungry, what the hell." "Never mind the name—'wood in bulk'! We got a whale in here! Everyone else is stressing about the next hour and this person's already running a business?" "I need some! My campfire's down to like two hours. I don't know if I actually die when it hits zero but I don't wanna find out." Suddenly, half the channel was scrambling for wood. But then the skeptics crawled out. "Hang on. Everyone started with the same rusty axe. Chopping a tree in this weather takes twenty, thirty minutes minimum. Where's she getting 'bulk' wood from? Sounds like a scam." "InvincibleWarrior: Everybody chill. Look at that ID—sounds like a girl's handle. I'm a grown man, been busting my ass, and I've only got like ten logs saved up. My hands are shredded. Some girl with a food name claims she's got bulk? She's trying to run a game. Scam people out of their stuff." "Iron_Tough: Agreed. Scammers made it through the apocalypse too, I guess. My advice: ignore her. Don't get played. How much wood can a woman chop anyway? Probably can't even lift the axe right, lol." Riley scrolled through the messages, expression flat. She almost laughed. But some people pushed back. "FishHater44: How is it a scam? If she doesn't deliver, you don't complete the trade. Just 'cause you can't chop that much wood doesn't mean nobody can." Riley nodded slightly. That one had a point. But she didn't waste energy arguing in the channel. Instead, she flipped on Do Not Disturb for private messages—only allowing chat requests that included a trade offer. Some people didn't actually care whether she had wood. They just couldn't stand seeing someone else do well. "Ding. Ding. Ding." Private messages started pouring in like rain. Most players weren't idiots. Faced with the very real threat of freezing to death, they'd try anything for a chance. Riley opened the first one. "Windwalker: I got "Coal x3" from a crate. How much wood can I get for it? I can't chop anymore. The wind out here is insane. I tried to throw the coal in my fire but it just kept popping back out. System says my campfire level's too low, won't let me use it. I'm out of wood. My fire's almost dead." Riley thought for a moment. "Three coal for five wood. Deal?" She hadn't known about that restriction. Coal was supposed to be better fuel than wood—didn't expect the game to lock it behind a level gate. The reply came instantly, "Deal. But five wood feels light. It's coal." The guy was conflicted. He knew coal had value, but he was desperate. "I'll make it six. Final offer." Riley wasn't sure about coal's real value yet. Six was her limit. "Fine. Deal." They both dropped their items into the trade window. A moment later, it completed. A flash of white light. Riley's inventory lost six wood. Gained three chunks of coal, each about the size of a small melon. One down. "CrunchyFrog: Hey, I got two "Iron Ingots" from a crate. System calls them "Scrap Steel". Can I get eight wood for them? Trying to stock up enough to sleep through the night." Riley replied, "Sure. Initiate." In just over ten minutes, her wood stockpile dropped significantly. But her inventory filled up with good stuff. "Coal x10 "Stone x23 "Scrap Steel x5 "Raw Meat x2 "White Bread x2 "Basic Torch Blueprint x1" The blueprint was new. The description said it was required for crafting certain items. Seemed useful, so she'd traded for it. Meanwhile, back in the channel, that "InvincibleWarrior" guy who'd been mocking her earlier seemed to notice that people were actually completing trades. His tone got bitter. "InvincibleWarrior: Whatever. She probably got lucky with a high-tier crate. Let's see how long her stock lasts. Once the wood's gone, she'll be begging me to let her join my group." The people who'd successfully traded with Riley popped into the channel to thank her. That might have been fine—except the thanks caused problems. Since Riley had stopped trading for now, most people hadn't gotten anything. And the sky was darkening. Temperature outside the campfire radius was dropping fast. Gathering wood was getting harder. Trading was their only hope. The ones who'd pinned everything on Riley, seeing her stop, started losing it. "You said 'in bulk'! You did like five trades and quit. What are we supposed to do now?" "Keep trading! My fire's almost out. You want us to go chop trees in the dark?" "If you couldn't deliver, why'd you post? Showing off and then hiding." Whether it was coordinated or just genuine rage, the number of people defending Riley in the channel shrank fast. Mostly it was attacks now. Accusations of being irresponsible. Using scarcity tactics. Playing games with people's lives. Riley closed the channel. She couldn't be bothered. In a life-or-death situation like this, people losing it was normal. If she actually had unlimited resources, she'd trade more. But she didn't. And back on Earth, nobody had ever handed her anything out of charity. She wasn't about to start playing savior now. She looked down at the "Basic Torch Blueprint" in her inventory. "Requirements: Wood x10, Kerosene, Scrap Steel x2" Note: Requires Level 2 Workbench to craft." She leaned back against the crate again. Felt the weight of her stockpile pressing back against that lingering sense of unease. In this world, your ID didn't matter. Your gender didn't matter either. What mattered was who held the resources. She looked at what she had left: 36 units of wood. Plus the steel, coal, and stone from trading. Time to plan. Upgrading to a Level 2 campfire required 55 wood. She had all the other materials. For the wood, she'd just have to use the handsaw tomorrow and gather a little more. That settled, she pulled a few more logs from inventory and arranged them on top of the crate, making a small enclosed space. Curled up inside it, she watched the sky outside slowly darken to black. Her eyes grew heavy. She drifted off. Chapter 4 The Culling Riley woke to the kind of soreness that made you reconsider ever moving again. She'd slept like the dead—no dreams, no blizzard, just nothing. When she opened her eyes, the first things she saw were the logs she'd stacked as a windbreak and the steady glow of the campfire. She tried to stretch. Big mistake. Every muscle in her body lit up at once, screaming in protest. "Sh*t." Riley sucked air through her teeth and pressed a hand to her aching shoulder. Her lower back felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to it. Yesterday's work had been too much. She wasn't weak—far from it—but she was still human. The lactic acid had settled in overnight, and now she moved like an arthritic tin man. At least she was alive. She stowed the windbreak logs back in her inventory and looked around. The world hadn't changed. Same dull gray sky. Same swirling snow. Outside the six-foot radius of the fire, the drifts looked deeper than yesterday. The wind had been busy. Riley pulled out the half-empty water bottle and wet her throat. Then she retrieved the white bread she'd traded for yesterday. Compared to that dense, flavorless black bread, this was practically cake. She tore off small pieces, letting the faint sweetness dissolve on her tongue, and habitually opened the "Server Channel". She stopped chewing. The number in the top left hit her like a physical blow. "Current Online Players: 4968/10000" "Five thousand..." Riley's eyes went wide. In a single night, that number had been cut in half. Five thousand people. Gone. Winked out of existence on this frozen ice field while she slept. "Ding." The system notification cut through her thoughts—cold, emotionless, like it was announcing the weather. "Global Announcement: Congratulations to all survivors for successfully surviving the first day. "This was a culling. Last night eliminated those fools who failed to add fuel to their fires or refused to gather wood. Remember: in this place, tears mean nothing. When you die here, you're dead-dead. "You who remain are the lucky ones. "Grace Period: A five-day 'New Player Support Period' now begins. For the next five days, your initial supply crates will refresh daily with a fixed amount of food. "Special Reward: Each survivor receives one pair of "Standard Issue Snow Boots (Common)". Be grateful for this mercy. Enjoy the game." The words sat there on her screen. Fools. Mercy. The system's tone dripped with contempt. The math was simple. Starting package: five hours of fuel. Initial gift: five units of wood, another five hours. Total ten hours, if you did absolutely nothing. The ones who'd frozen to death last night—they were the ones who'd clung to hope. The ones too scared to move. The ones who'd told themselves someone would save them. Five thousand people. One night. Gone. This wasn't a game. It was a slaughter. In the channel, the survivors who'd made it through were clearly rattled by the numbers too. "Holy sh*t... My friend's icon went dark last night. Does that mean he's dead? Actually dead?" "I can't do this. I don't wanna play anymore, I wanna go home. I swear I'll work today. I'll chop wood, I'll do whatever, just please—" "Everyone move! Don't save your strength! If you die, that's it. No respawns!" Panic spread fast. But almost immediately, the tone shifted. The fear found a target. "That SpicyBurger—if she'd shared more wood yesterday, would so many people have died?" "For real. If she had extra, why not just give it away? Why did it have to be trades? She could've at least loaned some out." "This is what happens when people hoard resources and watch others freeze. Remember that name. Don't trade with her. Ever." Riley frowned. Here we go again. She scrolled up. Sure enough, there it was—that familiar ID: "InvincibleWarrior". He was going hard in the channel. "She's profiting off suffering. That's what some people do. Women like that are the worst—hoarding supplies while people die around them. Wait and see. Someone like her won't last." Riley laughed. Actually laughed out loud. Moral blackmail. In the apocalypse. She typed, "If you want wood, go cut it yourself. I'm not your mommy. No amount of crying in chat is gonna put logs in your inventory. You'd get more done if you just picked up your d*mn axe." The channel went quiet for a second. Then the reasonable voices piped up. "She's right. Nobody owes you anything. Work for it." "Exactly. Just 'cause someone's quiet doesn't mean they're an easy target." In a world where staying alive took everything you had, expecting charity was the dumbest move of all. Riley didn't waste more energy on it. People like that—the more you engaged, the more they thrived. Let him run his mouth. She had bigger things to worry about. She closed the channel and turned to the big wooden crate—her initial supply point. Sure enough, new items had materialized inside. "Bottled Water x3 "White Bread x3 "Fresh Orange Juice x1 "Standard Snow Boots x1" "Orange juice?" Riley picked up the bottle, genuinely surprised. The orange liquid inside sloshed gently. Vitamins. The system was actually giving them vitamins. She pulled off her old shoes—already damp and cold—and swapped into the new boots. They were clunky, sure. But they gripped the snow, and the insulation was real. The chill that had been seeping up through her soles disappeared instantly. Next, she opened her toolbox. Goggles on. Thick cut-resistant gloves. Head-to-toe gear. "Time to work." The channel noise faded from her mind. She had one priority today, and it wasn't arguing with idiots. She picked up the chainsaw and headed back to the tree line. The cold played tricks on batteries. She'd known that, intellectually. But knowing it and feeling it were different things. After just eight trees, the last spare battery gave out. The chainsaw stuttered, died, and went silent in her hands. Riley stared at it. "Son of a b*tch." Chapter 5 Dead Battery Riley stared at the dead chainsaw in her hands and shook her head. Without power, it was just an expensive paperweight. If she wanted more wood, she'd have to do it the old-fashioned way—pick up the axe or the manual handsaw from the toolbox and go to war with frozen timber. But eight more trees were eight more trees. Her stockpile was looking healthy. "First things first. Get these back." She sucked it up, stowed the chainsaw in her inventory, and started hauling. Her body screamed even louder than yesterday. Every muscle felt like it had been replaced with concrete. She dragged each log back one at a time, moving like a zombie. Drag. Rest two minutes. Drag again. The wind howled in her ears. Riley lost track of time, lost track of everything except the mechanical rhythm of work. By the time the sun was high—not that you could really see it through the clouds—she dragged the last log into the campfire's radius. It dissolved into light, absorbed by the system. Riley all but collapsed into the snow. "Acquired: Wood x40" She lay there for a moment, chest heaving, staring at the number in her inventory. A tired smile crept across her face. She had enough. Combined with the coal and steel from yesterday's trades, she had everything she needed for the upgrade. Riley forced herself upright and walked to the campfire. On the floating translucent panel, the "Upgrade" button glowed that tempting gold. "Upgrade Primitive Shelter to Lv.2? "Cost: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Scrap Steel x5 "Remaining after upgrade: Wood x16, Stone x3, Coal x0, Steel x0" "Upgrade." Riley took a breath and pressed it. "Hmmmm—!" A blinding white light erupted from the heart of the campfire, swallowing everything. Riley squeezed her eyes shut. No explosion. No thunder. Just a sound like Legos snapping together. A few seconds later, the light faded. Riley opened her eyes. And stopped breathing. The campfire wasn't just a campfire anymore. The rough stone ring had transformed into something neat and intentional—a proper firepit with a stone border for insulation, a place to set things, even a simple steel grate attached to the side. But that wasn't the big news. The heat that used to push back the cold within a six-foot radius now stretched a full fifteen feet. Inside that circle, snow was actively melting, revealing dark frozen soil underneath. In one corner, she spotted a patch of moss stubbornly poking through. Riley spun around. Behind the big wooden crate, a small log cabin stood waiting. It wasn't much—maybe forty feet square, built from rough-hewn logs. Nothing fancy. But it was solid. Four walls and a roof, blocking wind and snow completely. Riley walked over and pushed open the heavy wooden door. Warm air hit her face. Inside was simple: a wooden bed frame piled with dry grass, a crude workbench, a chair, and a small fireplace connected to a chimney that ran up through the roof. Rustic. But right now, it was heaven. Wood and fire. Four walls. A roof. Home. Riley ran her hand along the rough wall. Her eyes stung a little. She wouldn't have to sleep in the open anymore. Wouldn't have to wake up every few hours to check the fire. Wouldn't have to worry about freezing to death in her sleep. Right on cue, the server announcement chimed. Gold text this time, blazing right in the center of everyone's vision. "Server Announcement: Congratulations to player SpicyBurger for being the first to achieve "Level 2 Shelter". Rewards have been distributed." The chat channel, which had been wallowing in fear and despair, exploded. "Holy sh*t? Level 2 already? What does Level 2 unlock? Can you post pics, big shot?" "That's the wood seller from yesterday? No way. Absolute legend." "Carry me please! SpicyBurger, I'll be your loyal follower. I can cook, I can clean, I can—" "Teach us, master! How'd you gather materials so fast? What's your secret?" Compliments. Pleas. Desperate attempts to get noticed. And then, of course, the sour grapes. "InvincibleWarrior: Big deal. Just profiteering off everyone else's suffering. If she'd shared that wood instead of selling it, maybe those five thousand people would still be alive. How does it feel to climb on corpses?" "GodLovesMeFirst: Seriously. Building your success on other people's deaths. Karma's real. She'll get hers." Riley's jaw tightened. If InvincibleWarrior had been standing in front of her right now, she'd have knocked his teeth out. Guys like him—useless themselves, but always ready to tear down anyone who actually accomplished something. Sewer rats. Her private messages exploded too. She'd set it to only accept trade offers, but people had found a workaround—using the "trade note" function to send spam. "Hey beautiful, I'm a personal trainer. Great shape. Wanna see? Hit me with some wood and I'll do a voice call with you!" A photo of some guy flexing in a mirror, shirt off. Riley glanced at it, unimpressed. Decent abs. Pathetic attitude. Dude was clearly strong enough to chop wood—why was he wasting time on this? She'd never mentioned her gender, so most people probably assumed anyone who'd gathered that much wood must be a guy. The messages reflected that assumption. Some women sent selfies too, trying to flirt their way into favor. Didn't matter. Shameless cut across all demographics. From the backgrounds in the photos, everyone seemed to be in different locations. But one thing was consistent: they all had trees nearby. The system must have arranged that—a new player perk. "A bunch of degenerates." Riley's face went cold. She changed her privacy settings to "Friends Only". Then she added a line to her trading post description. "No spam. Send junk, get blocked." Silence. Blessed silence. She took a breath, let the noise drain away, and focused on what mattered. "First-place upgrade reward..." She opened her inventory. Sitting there, glowing faintly purple, was a gift box. For more exciting content, please download the "JoyRead" app to continue reading.
Chapter 1 The Countdown Ends It was the year 2027, and the end of the world was now less than an hour away. "00:59:23" Riley Carter stood on a ladder with a screw clenched between her teeth, an impact driver in her hand, securing the last window panel in place. A month ago, that timer had just appeared out of nowhere, hanging in the corner of everyone's vision like it had always been there. At first, people wrote it off as some kind of mass hacker prank. The government fed the media soothing statements in an attempt to keep things calm, but there was no way to talk down the panic as prices kept rising and supplies were held in a monopoly in real time. News outlets might spin whatever narrative they wanted, but no one could argue with the price of eggs. For a while, it was a frenzy. People cleaned out grocery stores like locusts. The government did what they could—price caps, purchase limits, reassurances from the podium—but none of it mattered. The cost of living kept climbing, and bit by bit, the country started coming apart at the seams. Online, it was a circus. Some people posted doom-laden predictions. Others openly celebrated the thought of the world finally burning. A few just seemed relieved they wouldn't have to clock in on Monday. In that final hour, things got truly ugly. Both on the streets and on social media, it was chaos. Some people figured why not went out with a bang? If the world was ending, they'd spend their last hours doing every reckless thing they'd ever fantasized about. Others, paralyzed by fear of whatever was coming, scrambled for anything they could hoard. Supplies. Weapons. Gasoline. Didn't matter what, as long as they had more of it than the next guy. Most people just wanted to be with the ones they loved. Riley didn't have that luxury anymore. Fresh out of community college, she'd lost both her parents in a highway pileup eighteen months back. The only thing they'd left her was the family hardware store, a cramped little place wedged between a laundromat and a taqueria. She'd been running it solo for just over a year when that d*mn countdown appeared overhead. At first, she'd thought maybe an apocalypse wouldn't be the worst thing. Maybe there'd be something on the other side. A reunion. But then she thought about her folks. They'd doted on her. Made her feel like the center of their world. And even though she'd grown a thick skin since going it alone, feeling indifferent to the world, she knew what they'd want. They'd want her to fight. To stay. She was the only piece of them still left in this world. People always say you aren't really gone until the last person forgets your name. As long as she kept breathing, kept carrying them with her another day, they weren't truly dead. Riley spat the screw into her palm, face calm, the impact driver whirring as she sank another fastener into the reinforced frame. "Flour's three hundred a pound now, and you can't even buy it straight—they make you tack on a bunch of other junk you don't need just to get it," she muttered to herself, shaking her head. When that timer first flickered into existence, Riley had done something smart. She'd liquidated everything. Converted every dollar she could scrape together into supplies. Unfortunately, by the time she hit the stores, inflation had already done its damage. Her savings didn't go nearly as far as they should have. Any cash that was left went toward tools. If the world was ending, she thought they could be useful. Riley pressed the last sheet of thick insulation foam into the window frame, seating it flush against the reinforced plywood beneath. The impact driver snarled as she buried the screws. Then she reached for her pneumatic glue gun—a satisfying pfft as the sealant filled the final gap. She wiped sweat from her forehead and climbed down off the ladder. Stepped back to admire her work. The little apartment was a fortress now. Doors reinforced. Windows barricaded. Every interior wall lined with an extra layer of insulation. She glanced down at herself. Custom-fit heavy-duty workwear. Slash-resistant fabric. More pockets than she'd ever need. Reinforced padding at the knees and elbows. It wasn't fashionable, but it was practical. And her real treasure: tools. A chainsaw. A reciprocating saw. The impact driver in her hand. A multi-bit screwdriver that had cost more than she wanted to admit. She'd brought everything usable from the shop back here, consolidated it into three massive toolboxes. She'd also grabbed some stuff like an air purifier and some spare filters—anything that might matter when civilization took a vacation. She didn't know what the countdown would bring. Some folks online predicted zombies. Others said asteroid impact. Volcanic winter. Alien invasion. Take your pick. Food. Tools. Shelter. She'd even started working out, building strength she'd never needed before. She'd done everything she could think of to prepare. Whatever was coming, she figured she'd last longer than most. With nothing left to do, she dropped onto one of the big toolboxes laid flat on the floor, wiped her forehead again, and pulled out her phone. Most news apps had crashed. The only things still loading were comment sections, and they were going crazy. [Anyone got rice? I'll pay eight grand for a bag. Please, we got nothing left.] [Forget it, man. Money's toilet paper now. Saw it with my own eyes—some rich assholes cleared out the Costco warehouse last week. All that 'purchase limit' crap was just theater. Shelves were empty 'cause the stock never made it there. It's all sitting in some hedge fund guy's basement.] [No kidding? Same thing happened to me! Store manager kept telling me, 'We're limiting purchases, come back next week, we'll put your name on the list.' So the whole time the back room was empty? They were just jerking us around?] [Of course they were. Rich people cornered the market on everything. So what are normal people supposed to do? Just sit here and die?] [Anyone know what actually happens when the clock hits zero? Like, is it nukes? That virus thing from that old video game?] Riley locked her phone. Tucked it away. She didn't have anything to add to that conversation. A month ago, when the countdown first showed up, prices had spiked instantly. A fifty-pound bag of rice that normally went for thirty bucks jumped to eight hundred overnight. By yesterday, it was breaking two grand. The wealthy had rolled up with trucks and cleaned out supermarkets. Riley had been smart—she'd gone early, bought stuff that would keep, stuff that was calorie-dense and cheap. Chocolate. Survival biscuits. Canned goods. It wasn't much, but it was enough for one person, at least for a while. She took a deep breath and glanced at the timer. "00:01:10" Just over a minute. Riley gripped the toolbox beneath her. Knuckles white. Who knew what would happen when that thing hit zero? Maybe it'd be like 2012—all hype, nothing real. In that last minute, her life flickered past. Her parents' faces. The hardware store. The lonely months since. "00:00:00" The countdown ended. Riley had just started to breathe a sigh of relief—nothing happened, maybe it really was nothing—when the world lurched beneath her. A dizzying weightlessness. A sensation of falling. Everything spun. ***** She didn't know how long she was out. "Whew." A wind like a knife blade sliced across her face. Riley's eyes snapped open. Her warm apartment was gone. In its place, an endless white expanse stretched in every direction. Snow whipped through the air. Wind howled like a wounded animal. And at her feet, a small campfire guttered in the gale, threatening to die at any second. "What the—" Before she could process, a chime rang directly in her skull. Not heard. Known. "Welcome to the Extreme Cold Survival Game. "Earth no longer exists. This is your new home. This is your grave. "Survival rules are as follows. "1. Each player begins with one campfire. It is your only defense against the cold. If the campfire dies, you will be judged deceased by the system. Not that it matters—without the fire, you won't last anyway. "2. This is a real world. You can die from hunger. From exposure. From animal attack. "3. Supplies stockpiled in your previous world do not carry over. Only items on your person, or in direct physical contact at the moment of transfer, are retained. "4. Struggle to survive. It is your only hope." Riley's heart slammed against her ribs. Supplies didn't carry over? Her mind flashed to those wealthy forum posters bragging about their warehouse stockpiles. And then she looked down at herself. Workwear. Intact. And— She was still sitting on the three giant toolboxes. They sat solidly in the snow, dusted with powder, unmistakably here. "Whew." Riley let out a long breath. A white cloud dispersed in front of her face. Pity, though. During her renovations, she'd stocked those boxes with a lot of power tools. The expensive impact driver. The reciprocating saw. In a world with no electrical outlets, once those batteries died, they were just dead weight. But even so. The hand tools. The consumables. The sheer volume of stuff in those boxes—it was a treasure beyond measure in a place like this. Riley forced herself to calm down. She was here. She'd deal with it. Something new lived in her mind now. She concentrated, and a translucent pale-blue screen materialized in front of her eyes. Looked just like a video game HUD. "Personal Panel "Name: Riley Carter "ID: 1120-US "Level: 1 (Standard Survivor) "Strength: 8 (Years of manual labor have made you stronger than average) "Agility: 8 (You've got quick reflexes) "Constitution: 6 (You've been skipping meals lately) "Spirit: 9 (You keep your head when others panic) "Inventory: 16/16 slots (Base capacity)" "Inventory?" Riley studied the sixteen empty squares at the bottom of the display. She reached out, touched one of the toolboxes, and thought the word, "Store." Whoosh. The heavy box vanished. In its place, a tiny icon appeared in the first inventory slot, a miniature "x1" in the corner. "It actually worked." For the first time since arriving, a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. Retrieve. Thud. The toolbox landed back in the snow, puffing up powder. No energy cost. No sense of weight. And in that inventory, she could carry anything, regardless of how heavy it was. Later on, when she went scavenging, that would make all the difference. Riley rubbed her stiff, freezing hands together and turned her attention to the campfire at her feet. It was the only warmth in this frozen wasteland. Hovering above the flames, visible only to her, were a few lines of glowing text. "Basic Campfire (Lv.1) "Remaining Burn Time: 05:28:00 "Current Coverage: Radius six feet (Blocks wind and snow) "Upgrade Requirements: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Steel x5 "Description: This is your life. Do not let it die. Upgrading expands your safe zone and unlocks additional construction options." "Needs upgrading." Riley frowned. Wood and stone she could probably find. But coal? Steel? Out here in the middle of nowhere? A flash of movement caught her eye. A small wooden box, half-buried in the snow not far from the fire. The starter crate. Had to be. Riley didn't rush. First, she pulled the claw hammer from her belt—the one she always kept there, habit from years of work—and gripped it tight. She scanned the tree line. Listened past the wind. Nothing moved. No sounds but the storm. She walked over quickly, crouched by the box. No lock. She pried the lid open with the claw end of her hammer. Inside, a handful of items. "Obtained: Iron Axe x1 "Obtained: Stale Dark Bread x2 "Obtained: 500ml Bottled Water x1 "Obtained: Kindling x5 "Obtained: Insulated Field Jacket x1 "Obtained: Utility Rope (25ft) "Obtained: Thermal Underwear (Set) x2 Not much. Barely anything. Riley picked up one of the dark loaves. It was rock hard. She examined the jacket—basic, but warm-looking. "So this is what a standard survivor starts with." At least the system had thought of everything. Including the underwear. She'd half-expected to wake up naked in the snow; at least she didn't have to worry about that. She stored everything in her inventory, then shrugged on the field jacket. The temperature shift was brutal. Even those few seconds exposed had left her hands numb. Hypothermia would set in fast out here. Jacket on, she hurried back to the campfire. She pulled the five units of Kindling from her inventory and tossed them onto the flames. The fire roared higher. Warmth flooded over her. "Fuel added. Remaining Burn Time: 10:28:00" Ten hours. If she didn't move fast, in ten hours she'd freeze to death on this ice field. And the game had made it clear—if the fire died, the system would judge her dead. Whether she actually froze or not. Riley lifted her head and scanned the landscape. She was in a sparse coniferous forest. Barely alive trees, crusted with frost, dotted the area not far from her position. "Wood." A slow smile spread across her face. She patted the toolbox beside her. "Other people might have axes. But felling a tree with just an axe takes hours. Exhausts you." She unlatched the box. Pulled out the chainsaw. Checked the battery gauge—full. "I've got a handsaw in here too. And a chainsaw with a full charge." The battery wouldn't last forever. But it would last long enough to give her a massive head start. In this race for survival, that was everything. Chapter 2 The Chainsaw The wind screamed across the open ground, picking up loose snow and flinging it against her goggles like sand. It sounded like static. Riley had pulled her basic work gear from the toolbox before heading out. Now she stood in the snow, surrounded by clusters of thin conifers that looked half-dead already. She took a breath. The air burned going down. "Zzzzzzz—!!!" She squeezed the trigger. The orange-and-black lithium-ion chainsaw in her hands roared to life, the chain spinning so fast it blurred. She buried the teeth in the nearest pine trunk. Wood chips exploded everywhere. Fragrant shavings—still wet with resin—scattered across the pristine snow, stark and yellow against all that white. Five seconds. Crack. The pine tree, thick as her arm, groaned and tilted. Then it fell slow and heavy into a drift, sending up a puff of powder. "God bless modern technology." Riley shook out her wrist—the vibration had numbed her fingers—and allowed herself a small smile. Without that chainsaw, with just the basic iron axe the system had given her, felling a tree frozen solid like this would have taken twenty minutes minimum. And it would have left her soaked with sweat. In subzero temps, sweat was a death sentence. Once your base layers got wet, the moment you stopped moving, your body temperature would plummet. Hypothermia would follow fast. Riley didn't waste time celebrating. She knew the saw in her hands was a hungry machine. She'd brought two spare high-capacity batteries, sure, but until she found a way to recharge them, every second the motor ran was borrowed time. She had to gather as much wood as possible before the batteries gave out. "Zzzzz—Zzzzz—" At the edge of the forest, the chainsaw's snarl rose and fell, shattering the frozen silence. Riley worked like she was possessed. Fell a tree. Move to the next. Fell another. But she had to stay alert—watch for hidden snow pits underfoot, keep adjusting her collar against the wind that kept finding its way down her neck. Her stamina drained faster than she'd anticipated. In extreme cold, body burned through calories just to stay alive. Added walking through knee-deep snow, where every step took three times the energy of walking on pavement, and the math got ugly fast. Pretty soon, Riley was breathing hard. Her breath fogged the inside of her goggles, and she had to keep wiping them clear. "Zzzzz..." She was mid-cut on a tree—didn't even know which number anymore—when the chainsaw's roar stuttered. Died. The chain jammed solid in the wood. A red light blinked at her. Dead battery. Riley yanked the saw free and patted its housing. "Good work, buddy." Genuine regret in her voice. She straightened up and looked around. Pine trunks lay scattered across the snow in every direction. A decent haul. She counted silently. "Twenty-three total." Then the next problem hit her. According to the system, until she actually possessed these logs, they were still just natural resources. That meant they didn't qualify for Inventory storage. She couldn't just snap her fingers and make them disappear. She had to drag them back to camp. Riley grabbed the nearest pine and tried to pull. Heavy. Like, unreasonably heavy. Fresh-cut wood was full of moisture. Add the branches catching in the snow, dragging like anchors, and she felt like she was hauling a dead body through mud. "Huff... huff..." She gritted her teeth, looped rope around the trunk, slung it over her shoulder, leaned forward, and started walking. Inch by inch. The tree line to her campfire was maybe fifty yards. Right now, it felt like fifty miles. By the time she'd wrestled the fourth tree back into the fire's warm radius, she was wrecked. Her legs felt like someone had filled them with concrete. Her lungs burned from hauling freezing air through them. "Can't... can't do more." Riley made the call. She stopped. Those nineteen trees still out there in the snow—they called to her. Tempted her. But if she kept pushing without rest, without fuel for herself, she'd collapse out there. And out there, collapse meant death. She dropped down next to the big wooden crate that had held her starter supplies. It was less than three feet from the campfire. The flames danced orange and red, pumping out heat that felt like heaven. The shift from frozen to warm made her shiver violently. She pulled off her goggles and thick gloves, set them near the fire to warm up, then—still shaking—pulled the half-empty water bottle from her Inventory. Took a small sip. Then the bread. Two black bricks that looked more like construction material than food. "Crunch." Riley bit off a piece with effort. It was coarse. Tasted like sawdust with a hint of burnt toast. Bitter. But it was calories. Carbs. Fuel for her own fire. She forced herself to chew, swallow. When the food hit her stomach, warmth finally started spreading through her core. The uncontrollable shaking eased. After half a loaf, Riley leaned back against the crate. Her eyelids drooped. Post-exhaustion crash hit her like a wave. The campfire crackled. The wind seemed farther away now. Muffled. She really wanted to sleep... Her head nodded. Her body started sliding sideways. "Wait—" Some animal instinct jolted her awake just before she went under. She pinched her thigh. Hard. Then looked up at the timer floating above the flames. "Shelter Level 1 "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 06:28:00" Six and a half hours. If she slept too deep, too long, and that fire went out—what then? Even ignoring the obvious—that she'd freeze to death in this hellhole without a heat source—the game rules were clear. When the campfire hits zero, it's game over. "No sleeping. Not allowed." Riley slapped her own cheeks, forced herself upright. She stayed near the fire, but she didn't take off her heavy work clothes. She remembered reading something once, a survival article. "In the late stages of hypothermia, your hypothalamus malfunctions. You get a false sensation of heat. It's called "paradoxical undressing"—people strip down right before they freeze to death." "Okay. Process these four. Keep the fire fed." She pulled a traditional handsaw from the toolbox. Looking at the four thick pine logs on the ground, she almost laughed. Without power tools, breaking these down into burnable pieces would take at least half an hour. Burn the little energy she had left. But what choice did she have? Riley knelt in the snow, positioned the blade against the trunk, and was about to start cutting— A soft white light shot out from the system panel on her chest. It washed over the logs. "Ding! "Detected felled, intact logs within shelter range. "Perform quick recovery?" Riley's hand froze mid-saw. Quick recovery? It took her a second to process. Then relief flooded through her so hard she almost cried. "Yes! Recover!" She didn't hesitate. The next moment, something impossible happened. The four pine trunks—the ones she'd have to saw and split by hand, the ones that represented hours of brutal labor—dissolved into pale blue light particles. Not into dust. Into neat, uniform logs that stacked themselves automatically in her Inventory. The branches, the needles, all the useless parts—purified out of existence. "Recovery successful! "Obtained: Common Wood x20" Riley's eyes went wide, staring at the perfect lumber in her inventory display. Looked like it came straight from a hardware store. "One tree gives five units of wood? "And I don't have to cut it myself?" This changed everything. It meant she only had to handle the felling and the dragging. Once a log crossed into her camp's boundary, the system recognized it as hers. The most time-consuming part—the processing—just... didn't exist anymore. Riley immediately grabbed five units of wood and fed them to the fire. Whoosh. The flames leaped, hungry and grateful. "Fuel added. "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 12:20:00" "Five logs, five hours..." She did the math fast, looking at the fifteen units still on the ground. If she threw all of those in, that'd be another fifteen hours. Total of twenty-seven. She could sleep like the dead right now, and that fire would still be burning when she woke up. Security. For the first time since the world ended, Riley felt something like security. She selected the remaining wood. Deposited it all. Watched the countdown tick up to a very comfortable "27:20:00". Then her nerves finally let go. She dragged one of the toolboxes into position to block the wind, wrapped the field jacket tight around herself, pulled her hat down over her eyes, leaned back against the warm crate, and let the crackle of the fire pull her under. ***** She didn't sleep long. When she opened her eyes again, the sky was still that same dull gray-white. Impossible to tell if it was morning or afternoon. System clock said three hours. Her body ached. Shoulders and arms especially—felt like she'd gone ten rounds with someone. But her head was clear. She stretched her stiff neck and stood up. The snow seemed lighter. The feathery flakes had tapered off into sporadic icy grains. Riley ate a little more, got some fuel back in the tank, then stepped outside the campfire's warmth. The fire's effect wasn't what she'd expected. It wasn't that the temperature gradually dropped as you moved away. It was sharper than that. Like there was an invisible barrier around the flames. Inside, livable. Outside, the cold hit you like a wall. She wandered a little way off. The cold found every gap in her clothing. She thought about going farther, exploring. But there was nothing visible except that stand of trees she'd already worked. Maybe stuff was buried under the snow, but she couldn't see it. "No proper snow boots. Not going far." Riley glanced at the endless white distance with real regret. "Don't get greedy. Get those nineteen trees first." She turned. Looked at the woods. Her loot was still out there. And now she knew: if she could drag them back into the campfire's circle, the system would cash them out automatically. "Time to work." Riley rubbed her hands together. Let the motivation build. For the next few hours, she became a machine. Drag a tree to camp. Recover it. Go back for another. Repeat. It was boring. Exhausting. But watching those logs turn into numbers in her inventory—that feeling was hard to describe. Satisfying, in a way nothing had been satisfying in a long time. When the last pine trunk crossed into the light and dissolved into particles, Riley just collapsed. Lay flat in the snow and stared at the gray sky. She pulled up her Inventory. The once-empty slots were full now. Stack after stack of wood icons. "Item: Common Wood "Quantity: 80 "Description: Basic survival resource. Can be used for fuel or construction." Eighty units. Plus what was already burning in the campfire. Her day's work had yielded a clean hundred. One unit of wood burned for one hour. Riley looked at the flames dancing in front of her. Felt the heat on her face. Let herself smile, wide and real. "One hundred hours." Four full days. While everyone else was probably still panicking. Crying. Begging. Trying to figure out how to survive their first night in this frozen nightmare... She, Riley, had enough fuel stockpiled to last four days. Which meant: for the next ninety-six hours, unless she actively chose to die, nobody and nothing could put her fire out. She pulled the half-empty water bottle from Inventory. The space must have been insulated somehow—the water was still warm. Almost body temperature. She sipped it. Tasted sweet, even though it was just tap water. "Okay. Next step." Her gaze settled on the "Upgrade" button on the campfire panel. This open-air setup was fine for now. But if she was going to survive long-term, she needed something better. A real shelter. All she needed was a little stone. Some coal. Some steel. Then she could build something worth calling home. Chapter 3 The Trading Game The blizzard howled outside, but within the six-foot radius of the campfire, the air stayed surprisingly warm—like the wind had hit an invisible wall and just couldn't reach. Riley leaned back against the dusty wooden crate, holding the half-empty water bottle in her hand. She stared into the flames for a moment, then focused her attention inward. The pale blue system panel unfolded in front of her eyes again. Now that the immediate crisis was handled, she finally had time to sit quietly and really explore this so-called "Survival System". Beyond the personal stats and inventory, the bottom of the panel had a row of function icons: Server Channel, Friends List, Trading Market, and Crafting Manual. Friends List was empty. No surprise there. She hadn't exactly been a social butterfly back in the old world, and she sure as hell wasn't going to make friends easily in a frozen hellscape where everyone was fighting for their next breath. She tapped into the "Server Channel". A line of numbers appeared in the top left. "Server: US-008 "Current Online: 9911/10000" Ten thousand people started. Less than ten hours in, eighty-nine were already gone. "That doesn't add up." Everyone's starter crate came with a rusty iron axe and five units of wood. Plus the initial fuel the campfire had when they arrived—that alone bought them ten hours minimum, even if they just sat there doing nothing. What the hell did those people do to get eliminated so fast? The channel was moving fast, messages scrolling by every second. Desperation dripped from every line. "Someone help, I'm freezing my ass off out here. This stupid axe can't cut sh*t—every swing just bounces off and rattles my whole arm. Can anyone spare a couple logs? My dad's a senior VP at Walker Group. I'll wire you a million dollars when we get back, I swear." "Wake up, buddy. If your dad's still alive, he's out there chopping trees right now too." "Don't even talk to me. I spotted a wooden crate in the snow earlier, got all excited, ran over—and before I got within ten feet, some white rabbit thing jumped out of a drift. Teeth like needles. Almost took a chunk out of my leg. Missed the crate, wasted all that energy for nothing." "I saw that too! Random crates spawn in the wild. I opened a wooden one and got two chocolate bars and some coal." Reading through the chaos, Riley picked out two keywords, "Random Reward Crates" and "Dangerous Creatures". So this world was deeper than she thought. Wooden crates, copper crates—these randomly spawning resource points were the real way to get ahead. Coal came from crates. That was useful to know. And if coal was in crates, steel probably was too. But something bothered her. According to what people were saying, reward crates weren't exactly rare. So why hadn't she found a single one during her lumber run? She doubted it was just bad luck. Riley exited chat and tapped into the "Trading Market". "Seller: MountainMan88 Item: Stone x2 Wants: White Bread x5" "Seller: LoneWolf_21 Item: Cotton Cloth Wants: Clean Water" "Seller: NotDeadYet Item: Wood x3 Wants: Anything edible" Most people were trading for food and wood. The stuff that kept you alive right now. Things like stone and cloth were getting dumped cheap—nobody had the luxury of thinking long-term. Riley looked at her own inventory. Eighty units of wood staring back at her. Her heart beat a little faster. In this opening phase, where wood literally meant the difference between life and death, the resources in her hands were basically gold bars. "Time to trade," she muttered to herself. "Coal, steel—can't get those from chopping trees. And right now, wood's at maximum value. If I wait, the exchange rate shifts." Even with the chainsaw dead, she still had the handsaw. Less efficient, sure, but she could gather more wood if she needed it. Short-term, she wasn't going to run out. She clicked to post a message in the channel. "System Prompt: Detected that you have not set a virtual ID. Please enter your nickname (cannot be changed after setting)." Riley stared at the blank input box. Naming things was the worst. She sat there for a long time, nothing coming to mind. Finally, she gave up. Couldn't think of anything cool or clever, so she'd just go with something random. Her fingers tapped across the virtual keyboard—SpicyBurger. "Setting successful. ID locked." The prompt closed. Riley posted her message. "SpicyBurger: Selling wood in bulk. Looking for: Coal, Steel, High-calorie food. DM me with offers—what you have and your rate. Good deals go fast, don't sleep on this." For three seconds after the message appeared, the channel went dead silent. Then it exploded. "SpicyBurger? That name's making me hungry, what the hell." "Never mind the name—'wood in bulk'! We got a whale in here! Everyone else is stressing about the next hour and this person's already running a business?" "I need some! My campfire's down to like two hours. I don't know if I actually die when it hits zero but I don't wanna find out." Suddenly, half the channel was scrambling for wood. But then the skeptics crawled out. "Hang on. Everyone started with the same rusty axe. Chopping a tree in this weather takes twenty, thirty minutes minimum. Where's she getting 'bulk' wood from? Sounds like a scam." "InvincibleWarrior: Everybody chill. Look at that ID—sounds like a girl's handle. I'm a grown man, been busting my ass, and I've only got like ten logs saved up. My hands are shredded. Some girl with a food name claims she's got bulk? She's trying to run a game. Scam people out of their stuff." "Iron_Tough: Agreed. Scammers made it through the apocalypse too, I guess. My advice: ignore her. Don't get played. How much wood can a woman chop anyway? Probably can't even lift the axe right, lol." Riley scrolled through the messages, expression flat. She almost laughed. But some people pushed back. "FishHater44: How is it a scam? If she doesn't deliver, you don't complete the trade. Just 'cause you can't chop that much wood doesn't mean nobody can." Riley nodded slightly. That one had a point. But she didn't waste energy arguing in the channel. Instead, she flipped on Do Not Disturb for private messages—only allowing chat requests that included a trade offer. Some people didn't actually care whether she had wood. They just couldn't stand seeing someone else do well. "Ding. Ding. Ding." Private messages started pouring in like rain. Most players weren't idiots. Faced with the very real threat of freezing to death, they'd try anything for a chance. Riley opened the first one. "Windwalker: I got "Coal x3" from a crate. How much wood can I get for it? I can't chop anymore. The wind out here is insane. I tried to throw the coal in my fire but it just kept popping back out. System says my campfire level's too low, won't let me use it. I'm out of wood. My fire's almost dead." Riley thought for a moment. "Three coal for five wood. Deal?" She hadn't known about that restriction. Coal was supposed to be better fuel than wood—didn't expect the game to lock it behind a level gate. The reply came instantly, "Deal. But five wood feels light. It's coal." The guy was conflicted. He knew coal had value, but he was desperate. "I'll make it six. Final offer." Riley wasn't sure about coal's real value yet. Six was her limit. "Fine. Deal." They both dropped their items into the trade window. A moment later, it completed. A flash of white light. Riley's inventory lost six wood. Gained three chunks of coal, each about the size of a small melon. One down. "CrunchyFrog: Hey, I got two "Iron Ingots" from a crate. System calls them "Scrap Steel". Can I get eight wood for them? Trying to stock up enough to sleep through the night." Riley replied, "Sure. Initiate." In just over ten minutes, her wood stockpile dropped significantly. But her inventory filled up with good stuff. "Coal x10 "Stone x23 "Scrap Steel x5 "Raw Meat x2 "White Bread x2 "Basic Torch Blueprint x1" The blueprint was new. The description said it was required for crafting certain items. Seemed useful, so she'd traded for it. Meanwhile, back in the channel, that "InvincibleWarrior" guy who'd been mocking her earlier seemed to notice that people were actually completing trades. His tone got bitter. "InvincibleWarrior: Whatever. She probably got lucky with a high-tier crate. Let's see how long her stock lasts. Once the wood's gone, she'll be begging me to let her join my group." The people who'd successfully traded with Riley popped into the channel to thank her. That might have been fine—except the thanks caused problems. Since Riley had stopped trading for now, most people hadn't gotten anything. And the sky was darkening. Temperature outside the campfire radius was dropping fast. Gathering wood was getting harder. Trading was their only hope. The ones who'd pinned everything on Riley, seeing her stop, started losing it. "You said 'in bulk'! You did like five trades and quit. What are we supposed to do now?" "Keep trading! My fire's almost out. You want us to go chop trees in the dark?" "If you couldn't deliver, why'd you post? Showing off and then hiding." Whether it was coordinated or just genuine rage, the number of people defending Riley in the channel shrank fast. Mostly it was attacks now. Accusations of being irresponsible. Using scarcity tactics. Playing games with people's lives. Riley closed the channel. She couldn't be bothered. In a life-or-death situation like this, people losing it was normal. If she actually had unlimited resources, she'd trade more. But she didn't. And back on Earth, nobody had ever handed her anything out of charity. She wasn't about to start playing savior now. She looked down at the "Basic Torch Blueprint" in her inventory. "Requirements: Wood x10, Kerosene, Scrap Steel x2" Note: Requires Level 2 Workbench to craft." She leaned back against the crate again. Felt the weight of her stockpile pressing back against that lingering sense of unease. In this world, your ID didn't matter. Your gender didn't matter either. What mattered was who held the resources. She looked at what she had left: 36 units of wood. Plus the steel, coal, and stone from trading. Time to plan. Upgrading to a Level 2 campfire required 55 wood. She had all the other materials. For the wood, she'd just have to use the handsaw tomorrow and gather a little more. That settled, she pulled a few more logs from inventory and arranged them on top of the crate, making a small enclosed space. Curled up inside it, she watched the sky outside slowly darken to black. Her eyes grew heavy. She drifted off. Chapter 4 The Culling Riley woke to the kind of soreness that made you reconsider ever moving again. She'd slept like the dead—no dreams, no blizzard, just nothing. When she opened her eyes, the first things she saw were the logs she'd stacked as a windbreak and the steady glow of the campfire. She tried to stretch. Big mistake. Every muscle in her body lit up at once, screaming in protest. "Sh*t." Riley sucked air through her teeth and pressed a hand to her aching shoulder. Her lower back felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to it. Yesterday's work had been too much. She wasn't weak—far from it—but she was still human. The lactic acid had settled in overnight, and now she moved like an arthritic tin man. At least she was alive. She stowed the windbreak logs back in her inventory and looked around. The world hadn't changed. Same dull gray sky. Same swirling snow. Outside the six-foot radius of the fire, the drifts looked deeper than yesterday. The wind had been busy. Riley pulled out the half-empty water bottle and wet her throat. Then she retrieved the white bread she'd traded for yesterday. Compared to that dense, flavorless black bread, this was practically cake. She tore off small pieces, letting the faint sweetness dissolve on her tongue, and habitually opened the "Server Channel". She stopped chewing. The number in the top left hit her like a physical blow. "Current Online Players: 4968/10000" "Five thousand..." Riley's eyes went wide. In a single night, that number had been cut in half. Five thousand people. Gone. Winked out of existence on this frozen ice field while she slept. "Ding." The system notification cut through her thoughts—cold, emotionless, like it was announcing the weather. "Global Announcement: Congratulations to all survivors for successfully surviving the first day. "This was a culling. Last night eliminated those fools who failed to add fuel to their fires or refused to gather wood. Remember: in this place, tears mean nothing. When you die here, you're dead-dead. "You who remain are the lucky ones. "Grace Period: A five-day 'New Player Support Period' now begins. For the next five days, your initial supply crates will refresh daily with a fixed amount of food. "Special Reward: Each survivor receives one pair of "Standard Issue Snow Boots (Common)". Be grateful for this mercy. Enjoy the game." The words sat there on her screen. Fools. Mercy. The system's tone dripped with contempt. The math was simple. Starting package: five hours of fuel. Initial gift: five units of wood, another five hours. Total ten hours, if you did absolutely nothing. The ones who'd frozen to death last night—they were the ones who'd clung to hope. The ones too scared to move. The ones who'd told themselves someone would save them. Five thousand people. One night. Gone. This wasn't a game. It was a slaughter. In the channel, the survivors who'd made it through were clearly rattled by the numbers too. "Holy sh*t... My friend's icon went dark last night. Does that mean he's dead? Actually dead?" "I can't do this. I don't wanna play anymore, I wanna go home. I swear I'll work today. I'll chop wood, I'll do whatever, just please—" "Everyone move! Don't save your strength! If you die, that's it. No respawns!" Panic spread fast. But almost immediately, the tone shifted. The fear found a target. "That SpicyBurger—if she'd shared more wood yesterday, would so many people have died?" "For real. If she had extra, why not just give it away? Why did it have to be trades? She could've at least loaned some out." "This is what happens when people hoard resources and watch others freeze. Remember that name. Don't trade with her. Ever." Riley frowned. Here we go again. She scrolled up. Sure enough, there it was—that familiar ID: "InvincibleWarrior". He was going hard in the channel. "She's profiting off suffering. That's what some people do. Women like that are the worst—hoarding supplies while people die around them. Wait and see. Someone like her won't last." Riley laughed. Actually laughed out loud. Moral blackmail. In the apocalypse. She typed, "If you want wood, go cut it yourself. I'm not your mommy. No amount of crying in chat is gonna put logs in your inventory. You'd get more done if you just picked up your d*mn axe." The channel went quiet for a second. Then the reasonable voices piped up. "She's right. Nobody owes you anything. Work for it." "Exactly. Just 'cause someone's quiet doesn't mean they're an easy target." In a world where staying alive took everything you had, expecting charity was the dumbest move of all. Riley didn't waste more energy on it. People like that—the more you engaged, the more they thrived. Let him run his mouth. She had bigger things to worry about. She closed the channel and turned to the big wooden crate—her initial supply point. Sure enough, new items had materialized inside. "Bottled Water x3 "White Bread x3 "Fresh Orange Juice x1 "Standard Snow Boots x1" "Orange juice?" Riley picked up the bottle, genuinely surprised. The orange liquid inside sloshed gently. Vitamins. The system was actually giving them vitamins. She pulled off her old shoes—already damp and cold—and swapped into the new boots. They were clunky, sure. But they gripped the snow, and the insulation was real. The chill that had been seeping up through her soles disappeared instantly. Next, she opened her toolbox. Goggles on. Thick cut-resistant gloves. Head-to-toe gear. "Time to work." The channel noise faded from her mind. She had one priority today, and it wasn't arguing with idiots. She picked up the chainsaw and headed back to the tree line. The cold played tricks on batteries. She'd known that, intellectually. But knowing it and feeling it were different things. After just eight trees, the last spare battery gave out. The chainsaw stuttered, died, and went silent in her hands. Riley stared at it. "Son of a b*tch." Chapter 5 Dead Battery Riley stared at the dead chainsaw in her hands and shook her head. Without power, it was just an expensive paperweight. If she wanted more wood, she'd have to do it the old-fashioned way—pick up the axe or the manual handsaw from the toolbox and go to war with frozen timber. But eight more trees were eight more trees. Her stockpile was looking healthy. "First things first. Get these back." She sucked it up, stowed the chainsaw in her inventory, and started hauling. Her body screamed even louder than yesterday. Every muscle felt like it had been replaced with concrete. She dragged each log back one at a time, moving like a zombie. Drag. Rest two minutes. Drag again. The wind howled in her ears. Riley lost track of time, lost track of everything except the mechanical rhythm of work. By the time the sun was high—not that you could really see it through the clouds—she dragged the last log into the campfire's radius. It dissolved into light, absorbed by the system. Riley all but collapsed into the snow. "Acquired: Wood x40" She lay there for a moment, chest heaving, staring at the number in her inventory. A tired smile crept across her face. She had enough. Combined with the coal and steel from yesterday's trades, she had everything she needed for the upgrade. Riley forced herself upright and walked to the campfire. On the floating translucent panel, the "Upgrade" button glowed that tempting gold. "Upgrade Primitive Shelter to Lv.2? "Cost: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Scrap Steel x5 "Remaining after upgrade: Wood x16, Stone x3, Coal x0, Steel x0" "Upgrade." Riley took a breath and pressed it. "Hmmmm—!" A blinding white light erupted from the heart of the campfire, swallowing everything. Riley squeezed her eyes shut. No explosion. No thunder. Just a sound like Legos snapping together. A few seconds later, the light faded. Riley opened her eyes. And stopped breathing. The campfire wasn't just a campfire anymore. The rough stone ring had transformed into something neat and intentional—a proper firepit with a stone border for insulation, a place to set things, even a simple steel grate attached to the side. But that wasn't the big news. The heat that used to push back the cold within a six-foot radius now stretched a full fifteen feet. Inside that circle, snow was actively melting, revealing dark frozen soil underneath. In one corner, she spotted a patch of moss stubbornly poking through. Riley spun around. Behind the big wooden crate, a small log cabin stood waiting. It wasn't much—maybe forty feet square, built from rough-hewn logs. Nothing fancy. But it was solid. Four walls and a roof, blocking wind and snow completely. Riley walked over and pushed open the heavy wooden door. Warm air hit her face. Inside was simple: a wooden bed frame piled with dry grass, a crude workbench, a chair, and a small fireplace connected to a chimney that ran up through the roof. Rustic. But right now, it was heaven. Wood and fire. Four walls. A roof. Home. Riley ran her hand along the rough wall. Her eyes stung a little. She wouldn't have to sleep in the open anymore. Wouldn't have to wake up every few hours to check the fire. Wouldn't have to worry about freezing to death in her sleep. Right on cue, the server announcement chimed. Gold text this time, blazing right in the center of everyone's vision. "Server Announcement: Congratulations to player SpicyBurger for being the first to achieve "Level 2 Shelter". Rewards have been distributed." The chat channel, which had been wallowing in fear and despair, exploded. "Holy sh*t? Level 2 already? What does Level 2 unlock? Can you post pics, big shot?" "That's the wood seller from yesterday? No way. Absolute legend." "Carry me please! SpicyBurger, I'll be your loyal follower. I can cook, I can clean, I can—" "Teach us, master! How'd you gather materials so fast? What's your secret?" Compliments. Pleas. Desperate attempts to get noticed. And then, of course, the sour grapes. "InvincibleWarrior: Big deal. Just profiteering off everyone else's suffering. If she'd shared that wood instead of selling it, maybe those five thousand people would still be alive. How does it feel to climb on corpses?" "GodLovesMeFirst: Seriously. Building your success on other people's deaths. Karma's real. She'll get hers." Riley's jaw tightened. If InvincibleWarrior had been standing in front of her right now, she'd have knocked his teeth out. Guys like him—useless themselves, but always ready to tear down anyone who actually accomplished something. Sewer rats. Her private messages exploded too. She'd set it to only accept trade offers, but people had found a workaround—using the "trade note" function to send spam. "Hey beautiful, I'm a personal trainer. Great shape. Wanna see? Hit me with some wood and I'll do a voice call with you!" A photo of some guy flexing in a mirror, shirt off. Riley glanced at it, unimpressed. Decent abs. Pathetic attitude. Dude was clearly strong enough to chop wood—why was he wasting time on this? She'd never mentioned her gender, so most people probably assumed anyone who'd gathered that much wood must be a guy. The messages reflected that assumption. Some women sent selfies too, trying to flirt their way into favor. Didn't matter. Shameless cut across all demographics. From the backgrounds in the photos, everyone seemed to be in different locations. But one thing was consistent: they all had trees nearby. The system must have arranged that—a new player perk. "A bunch of degenerates." Riley's face went cold. She changed her privacy settings to "Friends Only". Then she added a line to her trading post description. "No spam. Send junk, get blocked." Silence. Blessed silence. She took a breath, let the noise drain away, and focused on what mattered. "First-place upgrade reward..." She opened her inventory. Sitting there, glowing faintly purple, was a gift box. For more exciting content, please download the "JoyRead" app to continue reading.
Chapter 1 The Countdown Ends It was the year 2027, and the end of the world was now less than an hour away. "00:59:23" Riley Carter stood on a ladder with a screw clenched between her teeth, an impact driver in her hand, securing the last window panel in place. A month ago, that timer had just appeared out of nowhere, hanging in the corner of everyone's vision like it had always been there. At first, people wrote it off as some kind of mass hacker prank. The government fed the media soothing statements in an attempt to keep things calm, but there was no way to talk down the panic as prices kept rising and supplies were held in a monopoly in real time. News outlets might spin whatever narrative they wanted, but no one could argue with the price of eggs. For a while, it was a frenzy. People cleaned out grocery stores like locusts. The government did what they could—price caps, purchase limits, reassurances from the podium—but none of it mattered. The cost of living kept climbing, and bit by bit, the country started coming apart at the seams. Online, it was a circus. Some people posted doom-laden predictions. Others openly celebrated the thought of the world finally burning. A few just seemed relieved they wouldn't have to clock in on Monday. In that final hour, things got truly ugly. Both on the streets and on social media, it was chaos. Some people figured why not went out with a bang? If the world was ending, they'd spend their last hours doing every reckless thing they'd ever fantasized about. Others, paralyzed by fear of whatever was coming, scrambled for anything they could hoard. Supplies. Weapons. Gasoline. Didn't matter what, as long as they had more of it than the next guy. Most people just wanted to be with the ones they loved. Riley didn't have that luxury anymore. Fresh out of community college, she'd lost both her parents in a highway pileup eighteen months back. The only thing they'd left her was the family hardware store, a cramped little place wedged between a laundromat and a taqueria. She'd been running it solo for just over a year when that d*mn countdown appeared overhead. At first, she'd thought maybe an apocalypse wouldn't be the worst thing. Maybe there'd be something on the other side. A reunion. But then she thought about her folks. They'd doted on her. Made her feel like the center of their world. And even though she'd grown a thick skin since going it alone, feeling indifferent to the world, she knew what they'd want. They'd want her to fight. To stay. She was the only piece of them still left in this world. People always say you aren't really gone until the last person forgets your name. As long as she kept breathing, kept carrying them with her another day, they weren't truly dead. Riley spat the screw into her palm, face calm, the impact driver whirring as she sank another fastener into the reinforced frame. "Flour's three hundred a pound now, and you can't even buy it straight—they make you tack on a bunch of other junk you don't need just to get it," she muttered to herself, shaking her head. When that timer first flickered into existence, Riley had done something smart. She'd liquidated everything. Converted every dollar she could scrape together into supplies. Unfortunately, by the time she hit the stores, inflation had already done its damage. Her savings didn't go nearly as far as they should have. Any cash that was left went toward tools. If the world was ending, she thought they could be useful. Riley pressed the last sheet of thick insulation foam into the window frame, seating it flush against the reinforced plywood beneath. The impact driver snarled as she buried the screws. Then she reached for her pneumatic glue gun—a satisfying pfft as the sealant filled the final gap. She wiped sweat from her forehead and climbed down off the ladder. Stepped back to admire her work. The little apartment was a fortress now. Doors reinforced. Windows barricaded. Every interior wall lined with an extra layer of insulation. She glanced down at herself. Custom-fit heavy-duty workwear. Slash-resistant fabric. More pockets than she'd ever need. Reinforced padding at the knees and elbows. It wasn't fashionable, but it was practical. And her real treasure: tools. A chainsaw. A reciprocating saw. The impact driver in her hand. A multi-bit screwdriver that had cost more than she wanted to admit. She'd brought everything usable from the shop back here, consolidated it into three massive toolboxes. She'd also grabbed some stuff like an air purifier and some spare filters—anything that might matter when civilization took a vacation. She didn't know what the countdown would bring. Some folks online predicted zombies. Others said asteroid impact. Volcanic winter. Alien invasion. Take your pick. Food. Tools. Shelter. She'd even started working out, building strength she'd never needed before. She'd done everything she could think of to prepare. Whatever was coming, she figured she'd last longer than most. With nothing left to do, she dropped onto one of the big toolboxes laid flat on the floor, wiped her forehead again, and pulled out her phone. Most news apps had crashed. The only things still loading were comment sections, and they were going crazy. [Anyone got rice? I'll pay eight grand for a bag. Please, we got nothing left.] [Forget it, man. Money's toilet paper now. Saw it with my own eyes—some rich assholes cleared out the Costco warehouse last week. All that 'purchase limit' crap was just theater. Shelves were empty 'cause the stock never made it there. It's all sitting in some hedge fund guy's basement.] [No kidding? Same thing happened to me! Store manager kept telling me, 'We're limiting purchases, come back next week, we'll put your name on the list.' So the whole time the back room was empty? They were just jerking us around?] [Of course they were. Rich people cornered the market on everything. So what are normal people supposed to do? Just sit here and die?] [Anyone know what actually happens when the clock hits zero? Like, is it nukes? That virus thing from that old video game?] Riley locked her phone. Tucked it away. She didn't have anything to add to that conversation. A month ago, when the countdown first showed up, prices had spiked instantly. A fifty-pound bag of rice that normally went for thirty bucks jumped to eight hundred overnight. By yesterday, it was breaking two grand. The wealthy had rolled up with trucks and cleaned out supermarkets. Riley had been smart—she'd gone early, bought stuff that would keep, stuff that was calorie-dense and cheap. Chocolate. Survival biscuits. Canned goods. It wasn't much, but it was enough for one person, at least for a while. She took a deep breath and glanced at the timer. "00:01:10" Just over a minute. Riley gripped the toolbox beneath her. Knuckles white. Who knew what would happen when that thing hit zero? Maybe it'd be like 2012—all hype, nothing real. In that last minute, her life flickered past. Her parents' faces. The hardware store. The lonely months since. "00:00:00" The countdown ended. Riley had just started to breathe a sigh of relief—nothing happened, maybe it really was nothing—when the world lurched beneath her. A dizzying weightlessness. A sensation of falling. Everything spun. ***** She didn't know how long she was out. "Whew." A wind like a knife blade sliced across her face. Riley's eyes snapped open. Her warm apartment was gone. In its place, an endless white expanse stretched in every direction. Snow whipped through the air. Wind howled like a wounded animal. And at her feet, a small campfire guttered in the gale, threatening to die at any second. "What the—" Before she could process, a chime rang directly in her skull. Not heard. Known. "Welcome to the Extreme Cold Survival Game. "Earth no longer exists. This is your new home. This is your grave. "Survival rules are as follows. "1. Each player begins with one campfire. It is your only defense against the cold. If the campfire dies, you will be judged deceased by the system. Not that it matters—without the fire, you won't last anyway. "2. This is a real world. You can die from hunger. From exposure. From animal attack. "3. Supplies stockpiled in your previous world do not carry over. Only items on your person, or in direct physical contact at the moment of transfer, are retained. "4. Struggle to survive. It is your only hope." Riley's heart slammed against her ribs. Supplies didn't carry over? Her mind flashed to those wealthy forum posters bragging about their warehouse stockpiles. And then she looked down at herself. Workwear. Intact. And— She was still sitting on the three giant toolboxes. They sat solidly in the snow, dusted with powder, unmistakably here. "Whew." Riley let out a long breath. A white cloud dispersed in front of her face. Pity, though. During her renovations, she'd stocked those boxes with a lot of power tools. The expensive impact driver. The reciprocating saw. In a world with no electrical outlets, once those batteries died, they were just dead weight. But even so. The hand tools. The consumables. The sheer volume of stuff in those boxes—it was a treasure beyond measure in a place like this. Riley forced herself to calm down. She was here. She'd deal with it. Something new lived in her mind now. She concentrated, and a translucent pale-blue screen materialized in front of her eyes. Looked just like a video game HUD. "Personal Panel "Name: Riley Carter "ID: 1120-US "Level: 1 (Standard Survivor) "Strength: 8 (Years of manual labor have made you stronger than average) "Agility: 8 (You've got quick reflexes) "Constitution: 6 (You've been skipping meals lately) "Spirit: 9 (You keep your head when others panic) "Inventory: 16/16 slots (Base capacity)" "Inventory?" Riley studied the sixteen empty squares at the bottom of the display. She reached out, touched one of the toolboxes, and thought the word, "Store." Whoosh. The heavy box vanished. In its place, a tiny icon appeared in the first inventory slot, a miniature "x1" in the corner. "It actually worked." For the first time since arriving, a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. Retrieve. Thud. The toolbox landed back in the snow, puffing up powder. No energy cost. No sense of weight. And in that inventory, she could carry anything, regardless of how heavy it was. Later on, when she went scavenging, that would make all the difference. Riley rubbed her stiff, freezing hands together and turned her attention to the campfire at her feet. It was the only warmth in this frozen wasteland. Hovering above the flames, visible only to her, were a few lines of glowing text. "Basic Campfire (Lv.1) "Remaining Burn Time: 05:28:00 "Current Coverage: Radius six feet (Blocks wind and snow) "Upgrade Requirements: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Steel x5 "Description: This is your life. Do not let it die. Upgrading expands your safe zone and unlocks additional construction options." "Needs upgrading." Riley frowned. Wood and stone she could probably find. But coal? Steel? Out here in the middle of nowhere? A flash of movement caught her eye. A small wooden box, half-buried in the snow not far from the fire. The starter crate. Had to be. Riley didn't rush. First, she pulled the claw hammer from her belt—the one she always kept there, habit from years of work—and gripped it tight. She scanned the tree line. Listened past the wind. Nothing moved. No sounds but the storm. She walked over quickly, crouched by the box. No lock. She pried the lid open with the claw end of her hammer. Inside, a handful of items. "Obtained: Iron Axe x1 "Obtained: Stale Dark Bread x2 "Obtained: 500ml Bottled Water x1 "Obtained: Kindling x5 "Obtained: Insulated Field Jacket x1 "Obtained: Utility Rope (25ft) "Obtained: Thermal Underwear (Set) x2 Not much. Barely anything. Riley picked up one of the dark loaves. It was rock hard. She examined the jacket—basic, but warm-looking. "So this is what a standard survivor starts with." At least the system had thought of everything. Including the underwear. She'd half-expected to wake up naked in the snow; at least she didn't have to worry about that. She stored everything in her inventory, then shrugged on the field jacket. The temperature shift was brutal. Even those few seconds exposed had left her hands numb. Hypothermia would set in fast out here. Jacket on, she hurried back to the campfire. She pulled the five units of Kindling from her inventory and tossed them onto the flames. The fire roared higher. Warmth flooded over her. "Fuel added. Remaining Burn Time: 10:28:00" Ten hours. If she didn't move fast, in ten hours she'd freeze to death on this ice field. And the game had made it clear—if the fire died, the system would judge her dead. Whether she actually froze or not. Riley lifted her head and scanned the landscape. She was in a sparse coniferous forest. Barely alive trees, crusted with frost, dotted the area not far from her position. "Wood." A slow smile spread across her face. She patted the toolbox beside her. "Other people might have axes. But felling a tree with just an axe takes hours. Exhausts you." She unlatched the box. Pulled out the chainsaw. Checked the battery gauge—full. "I've got a handsaw in here too. And a chainsaw with a full charge." The battery wouldn't last forever. But it would last long enough to give her a massive head start. In this race for survival, that was everything. Chapter 2 The Chainsaw The wind screamed across the open ground, picking up loose snow and flinging it against her goggles like sand. It sounded like static. Riley had pulled her basic work gear from the toolbox before heading out. Now she stood in the snow, surrounded by clusters of thin conifers that looked half-dead already. She took a breath. The air burned going down. "Zzzzzzz—!!!" She squeezed the trigger. The orange-and-black lithium-ion chainsaw in her hands roared to life, the chain spinning so fast it blurred. She buried the teeth in the nearest pine trunk. Wood chips exploded everywhere. Fragrant shavings—still wet with resin—scattered across the pristine snow, stark and yellow against all that white. Five seconds. Crack. The pine tree, thick as her arm, groaned and tilted. Then it fell slow and heavy into a drift, sending up a puff of powder. "God bless modern technology." Riley shook out her wrist—the vibration had numbed her fingers—and allowed herself a small smile. Without that chainsaw, with just the basic iron axe the system had given her, felling a tree frozen solid like this would have taken twenty minutes minimum. And it would have left her soaked with sweat. In subzero temps, sweat was a death sentence. Once your base layers got wet, the moment you stopped moving, your body temperature would plummet. Hypothermia would follow fast. Riley didn't waste time celebrating. She knew the saw in her hands was a hungry machine. She'd brought two spare high-capacity batteries, sure, but until she found a way to recharge them, every second the motor ran was borrowed time. She had to gather as much wood as possible before the batteries gave out. "Zzzzz—Zzzzz—" At the edge of the forest, the chainsaw's snarl rose and fell, shattering the frozen silence. Riley worked like she was possessed. Fell a tree. Move to the next. Fell another. But she had to stay alert—watch for hidden snow pits underfoot, keep adjusting her collar against the wind that kept finding its way down her neck. Her stamina drained faster than she'd anticipated. In extreme cold, body burned through calories just to stay alive. Added walking through knee-deep snow, where every step took three times the energy of walking on pavement, and the math got ugly fast. Pretty soon, Riley was breathing hard. Her breath fogged the inside of her goggles, and she had to keep wiping them clear. "Zzzzz..." She was mid-cut on a tree—didn't even know which number anymore—when the chainsaw's roar stuttered. Died. The chain jammed solid in the wood. A red light blinked at her. Dead battery. Riley yanked the saw free and patted its housing. "Good work, buddy." Genuine regret in her voice. She straightened up and looked around. Pine trunks lay scattered across the snow in every direction. A decent haul. She counted silently. "Twenty-three total." Then the next problem hit her. According to the system, until she actually possessed these logs, they were still just natural resources. That meant they didn't qualify for Inventory storage. She couldn't just snap her fingers and make them disappear. She had to drag them back to camp. Riley grabbed the nearest pine and tried to pull. Heavy. Like, unreasonably heavy. Fresh-cut wood was full of moisture. Add the branches catching in the snow, dragging like anchors, and she felt like she was hauling a dead body through mud. "Huff... huff..." She gritted her teeth, looped rope around the trunk, slung it over her shoulder, leaned forward, and started walking. Inch by inch. The tree line to her campfire was maybe fifty yards. Right now, it felt like fifty miles. By the time she'd wrestled the fourth tree back into the fire's warm radius, she was wrecked. Her legs felt like someone had filled them with concrete. Her lungs burned from hauling freezing air through them. "Can't... can't do more." Riley made the call. She stopped. Those nineteen trees still out there in the snow—they called to her. Tempted her. But if she kept pushing without rest, without fuel for herself, she'd collapse out there. And out there, collapse meant death. She dropped down next to the big wooden crate that had held her starter supplies. It was less than three feet from the campfire. The flames danced orange and red, pumping out heat that felt like heaven. The shift from frozen to warm made her shiver violently. She pulled off her goggles and thick gloves, set them near the fire to warm up, then—still shaking—pulled the half-empty water bottle from her Inventory. Took a small sip. Then the bread. Two black bricks that looked more like construction material than food. "Crunch." Riley bit off a piece with effort. It was coarse. Tasted like sawdust with a hint of burnt toast. Bitter. But it was calories. Carbs. Fuel for her own fire. She forced herself to chew, swallow. When the food hit her stomach, warmth finally started spreading through her core. The uncontrollable shaking eased. After half a loaf, Riley leaned back against the crate. Her eyelids drooped. Post-exhaustion crash hit her like a wave. The campfire crackled. The wind seemed farther away now. Muffled. She really wanted to sleep... Her head nodded. Her body started sliding sideways. "Wait—" Some animal instinct jolted her awake just before she went under. She pinched her thigh. Hard. Then looked up at the timer floating above the flames. "Shelter Level 1 "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 06:28:00" Six and a half hours. If she slept too deep, too long, and that fire went out—what then? Even ignoring the obvious—that she'd freeze to death in this hellhole without a heat source—the game rules were clear. When the campfire hits zero, it's game over. "No sleeping. Not allowed." Riley slapped her own cheeks, forced herself upright. She stayed near the fire, but she didn't take off her heavy work clothes. She remembered reading something once, a survival article. "In the late stages of hypothermia, your hypothalamus malfunctions. You get a false sensation of heat. It's called "paradoxical undressing"—people strip down right before they freeze to death." "Okay. Process these four. Keep the fire fed." She pulled a traditional handsaw from the toolbox. Looking at the four thick pine logs on the ground, she almost laughed. Without power tools, breaking these down into burnable pieces would take at least half an hour. Burn the little energy she had left. But what choice did she have? Riley knelt in the snow, positioned the blade against the trunk, and was about to start cutting— A soft white light shot out from the system panel on her chest. It washed over the logs. "Ding! "Detected felled, intact logs within shelter range. "Perform quick recovery?" Riley's hand froze mid-saw. Quick recovery? It took her a second to process. Then relief flooded through her so hard she almost cried. "Yes! Recover!" She didn't hesitate. The next moment, something impossible happened. The four pine trunks—the ones she'd have to saw and split by hand, the ones that represented hours of brutal labor—dissolved into pale blue light particles. Not into dust. Into neat, uniform logs that stacked themselves automatically in her Inventory. The branches, the needles, all the useless parts—purified out of existence. "Recovery successful! "Obtained: Common Wood x20" Riley's eyes went wide, staring at the perfect lumber in her inventory display. Looked like it came straight from a hardware store. "One tree gives five units of wood? "And I don't have to cut it myself?" This changed everything. It meant she only had to handle the felling and the dragging. Once a log crossed into her camp's boundary, the system recognized it as hers. The most time-consuming part—the processing—just... didn't exist anymore. Riley immediately grabbed five units of wood and fed them to the fire. Whoosh. The flames leaped, hungry and grateful. "Fuel added. "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 12:20:00" "Five logs, five hours..." She did the math fast, looking at the fifteen units still on the ground. If she threw all of those in, that'd be another fifteen hours. Total of twenty-seven. She could sleep like the dead right now, and that fire would still be burning when she woke up. Security. For the first time since the world ended, Riley felt something like security. She selected the remaining wood. Deposited it all. Watched the countdown tick up to a very comfortable "27:20:00". Then her nerves finally let go. She dragged one of the toolboxes into position to block the wind, wrapped the field jacket tight around herself, pulled her hat down over her eyes, leaned back against the warm crate, and let the crackle of the fire pull her under. ***** She didn't sleep long. When she opened her eyes again, the sky was still that same dull gray-white. Impossible to tell if it was morning or afternoon. System clock said three hours. Her body ached. Shoulders and arms especially—felt like she'd gone ten rounds with someone. But her head was clear. She stretched her stiff neck and stood up. The snow seemed lighter. The feathery flakes had tapered off into sporadic icy grains. Riley ate a little more, got some fuel back in the tank, then stepped outside the campfire's warmth. The fire's effect wasn't what she'd expected. It wasn't that the temperature gradually dropped as you moved away. It was sharper than that. Like there was an invisible barrier around the flames. Inside, livable. Outside, the cold hit you like a wall. She wandered a little way off. The cold found every gap in her clothing. She thought about going farther, exploring. But there was nothing visible except that stand of trees she'd already worked. Maybe stuff was buried under the snow, but she couldn't see it. "No proper snow boots. Not going far." Riley glanced at the endless white distance with real regret. "Don't get greedy. Get those nineteen trees first." She turned. Looked at the woods. Her loot was still out there. And now she knew: if she could drag them back into the campfire's circle, the system would cash them out automatically. "Time to work." Riley rubbed her hands together. Let the motivation build. For the next few hours, she became a machine. Drag a tree to camp. Recover it. Go back for another. Repeat. It was boring. Exhausting. But watching those logs turn into numbers in her inventory—that feeling was hard to describe. Satisfying, in a way nothing had been satisfying in a long time. When the last pine trunk crossed into the light and dissolved into particles, Riley just collapsed. Lay flat in the snow and stared at the gray sky. She pulled up her Inventory. The once-empty slots were full now. Stack after stack of wood icons. "Item: Common Wood "Quantity: 80 "Description: Basic survival resource. Can be used for fuel or construction." Eighty units. Plus what was already burning in the campfire. Her day's work had yielded a clean hundred. One unit of wood burned for one hour. Riley looked at the flames dancing in front of her. Felt the heat on her face. Let herself smile, wide and real. "One hundred hours." Four full days. While everyone else was probably still panicking. Crying. Begging. Trying to figure out how to survive their first night in this frozen nightmare... She, Riley, had enough fuel stockpiled to last four days. Which meant: for the next ninety-six hours, unless she actively chose to die, nobody and nothing could put her fire out. She pulled the half-empty water bottle from Inventory. The space must have been insulated somehow—the water was still warm. Almost body temperature. She sipped it. Tasted sweet, even though it was just tap water. "Okay. Next step." Her gaze settled on the "Upgrade" button on the campfire panel. This open-air setup was fine for now. But if she was going to survive long-term, she needed something better. A real shelter. All she needed was a little stone. Some coal. Some steel. Then she could build something worth calling home. Chapter 3 The Trading Game The blizzard howled outside, but within the six-foot radius of the campfire, the air stayed surprisingly warm—like the wind had hit an invisible wall and just couldn't reach. Riley leaned back against the dusty wooden crate, holding the half-empty water bottle in her hand. She stared into the flames for a moment, then focused her attention inward. The pale blue system panel unfolded in front of her eyes again. Now that the immediate crisis was handled, she finally had time to sit quietly and really explore this so-called "Survival System". Beyond the personal stats and inventory, the bottom of the panel had a row of function icons: Server Channel, Friends List, Trading Market, and Crafting Manual. Friends List was empty. No surprise there. She hadn't exactly been a social butterfly back in the old world, and she sure as hell wasn't going to make friends easily in a frozen hellscape where everyone was fighting for their next breath. She tapped into the "Server Channel". A line of numbers appeared in the top left. "Server: US-008 "Current Online: 9911/10000" Ten thousand people started. Less than ten hours in, eighty-nine were already gone. "That doesn't add up." Everyone's starter crate came with a rusty iron axe and five units of wood. Plus the initial fuel the campfire had when they arrived—that alone bought them ten hours minimum, even if they just sat there doing nothing. What the hell did those people do to get eliminated so fast? The channel was moving fast, messages scrolling by every second. Desperation dripped from every line. "Someone help, I'm freezing my ass off out here. This stupid axe can't cut sh*t—every swing just bounces off and rattles my whole arm. Can anyone spare a couple logs? My dad's a senior VP at Walker Group. I'll wire you a million dollars when we get back, I swear." "Wake up, buddy. If your dad's still alive, he's out there chopping trees right now too." "Don't even talk to me. I spotted a wooden crate in the snow earlier, got all excited, ran over—and before I got within ten feet, some white rabbit thing jumped out of a drift. Teeth like needles. Almost took a chunk out of my leg. Missed the crate, wasted all that energy for nothing." "I saw that too! Random crates spawn in the wild. I opened a wooden one and got two chocolate bars and some coal." Reading through the chaos, Riley picked out two keywords, "Random Reward Crates" and "Dangerous Creatures". So this world was deeper than she thought. Wooden crates, copper crates—these randomly spawning resource points were the real way to get ahead. Coal came from crates. That was useful to know. And if coal was in crates, steel probably was too. But something bothered her. According to what people were saying, reward crates weren't exactly rare. So why hadn't she found a single one during her lumber run? She doubted it was just bad luck. Riley exited chat and tapped into the "Trading Market". "Seller: MountainMan88 Item: Stone x2 Wants: White Bread x5" "Seller: LoneWolf_21 Item: Cotton Cloth Wants: Clean Water" "Seller: NotDeadYet Item: Wood x3 Wants: Anything edible" Most people were trading for food and wood. The stuff that kept you alive right now. Things like stone and cloth were getting dumped cheap—nobody had the luxury of thinking long-term. Riley looked at her own inventory. Eighty units of wood staring back at her. Her heart beat a little faster. In this opening phase, where wood literally meant the difference between life and death, the resources in her hands were basically gold bars. "Time to trade," she muttered to herself. "Coal, steel—can't get those from chopping trees. And right now, wood's at maximum value. If I wait, the exchange rate shifts." Even with the chainsaw dead, she still had the handsaw. Less efficient, sure, but she could gather more wood if she needed it. Short-term, she wasn't going to run out. She clicked to post a message in the channel. "System Prompt: Detected that you have not set a virtual ID. Please enter your nickname (cannot be changed after setting)." Riley stared at the blank input box. Naming things was the worst. She sat there for a long time, nothing coming to mind. Finally, she gave up. Couldn't think of anything cool or clever, so she'd just go with something random. Her fingers tapped across the virtual keyboard—SpicyBurger. "Setting successful. ID locked." The prompt closed. Riley posted her message. "SpicyBurger: Selling wood in bulk. Looking for: Coal, Steel, High-calorie food. DM me with offers—what you have and your rate. Good deals go fast, don't sleep on this." For three seconds after the message appeared, the channel went dead silent. Then it exploded. "SpicyBurger? That name's making me hungry, what the hell." "Never mind the name—'wood in bulk'! We got a whale in here! Everyone else is stressing about the next hour and this person's already running a business?" "I need some! My campfire's down to like two hours. I don't know if I actually die when it hits zero but I don't wanna find out." Suddenly, half the channel was scrambling for wood. But then the skeptics crawled out. "Hang on. Everyone started with the same rusty axe. Chopping a tree in this weather takes twenty, thirty minutes minimum. Where's she getting 'bulk' wood from? Sounds like a scam." "InvincibleWarrior: Everybody chill. Look at that ID—sounds like a girl's handle. I'm a grown man, been busting my ass, and I've only got like ten logs saved up. My hands are shredded. Some girl with a food name claims she's got bulk? She's trying to run a game. Scam people out of their stuff." "Iron_Tough: Agreed. Scammers made it through the apocalypse too, I guess. My advice: ignore her. Don't get played. How much wood can a woman chop anyway? Probably can't even lift the axe right, lol." Riley scrolled through the messages, expression flat. She almost laughed. But some people pushed back. "FishHater44: How is it a scam? If she doesn't deliver, you don't complete the trade. Just 'cause you can't chop that much wood doesn't mean nobody can." Riley nodded slightly. That one had a point. But she didn't waste energy arguing in the channel. Instead, she flipped on Do Not Disturb for private messages—only allowing chat requests that included a trade offer. Some people didn't actually care whether she had wood. They just couldn't stand seeing someone else do well. "Ding. Ding. Ding." Private messages started pouring in like rain. Most players weren't idiots. Faced with the very real threat of freezing to death, they'd try anything for a chance. Riley opened the first one. "Windwalker: I got "Coal x3" from a crate. How much wood can I get for it? I can't chop anymore. The wind out here is insane. I tried to throw the coal in my fire but it just kept popping back out. System says my campfire level's too low, won't let me use it. I'm out of wood. My fire's almost dead." Riley thought for a moment. "Three coal for five wood. Deal?" She hadn't known about that restriction. Coal was supposed to be better fuel than wood—didn't expect the game to lock it behind a level gate. The reply came instantly, "Deal. But five wood feels light. It's coal." The guy was conflicted. He knew coal had value, but he was desperate. "I'll make it six. Final offer." Riley wasn't sure about coal's real value yet. Six was her limit. "Fine. Deal." They both dropped their items into the trade window. A moment later, it completed. A flash of white light. Riley's inventory lost six wood. Gained three chunks of coal, each about the size of a small melon. One down. "CrunchyFrog: Hey, I got two "Iron Ingots" from a crate. System calls them "Scrap Steel". Can I get eight wood for them? Trying to stock up enough to sleep through the night." Riley replied, "Sure. Initiate." In just over ten minutes, her wood stockpile dropped significantly. But her inventory filled up with good stuff. "Coal x10 "Stone x23 "Scrap Steel x5 "Raw Meat x2 "White Bread x2 "Basic Torch Blueprint x1" The blueprint was new. The description said it was required for crafting certain items. Seemed useful, so she'd traded for it. Meanwhile, back in the channel, that "InvincibleWarrior" guy who'd been mocking her earlier seemed to notice that people were actually completing trades. His tone got bitter. "InvincibleWarrior: Whatever. She probably got lucky with a high-tier crate. Let's see how long her stock lasts. Once the wood's gone, she'll be begging me to let her join my group." The people who'd successfully traded with Riley popped into the channel to thank her. That might have been fine—except the thanks caused problems. Since Riley had stopped trading for now, most people hadn't gotten anything. And the sky was darkening. Temperature outside the campfire radius was dropping fast. Gathering wood was getting harder. Trading was their only hope. The ones who'd pinned everything on Riley, seeing her stop, started losing it. "You said 'in bulk'! You did like five trades and quit. What are we supposed to do now?" "Keep trading! My fire's almost out. You want us to go chop trees in the dark?" "If you couldn't deliver, why'd you post? Showing off and then hiding." Whether it was coordinated or just genuine rage, the number of people defending Riley in the channel shrank fast. Mostly it was attacks now. Accusations of being irresponsible. Using scarcity tactics. Playing games with people's lives. Riley closed the channel. She couldn't be bothered. In a life-or-death situation like this, people losing it was normal. If she actually had unlimited resources, she'd trade more. But she didn't. And back on Earth, nobody had ever handed her anything out of charity. She wasn't about to start playing savior now. She looked down at the "Basic Torch Blueprint" in her inventory. "Requirements: Wood x10, Kerosene, Scrap Steel x2" Note: Requires Level 2 Workbench to craft." She leaned back against the crate again. Felt the weight of her stockpile pressing back against that lingering sense of unease. In this world, your ID didn't matter. Your gender didn't matter either. What mattered was who held the resources. She looked at what she had left: 36 units of wood. Plus the steel, coal, and stone from trading. Time to plan. Upgrading to a Level 2 campfire required 55 wood. She had all the other materials. For the wood, she'd just have to use the handsaw tomorrow and gather a little more. That settled, she pulled a few more logs from inventory and arranged them on top of the crate, making a small enclosed space. Curled up inside it, she watched the sky outside slowly darken to black. Her eyes grew heavy. She drifted off. Chapter 4 The Culling Riley woke to the kind of soreness that made you reconsider ever moving again. She'd slept like the dead—no dreams, no blizzard, just nothing. When she opened her eyes, the first things she saw were the logs she'd stacked as a windbreak and the steady glow of the campfire. She tried to stretch. Big mistake. Every muscle in her body lit up at once, screaming in protest. "Sh*t." Riley sucked air through her teeth and pressed a hand to her aching shoulder. Her lower back felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to it. Yesterday's work had been too much. She wasn't weak—far from it—but she was still human. The lactic acid had settled in overnight, and now she moved like an arthritic tin man. At least she was alive. She stowed the windbreak logs back in her inventory and looked around. The world hadn't changed. Same dull gray sky. Same swirling snow. Outside the six-foot radius of the fire, the drifts looked deeper than yesterday. The wind had been busy. Riley pulled out the half-empty water bottle and wet her throat. Then she retrieved the white bread she'd traded for yesterday. Compared to that dense, flavorless black bread, this was practically cake. She tore off small pieces, letting the faint sweetness dissolve on her tongue, and habitually opened the "Server Channel". She stopped chewing. The number in the top left hit her like a physical blow. "Current Online Players: 4968/10000" "Five thousand..." Riley's eyes went wide. In a single night, that number had been cut in half. Five thousand people. Gone. Winked out of existence on this frozen ice field while she slept. "Ding." The system notification cut through her thoughts—cold, emotionless, like it was announcing the weather. "Global Announcement: Congratulations to all survivors for successfully surviving the first day. "This was a culling. Last night eliminated those fools who failed to add fuel to their fires or refused to gather wood. Remember: in this place, tears mean nothing. When you die here, you're dead-dead. "You who remain are the lucky ones. "Grace Period: A five-day 'New Player Support Period' now begins. For the next five days, your initial supply crates will refresh daily with a fixed amount of food. "Special Reward: Each survivor receives one pair of "Standard Issue Snow Boots (Common)". Be grateful for this mercy. Enjoy the game." The words sat there on her screen. Fools. Mercy. The system's tone dripped with contempt. The math was simple. Starting package: five hours of fuel. Initial gift: five units of wood, another five hours. Total ten hours, if you did absolutely nothing. The ones who'd frozen to death last night—they were the ones who'd clung to hope. The ones too scared to move. The ones who'd told themselves someone would save them. Five thousand people. One night. Gone. This wasn't a game. It was a slaughter. In the channel, the survivors who'd made it through were clearly rattled by the numbers too. "Holy sh*t... My friend's icon went dark last night. Does that mean he's dead? Actually dead?" "I can't do this. I don't wanna play anymore, I wanna go home. I swear I'll work today. I'll chop wood, I'll do whatever, just please—" "Everyone move! Don't save your strength! If you die, that's it. No respawns!" Panic spread fast. But almost immediately, the tone shifted. The fear found a target. "That SpicyBurger—if she'd shared more wood yesterday, would so many people have died?" "For real. If she had extra, why not just give it away? Why did it have to be trades? She could've at least loaned some out." "This is what happens when people hoard resources and watch others freeze. Remember that name. Don't trade with her. Ever." Riley frowned. Here we go again. She scrolled up. Sure enough, there it was—that familiar ID: "InvincibleWarrior". He was going hard in the channel. "She's profiting off suffering. That's what some people do. Women like that are the worst—hoarding supplies while people die around them. Wait and see. Someone like her won't last." Riley laughed. Actually laughed out loud. Moral blackmail. In the apocalypse. She typed, "If you want wood, go cut it yourself. I'm not your mommy. No amount of crying in chat is gonna put logs in your inventory. You'd get more done if you just picked up your d*mn axe." The channel went quiet for a second. Then the reasonable voices piped up. "She's right. Nobody owes you anything. Work for it." "Exactly. Just 'cause someone's quiet doesn't mean they're an easy target." In a world where staying alive took everything you had, expecting charity was the dumbest move of all. Riley didn't waste more energy on it. People like that—the more you engaged, the more they thrived. Let him run his mouth. She had bigger things to worry about. She closed the channel and turned to the big wooden crate—her initial supply point. Sure enough, new items had materialized inside. "Bottled Water x3 "White Bread x3 "Fresh Orange Juice x1 "Standard Snow Boots x1" "Orange juice?" Riley picked up the bottle, genuinely surprised. The orange liquid inside sloshed gently. Vitamins. The system was actually giving them vitamins. She pulled off her old shoes—already damp and cold—and swapped into the new boots. They were clunky, sure. But they gripped the snow, and the insulation was real. The chill that had been seeping up through her soles disappeared instantly. Next, she opened her toolbox. Goggles on. Thick cut-resistant gloves. Head-to-toe gear. "Time to work." The channel noise faded from her mind. She had one priority today, and it wasn't arguing with idiots. She picked up the chainsaw and headed back to the tree line. The cold played tricks on batteries. She'd known that, intellectually. But knowing it and feeling it were different things. After just eight trees, the last spare battery gave out. The chainsaw stuttered, died, and went silent in her hands. Riley stared at it. "Son of a b*tch." Chapter 5 Dead Battery Riley stared at the dead chainsaw in her hands and shook her head. Without power, it was just an expensive paperweight. If she wanted more wood, she'd have to do it the old-fashioned way—pick up the axe or the manual handsaw from the toolbox and go to war with frozen timber. But eight more trees were eight more trees. Her stockpile was looking healthy. "First things first. Get these back." She sucked it up, stowed the chainsaw in her inventory, and started hauling. Her body screamed even louder than yesterday. Every muscle felt like it had been replaced with concrete. She dragged each log back one at a time, moving like a zombie. Drag. Rest two minutes. Drag again. The wind howled in her ears. Riley lost track of time, lost track of everything except the mechanical rhythm of work. By the time the sun was high—not that you could really see it through the clouds—she dragged the last log into the campfire's radius. It dissolved into light, absorbed by the system. Riley all but collapsed into the snow. "Acquired: Wood x40" She lay there for a moment, chest heaving, staring at the number in her inventory. A tired smile crept across her face. She had enough. Combined with the coal and steel from yesterday's trades, she had everything she needed for the upgrade. Riley forced herself upright and walked to the campfire. On the floating translucent panel, the "Upgrade" button glowed that tempting gold. "Upgrade Primitive Shelter to Lv.2? "Cost: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Scrap Steel x5 "Remaining after upgrade: Wood x16, Stone x3, Coal x0, Steel x0" "Upgrade." Riley took a breath and pressed it. "Hmmmm—!" A blinding white light erupted from the heart of the campfire, swallowing everything. Riley squeezed her eyes shut. No explosion. No thunder. Just a sound like Legos snapping together. A few seconds later, the light faded. Riley opened her eyes. And stopped breathing. The campfire wasn't just a campfire anymore. The rough stone ring had transformed into something neat and intentional—a proper firepit with a stone border for insulation, a place to set things, even a simple steel grate attached to the side. But that wasn't the big news. The heat that used to push back the cold within a six-foot radius now stretched a full fifteen feet. Inside that circle, snow was actively melting, revealing dark frozen soil underneath. In one corner, she spotted a patch of moss stubbornly poking through. Riley spun around. Behind the big wooden crate, a small log cabin stood waiting. It wasn't much—maybe forty feet square, built from rough-hewn logs. Nothing fancy. But it was solid. Four walls and a roof, blocking wind and snow completely. Riley walked over and pushed open the heavy wooden door. Warm air hit her face. Inside was simple: a wooden bed frame piled with dry grass, a crude workbench, a chair, and a small fireplace connected to a chimney that ran up through the roof. Rustic. But right now, it was heaven. Wood and fire. Four walls. A roof. Home. Riley ran her hand along the rough wall. Her eyes stung a little. She wouldn't have to sleep in the open anymore. Wouldn't have to wake up every few hours to check the fire. Wouldn't have to worry about freezing to death in her sleep. Right on cue, the server announcement chimed. Gold text this time, blazing right in the center of everyone's vision. "Server Announcement: Congratulations to player SpicyBurger for being the first to achieve "Level 2 Shelter". Rewards have been distributed." The chat channel, which had been wallowing in fear and despair, exploded. "Holy sh*t? Level 2 already? What does Level 2 unlock? Can you post pics, big shot?" "That's the wood seller from yesterday? No way. Absolute legend." "Carry me please! SpicyBurger, I'll be your loyal follower. I can cook, I can clean, I can—" "Teach us, master! How'd you gather materials so fast? What's your secret?" Compliments. Pleas. Desperate attempts to get noticed. And then, of course, the sour grapes. "InvincibleWarrior: Big deal. Just profiteering off everyone else's suffering. If she'd shared that wood instead of selling it, maybe those five thousand people would still be alive. How does it feel to climb on corpses?" "GodLovesMeFirst: Seriously. Building your success on other people's deaths. Karma's real. She'll get hers." Riley's jaw tightened. If InvincibleWarrior had been standing in front of her right now, she'd have knocked his teeth out. Guys like him—useless themselves, but always ready to tear down anyone who actually accomplished something. Sewer rats. Her private messages exploded too. She'd set it to only accept trade offers, but people had found a workaround—using the "trade note" function to send spam. "Hey beautiful, I'm a personal trainer. Great shape. Wanna see? Hit me with some wood and I'll do a voice call with you!" A photo of some guy flexing in a mirror, shirt off. Riley glanced at it, unimpressed. Decent abs. Pathetic attitude. Dude was clearly strong enough to chop wood—why was he wasting time on this? She'd never mentioned her gender, so most people probably assumed anyone who'd gathered that much wood must be a guy. The messages reflected that assumption. Some women sent selfies too, trying to flirt their way into favor. Didn't matter. Shameless cut across all demographics. From the backgrounds in the photos, everyone seemed to be in different locations. But one thing was consistent: they all had trees nearby. The system must have arranged that—a new player perk. "A bunch of degenerates." Riley's face went cold. She changed her privacy settings to "Friends Only". Then she added a line to her trading post description. "No spam. Send junk, get blocked." Silence. Blessed silence. She took a breath, let the noise drain away, and focused on what mattered. "First-place upgrade reward..." She opened her inventory. Sitting there, glowing faintly purple, was a gift box. For more exciting content, please download the "JoyRead" app to continue reading.
Chapter 1 The Countdown Ends It was the year 2027, and the end of the world was now less than an hour away. "00:59:23" Riley Carter stood on a ladder with a screw clenched between her teeth, an impact driver in her hand, securing the last window panel in place. A month ago, that timer had just appeared out of nowhere, hanging in the corner of everyone's vision like it had always been there. At first, people wrote it off as some kind of mass hacker prank. The government fed the media soothing statements in an attempt to keep things calm, but there was no way to talk down the panic as prices kept rising and supplies were held in a monopoly in real time. News outlets might spin whatever narrative they wanted, but no one could argue with the price of eggs. For a while, it was a frenzy. People cleaned out grocery stores like locusts. The government did what they could—price caps, purchase limits, reassurances from the podium—but none of it mattered. The cost of living kept climbing, and bit by bit, the country started coming apart at the seams. Online, it was a circus. Some people posted doom-laden predictions. Others openly celebrated the thought of the world finally burning. A few just seemed relieved they wouldn't have to clock in on Monday. In that final hour, things got truly ugly. Both on the streets and on social media, it was chaos. Some people figured why not went out with a bang? If the world was ending, they'd spend their last hours doing every reckless thing they'd ever fantasized about. Others, paralyzed by fear of whatever was coming, scrambled for anything they could hoard. Supplies. Weapons. Gasoline. Didn't matter what, as long as they had more of it than the next guy. Most people just wanted to be with the ones they loved. Riley didn't have that luxury anymore. Fresh out of community college, she'd lost both her parents in a highway pileup eighteen months back. The only thing they'd left her was the family hardware store, a cramped little place wedged between a laundromat and a taqueria. She'd been running it solo for just over a year when that d*mn countdown appeared overhead. At first, she'd thought maybe an apocalypse wouldn't be the worst thing. Maybe there'd be something on the other side. A reunion. But then she thought about her folks. They'd doted on her. Made her feel like the center of their world. And even though she'd grown a thick skin since going it alone, feeling indifferent to the world, she knew what they'd want. They'd want her to fight. To stay. She was the only piece of them still left in this world. People always say you aren't really gone until the last person forgets your name. As long as she kept breathing, kept carrying them with her another day, they weren't truly dead. Riley spat the screw into her palm, face calm, the impact driver whirring as she sank another fastener into the reinforced frame. "Flour's three hundred a pound now, and you can't even buy it straight—they make you tack on a bunch of other junk you don't need just to get it," she muttered to herself, shaking her head. When that timer first flickered into existence, Riley had done something smart. She'd liquidated everything. Converted every dollar she could scrape together into supplies. Unfortunately, by the time she hit the stores, inflation had already done its damage. Her savings didn't go nearly as far as they should have. Any cash that was left went toward tools. If the world was ending, she thought they could be useful. Riley pressed the last sheet of thick insulation foam into the window frame, seating it flush against the reinforced plywood beneath. The impact driver snarled as she buried the screws. Then she reached for her pneumatic glue gun—a satisfying pfft as the sealant filled the final gap. She wiped sweat from her forehead and climbed down off the ladder. Stepped back to admire her work. The little apartment was a fortress now. Doors reinforced. Windows barricaded. Every interior wall lined with an extra layer of insulation. She glanced down at herself. Custom-fit heavy-duty workwear. Slash-resistant fabric. More pockets than she'd ever need. Reinforced padding at the knees and elbows. It wasn't fashionable, but it was practical. And her real treasure: tools. A chainsaw. A reciprocating saw. The impact driver in her hand. A multi-bit screwdriver that had cost more than she wanted to admit. She'd brought everything usable from the shop back here, consolidated it into three massive toolboxes. She'd also grabbed some stuff like an air purifier and some spare filters—anything that might matter when civilization took a vacation. She didn't know what the countdown would bring. Some folks online predicted zombies. Others said asteroid impact. Volcanic winter. Alien invasion. Take your pick. Food. Tools. Shelter. She'd even started working out, building strength she'd never needed before. She'd done everything she could think of to prepare. Whatever was coming, she figured she'd last longer than most. With nothing left to do, she dropped onto one of the big toolboxes laid flat on the floor, wiped her forehead again, and pulled out her phone. Most news apps had crashed. The only things still loading were comment sections, and they were going crazy. [Anyone got rice? I'll pay eight grand for a bag. Please, we got nothing left.] [Forget it, man. Money's toilet paper now. Saw it with my own eyes—some rich assholes cleared out the Costco warehouse last week. All that 'purchase limit' crap was just theater. Shelves were empty 'cause the stock never made it there. It's all sitting in some hedge fund guy's basement.] [No kidding? Same thing happened to me! Store manager kept telling me, 'We're limiting purchases, come back next week, we'll put your name on the list.' So the whole time the back room was empty? They were just jerking us around?] [Of course they were. Rich people cornered the market on everything. So what are normal people supposed to do? Just sit here and die?] [Anyone know what actually happens when the clock hits zero? Like, is it nukes? That virus thing from that old video game?] Riley locked her phone. Tucked it away. She didn't have anything to add to that conversation. A month ago, when the countdown first showed up, prices had spiked instantly. A fifty-pound bag of rice that normally went for thirty bucks jumped to eight hundred overnight. By yesterday, it was breaking two grand. The wealthy had rolled up with trucks and cleaned out supermarkets. Riley had been smart—she'd gone early, bought stuff that would keep, stuff that was calorie-dense and cheap. Chocolate. Survival biscuits. Canned goods. It wasn't much, but it was enough for one person, at least for a while. She took a deep breath and glanced at the timer. "00:01:10" Just over a minute. Riley gripped the toolbox beneath her. Knuckles white. Who knew what would happen when that thing hit zero? Maybe it'd be like 2012—all hype, nothing real. In that last minute, her life flickered past. Her parents' faces. The hardware store. The lonely months since. "00:00:00" The countdown ended. Riley had just started to breathe a sigh of relief—nothing happened, maybe it really was nothing—when the world lurched beneath her. A dizzying weightlessness. A sensation of falling. Everything spun. ***** She didn't know how long she was out. "Whew." A wind like a knife blade sliced across her face. Riley's eyes snapped open. Her warm apartment was gone. In its place, an endless white expanse stretched in every direction. Snow whipped through the air. Wind howled like a wounded animal. And at her feet, a small campfire guttered in the gale, threatening to die at any second. "What the—" Before she could process, a chime rang directly in her skull. Not heard. Known. "Welcome to the Extreme Cold Survival Game. "Earth no longer exists. This is your new home. This is your grave. "Survival rules are as follows. "1. Each player begins with one campfire. It is your only defense against the cold. If the campfire dies, you will be judged deceased by the system. Not that it matters—without the fire, you won't last anyway. "2. This is a real world. You can die from hunger. From exposure. From animal attack. "3. Supplies stockpiled in your previous world do not carry over. Only items on your person, or in direct physical contact at the moment of transfer, are retained. "4. Struggle to survive. It is your only hope." Riley's heart slammed against her ribs. Supplies didn't carry over? Her mind flashed to those wealthy forum posters bragging about their warehouse stockpiles. And then she looked down at herself. Workwear. Intact. And— She was still sitting on the three giant toolboxes. They sat solidly in the snow, dusted with powder, unmistakably here. "Whew." Riley let out a long breath. A white cloud dispersed in front of her face. Pity, though. During her renovations, she'd stocked those boxes with a lot of power tools. The expensive impact driver. The reciprocating saw. In a world with no electrical outlets, once those batteries died, they were just dead weight. But even so. The hand tools. The consumables. The sheer volume of stuff in those boxes—it was a treasure beyond measure in a place like this. Riley forced herself to calm down. She was here. She'd deal with it. Something new lived in her mind now. She concentrated, and a translucent pale-blue screen materialized in front of her eyes. Looked just like a video game HUD. "Personal Panel "Name: Riley Carter "ID: 1120-US "Level: 1 (Standard Survivor) "Strength: 8 (Years of manual labor have made you stronger than average) "Agility: 8 (You've got quick reflexes) "Constitution: 6 (You've been skipping meals lately) "Spirit: 9 (You keep your head when others panic) "Inventory: 16/16 slots (Base capacity)" "Inventory?" Riley studied the sixteen empty squares at the bottom of the display. She reached out, touched one of the toolboxes, and thought the word, "Store." Whoosh. The heavy box vanished. In its place, a tiny icon appeared in the first inventory slot, a miniature "x1" in the corner. "It actually worked." For the first time since arriving, a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. Retrieve. Thud. The toolbox landed back in the snow, puffing up powder. No energy cost. No sense of weight. And in that inventory, she could carry anything, regardless of how heavy it was. Later on, when she went scavenging, that would make all the difference. Riley rubbed her stiff, freezing hands together and turned her attention to the campfire at her feet. It was the only warmth in this frozen wasteland. Hovering above the flames, visible only to her, were a few lines of glowing text. "Basic Campfire (Lv.1) "Remaining Burn Time: 05:28:00 "Current Coverage: Radius six feet (Blocks wind and snow) "Upgrade Requirements: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Steel x5 "Description: This is your life. Do not let it die. Upgrading expands your safe zone and unlocks additional construction options." "Needs upgrading." Riley frowned. Wood and stone she could probably find. But coal? Steel? Out here in the middle of nowhere? A flash of movement caught her eye. A small wooden box, half-buried in the snow not far from the fire. The starter crate. Had to be. Riley didn't rush. First, she pulled the claw hammer from her belt—the one she always kept there, habit from years of work—and gripped it tight. She scanned the tree line. Listened past the wind. Nothing moved. No sounds but the storm. She walked over quickly, crouched by the box. No lock. She pried the lid open with the claw end of her hammer. Inside, a handful of items. "Obtained: Iron Axe x1 "Obtained: Stale Dark Bread x2 "Obtained: 500ml Bottled Water x1 "Obtained: Kindling x5 "Obtained: Insulated Field Jacket x1 "Obtained: Utility Rope (25ft) "Obtained: Thermal Underwear (Set) x2 Not much. Barely anything. Riley picked up one of the dark loaves. It was rock hard. She examined the jacket—basic, but warm-looking. "So this is what a standard survivor starts with." At least the system had thought of everything. Including the underwear. She'd half-expected to wake up naked in the snow; at least she didn't have to worry about that. She stored everything in her inventory, then shrugged on the field jacket. The temperature shift was brutal. Even those few seconds exposed had left her hands numb. Hypothermia would set in fast out here. Jacket on, she hurried back to the campfire. She pulled the five units of Kindling from her inventory and tossed them onto the flames. The fire roared higher. Warmth flooded over her. "Fuel added. Remaining Burn Time: 10:28:00" Ten hours. If she didn't move fast, in ten hours she'd freeze to death on this ice field. And the game had made it clear—if the fire died, the system would judge her dead. Whether she actually froze or not. Riley lifted her head and scanned the landscape. She was in a sparse coniferous forest. Barely alive trees, crusted with frost, dotted the area not far from her position. "Wood." A slow smile spread across her face. She patted the toolbox beside her. "Other people might have axes. But felling a tree with just an axe takes hours. Exhausts you." She unlatched the box. Pulled out the chainsaw. Checked the battery gauge—full. "I've got a handsaw in here too. And a chainsaw with a full charge." The battery wouldn't last forever. But it would last long enough to give her a massive head start. In this race for survival, that was everything. Chapter 2 The Chainsaw The wind screamed across the open ground, picking up loose snow and flinging it against her goggles like sand. It sounded like static. Riley had pulled her basic work gear from the toolbox before heading out. Now she stood in the snow, surrounded by clusters of thin conifers that looked half-dead already. She took a breath. The air burned going down. "Zzzzzzz—!!!" She squeezed the trigger. The orange-and-black lithium-ion chainsaw in her hands roared to life, the chain spinning so fast it blurred. She buried the teeth in the nearest pine trunk. Wood chips exploded everywhere. Fragrant shavings—still wet with resin—scattered across the pristine snow, stark and yellow against all that white. Five seconds. Crack. The pine tree, thick as her arm, groaned and tilted. Then it fell slow and heavy into a drift, sending up a puff of powder. "God bless modern technology." Riley shook out her wrist—the vibration had numbed her fingers—and allowed herself a small smile. Without that chainsaw, with just the basic iron axe the system had given her, felling a tree frozen solid like this would have taken twenty minutes minimum. And it would have left her soaked with sweat. In subzero temps, sweat was a death sentence. Once your base layers got wet, the moment you stopped moving, your body temperature would plummet. Hypothermia would follow fast. Riley didn't waste time celebrating. She knew the saw in her hands was a hungry machine. She'd brought two spare high-capacity batteries, sure, but until she found a way to recharge them, every second the motor ran was borrowed time. She had to gather as much wood as possible before the batteries gave out. "Zzzzz—Zzzzz—" At the edge of the forest, the chainsaw's snarl rose and fell, shattering the frozen silence. Riley worked like she was possessed. Fell a tree. Move to the next. Fell another. But she had to stay alert—watch for hidden snow pits underfoot, keep adjusting her collar against the wind that kept finding its way down her neck. Her stamina drained faster than she'd anticipated. In extreme cold, body burned through calories just to stay alive. Added walking through knee-deep snow, where every step took three times the energy of walking on pavement, and the math got ugly fast. Pretty soon, Riley was breathing hard. Her breath fogged the inside of her goggles, and she had to keep wiping them clear. "Zzzzz..." She was mid-cut on a tree—didn't even know which number anymore—when the chainsaw's roar stuttered. Died. The chain jammed solid in the wood. A red light blinked at her. Dead battery. Riley yanked the saw free and patted its housing. "Good work, buddy." Genuine regret in her voice. She straightened up and looked around. Pine trunks lay scattered across the snow in every direction. A decent haul. She counted silently. "Twenty-three total." Then the next problem hit her. According to the system, until she actually possessed these logs, they were still just natural resources. That meant they didn't qualify for Inventory storage. She couldn't just snap her fingers and make them disappear. She had to drag them back to camp. Riley grabbed the nearest pine and tried to pull. Heavy. Like, unreasonably heavy. Fresh-cut wood was full of moisture. Add the branches catching in the snow, dragging like anchors, and she felt like she was hauling a dead body through mud. "Huff... huff..." She gritted her teeth, looped rope around the trunk, slung it over her shoulder, leaned forward, and started walking. Inch by inch. The tree line to her campfire was maybe fifty yards. Right now, it felt like fifty miles. By the time she'd wrestled the fourth tree back into the fire's warm radius, she was wrecked. Her legs felt like someone had filled them with concrete. Her lungs burned from hauling freezing air through them. "Can't... can't do more." Riley made the call. She stopped. Those nineteen trees still out there in the snow—they called to her. Tempted her. But if she kept pushing without rest, without fuel for herself, she'd collapse out there. And out there, collapse meant death. She dropped down next to the big wooden crate that had held her starter supplies. It was less than three feet from the campfire. The flames danced orange and red, pumping out heat that felt like heaven. The shift from frozen to warm made her shiver violently. She pulled off her goggles and thick gloves, set them near the fire to warm up, then—still shaking—pulled the half-empty water bottle from her Inventory. Took a small sip. Then the bread. Two black bricks that looked more like construction material than food. "Crunch." Riley bit off a piece with effort. It was coarse. Tasted like sawdust with a hint of burnt toast. Bitter. But it was calories. Carbs. Fuel for her own fire. She forced herself to chew, swallow. When the food hit her stomach, warmth finally started spreading through her core. The uncontrollable shaking eased. After half a loaf, Riley leaned back against the crate. Her eyelids drooped. Post-exhaustion crash hit her like a wave. The campfire crackled. The wind seemed farther away now. Muffled. She really wanted to sleep... Her head nodded. Her body started sliding sideways. "Wait—" Some animal instinct jolted her awake just before she went under. She pinched her thigh. Hard. Then looked up at the timer floating above the flames. "Shelter Level 1 "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 06:28:00" Six and a half hours. If she slept too deep, too long, and that fire went out—what then? Even ignoring the obvious—that she'd freeze to death in this hellhole without a heat source—the game rules were clear. When the campfire hits zero, it's game over. "No sleeping. Not allowed." Riley slapped her own cheeks, forced herself upright. She stayed near the fire, but she didn't take off her heavy work clothes. She remembered reading something once, a survival article. "In the late stages of hypothermia, your hypothalamus malfunctions. You get a false sensation of heat. It's called "paradoxical undressing"—people strip down right before they freeze to death." "Okay. Process these four. Keep the fire fed." She pulled a traditional handsaw from the toolbox. Looking at the four thick pine logs on the ground, she almost laughed. Without power tools, breaking these down into burnable pieces would take at least half an hour. Burn the little energy she had left. But what choice did she have? Riley knelt in the snow, positioned the blade against the trunk, and was about to start cutting— A soft white light shot out from the system panel on her chest. It washed over the logs. "Ding! "Detected felled, intact logs within shelter range. "Perform quick recovery?" Riley's hand froze mid-saw. Quick recovery? It took her a second to process. Then relief flooded through her so hard she almost cried. "Yes! Recover!" She didn't hesitate. The next moment, something impossible happened. The four pine trunks—the ones she'd have to saw and split by hand, the ones that represented hours of brutal labor—dissolved into pale blue light particles. Not into dust. Into neat, uniform logs that stacked themselves automatically in her Inventory. The branches, the needles, all the useless parts—purified out of existence. "Recovery successful! "Obtained: Common Wood x20" Riley's eyes went wide, staring at the perfect lumber in her inventory display. Looked like it came straight from a hardware store. "One tree gives five units of wood? "And I don't have to cut it myself?" This changed everything. It meant she only had to handle the felling and the dragging. Once a log crossed into her camp's boundary, the system recognized it as hers. The most time-consuming part—the processing—just... didn't exist anymore. Riley immediately grabbed five units of wood and fed them to the fire. Whoosh. The flames leaped, hungry and grateful. "Fuel added. "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 12:20:00" "Five logs, five hours..." She did the math fast, looking at the fifteen units still on the ground. If she threw all of those in, that'd be another fifteen hours. Total of twenty-seven. She could sleep like the dead right now, and that fire would still be burning when she woke up. Security. For the first time since the world ended, Riley felt something like security. She selected the remaining wood. Deposited it all. Watched the countdown tick up to a very comfortable "27:20:00". Then her nerves finally let go. She dragged one of the toolboxes into position to block the wind, wrapped the field jacket tight around herself, pulled her hat down over her eyes, leaned back against the warm crate, and let the crackle of the fire pull her under. ***** She didn't sleep long. When she opened her eyes again, the sky was still that same dull gray-white. Impossible to tell if it was morning or afternoon. System clock said three hours. Her body ached. Shoulders and arms especially—felt like she'd gone ten rounds with someone. But her head was clear. She stretched her stiff neck and stood up. The snow seemed lighter. The feathery flakes had tapered off into sporadic icy grains. Riley ate a little more, got some fuel back in the tank, then stepped outside the campfire's warmth. The fire's effect wasn't what she'd expected. It wasn't that the temperature gradually dropped as you moved away. It was sharper than that. Like there was an invisible barrier around the flames. Inside, livable. Outside, the cold hit you like a wall. She wandered a little way off. The cold found every gap in her clothing. She thought about going farther, exploring. But there was nothing visible except that stand of trees she'd already worked. Maybe stuff was buried under the snow, but she couldn't see it. "No proper snow boots. Not going far." Riley glanced at the endless white distance with real regret. "Don't get greedy. Get those nineteen trees first." She turned. Looked at the woods. Her loot was still out there. And now she knew: if she could drag them back into the campfire's circle, the system would cash them out automatically. "Time to work." Riley rubbed her hands together. Let the motivation build. For the next few hours, she became a machine. Drag a tree to camp. Recover it. Go back for another. Repeat. It was boring. Exhausting. But watching those logs turn into numbers in her inventory—that feeling was hard to describe. Satisfying, in a way nothing had been satisfying in a long time. When the last pine trunk crossed into the light and dissolved into particles, Riley just collapsed. Lay flat in the snow and stared at the gray sky. She pulled up her Inventory. The once-empty slots were full now. Stack after stack of wood icons. "Item: Common Wood "Quantity: 80 "Description: Basic survival resource. Can be used for fuel or construction." Eighty units. Plus what was already burning in the campfire. Her day's work had yielded a clean hundred. One unit of wood burned for one hour. Riley looked at the flames dancing in front of her. Felt the heat on her face. Let herself smile, wide and real. "One hundred hours." Four full days. While everyone else was probably still panicking. Crying. Begging. Trying to figure out how to survive their first night in this frozen nightmare... She, Riley, had enough fuel stockpiled to last four days. Which meant: for the next ninety-six hours, unless she actively chose to die, nobody and nothing could put her fire out. She pulled the half-empty water bottle from Inventory. The space must have been insulated somehow—the water was still warm. Almost body temperature. She sipped it. Tasted sweet, even though it was just tap water. "Okay. Next step." Her gaze settled on the "Upgrade" button on the campfire panel. This open-air setup was fine for now. But if she was going to survive long-term, she needed something better. A real shelter. All she needed was a little stone. Some coal. Some steel. Then she could build something worth calling home. Chapter 3 The Trading Game The blizzard howled outside, but within the six-foot radius of the campfire, the air stayed surprisingly warm—like the wind had hit an invisible wall and just couldn't reach. Riley leaned back against the dusty wooden crate, holding the half-empty water bottle in her hand. She stared into the flames for a moment, then focused her attention inward. The pale blue system panel unfolded in front of her eyes again. Now that the immediate crisis was handled, she finally had time to sit quietly and really explore this so-called "Survival System". Beyond the personal stats and inventory, the bottom of the panel had a row of function icons: Server Channel, Friends List, Trading Market, and Crafting Manual. Friends List was empty. No surprise there. She hadn't exactly been a social butterfly back in the old world, and she sure as hell wasn't going to make friends easily in a frozen hellscape where everyone was fighting for their next breath. She tapped into the "Server Channel". A line of numbers appeared in the top left. "Server: US-008 "Current Online: 9911/10000" Ten thousand people started. Less than ten hours in, eighty-nine were already gone. "That doesn't add up." Everyone's starter crate came with a rusty iron axe and five units of wood. Plus the initial fuel the campfire had when they arrived—that alone bought them ten hours minimum, even if they just sat there doing nothing. What the hell did those people do to get eliminated so fast? The channel was moving fast, messages scrolling by every second. Desperation dripped from every line. "Someone help, I'm freezing my ass off out here. This stupid axe can't cut sh*t—every swing just bounces off and rattles my whole arm. Can anyone spare a couple logs? My dad's a senior VP at Walker Group. I'll wire you a million dollars when we get back, I swear." "Wake up, buddy. If your dad's still alive, he's out there chopping trees right now too." "Don't even talk to me. I spotted a wooden crate in the snow earlier, got all excited, ran over—and before I got within ten feet, some white rabbit thing jumped out of a drift. Teeth like needles. Almost took a chunk out of my leg. Missed the crate, wasted all that energy for nothing." "I saw that too! Random crates spawn in the wild. I opened a wooden one and got two chocolate bars and some coal." Reading through the chaos, Riley picked out two keywords, "Random Reward Crates" and "Dangerous Creatures". So this world was deeper than she thought. Wooden crates, copper crates—these randomly spawning resource points were the real way to get ahead. Coal came from crates. That was useful to know. And if coal was in crates, steel probably was too. But something bothered her. According to what people were saying, reward crates weren't exactly rare. So why hadn't she found a single one during her lumber run? She doubted it was just bad luck. Riley exited chat and tapped into the "Trading Market". "Seller: MountainMan88 Item: Stone x2 Wants: White Bread x5" "Seller: LoneWolf_21 Item: Cotton Cloth Wants: Clean Water" "Seller: NotDeadYet Item: Wood x3 Wants: Anything edible" Most people were trading for food and wood. The stuff that kept you alive right now. Things like stone and cloth were getting dumped cheap—nobody had the luxury of thinking long-term. Riley looked at her own inventory. Eighty units of wood staring back at her. Her heart beat a little faster. In this opening phase, where wood literally meant the difference between life and death, the resources in her hands were basically gold bars. "Time to trade," she muttered to herself. "Coal, steel—can't get those from chopping trees. And right now, wood's at maximum value. If I wait, the exchange rate shifts." Even with the chainsaw dead, she still had the handsaw. Less efficient, sure, but she could gather more wood if she needed it. Short-term, she wasn't going to run out. She clicked to post a message in the channel. "System Prompt: Detected that you have not set a virtual ID. Please enter your nickname (cannot be changed after setting)." Riley stared at the blank input box. Naming things was the worst. She sat there for a long time, nothing coming to mind. Finally, she gave up. Couldn't think of anything cool or clever, so she'd just go with something random. Her fingers tapped across the virtual keyboard—SpicyBurger. "Setting successful. ID locked." The prompt closed. Riley posted her message. "SpicyBurger: Selling wood in bulk. Looking for: Coal, Steel, High-calorie food. DM me with offers—what you have and your rate. Good deals go fast, don't sleep on this." For three seconds after the message appeared, the channel went dead silent. Then it exploded. "SpicyBurger? That name's making me hungry, what the hell." "Never mind the name—'wood in bulk'! We got a whale in here! Everyone else is stressing about the next hour and this person's already running a business?" "I need some! My campfire's down to like two hours. I don't know if I actually die when it hits zero but I don't wanna find out." Suddenly, half the channel was scrambling for wood. But then the skeptics crawled out. "Hang on. Everyone started with the same rusty axe. Chopping a tree in this weather takes twenty, thirty minutes minimum. Where's she getting 'bulk' wood from? Sounds like a scam." "InvincibleWarrior: Everybody chill. Look at that ID—sounds like a girl's handle. I'm a grown man, been busting my ass, and I've only got like ten logs saved up. My hands are shredded. Some girl with a food name claims she's got bulk? She's trying to run a game. Scam people out of their stuff." "Iron_Tough: Agreed. Scammers made it through the apocalypse too, I guess. My advice: ignore her. Don't get played. How much wood can a woman chop anyway? Probably can't even lift the axe right, lol." Riley scrolled through the messages, expression flat. She almost laughed. But some people pushed back. "FishHater44: How is it a scam? If she doesn't deliver, you don't complete the trade. Just 'cause you can't chop that much wood doesn't mean nobody can." Riley nodded slightly. That one had a point. But she didn't waste energy arguing in the channel. Instead, she flipped on Do Not Disturb for private messages—only allowing chat requests that included a trade offer. Some people didn't actually care whether she had wood. They just couldn't stand seeing someone else do well. "Ding. Ding. Ding." Private messages started pouring in like rain. Most players weren't idiots. Faced with the very real threat of freezing to death, they'd try anything for a chance. Riley opened the first one. "Windwalker: I got "Coal x3" from a crate. How much wood can I get for it? I can't chop anymore. The wind out here is insane. I tried to throw the coal in my fire but it just kept popping back out. System says my campfire level's too low, won't let me use it. I'm out of wood. My fire's almost dead." Riley thought for a moment. "Three coal for five wood. Deal?" She hadn't known about that restriction. Coal was supposed to be better fuel than wood—didn't expect the game to lock it behind a level gate. The reply came instantly, "Deal. But five wood feels light. It's coal." The guy was conflicted. He knew coal had value, but he was desperate. "I'll make it six. Final offer." Riley wasn't sure about coal's real value yet. Six was her limit. "Fine. Deal." They both dropped their items into the trade window. A moment later, it completed. A flash of white light. Riley's inventory lost six wood. Gained three chunks of coal, each about the size of a small melon. One down. "CrunchyFrog: Hey, I got two "Iron Ingots" from a crate. System calls them "Scrap Steel". Can I get eight wood for them? Trying to stock up enough to sleep through the night." Riley replied, "Sure. Initiate." In just over ten minutes, her wood stockpile dropped significantly. But her inventory filled up with good stuff. "Coal x10 "Stone x23 "Scrap Steel x5 "Raw Meat x2 "White Bread x2 "Basic Torch Blueprint x1" The blueprint was new. The description said it was required for crafting certain items. Seemed useful, so she'd traded for it. Meanwhile, back in the channel, that "InvincibleWarrior" guy who'd been mocking her earlier seemed to notice that people were actually completing trades. His tone got bitter. "InvincibleWarrior: Whatever. She probably got lucky with a high-tier crate. Let's see how long her stock lasts. Once the wood's gone, she'll be begging me to let her join my group." The people who'd successfully traded with Riley popped into the channel to thank her. That might have been fine—except the thanks caused problems. Since Riley had stopped trading for now, most people hadn't gotten anything. And the sky was darkening. Temperature outside the campfire radius was dropping fast. Gathering wood was getting harder. Trading was their only hope. The ones who'd pinned everything on Riley, seeing her stop, started losing it. "You said 'in bulk'! You did like five trades and quit. What are we supposed to do now?" "Keep trading! My fire's almost out. You want us to go chop trees in the dark?" "If you couldn't deliver, why'd you post? Showing off and then hiding." Whether it was coordinated or just genuine rage, the number of people defending Riley in the channel shrank fast. Mostly it was attacks now. Accusations of being irresponsible. Using scarcity tactics. Playing games with people's lives. Riley closed the channel. She couldn't be bothered. In a life-or-death situation like this, people losing it was normal. If she actually had unlimited resources, she'd trade more. But she didn't. And back on Earth, nobody had ever handed her anything out of charity. She wasn't about to start playing savior now. She looked down at the "Basic Torch Blueprint" in her inventory. "Requirements: Wood x10, Kerosene, Scrap Steel x2" Note: Requires Level 2 Workbench to craft." She leaned back against the crate again. Felt the weight of her stockpile pressing back against that lingering sense of unease. In this world, your ID didn't matter. Your gender didn't matter either. What mattered was who held the resources. She looked at what she had left: 36 units of wood. Plus the steel, coal, and stone from trading. Time to plan. Upgrading to a Level 2 campfire required 55 wood. She had all the other materials. For the wood, she'd just have to use the handsaw tomorrow and gather a little more. That settled, she pulled a few more logs from inventory and arranged them on top of the crate, making a small enclosed space. Curled up inside it, she watched the sky outside slowly darken to black. Her eyes grew heavy. She drifted off. Chapter 4 The Culling Riley woke to the kind of soreness that made you reconsider ever moving again. She'd slept like the dead—no dreams, no blizzard, just nothing. When she opened her eyes, the first things she saw were the logs she'd stacked as a windbreak and the steady glow of the campfire. She tried to stretch. Big mistake. Every muscle in her body lit up at once, screaming in protest. "Sh*t." Riley sucked air through her teeth and pressed a hand to her aching shoulder. Her lower back felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to it. Yesterday's work had been too much. She wasn't weak—far from it—but she was still human. The lactic acid had settled in overnight, and now she moved like an arthritic tin man. At least she was alive. She stowed the windbreak logs back in her inventory and looked around. The world hadn't changed. Same dull gray sky. Same swirling snow. Outside the six-foot radius of the fire, the drifts looked deeper than yesterday. The wind had been busy. Riley pulled out the half-empty water bottle and wet her throat. Then she retrieved the white bread she'd traded for yesterday. Compared to that dense, flavorless black bread, this was practically cake. She tore off small pieces, letting the faint sweetness dissolve on her tongue, and habitually opened the "Server Channel". She stopped chewing. The number in the top left hit her like a physical blow. "Current Online Players: 4968/10000" "Five thousand..." Riley's eyes went wide. In a single night, that number had been cut in half. Five thousand people. Gone. Winked out of existence on this frozen ice field while she slept. "Ding." The system notification cut through her thoughts—cold, emotionless, like it was announcing the weather. "Global Announcement: Congratulations to all survivors for successfully surviving the first day. "This was a culling. Last night eliminated those fools who failed to add fuel to their fires or refused to gather wood. Remember: in this place, tears mean nothing. When you die here, you're dead-dead. "You who remain are the lucky ones. "Grace Period: A five-day 'New Player Support Period' now begins. For the next five days, your initial supply crates will refresh daily with a fixed amount of food. "Special Reward: Each survivor receives one pair of "Standard Issue Snow Boots (Common)". Be grateful for this mercy. Enjoy the game." The words sat there on her screen. Fools. Mercy. The system's tone dripped with contempt. The math was simple. Starting package: five hours of fuel. Initial gift: five units of wood, another five hours. Total ten hours, if you did absolutely nothing. The ones who'd frozen to death last night—they were the ones who'd clung to hope. The ones too scared to move. The ones who'd told themselves someone would save them. Five thousand people. One night. Gone. This wasn't a game. It was a slaughter. In the channel, the survivors who'd made it through were clearly rattled by the numbers too. "Holy sh*t... My friend's icon went dark last night. Does that mean he's dead? Actually dead?" "I can't do this. I don't wanna play anymore, I wanna go home. I swear I'll work today. I'll chop wood, I'll do whatever, just please—" "Everyone move! Don't save your strength! If you die, that's it. No respawns!" Panic spread fast. But almost immediately, the tone shifted. The fear found a target. "That SpicyBurger—if she'd shared more wood yesterday, would so many people have died?" "For real. If she had extra, why not just give it away? Why did it have to be trades? She could've at least loaned some out." "This is what happens when people hoard resources and watch others freeze. Remember that name. Don't trade with her. Ever." Riley frowned. Here we go again. She scrolled up. Sure enough, there it was—that familiar ID: "InvincibleWarrior". He was going hard in the channel. "She's profiting off suffering. That's what some people do. Women like that are the worst—hoarding supplies while people die around them. Wait and see. Someone like her won't last." Riley laughed. Actually laughed out loud. Moral blackmail. In the apocalypse. She typed, "If you want wood, go cut it yourself. I'm not your mommy. No amount of crying in chat is gonna put logs in your inventory. You'd get more done if you just picked up your d*mn axe." The channel went quiet for a second. Then the reasonable voices piped up. "She's right. Nobody owes you anything. Work for it." "Exactly. Just 'cause someone's quiet doesn't mean they're an easy target." In a world where staying alive took everything you had, expecting charity was the dumbest move of all. Riley didn't waste more energy on it. People like that—the more you engaged, the more they thrived. Let him run his mouth. She had bigger things to worry about. She closed the channel and turned to the big wooden crate—her initial supply point. Sure enough, new items had materialized inside. "Bottled Water x3 "White Bread x3 "Fresh Orange Juice x1 "Standard Snow Boots x1" "Orange juice?" Riley picked up the bottle, genuinely surprised. The orange liquid inside sloshed gently. Vitamins. The system was actually giving them vitamins. She pulled off her old shoes—already damp and cold—and swapped into the new boots. They were clunky, sure. But they gripped the snow, and the insulation was real. The chill that had been seeping up through her soles disappeared instantly. Next, she opened her toolbox. Goggles on. Thick cut-resistant gloves. Head-to-toe gear. "Time to work." The channel noise faded from her mind. She had one priority today, and it wasn't arguing with idiots. She picked up the chainsaw and headed back to the tree line. The cold played tricks on batteries. She'd known that, intellectually. But knowing it and feeling it were different things. After just eight trees, the last spare battery gave out. The chainsaw stuttered, died, and went silent in her hands. Riley stared at it. "Son of a b*tch." Chapter 5 Dead Battery Riley stared at the dead chainsaw in her hands and shook her head. Without power, it was just an expensive paperweight. If she wanted more wood, she'd have to do it the old-fashioned way—pick up the axe or the manual handsaw from the toolbox and go to war with frozen timber. But eight more trees were eight more trees. Her stockpile was looking healthy. "First things first. Get these back." She sucked it up, stowed the chainsaw in her inventory, and started hauling. Her body screamed even louder than yesterday. Every muscle felt like it had been replaced with concrete. She dragged each log back one at a time, moving like a zombie. Drag. Rest two minutes. Drag again. The wind howled in her ears. Riley lost track of time, lost track of everything except the mechanical rhythm of work. By the time the sun was high—not that you could really see it through the clouds—she dragged the last log into the campfire's radius. It dissolved into light, absorbed by the system. Riley all but collapsed into the snow. "Acquired: Wood x40" She lay there for a moment, chest heaving, staring at the number in her inventory. A tired smile crept across her face. She had enough. Combined with the coal and steel from yesterday's trades, she had everything she needed for the upgrade. Riley forced herself upright and walked to the campfire. On the floating translucent panel, the "Upgrade" button glowed that tempting gold. "Upgrade Primitive Shelter to Lv.2? "Cost: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Scrap Steel x5 "Remaining after upgrade: Wood x16, Stone x3, Coal x0, Steel x0" "Upgrade." Riley took a breath and pressed it. "Hmmmm—!" A blinding white light erupted from the heart of the campfire, swallowing everything. Riley squeezed her eyes shut. No explosion. No thunder. Just a sound like Legos snapping together. A few seconds later, the light faded. Riley opened her eyes. And stopped breathing. The campfire wasn't just a campfire anymore. The rough stone ring had transformed into something neat and intentional—a proper firepit with a stone border for insulation, a place to set things, even a simple steel grate attached to the side. But that wasn't the big news. The heat that used to push back the cold within a six-foot radius now stretched a full fifteen feet. Inside that circle, snow was actively melting, revealing dark frozen soil underneath. In one corner, she spotted a patch of moss stubbornly poking through. Riley spun around. Behind the big wooden crate, a small log cabin stood waiting. It wasn't much—maybe forty feet square, built from rough-hewn logs. Nothing fancy. But it was solid. Four walls and a roof, blocking wind and snow completely. Riley walked over and pushed open the heavy wooden door. Warm air hit her face. Inside was simple: a wooden bed frame piled with dry grass, a crude workbench, a chair, and a small fireplace connected to a chimney that ran up through the roof. Rustic. But right now, it was heaven. Wood and fire. Four walls. A roof. Home. Riley ran her hand along the rough wall. Her eyes stung a little. She wouldn't have to sleep in the open anymore. Wouldn't have to wake up every few hours to check the fire. Wouldn't have to worry about freezing to death in her sleep. Right on cue, the server announcement chimed. Gold text this time, blazing right in the center of everyone's vision. "Server Announcement: Congratulations to player SpicyBurger for being the first to achieve "Level 2 Shelter". Rewards have been distributed." The chat channel, which had been wallowing in fear and despair, exploded. "Holy sh*t? Level 2 already? What does Level 2 unlock? Can you post pics, big shot?" "That's the wood seller from yesterday? No way. Absolute legend." "Carry me please! SpicyBurger, I'll be your loyal follower. I can cook, I can clean, I can—" "Teach us, master! How'd you gather materials so fast? What's your secret?" Compliments. Pleas. Desperate attempts to get noticed. And then, of course, the sour grapes. "InvincibleWarrior: Big deal. Just profiteering off everyone else's suffering. If she'd shared that wood instead of selling it, maybe those five thousand people would still be alive. How does it feel to climb on corpses?" "GodLovesMeFirst: Seriously. Building your success on other people's deaths. Karma's real. She'll get hers." Riley's jaw tightened. If InvincibleWarrior had been standing in front of her right now, she'd have knocked his teeth out. Guys like him—useless themselves, but always ready to tear down anyone who actually accomplished something. Sewer rats. Her private messages exploded too. She'd set it to only accept trade offers, but people had found a workaround—using the "trade note" function to send spam. "Hey beautiful, I'm a personal trainer. Great shape. Wanna see? Hit me with some wood and I'll do a voice call with you!" A photo of some guy flexing in a mirror, shirt off. Riley glanced at it, unimpressed. Decent abs. Pathetic attitude. Dude was clearly strong enough to chop wood—why was he wasting time on this? She'd never mentioned her gender, so most people probably assumed anyone who'd gathered that much wood must be a guy. The messages reflected that assumption. Some women sent selfies too, trying to flirt their way into favor. Didn't matter. Shameless cut across all demographics. From the backgrounds in the photos, everyone seemed to be in different locations. But one thing was consistent: they all had trees nearby. The system must have arranged that—a new player perk. "A bunch of degenerates." Riley's face went cold. She changed her privacy settings to "Friends Only". Then she added a line to her trading post description. "No spam. Send junk, get blocked." Silence. Blessed silence. She took a breath, let the noise drain away, and focused on what mattered. "First-place upgrade reward..." She opened her inventory. Sitting there, glowing faintly purple, was a gift box. For more exciting content, please download the "JoyRead" app to continue reading.
Chapter 1 The Countdown Ends It was the year 2027, and the end of the world was now less than an hour away. "00:59:23" Riley Carter stood on a ladder with a screw clenched between her teeth, an impact driver in her hand, securing the last window panel in place. A month ago, that timer had just appeared out of nowhere, hanging in the corner of everyone's vision like it had always been there. At first, people wrote it off as some kind of mass hacker prank. The government fed the media soothing statements in an attempt to keep things calm, but there was no way to talk down the panic as prices kept rising and supplies were held in a monopoly in real time. News outlets might spin whatever narrative they wanted, but no one could argue with the price of eggs. For a while, it was a frenzy. People cleaned out grocery stores like locusts. The government did what they could—price caps, purchase limits, reassurances from the podium—but none of it mattered. The cost of living kept climbing, and bit by bit, the country started coming apart at the seams. Online, it was a circus. Some people posted doom-laden predictions. Others openly celebrated the thought of the world finally burning. A few just seemed relieved they wouldn't have to clock in on Monday. In that final hour, things got truly ugly. Both on the streets and on social media, it was chaos. Some people figured why not went out with a bang? If the world was ending, they'd spend their last hours doing every reckless thing they'd ever fantasized about. Others, paralyzed by fear of whatever was coming, scrambled for anything they could hoard. Supplies. Weapons. Gasoline. Didn't matter what, as long as they had more of it than the next guy. Most people just wanted to be with the ones they loved. Riley didn't have that luxury anymore. Fresh out of community college, she'd lost both her parents in a highway pileup eighteen months back. The only thing they'd left her was the family hardware store, a cramped little place wedged between a laundromat and a taqueria. She'd been running it solo for just over a year when that d*mn countdown appeared overhead. At first, she'd thought maybe an apocalypse wouldn't be the worst thing. Maybe there'd be something on the other side. A reunion. But then she thought about her folks. They'd doted on her. Made her feel like the center of their world. And even though she'd grown a thick skin since going it alone, feeling indifferent to the world, she knew what they'd want. They'd want her to fight. To stay. She was the only piece of them still left in this world. People always say you aren't really gone until the last person forgets your name. As long as she kept breathing, kept carrying them with her another day, they weren't truly dead. Riley spat the screw into her palm, face calm, the impact driver whirring as she sank another fastener into the reinforced frame. "Flour's three hundred a pound now, and you can't even buy it straight—they make you tack on a bunch of other junk you don't need just to get it," she muttered to herself, shaking her head. When that timer first flickered into existence, Riley had done something smart. She'd liquidated everything. Converted every dollar she could scrape together into supplies. Unfortunately, by the time she hit the stores, inflation had already done its damage. Her savings didn't go nearly as far as they should have. Any cash that was left went toward tools. If the world was ending, she thought they could be useful. Riley pressed the last sheet of thick insulation foam into the window frame, seating it flush against the reinforced plywood beneath. The impact driver snarled as she buried the screws. Then she reached for her pneumatic glue gun—a satisfying pfft as the sealant filled the final gap. She wiped sweat from her forehead and climbed down off the ladder. Stepped back to admire her work. The little apartment was a fortress now. Doors reinforced. Windows barricaded. Every interior wall lined with an extra layer of insulation. She glanced down at herself. Custom-fit heavy-duty workwear. Slash-resistant fabric. More pockets than she'd ever need. Reinforced padding at the knees and elbows. It wasn't fashionable, but it was practical. And her real treasure: tools. A chainsaw. A reciprocating saw. The impact driver in her hand. A multi-bit screwdriver that had cost more than she wanted to admit. She'd brought everything usable from the shop back here, consolidated it into three massive toolboxes. She'd also grabbed some stuff like an air purifier and some spare filters—anything that might matter when civilization took a vacation. She didn't know what the countdown would bring. Some folks online predicted zombies. Others said asteroid impact. Volcanic winter. Alien invasion. Take your pick. Food. Tools. Shelter. She'd even started working out, building strength she'd never needed before. She'd done everything she could think of to prepare. Whatever was coming, she figured she'd last longer than most. With nothing left to do, she dropped onto one of the big toolboxes laid flat on the floor, wiped her forehead again, and pulled out her phone. Most news apps had crashed. The only things still loading were comment sections, and they were going crazy. [Anyone got rice? I'll pay eight grand for a bag. Please, we got nothing left.] [Forget it, man. Money's toilet paper now. Saw it with my own eyes—some rich assholes cleared out the Costco warehouse last week. All that 'purchase limit' crap was just theater. Shelves were empty 'cause the stock never made it there. It's all sitting in some hedge fund guy's basement.] [No kidding? Same thing happened to me! Store manager kept telling me, 'We're limiting purchases, come back next week, we'll put your name on the list.' So the whole time the back room was empty? They were just jerking us around?] [Of course they were. Rich people cornered the market on everything. So what are normal people supposed to do? Just sit here and die?] [Anyone know what actually happens when the clock hits zero? Like, is it nukes? That virus thing from that old video game?] Riley locked her phone. Tucked it away. She didn't have anything to add to that conversation. A month ago, when the countdown first showed up, prices had spiked instantly. A fifty-pound bag of rice that normally went for thirty bucks jumped to eight hundred overnight. By yesterday, it was breaking two grand. The wealthy had rolled up with trucks and cleaned out supermarkets. Riley had been smart—she'd gone early, bought stuff that would keep, stuff that was calorie-dense and cheap. Chocolate. Survival biscuits. Canned goods. It wasn't much, but it was enough for one person, at least for a while. She took a deep breath and glanced at the timer. "00:01:10" Just over a minute. Riley gripped the toolbox beneath her. Knuckles white. Who knew what would happen when that thing hit zero? Maybe it'd be like 2012—all hype, nothing real. In that last minute, her life flickered past. Her parents' faces. The hardware store. The lonely months since. "00:00:00" The countdown ended. Riley had just started to breathe a sigh of relief—nothing happened, maybe it really was nothing—when the world lurched beneath her. A dizzying weightlessness. A sensation of falling. Everything spun. ***** She didn't know how long she was out. "Whew." A wind like a knife blade sliced across her face. Riley's eyes snapped open. Her warm apartment was gone. In its place, an endless white expanse stretched in every direction. Snow whipped through the air. Wind howled like a wounded animal. And at her feet, a small campfire guttered in the gale, threatening to die at any second. "What the—" Before she could process, a chime rang directly in her skull. Not heard. Known. "Welcome to the Extreme Cold Survival Game. "Earth no longer exists. This is your new home. This is your grave. "Survival rules are as follows. "1. Each player begins with one campfire. It is your only defense against the cold. If the campfire dies, you will be judged deceased by the system. Not that it matters—without the fire, you won't last anyway. "2. This is a real world. You can die from hunger. From exposure. From animal attack. "3. Supplies stockpiled in your previous world do not carry over. Only items on your person, or in direct physical contact at the moment of transfer, are retained. "4. Struggle to survive. It is your only hope." Riley's heart slammed against her ribs. Supplies didn't carry over? Her mind flashed to those wealthy forum posters bragging about their warehouse stockpiles. And then she looked down at herself. Workwear. Intact. And— She was still sitting on the three giant toolboxes. They sat solidly in the snow, dusted with powder, unmistakably here. "Whew." Riley let out a long breath. A white cloud dispersed in front of her face. Pity, though. During her renovations, she'd stocked those boxes with a lot of power tools. The expensive impact driver. The reciprocating saw. In a world with no electrical outlets, once those batteries died, they were just dead weight. But even so. The hand tools. The consumables. The sheer volume of stuff in those boxes—it was a treasure beyond measure in a place like this. Riley forced herself to calm down. She was here. She'd deal with it. Something new lived in her mind now. She concentrated, and a translucent pale-blue screen materialized in front of her eyes. Looked just like a video game HUD. "Personal Panel "Name: Riley Carter "ID: 1120-US "Level: 1 (Standard Survivor) "Strength: 8 (Years of manual labor have made you stronger than average) "Agility: 8 (You've got quick reflexes) "Constitution: 6 (You've been skipping meals lately) "Spirit: 9 (You keep your head when others panic) "Inventory: 16/16 slots (Base capacity)" "Inventory?" Riley studied the sixteen empty squares at the bottom of the display. She reached out, touched one of the toolboxes, and thought the word, "Store." Whoosh. The heavy box vanished. In its place, a tiny icon appeared in the first inventory slot, a miniature "x1" in the corner. "It actually worked." For the first time since arriving, a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. Retrieve. Thud. The toolbox landed back in the snow, puffing up powder. No energy cost. No sense of weight. And in that inventory, she could carry anything, regardless of how heavy it was. Later on, when she went scavenging, that would make all the difference. Riley rubbed her stiff, freezing hands together and turned her attention to the campfire at her feet. It was the only warmth in this frozen wasteland. Hovering above the flames, visible only to her, were a few lines of glowing text. "Basic Campfire (Lv.1) "Remaining Burn Time: 05:28:00 "Current Coverage: Radius six feet (Blocks wind and snow) "Upgrade Requirements: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Steel x5 "Description: This is your life. Do not let it die. Upgrading expands your safe zone and unlocks additional construction options." "Needs upgrading." Riley frowned. Wood and stone she could probably find. But coal? Steel? Out here in the middle of nowhere? A flash of movement caught her eye. A small wooden box, half-buried in the snow not far from the fire. The starter crate. Had to be. Riley didn't rush. First, she pulled the claw hammer from her belt—the one she always kept there, habit from years of work—and gripped it tight. She scanned the tree line. Listened past the wind. Nothing moved. No sounds but the storm. She walked over quickly, crouched by the box. No lock. She pried the lid open with the claw end of her hammer. Inside, a handful of items. "Obtained: Iron Axe x1 "Obtained: Stale Dark Bread x2 "Obtained: 500ml Bottled Water x1 "Obtained: Kindling x5 "Obtained: Insulated Field Jacket x1 "Obtained: Utility Rope (25ft) "Obtained: Thermal Underwear (Set) x2 Not much. Barely anything. Riley picked up one of the dark loaves. It was rock hard. She examined the jacket—basic, but warm-looking. "So this is what a standard survivor starts with." At least the system had thought of everything. Including the underwear. She'd half-expected to wake up naked in the snow; at least she didn't have to worry about that. She stored everything in her inventory, then shrugged on the field jacket. The temperature shift was brutal. Even those few seconds exposed had left her hands numb. Hypothermia would set in fast out here. Jacket on, she hurried back to the campfire. She pulled the five units of Kindling from her inventory and tossed them onto the flames. The fire roared higher. Warmth flooded over her. "Fuel added. Remaining Burn Time: 10:28:00" Ten hours. If she didn't move fast, in ten hours she'd freeze to death on this ice field. And the game had made it clear—if the fire died, the system would judge her dead. Whether she actually froze or not. Riley lifted her head and scanned the landscape. She was in a sparse coniferous forest. Barely alive trees, crusted with frost, dotted the area not far from her position. "Wood." A slow smile spread across her face. She patted the toolbox beside her. "Other people might have axes. But felling a tree with just an axe takes hours. Exhausts you." She unlatched the box. Pulled out the chainsaw. Checked the battery gauge—full. "I've got a handsaw in here too. And a chainsaw with a full charge." The battery wouldn't last forever. But it would last long enough to give her a massive head start. In this race for survival, that was everything. Chapter 2 The Chainsaw The wind screamed across the open ground, picking up loose snow and flinging it against her goggles like sand. It sounded like static. Riley had pulled her basic work gear from the toolbox before heading out. Now she stood in the snow, surrounded by clusters of thin conifers that looked half-dead already. She took a breath. The air burned going down. "Zzzzzzz—!!!" She squeezed the trigger. The orange-and-black lithium-ion chainsaw in her hands roared to life, the chain spinning so fast it blurred. She buried the teeth in the nearest pine trunk. Wood chips exploded everywhere. Fragrant shavings—still wet with resin—scattered across the pristine snow, stark and yellow against all that white. Five seconds. Crack. The pine tree, thick as her arm, groaned and tilted. Then it fell slow and heavy into a drift, sending up a puff of powder. "God bless modern technology." Riley shook out her wrist—the vibration had numbed her fingers—and allowed herself a small smile. Without that chainsaw, with just the basic iron axe the system had given her, felling a tree frozen solid like this would have taken twenty minutes minimum. And it would have left her soaked with sweat. In subzero temps, sweat was a death sentence. Once your base layers got wet, the moment you stopped moving, your body temperature would plummet. Hypothermia would follow fast. Riley didn't waste time celebrating. She knew the saw in her hands was a hungry machine. She'd brought two spare high-capacity batteries, sure, but until she found a way to recharge them, every second the motor ran was borrowed time. She had to gather as much wood as possible before the batteries gave out. "Zzzzz—Zzzzz—" At the edge of the forest, the chainsaw's snarl rose and fell, shattering the frozen silence. Riley worked like she was possessed. Fell a tree. Move to the next. Fell another. But she had to stay alert—watch for hidden snow pits underfoot, keep adjusting her collar against the wind that kept finding its way down her neck. Her stamina drained faster than she'd anticipated. In extreme cold, body burned through calories just to stay alive. Added walking through knee-deep snow, where every step took three times the energy of walking on pavement, and the math got ugly fast. Pretty soon, Riley was breathing hard. Her breath fogged the inside of her goggles, and she had to keep wiping them clear. "Zzzzz..." She was mid-cut on a tree—didn't even know which number anymore—when the chainsaw's roar stuttered. Died. The chain jammed solid in the wood. A red light blinked at her. Dead battery. Riley yanked the saw free and patted its housing. "Good work, buddy." Genuine regret in her voice. She straightened up and looked around. Pine trunks lay scattered across the snow in every direction. A decent haul. She counted silently. "Twenty-three total." Then the next problem hit her. According to the system, until she actually possessed these logs, they were still just natural resources. That meant they didn't qualify for Inventory storage. She couldn't just snap her fingers and make them disappear. She had to drag them back to camp. Riley grabbed the nearest pine and tried to pull. Heavy. Like, unreasonably heavy. Fresh-cut wood was full of moisture. Add the branches catching in the snow, dragging like anchors, and she felt like she was hauling a dead body through mud. "Huff... huff..." She gritted her teeth, looped rope around the trunk, slung it over her shoulder, leaned forward, and started walking. Inch by inch. The tree line to her campfire was maybe fifty yards. Right now, it felt like fifty miles. By the time she'd wrestled the fourth tree back into the fire's warm radius, she was wrecked. Her legs felt like someone had filled them with concrete. Her lungs burned from hauling freezing air through them. "Can't... can't do more." Riley made the call. She stopped. Those nineteen trees still out there in the snow—they called to her. Tempted her. But if she kept pushing without rest, without fuel for herself, she'd collapse out there. And out there, collapse meant death. She dropped down next to the big wooden crate that had held her starter supplies. It was less than three feet from the campfire. The flames danced orange and red, pumping out heat that felt like heaven. The shift from frozen to warm made her shiver violently. She pulled off her goggles and thick gloves, set them near the fire to warm up, then—still shaking—pulled the half-empty water bottle from her Inventory. Took a small sip. Then the bread. Two black bricks that looked more like construction material than food. "Crunch." Riley bit off a piece with effort. It was coarse. Tasted like sawdust with a hint of burnt toast. Bitter. But it was calories. Carbs. Fuel for her own fire. She forced herself to chew, swallow. When the food hit her stomach, warmth finally started spreading through her core. The uncontrollable shaking eased. After half a loaf, Riley leaned back against the crate. Her eyelids drooped. Post-exhaustion crash hit her like a wave. The campfire crackled. The wind seemed farther away now. Muffled. She really wanted to sleep... Her head nodded. Her body started sliding sideways. "Wait—" Some animal instinct jolted her awake just before she went under. She pinched her thigh. Hard. Then looked up at the timer floating above the flames. "Shelter Level 1 "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 06:28:00" Six and a half hours. If she slept too deep, too long, and that fire went out—what then? Even ignoring the obvious—that she'd freeze to death in this hellhole without a heat source—the game rules were clear. When the campfire hits zero, it's game over. "No sleeping. Not allowed." Riley slapped her own cheeks, forced herself upright. She stayed near the fire, but she didn't take off her heavy work clothes. She remembered reading something once, a survival article. "In the late stages of hypothermia, your hypothalamus malfunctions. You get a false sensation of heat. It's called "paradoxical undressing"—people strip down right before they freeze to death." "Okay. Process these four. Keep the fire fed." She pulled a traditional handsaw from the toolbox. Looking at the four thick pine logs on the ground, she almost laughed. Without power tools, breaking these down into burnable pieces would take at least half an hour. Burn the little energy she had left. But what choice did she have? Riley knelt in the snow, positioned the blade against the trunk, and was about to start cutting— A soft white light shot out from the system panel on her chest. It washed over the logs. "Ding! "Detected felled, intact logs within shelter range. "Perform quick recovery?" Riley's hand froze mid-saw. Quick recovery? It took her a second to process. Then relief flooded through her so hard she almost cried. "Yes! Recover!" She didn't hesitate. The next moment, something impossible happened. The four pine trunks—the ones she'd have to saw and split by hand, the ones that represented hours of brutal labor—dissolved into pale blue light particles. Not into dust. Into neat, uniform logs that stacked themselves automatically in her Inventory. The branches, the needles, all the useless parts—purified out of existence. "Recovery successful! "Obtained: Common Wood x20" Riley's eyes went wide, staring at the perfect lumber in her inventory display. Looked like it came straight from a hardware store. "One tree gives five units of wood? "And I don't have to cut it myself?" This changed everything. It meant she only had to handle the felling and the dragging. Once a log crossed into her camp's boundary, the system recognized it as hers. The most time-consuming part—the processing—just... didn't exist anymore. Riley immediately grabbed five units of wood and fed them to the fire. Whoosh. The flames leaped, hungry and grateful. "Fuel added. "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 12:20:00" "Five logs, five hours..." She did the math fast, looking at the fifteen units still on the ground. If she threw all of those in, that'd be another fifteen hours. Total of twenty-seven. She could sleep like the dead right now, and that fire would still be burning when she woke up. Security. For the first time since the world ended, Riley felt something like security. She selected the remaining wood. Deposited it all. Watched the countdown tick up to a very comfortable "27:20:00". Then her nerves finally let go. She dragged one of the toolboxes into position to block the wind, wrapped the field jacket tight around herself, pulled her hat down over her eyes, leaned back against the warm crate, and let the crackle of the fire pull her under. ***** She didn't sleep long. When she opened her eyes again, the sky was still that same dull gray-white. Impossible to tell if it was morning or afternoon. System clock said three hours. Her body ached. Shoulders and arms especially—felt like she'd gone ten rounds with someone. But her head was clear. She stretched her stiff neck and stood up. The snow seemed lighter. The feathery flakes had tapered off into sporadic icy grains. Riley ate a little more, got some fuel back in the tank, then stepped outside the campfire's warmth. The fire's effect wasn't what she'd expected. It wasn't that the temperature gradually dropped as you moved away. It was sharper than that. Like there was an invisible barrier around the flames. Inside, livable. Outside, the cold hit you like a wall. She wandered a little way off. The cold found every gap in her clothing. She thought about going farther, exploring. But there was nothing visible except that stand of trees she'd already worked. Maybe stuff was buried under the snow, but she couldn't see it. "No proper snow boots. Not going far." Riley glanced at the endless white distance with real regret. "Don't get greedy. Get those nineteen trees first." She turned. Looked at the woods. Her loot was still out there. And now she knew: if she could drag them back into the campfire's circle, the system would cash them out automatically. "Time to work." Riley rubbed her hands together. Let the motivation build. For the next few hours, she became a machine. Drag a tree to camp. Recover it. Go back for another. Repeat. It was boring. Exhausting. But watching those logs turn into numbers in her inventory—that feeling was hard to describe. Satisfying, in a way nothing had been satisfying in a long time. When the last pine trunk crossed into the light and dissolved into particles, Riley just collapsed. Lay flat in the snow and stared at the gray sky. She pulled up her Inventory. The once-empty slots were full now. Stack after stack of wood icons. "Item: Common Wood "Quantity: 80 "Description: Basic survival resource. Can be used for fuel or construction." Eighty units. Plus what was already burning in the campfire. Her day's work had yielded a clean hundred. One unit of wood burned for one hour. Riley looked at the flames dancing in front of her. Felt the heat on her face. Let herself smile, wide and real. "One hundred hours." Four full days. While everyone else was probably still panicking. Crying. Begging. Trying to figure out how to survive their first night in this frozen nightmare... She, Riley, had enough fuel stockpiled to last four days. Which meant: for the next ninety-six hours, unless she actively chose to die, nobody and nothing could put her fire out. She pulled the half-empty water bottle from Inventory. The space must have been insulated somehow—the water was still warm. Almost body temperature. She sipped it. Tasted sweet, even though it was just tap water. "Okay. Next step." Her gaze settled on the "Upgrade" button on the campfire panel. This open-air setup was fine for now. But if she was going to survive long-term, she needed something better. A real shelter. All she needed was a little stone. Some coal. Some steel. Then she could build something worth calling home. Chapter 3 The Trading Game The blizzard howled outside, but within the six-foot radius of the campfire, the air stayed surprisingly warm—like the wind had hit an invisible wall and just couldn't reach. Riley leaned back against the dusty wooden crate, holding the half-empty water bottle in her hand. She stared into the flames for a moment, then focused her attention inward. The pale blue system panel unfolded in front of her eyes again. Now that the immediate crisis was handled, she finally had time to sit quietly and really explore this so-called "Survival System". Beyond the personal stats and inventory, the bottom of the panel had a row of function icons: Server Channel, Friends List, Trading Market, and Crafting Manual. Friends List was empty. No surprise there. She hadn't exactly been a social butterfly back in the old world, and she sure as hell wasn't going to make friends easily in a frozen hellscape where everyone was fighting for their next breath. She tapped into the "Server Channel". A line of numbers appeared in the top left. "Server: US-008 "Current Online: 9911/10000" Ten thousand people started. Less than ten hours in, eighty-nine were already gone. "That doesn't add up." Everyone's starter crate came with a rusty iron axe and five units of wood. Plus the initial fuel the campfire had when they arrived—that alone bought them ten hours minimum, even if they just sat there doing nothing. What the hell did those people do to get eliminated so fast? The channel was moving fast, messages scrolling by every second. Desperation dripped from every line. "Someone help, I'm freezing my ass off out here. This stupid axe can't cut sh*t—every swing just bounces off and rattles my whole arm. Can anyone spare a couple logs? My dad's a senior VP at Walker Group. I'll wire you a million dollars when we get back, I swear." "Wake up, buddy. If your dad's still alive, he's out there chopping trees right now too." "Don't even talk to me. I spotted a wooden crate in the snow earlier, got all excited, ran over—and before I got within ten feet, some white rabbit thing jumped out of a drift. Teeth like needles. Almost took a chunk out of my leg. Missed the crate, wasted all that energy for nothing." "I saw that too! Random crates spawn in the wild. I opened a wooden one and got two chocolate bars and some coal." Reading through the chaos, Riley picked out two keywords, "Random Reward Crates" and "Dangerous Creatures". So this world was deeper than she thought. Wooden crates, copper crates—these randomly spawning resource points were the real way to get ahead. Coal came from crates. That was useful to know. And if coal was in crates, steel probably was too. But something bothered her. According to what people were saying, reward crates weren't exactly rare. So why hadn't she found a single one during her lumber run? She doubted it was just bad luck. Riley exited chat and tapped into the "Trading Market". "Seller: MountainMan88 Item: Stone x2 Wants: White Bread x5" "Seller: LoneWolf_21 Item: Cotton Cloth Wants: Clean Water" "Seller: NotDeadYet Item: Wood x3 Wants: Anything edible" Most people were trading for food and wood. The stuff that kept you alive right now. Things like stone and cloth were getting dumped cheap—nobody had the luxury of thinking long-term. Riley looked at her own inventory. Eighty units of wood staring back at her. Her heart beat a little faster. In this opening phase, where wood literally meant the difference between life and death, the resources in her hands were basically gold bars. "Time to trade," she muttered to herself. "Coal, steel—can't get those from chopping trees. And right now, wood's at maximum value. If I wait, the exchange rate shifts." Even with the chainsaw dead, she still had the handsaw. Less efficient, sure, but she could gather more wood if she needed it. Short-term, she wasn't going to run out. She clicked to post a message in the channel. "System Prompt: Detected that you have not set a virtual ID. Please enter your nickname (cannot be changed after setting)." Riley stared at the blank input box. Naming things was the worst. She sat there for a long time, nothing coming to mind. Finally, she gave up. Couldn't think of anything cool or clever, so she'd just go with something random. Her fingers tapped across the virtual keyboard—SpicyBurger. "Setting successful. ID locked." The prompt closed. Riley posted her message. "SpicyBurger: Selling wood in bulk. Looking for: Coal, Steel, High-calorie food. DM me with offers—what you have and your rate. Good deals go fast, don't sleep on this." For three seconds after the message appeared, the channel went dead silent. Then it exploded. "SpicyBurger? That name's making me hungry, what the hell." "Never mind the name—'wood in bulk'! We got a whale in here! Everyone else is stressing about the next hour and this person's already running a business?" "I need some! My campfire's down to like two hours. I don't know if I actually die when it hits zero but I don't wanna find out." Suddenly, half the channel was scrambling for wood. But then the skeptics crawled out. "Hang on. Everyone started with the same rusty axe. Chopping a tree in this weather takes twenty, thirty minutes minimum. Where's she getting 'bulk' wood from? Sounds like a scam." "InvincibleWarrior: Everybody chill. Look at that ID—sounds like a girl's handle. I'm a grown man, been busting my ass, and I've only got like ten logs saved up. My hands are shredded. Some girl with a food name claims she's got bulk? She's trying to run a game. Scam people out of their stuff." "Iron_Tough: Agreed. Scammers made it through the apocalypse too, I guess. My advice: ignore her. Don't get played. How much wood can a woman chop anyway? Probably can't even lift the axe right, lol." Riley scrolled through the messages, expression flat. She almost laughed. But some people pushed back. "FishHater44: How is it a scam? If she doesn't deliver, you don't complete the trade. Just 'cause you can't chop that much wood doesn't mean nobody can." Riley nodded slightly. That one had a point. But she didn't waste energy arguing in the channel. Instead, she flipped on Do Not Disturb for private messages—only allowing chat requests that included a trade offer. Some people didn't actually care whether she had wood. They just couldn't stand seeing someone else do well. "Ding. Ding. Ding." Private messages started pouring in like rain. Most players weren't idiots. Faced with the very real threat of freezing to death, they'd try anything for a chance. Riley opened the first one. "Windwalker: I got "Coal x3" from a crate. How much wood can I get for it? I can't chop anymore. The wind out here is insane. I tried to throw the coal in my fire but it just kept popping back out. System says my campfire level's too low, won't let me use it. I'm out of wood. My fire's almost dead." Riley thought for a moment. "Three coal for five wood. Deal?" She hadn't known about that restriction. Coal was supposed to be better fuel than wood—didn't expect the game to lock it behind a level gate. The reply came instantly, "Deal. But five wood feels light. It's coal." The guy was conflicted. He knew coal had value, but he was desperate. "I'll make it six. Final offer." Riley wasn't sure about coal's real value yet. Six was her limit. "Fine. Deal." They both dropped their items into the trade window. A moment later, it completed. A flash of white light. Riley's inventory lost six wood. Gained three chunks of coal, each about the size of a small melon. One down. "CrunchyFrog: Hey, I got two "Iron Ingots" from a crate. System calls them "Scrap Steel". Can I get eight wood for them? Trying to stock up enough to sleep through the night." Riley replied, "Sure. Initiate." In just over ten minutes, her wood stockpile dropped significantly. But her inventory filled up with good stuff. "Coal x10 "Stone x23 "Scrap Steel x5 "Raw Meat x2 "White Bread x2 "Basic Torch Blueprint x1" The blueprint was new. The description said it was required for crafting certain items. Seemed useful, so she'd traded for it. Meanwhile, back in the channel, that "InvincibleWarrior" guy who'd been mocking her earlier seemed to notice that people were actually completing trades. His tone got bitter. "InvincibleWarrior: Whatever. She probably got lucky with a high-tier crate. Let's see how long her stock lasts. Once the wood's gone, she'll be begging me to let her join my group." The people who'd successfully traded with Riley popped into the channel to thank her. That might have been fine—except the thanks caused problems. Since Riley had stopped trading for now, most people hadn't gotten anything. And the sky was darkening. Temperature outside the campfire radius was dropping fast. Gathering wood was getting harder. Trading was their only hope. The ones who'd pinned everything on Riley, seeing her stop, started losing it. "You said 'in bulk'! You did like five trades and quit. What are we supposed to do now?" "Keep trading! My fire's almost out. You want us to go chop trees in the dark?" "If you couldn't deliver, why'd you post? Showing off and then hiding." Whether it was coordinated or just genuine rage, the number of people defending Riley in the channel shrank fast. Mostly it was attacks now. Accusations of being irresponsible. Using scarcity tactics. Playing games with people's lives. Riley closed the channel. She couldn't be bothered. In a life-or-death situation like this, people losing it was normal. If she actually had unlimited resources, she'd trade more. But she didn't. And back on Earth, nobody had ever handed her anything out of charity. She wasn't about to start playing savior now. She looked down at the "Basic Torch Blueprint" in her inventory. "Requirements: Wood x10, Kerosene, Scrap Steel x2" Note: Requires Level 2 Workbench to craft." She leaned back against the crate again. Felt the weight of her stockpile pressing back against that lingering sense of unease. In this world, your ID didn't matter. Your gender didn't matter either. What mattered was who held the resources. She looked at what she had left: 36 units of wood. Plus the steel, coal, and stone from trading. Time to plan. Upgrading to a Level 2 campfire required 55 wood. She had all the other materials. For the wood, she'd just have to use the handsaw tomorrow and gather a little more. That settled, she pulled a few more logs from inventory and arranged them on top of the crate, making a small enclosed space. Curled up inside it, she watched the sky outside slowly darken to black. Her eyes grew heavy. She drifted off. Chapter 4 The Culling Riley woke to the kind of soreness that made you reconsider ever moving again. She'd slept like the dead—no dreams, no blizzard, just nothing. When she opened her eyes, the first things she saw were the logs she'd stacked as a windbreak and the steady glow of the campfire. She tried to stretch. Big mistake. Every muscle in her body lit up at once, screaming in protest. "Sh*t." Riley sucked air through her teeth and pressed a hand to her aching shoulder. Her lower back felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to it. Yesterday's work had been too much. She wasn't weak—far from it—but she was still human. The lactic acid had settled in overnight, and now she moved like an arthritic tin man. At least she was alive. She stowed the windbreak logs back in her inventory and looked around. The world hadn't changed. Same dull gray sky. Same swirling snow. Outside the six-foot radius of the fire, the drifts looked deeper than yesterday. The wind had been busy. Riley pulled out the half-empty water bottle and wet her throat. Then she retrieved the white bread she'd traded for yesterday. Compared to that dense, flavorless black bread, this was practically cake. She tore off small pieces, letting the faint sweetness dissolve on her tongue, and habitually opened the "Server Channel". She stopped chewing. The number in the top left hit her like a physical blow. "Current Online Players: 4968/10000" "Five thousand..." Riley's eyes went wide. In a single night, that number had been cut in half. Five thousand people. Gone. Winked out of existence on this frozen ice field while she slept. "Ding." The system notification cut through her thoughts—cold, emotionless, like it was announcing the weather. "Global Announcement: Congratulations to all survivors for successfully surviving the first day. "This was a culling. Last night eliminated those fools who failed to add fuel to their fires or refused to gather wood. Remember: in this place, tears mean nothing. When you die here, you're dead-dead. "You who remain are the lucky ones. "Grace Period: A five-day 'New Player Support Period' now begins. For the next five days, your initial supply crates will refresh daily with a fixed amount of food. "Special Reward: Each survivor receives one pair of "Standard Issue Snow Boots (Common)". Be grateful for this mercy. Enjoy the game." The words sat there on her screen. Fools. Mercy. The system's tone dripped with contempt. The math was simple. Starting package: five hours of fuel. Initial gift: five units of wood, another five hours. Total ten hours, if you did absolutely nothing. The ones who'd frozen to death last night—they were the ones who'd clung to hope. The ones too scared to move. The ones who'd told themselves someone would save them. Five thousand people. One night. Gone. This wasn't a game. It was a slaughter. In the channel, the survivors who'd made it through were clearly rattled by the numbers too. "Holy sh*t... My friend's icon went dark last night. Does that mean he's dead? Actually dead?" "I can't do this. I don't wanna play anymore, I wanna go home. I swear I'll work today. I'll chop wood, I'll do whatever, just please—" "Everyone move! Don't save your strength! If you die, that's it. No respawns!" Panic spread fast. But almost immediately, the tone shifted. The fear found a target. "That SpicyBurger—if she'd shared more wood yesterday, would so many people have died?" "For real. If she had extra, why not just give it away? Why did it have to be trades? She could've at least loaned some out." "This is what happens when people hoard resources and watch others freeze. Remember that name. Don't trade with her. Ever." Riley frowned. Here we go again. She scrolled up. Sure enough, there it was—that familiar ID: "InvincibleWarrior". He was going hard in the channel. "She's profiting off suffering. That's what some people do. Women like that are the worst—hoarding supplies while people die around them. Wait and see. Someone like her won't last." Riley laughed. Actually laughed out loud. Moral blackmail. In the apocalypse. She typed, "If you want wood, go cut it yourself. I'm not your mommy. No amount of crying in chat is gonna put logs in your inventory. You'd get more done if you just picked up your d*mn axe." The channel went quiet for a second. Then the reasonable voices piped up. "She's right. Nobody owes you anything. Work for it." "Exactly. Just 'cause someone's quiet doesn't mean they're an easy target." In a world where staying alive took everything you had, expecting charity was the dumbest move of all. Riley didn't waste more energy on it. People like that—the more you engaged, the more they thrived. Let him run his mouth. She had bigger things to worry about. She closed the channel and turned to the big wooden crate—her initial supply point. Sure enough, new items had materialized inside. "Bottled Water x3 "White Bread x3 "Fresh Orange Juice x1 "Standard Snow Boots x1" "Orange juice?" Riley picked up the bottle, genuinely surprised. The orange liquid inside sloshed gently. Vitamins. The system was actually giving them vitamins. She pulled off her old shoes—already damp and cold—and swapped into the new boots. They were clunky, sure. But they gripped the snow, and the insulation was real. The chill that had been seeping up through her soles disappeared instantly. Next, she opened her toolbox. Goggles on. Thick cut-resistant gloves. Head-to-toe gear. "Time to work." The channel noise faded from her mind. She had one priority today, and it wasn't arguing with idiots. She picked up the chainsaw and headed back to the tree line. The cold played tricks on batteries. She'd known that, intellectually. But knowing it and feeling it were different things. After just eight trees, the last spare battery gave out. The chainsaw stuttered, died, and went silent in her hands. Riley stared at it. "Son of a b*tch." Chapter 5 Dead Battery Riley stared at the dead chainsaw in her hands and shook her head. Without power, it was just an expensive paperweight. If she wanted more wood, she'd have to do it the old-fashioned way—pick up the axe or the manual handsaw from the toolbox and go to war with frozen timber. But eight more trees were eight more trees. Her stockpile was looking healthy. "First things first. Get these back." She sucked it up, stowed the chainsaw in her inventory, and started hauling. Her body screamed even louder than yesterday. Every muscle felt like it had been replaced with concrete. She dragged each log back one at a time, moving like a zombie. Drag. Rest two minutes. Drag again. The wind howled in her ears. Riley lost track of time, lost track of everything except the mechanical rhythm of work. By the time the sun was high—not that you could really see it through the clouds—she dragged the last log into the campfire's radius. It dissolved into light, absorbed by the system. Riley all but collapsed into the snow. "Acquired: Wood x40" She lay there for a moment, chest heaving, staring at the number in her inventory. A tired smile crept across her face. She had enough. Combined with the coal and steel from yesterday's trades, she had everything she needed for the upgrade. Riley forced herself upright and walked to the campfire. On the floating translucent panel, the "Upgrade" button glowed that tempting gold. "Upgrade Primitive Shelter to Lv.2? "Cost: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Scrap Steel x5 "Remaining after upgrade: Wood x16, Stone x3, Coal x0, Steel x0" "Upgrade." Riley took a breath and pressed it. "Hmmmm—!" A blinding white light erupted from the heart of the campfire, swallowing everything. Riley squeezed her eyes shut. No explosion. No thunder. Just a sound like Legos snapping together. A few seconds later, the light faded. Riley opened her eyes. And stopped breathing. The campfire wasn't just a campfire anymore. The rough stone ring had transformed into something neat and intentional—a proper firepit with a stone border for insulation, a place to set things, even a simple steel grate attached to the side. But that wasn't the big news. The heat that used to push back the cold within a six-foot radius now stretched a full fifteen feet. Inside that circle, snow was actively melting, revealing dark frozen soil underneath. In one corner, she spotted a patch of moss stubbornly poking through. Riley spun around. Behind the big wooden crate, a small log cabin stood waiting. It wasn't much—maybe forty feet square, built from rough-hewn logs. Nothing fancy. But it was solid. Four walls and a roof, blocking wind and snow completely. Riley walked over and pushed open the heavy wooden door. Warm air hit her face. Inside was simple: a wooden bed frame piled with dry grass, a crude workbench, a chair, and a small fireplace connected to a chimney that ran up through the roof. Rustic. But right now, it was heaven. Wood and fire. Four walls. A roof. Home. Riley ran her hand along the rough wall. Her eyes stung a little. She wouldn't have to sleep in the open anymore. Wouldn't have to wake up every few hours to check the fire. Wouldn't have to worry about freezing to death in her sleep. Right on cue, the server announcement chimed. Gold text this time, blazing right in the center of everyone's vision. "Server Announcement: Congratulations to player SpicyBurger for being the first to achieve "Level 2 Shelter". Rewards have been distributed." The chat channel, which had been wallowing in fear and despair, exploded. "Holy sh*t? Level 2 already? What does Level 2 unlock? Can you post pics, big shot?" "That's the wood seller from yesterday? No way. Absolute legend." "Carry me please! SpicyBurger, I'll be your loyal follower. I can cook, I can clean, I can—" "Teach us, master! How'd you gather materials so fast? What's your secret?" Compliments. Pleas. Desperate attempts to get noticed. And then, of course, the sour grapes. "InvincibleWarrior: Big deal. Just profiteering off everyone else's suffering. If she'd shared that wood instead of selling it, maybe those five thousand people would still be alive. How does it feel to climb on corpses?" "GodLovesMeFirst: Seriously. Building your success on other people's deaths. Karma's real. She'll get hers." Riley's jaw tightened. If InvincibleWarrior had been standing in front of her right now, she'd have knocked his teeth out. Guys like him—useless themselves, but always ready to tear down anyone who actually accomplished something. Sewer rats. Her private messages exploded too. She'd set it to only accept trade offers, but people had found a workaround—using the "trade note" function to send spam. "Hey beautiful, I'm a personal trainer. Great shape. Wanna see? Hit me with some wood and I'll do a voice call with you!" A photo of some guy flexing in a mirror, shirt off. Riley glanced at it, unimpressed. Decent abs. Pathetic attitude. Dude was clearly strong enough to chop wood—why was he wasting time on this? She'd never mentioned her gender, so most people probably assumed anyone who'd gathered that much wood must be a guy. The messages reflected that assumption. Some women sent selfies too, trying to flirt their way into favor. Didn't matter. Shameless cut across all demographics. From the backgrounds in the photos, everyone seemed to be in different locations. But one thing was consistent: they all had trees nearby. The system must have arranged that—a new player perk. "A bunch of degenerates." Riley's face went cold. She changed her privacy settings to "Friends Only". Then she added a line to her trading post description. "No spam. Send junk, get blocked." Silence. Blessed silence. She took a breath, let the noise drain away, and focused on what mattered. "First-place upgrade reward..." She opened her inventory. Sitting there, glowing faintly purple, was a gift box. For more exciting content, please download the "JoyRead" app to continue reading.
Chapter 1 The Countdown Ends It was the year 2027, and the end of the world was now less than an hour away. "00:59:23" Riley Carter stood on a ladder with a screw clenched between her teeth, an impact driver in her hand, securing the last window panel in place. A month ago, that timer had just appeared out of nowhere, hanging in the corner of everyone's vision like it had always been there. At first, people wrote it off as some kind of mass hacker prank. The government fed the media soothing statements in an attempt to keep things calm, but there was no way to talk down the panic as prices kept rising and supplies were held in a monopoly in real time. News outlets might spin whatever narrative they wanted, but no one could argue with the price of eggs. For a while, it was a frenzy. People cleaned out grocery stores like locusts. The government did what they could—price caps, purchase limits, reassurances from the podium—but none of it mattered. The cost of living kept climbing, and bit by bit, the country started coming apart at the seams. Online, it was a circus. Some people posted doom-laden predictions. Others openly celebrated the thought of the world finally burning. A few just seemed relieved they wouldn't have to clock in on Monday. In that final hour, things got truly ugly. Both on the streets and on social media, it was chaos. Some people figured why not went out with a bang? If the world was ending, they'd spend their last hours doing every reckless thing they'd ever fantasized about. Others, paralyzed by fear of whatever was coming, scrambled for anything they could hoard. Supplies. Weapons. Gasoline. Didn't matter what, as long as they had more of it than the next guy. Most people just wanted to be with the ones they loved. Riley didn't have that luxury anymore. Fresh out of community college, she'd lost both her parents in a highway pileup eighteen months back. The only thing they'd left her was the family hardware store, a cramped little place wedged between a laundromat and a taqueria. She'd been running it solo for just over a year when that d*mn countdown appeared overhead. At first, she'd thought maybe an apocalypse wouldn't be the worst thing. Maybe there'd be something on the other side. A reunion. But then she thought about her folks. They'd doted on her. Made her feel like the center of their world. And even though she'd grown a thick skin since going it alone, feeling indifferent to the world, she knew what they'd want. They'd want her to fight. To stay. She was the only piece of them still left in this world. People always say you aren't really gone until the last person forgets your name. As long as she kept breathing, kept carrying them with her another day, they weren't truly dead. Riley spat the screw into her palm, face calm, the impact driver whirring as she sank another fastener into the reinforced frame. "Flour's three hundred a pound now, and you can't even buy it straight—they make you tack on a bunch of other junk you don't need just to get it," she muttered to herself, shaking her head. When that timer first flickered into existence, Riley had done something smart. She'd liquidated everything. Converted every dollar she could scrape together into supplies. Unfortunately, by the time she hit the stores, inflation had already done its damage. Her savings didn't go nearly as far as they should have. Any cash that was left went toward tools. If the world was ending, she thought they could be useful. Riley pressed the last sheet of thick insulation foam into the window frame, seating it flush against the reinforced plywood beneath. The impact driver snarled as she buried the screws. Then she reached for her pneumatic glue gun—a satisfying pfft as the sealant filled the final gap. She wiped sweat from her forehead and climbed down off the ladder. Stepped back to admire her work. The little apartment was a fortress now. Doors reinforced. Windows barricaded. Every interior wall lined with an extra layer of insulation. She glanced down at herself. Custom-fit heavy-duty workwear. Slash-resistant fabric. More pockets than she'd ever need. Reinforced padding at the knees and elbows. It wasn't fashionable, but it was practical. And her real treasure: tools. A chainsaw. A reciprocating saw. The impact driver in her hand. A multi-bit screwdriver that had cost more than she wanted to admit. She'd brought everything usable from the shop back here, consolidated it into three massive toolboxes. She'd also grabbed some stuff like an air purifier and some spare filters—anything that might matter when civilization took a vacation. She didn't know what the countdown would bring. Some folks online predicted zombies. Others said asteroid impact. Volcanic winter. Alien invasion. Take your pick. Food. Tools. Shelter. She'd even started working out, building strength she'd never needed before. She'd done everything she could think of to prepare. Whatever was coming, she figured she'd last longer than most. With nothing left to do, she dropped onto one of the big toolboxes laid flat on the floor, wiped her forehead again, and pulled out her phone. Most news apps had crashed. The only things still loading were comment sections, and they were going crazy. [Anyone got rice? I'll pay eight grand for a bag. Please, we got nothing left.] [Forget it, man. Money's toilet paper now. Saw it with my own eyes—some rich assholes cleared out the Costco warehouse last week. All that 'purchase limit' crap was just theater. Shelves were empty 'cause the stock never made it there. It's all sitting in some hedge fund guy's basement.] [No kidding? Same thing happened to me! Store manager kept telling me, 'We're limiting purchases, come back next week, we'll put your name on the list.' So the whole time the back room was empty? They were just jerking us around?] [Of course they were. Rich people cornered the market on everything. So what are normal people supposed to do? Just sit here and die?] [Anyone know what actually happens when the clock hits zero? Like, is it nukes? That virus thing from that old video game?] Riley locked her phone. Tucked it away. She didn't have anything to add to that conversation. A month ago, when the countdown first showed up, prices had spiked instantly. A fifty-pound bag of rice that normally went for thirty bucks jumped to eight hundred overnight. By yesterday, it was breaking two grand. The wealthy had rolled up with trucks and cleaned out supermarkets. Riley had been smart—she'd gone early, bought stuff that would keep, stuff that was calorie-dense and cheap. Chocolate. Survival biscuits. Canned goods. It wasn't much, but it was enough for one person, at least for a while. She took a deep breath and glanced at the timer. "00:01:10" Just over a minute. Riley gripped the toolbox beneath her. Knuckles white. Who knew what would happen when that thing hit zero? Maybe it'd be like 2012—all hype, nothing real. In that last minute, her life flickered past. Her parents' faces. The hardware store. The lonely months since. "00:00:00" The countdown ended. Riley had just started to breathe a sigh of relief—nothing happened, maybe it really was nothing—when the world lurched beneath her. A dizzying weightlessness. A sensation of falling. Everything spun. ***** She didn't know how long she was out. "Whew." A wind like a knife blade sliced across her face. Riley's eyes snapped open. Her warm apartment was gone. In its place, an endless white expanse stretched in every direction. Snow whipped through the air. Wind howled like a wounded animal. And at her feet, a small campfire guttered in the gale, threatening to die at any second. "What the—" Before she could process, a chime rang directly in her skull. Not heard. Known. "Welcome to the Extreme Cold Survival Game. "Earth no longer exists. This is your new home. This is your grave. "Survival rules are as follows. "1. Each player begins with one campfire. It is your only defense against the cold. If the campfire dies, you will be judged deceased by the system. Not that it matters—without the fire, you won't last anyway. "2. This is a real world. You can die from hunger. From exposure. From animal attack. "3. Supplies stockpiled in your previous world do not carry over. Only items on your person, or in direct physical contact at the moment of transfer, are retained. "4. Struggle to survive. It is your only hope." Riley's heart slammed against her ribs. Supplies didn't carry over? Her mind flashed to those wealthy forum posters bragging about their warehouse stockpiles. And then she looked down at herself. Workwear. Intact. And— She was still sitting on the three giant toolboxes. They sat solidly in the snow, dusted with powder, unmistakably here. "Whew." Riley let out a long breath. A white cloud dispersed in front of her face. Pity, though. During her renovations, she'd stocked those boxes with a lot of power tools. The expensive impact driver. The reciprocating saw. In a world with no electrical outlets, once those batteries died, they were just dead weight. But even so. The hand tools. The consumables. The sheer volume of stuff in those boxes—it was a treasure beyond measure in a place like this. Riley forced herself to calm down. She was here. She'd deal with it. Something new lived in her mind now. She concentrated, and a translucent pale-blue screen materialized in front of her eyes. Looked just like a video game HUD. "Personal Panel "Name: Riley Carter "ID: 1120-US "Level: 1 (Standard Survivor) "Strength: 8 (Years of manual labor have made you stronger than average) "Agility: 8 (You've got quick reflexes) "Constitution: 6 (You've been skipping meals lately) "Spirit: 9 (You keep your head when others panic) "Inventory: 16/16 slots (Base capacity)" "Inventory?" Riley studied the sixteen empty squares at the bottom of the display. She reached out, touched one of the toolboxes, and thought the word, "Store." Whoosh. The heavy box vanished. In its place, a tiny icon appeared in the first inventory slot, a miniature "x1" in the corner. "It actually worked." For the first time since arriving, a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. Retrieve. Thud. The toolbox landed back in the snow, puffing up powder. No energy cost. No sense of weight. And in that inventory, she could carry anything, regardless of how heavy it was. Later on, when she went scavenging, that would make all the difference. Riley rubbed her stiff, freezing hands together and turned her attention to the campfire at her feet. It was the only warmth in this frozen wasteland. Hovering above the flames, visible only to her, were a few lines of glowing text. "Basic Campfire (Lv.1) "Remaining Burn Time: 05:28:00 "Current Coverage: Radius six feet (Blocks wind and snow) "Upgrade Requirements: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Steel x5 "Description: This is your life. Do not let it die. Upgrading expands your safe zone and unlocks additional construction options." "Needs upgrading." Riley frowned. Wood and stone she could probably find. But coal? Steel? Out here in the middle of nowhere? A flash of movement caught her eye. A small wooden box, half-buried in the snow not far from the fire. The starter crate. Had to be. Riley didn't rush. First, she pulled the claw hammer from her belt—the one she always kept there, habit from years of work—and gripped it tight. She scanned the tree line. Listened past the wind. Nothing moved. No sounds but the storm. She walked over quickly, crouched by the box. No lock. She pried the lid open with the claw end of her hammer. Inside, a handful of items. "Obtained: Iron Axe x1 "Obtained: Stale Dark Bread x2 "Obtained: 500ml Bottled Water x1 "Obtained: Kindling x5 "Obtained: Insulated Field Jacket x1 "Obtained: Utility Rope (25ft) "Obtained: Thermal Underwear (Set) x2 Not much. Barely anything. Riley picked up one of the dark loaves. It was rock hard. She examined the jacket—basic, but warm-looking. "So this is what a standard survivor starts with." At least the system had thought of everything. Including the underwear. She'd half-expected to wake up naked in the snow; at least she didn't have to worry about that. She stored everything in her inventory, then shrugged on the field jacket. The temperature shift was brutal. Even those few seconds exposed had left her hands numb. Hypothermia would set in fast out here. Jacket on, she hurried back to the campfire. She pulled the five units of Kindling from her inventory and tossed them onto the flames. The fire roared higher. Warmth flooded over her. "Fuel added. Remaining Burn Time: 10:28:00" Ten hours. If she didn't move fast, in ten hours she'd freeze to death on this ice field. And the game had made it clear—if the fire died, the system would judge her dead. Whether she actually froze or not. Riley lifted her head and scanned the landscape. She was in a sparse coniferous forest. Barely alive trees, crusted with frost, dotted the area not far from her position. "Wood." A slow smile spread across her face. She patted the toolbox beside her. "Other people might have axes. But felling a tree with just an axe takes hours. Exhausts you." She unlatched the box. Pulled out the chainsaw. Checked the battery gauge—full. "I've got a handsaw in here too. And a chainsaw with a full charge." The battery wouldn't last forever. But it would last long enough to give her a massive head start. In this race for survival, that was everything. Chapter 2 The Chainsaw The wind screamed across the open ground, picking up loose snow and flinging it against her goggles like sand. It sounded like static. Riley had pulled her basic work gear from the toolbox before heading out. Now she stood in the snow, surrounded by clusters of thin conifers that looked half-dead already. She took a breath. The air burned going down. "Zzzzzzz—!!!" She squeezed the trigger. The orange-and-black lithium-ion chainsaw in her hands roared to life, the chain spinning so fast it blurred. She buried the teeth in the nearest pine trunk. Wood chips exploded everywhere. Fragrant shavings—still wet with resin—scattered across the pristine snow, stark and yellow against all that white. Five seconds. Crack. The pine tree, thick as her arm, groaned and tilted. Then it fell slow and heavy into a drift, sending up a puff of powder. "God bless modern technology." Riley shook out her wrist—the vibration had numbed her fingers—and allowed herself a small smile. Without that chainsaw, with just the basic iron axe the system had given her, felling a tree frozen solid like this would have taken twenty minutes minimum. And it would have left her soaked with sweat. In subzero temps, sweat was a death sentence. Once your base layers got wet, the moment you stopped moving, your body temperature would plummet. Hypothermia would follow fast. Riley didn't waste time celebrating. She knew the saw in her hands was a hungry machine. She'd brought two spare high-capacity batteries, sure, but until she found a way to recharge them, every second the motor ran was borrowed time. She had to gather as much wood as possible before the batteries gave out. "Zzzzz—Zzzzz—" At the edge of the forest, the chainsaw's snarl rose and fell, shattering the frozen silence. Riley worked like she was possessed. Fell a tree. Move to the next. Fell another. But she had to stay alert—watch for hidden snow pits underfoot, keep adjusting her collar against the wind that kept finding its way down her neck. Her stamina drained faster than she'd anticipated. In extreme cold, body burned through calories just to stay alive. Added walking through knee-deep snow, where every step took three times the energy of walking on pavement, and the math got ugly fast. Pretty soon, Riley was breathing hard. Her breath fogged the inside of her goggles, and she had to keep wiping them clear. "Zzzzz..." She was mid-cut on a tree—didn't even know which number anymore—when the chainsaw's roar stuttered. Died. The chain jammed solid in the wood. A red light blinked at her. Dead battery. Riley yanked the saw free and patted its housing. "Good work, buddy." Genuine regret in her voice. She straightened up and looked around. Pine trunks lay scattered across the snow in every direction. A decent haul. She counted silently. "Twenty-three total." Then the next problem hit her. According to the system, until she actually possessed these logs, they were still just natural resources. That meant they didn't qualify for Inventory storage. She couldn't just snap her fingers and make them disappear. She had to drag them back to camp. Riley grabbed the nearest pine and tried to pull. Heavy. Like, unreasonably heavy. Fresh-cut wood was full of moisture. Add the branches catching in the snow, dragging like anchors, and she felt like she was hauling a dead body through mud. "Huff... huff..." She gritted her teeth, looped rope around the trunk, slung it over her shoulder, leaned forward, and started walking. Inch by inch. The tree line to her campfire was maybe fifty yards. Right now, it felt like fifty miles. By the time she'd wrestled the fourth tree back into the fire's warm radius, she was wrecked. Her legs felt like someone had filled them with concrete. Her lungs burned from hauling freezing air through them. "Can't... can't do more." Riley made the call. She stopped. Those nineteen trees still out there in the snow—they called to her. Tempted her. But if she kept pushing without rest, without fuel for herself, she'd collapse out there. And out there, collapse meant death. She dropped down next to the big wooden crate that had held her starter supplies. It was less than three feet from the campfire. The flames danced orange and red, pumping out heat that felt like heaven. The shift from frozen to warm made her shiver violently. She pulled off her goggles and thick gloves, set them near the fire to warm up, then—still shaking—pulled the half-empty water bottle from her Inventory. Took a small sip. Then the bread. Two black bricks that looked more like construction material than food. "Crunch." Riley bit off a piece with effort. It was coarse. Tasted like sawdust with a hint of burnt toast. Bitter. But it was calories. Carbs. Fuel for her own fire. She forced herself to chew, swallow. When the food hit her stomach, warmth finally started spreading through her core. The uncontrollable shaking eased. After half a loaf, Riley leaned back against the crate. Her eyelids drooped. Post-exhaustion crash hit her like a wave. The campfire crackled. The wind seemed farther away now. Muffled. She really wanted to sleep... Her head nodded. Her body started sliding sideways. "Wait—" Some animal instinct jolted her awake just before she went under. She pinched her thigh. Hard. Then looked up at the timer floating above the flames. "Shelter Level 1 "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 06:28:00" Six and a half hours. If she slept too deep, too long, and that fire went out—what then? Even ignoring the obvious—that she'd freeze to death in this hellhole without a heat source—the game rules were clear. When the campfire hits zero, it's game over. "No sleeping. Not allowed." Riley slapped her own cheeks, forced herself upright. She stayed near the fire, but she didn't take off her heavy work clothes. She remembered reading something once, a survival article. "In the late stages of hypothermia, your hypothalamus malfunctions. You get a false sensation of heat. It's called "paradoxical undressing"—people strip down right before they freeze to death." "Okay. Process these four. Keep the fire fed." She pulled a traditional handsaw from the toolbox. Looking at the four thick pine logs on the ground, she almost laughed. Without power tools, breaking these down into burnable pieces would take at least half an hour. Burn the little energy she had left. But what choice did she have? Riley knelt in the snow, positioned the blade against the trunk, and was about to start cutting— A soft white light shot out from the system panel on her chest. It washed over the logs. "Ding! "Detected felled, intact logs within shelter range. "Perform quick recovery?" Riley's hand froze mid-saw. Quick recovery? It took her a second to process. Then relief flooded through her so hard she almost cried. "Yes! Recover!" She didn't hesitate. The next moment, something impossible happened. The four pine trunks—the ones she'd have to saw and split by hand, the ones that represented hours of brutal labor—dissolved into pale blue light particles. Not into dust. Into neat, uniform logs that stacked themselves automatically in her Inventory. The branches, the needles, all the useless parts—purified out of existence. "Recovery successful! "Obtained: Common Wood x20" Riley's eyes went wide, staring at the perfect lumber in her inventory display. Looked like it came straight from a hardware store. "One tree gives five units of wood? "And I don't have to cut it myself?" This changed everything. It meant she only had to handle the felling and the dragging. Once a log crossed into her camp's boundary, the system recognized it as hers. The most time-consuming part—the processing—just... didn't exist anymore. Riley immediately grabbed five units of wood and fed them to the fire. Whoosh. The flames leaped, hungry and grateful. "Fuel added. "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 12:20:00" "Five logs, five hours..." She did the math fast, looking at the fifteen units still on the ground. If she threw all of those in, that'd be another fifteen hours. Total of twenty-seven. She could sleep like the dead right now, and that fire would still be burning when she woke up. Security. For the first time since the world ended, Riley felt something like security. She selected the remaining wood. Deposited it all. Watched the countdown tick up to a very comfortable "27:20:00". Then her nerves finally let go. She dragged one of the toolboxes into position to block the wind, wrapped the field jacket tight around herself, pulled her hat down over her eyes, leaned back against the warm crate, and let the crackle of the fire pull her under. ***** She didn't sleep long. When she opened her eyes again, the sky was still that same dull gray-white. Impossible to tell if it was morning or afternoon. System clock said three hours. Her body ached. Shoulders and arms especially—felt like she'd gone ten rounds with someone. But her head was clear. She stretched her stiff neck and stood up. The snow seemed lighter. The feathery flakes had tapered off into sporadic icy grains. Riley ate a little more, got some fuel back in the tank, then stepped outside the campfire's warmth. The fire's effect wasn't what she'd expected. It wasn't that the temperature gradually dropped as you moved away. It was sharper than that. Like there was an invisible barrier around the flames. Inside, livable. Outside, the cold hit you like a wall. She wandered a little way off. The cold found every gap in her clothing. She thought about going farther, exploring. But there was nothing visible except that stand of trees she'd already worked. Maybe stuff was buried under the snow, but she couldn't see it. "No proper snow boots. Not going far." Riley glanced at the endless white distance with real regret. "Don't get greedy. Get those nineteen trees first." She turned. Looked at the woods. Her loot was still out there. And now she knew: if she could drag them back into the campfire's circle, the system would cash them out automatically. "Time to work." Riley rubbed her hands together. Let the motivation build. For the next few hours, she became a machine. Drag a tree to camp. Recover it. Go back for another. Repeat. It was boring. Exhausting. But watching those logs turn into numbers in her inventory—that feeling was hard to describe. Satisfying, in a way nothing had been satisfying in a long time. When the last pine trunk crossed into the light and dissolved into particles, Riley just collapsed. Lay flat in the snow and stared at the gray sky. She pulled up her Inventory. The once-empty slots were full now. Stack after stack of wood icons. "Item: Common Wood "Quantity: 80 "Description: Basic survival resource. Can be used for fuel or construction." Eighty units. Plus what was already burning in the campfire. Her day's work had yielded a clean hundred. One unit of wood burned for one hour. Riley looked at the flames dancing in front of her. Felt the heat on her face. Let herself smile, wide and real. "One hundred hours." Four full days. While everyone else was probably still panicking. Crying. Begging. Trying to figure out how to survive their first night in this frozen nightmare... She, Riley, had enough fuel stockpiled to last four days. Which meant: for the next ninety-six hours, unless she actively chose to die, nobody and nothing could put her fire out. She pulled the half-empty water bottle from Inventory. The space must have been insulated somehow—the water was still warm. Almost body temperature. She sipped it. Tasted sweet, even though it was just tap water. "Okay. Next step." Her gaze settled on the "Upgrade" button on the campfire panel. This open-air setup was fine for now. But if she was going to survive long-term, she needed something better. A real shelter. All she needed was a little stone. Some coal. Some steel. Then she could build something worth calling home. Chapter 3 The Trading Game The blizzard howled outside, but within the six-foot radius of the campfire, the air stayed surprisingly warm—like the wind had hit an invisible wall and just couldn't reach. Riley leaned back against the dusty wooden crate, holding the half-empty water bottle in her hand. She stared into the flames for a moment, then focused her attention inward. The pale blue system panel unfolded in front of her eyes again. Now that the immediate crisis was handled, she finally had time to sit quietly and really explore this so-called "Survival System". Beyond the personal stats and inventory, the bottom of the panel had a row of function icons: Server Channel, Friends List, Trading Market, and Crafting Manual. Friends List was empty. No surprise there. She hadn't exactly been a social butterfly back in the old world, and she sure as hell wasn't going to make friends easily in a frozen hellscape where everyone was fighting for their next breath. She tapped into the "Server Channel". A line of numbers appeared in the top left. "Server: US-008 "Current Online: 9911/10000" Ten thousand people started. Less than ten hours in, eighty-nine were already gone. "That doesn't add up." Everyone's starter crate came with a rusty iron axe and five units of wood. Plus the initial fuel the campfire had when they arrived—that alone bought them ten hours minimum, even if they just sat there doing nothing. What the hell did those people do to get eliminated so fast? The channel was moving fast, messages scrolling by every second. Desperation dripped from every line. "Someone help, I'm freezing my ass off out here. This stupid axe can't cut sh*t—every swing just bounces off and rattles my whole arm. Can anyone spare a couple logs? My dad's a senior VP at Walker Group. I'll wire you a million dollars when we get back, I swear." "Wake up, buddy. If your dad's still alive, he's out there chopping trees right now too." "Don't even talk to me. I spotted a wooden crate in the snow earlier, got all excited, ran over—and before I got within ten feet, some white rabbit thing jumped out of a drift. Teeth like needles. Almost took a chunk out of my leg. Missed the crate, wasted all that energy for nothing." "I saw that too! Random crates spawn in the wild. I opened a wooden one and got two chocolate bars and some coal." Reading through the chaos, Riley picked out two keywords, "Random Reward Crates" and "Dangerous Creatures". So this world was deeper than she thought. Wooden crates, copper crates—these randomly spawning resource points were the real way to get ahead. Coal came from crates. That was useful to know. And if coal was in crates, steel probably was too. But something bothered her. According to what people were saying, reward crates weren't exactly rare. So why hadn't she found a single one during her lumber run? She doubted it was just bad luck. Riley exited chat and tapped into the "Trading Market". "Seller: MountainMan88 Item: Stone x2 Wants: White Bread x5" "Seller: LoneWolf_21 Item: Cotton Cloth Wants: Clean Water" "Seller: NotDeadYet Item: Wood x3 Wants: Anything edible" Most people were trading for food and wood. The stuff that kept you alive right now. Things like stone and cloth were getting dumped cheap—nobody had the luxury of thinking long-term. Riley looked at her own inventory. Eighty units of wood staring back at her. Her heart beat a little faster. In this opening phase, where wood literally meant the difference between life and death, the resources in her hands were basically gold bars. "Time to trade," she muttered to herself. "Coal, steel—can't get those from chopping trees. And right now, wood's at maximum value. If I wait, the exchange rate shifts." Even with the chainsaw dead, she still had the handsaw. Less efficient, sure, but she could gather more wood if she needed it. Short-term, she wasn't going to run out. She clicked to post a message in the channel. "System Prompt: Detected that you have not set a virtual ID. Please enter your nickname (cannot be changed after setting)." Riley stared at the blank input box. Naming things was the worst. She sat there for a long time, nothing coming to mind. Finally, she gave up. Couldn't think of anything cool or clever, so she'd just go with something random. Her fingers tapped across the virtual keyboard—SpicyBurger. "Setting successful. ID locked." The prompt closed. Riley posted her message. "SpicyBurger: Selling wood in bulk. Looking for: Coal, Steel, High-calorie food. DM me with offers—what you have and your rate. Good deals go fast, don't sleep on this." For three seconds after the message appeared, the channel went dead silent. Then it exploded. "SpicyBurger? That name's making me hungry, what the hell." "Never mind the name—'wood in bulk'! We got a whale in here! Everyone else is stressing about the next hour and this person's already running a business?" "I need some! My campfire's down to like two hours. I don't know if I actually die when it hits zero but I don't wanna find out." Suddenly, half the channel was scrambling for wood. But then the skeptics crawled out. "Hang on. Everyone started with the same rusty axe. Chopping a tree in this weather takes twenty, thirty minutes minimum. Where's she getting 'bulk' wood from? Sounds like a scam." "InvincibleWarrior: Everybody chill. Look at that ID—sounds like a girl's handle. I'm a grown man, been busting my ass, and I've only got like ten logs saved up. My hands are shredded. Some girl with a food name claims she's got bulk? She's trying to run a game. Scam people out of their stuff." "Iron_Tough: Agreed. Scammers made it through the apocalypse too, I guess. My advice: ignore her. Don't get played. How much wood can a woman chop anyway? Probably can't even lift the axe right, lol." Riley scrolled through the messages, expression flat. She almost laughed. But some people pushed back. "FishHater44: How is it a scam? If she doesn't deliver, you don't complete the trade. Just 'cause you can't chop that much wood doesn't mean nobody can." Riley nodded slightly. That one had a point. But she didn't waste energy arguing in the channel. Instead, she flipped on Do Not Disturb for private messages—only allowing chat requests that included a trade offer. Some people didn't actually care whether she had wood. They just couldn't stand seeing someone else do well. "Ding. Ding. Ding." Private messages started pouring in like rain. Most players weren't idiots. Faced with the very real threat of freezing to death, they'd try anything for a chance. Riley opened the first one. "Windwalker: I got "Coal x3" from a crate. How much wood can I get for it? I can't chop anymore. The wind out here is insane. I tried to throw the coal in my fire but it just kept popping back out. System says my campfire level's too low, won't let me use it. I'm out of wood. My fire's almost dead." Riley thought for a moment. "Three coal for five wood. Deal?" She hadn't known about that restriction. Coal was supposed to be better fuel than wood—didn't expect the game to lock it behind a level gate. The reply came instantly, "Deal. But five wood feels light. It's coal." The guy was conflicted. He knew coal had value, but he was desperate. "I'll make it six. Final offer." Riley wasn't sure about coal's real value yet. Six was her limit. "Fine. Deal." They both dropped their items into the trade window. A moment later, it completed. A flash of white light. Riley's inventory lost six wood. Gained three chunks of coal, each about the size of a small melon. One down. "CrunchyFrog: Hey, I got two "Iron Ingots" from a crate. System calls them "Scrap Steel". Can I get eight wood for them? Trying to stock up enough to sleep through the night." Riley replied, "Sure. Initiate." In just over ten minutes, her wood stockpile dropped significantly. But her inventory filled up with good stuff. "Coal x10 "Stone x23 "Scrap Steel x5 "Raw Meat x2 "White Bread x2 "Basic Torch Blueprint x1" The blueprint was new. The description said it was required for crafting certain items. Seemed useful, so she'd traded for it. Meanwhile, back in the channel, that "InvincibleWarrior" guy who'd been mocking her earlier seemed to notice that people were actually completing trades. His tone got bitter. "InvincibleWarrior: Whatever. She probably got lucky with a high-tier crate. Let's see how long her stock lasts. Once the wood's gone, she'll be begging me to let her join my group." The people who'd successfully traded with Riley popped into the channel to thank her. That might have been fine—except the thanks caused problems. Since Riley had stopped trading for now, most people hadn't gotten anything. And the sky was darkening. Temperature outside the campfire radius was dropping fast. Gathering wood was getting harder. Trading was their only hope. The ones who'd pinned everything on Riley, seeing her stop, started losing it. "You said 'in bulk'! You did like five trades and quit. What are we supposed to do now?" "Keep trading! My fire's almost out. You want us to go chop trees in the dark?" "If you couldn't deliver, why'd you post? Showing off and then hiding." Whether it was coordinated or just genuine rage, the number of people defending Riley in the channel shrank fast. Mostly it was attacks now. Accusations of being irresponsible. Using scarcity tactics. Playing games with people's lives. Riley closed the channel. She couldn't be bothered. In a life-or-death situation like this, people losing it was normal. If she actually had unlimited resources, she'd trade more. But she didn't. And back on Earth, nobody had ever handed her anything out of charity. She wasn't about to start playing savior now. She looked down at the "Basic Torch Blueprint" in her inventory. "Requirements: Wood x10, Kerosene, Scrap Steel x2" Note: Requires Level 2 Workbench to craft." She leaned back against the crate again. Felt the weight of her stockpile pressing back against that lingering sense of unease. In this world, your ID didn't matter. Your gender didn't matter either. What mattered was who held the resources. She looked at what she had left: 36 units of wood. Plus the steel, coal, and stone from trading. Time to plan. Upgrading to a Level 2 campfire required 55 wood. She had all the other materials. For the wood, she'd just have to use the handsaw tomorrow and gather a little more. That settled, she pulled a few more logs from inventory and arranged them on top of the crate, making a small enclosed space. Curled up inside it, she watched the sky outside slowly darken to black. Her eyes grew heavy. She drifted off. Chapter 4 The Culling Riley woke to the kind of soreness that made you reconsider ever moving again. She'd slept like the dead—no dreams, no blizzard, just nothing. When she opened her eyes, the first things she saw were the logs she'd stacked as a windbreak and the steady glow of the campfire. She tried to stretch. Big mistake. Every muscle in her body lit up at once, screaming in protest. "Sh*t." Riley sucked air through her teeth and pressed a hand to her aching shoulder. Her lower back felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to it. Yesterday's work had been too much. She wasn't weak—far from it—but she was still human. The lactic acid had settled in overnight, and now she moved like an arthritic tin man. At least she was alive. She stowed the windbreak logs back in her inventory and looked around. The world hadn't changed. Same dull gray sky. Same swirling snow. Outside the six-foot radius of the fire, the drifts looked deeper than yesterday. The wind had been busy. Riley pulled out the half-empty water bottle and wet her throat. Then she retrieved the white bread she'd traded for yesterday. Compared to that dense, flavorless black bread, this was practically cake. She tore off small pieces, letting the faint sweetness dissolve on her tongue, and habitually opened the "Server Channel". She stopped chewing. The number in the top left hit her like a physical blow. "Current Online Players: 4968/10000" "Five thousand..." Riley's eyes went wide. In a single night, that number had been cut in half. Five thousand people. Gone. Winked out of existence on this frozen ice field while she slept. "Ding." The system notification cut through her thoughts—cold, emotionless, like it was announcing the weather. "Global Announcement: Congratulations to all survivors for successfully surviving the first day. "This was a culling. Last night eliminated those fools who failed to add fuel to their fires or refused to gather wood. Remember: in this place, tears mean nothing. When you die here, you're dead-dead. "You who remain are the lucky ones. "Grace Period: A five-day 'New Player Support Period' now begins. For the next five days, your initial supply crates will refresh daily with a fixed amount of food. "Special Reward: Each survivor receives one pair of "Standard Issue Snow Boots (Common)". Be grateful for this mercy. Enjoy the game." The words sat there on her screen. Fools. Mercy. The system's tone dripped with contempt. The math was simple. Starting package: five hours of fuel. Initial gift: five units of wood, another five hours. Total ten hours, if you did absolutely nothing. The ones who'd frozen to death last night—they were the ones who'd clung to hope. The ones too scared to move. The ones who'd told themselves someone would save them. Five thousand people. One night. Gone. This wasn't a game. It was a slaughter. In the channel, the survivors who'd made it through were clearly rattled by the numbers too. "Holy sh*t... My friend's icon went dark last night. Does that mean he's dead? Actually dead?" "I can't do this. I don't wanna play anymore, I wanna go home. I swear I'll work today. I'll chop wood, I'll do whatever, just please—" "Everyone move! Don't save your strength! If you die, that's it. No respawns!" Panic spread fast. But almost immediately, the tone shifted. The fear found a target. "That SpicyBurger—if she'd shared more wood yesterday, would so many people have died?" "For real. If she had extra, why not just give it away? Why did it have to be trades? She could've at least loaned some out." "This is what happens when people hoard resources and watch others freeze. Remember that name. Don't trade with her. Ever." Riley frowned. Here we go again. She scrolled up. Sure enough, there it was—that familiar ID: "InvincibleWarrior". He was going hard in the channel. "She's profiting off suffering. That's what some people do. Women like that are the worst—hoarding supplies while people die around them. Wait and see. Someone like her won't last." Riley laughed. Actually laughed out loud. Moral blackmail. In the apocalypse. She typed, "If you want wood, go cut it yourself. I'm not your mommy. No amount of crying in chat is gonna put logs in your inventory. You'd get more done if you just picked up your d*mn axe." The channel went quiet for a second. Then the reasonable voices piped up. "She's right. Nobody owes you anything. Work for it." "Exactly. Just 'cause someone's quiet doesn't mean they're an easy target." In a world where staying alive took everything you had, expecting charity was the dumbest move of all. Riley didn't waste more energy on it. People like that—the more you engaged, the more they thrived. Let him run his mouth. She had bigger things to worry about. She closed the channel and turned to the big wooden crate—her initial supply point. Sure enough, new items had materialized inside. "Bottled Water x3 "White Bread x3 "Fresh Orange Juice x1 "Standard Snow Boots x1" "Orange juice?" Riley picked up the bottle, genuinely surprised. The orange liquid inside sloshed gently. Vitamins. The system was actually giving them vitamins. She pulled off her old shoes—already damp and cold—and swapped into the new boots. They were clunky, sure. But they gripped the snow, and the insulation was real. The chill that had been seeping up through her soles disappeared instantly. Next, she opened her toolbox. Goggles on. Thick cut-resistant gloves. Head-to-toe gear. "Time to work." The channel noise faded from her mind. She had one priority today, and it wasn't arguing with idiots. She picked up the chainsaw and headed back to the tree line. The cold played tricks on batteries. She'd known that, intellectually. But knowing it and feeling it were different things. After just eight trees, the last spare battery gave out. The chainsaw stuttered, died, and went silent in her hands. Riley stared at it. "Son of a b*tch." Chapter 5 Dead Battery Riley stared at the dead chainsaw in her hands and shook her head. Without power, it was just an expensive paperweight. If she wanted more wood, she'd have to do it the old-fashioned way—pick up the axe or the manual handsaw from the toolbox and go to war with frozen timber. But eight more trees were eight more trees. Her stockpile was looking healthy. "First things first. Get these back." She sucked it up, stowed the chainsaw in her inventory, and started hauling. Her body screamed even louder than yesterday. Every muscle felt like it had been replaced with concrete. She dragged each log back one at a time, moving like a zombie. Drag. Rest two minutes. Drag again. The wind howled in her ears. Riley lost track of time, lost track of everything except the mechanical rhythm of work. By the time the sun was high—not that you could really see it through the clouds—she dragged the last log into the campfire's radius. It dissolved into light, absorbed by the system. Riley all but collapsed into the snow. "Acquired: Wood x40" She lay there for a moment, chest heaving, staring at the number in her inventory. A tired smile crept across her face. She had enough. Combined with the coal and steel from yesterday's trades, she had everything she needed for the upgrade. Riley forced herself upright and walked to the campfire. On the floating translucent panel, the "Upgrade" button glowed that tempting gold. "Upgrade Primitive Shelter to Lv.2? "Cost: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Scrap Steel x5 "Remaining after upgrade: Wood x16, Stone x3, Coal x0, Steel x0" "Upgrade." Riley took a breath and pressed it. "Hmmmm—!" A blinding white light erupted from the heart of the campfire, swallowing everything. Riley squeezed her eyes shut. No explosion. No thunder. Just a sound like Legos snapping together. A few seconds later, the light faded. Riley opened her eyes. And stopped breathing. The campfire wasn't just a campfire anymore. The rough stone ring had transformed into something neat and intentional—a proper firepit with a stone border for insulation, a place to set things, even a simple steel grate attached to the side. But that wasn't the big news. The heat that used to push back the cold within a six-foot radius now stretched a full fifteen feet. Inside that circle, snow was actively melting, revealing dark frozen soil underneath. In one corner, she spotted a patch of moss stubbornly poking through. Riley spun around. Behind the big wooden crate, a small log cabin stood waiting. It wasn't much—maybe forty feet square, built from rough-hewn logs. Nothing fancy. But it was solid. Four walls and a roof, blocking wind and snow completely. Riley walked over and pushed open the heavy wooden door. Warm air hit her face. Inside was simple: a wooden bed frame piled with dry grass, a crude workbench, a chair, and a small fireplace connected to a chimney that ran up through the roof. Rustic. But right now, it was heaven. Wood and fire. Four walls. A roof. Home. Riley ran her hand along the rough wall. Her eyes stung a little. She wouldn't have to sleep in the open anymore. Wouldn't have to wake up every few hours to check the fire. Wouldn't have to worry about freezing to death in her sleep. Right on cue, the server announcement chimed. Gold text this time, blazing right in the center of everyone's vision. "Server Announcement: Congratulations to player SpicyBurger for being the first to achieve "Level 2 Shelter". Rewards have been distributed." The chat channel, which had been wallowing in fear and despair, exploded. "Holy sh*t? Level 2 already? What does Level 2 unlock? Can you post pics, big shot?" "That's the wood seller from yesterday? No way. Absolute legend." "Carry me please! SpicyBurger, I'll be your loyal follower. I can cook, I can clean, I can—" "Teach us, master! How'd you gather materials so fast? What's your secret?" Compliments. Pleas. Desperate attempts to get noticed. And then, of course, the sour grapes. "InvincibleWarrior: Big deal. Just profiteering off everyone else's suffering. If she'd shared that wood instead of selling it, maybe those five thousand people would still be alive. How does it feel to climb on corpses?" "GodLovesMeFirst: Seriously. Building your success on other people's deaths. Karma's real. She'll get hers." Riley's jaw tightened. If InvincibleWarrior had been standing in front of her right now, she'd have knocked his teeth out. Guys like him—useless themselves, but always ready to tear down anyone who actually accomplished something. Sewer rats. Her private messages exploded too. She'd set it to only accept trade offers, but people had found a workaround—using the "trade note" function to send spam. "Hey beautiful, I'm a personal trainer. Great shape. Wanna see? Hit me with some wood and I'll do a voice call with you!" A photo of some guy flexing in a mirror, shirt off. Riley glanced at it, unimpressed. Decent abs. Pathetic attitude. Dude was clearly strong enough to chop wood—why was he wasting time on this? She'd never mentioned her gender, so most people probably assumed anyone who'd gathered that much wood must be a guy. The messages reflected that assumption. Some women sent selfies too, trying to flirt their way into favor. Didn't matter. Shameless cut across all demographics. From the backgrounds in the photos, everyone seemed to be in different locations. But one thing was consistent: they all had trees nearby. The system must have arranged that—a new player perk. "A bunch of degenerates." Riley's face went cold. She changed her privacy settings to "Friends Only". Then she added a line to her trading post description. "No spam. Send junk, get blocked." Silence. Blessed silence. She took a breath, let the noise drain away, and focused on what mattered. "First-place upgrade reward..." She opened her inventory. Sitting there, glowing faintly purple, was a gift box. For more exciting content, please download the "JoyRead" app to continue reading.
Chapter 1 The Countdown Ends It was the year 2027, and the end of the world was now less than an hour away. "00:59:23" Riley Carter stood on a ladder with a screw clenched between her teeth, an impact driver in her hand, securing the last window panel in place. A month ago, that timer had just appeared out of nowhere, hanging in the corner of everyone's vision like it had always been there. At first, people wrote it off as some kind of mass hacker prank. The government fed the media soothing statements in an attempt to keep things calm, but there was no way to talk down the panic as prices kept rising and supplies were held in a monopoly in real time. News outlets might spin whatever narrative they wanted, but no one could argue with the price of eggs. For a while, it was a frenzy. People cleaned out grocery stores like locusts. The government did what they could—price caps, purchase limits, reassurances from the podium—but none of it mattered. The cost of living kept climbing, and bit by bit, the country started coming apart at the seams. Online, it was a circus. Some people posted doom-laden predictions. Others openly celebrated the thought of the world finally burning. A few just seemed relieved they wouldn't have to clock in on Monday. In that final hour, things got truly ugly. Both on the streets and on social media, it was chaos. Some people figured why not went out with a bang? If the world was ending, they'd spend their last hours doing every reckless thing they'd ever fantasized about. Others, paralyzed by fear of whatever was coming, scrambled for anything they could hoard. Supplies. Weapons. Gasoline. Didn't matter what, as long as they had more of it than the next guy. Most people just wanted to be with the ones they loved. Riley didn't have that luxury anymore. Fresh out of community college, she'd lost both her parents in a highway pileup eighteen months back. The only thing they'd left her was the family hardware store, a cramped little place wedged between a laundromat and a taqueria. She'd been running it solo for just over a year when that d*mn countdown appeared overhead. At first, she'd thought maybe an apocalypse wouldn't be the worst thing. Maybe there'd be something on the other side. A reunion. But then she thought about her folks. They'd doted on her. Made her feel like the center of their world. And even though she'd grown a thick skin since going it alone, feeling indifferent to the world, she knew what they'd want. They'd want her to fight. To stay. She was the only piece of them still left in this world. People always say you aren't really gone until the last person forgets your name. As long as she kept breathing, kept carrying them with her another day, they weren't truly dead. Riley spat the screw into her palm, face calm, the impact driver whirring as she sank another fastener into the reinforced frame. "Flour's three hundred a pound now, and you can't even buy it straight—they make you tack on a bunch of other junk you don't need just to get it," she muttered to herself, shaking her head. When that timer first flickered into existence, Riley had done something smart. She'd liquidated everything. Converted every dollar she could scrape together into supplies. Unfortunately, by the time she hit the stores, inflation had already done its damage. Her savings didn't go nearly as far as they should have. Any cash that was left went toward tools. If the world was ending, she thought they could be useful. Riley pressed the last sheet of thick insulation foam into the window frame, seating it flush against the reinforced plywood beneath. The impact driver snarled as she buried the screws. Then she reached for her pneumatic glue gun—a satisfying pfft as the sealant filled the final gap. She wiped sweat from her forehead and climbed down off the ladder. Stepped back to admire her work. The little apartment was a fortress now. Doors reinforced. Windows barricaded. Every interior wall lined with an extra layer of insulation. She glanced down at herself. Custom-fit heavy-duty workwear. Slash-resistant fabric. More pockets than she'd ever need. Reinforced padding at the knees and elbows. It wasn't fashionable, but it was practical. And her real treasure: tools. A chainsaw. A reciprocating saw. The impact driver in her hand. A multi-bit screwdriver that had cost more than she wanted to admit. She'd brought everything usable from the shop back here, consolidated it into three massive toolboxes. She'd also grabbed some stuff like an air purifier and some spare filters—anything that might matter when civilization took a vacation. She didn't know what the countdown would bring. Some folks online predicted zombies. Others said asteroid impact. Volcanic winter. Alien invasion. Take your pick. Food. Tools. Shelter. She'd even started working out, building strength she'd never needed before. She'd done everything she could think of to prepare. Whatever was coming, she figured she'd last longer than most. With nothing left to do, she dropped onto one of the big toolboxes laid flat on the floor, wiped her forehead again, and pulled out her phone. Most news apps had crashed. The only things still loading were comment sections, and they were going crazy. [Anyone got rice? I'll pay eight grand for a bag. Please, we got nothing left.] [Forget it, man. Money's toilet paper now. Saw it with my own eyes—some rich assholes cleared out the Costco warehouse last week. All that 'purchase limit' crap was just theater. Shelves were empty 'cause the stock never made it there. It's all sitting in some hedge fund guy's basement.] [No kidding? Same thing happened to me! Store manager kept telling me, 'We're limiting purchases, come back next week, we'll put your name on the list.' So the whole time the back room was empty? They were just jerking us around?] [Of course they were. Rich people cornered the market on everything. So what are normal people supposed to do? Just sit here and die?] [Anyone know what actually happens when the clock hits zero? Like, is it nukes? That virus thing from that old video game?] Riley locked her phone. Tucked it away. She didn't have anything to add to that conversation. A month ago, when the countdown first showed up, prices had spiked instantly. A fifty-pound bag of rice that normally went for thirty bucks jumped to eight hundred overnight. By yesterday, it was breaking two grand. The wealthy had rolled up with trucks and cleaned out supermarkets. Riley had been smart—she'd gone early, bought stuff that would keep, stuff that was calorie-dense and cheap. Chocolate. Survival biscuits. Canned goods. It wasn't much, but it was enough for one person, at least for a while. She took a deep breath and glanced at the timer. "00:01:10" Just over a minute. Riley gripped the toolbox beneath her. Knuckles white. Who knew what would happen when that thing hit zero? Maybe it'd be like 2012—all hype, nothing real. In that last minute, her life flickered past. Her parents' faces. The hardware store. The lonely months since. "00:00:00" The countdown ended. Riley had just started to breathe a sigh of relief—nothing happened, maybe it really was nothing—when the world lurched beneath her. A dizzying weightlessness. A sensation of falling. Everything spun. ***** She didn't know how long she was out. "Whew." A wind like a knife blade sliced across her face. Riley's eyes snapped open. Her warm apartment was gone. In its place, an endless white expanse stretched in every direction. Snow whipped through the air. Wind howled like a wounded animal. And at her feet, a small campfire guttered in the gale, threatening to die at any second. "What the—" Before she could process, a chime rang directly in her skull. Not heard. Known. "Welcome to the Extreme Cold Survival Game. "Earth no longer exists. This is your new home. This is your grave. "Survival rules are as follows. "1. Each player begins with one campfire. It is your only defense against the cold. If the campfire dies, you will be judged deceased by the system. Not that it matters—without the fire, you won't last anyway. "2. This is a real world. You can die from hunger. From exposure. From animal attack. "3. Supplies stockpiled in your previous world do not carry over. Only items on your person, or in direct physical contact at the moment of transfer, are retained. "4. Struggle to survive. It is your only hope." Riley's heart slammed against her ribs. Supplies didn't carry over? Her mind flashed to those wealthy forum posters bragging about their warehouse stockpiles. And then she looked down at herself. Workwear. Intact. And— She was still sitting on the three giant toolboxes. They sat solidly in the snow, dusted with powder, unmistakably here. "Whew." Riley let out a long breath. A white cloud dispersed in front of her face. Pity, though. During her renovations, she'd stocked those boxes with a lot of power tools. The expensive impact driver. The reciprocating saw. In a world with no electrical outlets, once those batteries died, they were just dead weight. But even so. The hand tools. The consumables. The sheer volume of stuff in those boxes—it was a treasure beyond measure in a place like this. Riley forced herself to calm down. She was here. She'd deal with it. Something new lived in her mind now. She concentrated, and a translucent pale-blue screen materialized in front of her eyes. Looked just like a video game HUD. "Personal Panel "Name: Riley Carter "ID: 1120-US "Level: 1 (Standard Survivor) "Strength: 8 (Years of manual labor have made you stronger than average) "Agility: 8 (You've got quick reflexes) "Constitution: 6 (You've been skipping meals lately) "Spirit: 9 (You keep your head when others panic) "Inventory: 16/16 slots (Base capacity)" "Inventory?" Riley studied the sixteen empty squares at the bottom of the display. She reached out, touched one of the toolboxes, and thought the word, "Store." Whoosh. The heavy box vanished. In its place, a tiny icon appeared in the first inventory slot, a miniature "x1" in the corner. "It actually worked." For the first time since arriving, a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. Retrieve. Thud. The toolbox landed back in the snow, puffing up powder. No energy cost. No sense of weight. And in that inventory, she could carry anything, regardless of how heavy it was. Later on, when she went scavenging, that would make all the difference. Riley rubbed her stiff, freezing hands together and turned her attention to the campfire at her feet. It was the only warmth in this frozen wasteland. Hovering above the flames, visible only to her, were a few lines of glowing text. "Basic Campfire (Lv.1) "Remaining Burn Time: 05:28:00 "Current Coverage: Radius six feet (Blocks wind and snow) "Upgrade Requirements: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Steel x5 "Description: This is your life. Do not let it die. Upgrading expands your safe zone and unlocks additional construction options." "Needs upgrading." Riley frowned. Wood and stone she could probably find. But coal? Steel? Out here in the middle of nowhere? A flash of movement caught her eye. A small wooden box, half-buried in the snow not far from the fire. The starter crate. Had to be. Riley didn't rush. First, she pulled the claw hammer from her belt—the one she always kept there, habit from years of work—and gripped it tight. She scanned the tree line. Listened past the wind. Nothing moved. No sounds but the storm. She walked over quickly, crouched by the box. No lock. She pried the lid open with the claw end of her hammer. Inside, a handful of items. "Obtained: Iron Axe x1 "Obtained: Stale Dark Bread x2 "Obtained: 500ml Bottled Water x1 "Obtained: Kindling x5 "Obtained: Insulated Field Jacket x1 "Obtained: Utility Rope (25ft) "Obtained: Thermal Underwear (Set) x2 Not much. Barely anything. Riley picked up one of the dark loaves. It was rock hard. She examined the jacket—basic, but warm-looking. "So this is what a standard survivor starts with." At least the system had thought of everything. Including the underwear. She'd half-expected to wake up naked in the snow; at least she didn't have to worry about that. She stored everything in her inventory, then shrugged on the field jacket. The temperature shift was brutal. Even those few seconds exposed had left her hands numb. Hypothermia would set in fast out here. Jacket on, she hurried back to the campfire. She pulled the five units of Kindling from her inventory and tossed them onto the flames. The fire roared higher. Warmth flooded over her. "Fuel added. Remaining Burn Time: 10:28:00" Ten hours. If she didn't move fast, in ten hours she'd freeze to death on this ice field. And the game had made it clear—if the fire died, the system would judge her dead. Whether she actually froze or not. Riley lifted her head and scanned the landscape. She was in a sparse coniferous forest. Barely alive trees, crusted with frost, dotted the area not far from her position. "Wood." A slow smile spread across her face. She patted the toolbox beside her. "Other people might have axes. But felling a tree with just an axe takes hours. Exhausts you." She unlatched the box. Pulled out the chainsaw. Checked the battery gauge—full. "I've got a handsaw in here too. And a chainsaw with a full charge." The battery wouldn't last forever. But it would last long enough to give her a massive head start. In this race for survival, that was everything. Chapter 2 The Chainsaw The wind screamed across the open ground, picking up loose snow and flinging it against her goggles like sand. It sounded like static. Riley had pulled her basic work gear from the toolbox before heading out. Now she stood in the snow, surrounded by clusters of thin conifers that looked half-dead already. She took a breath. The air burned going down. "Zzzzzzz—!!!" She squeezed the trigger. The orange-and-black lithium-ion chainsaw in her hands roared to life, the chain spinning so fast it blurred. She buried the teeth in the nearest pine trunk. Wood chips exploded everywhere. Fragrant shavings—still wet with resin—scattered across the pristine snow, stark and yellow against all that white. Five seconds. Crack. The pine tree, thick as her arm, groaned and tilted. Then it fell slow and heavy into a drift, sending up a puff of powder. "God bless modern technology." Riley shook out her wrist—the vibration had numbed her fingers—and allowed herself a small smile. Without that chainsaw, with just the basic iron axe the system had given her, felling a tree frozen solid like this would have taken twenty minutes minimum. And it would have left her soaked with sweat. In subzero temps, sweat was a death sentence. Once your base layers got wet, the moment you stopped moving, your body temperature would plummet. Hypothermia would follow fast. Riley didn't waste time celebrating. She knew the saw in her hands was a hungry machine. She'd brought two spare high-capacity batteries, sure, but until she found a way to recharge them, every second the motor ran was borrowed time. She had to gather as much wood as possible before the batteries gave out. "Zzzzz—Zzzzz—" At the edge of the forest, the chainsaw's snarl rose and fell, shattering the frozen silence. Riley worked like she was possessed. Fell a tree. Move to the next. Fell another. But she had to stay alert—watch for hidden snow pits underfoot, keep adjusting her collar against the wind that kept finding its way down her neck. Her stamina drained faster than she'd anticipated. In extreme cold, body burned through calories just to stay alive. Added walking through knee-deep snow, where every step took three times the energy of walking on pavement, and the math got ugly fast. Pretty soon, Riley was breathing hard. Her breath fogged the inside of her goggles, and she had to keep wiping them clear. "Zzzzz..." She was mid-cut on a tree—didn't even know which number anymore—when the chainsaw's roar stuttered. Died. The chain jammed solid in the wood. A red light blinked at her. Dead battery. Riley yanked the saw free and patted its housing. "Good work, buddy." Genuine regret in her voice. She straightened up and looked around. Pine trunks lay scattered across the snow in every direction. A decent haul. She counted silently. "Twenty-three total." Then the next problem hit her. According to the system, until she actually possessed these logs, they were still just natural resources. That meant they didn't qualify for Inventory storage. She couldn't just snap her fingers and make them disappear. She had to drag them back to camp. Riley grabbed the nearest pine and tried to pull. Heavy. Like, unreasonably heavy. Fresh-cut wood was full of moisture. Add the branches catching in the snow, dragging like anchors, and she felt like she was hauling a dead body through mud. "Huff... huff..." She gritted her teeth, looped rope around the trunk, slung it over her shoulder, leaned forward, and started walking. Inch by inch. The tree line to her campfire was maybe fifty yards. Right now, it felt like fifty miles. By the time she'd wrestled the fourth tree back into the fire's warm radius, she was wrecked. Her legs felt like someone had filled them with concrete. Her lungs burned from hauling freezing air through them. "Can't... can't do more." Riley made the call. She stopped. Those nineteen trees still out there in the snow—they called to her. Tempted her. But if she kept pushing without rest, without fuel for herself, she'd collapse out there. And out there, collapse meant death. She dropped down next to the big wooden crate that had held her starter supplies. It was less than three feet from the campfire. The flames danced orange and red, pumping out heat that felt like heaven. The shift from frozen to warm made her shiver violently. She pulled off her goggles and thick gloves, set them near the fire to warm up, then—still shaking—pulled the half-empty water bottle from her Inventory. Took a small sip. Then the bread. Two black bricks that looked more like construction material than food. "Crunch." Riley bit off a piece with effort. It was coarse. Tasted like sawdust with a hint of burnt toast. Bitter. But it was calories. Carbs. Fuel for her own fire. She forced herself to chew, swallow. When the food hit her stomach, warmth finally started spreading through her core. The uncontrollable shaking eased. After half a loaf, Riley leaned back against the crate. Her eyelids drooped. Post-exhaustion crash hit her like a wave. The campfire crackled. The wind seemed farther away now. Muffled. She really wanted to sleep... Her head nodded. Her body started sliding sideways. "Wait—" Some animal instinct jolted her awake just before she went under. She pinched her thigh. Hard. Then looked up at the timer floating above the flames. "Shelter Level 1 "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 06:28:00" Six and a half hours. If she slept too deep, too long, and that fire went out—what then? Even ignoring the obvious—that she'd freeze to death in this hellhole without a heat source—the game rules were clear. When the campfire hits zero, it's game over. "No sleeping. Not allowed." Riley slapped her own cheeks, forced herself upright. She stayed near the fire, but she didn't take off her heavy work clothes. She remembered reading something once, a survival article. "In the late stages of hypothermia, your hypothalamus malfunctions. You get a false sensation of heat. It's called "paradoxical undressing"—people strip down right before they freeze to death." "Okay. Process these four. Keep the fire fed." She pulled a traditional handsaw from the toolbox. Looking at the four thick pine logs on the ground, she almost laughed. Without power tools, breaking these down into burnable pieces would take at least half an hour. Burn the little energy she had left. But what choice did she have? Riley knelt in the snow, positioned the blade against the trunk, and was about to start cutting— A soft white light shot out from the system panel on her chest. It washed over the logs. "Ding! "Detected felled, intact logs within shelter range. "Perform quick recovery?" Riley's hand froze mid-saw. Quick recovery? It took her a second to process. Then relief flooded through her so hard she almost cried. "Yes! Recover!" She didn't hesitate. The next moment, something impossible happened. The four pine trunks—the ones she'd have to saw and split by hand, the ones that represented hours of brutal labor—dissolved into pale blue light particles. Not into dust. Into neat, uniform logs that stacked themselves automatically in her Inventory. The branches, the needles, all the useless parts—purified out of existence. "Recovery successful! "Obtained: Common Wood x20" Riley's eyes went wide, staring at the perfect lumber in her inventory display. Looked like it came straight from a hardware store. "One tree gives five units of wood? "And I don't have to cut it myself?" This changed everything. It meant she only had to handle the felling and the dragging. Once a log crossed into her camp's boundary, the system recognized it as hers. The most time-consuming part—the processing—just... didn't exist anymore. Riley immediately grabbed five units of wood and fed them to the fire. Whoosh. The flames leaped, hungry and grateful. "Fuel added. "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 12:20:00" "Five logs, five hours..." She did the math fast, looking at the fifteen units still on the ground. If she threw all of those in, that'd be another fifteen hours. Total of twenty-seven. She could sleep like the dead right now, and that fire would still be burning when she woke up. Security. For the first time since the world ended, Riley felt something like security. She selected the remaining wood. Deposited it all. Watched the countdown tick up to a very comfortable "27:20:00". Then her nerves finally let go. She dragged one of the toolboxes into position to block the wind, wrapped the field jacket tight around herself, pulled her hat down over her eyes, leaned back against the warm crate, and let the crackle of the fire pull her under. ***** She didn't sleep long. When she opened her eyes again, the sky was still that same dull gray-white. Impossible to tell if it was morning or afternoon. System clock said three hours. Her body ached. Shoulders and arms especially—felt like she'd gone ten rounds with someone. But her head was clear. She stretched her stiff neck and stood up. The snow seemed lighter. The feathery flakes had tapered off into sporadic icy grains. Riley ate a little more, got some fuel back in the tank, then stepped outside the campfire's warmth. The fire's effect wasn't what she'd expected. It wasn't that the temperature gradually dropped as you moved away. It was sharper than that. Like there was an invisible barrier around the flames. Inside, livable. Outside, the cold hit you like a wall. She wandered a little way off. The cold found every gap in her clothing. She thought about going farther, exploring. But there was nothing visible except that stand of trees she'd already worked. Maybe stuff was buried under the snow, but she couldn't see it. "No proper snow boots. Not going far." Riley glanced at the endless white distance with real regret. "Don't get greedy. Get those nineteen trees first." She turned. Looked at the woods. Her loot was still out there. And now she knew: if she could drag them back into the campfire's circle, the system would cash them out automatically. "Time to work." Riley rubbed her hands together. Let the motivation build. For the next few hours, she became a machine. Drag a tree to camp. Recover it. Go back for another. Repeat. It was boring. Exhausting. But watching those logs turn into numbers in her inventory—that feeling was hard to describe. Satisfying, in a way nothing had been satisfying in a long time. When the last pine trunk crossed into the light and dissolved into particles, Riley just collapsed. Lay flat in the snow and stared at the gray sky. She pulled up her Inventory. The once-empty slots were full now. Stack after stack of wood icons. "Item: Common Wood "Quantity: 80 "Description: Basic survival resource. Can be used for fuel or construction." Eighty units. Plus what was already burning in the campfire. Her day's work had yielded a clean hundred. One unit of wood burned for one hour. Riley looked at the flames dancing in front of her. Felt the heat on her face. Let herself smile, wide and real. "One hundred hours." Four full days. While everyone else was probably still panicking. Crying. Begging. Trying to figure out how to survive their first night in this frozen nightmare... She, Riley, had enough fuel stockpiled to last four days. Which meant: for the next ninety-six hours, unless she actively chose to die, nobody and nothing could put her fire out. She pulled the half-empty water bottle from Inventory. The space must have been insulated somehow—the water was still warm. Almost body temperature. She sipped it. Tasted sweet, even though it was just tap water. "Okay. Next step." Her gaze settled on the "Upgrade" button on the campfire panel. This open-air setup was fine for now. But if she was going to survive long-term, she needed something better. A real shelter. All she needed was a little stone. Some coal. Some steel. Then she could build something worth calling home. Chapter 3 The Trading Game The blizzard howled outside, but within the six-foot radius of the campfire, the air stayed surprisingly warm—like the wind had hit an invisible wall and just couldn't reach. Riley leaned back against the dusty wooden crate, holding the half-empty water bottle in her hand. She stared into the flames for a moment, then focused her attention inward. The pale blue system panel unfolded in front of her eyes again. Now that the immediate crisis was handled, she finally had time to sit quietly and really explore this so-called "Survival System". Beyond the personal stats and inventory, the bottom of the panel had a row of function icons: Server Channel, Friends List, Trading Market, and Crafting Manual. Friends List was empty. No surprise there. She hadn't exactly been a social butterfly back in the old world, and she sure as hell wasn't going to make friends easily in a frozen hellscape where everyone was fighting for their next breath. She tapped into the "Server Channel". A line of numbers appeared in the top left. "Server: US-008 "Current Online: 9911/10000" Ten thousand people started. Less than ten hours in, eighty-nine were already gone. "That doesn't add up." Everyone's starter crate came with a rusty iron axe and five units of wood. Plus the initial fuel the campfire had when they arrived—that alone bought them ten hours minimum, even if they just sat there doing nothing. What the hell did those people do to get eliminated so fast? The channel was moving fast, messages scrolling by every second. Desperation dripped from every line. "Someone help, I'm freezing my ass off out here. This stupid axe can't cut sh*t—every swing just bounces off and rattles my whole arm. Can anyone spare a couple logs? My dad's a senior VP at Walker Group. I'll wire you a million dollars when we get back, I swear." "Wake up, buddy. If your dad's still alive, he's out there chopping trees right now too." "Don't even talk to me. I spotted a wooden crate in the snow earlier, got all excited, ran over—and before I got within ten feet, some white rabbit thing jumped out of a drift. Teeth like needles. Almost took a chunk out of my leg. Missed the crate, wasted all that energy for nothing." "I saw that too! Random crates spawn in the wild. I opened a wooden one and got two chocolate bars and some coal." Reading through the chaos, Riley picked out two keywords, "Random Reward Crates" and "Dangerous Creatures". So this world was deeper than she thought. Wooden crates, copper crates—these randomly spawning resource points were the real way to get ahead. Coal came from crates. That was useful to know. And if coal was in crates, steel probably was too. But something bothered her. According to what people were saying, reward crates weren't exactly rare. So why hadn't she found a single one during her lumber run? She doubted it was just bad luck. Riley exited chat and tapped into the "Trading Market". "Seller: MountainMan88 Item: Stone x2 Wants: White Bread x5" "Seller: LoneWolf_21 Item: Cotton Cloth Wants: Clean Water" "Seller: NotDeadYet Item: Wood x3 Wants: Anything edible" Most people were trading for food and wood. The stuff that kept you alive right now. Things like stone and cloth were getting dumped cheap—nobody had the luxury of thinking long-term. Riley looked at her own inventory. Eighty units of wood staring back at her. Her heart beat a little faster. In this opening phase, where wood literally meant the difference between life and death, the resources in her hands were basically gold bars. "Time to trade," she muttered to herself. "Coal, steel—can't get those from chopping trees. And right now, wood's at maximum value. If I wait, the exchange rate shifts." Even with the chainsaw dead, she still had the handsaw. Less efficient, sure, but she could gather more wood if she needed it. Short-term, she wasn't going to run out. She clicked to post a message in the channel. "System Prompt: Detected that you have not set a virtual ID. Please enter your nickname (cannot be changed after setting)." Riley stared at the blank input box. Naming things was the worst. She sat there for a long time, nothing coming to mind. Finally, she gave up. Couldn't think of anything cool or clever, so she'd just go with something random. Her fingers tapped across the virtual keyboard—SpicyBurger. "Setting successful. ID locked." The prompt closed. Riley posted her message. "SpicyBurger: Selling wood in bulk. Looking for: Coal, Steel, High-calorie food. DM me with offers—what you have and your rate. Good deals go fast, don't sleep on this." For three seconds after the message appeared, the channel went dead silent. Then it exploded. "SpicyBurger? That name's making me hungry, what the hell." "Never mind the name—'wood in bulk'! We got a whale in here! Everyone else is stressing about the next hour and this person's already running a business?" "I need some! My campfire's down to like two hours. I don't know if I actually die when it hits zero but I don't wanna find out." Suddenly, half the channel was scrambling for wood. But then the skeptics crawled out. "Hang on. Everyone started with the same rusty axe. Chopping a tree in this weather takes twenty, thirty minutes minimum. Where's she getting 'bulk' wood from? Sounds like a scam." "InvincibleWarrior: Everybody chill. Look at that ID—sounds like a girl's handle. I'm a grown man, been busting my ass, and I've only got like ten logs saved up. My hands are shredded. Some girl with a food name claims she's got bulk? She's trying to run a game. Scam people out of their stuff." "Iron_Tough: Agreed. Scammers made it through the apocalypse too, I guess. My advice: ignore her. Don't get played. How much wood can a woman chop anyway? Probably can't even lift the axe right, lol." Riley scrolled through the messages, expression flat. She almost laughed. But some people pushed back. "FishHater44: How is it a scam? If she doesn't deliver, you don't complete the trade. Just 'cause you can't chop that much wood doesn't mean nobody can." Riley nodded slightly. That one had a point. But she didn't waste energy arguing in the channel. Instead, she flipped on Do Not Disturb for private messages—only allowing chat requests that included a trade offer. Some people didn't actually care whether she had wood. They just couldn't stand seeing someone else do well. "Ding. Ding. Ding." Private messages started pouring in like rain. Most players weren't idiots. Faced with the very real threat of freezing to death, they'd try anything for a chance. Riley opened the first one. "Windwalker: I got "Coal x3" from a crate. How much wood can I get for it? I can't chop anymore. The wind out here is insane. I tried to throw the coal in my fire but it just kept popping back out. System says my campfire level's too low, won't let me use it. I'm out of wood. My fire's almost dead." Riley thought for a moment. "Three coal for five wood. Deal?" She hadn't known about that restriction. Coal was supposed to be better fuel than wood—didn't expect the game to lock it behind a level gate. The reply came instantly, "Deal. But five wood feels light. It's coal." The guy was conflicted. He knew coal had value, but he was desperate. "I'll make it six. Final offer." Riley wasn't sure about coal's real value yet. Six was her limit. "Fine. Deal." They both dropped their items into the trade window. A moment later, it completed. A flash of white light. Riley's inventory lost six wood. Gained three chunks of coal, each about the size of a small melon. One down. "CrunchyFrog: Hey, I got two "Iron Ingots" from a crate. System calls them "Scrap Steel". Can I get eight wood for them? Trying to stock up enough to sleep through the night." Riley replied, "Sure. Initiate." In just over ten minutes, her wood stockpile dropped significantly. But her inventory filled up with good stuff. "Coal x10 "Stone x23 "Scrap Steel x5 "Raw Meat x2 "White Bread x2 "Basic Torch Blueprint x1" The blueprint was new. The description said it was required for crafting certain items. Seemed useful, so she'd traded for it. Meanwhile, back in the channel, that "InvincibleWarrior" guy who'd been mocking her earlier seemed to notice that people were actually completing trades. His tone got bitter. "InvincibleWarrior: Whatever. She probably got lucky with a high-tier crate. Let's see how long her stock lasts. Once the wood's gone, she'll be begging me to let her join my group." The people who'd successfully traded with Riley popped into the channel to thank her. That might have been fine—except the thanks caused problems. Since Riley had stopped trading for now, most people hadn't gotten anything. And the sky was darkening. Temperature outside the campfire radius was dropping fast. Gathering wood was getting harder. Trading was their only hope. The ones who'd pinned everything on Riley, seeing her stop, started losing it. "You said 'in bulk'! You did like five trades and quit. What are we supposed to do now?" "Keep trading! My fire's almost out. You want us to go chop trees in the dark?" "If you couldn't deliver, why'd you post? Showing off and then hiding." Whether it was coordinated or just genuine rage, the number of people defending Riley in the channel shrank fast. Mostly it was attacks now. Accusations of being irresponsible. Using scarcity tactics. Playing games with people's lives. Riley closed the channel. She couldn't be bothered. In a life-or-death situation like this, people losing it was normal. If she actually had unlimited resources, she'd trade more. But she didn't. And back on Earth, nobody had ever handed her anything out of charity. She wasn't about to start playing savior now. She looked down at the "Basic Torch Blueprint" in her inventory. "Requirements: Wood x10, Kerosene, Scrap Steel x2" Note: Requires Level 2 Workbench to craft." She leaned back against the crate again. Felt the weight of her stockpile pressing back against that lingering sense of unease. In this world, your ID didn't matter. Your gender didn't matter either. What mattered was who held the resources. She looked at what she had left: 36 units of wood. Plus the steel, coal, and stone from trading. Time to plan. Upgrading to a Level 2 campfire required 55 wood. She had all the other materials. For the wood, she'd just have to use the handsaw tomorrow and gather a little more. That settled, she pulled a few more logs from inventory and arranged them on top of the crate, making a small enclosed space. Curled up inside it, she watched the sky outside slowly darken to black. Her eyes grew heavy. She drifted off. Chapter 4 The Culling Riley woke to the kind of soreness that made you reconsider ever moving again. She'd slept like the dead—no dreams, no blizzard, just nothing. When she opened her eyes, the first things she saw were the logs she'd stacked as a windbreak and the steady glow of the campfire. She tried to stretch. Big mistake. Every muscle in her body lit up at once, screaming in protest. "Sh*t." Riley sucked air through her teeth and pressed a hand to her aching shoulder. Her lower back felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to it. Yesterday's work had been too much. She wasn't weak—far from it—but she was still human. The lactic acid had settled in overnight, and now she moved like an arthritic tin man. At least she was alive. She stowed the windbreak logs back in her inventory and looked around. The world hadn't changed. Same dull gray sky. Same swirling snow. Outside the six-foot radius of the fire, the drifts looked deeper than yesterday. The wind had been busy. Riley pulled out the half-empty water bottle and wet her throat. Then she retrieved the white bread she'd traded for yesterday. Compared to that dense, flavorless black bread, this was practically cake. She tore off small pieces, letting the faint sweetness dissolve on her tongue, and habitually opened the "Server Channel". She stopped chewing. The number in the top left hit her like a physical blow. "Current Online Players: 4968/10000" "Five thousand..." Riley's eyes went wide. In a single night, that number had been cut in half. Five thousand people. Gone. Winked out of existence on this frozen ice field while she slept. "Ding." The system notification cut through her thoughts—cold, emotionless, like it was announcing the weather. "Global Announcement: Congratulations to all survivors for successfully surviving the first day. "This was a culling. Last night eliminated those fools who failed to add fuel to their fires or refused to gather wood. Remember: in this place, tears mean nothing. When you die here, you're dead-dead. "You who remain are the lucky ones. "Grace Period: A five-day 'New Player Support Period' now begins. For the next five days, your initial supply crates will refresh daily with a fixed amount of food. "Special Reward: Each survivor receives one pair of "Standard Issue Snow Boots (Common)". Be grateful for this mercy. Enjoy the game." The words sat there on her screen. Fools. Mercy. The system's tone dripped with contempt. The math was simple. Starting package: five hours of fuel. Initial gift: five units of wood, another five hours. Total ten hours, if you did absolutely nothing. The ones who'd frozen to death last night—they were the ones who'd clung to hope. The ones too scared to move. The ones who'd told themselves someone would save them. Five thousand people. One night. Gone. This wasn't a game. It was a slaughter. In the channel, the survivors who'd made it through were clearly rattled by the numbers too. "Holy sh*t... My friend's icon went dark last night. Does that mean he's dead? Actually dead?" "I can't do this. I don't wanna play anymore, I wanna go home. I swear I'll work today. I'll chop wood, I'll do whatever, just please—" "Everyone move! Don't save your strength! If you die, that's it. No respawns!" Panic spread fast. But almost immediately, the tone shifted. The fear found a target. "That SpicyBurger—if she'd shared more wood yesterday, would so many people have died?" "For real. If she had extra, why not just give it away? Why did it have to be trades? She could've at least loaned some out." "This is what happens when people hoard resources and watch others freeze. Remember that name. Don't trade with her. Ever." Riley frowned. Here we go again. She scrolled up. Sure enough, there it was—that familiar ID: "InvincibleWarrior". He was going hard in the channel. "She's profiting off suffering. That's what some people do. Women like that are the worst—hoarding supplies while people die around them. Wait and see. Someone like her won't last." Riley laughed. Actually laughed out loud. Moral blackmail. In the apocalypse. She typed, "If you want wood, go cut it yourself. I'm not your mommy. No amount of crying in chat is gonna put logs in your inventory. You'd get more done if you just picked up your d*mn axe." The channel went quiet for a second. Then the reasonable voices piped up. "She's right. Nobody owes you anything. Work for it." "Exactly. Just 'cause someone's quiet doesn't mean they're an easy target." In a world where staying alive took everything you had, expecting charity was the dumbest move of all. Riley didn't waste more energy on it. People like that—the more you engaged, the more they thrived. Let him run his mouth. She had bigger things to worry about. She closed the channel and turned to the big wooden crate—her initial supply point. Sure enough, new items had materialized inside. "Bottled Water x3 "White Bread x3 "Fresh Orange Juice x1 "Standard Snow Boots x1" "Orange juice?" Riley picked up the bottle, genuinely surprised. The orange liquid inside sloshed gently. Vitamins. The system was actually giving them vitamins. She pulled off her old shoes—already damp and cold—and swapped into the new boots. They were clunky, sure. But they gripped the snow, and the insulation was real. The chill that had been seeping up through her soles disappeared instantly. Next, she opened her toolbox. Goggles on. Thick cut-resistant gloves. Head-to-toe gear. "Time to work." The channel noise faded from her mind. She had one priority today, and it wasn't arguing with idiots. She picked up the chainsaw and headed back to the tree line. The cold played tricks on batteries. She'd known that, intellectually. But knowing it and feeling it were different things. After just eight trees, the last spare battery gave out. The chainsaw stuttered, died, and went silent in her hands. Riley stared at it. "Son of a b*tch." Chapter 5 Dead Battery Riley stared at the dead chainsaw in her hands and shook her head. Without power, it was just an expensive paperweight. If she wanted more wood, she'd have to do it the old-fashioned way—pick up the axe or the manual handsaw from the toolbox and go to war with frozen timber. But eight more trees were eight more trees. Her stockpile was looking healthy. "First things first. Get these back." She sucked it up, stowed the chainsaw in her inventory, and started hauling. Her body screamed even louder than yesterday. Every muscle felt like it had been replaced with concrete. She dragged each log back one at a time, moving like a zombie. Drag. Rest two minutes. Drag again. The wind howled in her ears. Riley lost track of time, lost track of everything except the mechanical rhythm of work. By the time the sun was high—not that you could really see it through the clouds—she dragged the last log into the campfire's radius. It dissolved into light, absorbed by the system. Riley all but collapsed into the snow. "Acquired: Wood x40" She lay there for a moment, chest heaving, staring at the number in her inventory. A tired smile crept across her face. She had enough. Combined with the coal and steel from yesterday's trades, she had everything she needed for the upgrade. Riley forced herself upright and walked to the campfire. On the floating translucent panel, the "Upgrade" button glowed that tempting gold. "Upgrade Primitive Shelter to Lv.2? "Cost: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Scrap Steel x5 "Remaining after upgrade: Wood x16, Stone x3, Coal x0, Steel x0" "Upgrade." Riley took a breath and pressed it. "Hmmmm—!" A blinding white light erupted from the heart of the campfire, swallowing everything. Riley squeezed her eyes shut. No explosion. No thunder. Just a sound like Legos snapping together. A few seconds later, the light faded. Riley opened her eyes. And stopped breathing. The campfire wasn't just a campfire anymore. The rough stone ring had transformed into something neat and intentional—a proper firepit with a stone border for insulation, a place to set things, even a simple steel grate attached to the side. But that wasn't the big news. The heat that used to push back the cold within a six-foot radius now stretched a full fifteen feet. Inside that circle, snow was actively melting, revealing dark frozen soil underneath. In one corner, she spotted a patch of moss stubbornly poking through. Riley spun around. Behind the big wooden crate, a small log cabin stood waiting. It wasn't much—maybe forty feet square, built from rough-hewn logs. Nothing fancy. But it was solid. Four walls and a roof, blocking wind and snow completely. Riley walked over and pushed open the heavy wooden door. Warm air hit her face. Inside was simple: a wooden bed frame piled with dry grass, a crude workbench, a chair, and a small fireplace connected to a chimney that ran up through the roof. Rustic. But right now, it was heaven. Wood and fire. Four walls. A roof. Home. Riley ran her hand along the rough wall. Her eyes stung a little. She wouldn't have to sleep in the open anymore. Wouldn't have to wake up every few hours to check the fire. Wouldn't have to worry about freezing to death in her sleep. Right on cue, the server announcement chimed. Gold text this time, blazing right in the center of everyone's vision. "Server Announcement: Congratulations to player SpicyBurger for being the first to achieve "Level 2 Shelter". Rewards have been distributed." The chat channel, which had been wallowing in fear and despair, exploded. "Holy sh*t? Level 2 already? What does Level 2 unlock? Can you post pics, big shot?" "That's the wood seller from yesterday? No way. Absolute legend." "Carry me please! SpicyBurger, I'll be your loyal follower. I can cook, I can clean, I can—" "Teach us, master! How'd you gather materials so fast? What's your secret?" Compliments. Pleas. Desperate attempts to get noticed. And then, of course, the sour grapes. "InvincibleWarrior: Big deal. Just profiteering off everyone else's suffering. If she'd shared that wood instead of selling it, maybe those five thousand people would still be alive. How does it feel to climb on corpses?" "GodLovesMeFirst: Seriously. Building your success on other people's deaths. Karma's real. She'll get hers." Riley's jaw tightened. If InvincibleWarrior had been standing in front of her right now, she'd have knocked his teeth out. Guys like him—useless themselves, but always ready to tear down anyone who actually accomplished something. Sewer rats. Her private messages exploded too. She'd set it to only accept trade offers, but people had found a workaround—using the "trade note" function to send spam. "Hey beautiful, I'm a personal trainer. Great shape. Wanna see? Hit me with some wood and I'll do a voice call with you!" A photo of some guy flexing in a mirror, shirt off. Riley glanced at it, unimpressed. Decent abs. Pathetic attitude. Dude was clearly strong enough to chop wood—why was he wasting time on this? She'd never mentioned her gender, so most people probably assumed anyone who'd gathered that much wood must be a guy. The messages reflected that assumption. Some women sent selfies too, trying to flirt their way into favor. Didn't matter. Shameless cut across all demographics. From the backgrounds in the photos, everyone seemed to be in different locations. But one thing was consistent: they all had trees nearby. The system must have arranged that—a new player perk. "A bunch of degenerates." Riley's face went cold. She changed her privacy settings to "Friends Only". Then she added a line to her trading post description. "No spam. Send junk, get blocked." Silence. Blessed silence. She took a breath, let the noise drain away, and focused on what mattered. "First-place upgrade reward..." She opened her inventory. Sitting there, glowing faintly purple, was a gift box. For more exciting content, please download the "JoyRead" app to continue reading.
Chapter 1 The Countdown Ends It was the year 2027, and the end of the world was now less than an hour away. "00:59:23" Riley Carter stood on a ladder with a screw clenched between her teeth, an impact driver in her hand, securing the last window panel in place. A month ago, that timer had just appeared out of nowhere, hanging in the corner of everyone's vision like it had always been there. At first, people wrote it off as some kind of mass hacker prank. The government fed the media soothing statements in an attempt to keep things calm, but there was no way to talk down the panic as prices kept rising and supplies were held in a monopoly in real time. News outlets might spin whatever narrative they wanted, but no one could argue with the price of eggs. For a while, it was a frenzy. People cleaned out grocery stores like locusts. The government did what they could—price caps, purchase limits, reassurances from the podium—but none of it mattered. The cost of living kept climbing, and bit by bit, the country started coming apart at the seams. Online, it was a circus. Some people posted doom-laden predictions. Others openly celebrated the thought of the world finally burning. A few just seemed relieved they wouldn't have to clock in on Monday. In that final hour, things got truly ugly. Both on the streets and on social media, it was chaos. Some people figured why not went out with a bang? If the world was ending, they'd spend their last hours doing every reckless thing they'd ever fantasized about. Others, paralyzed by fear of whatever was coming, scrambled for anything they could hoard. Supplies. Weapons. Gasoline. Didn't matter what, as long as they had more of it than the next guy. Most people just wanted to be with the ones they loved. Riley didn't have that luxury anymore. Fresh out of community college, she'd lost both her parents in a highway pileup eighteen months back. The only thing they'd left her was the family hardware store, a cramped little place wedged between a laundromat and a taqueria. She'd been running it solo for just over a year when that d*mn countdown appeared overhead. At first, she'd thought maybe an apocalypse wouldn't be the worst thing. Maybe there'd be something on the other side. A reunion. But then she thought about her folks. They'd doted on her. Made her feel like the center of their world. And even though she'd grown a thick skin since going it alone, feeling indifferent to the world, she knew what they'd want. They'd want her to fight. To stay. She was the only piece of them still left in this world. People always say you aren't really gone until the last person forgets your name. As long as she kept breathing, kept carrying them with her another day, they weren't truly dead. Riley spat the screw into her palm, face calm, the impact driver whirring as she sank another fastener into the reinforced frame. "Flour's three hundred a pound now, and you can't even buy it straight—they make you tack on a bunch of other junk you don't need just to get it," she muttered to herself, shaking her head. When that timer first flickered into existence, Riley had done something smart. She'd liquidated everything. Converted every dollar she could scrape together into supplies. Unfortunately, by the time she hit the stores, inflation had already done its damage. Her savings didn't go nearly as far as they should have. Any cash that was left went toward tools. If the world was ending, she thought they could be useful. Riley pressed the last sheet of thick insulation foam into the window frame, seating it flush against the reinforced plywood beneath. The impact driver snarled as she buried the screws. Then she reached for her pneumatic glue gun—a satisfying pfft as the sealant filled the final gap. She wiped sweat from her forehead and climbed down off the ladder. Stepped back to admire her work. The little apartment was a fortress now. Doors reinforced. Windows barricaded. Every interior wall lined with an extra layer of insulation. She glanced down at herself. Custom-fit heavy-duty workwear. Slash-resistant fabric. More pockets than she'd ever need. Reinforced padding at the knees and elbows. It wasn't fashionable, but it was practical. And her real treasure: tools. A chainsaw. A reciprocating saw. The impact driver in her hand. A multi-bit screwdriver that had cost more than she wanted to admit. She'd brought everything usable from the shop back here, consolidated it into three massive toolboxes. She'd also grabbed some stuff like an air purifier and some spare filters—anything that might matter when civilization took a vacation. She didn't know what the countdown would bring. Some folks online predicted zombies. Others said asteroid impact. Volcanic winter. Alien invasion. Take your pick. Food. Tools. Shelter. She'd even started working out, building strength she'd never needed before. She'd done everything she could think of to prepare. Whatever was coming, she figured she'd last longer than most. With nothing left to do, she dropped onto one of the big toolboxes laid flat on the floor, wiped her forehead again, and pulled out her phone. Most news apps had crashed. The only things still loading were comment sections, and they were going crazy. [Anyone got rice? I'll pay eight grand for a bag. Please, we got nothing left.] [Forget it, man. Money's toilet paper now. Saw it with my own eyes—some rich assholes cleared out the Costco warehouse last week. All that 'purchase limit' crap was just theater. Shelves were empty 'cause the stock never made it there. It's all sitting in some hedge fund guy's basement.] [No kidding? Same thing happened to me! Store manager kept telling me, 'We're limiting purchases, come back next week, we'll put your name on the list.' So the whole time the back room was empty? They were just jerking us around?] [Of course they were. Rich people cornered the market on everything. So what are normal people supposed to do? Just sit here and die?] [Anyone know what actually happens when the clock hits zero? Like, is it nukes? That virus thing from that old video game?] Riley locked her phone. Tucked it away. She didn't have anything to add to that conversation. A month ago, when the countdown first showed up, prices had spiked instantly. A fifty-pound bag of rice that normally went for thirty bucks jumped to eight hundred overnight. By yesterday, it was breaking two grand. The wealthy had rolled up with trucks and cleaned out supermarkets. Riley had been smart—she'd gone early, bought stuff that would keep, stuff that was calorie-dense and cheap. Chocolate. Survival biscuits. Canned goods. It wasn't much, but it was enough for one person, at least for a while. She took a deep breath and glanced at the timer. "00:01:10" Just over a minute. Riley gripped the toolbox beneath her. Knuckles white. Who knew what would happen when that thing hit zero? Maybe it'd be like 2012—all hype, nothing real. In that last minute, her life flickered past. Her parents' faces. The hardware store. The lonely months since. "00:00:00" The countdown ended. Riley had just started to breathe a sigh of relief—nothing happened, maybe it really was nothing—when the world lurched beneath her. A dizzying weightlessness. A sensation of falling. Everything spun. ***** She didn't know how long she was out. "Whew." A wind like a knife blade sliced across her face. Riley's eyes snapped open. Her warm apartment was gone. In its place, an endless white expanse stretched in every direction. Snow whipped through the air. Wind howled like a wounded animal. And at her feet, a small campfire guttered in the gale, threatening to die at any second. "What the—" Before she could process, a chime rang directly in her skull. Not heard. Known. "Welcome to the Extreme Cold Survival Game. "Earth no longer exists. This is your new home. This is your grave. "Survival rules are as follows. "1. Each player begins with one campfire. It is your only defense against the cold. If the campfire dies, you will be judged deceased by the system. Not that it matters—without the fire, you won't last anyway. "2. This is a real world. You can die from hunger. From exposure. From animal attack. "3. Supplies stockpiled in your previous world do not carry over. Only items on your person, or in direct physical contact at the moment of transfer, are retained. "4. Struggle to survive. It is your only hope." Riley's heart slammed against her ribs. Supplies didn't carry over? Her mind flashed to those wealthy forum posters bragging about their warehouse stockpiles. And then she looked down at herself. Workwear. Intact. And— She was still sitting on the three giant toolboxes. They sat solidly in the snow, dusted with powder, unmistakably here. "Whew." Riley let out a long breath. A white cloud dispersed in front of her face. Pity, though. During her renovations, she'd stocked those boxes with a lot of power tools. The expensive impact driver. The reciprocating saw. In a world with no electrical outlets, once those batteries died, they were just dead weight. But even so. The hand tools. The consumables. The sheer volume of stuff in those boxes—it was a treasure beyond measure in a place like this. Riley forced herself to calm down. She was here. She'd deal with it. Something new lived in her mind now. She concentrated, and a translucent pale-blue screen materialized in front of her eyes. Looked just like a video game HUD. "Personal Panel "Name: Riley Carter "ID: 1120-US "Level: 1 (Standard Survivor) "Strength: 8 (Years of manual labor have made you stronger than average) "Agility: 8 (You've got quick reflexes) "Constitution: 6 (You've been skipping meals lately) "Spirit: 9 (You keep your head when others panic) "Inventory: 16/16 slots (Base capacity)" "Inventory?" Riley studied the sixteen empty squares at the bottom of the display. She reached out, touched one of the toolboxes, and thought the word, "Store." Whoosh. The heavy box vanished. In its place, a tiny icon appeared in the first inventory slot, a miniature "x1" in the corner. "It actually worked." For the first time since arriving, a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. Retrieve. Thud. The toolbox landed back in the snow, puffing up powder. No energy cost. No sense of weight. And in that inventory, she could carry anything, regardless of how heavy it was. Later on, when she went scavenging, that would make all the difference. Riley rubbed her stiff, freezing hands together and turned her attention to the campfire at her feet. It was the only warmth in this frozen wasteland. Hovering above the flames, visible only to her, were a few lines of glowing text. "Basic Campfire (Lv.1) "Remaining Burn Time: 05:28:00 "Current Coverage: Radius six feet (Blocks wind and snow) "Upgrade Requirements: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Steel x5 "Description: This is your life. Do not let it die. Upgrading expands your safe zone and unlocks additional construction options." "Needs upgrading." Riley frowned. Wood and stone she could probably find. But coal? Steel? Out here in the middle of nowhere? A flash of movement caught her eye. A small wooden box, half-buried in the snow not far from the fire. The starter crate. Had to be. Riley didn't rush. First, she pulled the claw hammer from her belt—the one she always kept there, habit from years of work—and gripped it tight. She scanned the tree line. Listened past the wind. Nothing moved. No sounds but the storm. She walked over quickly, crouched by the box. No lock. She pried the lid open with the claw end of her hammer. Inside, a handful of items. "Obtained: Iron Axe x1 "Obtained: Stale Dark Bread x2 "Obtained: 500ml Bottled Water x1 "Obtained: Kindling x5 "Obtained: Insulated Field Jacket x1 "Obtained: Utility Rope (25ft) "Obtained: Thermal Underwear (Set) x2 Not much. Barely anything. Riley picked up one of the dark loaves. It was rock hard. She examined the jacket—basic, but warm-looking. "So this is what a standard survivor starts with." At least the system had thought of everything. Including the underwear. She'd half-expected to wake up naked in the snow; at least she didn't have to worry about that. She stored everything in her inventory, then shrugged on the field jacket. The temperature shift was brutal. Even those few seconds exposed had left her hands numb. Hypothermia would set in fast out here. Jacket on, she hurried back to the campfire. She pulled the five units of Kindling from her inventory and tossed them onto the flames. The fire roared higher. Warmth flooded over her. "Fuel added. Remaining Burn Time: 10:28:00" Ten hours. If she didn't move fast, in ten hours she'd freeze to death on this ice field. And the game had made it clear—if the fire died, the system would judge her dead. Whether she actually froze or not. Riley lifted her head and scanned the landscape. She was in a sparse coniferous forest. Barely alive trees, crusted with frost, dotted the area not far from her position. "Wood." A slow smile spread across her face. She patted the toolbox beside her. "Other people might have axes. But felling a tree with just an axe takes hours. Exhausts you." She unlatched the box. Pulled out the chainsaw. Checked the battery gauge—full. "I've got a handsaw in here too. And a chainsaw with a full charge." The battery wouldn't last forever. But it would last long enough to give her a massive head start. In this race for survival, that was everything. Chapter 2 The Chainsaw The wind screamed across the open ground, picking up loose snow and flinging it against her goggles like sand. It sounded like static. Riley had pulled her basic work gear from the toolbox before heading out. Now she stood in the snow, surrounded by clusters of thin conifers that looked half-dead already. She took a breath. The air burned going down. "Zzzzzzz—!!!" She squeezed the trigger. The orange-and-black lithium-ion chainsaw in her hands roared to life, the chain spinning so fast it blurred. She buried the teeth in the nearest pine trunk. Wood chips exploded everywhere. Fragrant shavings—still wet with resin—scattered across the pristine snow, stark and yellow against all that white. Five seconds. Crack. The pine tree, thick as her arm, groaned and tilted. Then it fell slow and heavy into a drift, sending up a puff of powder. "God bless modern technology." Riley shook out her wrist—the vibration had numbed her fingers—and allowed herself a small smile. Without that chainsaw, with just the basic iron axe the system had given her, felling a tree frozen solid like this would have taken twenty minutes minimum. And it would have left her soaked with sweat. In subzero temps, sweat was a death sentence. Once your base layers got wet, the moment you stopped moving, your body temperature would plummet. Hypothermia would follow fast. Riley didn't waste time celebrating. She knew the saw in her hands was a hungry machine. She'd brought two spare high-capacity batteries, sure, but until she found a way to recharge them, every second the motor ran was borrowed time. She had to gather as much wood as possible before the batteries gave out. "Zzzzz—Zzzzz—" At the edge of the forest, the chainsaw's snarl rose and fell, shattering the frozen silence. Riley worked like she was possessed. Fell a tree. Move to the next. Fell another. But she had to stay alert—watch for hidden snow pits underfoot, keep adjusting her collar against the wind that kept finding its way down her neck. Her stamina drained faster than she'd anticipated. In extreme cold, body burned through calories just to stay alive. Added walking through knee-deep snow, where every step took three times the energy of walking on pavement, and the math got ugly fast. Pretty soon, Riley was breathing hard. Her breath fogged the inside of her goggles, and she had to keep wiping them clear. "Zzzzz..." She was mid-cut on a tree—didn't even know which number anymore—when the chainsaw's roar stuttered. Died. The chain jammed solid in the wood. A red light blinked at her. Dead battery. Riley yanked the saw free and patted its housing. "Good work, buddy." Genuine regret in her voice. She straightened up and looked around. Pine trunks lay scattered across the snow in every direction. A decent haul. She counted silently. "Twenty-three total." Then the next problem hit her. According to the system, until she actually possessed these logs, they were still just natural resources. That meant they didn't qualify for Inventory storage. She couldn't just snap her fingers and make them disappear. She had to drag them back to camp. Riley grabbed the nearest pine and tried to pull. Heavy. Like, unreasonably heavy. Fresh-cut wood was full of moisture. Add the branches catching in the snow, dragging like anchors, and she felt like she was hauling a dead body through mud. "Huff... huff..." She gritted her teeth, looped rope around the trunk, slung it over her shoulder, leaned forward, and started walking. Inch by inch. The tree line to her campfire was maybe fifty yards. Right now, it felt like fifty miles. By the time she'd wrestled the fourth tree back into the fire's warm radius, she was wrecked. Her legs felt like someone had filled them with concrete. Her lungs burned from hauling freezing air through them. "Can't... can't do more." Riley made the call. She stopped. Those nineteen trees still out there in the snow—they called to her. Tempted her. But if she kept pushing without rest, without fuel for herself, she'd collapse out there. And out there, collapse meant death. She dropped down next to the big wooden crate that had held her starter supplies. It was less than three feet from the campfire. The flames danced orange and red, pumping out heat that felt like heaven. The shift from frozen to warm made her shiver violently. She pulled off her goggles and thick gloves, set them near the fire to warm up, then—still shaking—pulled the half-empty water bottle from her Inventory. Took a small sip. Then the bread. Two black bricks that looked more like construction material than food. "Crunch." Riley bit off a piece with effort. It was coarse. Tasted like sawdust with a hint of burnt toast. Bitter. But it was calories. Carbs. Fuel for her own fire. She forced herself to chew, swallow. When the food hit her stomach, warmth finally started spreading through her core. The uncontrollable shaking eased. After half a loaf, Riley leaned back against the crate. Her eyelids drooped. Post-exhaustion crash hit her like a wave. The campfire crackled. The wind seemed farther away now. Muffled. She really wanted to sleep... Her head nodded. Her body started sliding sideways. "Wait—" Some animal instinct jolted her awake just before she went under. She pinched her thigh. Hard. Then looked up at the timer floating above the flames. "Shelter Level 1 "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 06:28:00" Six and a half hours. If she slept too deep, too long, and that fire went out—what then? Even ignoring the obvious—that she'd freeze to death in this hellhole without a heat source—the game rules were clear. When the campfire hits zero, it's game over. "No sleeping. Not allowed." Riley slapped her own cheeks, forced herself upright. She stayed near the fire, but she didn't take off her heavy work clothes. She remembered reading something once, a survival article. "In the late stages of hypothermia, your hypothalamus malfunctions. You get a false sensation of heat. It's called "paradoxical undressing"—people strip down right before they freeze to death." "Okay. Process these four. Keep the fire fed." She pulled a traditional handsaw from the toolbox. Looking at the four thick pine logs on the ground, she almost laughed. Without power tools, breaking these down into burnable pieces would take at least half an hour. Burn the little energy she had left. But what choice did she have? Riley knelt in the snow, positioned the blade against the trunk, and was about to start cutting— A soft white light shot out from the system panel on her chest. It washed over the logs. "Ding! "Detected felled, intact logs within shelter range. "Perform quick recovery?" Riley's hand froze mid-saw. Quick recovery? It took her a second to process. Then relief flooded through her so hard she almost cried. "Yes! Recover!" She didn't hesitate. The next moment, something impossible happened. The four pine trunks—the ones she'd have to saw and split by hand, the ones that represented hours of brutal labor—dissolved into pale blue light particles. Not into dust. Into neat, uniform logs that stacked themselves automatically in her Inventory. The branches, the needles, all the useless parts—purified out of existence. "Recovery successful! "Obtained: Common Wood x20" Riley's eyes went wide, staring at the perfect lumber in her inventory display. Looked like it came straight from a hardware store. "One tree gives five units of wood? "And I don't have to cut it myself?" This changed everything. It meant she only had to handle the felling and the dragging. Once a log crossed into her camp's boundary, the system recognized it as hers. The most time-consuming part—the processing—just... didn't exist anymore. Riley immediately grabbed five units of wood and fed them to the fire. Whoosh. The flames leaped, hungry and grateful. "Fuel added. "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 12:20:00" "Five logs, five hours..." She did the math fast, looking at the fifteen units still on the ground. If she threw all of those in, that'd be another fifteen hours. Total of twenty-seven. She could sleep like the dead right now, and that fire would still be burning when she woke up. Security. For the first time since the world ended, Riley felt something like security. She selected the remaining wood. Deposited it all. Watched the countdown tick up to a very comfortable "27:20:00". Then her nerves finally let go. She dragged one of the toolboxes into position to block the wind, wrapped the field jacket tight around herself, pulled her hat down over her eyes, leaned back against the warm crate, and let the crackle of the fire pull her under. ***** She didn't sleep long. When she opened her eyes again, the sky was still that same dull gray-white. Impossible to tell if it was morning or afternoon. System clock said three hours. Her body ached. Shoulders and arms especially—felt like she'd gone ten rounds with someone. But her head was clear. She stretched her stiff neck and stood up. The snow seemed lighter. The feathery flakes had tapered off into sporadic icy grains. Riley ate a little more, got some fuel back in the tank, then stepped outside the campfire's warmth. The fire's effect wasn't what she'd expected. It wasn't that the temperature gradually dropped as you moved away. It was sharper than that. Like there was an invisible barrier around the flames. Inside, livable. Outside, the cold hit you like a wall. She wandered a little way off. The cold found every gap in her clothing. She thought about going farther, exploring. But there was nothing visible except that stand of trees she'd already worked. Maybe stuff was buried under the snow, but she couldn't see it. "No proper snow boots. Not going far." Riley glanced at the endless white distance with real regret. "Don't get greedy. Get those nineteen trees first." She turned. Looked at the woods. Her loot was still out there. And now she knew: if she could drag them back into the campfire's circle, the system would cash them out automatically. "Time to work." Riley rubbed her hands together. Let the motivation build. For the next few hours, she became a machine. Drag a tree to camp. Recover it. Go back for another. Repeat. It was boring. Exhausting. But watching those logs turn into numbers in her inventory—that feeling was hard to describe. Satisfying, in a way nothing had been satisfying in a long time. When the last pine trunk crossed into the light and dissolved into particles, Riley just collapsed. Lay flat in the snow and stared at the gray sky. She pulled up her Inventory. The once-empty slots were full now. Stack after stack of wood icons. "Item: Common Wood "Quantity: 80 "Description: Basic survival resource. Can be used for fuel or construction." Eighty units. Plus what was already burning in the campfire. Her day's work had yielded a clean hundred. One unit of wood burned for one hour. Riley looked at the flames dancing in front of her. Felt the heat on her face. Let herself smile, wide and real. "One hundred hours." Four full days. While everyone else was probably still panicking. Crying. Begging. Trying to figure out how to survive their first night in this frozen nightmare... She, Riley, had enough fuel stockpiled to last four days. Which meant: for the next ninety-six hours, unless she actively chose to die, nobody and nothing could put her fire out. She pulled the half-empty water bottle from Inventory. The space must have been insulated somehow—the water was still warm. Almost body temperature. She sipped it. Tasted sweet, even though it was just tap water. "Okay. Next step." Her gaze settled on the "Upgrade" button on the campfire panel. This open-air setup was fine for now. But if she was going to survive long-term, she needed something better. A real shelter. All she needed was a little stone. Some coal. Some steel. Then she could build something worth calling home. Chapter 3 The Trading Game The blizzard howled outside, but within the six-foot radius of the campfire, the air stayed surprisingly warm—like the wind had hit an invisible wall and just couldn't reach. Riley leaned back against the dusty wooden crate, holding the half-empty water bottle in her hand. She stared into the flames for a moment, then focused her attention inward. The pale blue system panel unfolded in front of her eyes again. Now that the immediate crisis was handled, she finally had time to sit quietly and really explore this so-called "Survival System". Beyond the personal stats and inventory, the bottom of the panel had a row of function icons: Server Channel, Friends List, Trading Market, and Crafting Manual. Friends List was empty. No surprise there. She hadn't exactly been a social butterfly back in the old world, and she sure as hell wasn't going to make friends easily in a frozen hellscape where everyone was fighting for their next breath. She tapped into the "Server Channel". A line of numbers appeared in the top left. "Server: US-008 "Current Online: 9911/10000" Ten thousand people started. Less than ten hours in, eighty-nine were already gone. "That doesn't add up." Everyone's starter crate came with a rusty iron axe and five units of wood. Plus the initial fuel the campfire had when they arrived—that alone bought them ten hours minimum, even if they just sat there doing nothing. What the hell did those people do to get eliminated so fast? The channel was moving fast, messages scrolling by every second. Desperation dripped from every line. "Someone help, I'm freezing my ass off out here. This stupid axe can't cut sh*t—every swing just bounces off and rattles my whole arm. Can anyone spare a couple logs? My dad's a senior VP at Walker Group. I'll wire you a million dollars when we get back, I swear." "Wake up, buddy. If your dad's still alive, he's out there chopping trees right now too." "Don't even talk to me. I spotted a wooden crate in the snow earlier, got all excited, ran over—and before I got within ten feet, some white rabbit thing jumped out of a drift. Teeth like needles. Almost took a chunk out of my leg. Missed the crate, wasted all that energy for nothing." "I saw that too! Random crates spawn in the wild. I opened a wooden one and got two chocolate bars and some coal." Reading through the chaos, Riley picked out two keywords, "Random Reward Crates" and "Dangerous Creatures". So this world was deeper than she thought. Wooden crates, copper crates—these randomly spawning resource points were the real way to get ahead. Coal came from crates. That was useful to know. And if coal was in crates, steel probably was too. But something bothered her. According to what people were saying, reward crates weren't exactly rare. So why hadn't she found a single one during her lumber run? She doubted it was just bad luck. Riley exited chat and tapped into the "Trading Market". "Seller: MountainMan88 Item: Stone x2 Wants: White Bread x5" "Seller: LoneWolf_21 Item: Cotton Cloth Wants: Clean Water" "Seller: NotDeadYet Item: Wood x3 Wants: Anything edible" Most people were trading for food and wood. The stuff that kept you alive right now. Things like stone and cloth were getting dumped cheap—nobody had the luxury of thinking long-term. Riley looked at her own inventory. Eighty units of wood staring back at her. Her heart beat a little faster. In this opening phase, where wood literally meant the difference between life and death, the resources in her hands were basically gold bars. "Time to trade," she muttered to herself. "Coal, steel—can't get those from chopping trees. And right now, wood's at maximum value. If I wait, the exchange rate shifts." Even with the chainsaw dead, she still had the handsaw. Less efficient, sure, but she could gather more wood if she needed it. Short-term, she wasn't going to run out. She clicked to post a message in the channel. "System Prompt: Detected that you have not set a virtual ID. Please enter your nickname (cannot be changed after setting)." Riley stared at the blank input box. Naming things was the worst. She sat there for a long time, nothing coming to mind. Finally, she gave up. Couldn't think of anything cool or clever, so she'd just go with something random. Her fingers tapped across the virtual keyboard—SpicyBurger. "Setting successful. ID locked." The prompt closed. Riley posted her message. "SpicyBurger: Selling wood in bulk. Looking for: Coal, Steel, High-calorie food. DM me with offers—what you have and your rate. Good deals go fast, don't sleep on this." For three seconds after the message appeared, the channel went dead silent. Then it exploded. "SpicyBurger? That name's making me hungry, what the hell." "Never mind the name—'wood in bulk'! We got a whale in here! Everyone else is stressing about the next hour and this person's already running a business?" "I need some! My campfire's down to like two hours. I don't know if I actually die when it hits zero but I don't wanna find out." Suddenly, half the channel was scrambling for wood. But then the skeptics crawled out. "Hang on. Everyone started with the same rusty axe. Chopping a tree in this weather takes twenty, thirty minutes minimum. Where's she getting 'bulk' wood from? Sounds like a scam." "InvincibleWarrior: Everybody chill. Look at that ID—sounds like a girl's handle. I'm a grown man, been busting my ass, and I've only got like ten logs saved up. My hands are shredded. Some girl with a food name claims she's got bulk? She's trying to run a game. Scam people out of their stuff." "Iron_Tough: Agreed. Scammers made it through the apocalypse too, I guess. My advice: ignore her. Don't get played. How much wood can a woman chop anyway? Probably can't even lift the axe right, lol." Riley scrolled through the messages, expression flat. She almost laughed. But some people pushed back. "FishHater44: How is it a scam? If she doesn't deliver, you don't complete the trade. Just 'cause you can't chop that much wood doesn't mean nobody can." Riley nodded slightly. That one had a point. But she didn't waste energy arguing in the channel. Instead, she flipped on Do Not Disturb for private messages—only allowing chat requests that included a trade offer. Some people didn't actually care whether she had wood. They just couldn't stand seeing someone else do well. "Ding. Ding. Ding." Private messages started pouring in like rain. Most players weren't idiots. Faced with the very real threat of freezing to death, they'd try anything for a chance. Riley opened the first one. "Windwalker: I got "Coal x3" from a crate. How much wood can I get for it? I can't chop anymore. The wind out here is insane. I tried to throw the coal in my fire but it just kept popping back out. System says my campfire level's too low, won't let me use it. I'm out of wood. My fire's almost dead." Riley thought for a moment. "Three coal for five wood. Deal?" She hadn't known about that restriction. Coal was supposed to be better fuel than wood—didn't expect the game to lock it behind a level gate. The reply came instantly, "Deal. But five wood feels light. It's coal." The guy was conflicted. He knew coal had value, but he was desperate. "I'll make it six. Final offer." Riley wasn't sure about coal's real value yet. Six was her limit. "Fine. Deal." They both dropped their items into the trade window. A moment later, it completed. A flash of white light. Riley's inventory lost six wood. Gained three chunks of coal, each about the size of a small melon. One down. "CrunchyFrog: Hey, I got two "Iron Ingots" from a crate. System calls them "Scrap Steel". Can I get eight wood for them? Trying to stock up enough to sleep through the night." Riley replied, "Sure. Initiate." In just over ten minutes, her wood stockpile dropped significantly. But her inventory filled up with good stuff. "Coal x10 "Stone x23 "Scrap Steel x5 "Raw Meat x2 "White Bread x2 "Basic Torch Blueprint x1" The blueprint was new. The description said it was required for crafting certain items. Seemed useful, so she'd traded for it. Meanwhile, back in the channel, that "InvincibleWarrior" guy who'd been mocking her earlier seemed to notice that people were actually completing trades. His tone got bitter. "InvincibleWarrior: Whatever. She probably got lucky with a high-tier crate. Let's see how long her stock lasts. Once the wood's gone, she'll be begging me to let her join my group." The people who'd successfully traded with Riley popped into the channel to thank her. That might have been fine—except the thanks caused problems. Since Riley had stopped trading for now, most people hadn't gotten anything. And the sky was darkening. Temperature outside the campfire radius was dropping fast. Gathering wood was getting harder. Trading was their only hope. The ones who'd pinned everything on Riley, seeing her stop, started losing it. "You said 'in bulk'! You did like five trades and quit. What are we supposed to do now?" "Keep trading! My fire's almost out. You want us to go chop trees in the dark?" "If you couldn't deliver, why'd you post? Showing off and then hiding." Whether it was coordinated or just genuine rage, the number of people defending Riley in the channel shrank fast. Mostly it was attacks now. Accusations of being irresponsible. Using scarcity tactics. Playing games with people's lives. Riley closed the channel. She couldn't be bothered. In a life-or-death situation like this, people losing it was normal. If she actually had unlimited resources, she'd trade more. But she didn't. And back on Earth, nobody had ever handed her anything out of charity. She wasn't about to start playing savior now. She looked down at the "Basic Torch Blueprint" in her inventory. "Requirements: Wood x10, Kerosene, Scrap Steel x2" Note: Requires Level 2 Workbench to craft." She leaned back against the crate again. Felt the weight of her stockpile pressing back against that lingering sense of unease. In this world, your ID didn't matter. Your gender didn't matter either. What mattered was who held the resources. She looked at what she had left: 36 units of wood. Plus the steel, coal, and stone from trading. Time to plan. Upgrading to a Level 2 campfire required 55 wood. She had all the other materials. For the wood, she'd just have to use the handsaw tomorrow and gather a little more. That settled, she pulled a few more logs from inventory and arranged them on top of the crate, making a small enclosed space. Curled up inside it, she watched the sky outside slowly darken to black. Her eyes grew heavy. She drifted off. Chapter 4 The Culling Riley woke to the kind of soreness that made you reconsider ever moving again. She'd slept like the dead—no dreams, no blizzard, just nothing. When she opened her eyes, the first things she saw were the logs she'd stacked as a windbreak and the steady glow of the campfire. She tried to stretch. Big mistake. Every muscle in her body lit up at once, screaming in protest. "Sh*t." Riley sucked air through her teeth and pressed a hand to her aching shoulder. Her lower back felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to it. Yesterday's work had been too much. She wasn't weak—far from it—but she was still human. The lactic acid had settled in overnight, and now she moved like an arthritic tin man. At least she was alive. She stowed the windbreak logs back in her inventory and looked around. The world hadn't changed. Same dull gray sky. Same swirling snow. Outside the six-foot radius of the fire, the drifts looked deeper than yesterday. The wind had been busy. Riley pulled out the half-empty water bottle and wet her throat. Then she retrieved the white bread she'd traded for yesterday. Compared to that dense, flavorless black bread, this was practically cake. She tore off small pieces, letting the faint sweetness dissolve on her tongue, and habitually opened the "Server Channel". She stopped chewing. The number in the top left hit her like a physical blow. "Current Online Players: 4968/10000" "Five thousand..." Riley's eyes went wide. In a single night, that number had been cut in half. Five thousand people. Gone. Winked out of existence on this frozen ice field while she slept. "Ding." The system notification cut through her thoughts—cold, emotionless, like it was announcing the weather. "Global Announcement: Congratulations to all survivors for successfully surviving the first day. "This was a culling. Last night eliminated those fools who failed to add fuel to their fires or refused to gather wood. Remember: in this place, tears mean nothing. When you die here, you're dead-dead. "You who remain are the lucky ones. "Grace Period: A five-day 'New Player Support Period' now begins. For the next five days, your initial supply crates will refresh daily with a fixed amount of food. "Special Reward: Each survivor receives one pair of "Standard Issue Snow Boots (Common)". Be grateful for this mercy. Enjoy the game." The words sat there on her screen. Fools. Mercy. The system's tone dripped with contempt. The math was simple. Starting package: five hours of fuel. Initial gift: five units of wood, another five hours. Total ten hours, if you did absolutely nothing. The ones who'd frozen to death last night—they were the ones who'd clung to hope. The ones too scared to move. The ones who'd told themselves someone would save them. Five thousand people. One night. Gone. This wasn't a game. It was a slaughter. In the channel, the survivors who'd made it through were clearly rattled by the numbers too. "Holy sh*t... My friend's icon went dark last night. Does that mean he's dead? Actually dead?" "I can't do this. I don't wanna play anymore, I wanna go home. I swear I'll work today. I'll chop wood, I'll do whatever, just please—" "Everyone move! Don't save your strength! If you die, that's it. No respawns!" Panic spread fast. But almost immediately, the tone shifted. The fear found a target. "That SpicyBurger—if she'd shared more wood yesterday, would so many people have died?" "For real. If she had extra, why not just give it away? Why did it have to be trades? She could've at least loaned some out." "This is what happens when people hoard resources and watch others freeze. Remember that name. Don't trade with her. Ever." Riley frowned. Here we go again. She scrolled up. Sure enough, there it was—that familiar ID: "InvincibleWarrior". He was going hard in the channel. "She's profiting off suffering. That's what some people do. Women like that are the worst—hoarding supplies while people die around them. Wait and see. Someone like her won't last." Riley laughed. Actually laughed out loud. Moral blackmail. In the apocalypse. She typed, "If you want wood, go cut it yourself. I'm not your mommy. No amount of crying in chat is gonna put logs in your inventory. You'd get more done if you just picked up your d*mn axe." The channel went quiet for a second. Then the reasonable voices piped up. "She's right. Nobody owes you anything. Work for it." "Exactly. Just 'cause someone's quiet doesn't mean they're an easy target." In a world where staying alive took everything you had, expecting charity was the dumbest move of all. Riley didn't waste more energy on it. People like that—the more you engaged, the more they thrived. Let him run his mouth. She had bigger things to worry about. She closed the channel and turned to the big wooden crate—her initial supply point. Sure enough, new items had materialized inside. "Bottled Water x3 "White Bread x3 "Fresh Orange Juice x1 "Standard Snow Boots x1" "Orange juice?" Riley picked up the bottle, genuinely surprised. The orange liquid inside sloshed gently. Vitamins. The system was actually giving them vitamins. She pulled off her old shoes—already damp and cold—and swapped into the new boots. They were clunky, sure. But they gripped the snow, and the insulation was real. The chill that had been seeping up through her soles disappeared instantly. Next, she opened her toolbox. Goggles on. Thick cut-resistant gloves. Head-to-toe gear. "Time to work." The channel noise faded from her mind. She had one priority today, and it wasn't arguing with idiots. She picked up the chainsaw and headed back to the tree line. The cold played tricks on batteries. She'd known that, intellectually. But knowing it and feeling it were different things. After just eight trees, the last spare battery gave out. The chainsaw stuttered, died, and went silent in her hands. Riley stared at it. "Son of a b*tch." Chapter 5 Dead Battery Riley stared at the dead chainsaw in her hands and shook her head. Without power, it was just an expensive paperweight. If she wanted more wood, she'd have to do it the old-fashioned way—pick up the axe or the manual handsaw from the toolbox and go to war with frozen timber. But eight more trees were eight more trees. Her stockpile was looking healthy. "First things first. Get these back." She sucked it up, stowed the chainsaw in her inventory, and started hauling. Her body screamed even louder than yesterday. Every muscle felt like it had been replaced with concrete. She dragged each log back one at a time, moving like a zombie. Drag. Rest two minutes. Drag again. The wind howled in her ears. Riley lost track of time, lost track of everything except the mechanical rhythm of work. By the time the sun was high—not that you could really see it through the clouds—she dragged the last log into the campfire's radius. It dissolved into light, absorbed by the system. Riley all but collapsed into the snow. "Acquired: Wood x40" She lay there for a moment, chest heaving, staring at the number in her inventory. A tired smile crept across her face. She had enough. Combined with the coal and steel from yesterday's trades, she had everything she needed for the upgrade. Riley forced herself upright and walked to the campfire. On the floating translucent panel, the "Upgrade" button glowed that tempting gold. "Upgrade Primitive Shelter to Lv.2? "Cost: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Scrap Steel x5 "Remaining after upgrade: Wood x16, Stone x3, Coal x0, Steel x0" "Upgrade." Riley took a breath and pressed it. "Hmmmm—!" A blinding white light erupted from the heart of the campfire, swallowing everything. Riley squeezed her eyes shut. No explosion. No thunder. Just a sound like Legos snapping together. A few seconds later, the light faded. Riley opened her eyes. And stopped breathing. The campfire wasn't just a campfire anymore. The rough stone ring had transformed into something neat and intentional—a proper firepit with a stone border for insulation, a place to set things, even a simple steel grate attached to the side. But that wasn't the big news. The heat that used to push back the cold within a six-foot radius now stretched a full fifteen feet. Inside that circle, snow was actively melting, revealing dark frozen soil underneath. In one corner, she spotted a patch of moss stubbornly poking through. Riley spun around. Behind the big wooden crate, a small log cabin stood waiting. It wasn't much—maybe forty feet square, built from rough-hewn logs. Nothing fancy. But it was solid. Four walls and a roof, blocking wind and snow completely. Riley walked over and pushed open the heavy wooden door. Warm air hit her face. Inside was simple: a wooden bed frame piled with dry grass, a crude workbench, a chair, and a small fireplace connected to a chimney that ran up through the roof. Rustic. But right now, it was heaven. Wood and fire. Four walls. A roof. Home. Riley ran her hand along the rough wall. Her eyes stung a little. She wouldn't have to sleep in the open anymore. Wouldn't have to wake up every few hours to check the fire. Wouldn't have to worry about freezing to death in her sleep. Right on cue, the server announcement chimed. Gold text this time, blazing right in the center of everyone's vision. "Server Announcement: Congratulations to player SpicyBurger for being the first to achieve "Level 2 Shelter". Rewards have been distributed." The chat channel, which had been wallowing in fear and despair, exploded. "Holy sh*t? Level 2 already? What does Level 2 unlock? Can you post pics, big shot?" "That's the wood seller from yesterday? No way. Absolute legend." "Carry me please! SpicyBurger, I'll be your loyal follower. I can cook, I can clean, I can—" "Teach us, master! How'd you gather materials so fast? What's your secret?" Compliments. Pleas. Desperate attempts to get noticed. And then, of course, the sour grapes. "InvincibleWarrior: Big deal. Just profiteering off everyone else's suffering. If she'd shared that wood instead of selling it, maybe those five thousand people would still be alive. How does it feel to climb on corpses?" "GodLovesMeFirst: Seriously. Building your success on other people's deaths. Karma's real. She'll get hers." Riley's jaw tightened. If InvincibleWarrior had been standing in front of her right now, she'd have knocked his teeth out. Guys like him—useless themselves, but always ready to tear down anyone who actually accomplished something. Sewer rats. Her private messages exploded too. She'd set it to only accept trade offers, but people had found a workaround—using the "trade note" function to send spam. "Hey beautiful, I'm a personal trainer. Great shape. Wanna see? Hit me with some wood and I'll do a voice call with you!" A photo of some guy flexing in a mirror, shirt off. Riley glanced at it, unimpressed. Decent abs. Pathetic attitude. Dude was clearly strong enough to chop wood—why was he wasting time on this? She'd never mentioned her gender, so most people probably assumed anyone who'd gathered that much wood must be a guy. The messages reflected that assumption. Some women sent selfies too, trying to flirt their way into favor. Didn't matter. Shameless cut across all demographics. From the backgrounds in the photos, everyone seemed to be in different locations. But one thing was consistent: they all had trees nearby. The system must have arranged that—a new player perk. "A bunch of degenerates." Riley's face went cold. She changed her privacy settings to "Friends Only". Then she added a line to her trading post description. "No spam. Send junk, get blocked." Silence. Blessed silence. She took a breath, let the noise drain away, and focused on what mattered. "First-place upgrade reward..." She opened her inventory. Sitting there, glowing faintly purple, was a gift box. For more exciting content, please download the "JoyRead" app to continue reading.
Chapter 1 The Countdown Ends It was the year 2027, and the end of the world was now less than an hour away. "00:59:23" Riley Carter stood on a ladder with a screw clenched between her teeth, an impact driver in her hand, securing the last window panel in place. A month ago, that timer had just appeared out of nowhere, hanging in the corner of everyone's vision like it had always been there. At first, people wrote it off as some kind of mass hacker prank. The government fed the media soothing statements in an attempt to keep things calm, but there was no way to talk down the panic as prices kept rising and supplies were held in a monopoly in real time. News outlets might spin whatever narrative they wanted, but no one could argue with the price of eggs. For a while, it was a frenzy. People cleaned out grocery stores like locusts. The government did what they could—price caps, purchase limits, reassurances from the podium—but none of it mattered. The cost of living kept climbing, and bit by bit, the country started coming apart at the seams. Online, it was a circus. Some people posted doom-laden predictions. Others openly celebrated the thought of the world finally burning. A few just seemed relieved they wouldn't have to clock in on Monday. In that final hour, things got truly ugly. Both on the streets and on social media, it was chaos. Some people figured why not went out with a bang? If the world was ending, they'd spend their last hours doing every reckless thing they'd ever fantasized about. Others, paralyzed by fear of whatever was coming, scrambled for anything they could hoard. Supplies. Weapons. Gasoline. Didn't matter what, as long as they had more of it than the next guy. Most people just wanted to be with the ones they loved. Riley didn't have that luxury anymore. Fresh out of community college, she'd lost both her parents in a highway pileup eighteen months back. The only thing they'd left her was the family hardware store, a cramped little place wedged between a laundromat and a taqueria. She'd been running it solo for just over a year when that d*mn countdown appeared overhead. At first, she'd thought maybe an apocalypse wouldn't be the worst thing. Maybe there'd be something on the other side. A reunion. But then she thought about her folks. They'd doted on her. Made her feel like the center of their world. And even though she'd grown a thick skin since going it alone, feeling indifferent to the world, she knew what they'd want. They'd want her to fight. To stay. She was the only piece of them still left in this world. People always say you aren't really gone until the last person forgets your name. As long as she kept breathing, kept carrying them with her another day, they weren't truly dead. Riley spat the screw into her palm, face calm, the impact driver whirring as she sank another fastener into the reinforced frame. "Flour's three hundred a pound now, and you can't even buy it straight—they make you tack on a bunch of other junk you don't need just to get it," she muttered to herself, shaking her head. When that timer first flickered into existence, Riley had done something smart. She'd liquidated everything. Converted every dollar she could scrape together into supplies. Unfortunately, by the time she hit the stores, inflation had already done its damage. Her savings didn't go nearly as far as they should have. Any cash that was left went toward tools. If the world was ending, she thought they could be useful. Riley pressed the last sheet of thick insulation foam into the window frame, seating it flush against the reinforced plywood beneath. The impact driver snarled as she buried the screws. Then she reached for her pneumatic glue gun—a satisfying pfft as the sealant filled the final gap. She wiped sweat from her forehead and climbed down off the ladder. Stepped back to admire her work. The little apartment was a fortress now. Doors reinforced. Windows barricaded. Every interior wall lined with an extra layer of insulation. She glanced down at herself. Custom-fit heavy-duty workwear. Slash-resistant fabric. More pockets than she'd ever need. Reinforced padding at the knees and elbows. It wasn't fashionable, but it was practical. And her real treasure: tools. A chainsaw. A reciprocating saw. The impact driver in her hand. A multi-bit screwdriver that had cost more than she wanted to admit. She'd brought everything usable from the shop back here, consolidated it into three massive toolboxes. She'd also grabbed some stuff like an air purifier and some spare filters—anything that might matter when civilization took a vacation. She didn't know what the countdown would bring. Some folks online predicted zombies. Others said asteroid impact. Volcanic winter. Alien invasion. Take your pick. Food. Tools. Shelter. She'd even started working out, building strength she'd never needed before. She'd done everything she could think of to prepare. Whatever was coming, she figured she'd last longer than most. With nothing left to do, she dropped onto one of the big toolboxes laid flat on the floor, wiped her forehead again, and pulled out her phone. Most news apps had crashed. The only things still loading were comment sections, and they were going crazy. [Anyone got rice? I'll pay eight grand for a bag. Please, we got nothing left.] [Forget it, man. Money's toilet paper now. Saw it with my own eyes—some rich assholes cleared out the Costco warehouse last week. All that 'purchase limit' crap was just theater. Shelves were empty 'cause the stock never made it there. It's all sitting in some hedge fund guy's basement.] [No kidding? Same thing happened to me! Store manager kept telling me, 'We're limiting purchases, come back next week, we'll put your name on the list.' So the whole time the back room was empty? They were just jerking us around?] [Of course they were. Rich people cornered the market on everything. So what are normal people supposed to do? Just sit here and die?] [Anyone know what actually happens when the clock hits zero? Like, is it nukes? That virus thing from that old video game?] Riley locked her phone. Tucked it away. She didn't have anything to add to that conversation. A month ago, when the countdown first showed up, prices had spiked instantly. A fifty-pound bag of rice that normally went for thirty bucks jumped to eight hundred overnight. By yesterday, it was breaking two grand. The wealthy had rolled up with trucks and cleaned out supermarkets. Riley had been smart—she'd gone early, bought stuff that would keep, stuff that was calorie-dense and cheap. Chocolate. Survival biscuits. Canned goods. It wasn't much, but it was enough for one person, at least for a while. She took a deep breath and glanced at the timer. "00:01:10" Just over a minute. Riley gripped the toolbox beneath her. Knuckles white. Who knew what would happen when that thing hit zero? Maybe it'd be like 2012—all hype, nothing real. In that last minute, her life flickered past. Her parents' faces. The hardware store. The lonely months since. "00:00:00" The countdown ended. Riley had just started to breathe a sigh of relief—nothing happened, maybe it really was nothing—when the world lurched beneath her. A dizzying weightlessness. A sensation of falling. Everything spun. ***** She didn't know how long she was out. "Whew." A wind like a knife blade sliced across her face. Riley's eyes snapped open. Her warm apartment was gone. In its place, an endless white expanse stretched in every direction. Snow whipped through the air. Wind howled like a wounded animal. And at her feet, a small campfire guttered in the gale, threatening to die at any second. "What the—" Before she could process, a chime rang directly in her skull. Not heard. Known. "Welcome to the Extreme Cold Survival Game. "Earth no longer exists. This is your new home. This is your grave. "Survival rules are as follows. "1. Each player begins with one campfire. It is your only defense against the cold. If the campfire dies, you will be judged deceased by the system. Not that it matters—without the fire, you won't last anyway. "2. This is a real world. You can die from hunger. From exposure. From animal attack. "3. Supplies stockpiled in your previous world do not carry over. Only items on your person, or in direct physical contact at the moment of transfer, are retained. "4. Struggle to survive. It is your only hope." Riley's heart slammed against her ribs. Supplies didn't carry over? Her mind flashed to those wealthy forum posters bragging about their warehouse stockpiles. And then she looked down at herself. Workwear. Intact. And— She was still sitting on the three giant toolboxes. They sat solidly in the snow, dusted with powder, unmistakably here. "Whew." Riley let out a long breath. A white cloud dispersed in front of her face. Pity, though. During her renovations, she'd stocked those boxes with a lot of power tools. The expensive impact driver. The reciprocating saw. In a world with no electrical outlets, once those batteries died, they were just dead weight. But even so. The hand tools. The consumables. The sheer volume of stuff in those boxes—it was a treasure beyond measure in a place like this. Riley forced herself to calm down. She was here. She'd deal with it. Something new lived in her mind now. She concentrated, and a translucent pale-blue screen materialized in front of her eyes. Looked just like a video game HUD. "Personal Panel "Name: Riley Carter "ID: 1120-US "Level: 1 (Standard Survivor) "Strength: 8 (Years of manual labor have made you stronger than average) "Agility: 8 (You've got quick reflexes) "Constitution: 6 (You've been skipping meals lately) "Spirit: 9 (You keep your head when others panic) "Inventory: 16/16 slots (Base capacity)" "Inventory?" Riley studied the sixteen empty squares at the bottom of the display. She reached out, touched one of the toolboxes, and thought the word, "Store." Whoosh. The heavy box vanished. In its place, a tiny icon appeared in the first inventory slot, a miniature "x1" in the corner. "It actually worked." For the first time since arriving, a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. Retrieve. Thud. The toolbox landed back in the snow, puffing up powder. No energy cost. No sense of weight. And in that inventory, she could carry anything, regardless of how heavy it was. Later on, when she went scavenging, that would make all the difference. Riley rubbed her stiff, freezing hands together and turned her attention to the campfire at her feet. It was the only warmth in this frozen wasteland. Hovering above the flames, visible only to her, were a few lines of glowing text. "Basic Campfire (Lv.1) "Remaining Burn Time: 05:28:00 "Current Coverage: Radius six feet (Blocks wind and snow) "Upgrade Requirements: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Steel x5 "Description: This is your life. Do not let it die. Upgrading expands your safe zone and unlocks additional construction options." "Needs upgrading." Riley frowned. Wood and stone she could probably find. But coal? Steel? Out here in the middle of nowhere? A flash of movement caught her eye. A small wooden box, half-buried in the snow not far from the fire. The starter crate. Had to be. Riley didn't rush. First, she pulled the claw hammer from her belt—the one she always kept there, habit from years of work—and gripped it tight. She scanned the tree line. Listened past the wind. Nothing moved. No sounds but the storm. She walked over quickly, crouched by the box. No lock. She pried the lid open with the claw end of her hammer. Inside, a handful of items. "Obtained: Iron Axe x1 "Obtained: Stale Dark Bread x2 "Obtained: 500ml Bottled Water x1 "Obtained: Kindling x5 "Obtained: Insulated Field Jacket x1 "Obtained: Utility Rope (25ft) "Obtained: Thermal Underwear (Set) x2 Not much. Barely anything. Riley picked up one of the dark loaves. It was rock hard. She examined the jacket—basic, but warm-looking. "So this is what a standard survivor starts with." At least the system had thought of everything. Including the underwear. She'd half-expected to wake up naked in the snow; at least she didn't have to worry about that. She stored everything in her inventory, then shrugged on the field jacket. The temperature shift was brutal. Even those few seconds exposed had left her hands numb. Hypothermia would set in fast out here. Jacket on, she hurried back to the campfire. She pulled the five units of Kindling from her inventory and tossed them onto the flames. The fire roared higher. Warmth flooded over her. "Fuel added. Remaining Burn Time: 10:28:00" Ten hours. If she didn't move fast, in ten hours she'd freeze to death on this ice field. And the game had made it clear—if the fire died, the system would judge her dead. Whether she actually froze or not. Riley lifted her head and scanned the landscape. She was in a sparse coniferous forest. Barely alive trees, crusted with frost, dotted the area not far from her position. "Wood." A slow smile spread across her face. She patted the toolbox beside her. "Other people might have axes. But felling a tree with just an axe takes hours. Exhausts you." She unlatched the box. Pulled out the chainsaw. Checked the battery gauge—full. "I've got a handsaw in here too. And a chainsaw with a full charge." The battery wouldn't last forever. But it would last long enough to give her a massive head start. In this race for survival, that was everything. Chapter 2 The Chainsaw The wind screamed across the open ground, picking up loose snow and flinging it against her goggles like sand. It sounded like static. Riley had pulled her basic work gear from the toolbox before heading out. Now she stood in the snow, surrounded by clusters of thin conifers that looked half-dead already. She took a breath. The air burned going down. "Zzzzzzz—!!!" She squeezed the trigger. The orange-and-black lithium-ion chainsaw in her hands roared to life, the chain spinning so fast it blurred. She buried the teeth in the nearest pine trunk. Wood chips exploded everywhere. Fragrant shavings—still wet with resin—scattered across the pristine snow, stark and yellow against all that white. Five seconds. Crack. The pine tree, thick as her arm, groaned and tilted. Then it fell slow and heavy into a drift, sending up a puff of powder. "God bless modern technology." Riley shook out her wrist—the vibration had numbed her fingers—and allowed herself a small smile. Without that chainsaw, with just the basic iron axe the system had given her, felling a tree frozen solid like this would have taken twenty minutes minimum. And it would have left her soaked with sweat. In subzero temps, sweat was a death sentence. Once your base layers got wet, the moment you stopped moving, your body temperature would plummet. Hypothermia would follow fast. Riley didn't waste time celebrating. She knew the saw in her hands was a hungry machine. She'd brought two spare high-capacity batteries, sure, but until she found a way to recharge them, every second the motor ran was borrowed time. She had to gather as much wood as possible before the batteries gave out. "Zzzzz—Zzzzz—" At the edge of the forest, the chainsaw's snarl rose and fell, shattering the frozen silence. Riley worked like she was possessed. Fell a tree. Move to the next. Fell another. But she had to stay alert—watch for hidden snow pits underfoot, keep adjusting her collar against the wind that kept finding its way down her neck. Her stamina drained faster than she'd anticipated. In extreme cold, body burned through calories just to stay alive. Added walking through knee-deep snow, where every step took three times the energy of walking on pavement, and the math got ugly fast. Pretty soon, Riley was breathing hard. Her breath fogged the inside of her goggles, and she had to keep wiping them clear. "Zzzzz..." She was mid-cut on a tree—didn't even know which number anymore—when the chainsaw's roar stuttered. Died. The chain jammed solid in the wood. A red light blinked at her. Dead battery. Riley yanked the saw free and patted its housing. "Good work, buddy." Genuine regret in her voice. She straightened up and looked around. Pine trunks lay scattered across the snow in every direction. A decent haul. She counted silently. "Twenty-three total." Then the next problem hit her. According to the system, until she actually possessed these logs, they were still just natural resources. That meant they didn't qualify for Inventory storage. She couldn't just snap her fingers and make them disappear. She had to drag them back to camp. Riley grabbed the nearest pine and tried to pull. Heavy. Like, unreasonably heavy. Fresh-cut wood was full of moisture. Add the branches catching in the snow, dragging like anchors, and she felt like she was hauling a dead body through mud. "Huff... huff..." She gritted her teeth, looped rope around the trunk, slung it over her shoulder, leaned forward, and started walking. Inch by inch. The tree line to her campfire was maybe fifty yards. Right now, it felt like fifty miles. By the time she'd wrestled the fourth tree back into the fire's warm radius, she was wrecked. Her legs felt like someone had filled them with concrete. Her lungs burned from hauling freezing air through them. "Can't... can't do more." Riley made the call. She stopped. Those nineteen trees still out there in the snow—they called to her. Tempted her. But if she kept pushing without rest, without fuel for herself, she'd collapse out there. And out there, collapse meant death. She dropped down next to the big wooden crate that had held her starter supplies. It was less than three feet from the campfire. The flames danced orange and red, pumping out heat that felt like heaven. The shift from frozen to warm made her shiver violently. She pulled off her goggles and thick gloves, set them near the fire to warm up, then—still shaking—pulled the half-empty water bottle from her Inventory. Took a small sip. Then the bread. Two black bricks that looked more like construction material than food. "Crunch." Riley bit off a piece with effort. It was coarse. Tasted like sawdust with a hint of burnt toast. Bitter. But it was calories. Carbs. Fuel for her own fire. She forced herself to chew, swallow. When the food hit her stomach, warmth finally started spreading through her core. The uncontrollable shaking eased. After half a loaf, Riley leaned back against the crate. Her eyelids drooped. Post-exhaustion crash hit her like a wave. The campfire crackled. The wind seemed farther away now. Muffled. She really wanted to sleep... Her head nodded. Her body started sliding sideways. "Wait—" Some animal instinct jolted her awake just before she went under. She pinched her thigh. Hard. Then looked up at the timer floating above the flames. "Shelter Level 1 "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 06:28:00" Six and a half hours. If she slept too deep, too long, and that fire went out—what then? Even ignoring the obvious—that she'd freeze to death in this hellhole without a heat source—the game rules were clear. When the campfire hits zero, it's game over. "No sleeping. Not allowed." Riley slapped her own cheeks, forced herself upright. She stayed near the fire, but she didn't take off her heavy work clothes. She remembered reading something once, a survival article. "In the late stages of hypothermia, your hypothalamus malfunctions. You get a false sensation of heat. It's called "paradoxical undressing"—people strip down right before they freeze to death." "Okay. Process these four. Keep the fire fed." She pulled a traditional handsaw from the toolbox. Looking at the four thick pine logs on the ground, she almost laughed. Without power tools, breaking these down into burnable pieces would take at least half an hour. Burn the little energy she had left. But what choice did she have? Riley knelt in the snow, positioned the blade against the trunk, and was about to start cutting— A soft white light shot out from the system panel on her chest. It washed over the logs. "Ding! "Detected felled, intact logs within shelter range. "Perform quick recovery?" Riley's hand froze mid-saw. Quick recovery? It took her a second to process. Then relief flooded through her so hard she almost cried. "Yes! Recover!" She didn't hesitate. The next moment, something impossible happened. The four pine trunks—the ones she'd have to saw and split by hand, the ones that represented hours of brutal labor—dissolved into pale blue light particles. Not into dust. Into neat, uniform logs that stacked themselves automatically in her Inventory. The branches, the needles, all the useless parts—purified out of existence. "Recovery successful! "Obtained: Common Wood x20" Riley's eyes went wide, staring at the perfect lumber in her inventory display. Looked like it came straight from a hardware store. "One tree gives five units of wood? "And I don't have to cut it myself?" This changed everything. It meant she only had to handle the felling and the dragging. Once a log crossed into her camp's boundary, the system recognized it as hers. The most time-consuming part—the processing—just... didn't exist anymore. Riley immediately grabbed five units of wood and fed them to the fire. Whoosh. The flames leaped, hungry and grateful. "Fuel added. "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 12:20:00" "Five logs, five hours..." She did the math fast, looking at the fifteen units still on the ground. If she threw all of those in, that'd be another fifteen hours. Total of twenty-seven. She could sleep like the dead right now, and that fire would still be burning when she woke up. Security. For the first time since the world ended, Riley felt something like security. She selected the remaining wood. Deposited it all. Watched the countdown tick up to a very comfortable "27:20:00". Then her nerves finally let go. She dragged one of the toolboxes into position to block the wind, wrapped the field jacket tight around herself, pulled her hat down over her eyes, leaned back against the warm crate, and let the crackle of the fire pull her under. ***** She didn't sleep long. When she opened her eyes again, the sky was still that same dull gray-white. Impossible to tell if it was morning or afternoon. System clock said three hours. Her body ached. Shoulders and arms especially—felt like she'd gone ten rounds with someone. But her head was clear. She stretched her stiff neck and stood up. The snow seemed lighter. The feathery flakes had tapered off into sporadic icy grains. Riley ate a little more, got some fuel back in the tank, then stepped outside the campfire's warmth. The fire's effect wasn't what she'd expected. It wasn't that the temperature gradually dropped as you moved away. It was sharper than that. Like there was an invisible barrier around the flames. Inside, livable. Outside, the cold hit you like a wall. She wandered a little way off. The cold found every gap in her clothing. She thought about going farther, exploring. But there was nothing visible except that stand of trees she'd already worked. Maybe stuff was buried under the snow, but she couldn't see it. "No proper snow boots. Not going far." Riley glanced at the endless white distance with real regret. "Don't get greedy. Get those nineteen trees first." She turned. Looked at the woods. Her loot was still out there. And now she knew: if she could drag them back into the campfire's circle, the system would cash them out automatically. "Time to work." Riley rubbed her hands together. Let the motivation build. For the next few hours, she became a machine. Drag a tree to camp. Recover it. Go back for another. Repeat. It was boring. Exhausting. But watching those logs turn into numbers in her inventory—that feeling was hard to describe. Satisfying, in a way nothing had been satisfying in a long time. When the last pine trunk crossed into the light and dissolved into particles, Riley just collapsed. Lay flat in the snow and stared at the gray sky. She pulled up her Inventory. The once-empty slots were full now. Stack after stack of wood icons. "Item: Common Wood "Quantity: 80 "Description: Basic survival resource. Can be used for fuel or construction." Eighty units. Plus what was already burning in the campfire. Her day's work had yielded a clean hundred. One unit of wood burned for one hour. Riley looked at the flames dancing in front of her. Felt the heat on her face. Let herself smile, wide and real. "One hundred hours." Four full days. While everyone else was probably still panicking. Crying. Begging. Trying to figure out how to survive their first night in this frozen nightmare... She, Riley, had enough fuel stockpiled to last four days. Which meant: for the next ninety-six hours, unless she actively chose to die, nobody and nothing could put her fire out. She pulled the half-empty water bottle from Inventory. The space must have been insulated somehow—the water was still warm. Almost body temperature. She sipped it. Tasted sweet, even though it was just tap water. "Okay. Next step." Her gaze settled on the "Upgrade" button on the campfire panel. This open-air setup was fine for now. But if she was going to survive long-term, she needed something better. A real shelter. All she needed was a little stone. Some coal. Some steel. Then she could build something worth calling home. Chapter 3 The Trading Game The blizzard howled outside, but within the six-foot radius of the campfire, the air stayed surprisingly warm—like the wind had hit an invisible wall and just couldn't reach. Riley leaned back against the dusty wooden crate, holding the half-empty water bottle in her hand. She stared into the flames for a moment, then focused her attention inward. The pale blue system panel unfolded in front of her eyes again. Now that the immediate crisis was handled, she finally had time to sit quietly and really explore this so-called "Survival System". Beyond the personal stats and inventory, the bottom of the panel had a row of function icons: Server Channel, Friends List, Trading Market, and Crafting Manual. Friends List was empty. No surprise there. She hadn't exactly been a social butterfly back in the old world, and she sure as hell wasn't going to make friends easily in a frozen hellscape where everyone was fighting for their next breath. She tapped into the "Server Channel". A line of numbers appeared in the top left. "Server: US-008 "Current Online: 9911/10000" Ten thousand people started. Less than ten hours in, eighty-nine were already gone. "That doesn't add up." Everyone's starter crate came with a rusty iron axe and five units of wood. Plus the initial fuel the campfire had when they arrived—that alone bought them ten hours minimum, even if they just sat there doing nothing. What the hell did those people do to get eliminated so fast? The channel was moving fast, messages scrolling by every second. Desperation dripped from every line. "Someone help, I'm freezing my ass off out here. This stupid axe can't cut sh*t—every swing just bounces off and rattles my whole arm. Can anyone spare a couple logs? My dad's a senior VP at Walker Group. I'll wire you a million dollars when we get back, I swear." "Wake up, buddy. If your dad's still alive, he's out there chopping trees right now too." "Don't even talk to me. I spotted a wooden crate in the snow earlier, got all excited, ran over—and before I got within ten feet, some white rabbit thing jumped out of a drift. Teeth like needles. Almost took a chunk out of my leg. Missed the crate, wasted all that energy for nothing." "I saw that too! Random crates spawn in the wild. I opened a wooden one and got two chocolate bars and some coal." Reading through the chaos, Riley picked out two keywords, "Random Reward Crates" and "Dangerous Creatures". So this world was deeper than she thought. Wooden crates, copper crates—these randomly spawning resource points were the real way to get ahead. Coal came from crates. That was useful to know. And if coal was in crates, steel probably was too. But something bothered her. According to what people were saying, reward crates weren't exactly rare. So why hadn't she found a single one during her lumber run? She doubted it was just bad luck. Riley exited chat and tapped into the "Trading Market". "Seller: MountainMan88 Item: Stone x2 Wants: White Bread x5" "Seller: LoneWolf_21 Item: Cotton Cloth Wants: Clean Water" "Seller: NotDeadYet Item: Wood x3 Wants: Anything edible" Most people were trading for food and wood. The stuff that kept you alive right now. Things like stone and cloth were getting dumped cheap—nobody had the luxury of thinking long-term. Riley looked at her own inventory. Eighty units of wood staring back at her. Her heart beat a little faster. In this opening phase, where wood literally meant the difference between life and death, the resources in her hands were basically gold bars. "Time to trade," she muttered to herself. "Coal, steel—can't get those from chopping trees. And right now, wood's at maximum value. If I wait, the exchange rate shifts." Even with the chainsaw dead, she still had the handsaw. Less efficient, sure, but she could gather more wood if she needed it. Short-term, she wasn't going to run out. She clicked to post a message in the channel. "System Prompt: Detected that you have not set a virtual ID. Please enter your nickname (cannot be changed after setting)." Riley stared at the blank input box. Naming things was the worst. She sat there for a long time, nothing coming to mind. Finally, she gave up. Couldn't think of anything cool or clever, so she'd just go with something random. Her fingers tapped across the virtual keyboard—SpicyBurger. "Setting successful. ID locked." The prompt closed. Riley posted her message. "SpicyBurger: Selling wood in bulk. Looking for: Coal, Steel, High-calorie food. DM me with offers—what you have and your rate. Good deals go fast, don't sleep on this." For three seconds after the message appeared, the channel went dead silent. Then it exploded. "SpicyBurger? That name's making me hungry, what the hell." "Never mind the name—'wood in bulk'! We got a whale in here! Everyone else is stressing about the next hour and this person's already running a business?" "I need some! My campfire's down to like two hours. I don't know if I actually die when it hits zero but I don't wanna find out." Suddenly, half the channel was scrambling for wood. But then the skeptics crawled out. "Hang on. Everyone started with the same rusty axe. Chopping a tree in this weather takes twenty, thirty minutes minimum. Where's she getting 'bulk' wood from? Sounds like a scam." "InvincibleWarrior: Everybody chill. Look at that ID—sounds like a girl's handle. I'm a grown man, been busting my ass, and I've only got like ten logs saved up. My hands are shredded. Some girl with a food name claims she's got bulk? She's trying to run a game. Scam people out of their stuff." "Iron_Tough: Agreed. Scammers made it through the apocalypse too, I guess. My advice: ignore her. Don't get played. How much wood can a woman chop anyway? Probably can't even lift the axe right, lol." Riley scrolled through the messages, expression flat. She almost laughed. But some people pushed back. "FishHater44: How is it a scam? If she doesn't deliver, you don't complete the trade. Just 'cause you can't chop that much wood doesn't mean nobody can." Riley nodded slightly. That one had a point. But she didn't waste energy arguing in the channel. Instead, she flipped on Do Not Disturb for private messages—only allowing chat requests that included a trade offer. Some people didn't actually care whether she had wood. They just couldn't stand seeing someone else do well. "Ding. Ding. Ding." Private messages started pouring in like rain. Most players weren't idiots. Faced with the very real threat of freezing to death, they'd try anything for a chance. Riley opened the first one. "Windwalker: I got "Coal x3" from a crate. How much wood can I get for it? I can't chop anymore. The wind out here is insane. I tried to throw the coal in my fire but it just kept popping back out. System says my campfire level's too low, won't let me use it. I'm out of wood. My fire's almost dead." Riley thought for a moment. "Three coal for five wood. Deal?" She hadn't known about that restriction. Coal was supposed to be better fuel than wood—didn't expect the game to lock it behind a level gate. The reply came instantly, "Deal. But five wood feels light. It's coal." The guy was conflicted. He knew coal had value, but he was desperate. "I'll make it six. Final offer." Riley wasn't sure about coal's real value yet. Six was her limit. "Fine. Deal." They both dropped their items into the trade window. A moment later, it completed. A flash of white light. Riley's inventory lost six wood. Gained three chunks of coal, each about the size of a small melon. One down. "CrunchyFrog: Hey, I got two "Iron Ingots" from a crate. System calls them "Scrap Steel". Can I get eight wood for them? Trying to stock up enough to sleep through the night." Riley replied, "Sure. Initiate." In just over ten minutes, her wood stockpile dropped significantly. But her inventory filled up with good stuff. "Coal x10 "Stone x23 "Scrap Steel x5 "Raw Meat x2 "White Bread x2 "Basic Torch Blueprint x1" The blueprint was new. The description said it was required for crafting certain items. Seemed useful, so she'd traded for it. Meanwhile, back in the channel, that "InvincibleWarrior" guy who'd been mocking her earlier seemed to notice that people were actually completing trades. His tone got bitter. "InvincibleWarrior: Whatever. She probably got lucky with a high-tier crate. Let's see how long her stock lasts. Once the wood's gone, she'll be begging me to let her join my group." The people who'd successfully traded with Riley popped into the channel to thank her. That might have been fine—except the thanks caused problems. Since Riley had stopped trading for now, most people hadn't gotten anything. And the sky was darkening. Temperature outside the campfire radius was dropping fast. Gathering wood was getting harder. Trading was their only hope. The ones who'd pinned everything on Riley, seeing her stop, started losing it. "You said 'in bulk'! You did like five trades and quit. What are we supposed to do now?" "Keep trading! My fire's almost out. You want us to go chop trees in the dark?" "If you couldn't deliver, why'd you post? Showing off and then hiding." Whether it was coordinated or just genuine rage, the number of people defending Riley in the channel shrank fast. Mostly it was attacks now. Accusations of being irresponsible. Using scarcity tactics. Playing games with people's lives. Riley closed the channel. She couldn't be bothered. In a life-or-death situation like this, people losing it was normal. If she actually had unlimited resources, she'd trade more. But she didn't. And back on Earth, nobody had ever handed her anything out of charity. She wasn't about to start playing savior now. She looked down at the "Basic Torch Blueprint" in her inventory. "Requirements: Wood x10, Kerosene, Scrap Steel x2" Note: Requires Level 2 Workbench to craft." She leaned back against the crate again. Felt the weight of her stockpile pressing back against that lingering sense of unease. In this world, your ID didn't matter. Your gender didn't matter either. What mattered was who held the resources. She looked at what she had left: 36 units of wood. Plus the steel, coal, and stone from trading. Time to plan. Upgrading to a Level 2 campfire required 55 wood. She had all the other materials. For the wood, she'd just have to use the handsaw tomorrow and gather a little more. That settled, she pulled a few more logs from inventory and arranged them on top of the crate, making a small enclosed space. Curled up inside it, she watched the sky outside slowly darken to black. Her eyes grew heavy. She drifted off. Chapter 4 The Culling Riley woke to the kind of soreness that made you reconsider ever moving again. She'd slept like the dead—no dreams, no blizzard, just nothing. When she opened her eyes, the first things she saw were the logs she'd stacked as a windbreak and the steady glow of the campfire. She tried to stretch. Big mistake. Every muscle in her body lit up at once, screaming in protest. "Sh*t." Riley sucked air through her teeth and pressed a hand to her aching shoulder. Her lower back felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to it. Yesterday's work had been too much. She wasn't weak—far from it—but she was still human. The lactic acid had settled in overnight, and now she moved like an arthritic tin man. At least she was alive. She stowed the windbreak logs back in her inventory and looked around. The world hadn't changed. Same dull gray sky. Same swirling snow. Outside the six-foot radius of the fire, the drifts looked deeper than yesterday. The wind had been busy. Riley pulled out the half-empty water bottle and wet her throat. Then she retrieved the white bread she'd traded for yesterday. Compared to that dense, flavorless black bread, this was practically cake. She tore off small pieces, letting the faint sweetness dissolve on her tongue, and habitually opened the "Server Channel". She stopped chewing. The number in the top left hit her like a physical blow. "Current Online Players: 4968/10000" "Five thousand..." Riley's eyes went wide. In a single night, that number had been cut in half. Five thousand people. Gone. Winked out of existence on this frozen ice field while she slept. "Ding." The system notification cut through her thoughts—cold, emotionless, like it was announcing the weather. "Global Announcement: Congratulations to all survivors for successfully surviving the first day. "This was a culling. Last night eliminated those fools who failed to add fuel to their fires or refused to gather wood. Remember: in this place, tears mean nothing. When you die here, you're dead-dead. "You who remain are the lucky ones. "Grace Period: A five-day 'New Player Support Period' now begins. For the next five days, your initial supply crates will refresh daily with a fixed amount of food. "Special Reward: Each survivor receives one pair of "Standard Issue Snow Boots (Common)". Be grateful for this mercy. Enjoy the game." The words sat there on her screen. Fools. Mercy. The system's tone dripped with contempt. The math was simple. Starting package: five hours of fuel. Initial gift: five units of wood, another five hours. Total ten hours, if you did absolutely nothing. The ones who'd frozen to death last night—they were the ones who'd clung to hope. The ones too scared to move. The ones who'd told themselves someone would save them. Five thousand people. One night. Gone. This wasn't a game. It was a slaughter. In the channel, the survivors who'd made it through were clearly rattled by the numbers too. "Holy sh*t... My friend's icon went dark last night. Does that mean he's dead? Actually dead?" "I can't do this. I don't wanna play anymore, I wanna go home. I swear I'll work today. I'll chop wood, I'll do whatever, just please—" "Everyone move! Don't save your strength! If you die, that's it. No respawns!" Panic spread fast. But almost immediately, the tone shifted. The fear found a target. "That SpicyBurger—if she'd shared more wood yesterday, would so many people have died?" "For real. If she had extra, why not just give it away? Why did it have to be trades? She could've at least loaned some out." "This is what happens when people hoard resources and watch others freeze. Remember that name. Don't trade with her. Ever." Riley frowned. Here we go again. She scrolled up. Sure enough, there it was—that familiar ID: "InvincibleWarrior". He was going hard in the channel. "She's profiting off suffering. That's what some people do. Women like that are the worst—hoarding supplies while people die around them. Wait and see. Someone like her won't last." Riley laughed. Actually laughed out loud. Moral blackmail. In the apocalypse. She typed, "If you want wood, go cut it yourself. I'm not your mommy. No amount of crying in chat is gonna put logs in your inventory. You'd get more done if you just picked up your d*mn axe." The channel went quiet for a second. Then the reasonable voices piped up. "She's right. Nobody owes you anything. Work for it." "Exactly. Just 'cause someone's quiet doesn't mean they're an easy target." In a world where staying alive took everything you had, expecting charity was the dumbest move of all. Riley didn't waste more energy on it. People like that—the more you engaged, the more they thrived. Let him run his mouth. She had bigger things to worry about. She closed the channel and turned to the big wooden crate—her initial supply point. Sure enough, new items had materialized inside. "Bottled Water x3 "White Bread x3 "Fresh Orange Juice x1 "Standard Snow Boots x1" "Orange juice?" Riley picked up the bottle, genuinely surprised. The orange liquid inside sloshed gently. Vitamins. The system was actually giving them vitamins. She pulled off her old shoes—already damp and cold—and swapped into the new boots. They were clunky, sure. But they gripped the snow, and the insulation was real. The chill that had been seeping up through her soles disappeared instantly. Next, she opened her toolbox. Goggles on. Thick cut-resistant gloves. Head-to-toe gear. "Time to work." The channel noise faded from her mind. She had one priority today, and it wasn't arguing with idiots. She picked up the chainsaw and headed back to the tree line. The cold played tricks on batteries. She'd known that, intellectually. But knowing it and feeling it were different things. After just eight trees, the last spare battery gave out. The chainsaw stuttered, died, and went silent in her hands. Riley stared at it. "Son of a b*tch." Chapter 5 Dead Battery Riley stared at the dead chainsaw in her hands and shook her head. Without power, it was just an expensive paperweight. If she wanted more wood, she'd have to do it the old-fashioned way—pick up the axe or the manual handsaw from the toolbox and go to war with frozen timber. But eight more trees were eight more trees. Her stockpile was looking healthy. "First things first. Get these back." She sucked it up, stowed the chainsaw in her inventory, and started hauling. Her body screamed even louder than yesterday. Every muscle felt like it had been replaced with concrete. She dragged each log back one at a time, moving like a zombie. Drag. Rest two minutes. Drag again. The wind howled in her ears. Riley lost track of time, lost track of everything except the mechanical rhythm of work. By the time the sun was high—not that you could really see it through the clouds—she dragged the last log into the campfire's radius. It dissolved into light, absorbed by the system. Riley all but collapsed into the snow. "Acquired: Wood x40" She lay there for a moment, chest heaving, staring at the number in her inventory. A tired smile crept across her face. She had enough. Combined with the coal and steel from yesterday's trades, she had everything she needed for the upgrade. Riley forced herself upright and walked to the campfire. On the floating translucent panel, the "Upgrade" button glowed that tempting gold. "Upgrade Primitive Shelter to Lv.2? "Cost: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Scrap Steel x5 "Remaining after upgrade: Wood x16, Stone x3, Coal x0, Steel x0" "Upgrade." Riley took a breath and pressed it. "Hmmmm—!" A blinding white light erupted from the heart of the campfire, swallowing everything. Riley squeezed her eyes shut. No explosion. No thunder. Just a sound like Legos snapping together. A few seconds later, the light faded. Riley opened her eyes. And stopped breathing. The campfire wasn't just a campfire anymore. The rough stone ring had transformed into something neat and intentional—a proper firepit with a stone border for insulation, a place to set things, even a simple steel grate attached to the side. But that wasn't the big news. The heat that used to push back the cold within a six-foot radius now stretched a full fifteen feet. Inside that circle, snow was actively melting, revealing dark frozen soil underneath. In one corner, she spotted a patch of moss stubbornly poking through. Riley spun around. Behind the big wooden crate, a small log cabin stood waiting. It wasn't much—maybe forty feet square, built from rough-hewn logs. Nothing fancy. But it was solid. Four walls and a roof, blocking wind and snow completely. Riley walked over and pushed open the heavy wooden door. Warm air hit her face. Inside was simple: a wooden bed frame piled with dry grass, a crude workbench, a chair, and a small fireplace connected to a chimney that ran up through the roof. Rustic. But right now, it was heaven. Wood and fire. Four walls. A roof. Home. Riley ran her hand along the rough wall. Her eyes stung a little. She wouldn't have to sleep in the open anymore. Wouldn't have to wake up every few hours to check the fire. Wouldn't have to worry about freezing to death in her sleep. Right on cue, the server announcement chimed. Gold text this time, blazing right in the center of everyone's vision. "Server Announcement: Congratulations to player SpicyBurger for being the first to achieve "Level 2 Shelter". Rewards have been distributed." The chat channel, which had been wallowing in fear and despair, exploded. "Holy sh*t? Level 2 already? What does Level 2 unlock? Can you post pics, big shot?" "That's the wood seller from yesterday? No way. Absolute legend." "Carry me please! SpicyBurger, I'll be your loyal follower. I can cook, I can clean, I can—" "Teach us, master! How'd you gather materials so fast? What's your secret?" Compliments. Pleas. Desperate attempts to get noticed. And then, of course, the sour grapes. "InvincibleWarrior: Big deal. Just profiteering off everyone else's suffering. If she'd shared that wood instead of selling it, maybe those five thousand people would still be alive. How does it feel to climb on corpses?" "GodLovesMeFirst: Seriously. Building your success on other people's deaths. Karma's real. She'll get hers." Riley's jaw tightened. If InvincibleWarrior had been standing in front of her right now, she'd have knocked his teeth out. Guys like him—useless themselves, but always ready to tear down anyone who actually accomplished something. Sewer rats. Her private messages exploded too. She'd set it to only accept trade offers, but people had found a workaround—using the "trade note" function to send spam. "Hey beautiful, I'm a personal trainer. Great shape. Wanna see? Hit me with some wood and I'll do a voice call with you!" A photo of some guy flexing in a mirror, shirt off. Riley glanced at it, unimpressed. Decent abs. Pathetic attitude. Dude was clearly strong enough to chop wood—why was he wasting time on this? She'd never mentioned her gender, so most people probably assumed anyone who'd gathered that much wood must be a guy. The messages reflected that assumption. Some women sent selfies too, trying to flirt their way into favor. Didn't matter. Shameless cut across all demographics. From the backgrounds in the photos, everyone seemed to be in different locations. But one thing was consistent: they all had trees nearby. The system must have arranged that—a new player perk. "A bunch of degenerates." Riley's face went cold. She changed her privacy settings to "Friends Only". Then she added a line to her trading post description. "No spam. Send junk, get blocked." Silence. Blessed silence. She took a breath, let the noise drain away, and focused on what mattered. "First-place upgrade reward..." She opened her inventory. Sitting there, glowing faintly purple, was a gift box. For more exciting content, please download the "JoyRead" app to continue reading.
Chapter 1 The Countdown Ends It was the year 2027, and the end of the world was now less than an hour away. "00:59:23" Riley Carter stood on a ladder with a screw clenched between her teeth, an impact driver in her hand, securing the last window panel in place. A month ago, that timer had just appeared out of nowhere, hanging in the corner of everyone's vision like it had always been there. At first, people wrote it off as some kind of mass hacker prank. The government fed the media soothing statements in an attempt to keep things calm, but there was no way to talk down the panic as prices kept rising and supplies were held in a monopoly in real time. News outlets might spin whatever narrative they wanted, but no one could argue with the price of eggs. For a while, it was a frenzy. People cleaned out grocery stores like locusts. The government did what they could—price caps, purchase limits, reassurances from the podium—but none of it mattered. The cost of living kept climbing, and bit by bit, the country started coming apart at the seams. Online, it was a circus. Some people posted doom-laden predictions. Others openly celebrated the thought of the world finally burning. A few just seemed relieved they wouldn't have to clock in on Monday. In that final hour, things got truly ugly. Both on the streets and on social media, it was chaos. Some people figured why not went out with a bang? If the world was ending, they'd spend their last hours doing every reckless thing they'd ever fantasized about. Others, paralyzed by fear of whatever was coming, scrambled for anything they could hoard. Supplies. Weapons. Gasoline. Didn't matter what, as long as they had more of it than the next guy. Most people just wanted to be with the ones they loved. Riley didn't have that luxury anymore. Fresh out of community college, she'd lost both her parents in a highway pileup eighteen months back. The only thing they'd left her was the family hardware store, a cramped little place wedged between a laundromat and a taqueria. She'd been running it solo for just over a year when that d*mn countdown appeared overhead. At first, she'd thought maybe an apocalypse wouldn't be the worst thing. Maybe there'd be something on the other side. A reunion. But then she thought about her folks. They'd doted on her. Made her feel like the center of their world. And even though she'd grown a thick skin since going it alone, feeling indifferent to the world, she knew what they'd want. They'd want her to fight. To stay. She was the only piece of them still left in this world. People always say you aren't really gone until the last person forgets your name. As long as she kept breathing, kept carrying them with her another day, they weren't truly dead. Riley spat the screw into her palm, face calm, the impact driver whirring as she sank another fastener into the reinforced frame. "Flour's three hundred a pound now, and you can't even buy it straight—they make you tack on a bunch of other junk you don't need just to get it," she muttered to herself, shaking her head. When that timer first flickered into existence, Riley had done something smart. She'd liquidated everything. Converted every dollar she could scrape together into supplies. Unfortunately, by the time she hit the stores, inflation had already done its damage. Her savings didn't go nearly as far as they should have. Any cash that was left went toward tools. If the world was ending, she thought they could be useful. Riley pressed the last sheet of thick insulation foam into the window frame, seating it flush against the reinforced plywood beneath. The impact driver snarled as she buried the screws. Then she reached for her pneumatic glue gun—a satisfying pfft as the sealant filled the final gap. She wiped sweat from her forehead and climbed down off the ladder. Stepped back to admire her work. The little apartment was a fortress now. Doors reinforced. Windows barricaded. Every interior wall lined with an extra layer of insulation. She glanced down at herself. Custom-fit heavy-duty workwear. Slash-resistant fabric. More pockets than she'd ever need. Reinforced padding at the knees and elbows. It wasn't fashionable, but it was practical. And her real treasure: tools. A chainsaw. A reciprocating saw. The impact driver in her hand. A multi-bit screwdriver that had cost more than she wanted to admit. She'd brought everything usable from the shop back here, consolidated it into three massive toolboxes. She'd also grabbed some stuff like an air purifier and some spare filters—anything that might matter when civilization took a vacation. She didn't know what the countdown would bring. Some folks online predicted zombies. Others said asteroid impact. Volcanic winter. Alien invasion. Take your pick. Food. Tools. Shelter. She'd even started working out, building strength she'd never needed before. She'd done everything she could think of to prepare. Whatever was coming, she figured she'd last longer than most. With nothing left to do, she dropped onto one of the big toolboxes laid flat on the floor, wiped her forehead again, and pulled out her phone. Most news apps had crashed. The only things still loading were comment sections, and they were going crazy. [Anyone got rice? I'll pay eight grand for a bag. Please, we got nothing left.] [Forget it, man. Money's toilet paper now. Saw it with my own eyes—some rich assholes cleared out the Costco warehouse last week. All that 'purchase limit' crap was just theater. Shelves were empty 'cause the stock never made it there. It's all sitting in some hedge fund guy's basement.] [No kidding? Same thing happened to me! Store manager kept telling me, 'We're limiting purchases, come back next week, we'll put your name on the list.' So the whole time the back room was empty? They were just jerking us around?] [Of course they were. Rich people cornered the market on everything. So what are normal people supposed to do? Just sit here and die?] [Anyone know what actually happens when the clock hits zero? Like, is it nukes? That virus thing from that old video game?] Riley locked her phone. Tucked it away. She didn't have anything to add to that conversation. A month ago, when the countdown first showed up, prices had spiked instantly. A fifty-pound bag of rice that normally went for thirty bucks jumped to eight hundred overnight. By yesterday, it was breaking two grand. The wealthy had rolled up with trucks and cleaned out supermarkets. Riley had been smart—she'd gone early, bought stuff that would keep, stuff that was calorie-dense and cheap. Chocolate. Survival biscuits. Canned goods. It wasn't much, but it was enough for one person, at least for a while. She took a deep breath and glanced at the timer. "00:01:10" Just over a minute. Riley gripped the toolbox beneath her. Knuckles white. Who knew what would happen when that thing hit zero? Maybe it'd be like 2012—all hype, nothing real. In that last minute, her life flickered past. Her parents' faces. The hardware store. The lonely months since. "00:00:00" The countdown ended. Riley had just started to breathe a sigh of relief—nothing happened, maybe it really was nothing—when the world lurched beneath her. A dizzying weightlessness. A sensation of falling. Everything spun. ***** She didn't know how long she was out. "Whew." A wind like a knife blade sliced across her face. Riley's eyes snapped open. Her warm apartment was gone. In its place, an endless white expanse stretched in every direction. Snow whipped through the air. Wind howled like a wounded animal. And at her feet, a small campfire guttered in the gale, threatening to die at any second. "What the—" Before she could process, a chime rang directly in her skull. Not heard. Known. "Welcome to the Extreme Cold Survival Game. "Earth no longer exists. This is your new home. This is your grave. "Survival rules are as follows. "1. Each player begins with one campfire. It is your only defense against the cold. If the campfire dies, you will be judged deceased by the system. Not that it matters—without the fire, you won't last anyway. "2. This is a real world. You can die from hunger. From exposure. From animal attack. "3. Supplies stockpiled in your previous world do not carry over. Only items on your person, or in direct physical contact at the moment of transfer, are retained. "4. Struggle to survive. It is your only hope." Riley's heart slammed against her ribs. Supplies didn't carry over? Her mind flashed to those wealthy forum posters bragging about their warehouse stockpiles. And then she looked down at herself. Workwear. Intact. And— She was still sitting on the three giant toolboxes. They sat solidly in the snow, dusted with powder, unmistakably here. "Whew." Riley let out a long breath. A white cloud dispersed in front of her face. Pity, though. During her renovations, she'd stocked those boxes with a lot of power tools. The expensive impact driver. The reciprocating saw. In a world with no electrical outlets, once those batteries died, they were just dead weight. But even so. The hand tools. The consumables. The sheer volume of stuff in those boxes—it was a treasure beyond measure in a place like this. Riley forced herself to calm down. She was here. She'd deal with it. Something new lived in her mind now. She concentrated, and a translucent pale-blue screen materialized in front of her eyes. Looked just like a video game HUD. "Personal Panel "Name: Riley Carter "ID: 1120-US "Level: 1 (Standard Survivor) "Strength: 8 (Years of manual labor have made you stronger than average) "Agility: 8 (You've got quick reflexes) "Constitution: 6 (You've been skipping meals lately) "Spirit: 9 (You keep your head when others panic) "Inventory: 16/16 slots (Base capacity)" "Inventory?" Riley studied the sixteen empty squares at the bottom of the display. She reached out, touched one of the toolboxes, and thought the word, "Store." Whoosh. The heavy box vanished. In its place, a tiny icon appeared in the first inventory slot, a miniature "x1" in the corner. "It actually worked." For the first time since arriving, a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. Retrieve. Thud. The toolbox landed back in the snow, puffing up powder. No energy cost. No sense of weight. And in that inventory, she could carry anything, regardless of how heavy it was. Later on, when she went scavenging, that would make all the difference. Riley rubbed her stiff, freezing hands together and turned her attention to the campfire at her feet. It was the only warmth in this frozen wasteland. Hovering above the flames, visible only to her, were a few lines of glowing text. "Basic Campfire (Lv.1) "Remaining Burn Time: 05:28:00 "Current Coverage: Radius six feet (Blocks wind and snow) "Upgrade Requirements: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Steel x5 "Description: This is your life. Do not let it die. Upgrading expands your safe zone and unlocks additional construction options." "Needs upgrading." Riley frowned. Wood and stone she could probably find. But coal? Steel? Out here in the middle of nowhere? A flash of movement caught her eye. A small wooden box, half-buried in the snow not far from the fire. The starter crate. Had to be. Riley didn't rush. First, she pulled the claw hammer from her belt—the one she always kept there, habit from years of work—and gripped it tight. She scanned the tree line. Listened past the wind. Nothing moved. No sounds but the storm. She walked over quickly, crouched by the box. No lock. She pried the lid open with the claw end of her hammer. Inside, a handful of items. "Obtained: Iron Axe x1 "Obtained: Stale Dark Bread x2 "Obtained: 500ml Bottled Water x1 "Obtained: Kindling x5 "Obtained: Insulated Field Jacket x1 "Obtained: Utility Rope (25ft) "Obtained: Thermal Underwear (Set) x2 Not much. Barely anything. Riley picked up one of the dark loaves. It was rock hard. She examined the jacket—basic, but warm-looking. "So this is what a standard survivor starts with." At least the system had thought of everything. Including the underwear. She'd half-expected to wake up naked in the snow; at least she didn't have to worry about that. She stored everything in her inventory, then shrugged on the field jacket. The temperature shift was brutal. Even those few seconds exposed had left her hands numb. Hypothermia would set in fast out here. Jacket on, she hurried back to the campfire. She pulled the five units of Kindling from her inventory and tossed them onto the flames. The fire roared higher. Warmth flooded over her. "Fuel added. Remaining Burn Time: 10:28:00" Ten hours. If she didn't move fast, in ten hours she'd freeze to death on this ice field. And the game had made it clear—if the fire died, the system would judge her dead. Whether she actually froze or not. Riley lifted her head and scanned the landscape. She was in a sparse coniferous forest. Barely alive trees, crusted with frost, dotted the area not far from her position. "Wood." A slow smile spread across her face. She patted the toolbox beside her. "Other people might have axes. But felling a tree with just an axe takes hours. Exhausts you." She unlatched the box. Pulled out the chainsaw. Checked the battery gauge—full. "I've got a handsaw in here too. And a chainsaw with a full charge." The battery wouldn't last forever. But it would last long enough to give her a massive head start. In this race for survival, that was everything. Chapter 2 The Chainsaw The wind screamed across the open ground, picking up loose snow and flinging it against her goggles like sand. It sounded like static. Riley had pulled her basic work gear from the toolbox before heading out. Now she stood in the snow, surrounded by clusters of thin conifers that looked half-dead already. She took a breath. The air burned going down. "Zzzzzzz—!!!" She squeezed the trigger. The orange-and-black lithium-ion chainsaw in her hands roared to life, the chain spinning so fast it blurred. She buried the teeth in the nearest pine trunk. Wood chips exploded everywhere. Fragrant shavings—still wet with resin—scattered across the pristine snow, stark and yellow against all that white. Five seconds. Crack. The pine tree, thick as her arm, groaned and tilted. Then it fell slow and heavy into a drift, sending up a puff of powder. "God bless modern technology." Riley shook out her wrist—the vibration had numbed her fingers—and allowed herself a small smile. Without that chainsaw, with just the basic iron axe the system had given her, felling a tree frozen solid like this would have taken twenty minutes minimum. And it would have left her soaked with sweat. In subzero temps, sweat was a death sentence. Once your base layers got wet, the moment you stopped moving, your body temperature would plummet. Hypothermia would follow fast. Riley didn't waste time celebrating. She knew the saw in her hands was a hungry machine. She'd brought two spare high-capacity batteries, sure, but until she found a way to recharge them, every second the motor ran was borrowed time. She had to gather as much wood as possible before the batteries gave out. "Zzzzz—Zzzzz—" At the edge of the forest, the chainsaw's snarl rose and fell, shattering the frozen silence. Riley worked like she was possessed. Fell a tree. Move to the next. Fell another. But she had to stay alert—watch for hidden snow pits underfoot, keep adjusting her collar against the wind that kept finding its way down her neck. Her stamina drained faster than she'd anticipated. In extreme cold, body burned through calories just to stay alive. Added walking through knee-deep snow, where every step took three times the energy of walking on pavement, and the math got ugly fast. Pretty soon, Riley was breathing hard. Her breath fogged the inside of her goggles, and she had to keep wiping them clear. "Zzzzz..." She was mid-cut on a tree—didn't even know which number anymore—when the chainsaw's roar stuttered. Died. The chain jammed solid in the wood. A red light blinked at her. Dead battery. Riley yanked the saw free and patted its housing. "Good work, buddy." Genuine regret in her voice. She straightened up and looked around. Pine trunks lay scattered across the snow in every direction. A decent haul. She counted silently. "Twenty-three total." Then the next problem hit her. According to the system, until she actually possessed these logs, they were still just natural resources. That meant they didn't qualify for Inventory storage. She couldn't just snap her fingers and make them disappear. She had to drag them back to camp. Riley grabbed the nearest pine and tried to pull. Heavy. Like, unreasonably heavy. Fresh-cut wood was full of moisture. Add the branches catching in the snow, dragging like anchors, and she felt like she was hauling a dead body through mud. "Huff... huff..." She gritted her teeth, looped rope around the trunk, slung it over her shoulder, leaned forward, and started walking. Inch by inch. The tree line to her campfire was maybe fifty yards. Right now, it felt like fifty miles. By the time she'd wrestled the fourth tree back into the fire's warm radius, she was wrecked. Her legs felt like someone had filled them with concrete. Her lungs burned from hauling freezing air through them. "Can't... can't do more." Riley made the call. She stopped. Those nineteen trees still out there in the snow—they called to her. Tempted her. But if she kept pushing without rest, without fuel for herself, she'd collapse out there. And out there, collapse meant death. She dropped down next to the big wooden crate that had held her starter supplies. It was less than three feet from the campfire. The flames danced orange and red, pumping out heat that felt like heaven. The shift from frozen to warm made her shiver violently. She pulled off her goggles and thick gloves, set them near the fire to warm up, then—still shaking—pulled the half-empty water bottle from her Inventory. Took a small sip. Then the bread. Two black bricks that looked more like construction material than food. "Crunch." Riley bit off a piece with effort. It was coarse. Tasted like sawdust with a hint of burnt toast. Bitter. But it was calories. Carbs. Fuel for her own fire. She forced herself to chew, swallow. When the food hit her stomach, warmth finally started spreading through her core. The uncontrollable shaking eased. After half a loaf, Riley leaned back against the crate. Her eyelids drooped. Post-exhaustion crash hit her like a wave. The campfire crackled. The wind seemed farther away now. Muffled. She really wanted to sleep... Her head nodded. Her body started sliding sideways. "Wait—" Some animal instinct jolted her awake just before she went under. She pinched her thigh. Hard. Then looked up at the timer floating above the flames. "Shelter Level 1 "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 06:28:00" Six and a half hours. If she slept too deep, too long, and that fire went out—what then? Even ignoring the obvious—that she'd freeze to death in this hellhole without a heat source—the game rules were clear. When the campfire hits zero, it's game over. "No sleeping. Not allowed." Riley slapped her own cheeks, forced herself upright. She stayed near the fire, but she didn't take off her heavy work clothes. She remembered reading something once, a survival article. "In the late stages of hypothermia, your hypothalamus malfunctions. You get a false sensation of heat. It's called "paradoxical undressing"—people strip down right before they freeze to death." "Okay. Process these four. Keep the fire fed." She pulled a traditional handsaw from the toolbox. Looking at the four thick pine logs on the ground, she almost laughed. Without power tools, breaking these down into burnable pieces would take at least half an hour. Burn the little energy she had left. But what choice did she have? Riley knelt in the snow, positioned the blade against the trunk, and was about to start cutting— A soft white light shot out from the system panel on her chest. It washed over the logs. "Ding! "Detected felled, intact logs within shelter range. "Perform quick recovery?" Riley's hand froze mid-saw. Quick recovery? It took her a second to process. Then relief flooded through her so hard she almost cried. "Yes! Recover!" She didn't hesitate. The next moment, something impossible happened. The four pine trunks—the ones she'd have to saw and split by hand, the ones that represented hours of brutal labor—dissolved into pale blue light particles. Not into dust. Into neat, uniform logs that stacked themselves automatically in her Inventory. The branches, the needles, all the useless parts—purified out of existence. "Recovery successful! "Obtained: Common Wood x20" Riley's eyes went wide, staring at the perfect lumber in her inventory display. Looked like it came straight from a hardware store. "One tree gives five units of wood? "And I don't have to cut it myself?" This changed everything. It meant she only had to handle the felling and the dragging. Once a log crossed into her camp's boundary, the system recognized it as hers. The most time-consuming part—the processing—just... didn't exist anymore. Riley immediately grabbed five units of wood and fed them to the fire. Whoosh. The flames leaped, hungry and grateful. "Fuel added. "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 12:20:00" "Five logs, five hours..." She did the math fast, looking at the fifteen units still on the ground. If she threw all of those in, that'd be another fifteen hours. Total of twenty-seven. She could sleep like the dead right now, and that fire would still be burning when she woke up. Security. For the first time since the world ended, Riley felt something like security. She selected the remaining wood. Deposited it all. Watched the countdown tick up to a very comfortable "27:20:00". Then her nerves finally let go. She dragged one of the toolboxes into position to block the wind, wrapped the field jacket tight around herself, pulled her hat down over her eyes, leaned back against the warm crate, and let the crackle of the fire pull her under. ***** She didn't sleep long. When she opened her eyes again, the sky was still that same dull gray-white. Impossible to tell if it was morning or afternoon. System clock said three hours. Her body ached. Shoulders and arms especially—felt like she'd gone ten rounds with someone. But her head was clear. She stretched her stiff neck and stood up. The snow seemed lighter. The feathery flakes had tapered off into sporadic icy grains. Riley ate a little more, got some fuel back in the tank, then stepped outside the campfire's warmth. The fire's effect wasn't what she'd expected. It wasn't that the temperature gradually dropped as you moved away. It was sharper than that. Like there was an invisible barrier around the flames. Inside, livable. Outside, the cold hit you like a wall. She wandered a little way off. The cold found every gap in her clothing. She thought about going farther, exploring. But there was nothing visible except that stand of trees she'd already worked. Maybe stuff was buried under the snow, but she couldn't see it. "No proper snow boots. Not going far." Riley glanced at the endless white distance with real regret. "Don't get greedy. Get those nineteen trees first." She turned. Looked at the woods. Her loot was still out there. And now she knew: if she could drag them back into the campfire's circle, the system would cash them out automatically. "Time to work." Riley rubbed her hands together. Let the motivation build. For the next few hours, she became a machine. Drag a tree to camp. Recover it. Go back for another. Repeat. It was boring. Exhausting. But watching those logs turn into numbers in her inventory—that feeling was hard to describe. Satisfying, in a way nothing had been satisfying in a long time. When the last pine trunk crossed into the light and dissolved into particles, Riley just collapsed. Lay flat in the snow and stared at the gray sky. She pulled up her Inventory. The once-empty slots were full now. Stack after stack of wood icons. "Item: Common Wood "Quantity: 80 "Description: Basic survival resource. Can be used for fuel or construction." Eighty units. Plus what was already burning in the campfire. Her day's work had yielded a clean hundred. One unit of wood burned for one hour. Riley looked at the flames dancing in front of her. Felt the heat on her face. Let herself smile, wide and real. "One hundred hours." Four full days. While everyone else was probably still panicking. Crying. Begging. Trying to figure out how to survive their first night in this frozen nightmare... She, Riley, had enough fuel stockpiled to last four days. Which meant: for the next ninety-six hours, unless she actively chose to die, nobody and nothing could put her fire out. She pulled the half-empty water bottle from Inventory. The space must have been insulated somehow—the water was still warm. Almost body temperature. She sipped it. Tasted sweet, even though it was just tap water. "Okay. Next step." Her gaze settled on the "Upgrade" button on the campfire panel. This open-air setup was fine for now. But if she was going to survive long-term, she needed something better. A real shelter. All she needed was a little stone. Some coal. Some steel. Then she could build something worth calling home. Chapter 3 The Trading Game The blizzard howled outside, but within the six-foot radius of the campfire, the air stayed surprisingly warm—like the wind had hit an invisible wall and just couldn't reach. Riley leaned back against the dusty wooden crate, holding the half-empty water bottle in her hand. She stared into the flames for a moment, then focused her attention inward. The pale blue system panel unfolded in front of her eyes again. Now that the immediate crisis was handled, she finally had time to sit quietly and really explore this so-called "Survival System". Beyond the personal stats and inventory, the bottom of the panel had a row of function icons: Server Channel, Friends List, Trading Market, and Crafting Manual. Friends List was empty. No surprise there. She hadn't exactly been a social butterfly back in the old world, and she sure as hell wasn't going to make friends easily in a frozen hellscape where everyone was fighting for their next breath. She tapped into the "Server Channel". A line of numbers appeared in the top left. "Server: US-008 "Current Online: 9911/10000" Ten thousand people started. Less than ten hours in, eighty-nine were already gone. "That doesn't add up." Everyone's starter crate came with a rusty iron axe and five units of wood. Plus the initial fuel the campfire had when they arrived—that alone bought them ten hours minimum, even if they just sat there doing nothing. What the hell did those people do to get eliminated so fast? The channel was moving fast, messages scrolling by every second. Desperation dripped from every line. "Someone help, I'm freezing my ass off out here. This stupid axe can't cut sh*t—every swing just bounces off and rattles my whole arm. Can anyone spare a couple logs? My dad's a senior VP at Walker Group. I'll wire you a million dollars when we get back, I swear." "Wake up, buddy. If your dad's still alive, he's out there chopping trees right now too." "Don't even talk to me. I spotted a wooden crate in the snow earlier, got all excited, ran over—and before I got within ten feet, some white rabbit thing jumped out of a drift. Teeth like needles. Almost took a chunk out of my leg. Missed the crate, wasted all that energy for nothing." "I saw that too! Random crates spawn in the wild. I opened a wooden one and got two chocolate bars and some coal." Reading through the chaos, Riley picked out two keywords, "Random Reward Crates" and "Dangerous Creatures". So this world was deeper than she thought. Wooden crates, copper crates—these randomly spawning resource points were the real way to get ahead. Coal came from crates. That was useful to know. And if coal was in crates, steel probably was too. But something bothered her. According to what people were saying, reward crates weren't exactly rare. So why hadn't she found a single one during her lumber run? She doubted it was just bad luck. Riley exited chat and tapped into the "Trading Market". "Seller: MountainMan88 Item: Stone x2 Wants: White Bread x5" "Seller: LoneWolf_21 Item: Cotton Cloth Wants: Clean Water" "Seller: NotDeadYet Item: Wood x3 Wants: Anything edible" Most people were trading for food and wood. The stuff that kept you alive right now. Things like stone and cloth were getting dumped cheap—nobody had the luxury of thinking long-term. Riley looked at her own inventory. Eighty units of wood staring back at her. Her heart beat a little faster. In this opening phase, where wood literally meant the difference between life and death, the resources in her hands were basically gold bars. "Time to trade," she muttered to herself. "Coal, steel—can't get those from chopping trees. And right now, wood's at maximum value. If I wait, the exchange rate shifts." Even with the chainsaw dead, she still had the handsaw. Less efficient, sure, but she could gather more wood if she needed it. Short-term, she wasn't going to run out. She clicked to post a message in the channel. "System Prompt: Detected that you have not set a virtual ID. Please enter your nickname (cannot be changed after setting)." Riley stared at the blank input box. Naming things was the worst. She sat there for a long time, nothing coming to mind. Finally, she gave up. Couldn't think of anything cool or clever, so she'd just go with something random. Her fingers tapped across the virtual keyboard—SpicyBurger. "Setting successful. ID locked." The prompt closed. Riley posted her message. "SpicyBurger: Selling wood in bulk. Looking for: Coal, Steel, High-calorie food. DM me with offers—what you have and your rate. Good deals go fast, don't sleep on this." For three seconds after the message appeared, the channel went dead silent. Then it exploded. "SpicyBurger? That name's making me hungry, what the hell." "Never mind the name—'wood in bulk'! We got a whale in here! Everyone else is stressing about the next hour and this person's already running a business?" "I need some! My campfire's down to like two hours. I don't know if I actually die when it hits zero but I don't wanna find out." Suddenly, half the channel was scrambling for wood. But then the skeptics crawled out. "Hang on. Everyone started with the same rusty axe. Chopping a tree in this weather takes twenty, thirty minutes minimum. Where's she getting 'bulk' wood from? Sounds like a scam." "InvincibleWarrior: Everybody chill. Look at that ID—sounds like a girl's handle. I'm a grown man, been busting my ass, and I've only got like ten logs saved up. My hands are shredded. Some girl with a food name claims she's got bulk? She's trying to run a game. Scam people out of their stuff." "Iron_Tough: Agreed. Scammers made it through the apocalypse too, I guess. My advice: ignore her. Don't get played. How much wood can a woman chop anyway? Probably can't even lift the axe right, lol." Riley scrolled through the messages, expression flat. She almost laughed. But some people pushed back. "FishHater44: How is it a scam? If she doesn't deliver, you don't complete the trade. Just 'cause you can't chop that much wood doesn't mean nobody can." Riley nodded slightly. That one had a point. But she didn't waste energy arguing in the channel. Instead, she flipped on Do Not Disturb for private messages—only allowing chat requests that included a trade offer. Some people didn't actually care whether she had wood. They just couldn't stand seeing someone else do well. "Ding. Ding. Ding." Private messages started pouring in like rain. Most players weren't idiots. Faced with the very real threat of freezing to death, they'd try anything for a chance. Riley opened the first one. "Windwalker: I got "Coal x3" from a crate. How much wood can I get for it? I can't chop anymore. The wind out here is insane. I tried to throw the coal in my fire but it just kept popping back out. System says my campfire level's too low, won't let me use it. I'm out of wood. My fire's almost dead." Riley thought for a moment. "Three coal for five wood. Deal?" She hadn't known about that restriction. Coal was supposed to be better fuel than wood—didn't expect the game to lock it behind a level gate. The reply came instantly, "Deal. But five wood feels light. It's coal." The guy was conflicted. He knew coal had value, but he was desperate. "I'll make it six. Final offer." Riley wasn't sure about coal's real value yet. Six was her limit. "Fine. Deal." They both dropped their items into the trade window. A moment later, it completed. A flash of white light. Riley's inventory lost six wood. Gained three chunks of coal, each about the size of a small melon. One down. "CrunchyFrog: Hey, I got two "Iron Ingots" from a crate. System calls them "Scrap Steel". Can I get eight wood for them? Trying to stock up enough to sleep through the night." Riley replied, "Sure. Initiate." In just over ten minutes, her wood stockpile dropped significantly. But her inventory filled up with good stuff. "Coal x10 "Stone x23 "Scrap Steel x5 "Raw Meat x2 "White Bread x2 "Basic Torch Blueprint x1" The blueprint was new. The description said it was required for crafting certain items. Seemed useful, so she'd traded for it. Meanwhile, back in the channel, that "InvincibleWarrior" guy who'd been mocking her earlier seemed to notice that people were actually completing trades. His tone got bitter. "InvincibleWarrior: Whatever. She probably got lucky with a high-tier crate. Let's see how long her stock lasts. Once the wood's gone, she'll be begging me to let her join my group." The people who'd successfully traded with Riley popped into the channel to thank her. That might have been fine—except the thanks caused problems. Since Riley had stopped trading for now, most people hadn't gotten anything. And the sky was darkening. Temperature outside the campfire radius was dropping fast. Gathering wood was getting harder. Trading was their only hope. The ones who'd pinned everything on Riley, seeing her stop, started losing it. "You said 'in bulk'! You did like five trades and quit. What are we supposed to do now?" "Keep trading! My fire's almost out. You want us to go chop trees in the dark?" "If you couldn't deliver, why'd you post? Showing off and then hiding." Whether it was coordinated or just genuine rage, the number of people defending Riley in the channel shrank fast. Mostly it was attacks now. Accusations of being irresponsible. Using scarcity tactics. Playing games with people's lives. Riley closed the channel. She couldn't be bothered. In a life-or-death situation like this, people losing it was normal. If she actually had unlimited resources, she'd trade more. But she didn't. And back on Earth, nobody had ever handed her anything out of charity. She wasn't about to start playing savior now. She looked down at the "Basic Torch Blueprint" in her inventory. "Requirements: Wood x10, Kerosene, Scrap Steel x2" Note: Requires Level 2 Workbench to craft." She leaned back against the crate again. Felt the weight of her stockpile pressing back against that lingering sense of unease. In this world, your ID didn't matter. Your gender didn't matter either. What mattered was who held the resources. She looked at what she had left: 36 units of wood. Plus the steel, coal, and stone from trading. Time to plan. Upgrading to a Level 2 campfire required 55 wood. She had all the other materials. For the wood, she'd just have to use the handsaw tomorrow and gather a little more. That settled, she pulled a few more logs from inventory and arranged them on top of the crate, making a small enclosed space. Curled up inside it, she watched the sky outside slowly darken to black. Her eyes grew heavy. She drifted off. Chapter 4 The Culling Riley woke to the kind of soreness that made you reconsider ever moving again. She'd slept like the dead—no dreams, no blizzard, just nothing. When she opened her eyes, the first things she saw were the logs she'd stacked as a windbreak and the steady glow of the campfire. She tried to stretch. Big mistake. Every muscle in her body lit up at once, screaming in protest. "Sh*t." Riley sucked air through her teeth and pressed a hand to her aching shoulder. Her lower back felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to it. Yesterday's work had been too much. She wasn't weak—far from it—but she was still human. The lactic acid had settled in overnight, and now she moved like an arthritic tin man. At least she was alive. She stowed the windbreak logs back in her inventory and looked around. The world hadn't changed. Same dull gray sky. Same swirling snow. Outside the six-foot radius of the fire, the drifts looked deeper than yesterday. The wind had been busy. Riley pulled out the half-empty water bottle and wet her throat. Then she retrieved the white bread she'd traded for yesterday. Compared to that dense, flavorless black bread, this was practically cake. She tore off small pieces, letting the faint sweetness dissolve on her tongue, and habitually opened the "Server Channel". She stopped chewing. The number in the top left hit her like a physical blow. "Current Online Players: 4968/10000" "Five thousand..." Riley's eyes went wide. In a single night, that number had been cut in half. Five thousand people. Gone. Winked out of existence on this frozen ice field while she slept. "Ding." The system notification cut through her thoughts—cold, emotionless, like it was announcing the weather. "Global Announcement: Congratulations to all survivors for successfully surviving the first day. "This was a culling. Last night eliminated those fools who failed to add fuel to their fires or refused to gather wood. Remember: in this place, tears mean nothing. When you die here, you're dead-dead. "You who remain are the lucky ones. "Grace Period: A five-day 'New Player Support Period' now begins. For the next five days, your initial supply crates will refresh daily with a fixed amount of food. "Special Reward: Each survivor receives one pair of "Standard Issue Snow Boots (Common)". Be grateful for this mercy. Enjoy the game." The words sat there on her screen. Fools. Mercy. The system's tone dripped with contempt. The math was simple. Starting package: five hours of fuel. Initial gift: five units of wood, another five hours. Total ten hours, if you did absolutely nothing. The ones who'd frozen to death last night—they were the ones who'd clung to hope. The ones too scared to move. The ones who'd told themselves someone would save them. Five thousand people. One night. Gone. This wasn't a game. It was a slaughter. In the channel, the survivors who'd made it through were clearly rattled by the numbers too. "Holy sh*t... My friend's icon went dark last night. Does that mean he's dead? Actually dead?" "I can't do this. I don't wanna play anymore, I wanna go home. I swear I'll work today. I'll chop wood, I'll do whatever, just please—" "Everyone move! Don't save your strength! If you die, that's it. No respawns!" Panic spread fast. But almost immediately, the tone shifted. The fear found a target. "That SpicyBurger—if she'd shared more wood yesterday, would so many people have died?" "For real. If she had extra, why not just give it away? Why did it have to be trades? She could've at least loaned some out." "This is what happens when people hoard resources and watch others freeze. Remember that name. Don't trade with her. Ever." Riley frowned. Here we go again. She scrolled up. Sure enough, there it was—that familiar ID: "InvincibleWarrior". He was going hard in the channel. "She's profiting off suffering. That's what some people do. Women like that are the worst—hoarding supplies while people die around them. Wait and see. Someone like her won't last." Riley laughed. Actually laughed out loud. Moral blackmail. In the apocalypse. She typed, "If you want wood, go cut it yourself. I'm not your mommy. No amount of crying in chat is gonna put logs in your inventory. You'd get more done if you just picked up your d*mn axe." The channel went quiet for a second. Then the reasonable voices piped up. "She's right. Nobody owes you anything. Work for it." "Exactly. Just 'cause someone's quiet doesn't mean they're an easy target." In a world where staying alive took everything you had, expecting charity was the dumbest move of all. Riley didn't waste more energy on it. People like that—the more you engaged, the more they thrived. Let him run his mouth. She had bigger things to worry about. She closed the channel and turned to the big wooden crate—her initial supply point. Sure enough, new items had materialized inside. "Bottled Water x3 "White Bread x3 "Fresh Orange Juice x1 "Standard Snow Boots x1" "Orange juice?" Riley picked up the bottle, genuinely surprised. The orange liquid inside sloshed gently. Vitamins. The system was actually giving them vitamins. She pulled off her old shoes—already damp and cold—and swapped into the new boots. They were clunky, sure. But they gripped the snow, and the insulation was real. The chill that had been seeping up through her soles disappeared instantly. Next, she opened her toolbox. Goggles on. Thick cut-resistant gloves. Head-to-toe gear. "Time to work." The channel noise faded from her mind. She had one priority today, and it wasn't arguing with idiots. She picked up the chainsaw and headed back to the tree line. The cold played tricks on batteries. She'd known that, intellectually. But knowing it and feeling it were different things. After just eight trees, the last spare battery gave out. The chainsaw stuttered, died, and went silent in her hands. Riley stared at it. "Son of a b*tch." Chapter 5 Dead Battery Riley stared at the dead chainsaw in her hands and shook her head. Without power, it was just an expensive paperweight. If she wanted more wood, she'd have to do it the old-fashioned way—pick up the axe or the manual handsaw from the toolbox and go to war with frozen timber. But eight more trees were eight more trees. Her stockpile was looking healthy. "First things first. Get these back." She sucked it up, stowed the chainsaw in her inventory, and started hauling. Her body screamed even louder than yesterday. Every muscle felt like it had been replaced with concrete. She dragged each log back one at a time, moving like a zombie. Drag. Rest two minutes. Drag again. The wind howled in her ears. Riley lost track of time, lost track of everything except the mechanical rhythm of work. By the time the sun was high—not that you could really see it through the clouds—she dragged the last log into the campfire's radius. It dissolved into light, absorbed by the system. Riley all but collapsed into the snow. "Acquired: Wood x40" She lay there for a moment, chest heaving, staring at the number in her inventory. A tired smile crept across her face. She had enough. Combined with the coal and steel from yesterday's trades, she had everything she needed for the upgrade. Riley forced herself upright and walked to the campfire. On the floating translucent panel, the "Upgrade" button glowed that tempting gold. "Upgrade Primitive Shelter to Lv.2? "Cost: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Scrap Steel x5 "Remaining after upgrade: Wood x16, Stone x3, Coal x0, Steel x0" "Upgrade." Riley took a breath and pressed it. "Hmmmm—!" A blinding white light erupted from the heart of the campfire, swallowing everything. Riley squeezed her eyes shut. No explosion. No thunder. Just a sound like Legos snapping together. A few seconds later, the light faded. Riley opened her eyes. And stopped breathing. The campfire wasn't just a campfire anymore. The rough stone ring had transformed into something neat and intentional—a proper firepit with a stone border for insulation, a place to set things, even a simple steel grate attached to the side. But that wasn't the big news. The heat that used to push back the cold within a six-foot radius now stretched a full fifteen feet. Inside that circle, snow was actively melting, revealing dark frozen soil underneath. In one corner, she spotted a patch of moss stubbornly poking through. Riley spun around. Behind the big wooden crate, a small log cabin stood waiting. It wasn't much—maybe forty feet square, built from rough-hewn logs. Nothing fancy. But it was solid. Four walls and a roof, blocking wind and snow completely. Riley walked over and pushed open the heavy wooden door. Warm air hit her face. Inside was simple: a wooden bed frame piled with dry grass, a crude workbench, a chair, and a small fireplace connected to a chimney that ran up through the roof. Rustic. But right now, it was heaven. Wood and fire. Four walls. A roof. Home. Riley ran her hand along the rough wall. Her eyes stung a little. She wouldn't have to sleep in the open anymore. Wouldn't have to wake up every few hours to check the fire. Wouldn't have to worry about freezing to death in her sleep. Right on cue, the server announcement chimed. Gold text this time, blazing right in the center of everyone's vision. "Server Announcement: Congratulations to player SpicyBurger for being the first to achieve "Level 2 Shelter". Rewards have been distributed." The chat channel, which had been wallowing in fear and despair, exploded. "Holy sh*t? Level 2 already? What does Level 2 unlock? Can you post pics, big shot?" "That's the wood seller from yesterday? No way. Absolute legend." "Carry me please! SpicyBurger, I'll be your loyal follower. I can cook, I can clean, I can—" "Teach us, master! How'd you gather materials so fast? What's your secret?" Compliments. Pleas. Desperate attempts to get noticed. And then, of course, the sour grapes. "InvincibleWarrior: Big deal. Just profiteering off everyone else's suffering. If she'd shared that wood instead of selling it, maybe those five thousand people would still be alive. How does it feel to climb on corpses?" "GodLovesMeFirst: Seriously. Building your success on other people's deaths. Karma's real. She'll get hers." Riley's jaw tightened. If InvincibleWarrior had been standing in front of her right now, she'd have knocked his teeth out. Guys like him—useless themselves, but always ready to tear down anyone who actually accomplished something. Sewer rats. Her private messages exploded too. She'd set it to only accept trade offers, but people had found a workaround—using the "trade note" function to send spam. "Hey beautiful, I'm a personal trainer. Great shape. Wanna see? Hit me with some wood and I'll do a voice call with you!" A photo of some guy flexing in a mirror, shirt off. Riley glanced at it, unimpressed. Decent abs. Pathetic attitude. Dude was clearly strong enough to chop wood—why was he wasting time on this? She'd never mentioned her gender, so most people probably assumed anyone who'd gathered that much wood must be a guy. The messages reflected that assumption. Some women sent selfies too, trying to flirt their way into favor. Didn't matter. Shameless cut across all demographics. From the backgrounds in the photos, everyone seemed to be in different locations. But one thing was consistent: they all had trees nearby. The system must have arranged that—a new player perk. "A bunch of degenerates." Riley's face went cold. She changed her privacy settings to "Friends Only". Then she added a line to her trading post description. "No spam. Send junk, get blocked." Silence. Blessed silence. She took a breath, let the noise drain away, and focused on what mattered. "First-place upgrade reward..." She opened her inventory. Sitting there, glowing faintly purple, was a gift box. For more exciting content, please download the "JoyRead" app to continue reading.
Chapter 1 The Countdown Ends It was the year 2027, and the end of the world was now less than an hour away. "00:59:23" Riley Carter stood on a ladder with a screw clenched between her teeth, an impact driver in her hand, securing the last window panel in place. A month ago, that timer had just appeared out of nowhere, hanging in the corner of everyone's vision like it had always been there. At first, people wrote it off as some kind of mass hacker prank. The government fed the media soothing statements in an attempt to keep things calm, but there was no way to talk down the panic as prices kept rising and supplies were held in a monopoly in real time. News outlets might spin whatever narrative they wanted, but no one could argue with the price of eggs. For a while, it was a frenzy. People cleaned out grocery stores like locusts. The government did what they could—price caps, purchase limits, reassurances from the podium—but none of it mattered. The cost of living kept climbing, and bit by bit, the country started coming apart at the seams. Online, it was a circus. Some people posted doom-laden predictions. Others openly celebrated the thought of the world finally burning. A few just seemed relieved they wouldn't have to clock in on Monday. In that final hour, things got truly ugly. Both on the streets and on social media, it was chaos. Some people figured why not went out with a bang? If the world was ending, they'd spend their last hours doing every reckless thing they'd ever fantasized about. Others, paralyzed by fear of whatever was coming, scrambled for anything they could hoard. Supplies. Weapons. Gasoline. Didn't matter what, as long as they had more of it than the next guy. Most people just wanted to be with the ones they loved. Riley didn't have that luxury anymore. Fresh out of community college, she'd lost both her parents in a highway pileup eighteen months back. The only thing they'd left her was the family hardware store, a cramped little place wedged between a laundromat and a taqueria. She'd been running it solo for just over a year when that d*mn countdown appeared overhead. At first, she'd thought maybe an apocalypse wouldn't be the worst thing. Maybe there'd be something on the other side. A reunion. But then she thought about her folks. They'd doted on her. Made her feel like the center of their world. And even though she'd grown a thick skin since going it alone, feeling indifferent to the world, she knew what they'd want. They'd want her to fight. To stay. She was the only piece of them still left in this world. People always say you aren't really gone until the last person forgets your name. As long as she kept breathing, kept carrying them with her another day, they weren't truly dead. Riley spat the screw into her palm, face calm, the impact driver whirring as she sank another fastener into the reinforced frame. "Flour's three hundred a pound now, and you can't even buy it straight—they make you tack on a bunch of other junk you don't need just to get it," she muttered to herself, shaking her head. When that timer first flickered into existence, Riley had done something smart. She'd liquidated everything. Converted every dollar she could scrape together into supplies. Unfortunately, by the time she hit the stores, inflation had already done its damage. Her savings didn't go nearly as far as they should have. Any cash that was left went toward tools. If the world was ending, she thought they could be useful. Riley pressed the last sheet of thick insulation foam into the window frame, seating it flush against the reinforced plywood beneath. The impact driver snarled as she buried the screws. Then she reached for her pneumatic glue gun—a satisfying pfft as the sealant filled the final gap. She wiped sweat from her forehead and climbed down off the ladder. Stepped back to admire her work. The little apartment was a fortress now. Doors reinforced. Windows barricaded. Every interior wall lined with an extra layer of insulation. She glanced down at herself. Custom-fit heavy-duty workwear. Slash-resistant fabric. More pockets than she'd ever need. Reinforced padding at the knees and elbows. It wasn't fashionable, but it was practical. And her real treasure: tools. A chainsaw. A reciprocating saw. The impact driver in her hand. A multi-bit screwdriver that had cost more than she wanted to admit. She'd brought everything usable from the shop back here, consolidated it into three massive toolboxes. She'd also grabbed some stuff like an air purifier and some spare filters—anything that might matter when civilization took a vacation. She didn't know what the countdown would bring. Some folks online predicted zombies. Others said asteroid impact. Volcanic winter. Alien invasion. Take your pick. Food. Tools. Shelter. She'd even started working out, building strength she'd never needed before. She'd done everything she could think of to prepare. Whatever was coming, she figured she'd last longer than most. With nothing left to do, she dropped onto one of the big toolboxes laid flat on the floor, wiped her forehead again, and pulled out her phone. Most news apps had crashed. The only things still loading were comment sections, and they were going crazy. [Anyone got rice? I'll pay eight grand for a bag. Please, we got nothing left.] [Forget it, man. Money's toilet paper now. Saw it with my own eyes—some rich assholes cleared out the Costco warehouse last week. All that 'purchase limit' crap was just theater. Shelves were empty 'cause the stock never made it there. It's all sitting in some hedge fund guy's basement.] [No kidding? Same thing happened to me! Store manager kept telling me, 'We're limiting purchases, come back next week, we'll put your name on the list.' So the whole time the back room was empty? They were just jerking us around?] [Of course they were. Rich people cornered the market on everything. So what are normal people supposed to do? Just sit here and die?] [Anyone know what actually happens when the clock hits zero? Like, is it nukes? That virus thing from that old video game?] Riley locked her phone. Tucked it away. She didn't have anything to add to that conversation. A month ago, when the countdown first showed up, prices had spiked instantly. A fifty-pound bag of rice that normally went for thirty bucks jumped to eight hundred overnight. By yesterday, it was breaking two grand. The wealthy had rolled up with trucks and cleaned out supermarkets. Riley had been smart—she'd gone early, bought stuff that would keep, stuff that was calorie-dense and cheap. Chocolate. Survival biscuits. Canned goods. It wasn't much, but it was enough for one person, at least for a while. She took a deep breath and glanced at the timer. "00:01:10" Just over a minute. Riley gripped the toolbox beneath her. Knuckles white. Who knew what would happen when that thing hit zero? Maybe it'd be like 2012—all hype, nothing real. In that last minute, her life flickered past. Her parents' faces. The hardware store. The lonely months since. "00:00:00" The countdown ended. Riley had just started to breathe a sigh of relief—nothing happened, maybe it really was nothing—when the world lurched beneath her. A dizzying weightlessness. A sensation of falling. Everything spun. ***** She didn't know how long she was out. "Whew." A wind like a knife blade sliced across her face. Riley's eyes snapped open. Her warm apartment was gone. In its place, an endless white expanse stretched in every direction. Snow whipped through the air. Wind howled like a wounded animal. And at her feet, a small campfire guttered in the gale, threatening to die at any second. "What the—" Before she could process, a chime rang directly in her skull. Not heard. Known. "Welcome to the Extreme Cold Survival Game. "Earth no longer exists. This is your new home. This is your grave. "Survival rules are as follows. "1. Each player begins with one campfire. It is your only defense against the cold. If the campfire dies, you will be judged deceased by the system. Not that it matters—without the fire, you won't last anyway. "2. This is a real world. You can die from hunger. From exposure. From animal attack. "3. Supplies stockpiled in your previous world do not carry over. Only items on your person, or in direct physical contact at the moment of transfer, are retained. "4. Struggle to survive. It is your only hope." Riley's heart slammed against her ribs. Supplies didn't carry over? Her mind flashed to those wealthy forum posters bragging about their warehouse stockpiles. And then she looked down at herself. Workwear. Intact. And— She was still sitting on the three giant toolboxes. They sat solidly in the snow, dusted with powder, unmistakably here. "Whew." Riley let out a long breath. A white cloud dispersed in front of her face. Pity, though. During her renovations, she'd stocked those boxes with a lot of power tools. The expensive impact driver. The reciprocating saw. In a world with no electrical outlets, once those batteries died, they were just dead weight. But even so. The hand tools. The consumables. The sheer volume of stuff in those boxes—it was a treasure beyond measure in a place like this. Riley forced herself to calm down. She was here. She'd deal with it. Something new lived in her mind now. She concentrated, and a translucent pale-blue screen materialized in front of her eyes. Looked just like a video game HUD. "Personal Panel "Name: Riley Carter "ID: 1120-US "Level: 1 (Standard Survivor) "Strength: 8 (Years of manual labor have made you stronger than average) "Agility: 8 (You've got quick reflexes) "Constitution: 6 (You've been skipping meals lately) "Spirit: 9 (You keep your head when others panic) "Inventory: 16/16 slots (Base capacity)" "Inventory?" Riley studied the sixteen empty squares at the bottom of the display. She reached out, touched one of the toolboxes, and thought the word, "Store." Whoosh. The heavy box vanished. In its place, a tiny icon appeared in the first inventory slot, a miniature "x1" in the corner. "It actually worked." For the first time since arriving, a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. Retrieve. Thud. The toolbox landed back in the snow, puffing up powder. No energy cost. No sense of weight. And in that inventory, she could carry anything, regardless of how heavy it was. Later on, when she went scavenging, that would make all the difference. Riley rubbed her stiff, freezing hands together and turned her attention to the campfire at her feet. It was the only warmth in this frozen wasteland. Hovering above the flames, visible only to her, were a few lines of glowing text. "Basic Campfire (Lv.1) "Remaining Burn Time: 05:28:00 "Current Coverage: Radius six feet (Blocks wind and snow) "Upgrade Requirements: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Steel x5 "Description: This is your life. Do not let it die. Upgrading expands your safe zone and unlocks additional construction options." "Needs upgrading." Riley frowned. Wood and stone she could probably find. But coal? Steel? Out here in the middle of nowhere? A flash of movement caught her eye. A small wooden box, half-buried in the snow not far from the fire. The starter crate. Had to be. Riley didn't rush. First, she pulled the claw hammer from her belt—the one she always kept there, habit from years of work—and gripped it tight. She scanned the tree line. Listened past the wind. Nothing moved. No sounds but the storm. She walked over quickly, crouched by the box. No lock. She pried the lid open with the claw end of her hammer. Inside, a handful of items. "Obtained: Iron Axe x1 "Obtained: Stale Dark Bread x2 "Obtained: 500ml Bottled Water x1 "Obtained: Kindling x5 "Obtained: Insulated Field Jacket x1 "Obtained: Utility Rope (25ft) "Obtained: Thermal Underwear (Set) x2 Not much. Barely anything. Riley picked up one of the dark loaves. It was rock hard. She examined the jacket—basic, but warm-looking. "So this is what a standard survivor starts with." At least the system had thought of everything. Including the underwear. She'd half-expected to wake up naked in the snow; at least she didn't have to worry about that. She stored everything in her inventory, then shrugged on the field jacket. The temperature shift was brutal. Even those few seconds exposed had left her hands numb. Hypothermia would set in fast out here. Jacket on, she hurried back to the campfire. She pulled the five units of Kindling from her inventory and tossed them onto the flames. The fire roared higher. Warmth flooded over her. "Fuel added. Remaining Burn Time: 10:28:00" Ten hours. If she didn't move fast, in ten hours she'd freeze to death on this ice field. And the game had made it clear—if the fire died, the system would judge her dead. Whether she actually froze or not. Riley lifted her head and scanned the landscape. She was in a sparse coniferous forest. Barely alive trees, crusted with frost, dotted the area not far from her position. "Wood." A slow smile spread across her face. She patted the toolbox beside her. "Other people might have axes. But felling a tree with just an axe takes hours. Exhausts you." She unlatched the box. Pulled out the chainsaw. Checked the battery gauge—full. "I've got a handsaw in here too. And a chainsaw with a full charge." The battery wouldn't last forever. But it would last long enough to give her a massive head start. In this race for survival, that was everything. Chapter 2 The Chainsaw The wind screamed across the open ground, picking up loose snow and flinging it against her goggles like sand. It sounded like static. Riley had pulled her basic work gear from the toolbox before heading out. Now she stood in the snow, surrounded by clusters of thin conifers that looked half-dead already. She took a breath. The air burned going down. "Zzzzzzz—!!!" She squeezed the trigger. The orange-and-black lithium-ion chainsaw in her hands roared to life, the chain spinning so fast it blurred. She buried the teeth in the nearest pine trunk. Wood chips exploded everywhere. Fragrant shavings—still wet with resin—scattered across the pristine snow, stark and yellow against all that white. Five seconds. Crack. The pine tree, thick as her arm, groaned and tilted. Then it fell slow and heavy into a drift, sending up a puff of powder. "God bless modern technology." Riley shook out her wrist—the vibration had numbed her fingers—and allowed herself a small smile. Without that chainsaw, with just the basic iron axe the system had given her, felling a tree frozen solid like this would have taken twenty minutes minimum. And it would have left her soaked with sweat. In subzero temps, sweat was a death sentence. Once your base layers got wet, the moment you stopped moving, your body temperature would plummet. Hypothermia would follow fast. Riley didn't waste time celebrating. She knew the saw in her hands was a hungry machine. She'd brought two spare high-capacity batteries, sure, but until she found a way to recharge them, every second the motor ran was borrowed time. She had to gather as much wood as possible before the batteries gave out. "Zzzzz—Zzzzz—" At the edge of the forest, the chainsaw's snarl rose and fell, shattering the frozen silence. Riley worked like she was possessed. Fell a tree. Move to the next. Fell another. But she had to stay alert—watch for hidden snow pits underfoot, keep adjusting her collar against the wind that kept finding its way down her neck. Her stamina drained faster than she'd anticipated. In extreme cold, body burned through calories just to stay alive. Added walking through knee-deep snow, where every step took three times the energy of walking on pavement, and the math got ugly fast. Pretty soon, Riley was breathing hard. Her breath fogged the inside of her goggles, and she had to keep wiping them clear. "Zzzzz..." She was mid-cut on a tree—didn't even know which number anymore—when the chainsaw's roar stuttered. Died. The chain jammed solid in the wood. A red light blinked at her. Dead battery. Riley yanked the saw free and patted its housing. "Good work, buddy." Genuine regret in her voice. She straightened up and looked around. Pine trunks lay scattered across the snow in every direction. A decent haul. She counted silently. "Twenty-three total." Then the next problem hit her. According to the system, until she actually possessed these logs, they were still just natural resources. That meant they didn't qualify for Inventory storage. She couldn't just snap her fingers and make them disappear. She had to drag them back to camp. Riley grabbed the nearest pine and tried to pull. Heavy. Like, unreasonably heavy. Fresh-cut wood was full of moisture. Add the branches catching in the snow, dragging like anchors, and she felt like she was hauling a dead body through mud. "Huff... huff..." She gritted her teeth, looped rope around the trunk, slung it over her shoulder, leaned forward, and started walking. Inch by inch. The tree line to her campfire was maybe fifty yards. Right now, it felt like fifty miles. By the time she'd wrestled the fourth tree back into the fire's warm radius, she was wrecked. Her legs felt like someone had filled them with concrete. Her lungs burned from hauling freezing air through them. "Can't... can't do more." Riley made the call. She stopped. Those nineteen trees still out there in the snow—they called to her. Tempted her. But if she kept pushing without rest, without fuel for herself, she'd collapse out there. And out there, collapse meant death. She dropped down next to the big wooden crate that had held her starter supplies. It was less than three feet from the campfire. The flames danced orange and red, pumping out heat that felt like heaven. The shift from frozen to warm made her shiver violently. She pulled off her goggles and thick gloves, set them near the fire to warm up, then—still shaking—pulled the half-empty water bottle from her Inventory. Took a small sip. Then the bread. Two black bricks that looked more like construction material than food. "Crunch." Riley bit off a piece with effort. It was coarse. Tasted like sawdust with a hint of burnt toast. Bitter. But it was calories. Carbs. Fuel for her own fire. She forced herself to chew, swallow. When the food hit her stomach, warmth finally started spreading through her core. The uncontrollable shaking eased. After half a loaf, Riley leaned back against the crate. Her eyelids drooped. Post-exhaustion crash hit her like a wave. The campfire crackled. The wind seemed farther away now. Muffled. She really wanted to sleep... Her head nodded. Her body started sliding sideways. "Wait—" Some animal instinct jolted her awake just before she went under. She pinched her thigh. Hard. Then looked up at the timer floating above the flames. "Shelter Level 1 "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 06:28:00" Six and a half hours. If she slept too deep, too long, and that fire went out—what then? Even ignoring the obvious—that she'd freeze to death in this hellhole without a heat source—the game rules were clear. When the campfire hits zero, it's game over. "No sleeping. Not allowed." Riley slapped her own cheeks, forced herself upright. She stayed near the fire, but she didn't take off her heavy work clothes. She remembered reading something once, a survival article. "In the late stages of hypothermia, your hypothalamus malfunctions. You get a false sensation of heat. It's called "paradoxical undressing"—people strip down right before they freeze to death." "Okay. Process these four. Keep the fire fed." She pulled a traditional handsaw from the toolbox. Looking at the four thick pine logs on the ground, she almost laughed. Without power tools, breaking these down into burnable pieces would take at least half an hour. Burn the little energy she had left. But what choice did she have? Riley knelt in the snow, positioned the blade against the trunk, and was about to start cutting— A soft white light shot out from the system panel on her chest. It washed over the logs. "Ding! "Detected felled, intact logs within shelter range. "Perform quick recovery?" Riley's hand froze mid-saw. Quick recovery? It took her a second to process. Then relief flooded through her so hard she almost cried. "Yes! Recover!" She didn't hesitate. The next moment, something impossible happened. The four pine trunks—the ones she'd have to saw and split by hand, the ones that represented hours of brutal labor—dissolved into pale blue light particles. Not into dust. Into neat, uniform logs that stacked themselves automatically in her Inventory. The branches, the needles, all the useless parts—purified out of existence. "Recovery successful! "Obtained: Common Wood x20" Riley's eyes went wide, staring at the perfect lumber in her inventory display. Looked like it came straight from a hardware store. "One tree gives five units of wood? "And I don't have to cut it myself?" This changed everything. It meant she only had to handle the felling and the dragging. Once a log crossed into her camp's boundary, the system recognized it as hers. The most time-consuming part—the processing—just... didn't exist anymore. Riley immediately grabbed five units of wood and fed them to the fire. Whoosh. The flames leaped, hungry and grateful. "Fuel added. "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 12:20:00" "Five logs, five hours..." She did the math fast, looking at the fifteen units still on the ground. If she threw all of those in, that'd be another fifteen hours. Total of twenty-seven. She could sleep like the dead right now, and that fire would still be burning when she woke up. Security. For the first time since the world ended, Riley felt something like security. She selected the remaining wood. Deposited it all. Watched the countdown tick up to a very comfortable "27:20:00". Then her nerves finally let go. She dragged one of the toolboxes into position to block the wind, wrapped the field jacket tight around herself, pulled her hat down over her eyes, leaned back against the warm crate, and let the crackle of the fire pull her under. ***** She didn't sleep long. When she opened her eyes again, the sky was still that same dull gray-white. Impossible to tell if it was morning or afternoon. System clock said three hours. Her body ached. Shoulders and arms especially—felt like she'd gone ten rounds with someone. But her head was clear. She stretched her stiff neck and stood up. The snow seemed lighter. The feathery flakes had tapered off into sporadic icy grains. Riley ate a little more, got some fuel back in the tank, then stepped outside the campfire's warmth. The fire's effect wasn't what she'd expected. It wasn't that the temperature gradually dropped as you moved away. It was sharper than that. Like there was an invisible barrier around the flames. Inside, livable. Outside, the cold hit you like a wall. She wandered a little way off. The cold found every gap in her clothing. She thought about going farther, exploring. But there was nothing visible except that stand of trees she'd already worked. Maybe stuff was buried under the snow, but she couldn't see it. "No proper snow boots. Not going far." Riley glanced at the endless white distance with real regret. "Don't get greedy. Get those nineteen trees first." She turned. Looked at the woods. Her loot was still out there. And now she knew: if she could drag them back into the campfire's circle, the system would cash them out automatically. "Time to work." Riley rubbed her hands together. Let the motivation build. For the next few hours, she became a machine. Drag a tree to camp. Recover it. Go back for another. Repeat. It was boring. Exhausting. But watching those logs turn into numbers in her inventory—that feeling was hard to describe. Satisfying, in a way nothing had been satisfying in a long time. When the last pine trunk crossed into the light and dissolved into particles, Riley just collapsed. Lay flat in the snow and stared at the gray sky. She pulled up her Inventory. The once-empty slots were full now. Stack after stack of wood icons. "Item: Common Wood "Quantity: 80 "Description: Basic survival resource. Can be used for fuel or construction." Eighty units. Plus what was already burning in the campfire. Her day's work had yielded a clean hundred. One unit of wood burned for one hour. Riley looked at the flames dancing in front of her. Felt the heat on her face. Let herself smile, wide and real. "One hundred hours." Four full days. While everyone else was probably still panicking. Crying. Begging. Trying to figure out how to survive their first night in this frozen nightmare... She, Riley, had enough fuel stockpiled to last four days. Which meant: for the next ninety-six hours, unless she actively chose to die, nobody and nothing could put her fire out. She pulled the half-empty water bottle from Inventory. The space must have been insulated somehow—the water was still warm. Almost body temperature. She sipped it. Tasted sweet, even though it was just tap water. "Okay. Next step." Her gaze settled on the "Upgrade" button on the campfire panel. This open-air setup was fine for now. But if she was going to survive long-term, she needed something better. A real shelter. All she needed was a little stone. Some coal. Some steel. Then she could build something worth calling home. Chapter 3 The Trading Game The blizzard howled outside, but within the six-foot radius of the campfire, the air stayed surprisingly warm—like the wind had hit an invisible wall and just couldn't reach. Riley leaned back against the dusty wooden crate, holding the half-empty water bottle in her hand. She stared into the flames for a moment, then focused her attention inward. The pale blue system panel unfolded in front of her eyes again. Now that the immediate crisis was handled, she finally had time to sit quietly and really explore this so-called "Survival System". Beyond the personal stats and inventory, the bottom of the panel had a row of function icons: Server Channel, Friends List, Trading Market, and Crafting Manual. Friends List was empty. No surprise there. She hadn't exactly been a social butterfly back in the old world, and she sure as hell wasn't going to make friends easily in a frozen hellscape where everyone was fighting for their next breath. She tapped into the "Server Channel". A line of numbers appeared in the top left. "Server: US-008 "Current Online: 9911/10000" Ten thousand people started. Less than ten hours in, eighty-nine were already gone. "That doesn't add up." Everyone's starter crate came with a rusty iron axe and five units of wood. Plus the initial fuel the campfire had when they arrived—that alone bought them ten hours minimum, even if they just sat there doing nothing. What the hell did those people do to get eliminated so fast? The channel was moving fast, messages scrolling by every second. Desperation dripped from every line. "Someone help, I'm freezing my ass off out here. This stupid axe can't cut sh*t—every swing just bounces off and rattles my whole arm. Can anyone spare a couple logs? My dad's a senior VP at Walker Group. I'll wire you a million dollars when we get back, I swear." "Wake up, buddy. If your dad's still alive, he's out there chopping trees right now too." "Don't even talk to me. I spotted a wooden crate in the snow earlier, got all excited, ran over—and before I got within ten feet, some white rabbit thing jumped out of a drift. Teeth like needles. Almost took a chunk out of my leg. Missed the crate, wasted all that energy for nothing." "I saw that too! Random crates spawn in the wild. I opened a wooden one and got two chocolate bars and some coal." Reading through the chaos, Riley picked out two keywords, "Random Reward Crates" and "Dangerous Creatures". So this world was deeper than she thought. Wooden crates, copper crates—these randomly spawning resource points were the real way to get ahead. Coal came from crates. That was useful to know. And if coal was in crates, steel probably was too. But something bothered her. According to what people were saying, reward crates weren't exactly rare. So why hadn't she found a single one during her lumber run? She doubted it was just bad luck. Riley exited chat and tapped into the "Trading Market". "Seller: MountainMan88 Item: Stone x2 Wants: White Bread x5" "Seller: LoneWolf_21 Item: Cotton Cloth Wants: Clean Water" "Seller: NotDeadYet Item: Wood x3 Wants: Anything edible" Most people were trading for food and wood. The stuff that kept you alive right now. Things like stone and cloth were getting dumped cheap—nobody had the luxury of thinking long-term. Riley looked at her own inventory. Eighty units of wood staring back at her. Her heart beat a little faster. In this opening phase, where wood literally meant the difference between life and death, the resources in her hands were basically gold bars. "Time to trade," she muttered to herself. "Coal, steel—can't get those from chopping trees. And right now, wood's at maximum value. If I wait, the exchange rate shifts." Even with the chainsaw dead, she still had the handsaw. Less efficient, sure, but she could gather more wood if she needed it. Short-term, she wasn't going to run out. She clicked to post a message in the channel. "System Prompt: Detected that you have not set a virtual ID. Please enter your nickname (cannot be changed after setting)." Riley stared at the blank input box. Naming things was the worst. She sat there for a long time, nothing coming to mind. Finally, she gave up. Couldn't think of anything cool or clever, so she'd just go with something random. Her fingers tapped across the virtual keyboard—SpicyBurger. "Setting successful. ID locked." The prompt closed. Riley posted her message. "SpicyBurger: Selling wood in bulk. Looking for: Coal, Steel, High-calorie food. DM me with offers—what you have and your rate. Good deals go fast, don't sleep on this." For three seconds after the message appeared, the channel went dead silent. Then it exploded. "SpicyBurger? That name's making me hungry, what the hell." "Never mind the name—'wood in bulk'! We got a whale in here! Everyone else is stressing about the next hour and this person's already running a business?" "I need some! My campfire's down to like two hours. I don't know if I actually die when it hits zero but I don't wanna find out." Suddenly, half the channel was scrambling for wood. But then the skeptics crawled out. "Hang on. Everyone started with the same rusty axe. Chopping a tree in this weather takes twenty, thirty minutes minimum. Where's she getting 'bulk' wood from? Sounds like a scam." "InvincibleWarrior: Everybody chill. Look at that ID—sounds like a girl's handle. I'm a grown man, been busting my ass, and I've only got like ten logs saved up. My hands are shredded. Some girl with a food name claims she's got bulk? She's trying to run a game. Scam people out of their stuff." "Iron_Tough: Agreed. Scammers made it through the apocalypse too, I guess. My advice: ignore her. Don't get played. How much wood can a woman chop anyway? Probably can't even lift the axe right, lol." Riley scrolled through the messages, expression flat. She almost laughed. But some people pushed back. "FishHater44: How is it a scam? If she doesn't deliver, you don't complete the trade. Just 'cause you can't chop that much wood doesn't mean nobody can." Riley nodded slightly. That one had a point. But she didn't waste energy arguing in the channel. Instead, she flipped on Do Not Disturb for private messages—only allowing chat requests that included a trade offer. Some people didn't actually care whether she had wood. They just couldn't stand seeing someone else do well. "Ding. Ding. Ding." Private messages started pouring in like rain. Most players weren't idiots. Faced with the very real threat of freezing to death, they'd try anything for a chance. Riley opened the first one. "Windwalker: I got "Coal x3" from a crate. How much wood can I get for it? I can't chop anymore. The wind out here is insane. I tried to throw the coal in my fire but it just kept popping back out. System says my campfire level's too low, won't let me use it. I'm out of wood. My fire's almost dead." Riley thought for a moment. "Three coal for five wood. Deal?" She hadn't known about that restriction. Coal was supposed to be better fuel than wood—didn't expect the game to lock it behind a level gate. The reply came instantly, "Deal. But five wood feels light. It's coal." The guy was conflicted. He knew coal had value, but he was desperate. "I'll make it six. Final offer." Riley wasn't sure about coal's real value yet. Six was her limit. "Fine. Deal." They both dropped their items into the trade window. A moment later, it completed. A flash of white light. Riley's inventory lost six wood. Gained three chunks of coal, each about the size of a small melon. One down. "CrunchyFrog: Hey, I got two "Iron Ingots" from a crate. System calls them "Scrap Steel". Can I get eight wood for them? Trying to stock up enough to sleep through the night." Riley replied, "Sure. Initiate." In just over ten minutes, her wood stockpile dropped significantly. But her inventory filled up with good stuff. "Coal x10 "Stone x23 "Scrap Steel x5 "Raw Meat x2 "White Bread x2 "Basic Torch Blueprint x1" The blueprint was new. The description said it was required for crafting certain items. Seemed useful, so she'd traded for it. Meanwhile, back in the channel, that "InvincibleWarrior" guy who'd been mocking her earlier seemed to notice that people were actually completing trades. His tone got bitter. "InvincibleWarrior: Whatever. She probably got lucky with a high-tier crate. Let's see how long her stock lasts. Once the wood's gone, she'll be begging me to let her join my group." The people who'd successfully traded with Riley popped into the channel to thank her. That might have been fine—except the thanks caused problems. Since Riley had stopped trading for now, most people hadn't gotten anything. And the sky was darkening. Temperature outside the campfire radius was dropping fast. Gathering wood was getting harder. Trading was their only hope. The ones who'd pinned everything on Riley, seeing her stop, started losing it. "You said 'in bulk'! You did like five trades and quit. What are we supposed to do now?" "Keep trading! My fire's almost out. You want us to go chop trees in the dark?" "If you couldn't deliver, why'd you post? Showing off and then hiding." Whether it was coordinated or just genuine rage, the number of people defending Riley in the channel shrank fast. Mostly it was attacks now. Accusations of being irresponsible. Using scarcity tactics. Playing games with people's lives. Riley closed the channel. She couldn't be bothered. In a life-or-death situation like this, people losing it was normal. If she actually had unlimited resources, she'd trade more. But she didn't. And back on Earth, nobody had ever handed her anything out of charity. She wasn't about to start playing savior now. She looked down at the "Basic Torch Blueprint" in her inventory. "Requirements: Wood x10, Kerosene, Scrap Steel x2" Note: Requires Level 2 Workbench to craft." She leaned back against the crate again. Felt the weight of her stockpile pressing back against that lingering sense of unease. In this world, your ID didn't matter. Your gender didn't matter either. What mattered was who held the resources. She looked at what she had left: 36 units of wood. Plus the steel, coal, and stone from trading. Time to plan. Upgrading to a Level 2 campfire required 55 wood. She had all the other materials. For the wood, she'd just have to use the handsaw tomorrow and gather a little more. That settled, she pulled a few more logs from inventory and arranged them on top of the crate, making a small enclosed space. Curled up inside it, she watched the sky outside slowly darken to black. Her eyes grew heavy. She drifted off. Chapter 4 The Culling Riley woke to the kind of soreness that made you reconsider ever moving again. She'd slept like the dead—no dreams, no blizzard, just nothing. When she opened her eyes, the first things she saw were the logs she'd stacked as a windbreak and the steady glow of the campfire. She tried to stretch. Big mistake. Every muscle in her body lit up at once, screaming in protest. "Sh*t." Riley sucked air through her teeth and pressed a hand to her aching shoulder. Her lower back felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to it. Yesterday's work had been too much. She wasn't weak—far from it—but she was still human. The lactic acid had settled in overnight, and now she moved like an arthritic tin man. At least she was alive. She stowed the windbreak logs back in her inventory and looked around. The world hadn't changed. Same dull gray sky. Same swirling snow. Outside the six-foot radius of the fire, the drifts looked deeper than yesterday. The wind had been busy. Riley pulled out the half-empty water bottle and wet her throat. Then she retrieved the white bread she'd traded for yesterday. Compared to that dense, flavorless black bread, this was practically cake. She tore off small pieces, letting the faint sweetness dissolve on her tongue, and habitually opened the "Server Channel". She stopped chewing. The number in the top left hit her like a physical blow. "Current Online Players: 4968/10000" "Five thousand..." Riley's eyes went wide. In a single night, that number had been cut in half. Five thousand people. Gone. Winked out of existence on this frozen ice field while she slept. "Ding." The system notification cut through her thoughts—cold, emotionless, like it was announcing the weather. "Global Announcement: Congratulations to all survivors for successfully surviving the first day. "This was a culling. Last night eliminated those fools who failed to add fuel to their fires or refused to gather wood. Remember: in this place, tears mean nothing. When you die here, you're dead-dead. "You who remain are the lucky ones. "Grace Period: A five-day 'New Player Support Period' now begins. For the next five days, your initial supply crates will refresh daily with a fixed amount of food. "Special Reward: Each survivor receives one pair of "Standard Issue Snow Boots (Common)". Be grateful for this mercy. Enjoy the game." The words sat there on her screen. Fools. Mercy. The system's tone dripped with contempt. The math was simple. Starting package: five hours of fuel. Initial gift: five units of wood, another five hours. Total ten hours, if you did absolutely nothing. The ones who'd frozen to death last night—they were the ones who'd clung to hope. The ones too scared to move. The ones who'd told themselves someone would save them. Five thousand people. One night. Gone. This wasn't a game. It was a slaughter. In the channel, the survivors who'd made it through were clearly rattled by the numbers too. "Holy sh*t... My friend's icon went dark last night. Does that mean he's dead? Actually dead?" "I can't do this. I don't wanna play anymore, I wanna go home. I swear I'll work today. I'll chop wood, I'll do whatever, just please—" "Everyone move! Don't save your strength! If you die, that's it. No respawns!" Panic spread fast. But almost immediately, the tone shifted. The fear found a target. "That SpicyBurger—if she'd shared more wood yesterday, would so many people have died?" "For real. If she had extra, why not just give it away? Why did it have to be trades? She could've at least loaned some out." "This is what happens when people hoard resources and watch others freeze. Remember that name. Don't trade with her. Ever." Riley frowned. Here we go again. She scrolled up. Sure enough, there it was—that familiar ID: "InvincibleWarrior". He was going hard in the channel. "She's profiting off suffering. That's what some people do. Women like that are the worst—hoarding supplies while people die around them. Wait and see. Someone like her won't last." Riley laughed. Actually laughed out loud. Moral blackmail. In the apocalypse. She typed, "If you want wood, go cut it yourself. I'm not your mommy. No amount of crying in chat is gonna put logs in your inventory. You'd get more done if you just picked up your d*mn axe." The channel went quiet for a second. Then the reasonable voices piped up. "She's right. Nobody owes you anything. Work for it." "Exactly. Just 'cause someone's quiet doesn't mean they're an easy target." In a world where staying alive took everything you had, expecting charity was the dumbest move of all. Riley didn't waste more energy on it. People like that—the more you engaged, the more they thrived. Let him run his mouth. She had bigger things to worry about. She closed the channel and turned to the big wooden crate—her initial supply point. Sure enough, new items had materialized inside. "Bottled Water x3 "White Bread x3 "Fresh Orange Juice x1 "Standard Snow Boots x1" "Orange juice?" Riley picked up the bottle, genuinely surprised. The orange liquid inside sloshed gently. Vitamins. The system was actually giving them vitamins. She pulled off her old shoes—already damp and cold—and swapped into the new boots. They were clunky, sure. But they gripped the snow, and the insulation was real. The chill that had been seeping up through her soles disappeared instantly. Next, she opened her toolbox. Goggles on. Thick cut-resistant gloves. Head-to-toe gear. "Time to work." The channel noise faded from her mind. She had one priority today, and it wasn't arguing with idiots. She picked up the chainsaw and headed back to the tree line. The cold played tricks on batteries. She'd known that, intellectually. But knowing it and feeling it were different things. After just eight trees, the last spare battery gave out. The chainsaw stuttered, died, and went silent in her hands. Riley stared at it. "Son of a b*tch." Chapter 5 Dead Battery Riley stared at the dead chainsaw in her hands and shook her head. Without power, it was just an expensive paperweight. If she wanted more wood, she'd have to do it the old-fashioned way—pick up the axe or the manual handsaw from the toolbox and go to war with frozen timber. But eight more trees were eight more trees. Her stockpile was looking healthy. "First things first. Get these back." She sucked it up, stowed the chainsaw in her inventory, and started hauling. Her body screamed even louder than yesterday. Every muscle felt like it had been replaced with concrete. She dragged each log back one at a time, moving like a zombie. Drag. Rest two minutes. Drag again. The wind howled in her ears. Riley lost track of time, lost track of everything except the mechanical rhythm of work. By the time the sun was high—not that you could really see it through the clouds—she dragged the last log into the campfire's radius. It dissolved into light, absorbed by the system. Riley all but collapsed into the snow. "Acquired: Wood x40" She lay there for a moment, chest heaving, staring at the number in her inventory. A tired smile crept across her face. She had enough. Combined with the coal and steel from yesterday's trades, she had everything she needed for the upgrade. Riley forced herself upright and walked to the campfire. On the floating translucent panel, the "Upgrade" button glowed that tempting gold. "Upgrade Primitive Shelter to Lv.2? "Cost: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Scrap Steel x5 "Remaining after upgrade: Wood x16, Stone x3, Coal x0, Steel x0" "Upgrade." Riley took a breath and pressed it. "Hmmmm—!" A blinding white light erupted from the heart of the campfire, swallowing everything. Riley squeezed her eyes shut. No explosion. No thunder. Just a sound like Legos snapping together. A few seconds later, the light faded. Riley opened her eyes. And stopped breathing. The campfire wasn't just a campfire anymore. The rough stone ring had transformed into something neat and intentional—a proper firepit with a stone border for insulation, a place to set things, even a simple steel grate attached to the side. But that wasn't the big news. The heat that used to push back the cold within a six-foot radius now stretched a full fifteen feet. Inside that circle, snow was actively melting, revealing dark frozen soil underneath. In one corner, she spotted a patch of moss stubbornly poking through. Riley spun around. Behind the big wooden crate, a small log cabin stood waiting. It wasn't much—maybe forty feet square, built from rough-hewn logs. Nothing fancy. But it was solid. Four walls and a roof, blocking wind and snow completely. Riley walked over and pushed open the heavy wooden door. Warm air hit her face. Inside was simple: a wooden bed frame piled with dry grass, a crude workbench, a chair, and a small fireplace connected to a chimney that ran up through the roof. Rustic. But right now, it was heaven. Wood and fire. Four walls. A roof. Home. Riley ran her hand along the rough wall. Her eyes stung a little. She wouldn't have to sleep in the open anymore. Wouldn't have to wake up every few hours to check the fire. Wouldn't have to worry about freezing to death in her sleep. Right on cue, the server announcement chimed. Gold text this time, blazing right in the center of everyone's vision. "Server Announcement: Congratulations to player SpicyBurger for being the first to achieve "Level 2 Shelter". Rewards have been distributed." The chat channel, which had been wallowing in fear and despair, exploded. "Holy sh*t? Level 2 already? What does Level 2 unlock? Can you post pics, big shot?" "That's the wood seller from yesterday? No way. Absolute legend." "Carry me please! SpicyBurger, I'll be your loyal follower. I can cook, I can clean, I can—" "Teach us, master! How'd you gather materials so fast? What's your secret?" Compliments. Pleas. Desperate attempts to get noticed. And then, of course, the sour grapes. "InvincibleWarrior: Big deal. Just profiteering off everyone else's suffering. If she'd shared that wood instead of selling it, maybe those five thousand people would still be alive. How does it feel to climb on corpses?" "GodLovesMeFirst: Seriously. Building your success on other people's deaths. Karma's real. She'll get hers." Riley's jaw tightened. If InvincibleWarrior had been standing in front of her right now, she'd have knocked his teeth out. Guys like him—useless themselves, but always ready to tear down anyone who actually accomplished something. Sewer rats. Her private messages exploded too. She'd set it to only accept trade offers, but people had found a workaround—using the "trade note" function to send spam. "Hey beautiful, I'm a personal trainer. Great shape. Wanna see? Hit me with some wood and I'll do a voice call with you!" A photo of some guy flexing in a mirror, shirt off. Riley glanced at it, unimpressed. Decent abs. Pathetic attitude. Dude was clearly strong enough to chop wood—why was he wasting time on this? She'd never mentioned her gender, so most people probably assumed anyone who'd gathered that much wood must be a guy. The messages reflected that assumption. Some women sent selfies too, trying to flirt their way into favor. Didn't matter. Shameless cut across all demographics. From the backgrounds in the photos, everyone seemed to be in different locations. But one thing was consistent: they all had trees nearby. The system must have arranged that—a new player perk. "A bunch of degenerates." Riley's face went cold. She changed her privacy settings to "Friends Only". Then she added a line to her trading post description. "No spam. Send junk, get blocked." Silence. Blessed silence. She took a breath, let the noise drain away, and focused on what mattered. "First-place upgrade reward..." She opened her inventory. Sitting there, glowing faintly purple, was a gift box. For more exciting content, please download the "JoyRead" app to continue reading.
Chapter 1 The Countdown Ends It was the year 2027, and the end of the world was now less than an hour away. "00:59:23" Riley Carter stood on a ladder with a screw clenched between her teeth, an impact driver in her hand, securing the last window panel in place. A month ago, that timer had just appeared out of nowhere, hanging in the corner of everyone's vision like it had always been there. At first, people wrote it off as some kind of mass hacker prank. The government fed the media soothing statements in an attempt to keep things calm, but there was no way to talk down the panic as prices kept rising and supplies were held in a monopoly in real time. News outlets might spin whatever narrative they wanted, but no one could argue with the price of eggs. For a while, it was a frenzy. People cleaned out grocery stores like locusts. The government did what they could—price caps, purchase limits, reassurances from the podium—but none of it mattered. The cost of living kept climbing, and bit by bit, the country started coming apart at the seams. Online, it was a circus. Some people posted doom-laden predictions. Others openly celebrated the thought of the world finally burning. A few just seemed relieved they wouldn't have to clock in on Monday. In that final hour, things got truly ugly. Both on the streets and on social media, it was chaos. Some people figured why not went out with a bang? If the world was ending, they'd spend their last hours doing every reckless thing they'd ever fantasized about. Others, paralyzed by fear of whatever was coming, scrambled for anything they could hoard. Supplies. Weapons. Gasoline. Didn't matter what, as long as they had more of it than the next guy. Most people just wanted to be with the ones they loved. Riley didn't have that luxury anymore. Fresh out of community college, she'd lost both her parents in a highway pileup eighteen months back. The only thing they'd left her was the family hardware store, a cramped little place wedged between a laundromat and a taqueria. She'd been running it solo for just over a year when that d*mn countdown appeared overhead. At first, she'd thought maybe an apocalypse wouldn't be the worst thing. Maybe there'd be something on the other side. A reunion. But then she thought about her folks. They'd doted on her. Made her feel like the center of their world. And even though she'd grown a thick skin since going it alone, feeling indifferent to the world, she knew what they'd want. They'd want her to fight. To stay. She was the only piece of them still left in this world. People always say you aren't really gone until the last person forgets your name. As long as she kept breathing, kept carrying them with her another day, they weren't truly dead. Riley spat the screw into her palm, face calm, the impact driver whirring as she sank another fastener into the reinforced frame. "Flour's three hundred a pound now, and you can't even buy it straight—they make you tack on a bunch of other junk you don't need just to get it," she muttered to herself, shaking her head. When that timer first flickered into existence, Riley had done something smart. She'd liquidated everything. Converted every dollar she could scrape together into supplies. Unfortunately, by the time she hit the stores, inflation had already done its damage. Her savings didn't go nearly as far as they should have. Any cash that was left went toward tools. If the world was ending, she thought they could be useful. Riley pressed the last sheet of thick insulation foam into the window frame, seating it flush against the reinforced plywood beneath. The impact driver snarled as she buried the screws. Then she reached for her pneumatic glue gun—a satisfying pfft as the sealant filled the final gap. She wiped sweat from her forehead and climbed down off the ladder. Stepped back to admire her work. The little apartment was a fortress now. Doors reinforced. Windows barricaded. Every interior wall lined with an extra layer of insulation. She glanced down at herself. Custom-fit heavy-duty workwear. Slash-resistant fabric. More pockets than she'd ever need. Reinforced padding at the knees and elbows. It wasn't fashionable, but it was practical. And her real treasure: tools. A chainsaw. A reciprocating saw. The impact driver in her hand. A multi-bit screwdriver that had cost more than she wanted to admit. She'd brought everything usable from the shop back here, consolidated it into three massive toolboxes. She'd also grabbed some stuff like an air purifier and some spare filters—anything that might matter when civilization took a vacation. She didn't know what the countdown would bring. Some folks online predicted zombies. Others said asteroid impact. Volcanic winter. Alien invasion. Take your pick. Food. Tools. Shelter. She'd even started working out, building strength she'd never needed before. She'd done everything she could think of to prepare. Whatever was coming, she figured she'd last longer than most. With nothing left to do, she dropped onto one of the big toolboxes laid flat on the floor, wiped her forehead again, and pulled out her phone. Most news apps had crashed. The only things still loading were comment sections, and they were going crazy. [Anyone got rice? I'll pay eight grand for a bag. Please, we got nothing left.] [Forget it, man. Money's toilet paper now. Saw it with my own eyes—some rich assholes cleared out the Costco warehouse last week. All that 'purchase limit' crap was just theater. Shelves were empty 'cause the stock never made it there. It's all sitting in some hedge fund guy's basement.] [No kidding? Same thing happened to me! Store manager kept telling me, 'We're limiting purchases, come back next week, we'll put your name on the list.' So the whole time the back room was empty? They were just jerking us around?] [Of course they were. Rich people cornered the market on everything. So what are normal people supposed to do? Just sit here and die?] [Anyone know what actually happens when the clock hits zero? Like, is it nukes? That virus thing from that old video game?] Riley locked her phone. Tucked it away. She didn't have anything to add to that conversation. A month ago, when the countdown first showed up, prices had spiked instantly. A fifty-pound bag of rice that normally went for thirty bucks jumped to eight hundred overnight. By yesterday, it was breaking two grand. The wealthy had rolled up with trucks and cleaned out supermarkets. Riley had been smart—she'd gone early, bought stuff that would keep, stuff that was calorie-dense and cheap. Chocolate. Survival biscuits. Canned goods. It wasn't much, but it was enough for one person, at least for a while. She took a deep breath and glanced at the timer. "00:01:10" Just over a minute. Riley gripped the toolbox beneath her. Knuckles white. Who knew what would happen when that thing hit zero? Maybe it'd be like 2012—all hype, nothing real. In that last minute, her life flickered past. Her parents' faces. The hardware store. The lonely months since. "00:00:00" The countdown ended. Riley had just started to breathe a sigh of relief—nothing happened, maybe it really was nothing—when the world lurched beneath her. A dizzying weightlessness. A sensation of falling. Everything spun. ***** She didn't know how long she was out. "Whew." A wind like a knife blade sliced across her face. Riley's eyes snapped open. Her warm apartment was gone. In its place, an endless white expanse stretched in every direction. Snow whipped through the air. Wind howled like a wounded animal. And at her feet, a small campfire guttered in the gale, threatening to die at any second. "What the—" Before she could process, a chime rang directly in her skull. Not heard. Known. "Welcome to the Extreme Cold Survival Game. "Earth no longer exists. This is your new home. This is your grave. "Survival rules are as follows. "1. Each player begins with one campfire. It is your only defense against the cold. If the campfire dies, you will be judged deceased by the system. Not that it matters—without the fire, you won't last anyway. "2. This is a real world. You can die from hunger. From exposure. From animal attack. "3. Supplies stockpiled in your previous world do not carry over. Only items on your person, or in direct physical contact at the moment of transfer, are retained. "4. Struggle to survive. It is your only hope." Riley's heart slammed against her ribs. Supplies didn't carry over? Her mind flashed to those wealthy forum posters bragging about their warehouse stockpiles. And then she looked down at herself. Workwear. Intact. And— She was still sitting on the three giant toolboxes. They sat solidly in the snow, dusted with powder, unmistakably here. "Whew." Riley let out a long breath. A white cloud dispersed in front of her face. Pity, though. During her renovations, she'd stocked those boxes with a lot of power tools. The expensive impact driver. The reciprocating saw. In a world with no electrical outlets, once those batteries died, they were just dead weight. But even so. The hand tools. The consumables. The sheer volume of stuff in those boxes—it was a treasure beyond measure in a place like this. Riley forced herself to calm down. She was here. She'd deal with it. Something new lived in her mind now. She concentrated, and a translucent pale-blue screen materialized in front of her eyes. Looked just like a video game HUD. "Personal Panel "Name: Riley Carter "ID: 1120-US "Level: 1 (Standard Survivor) "Strength: 8 (Years of manual labor have made you stronger than average) "Agility: 8 (You've got quick reflexes) "Constitution: 6 (You've been skipping meals lately) "Spirit: 9 (You keep your head when others panic) "Inventory: 16/16 slots (Base capacity)" "Inventory?" Riley studied the sixteen empty squares at the bottom of the display. She reached out, touched one of the toolboxes, and thought the word, "Store." Whoosh. The heavy box vanished. In its place, a tiny icon appeared in the first inventory slot, a miniature "x1" in the corner. "It actually worked." For the first time since arriving, a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. Retrieve. Thud. The toolbox landed back in the snow, puffing up powder. No energy cost. No sense of weight. And in that inventory, she could carry anything, regardless of how heavy it was. Later on, when she went scavenging, that would make all the difference. Riley rubbed her stiff, freezing hands together and turned her attention to the campfire at her feet. It was the only warmth in this frozen wasteland. Hovering above the flames, visible only to her, were a few lines of glowing text. "Basic Campfire (Lv.1) "Remaining Burn Time: 05:28:00 "Current Coverage: Radius six feet (Blocks wind and snow) "Upgrade Requirements: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Steel x5 "Description: This is your life. Do not let it die. Upgrading expands your safe zone and unlocks additional construction options." "Needs upgrading." Riley frowned. Wood and stone she could probably find. But coal? Steel? Out here in the middle of nowhere? A flash of movement caught her eye. A small wooden box, half-buried in the snow not far from the fire. The starter crate. Had to be. Riley didn't rush. First, she pulled the claw hammer from her belt—the one she always kept there, habit from years of work—and gripped it tight. She scanned the tree line. Listened past the wind. Nothing moved. No sounds but the storm. She walked over quickly, crouched by the box. No lock. She pried the lid open with the claw end of her hammer. Inside, a handful of items. "Obtained: Iron Axe x1 "Obtained: Stale Dark Bread x2 "Obtained: 500ml Bottled Water x1 "Obtained: Kindling x5 "Obtained: Insulated Field Jacket x1 "Obtained: Utility Rope (25ft) "Obtained: Thermal Underwear (Set) x2 Not much. Barely anything. Riley picked up one of the dark loaves. It was rock hard. She examined the jacket—basic, but warm-looking. "So this is what a standard survivor starts with." At least the system had thought of everything. Including the underwear. She'd half-expected to wake up naked in the snow; at least she didn't have to worry about that. She stored everything in her inventory, then shrugged on the field jacket. The temperature shift was brutal. Even those few seconds exposed had left her hands numb. Hypothermia would set in fast out here. Jacket on, she hurried back to the campfire. She pulled the five units of Kindling from her inventory and tossed them onto the flames. The fire roared higher. Warmth flooded over her. "Fuel added. Remaining Burn Time: 10:28:00" Ten hours. If she didn't move fast, in ten hours she'd freeze to death on this ice field. And the game had made it clear—if the fire died, the system would judge her dead. Whether she actually froze or not. Riley lifted her head and scanned the landscape. She was in a sparse coniferous forest. Barely alive trees, crusted with frost, dotted the area not far from her position. "Wood." A slow smile spread across her face. She patted the toolbox beside her. "Other people might have axes. But felling a tree with just an axe takes hours. Exhausts you." She unlatched the box. Pulled out the chainsaw. Checked the battery gauge—full. "I've got a handsaw in here too. And a chainsaw with a full charge." The battery wouldn't last forever. But it would last long enough to give her a massive head start. In this race for survival, that was everything. Chapter 2 The Chainsaw The wind screamed across the open ground, picking up loose snow and flinging it against her goggles like sand. It sounded like static. Riley had pulled her basic work gear from the toolbox before heading out. Now she stood in the snow, surrounded by clusters of thin conifers that looked half-dead already. She took a breath. The air burned going down. "Zzzzzzz—!!!" She squeezed the trigger. The orange-and-black lithium-ion chainsaw in her hands roared to life, the chain spinning so fast it blurred. She buried the teeth in the nearest pine trunk. Wood chips exploded everywhere. Fragrant shavings—still wet with resin—scattered across the pristine snow, stark and yellow against all that white. Five seconds. Crack. The pine tree, thick as her arm, groaned and tilted. Then it fell slow and heavy into a drift, sending up a puff of powder. "God bless modern technology." Riley shook out her wrist—the vibration had numbed her fingers—and allowed herself a small smile. Without that chainsaw, with just the basic iron axe the system had given her, felling a tree frozen solid like this would have taken twenty minutes minimum. And it would have left her soaked with sweat. In subzero temps, sweat was a death sentence. Once your base layers got wet, the moment you stopped moving, your body temperature would plummet. Hypothermia would follow fast. Riley didn't waste time celebrating. She knew the saw in her hands was a hungry machine. She'd brought two spare high-capacity batteries, sure, but until she found a way to recharge them, every second the motor ran was borrowed time. She had to gather as much wood as possible before the batteries gave out. "Zzzzz—Zzzzz—" At the edge of the forest, the chainsaw's snarl rose and fell, shattering the frozen silence. Riley worked like she was possessed. Fell a tree. Move to the next. Fell another. But she had to stay alert—watch for hidden snow pits underfoot, keep adjusting her collar against the wind that kept finding its way down her neck. Her stamina drained faster than she'd anticipated. In extreme cold, body burned through calories just to stay alive. Added walking through knee-deep snow, where every step took three times the energy of walking on pavement, and the math got ugly fast. Pretty soon, Riley was breathing hard. Her breath fogged the inside of her goggles, and she had to keep wiping them clear. "Zzzzz..." She was mid-cut on a tree—didn't even know which number anymore—when the chainsaw's roar stuttered. Died. The chain jammed solid in the wood. A red light blinked at her. Dead battery. Riley yanked the saw free and patted its housing. "Good work, buddy." Genuine regret in her voice. She straightened up and looked around. Pine trunks lay scattered across the snow in every direction. A decent haul. She counted silently. "Twenty-three total." Then the next problem hit her. According to the system, until she actually possessed these logs, they were still just natural resources. That meant they didn't qualify for Inventory storage. She couldn't just snap her fingers and make them disappear. She had to drag them back to camp. Riley grabbed the nearest pine and tried to pull. Heavy. Like, unreasonably heavy. Fresh-cut wood was full of moisture. Add the branches catching in the snow, dragging like anchors, and she felt like she was hauling a dead body through mud. "Huff... huff..." She gritted her teeth, looped rope around the trunk, slung it over her shoulder, leaned forward, and started walking. Inch by inch. The tree line to her campfire was maybe fifty yards. Right now, it felt like fifty miles. By the time she'd wrestled the fourth tree back into the fire's warm radius, she was wrecked. Her legs felt like someone had filled them with concrete. Her lungs burned from hauling freezing air through them. "Can't... can't do more." Riley made the call. She stopped. Those nineteen trees still out there in the snow—they called to her. Tempted her. But if she kept pushing without rest, without fuel for herself, she'd collapse out there. And out there, collapse meant death. She dropped down next to the big wooden crate that had held her starter supplies. It was less than three feet from the campfire. The flames danced orange and red, pumping out heat that felt like heaven. The shift from frozen to warm made her shiver violently. She pulled off her goggles and thick gloves, set them near the fire to warm up, then—still shaking—pulled the half-empty water bottle from her Inventory. Took a small sip. Then the bread. Two black bricks that looked more like construction material than food. "Crunch." Riley bit off a piece with effort. It was coarse. Tasted like sawdust with a hint of burnt toast. Bitter. But it was calories. Carbs. Fuel for her own fire. She forced herself to chew, swallow. When the food hit her stomach, warmth finally started spreading through her core. The uncontrollable shaking eased. After half a loaf, Riley leaned back against the crate. Her eyelids drooped. Post-exhaustion crash hit her like a wave. The campfire crackled. The wind seemed farther away now. Muffled. She really wanted to sleep... Her head nodded. Her body started sliding sideways. "Wait—" Some animal instinct jolted her awake just before she went under. She pinched her thigh. Hard. Then looked up at the timer floating above the flames. "Shelter Level 1 "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 06:28:00" Six and a half hours. If she slept too deep, too long, and that fire went out—what then? Even ignoring the obvious—that she'd freeze to death in this hellhole without a heat source—the game rules were clear. When the campfire hits zero, it's game over. "No sleeping. Not allowed." Riley slapped her own cheeks, forced herself upright. She stayed near the fire, but she didn't take off her heavy work clothes. She remembered reading something once, a survival article. "In the late stages of hypothermia, your hypothalamus malfunctions. You get a false sensation of heat. It's called "paradoxical undressing"—people strip down right before they freeze to death." "Okay. Process these four. Keep the fire fed." She pulled a traditional handsaw from the toolbox. Looking at the four thick pine logs on the ground, she almost laughed. Without power tools, breaking these down into burnable pieces would take at least half an hour. Burn the little energy she had left. But what choice did she have? Riley knelt in the snow, positioned the blade against the trunk, and was about to start cutting— A soft white light shot out from the system panel on her chest. It washed over the logs. "Ding! "Detected felled, intact logs within shelter range. "Perform quick recovery?" Riley's hand froze mid-saw. Quick recovery? It took her a second to process. Then relief flooded through her so hard she almost cried. "Yes! Recover!" She didn't hesitate. The next moment, something impossible happened. The four pine trunks—the ones she'd have to saw and split by hand, the ones that represented hours of brutal labor—dissolved into pale blue light particles. Not into dust. Into neat, uniform logs that stacked themselves automatically in her Inventory. The branches, the needles, all the useless parts—purified out of existence. "Recovery successful! "Obtained: Common Wood x20" Riley's eyes went wide, staring at the perfect lumber in her inventory display. Looked like it came straight from a hardware store. "One tree gives five units of wood? "And I don't have to cut it myself?" This changed everything. It meant she only had to handle the felling and the dragging. Once a log crossed into her camp's boundary, the system recognized it as hers. The most time-consuming part—the processing—just... didn't exist anymore. Riley immediately grabbed five units of wood and fed them to the fire. Whoosh. The flames leaped, hungry and grateful. "Fuel added. "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 12:20:00" "Five logs, five hours..." She did the math fast, looking at the fifteen units still on the ground. If she threw all of those in, that'd be another fifteen hours. Total of twenty-seven. She could sleep like the dead right now, and that fire would still be burning when she woke up. Security. For the first time since the world ended, Riley felt something like security. She selected the remaining wood. Deposited it all. Watched the countdown tick up to a very comfortable "27:20:00". Then her nerves finally let go. She dragged one of the toolboxes into position to block the wind, wrapped the field jacket tight around herself, pulled her hat down over her eyes, leaned back against the warm crate, and let the crackle of the fire pull her under. ***** She didn't sleep long. When she opened her eyes again, the sky was still that same dull gray-white. Impossible to tell if it was morning or afternoon. System clock said three hours. Her body ached. Shoulders and arms especially—felt like she'd gone ten rounds with someone. But her head was clear. She stretched her stiff neck and stood up. The snow seemed lighter. The feathery flakes had tapered off into sporadic icy grains. Riley ate a little more, got some fuel back in the tank, then stepped outside the campfire's warmth. The fire's effect wasn't what she'd expected. It wasn't that the temperature gradually dropped as you moved away. It was sharper than that. Like there was an invisible barrier around the flames. Inside, livable. Outside, the cold hit you like a wall. She wandered a little way off. The cold found every gap in her clothing. She thought about going farther, exploring. But there was nothing visible except that stand of trees she'd already worked. Maybe stuff was buried under the snow, but she couldn't see it. "No proper snow boots. Not going far." Riley glanced at the endless white distance with real regret. "Don't get greedy. Get those nineteen trees first." She turned. Looked at the woods. Her loot was still out there. And now she knew: if she could drag them back into the campfire's circle, the system would cash them out automatically. "Time to work." Riley rubbed her hands together. Let the motivation build. For the next few hours, she became a machine. Drag a tree to camp. Recover it. Go back for another. Repeat. It was boring. Exhausting. But watching those logs turn into numbers in her inventory—that feeling was hard to describe. Satisfying, in a way nothing had been satisfying in a long time. When the last pine trunk crossed into the light and dissolved into particles, Riley just collapsed. Lay flat in the snow and stared at the gray sky. She pulled up her Inventory. The once-empty slots were full now. Stack after stack of wood icons. "Item: Common Wood "Quantity: 80 "Description: Basic survival resource. Can be used for fuel or construction." Eighty units. Plus what was already burning in the campfire. Her day's work had yielded a clean hundred. One unit of wood burned for one hour. Riley looked at the flames dancing in front of her. Felt the heat on her face. Let herself smile, wide and real. "One hundred hours." Four full days. While everyone else was probably still panicking. Crying. Begging. Trying to figure out how to survive their first night in this frozen nightmare... She, Riley, had enough fuel stockpiled to last four days. Which meant: for the next ninety-six hours, unless she actively chose to die, nobody and nothing could put her fire out. She pulled the half-empty water bottle from Inventory. The space must have been insulated somehow—the water was still warm. Almost body temperature. She sipped it. Tasted sweet, even though it was just tap water. "Okay. Next step." Her gaze settled on the "Upgrade" button on the campfire panel. This open-air setup was fine for now. But if she was going to survive long-term, she needed something better. A real shelter. All she needed was a little stone. Some coal. Some steel. Then she could build something worth calling home. Chapter 3 The Trading Game The blizzard howled outside, but within the six-foot radius of the campfire, the air stayed surprisingly warm—like the wind had hit an invisible wall and just couldn't reach. Riley leaned back against the dusty wooden crate, holding the half-empty water bottle in her hand. She stared into the flames for a moment, then focused her attention inward. The pale blue system panel unfolded in front of her eyes again. Now that the immediate crisis was handled, she finally had time to sit quietly and really explore this so-called "Survival System". Beyond the personal stats and inventory, the bottom of the panel had a row of function icons: Server Channel, Friends List, Trading Market, and Crafting Manual. Friends List was empty. No surprise there. She hadn't exactly been a social butterfly back in the old world, and she sure as hell wasn't going to make friends easily in a frozen hellscape where everyone was fighting for their next breath. She tapped into the "Server Channel". A line of numbers appeared in the top left. "Server: US-008 "Current Online: 9911/10000" Ten thousand people started. Less than ten hours in, eighty-nine were already gone. "That doesn't add up." Everyone's starter crate came with a rusty iron axe and five units of wood. Plus the initial fuel the campfire had when they arrived—that alone bought them ten hours minimum, even if they just sat there doing nothing. What the hell did those people do to get eliminated so fast? The channel was moving fast, messages scrolling by every second. Desperation dripped from every line. "Someone help, I'm freezing my ass off out here. This stupid axe can't cut sh*t—every swing just bounces off and rattles my whole arm. Can anyone spare a couple logs? My dad's a senior VP at Walker Group. I'll wire you a million dollars when we get back, I swear." "Wake up, buddy. If your dad's still alive, he's out there chopping trees right now too." "Don't even talk to me. I spotted a wooden crate in the snow earlier, got all excited, ran over—and before I got within ten feet, some white rabbit thing jumped out of a drift. Teeth like needles. Almost took a chunk out of my leg. Missed the crate, wasted all that energy for nothing." "I saw that too! Random crates spawn in the wild. I opened a wooden one and got two chocolate bars and some coal." Reading through the chaos, Riley picked out two keywords, "Random Reward Crates" and "Dangerous Creatures". So this world was deeper than she thought. Wooden crates, copper crates—these randomly spawning resource points were the real way to get ahead. Coal came from crates. That was useful to know. And if coal was in crates, steel probably was too. But something bothered her. According to what people were saying, reward crates weren't exactly rare. So why hadn't she found a single one during her lumber run? She doubted it was just bad luck. Riley exited chat and tapped into the "Trading Market". "Seller: MountainMan88 Item: Stone x2 Wants: White Bread x5" "Seller: LoneWolf_21 Item: Cotton Cloth Wants: Clean Water" "Seller: NotDeadYet Item: Wood x3 Wants: Anything edible" Most people were trading for food and wood. The stuff that kept you alive right now. Things like stone and cloth were getting dumped cheap—nobody had the luxury of thinking long-term. Riley looked at her own inventory. Eighty units of wood staring back at her. Her heart beat a little faster. In this opening phase, where wood literally meant the difference between life and death, the resources in her hands were basically gold bars. "Time to trade," she muttered to herself. "Coal, steel—can't get those from chopping trees. And right now, wood's at maximum value. If I wait, the exchange rate shifts." Even with the chainsaw dead, she still had the handsaw. Less efficient, sure, but she could gather more wood if she needed it. Short-term, she wasn't going to run out. She clicked to post a message in the channel. "System Prompt: Detected that you have not set a virtual ID. Please enter your nickname (cannot be changed after setting)." Riley stared at the blank input box. Naming things was the worst. She sat there for a long time, nothing coming to mind. Finally, she gave up. Couldn't think of anything cool or clever, so she'd just go with something random. Her fingers tapped across the virtual keyboard—SpicyBurger. "Setting successful. ID locked." The prompt closed. Riley posted her message. "SpicyBurger: Selling wood in bulk. Looking for: Coal, Steel, High-calorie food. DM me with offers—what you have and your rate. Good deals go fast, don't sleep on this." For three seconds after the message appeared, the channel went dead silent. Then it exploded. "SpicyBurger? That name's making me hungry, what the hell." "Never mind the name—'wood in bulk'! We got a whale in here! Everyone else is stressing about the next hour and this person's already running a business?" "I need some! My campfire's down to like two hours. I don't know if I actually die when it hits zero but I don't wanna find out." Suddenly, half the channel was scrambling for wood. But then the skeptics crawled out. "Hang on. Everyone started with the same rusty axe. Chopping a tree in this weather takes twenty, thirty minutes minimum. Where's she getting 'bulk' wood from? Sounds like a scam." "InvincibleWarrior: Everybody chill. Look at that ID—sounds like a girl's handle. I'm a grown man, been busting my ass, and I've only got like ten logs saved up. My hands are shredded. Some girl with a food name claims she's got bulk? She's trying to run a game. Scam people out of their stuff." "Iron_Tough: Agreed. Scammers made it through the apocalypse too, I guess. My advice: ignore her. Don't get played. How much wood can a woman chop anyway? Probably can't even lift the axe right, lol." Riley scrolled through the messages, expression flat. She almost laughed. But some people pushed back. "FishHater44: How is it a scam? If she doesn't deliver, you don't complete the trade. Just 'cause you can't chop that much wood doesn't mean nobody can." Riley nodded slightly. That one had a point. But she didn't waste energy arguing in the channel. Instead, she flipped on Do Not Disturb for private messages—only allowing chat requests that included a trade offer. Some people didn't actually care whether she had wood. They just couldn't stand seeing someone else do well. "Ding. Ding. Ding." Private messages started pouring in like rain. Most players weren't idiots. Faced with the very real threat of freezing to death, they'd try anything for a chance. Riley opened the first one. "Windwalker: I got "Coal x3" from a crate. How much wood can I get for it? I can't chop anymore. The wind out here is insane. I tried to throw the coal in my fire but it just kept popping back out. System says my campfire level's too low, won't let me use it. I'm out of wood. My fire's almost dead." Riley thought for a moment. "Three coal for five wood. Deal?" She hadn't known about that restriction. Coal was supposed to be better fuel than wood—didn't expect the game to lock it behind a level gate. The reply came instantly, "Deal. But five wood feels light. It's coal." The guy was conflicted. He knew coal had value, but he was desperate. "I'll make it six. Final offer." Riley wasn't sure about coal's real value yet. Six was her limit. "Fine. Deal." They both dropped their items into the trade window. A moment later, it completed. A flash of white light. Riley's inventory lost six wood. Gained three chunks of coal, each about the size of a small melon. One down. "CrunchyFrog: Hey, I got two "Iron Ingots" from a crate. System calls them "Scrap Steel". Can I get eight wood for them? Trying to stock up enough to sleep through the night." Riley replied, "Sure. Initiate." In just over ten minutes, her wood stockpile dropped significantly. But her inventory filled up with good stuff. "Coal x10 "Stone x23 "Scrap Steel x5 "Raw Meat x2 "White Bread x2 "Basic Torch Blueprint x1" The blueprint was new. The description said it was required for crafting certain items. Seemed useful, so she'd traded for it. Meanwhile, back in the channel, that "InvincibleWarrior" guy who'd been mocking her earlier seemed to notice that people were actually completing trades. His tone got bitter. "InvincibleWarrior: Whatever. She probably got lucky with a high-tier crate. Let's see how long her stock lasts. Once the wood's gone, she'll be begging me to let her join my group." The people who'd successfully traded with Riley popped into the channel to thank her. That might have been fine—except the thanks caused problems. Since Riley had stopped trading for now, most people hadn't gotten anything. And the sky was darkening. Temperature outside the campfire radius was dropping fast. Gathering wood was getting harder. Trading was their only hope. The ones who'd pinned everything on Riley, seeing her stop, started losing it. "You said 'in bulk'! You did like five trades and quit. What are we supposed to do now?" "Keep trading! My fire's almost out. You want us to go chop trees in the dark?" "If you couldn't deliver, why'd you post? Showing off and then hiding." Whether it was coordinated or just genuine rage, the number of people defending Riley in the channel shrank fast. Mostly it was attacks now. Accusations of being irresponsible. Using scarcity tactics. Playing games with people's lives. Riley closed the channel. She couldn't be bothered. In a life-or-death situation like this, people losing it was normal. If she actually had unlimited resources, she'd trade more. But she didn't. And back on Earth, nobody had ever handed her anything out of charity. She wasn't about to start playing savior now. She looked down at the "Basic Torch Blueprint" in her inventory. "Requirements: Wood x10, Kerosene, Scrap Steel x2" Note: Requires Level 2 Workbench to craft." She leaned back against the crate again. Felt the weight of her stockpile pressing back against that lingering sense of unease. In this world, your ID didn't matter. Your gender didn't matter either. What mattered was who held the resources. She looked at what she had left: 36 units of wood. Plus the steel, coal, and stone from trading. Time to plan. Upgrading to a Level 2 campfire required 55 wood. She had all the other materials. For the wood, she'd just have to use the handsaw tomorrow and gather a little more. That settled, she pulled a few more logs from inventory and arranged them on top of the crate, making a small enclosed space. Curled up inside it, she watched the sky outside slowly darken to black. Her eyes grew heavy. She drifted off. Chapter 4 The Culling Riley woke to the kind of soreness that made you reconsider ever moving again. She'd slept like the dead—no dreams, no blizzard, just nothing. When she opened her eyes, the first things she saw were the logs she'd stacked as a windbreak and the steady glow of the campfire. She tried to stretch. Big mistake. Every muscle in her body lit up at once, screaming in protest. "Sh*t." Riley sucked air through her teeth and pressed a hand to her aching shoulder. Her lower back felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to it. Yesterday's work had been too much. She wasn't weak—far from it—but she was still human. The lactic acid had settled in overnight, and now she moved like an arthritic tin man. At least she was alive. She stowed the windbreak logs back in her inventory and looked around. The world hadn't changed. Same dull gray sky. Same swirling snow. Outside the six-foot radius of the fire, the drifts looked deeper than yesterday. The wind had been busy. Riley pulled out the half-empty water bottle and wet her throat. Then she retrieved the white bread she'd traded for yesterday. Compared to that dense, flavorless black bread, this was practically cake. She tore off small pieces, letting the faint sweetness dissolve on her tongue, and habitually opened the "Server Channel". She stopped chewing. The number in the top left hit her like a physical blow. "Current Online Players: 4968/10000" "Five thousand..." Riley's eyes went wide. In a single night, that number had been cut in half. Five thousand people. Gone. Winked out of existence on this frozen ice field while she slept. "Ding." The system notification cut through her thoughts—cold, emotionless, like it was announcing the weather. "Global Announcement: Congratulations to all survivors for successfully surviving the first day. "This was a culling. Last night eliminated those fools who failed to add fuel to their fires or refused to gather wood. Remember: in this place, tears mean nothing. When you die here, you're dead-dead. "You who remain are the lucky ones. "Grace Period: A five-day 'New Player Support Period' now begins. For the next five days, your initial supply crates will refresh daily with a fixed amount of food. "Special Reward: Each survivor receives one pair of "Standard Issue Snow Boots (Common)". Be grateful for this mercy. Enjoy the game." The words sat there on her screen. Fools. Mercy. The system's tone dripped with contempt. The math was simple. Starting package: five hours of fuel. Initial gift: five units of wood, another five hours. Total ten hours, if you did absolutely nothing. The ones who'd frozen to death last night—they were the ones who'd clung to hope. The ones too scared to move. The ones who'd told themselves someone would save them. Five thousand people. One night. Gone. This wasn't a game. It was a slaughter. In the channel, the survivors who'd made it through were clearly rattled by the numbers too. "Holy sh*t... My friend's icon went dark last night. Does that mean he's dead? Actually dead?" "I can't do this. I don't wanna play anymore, I wanna go home. I swear I'll work today. I'll chop wood, I'll do whatever, just please—" "Everyone move! Don't save your strength! If you die, that's it. No respawns!" Panic spread fast. But almost immediately, the tone shifted. The fear found a target. "That SpicyBurger—if she'd shared more wood yesterday, would so many people have died?" "For real. If she had extra, why not just give it away? Why did it have to be trades? She could've at least loaned some out." "This is what happens when people hoard resources and watch others freeze. Remember that name. Don't trade with her. Ever." Riley frowned. Here we go again. She scrolled up. Sure enough, there it was—that familiar ID: "InvincibleWarrior". He was going hard in the channel. "She's profiting off suffering. That's what some people do. Women like that are the worst—hoarding supplies while people die around them. Wait and see. Someone like her won't last." Riley laughed. Actually laughed out loud. Moral blackmail. In the apocalypse. She typed, "If you want wood, go cut it yourself. I'm not your mommy. No amount of crying in chat is gonna put logs in your inventory. You'd get more done if you just picked up your d*mn axe." The channel went quiet for a second. Then the reasonable voices piped up. "She's right. Nobody owes you anything. Work for it." "Exactly. Just 'cause someone's quiet doesn't mean they're an easy target." In a world where staying alive took everything you had, expecting charity was the dumbest move of all. Riley didn't waste more energy on it. People like that—the more you engaged, the more they thrived. Let him run his mouth. She had bigger things to worry about. She closed the channel and turned to the big wooden crate—her initial supply point. Sure enough, new items had materialized inside. "Bottled Water x3 "White Bread x3 "Fresh Orange Juice x1 "Standard Snow Boots x1" "Orange juice?" Riley picked up the bottle, genuinely surprised. The orange liquid inside sloshed gently. Vitamins. The system was actually giving them vitamins. She pulled off her old shoes—already damp and cold—and swapped into the new boots. They were clunky, sure. But they gripped the snow, and the insulation was real. The chill that had been seeping up through her soles disappeared instantly. Next, she opened her toolbox. Goggles on. Thick cut-resistant gloves. Head-to-toe gear. "Time to work." The channel noise faded from her mind. She had one priority today, and it wasn't arguing with idiots. She picked up the chainsaw and headed back to the tree line. The cold played tricks on batteries. She'd known that, intellectually. But knowing it and feeling it were different things. After just eight trees, the last spare battery gave out. The chainsaw stuttered, died, and went silent in her hands. Riley stared at it. "Son of a b*tch." Chapter 5 Dead Battery Riley stared at the dead chainsaw in her hands and shook her head. Without power, it was just an expensive paperweight. If she wanted more wood, she'd have to do it the old-fashioned way—pick up the axe or the manual handsaw from the toolbox and go to war with frozen timber. But eight more trees were eight more trees. Her stockpile was looking healthy. "First things first. Get these back." She sucked it up, stowed the chainsaw in her inventory, and started hauling. Her body screamed even louder than yesterday. Every muscle felt like it had been replaced with concrete. She dragged each log back one at a time, moving like a zombie. Drag. Rest two minutes. Drag again. The wind howled in her ears. Riley lost track of time, lost track of everything except the mechanical rhythm of work. By the time the sun was high—not that you could really see it through the clouds—she dragged the last log into the campfire's radius. It dissolved into light, absorbed by the system. Riley all but collapsed into the snow. "Acquired: Wood x40" She lay there for a moment, chest heaving, staring at the number in her inventory. A tired smile crept across her face. She had enough. Combined with the coal and steel from yesterday's trades, she had everything she needed for the upgrade. Riley forced herself upright and walked to the campfire. On the floating translucent panel, the "Upgrade" button glowed that tempting gold. "Upgrade Primitive Shelter to Lv.2? "Cost: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Scrap Steel x5 "Remaining after upgrade: Wood x16, Stone x3, Coal x0, Steel x0" "Upgrade." Riley took a breath and pressed it. "Hmmmm—!" A blinding white light erupted from the heart of the campfire, swallowing everything. Riley squeezed her eyes shut. No explosion. No thunder. Just a sound like Legos snapping together. A few seconds later, the light faded. Riley opened her eyes. And stopped breathing. The campfire wasn't just a campfire anymore. The rough stone ring had transformed into something neat and intentional—a proper firepit with a stone border for insulation, a place to set things, even a simple steel grate attached to the side. But that wasn't the big news. The heat that used to push back the cold within a six-foot radius now stretched a full fifteen feet. Inside that circle, snow was actively melting, revealing dark frozen soil underneath. In one corner, she spotted a patch of moss stubbornly poking through. Riley spun around. Behind the big wooden crate, a small log cabin stood waiting. It wasn't much—maybe forty feet square, built from rough-hewn logs. Nothing fancy. But it was solid. Four walls and a roof, blocking wind and snow completely. Riley walked over and pushed open the heavy wooden door. Warm air hit her face. Inside was simple: a wooden bed frame piled with dry grass, a crude workbench, a chair, and a small fireplace connected to a chimney that ran up through the roof. Rustic. But right now, it was heaven. Wood and fire. Four walls. A roof. Home. Riley ran her hand along the rough wall. Her eyes stung a little. She wouldn't have to sleep in the open anymore. Wouldn't have to wake up every few hours to check the fire. Wouldn't have to worry about freezing to death in her sleep. Right on cue, the server announcement chimed. Gold text this time, blazing right in the center of everyone's vision. "Server Announcement: Congratulations to player SpicyBurger for being the first to achieve "Level 2 Shelter". Rewards have been distributed." The chat channel, which had been wallowing in fear and despair, exploded. "Holy sh*t? Level 2 already? What does Level 2 unlock? Can you post pics, big shot?" "That's the wood seller from yesterday? No way. Absolute legend." "Carry me please! SpicyBurger, I'll be your loyal follower. I can cook, I can clean, I can—" "Teach us, master! How'd you gather materials so fast? What's your secret?" Compliments. Pleas. Desperate attempts to get noticed. And then, of course, the sour grapes. "InvincibleWarrior: Big deal. Just profiteering off everyone else's suffering. If she'd shared that wood instead of selling it, maybe those five thousand people would still be alive. How does it feel to climb on corpses?" "GodLovesMeFirst: Seriously. Building your success on other people's deaths. Karma's real. She'll get hers." Riley's jaw tightened. If InvincibleWarrior had been standing in front of her right now, she'd have knocked his teeth out. Guys like him—useless themselves, but always ready to tear down anyone who actually accomplished something. Sewer rats. Her private messages exploded too. She'd set it to only accept trade offers, but people had found a workaround—using the "trade note" function to send spam. "Hey beautiful, I'm a personal trainer. Great shape. Wanna see? Hit me with some wood and I'll do a voice call with you!" A photo of some guy flexing in a mirror, shirt off. Riley glanced at it, unimpressed. Decent abs. Pathetic attitude. Dude was clearly strong enough to chop wood—why was he wasting time on this? She'd never mentioned her gender, so most people probably assumed anyone who'd gathered that much wood must be a guy. The messages reflected that assumption. Some women sent selfies too, trying to flirt their way into favor. Didn't matter. Shameless cut across all demographics. From the backgrounds in the photos, everyone seemed to be in different locations. But one thing was consistent: they all had trees nearby. The system must have arranged that—a new player perk. "A bunch of degenerates." Riley's face went cold. She changed her privacy settings to "Friends Only". Then she added a line to her trading post description. "No spam. Send junk, get blocked." Silence. Blessed silence. She took a breath, let the noise drain away, and focused on what mattered. "First-place upgrade reward..." She opened her inventory. Sitting there, glowing faintly purple, was a gift box. For more exciting content, please download the "JoyRead" app to continue reading.
Chapter 1 The Countdown Ends It was the year 2027, and the end of the world was now less than an hour away. "00:59:23" Riley Carter stood on a ladder with a screw clenched between her teeth, an impact driver in her hand, securing the last window panel in place. A month ago, that timer had just appeared out of nowhere, hanging in the corner of everyone's vision like it had always been there. At first, people wrote it off as some kind of mass hacker prank. The government fed the media soothing statements in an attempt to keep things calm, but there was no way to talk down the panic as prices kept rising and supplies were held in a monopoly in real time. News outlets might spin whatever narrative they wanted, but no one could argue with the price of eggs. For a while, it was a frenzy. People cleaned out grocery stores like locusts. The government did what they could—price caps, purchase limits, reassurances from the podium—but none of it mattered. The cost of living kept climbing, and bit by bit, the country started coming apart at the seams. Online, it was a circus. Some people posted doom-laden predictions. Others openly celebrated the thought of the world finally burning. A few just seemed relieved they wouldn't have to clock in on Monday. In that final hour, things got truly ugly. Both on the streets and on social media, it was chaos. Some people figured why not went out with a bang? If the world was ending, they'd spend their last hours doing every reckless thing they'd ever fantasized about. Others, paralyzed by fear of whatever was coming, scrambled for anything they could hoard. Supplies. Weapons. Gasoline. Didn't matter what, as long as they had more of it than the next guy. Most people just wanted to be with the ones they loved. Riley didn't have that luxury anymore. Fresh out of community college, she'd lost both her parents in a highway pileup eighteen months back. The only thing they'd left her was the family hardware store, a cramped little place wedged between a laundromat and a taqueria. She'd been running it solo for just over a year when that d*mn countdown appeared overhead. At first, she'd thought maybe an apocalypse wouldn't be the worst thing. Maybe there'd be something on the other side. A reunion. But then she thought about her folks. They'd doted on her. Made her feel like the center of their world. And even though she'd grown a thick skin since going it alone, feeling indifferent to the world, she knew what they'd want. They'd want her to fight. To stay. She was the only piece of them still left in this world. People always say you aren't really gone until the last person forgets your name. As long as she kept breathing, kept carrying them with her another day, they weren't truly dead. Riley spat the screw into her palm, face calm, the impact driver whirring as she sank another fastener into the reinforced frame. "Flour's three hundred a pound now, and you can't even buy it straight—they make you tack on a bunch of other junk you don't need just to get it," she muttered to herself, shaking her head. When that timer first flickered into existence, Riley had done something smart. She'd liquidated everything. Converted every dollar she could scrape together into supplies. Unfortunately, by the time she hit the stores, inflation had already done its damage. Her savings didn't go nearly as far as they should have. Any cash that was left went toward tools. If the world was ending, she thought they could be useful. Riley pressed the last sheet of thick insulation foam into the window frame, seating it flush against the reinforced plywood beneath. The impact driver snarled as she buried the screws. Then she reached for her pneumatic glue gun—a satisfying pfft as the sealant filled the final gap. She wiped sweat from her forehead and climbed down off the ladder. Stepped back to admire her work. The little apartment was a fortress now. Doors reinforced. Windows barricaded. Every interior wall lined with an extra layer of insulation. She glanced down at herself. Custom-fit heavy-duty workwear. Slash-resistant fabric. More pockets than she'd ever need. Reinforced padding at the knees and elbows. It wasn't fashionable, but it was practical. And her real treasure: tools. A chainsaw. A reciprocating saw. The impact driver in her hand. A multi-bit screwdriver that had cost more than she wanted to admit. She'd brought everything usable from the shop back here, consolidated it into three massive toolboxes. She'd also grabbed some stuff like an air purifier and some spare filters—anything that might matter when civilization took a vacation. She didn't know what the countdown would bring. Some folks online predicted zombies. Others said asteroid impact. Volcanic winter. Alien invasion. Take your pick. Food. Tools. Shelter. She'd even started working out, building strength she'd never needed before. She'd done everything she could think of to prepare. Whatever was coming, she figured she'd last longer than most. With nothing left to do, she dropped onto one of the big toolboxes laid flat on the floor, wiped her forehead again, and pulled out her phone. Most news apps had crashed. The only things still loading were comment sections, and they were going crazy. [Anyone got rice? I'll pay eight grand for a bag. Please, we got nothing left.] [Forget it, man. Money's toilet paper now. Saw it with my own eyes—some rich assholes cleared out the Costco warehouse last week. All that 'purchase limit' crap was just theater. Shelves were empty 'cause the stock never made it there. It's all sitting in some hedge fund guy's basement.] [No kidding? Same thing happened to me! Store manager kept telling me, 'We're limiting purchases, come back next week, we'll put your name on the list.' So the whole time the back room was empty? They were just jerking us around?] [Of course they were. Rich people cornered the market on everything. So what are normal people supposed to do? Just sit here and die?] [Anyone know what actually happens when the clock hits zero? Like, is it nukes? That virus thing from that old video game?] Riley locked her phone. Tucked it away. She didn't have anything to add to that conversation. A month ago, when the countdown first showed up, prices had spiked instantly. A fifty-pound bag of rice that normally went for thirty bucks jumped to eight hundred overnight. By yesterday, it was breaking two grand. The wealthy had rolled up with trucks and cleaned out supermarkets. Riley had been smart—she'd gone early, bought stuff that would keep, stuff that was calorie-dense and cheap. Chocolate. Survival biscuits. Canned goods. It wasn't much, but it was enough for one person, at least for a while. She took a deep breath and glanced at the timer. "00:01:10" Just over a minute. Riley gripped the toolbox beneath her. Knuckles white. Who knew what would happen when that thing hit zero? Maybe it'd be like 2012—all hype, nothing real. In that last minute, her life flickered past. Her parents' faces. The hardware store. The lonely months since. "00:00:00" The countdown ended. Riley had just started to breathe a sigh of relief—nothing happened, maybe it really was nothing—when the world lurched beneath her. A dizzying weightlessness. A sensation of falling. Everything spun. ***** She didn't know how long she was out. "Whew." A wind like a knife blade sliced across her face. Riley's eyes snapped open. Her warm apartment was gone. In its place, an endless white expanse stretched in every direction. Snow whipped through the air. Wind howled like a wounded animal. And at her feet, a small campfire guttered in the gale, threatening to die at any second. "What the—" Before she could process, a chime rang directly in her skull. Not heard. Known. "Welcome to the Extreme Cold Survival Game. "Earth no longer exists. This is your new home. This is your grave. "Survival rules are as follows. "1. Each player begins with one campfire. It is your only defense against the cold. If the campfire dies, you will be judged deceased by the system. Not that it matters—without the fire, you won't last anyway. "2. This is a real world. You can die from hunger. From exposure. From animal attack. "3. Supplies stockpiled in your previous world do not carry over. Only items on your person, or in direct physical contact at the moment of transfer, are retained. "4. Struggle to survive. It is your only hope." Riley's heart slammed against her ribs. Supplies didn't carry over? Her mind flashed to those wealthy forum posters bragging about their warehouse stockpiles. And then she looked down at herself. Workwear. Intact. And— She was still sitting on the three giant toolboxes. They sat solidly in the snow, dusted with powder, unmistakably here. "Whew." Riley let out a long breath. A white cloud dispersed in front of her face. Pity, though. During her renovations, she'd stocked those boxes with a lot of power tools. The expensive impact driver. The reciprocating saw. In a world with no electrical outlets, once those batteries died, they were just dead weight. But even so. The hand tools. The consumables. The sheer volume of stuff in those boxes—it was a treasure beyond measure in a place like this. Riley forced herself to calm down. She was here. She'd deal with it. Something new lived in her mind now. She concentrated, and a translucent pale-blue screen materialized in front of her eyes. Looked just like a video game HUD. "Personal Panel "Name: Riley Carter "ID: 1120-US "Level: 1 (Standard Survivor) "Strength: 8 (Years of manual labor have made you stronger than average) "Agility: 8 (You've got quick reflexes) "Constitution: 6 (You've been skipping meals lately) "Spirit: 9 (You keep your head when others panic) "Inventory: 16/16 slots (Base capacity)" "Inventory?" Riley studied the sixteen empty squares at the bottom of the display. She reached out, touched one of the toolboxes, and thought the word, "Store." Whoosh. The heavy box vanished. In its place, a tiny icon appeared in the first inventory slot, a miniature "x1" in the corner. "It actually worked." For the first time since arriving, a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. Retrieve. Thud. The toolbox landed back in the snow, puffing up powder. No energy cost. No sense of weight. And in that inventory, she could carry anything, regardless of how heavy it was. Later on, when she went scavenging, that would make all the difference. Riley rubbed her stiff, freezing hands together and turned her attention to the campfire at her feet. It was the only warmth in this frozen wasteland. Hovering above the flames, visible only to her, were a few lines of glowing text. "Basic Campfire (Lv.1) "Remaining Burn Time: 05:28:00 "Current Coverage: Radius six feet (Blocks wind and snow) "Upgrade Requirements: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Steel x5 "Description: This is your life. Do not let it die. Upgrading expands your safe zone and unlocks additional construction options." "Needs upgrading." Riley frowned. Wood and stone she could probably find. But coal? Steel? Out here in the middle of nowhere? A flash of movement caught her eye. A small wooden box, half-buried in the snow not far from the fire. The starter crate. Had to be. Riley didn't rush. First, she pulled the claw hammer from her belt—the one she always kept there, habit from years of work—and gripped it tight. She scanned the tree line. Listened past the wind. Nothing moved. No sounds but the storm. She walked over quickly, crouched by the box. No lock. She pried the lid open with the claw end of her hammer. Inside, a handful of items. "Obtained: Iron Axe x1 "Obtained: Stale Dark Bread x2 "Obtained: 500ml Bottled Water x1 "Obtained: Kindling x5 "Obtained: Insulated Field Jacket x1 "Obtained: Utility Rope (25ft) "Obtained: Thermal Underwear (Set) x2 Not much. Barely anything. Riley picked up one of the dark loaves. It was rock hard. She examined the jacket—basic, but warm-looking. "So this is what a standard survivor starts with." At least the system had thought of everything. Including the underwear. She'd half-expected to wake up naked in the snow; at least she didn't have to worry about that. She stored everything in her inventory, then shrugged on the field jacket. The temperature shift was brutal. Even those few seconds exposed had left her hands numb. Hypothermia would set in fast out here. Jacket on, she hurried back to the campfire. She pulled the five units of Kindling from her inventory and tossed them onto the flames. The fire roared higher. Warmth flooded over her. "Fuel added. Remaining Burn Time: 10:28:00" Ten hours. If she didn't move fast, in ten hours she'd freeze to death on this ice field. And the game had made it clear—if the fire died, the system would judge her dead. Whether she actually froze or not. Riley lifted her head and scanned the landscape. She was in a sparse coniferous forest. Barely alive trees, crusted with frost, dotted the area not far from her position. "Wood." A slow smile spread across her face. She patted the toolbox beside her. "Other people might have axes. But felling a tree with just an axe takes hours. Exhausts you." She unlatched the box. Pulled out the chainsaw. Checked the battery gauge—full. "I've got a handsaw in here too. And a chainsaw with a full charge." The battery wouldn't last forever. But it would last long enough to give her a massive head start. In this race for survival, that was everything. Chapter 2 The Chainsaw The wind screamed across the open ground, picking up loose snow and flinging it against her goggles like sand. It sounded like static. Riley had pulled her basic work gear from the toolbox before heading out. Now she stood in the snow, surrounded by clusters of thin conifers that looked half-dead already. She took a breath. The air burned going down. "Zzzzzzz—!!!" She squeezed the trigger. The orange-and-black lithium-ion chainsaw in her hands roared to life, the chain spinning so fast it blurred. She buried the teeth in the nearest pine trunk. Wood chips exploded everywhere. Fragrant shavings—still wet with resin—scattered across the pristine snow, stark and yellow against all that white. Five seconds. Crack. The pine tree, thick as her arm, groaned and tilted. Then it fell slow and heavy into a drift, sending up a puff of powder. "God bless modern technology." Riley shook out her wrist—the vibration had numbed her fingers—and allowed herself a small smile. Without that chainsaw, with just the basic iron axe the system had given her, felling a tree frozen solid like this would have taken twenty minutes minimum. And it would have left her soaked with sweat. In subzero temps, sweat was a death sentence. Once your base layers got wet, the moment you stopped moving, your body temperature would plummet. Hypothermia would follow fast. Riley didn't waste time celebrating. She knew the saw in her hands was a hungry machine. She'd brought two spare high-capacity batteries, sure, but until she found a way to recharge them, every second the motor ran was borrowed time. She had to gather as much wood as possible before the batteries gave out. "Zzzzz—Zzzzz—" At the edge of the forest, the chainsaw's snarl rose and fell, shattering the frozen silence. Riley worked like she was possessed. Fell a tree. Move to the next. Fell another. But she had to stay alert—watch for hidden snow pits underfoot, keep adjusting her collar against the wind that kept finding its way down her neck. Her stamina drained faster than she'd anticipated. In extreme cold, body burned through calories just to stay alive. Added walking through knee-deep snow, where every step took three times the energy of walking on pavement, and the math got ugly fast. Pretty soon, Riley was breathing hard. Her breath fogged the inside of her goggles, and she had to keep wiping them clear. "Zzzzz..." She was mid-cut on a tree—didn't even know which number anymore—when the chainsaw's roar stuttered. Died. The chain jammed solid in the wood. A red light blinked at her. Dead battery. Riley yanked the saw free and patted its housing. "Good work, buddy." Genuine regret in her voice. She straightened up and looked around. Pine trunks lay scattered across the snow in every direction. A decent haul. She counted silently. "Twenty-three total." Then the next problem hit her. According to the system, until she actually possessed these logs, they were still just natural resources. That meant they didn't qualify for Inventory storage. She couldn't just snap her fingers and make them disappear. She had to drag them back to camp. Riley grabbed the nearest pine and tried to pull. Heavy. Like, unreasonably heavy. Fresh-cut wood was full of moisture. Add the branches catching in the snow, dragging like anchors, and she felt like she was hauling a dead body through mud. "Huff... huff..." She gritted her teeth, looped rope around the trunk, slung it over her shoulder, leaned forward, and started walking. Inch by inch. The tree line to her campfire was maybe fifty yards. Right now, it felt like fifty miles. By the time she'd wrestled the fourth tree back into the fire's warm radius, she was wrecked. Her legs felt like someone had filled them with concrete. Her lungs burned from hauling freezing air through them. "Can't... can't do more." Riley made the call. She stopped. Those nineteen trees still out there in the snow—they called to her. Tempted her. But if she kept pushing without rest, without fuel for herself, she'd collapse out there. And out there, collapse meant death. She dropped down next to the big wooden crate that had held her starter supplies. It was less than three feet from the campfire. The flames danced orange and red, pumping out heat that felt like heaven. The shift from frozen to warm made her shiver violently. She pulled off her goggles and thick gloves, set them near the fire to warm up, then—still shaking—pulled the half-empty water bottle from her Inventory. Took a small sip. Then the bread. Two black bricks that looked more like construction material than food. "Crunch." Riley bit off a piece with effort. It was coarse. Tasted like sawdust with a hint of burnt toast. Bitter. But it was calories. Carbs. Fuel for her own fire. She forced herself to chew, swallow. When the food hit her stomach, warmth finally started spreading through her core. The uncontrollable shaking eased. After half a loaf, Riley leaned back against the crate. Her eyelids drooped. Post-exhaustion crash hit her like a wave. The campfire crackled. The wind seemed farther away now. Muffled. She really wanted to sleep... Her head nodded. Her body started sliding sideways. "Wait—" Some animal instinct jolted her awake just before she went under. She pinched her thigh. Hard. Then looked up at the timer floating above the flames. "Shelter Level 1 "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 06:28:00" Six and a half hours. If she slept too deep, too long, and that fire went out—what then? Even ignoring the obvious—that she'd freeze to death in this hellhole without a heat source—the game rules were clear. When the campfire hits zero, it's game over. "No sleeping. Not allowed." Riley slapped her own cheeks, forced herself upright. She stayed near the fire, but she didn't take off her heavy work clothes. She remembered reading something once, a survival article. "In the late stages of hypothermia, your hypothalamus malfunctions. You get a false sensation of heat. It's called "paradoxical undressing"—people strip down right before they freeze to death." "Okay. Process these four. Keep the fire fed." She pulled a traditional handsaw from the toolbox. Looking at the four thick pine logs on the ground, she almost laughed. Without power tools, breaking these down into burnable pieces would take at least half an hour. Burn the little energy she had left. But what choice did she have? Riley knelt in the snow, positioned the blade against the trunk, and was about to start cutting— A soft white light shot out from the system panel on her chest. It washed over the logs. "Ding! "Detected felled, intact logs within shelter range. "Perform quick recovery?" Riley's hand froze mid-saw. Quick recovery? It took her a second to process. Then relief flooded through her so hard she almost cried. "Yes! Recover!" She didn't hesitate. The next moment, something impossible happened. The four pine trunks—the ones she'd have to saw and split by hand, the ones that represented hours of brutal labor—dissolved into pale blue light particles. Not into dust. Into neat, uniform logs that stacked themselves automatically in her Inventory. The branches, the needles, all the useless parts—purified out of existence. "Recovery successful! "Obtained: Common Wood x20" Riley's eyes went wide, staring at the perfect lumber in her inventory display. Looked like it came straight from a hardware store. "One tree gives five units of wood? "And I don't have to cut it myself?" This changed everything. It meant she only had to handle the felling and the dragging. Once a log crossed into her camp's boundary, the system recognized it as hers. The most time-consuming part—the processing—just... didn't exist anymore. Riley immediately grabbed five units of wood and fed them to the fire. Whoosh. The flames leaped, hungry and grateful. "Fuel added. "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 12:20:00" "Five logs, five hours..." She did the math fast, looking at the fifteen units still on the ground. If she threw all of those in, that'd be another fifteen hours. Total of twenty-seven. She could sleep like the dead right now, and that fire would still be burning when she woke up. Security. For the first time since the world ended, Riley felt something like security. She selected the remaining wood. Deposited it all. Watched the countdown tick up to a very comfortable "27:20:00". Then her nerves finally let go. She dragged one of the toolboxes into position to block the wind, wrapped the field jacket tight around herself, pulled her hat down over her eyes, leaned back against the warm crate, and let the crackle of the fire pull her under. ***** She didn't sleep long. When she opened her eyes again, the sky was still that same dull gray-white. Impossible to tell if it was morning or afternoon. System clock said three hours. Her body ached. Shoulders and arms especially—felt like she'd gone ten rounds with someone. But her head was clear. She stretched her stiff neck and stood up. The snow seemed lighter. The feathery flakes had tapered off into sporadic icy grains. Riley ate a little more, got some fuel back in the tank, then stepped outside the campfire's warmth. The fire's effect wasn't what she'd expected. It wasn't that the temperature gradually dropped as you moved away. It was sharper than that. Like there was an invisible barrier around the flames. Inside, livable. Outside, the cold hit you like a wall. She wandered a little way off. The cold found every gap in her clothing. She thought about going farther, exploring. But there was nothing visible except that stand of trees she'd already worked. Maybe stuff was buried under the snow, but she couldn't see it. "No proper snow boots. Not going far." Riley glanced at the endless white distance with real regret. "Don't get greedy. Get those nineteen trees first." She turned. Looked at the woods. Her loot was still out there. And now she knew: if she could drag them back into the campfire's circle, the system would cash them out automatically. "Time to work." Riley rubbed her hands together. Let the motivation build. For the next few hours, she became a machine. Drag a tree to camp. Recover it. Go back for another. Repeat. It was boring. Exhausting. But watching those logs turn into numbers in her inventory—that feeling was hard to describe. Satisfying, in a way nothing had been satisfying in a long time. When the last pine trunk crossed into the light and dissolved into particles, Riley just collapsed. Lay flat in the snow and stared at the gray sky. She pulled up her Inventory. The once-empty slots were full now. Stack after stack of wood icons. "Item: Common Wood "Quantity: 80 "Description: Basic survival resource. Can be used for fuel or construction." Eighty units. Plus what was already burning in the campfire. Her day's work had yielded a clean hundred. One unit of wood burned for one hour. Riley looked at the flames dancing in front of her. Felt the heat on her face. Let herself smile, wide and real. "One hundred hours." Four full days. While everyone else was probably still panicking. Crying. Begging. Trying to figure out how to survive their first night in this frozen nightmare... She, Riley, had enough fuel stockpiled to last four days. Which meant: for the next ninety-six hours, unless she actively chose to die, nobody and nothing could put her fire out. She pulled the half-empty water bottle from Inventory. The space must have been insulated somehow—the water was still warm. Almost body temperature. She sipped it. Tasted sweet, even though it was just tap water. "Okay. Next step." Her gaze settled on the "Upgrade" button on the campfire panel. This open-air setup was fine for now. But if she was going to survive long-term, she needed something better. A real shelter. All she needed was a little stone. Some coal. Some steel. Then she could build something worth calling home. Chapter 3 The Trading Game The blizzard howled outside, but within the six-foot radius of the campfire, the air stayed surprisingly warm—like the wind had hit an invisible wall and just couldn't reach. Riley leaned back against the dusty wooden crate, holding the half-empty water bottle in her hand. She stared into the flames for a moment, then focused her attention inward. The pale blue system panel unfolded in front of her eyes again. Now that the immediate crisis was handled, she finally had time to sit quietly and really explore this so-called "Survival System". Beyond the personal stats and inventory, the bottom of the panel had a row of function icons: Server Channel, Friends List, Trading Market, and Crafting Manual. Friends List was empty. No surprise there. She hadn't exactly been a social butterfly back in the old world, and she sure as hell wasn't going to make friends easily in a frozen hellscape where everyone was fighting for their next breath. She tapped into the "Server Channel". A line of numbers appeared in the top left. "Server: US-008 "Current Online: 9911/10000" Ten thousand people started. Less than ten hours in, eighty-nine were already gone. "That doesn't add up." Everyone's starter crate came with a rusty iron axe and five units of wood. Plus the initial fuel the campfire had when they arrived—that alone bought them ten hours minimum, even if they just sat there doing nothing. What the hell did those people do to get eliminated so fast? The channel was moving fast, messages scrolling by every second. Desperation dripped from every line. "Someone help, I'm freezing my ass off out here. This stupid axe can't cut sh*t—every swing just bounces off and rattles my whole arm. Can anyone spare a couple logs? My dad's a senior VP at Walker Group. I'll wire you a million dollars when we get back, I swear." "Wake up, buddy. If your dad's still alive, he's out there chopping trees right now too." "Don't even talk to me. I spotted a wooden crate in the snow earlier, got all excited, ran over—and before I got within ten feet, some white rabbit thing jumped out of a drift. Teeth like needles. Almost took a chunk out of my leg. Missed the crate, wasted all that energy for nothing." "I saw that too! Random crates spawn in the wild. I opened a wooden one and got two chocolate bars and some coal." Reading through the chaos, Riley picked out two keywords, "Random Reward Crates" and "Dangerous Creatures". So this world was deeper than she thought. Wooden crates, copper crates—these randomly spawning resource points were the real way to get ahead. Coal came from crates. That was useful to know. And if coal was in crates, steel probably was too. But something bothered her. According to what people were saying, reward crates weren't exactly rare. So why hadn't she found a single one during her lumber run? She doubted it was just bad luck. Riley exited chat and tapped into the "Trading Market". "Seller: MountainMan88 Item: Stone x2 Wants: White Bread x5" "Seller: LoneWolf_21 Item: Cotton Cloth Wants: Clean Water" "Seller: NotDeadYet Item: Wood x3 Wants: Anything edible" Most people were trading for food and wood. The stuff that kept you alive right now. Things like stone and cloth were getting dumped cheap—nobody had the luxury of thinking long-term. Riley looked at her own inventory. Eighty units of wood staring back at her. Her heart beat a little faster. In this opening phase, where wood literally meant the difference between life and death, the resources in her hands were basically gold bars. "Time to trade," she muttered to herself. "Coal, steel—can't get those from chopping trees. And right now, wood's at maximum value. If I wait, the exchange rate shifts." Even with the chainsaw dead, she still had the handsaw. Less efficient, sure, but she could gather more wood if she needed it. Short-term, she wasn't going to run out. She clicked to post a message in the channel. "System Prompt: Detected that you have not set a virtual ID. Please enter your nickname (cannot be changed after setting)." Riley stared at the blank input box. Naming things was the worst. She sat there for a long time, nothing coming to mind. Finally, she gave up. Couldn't think of anything cool or clever, so she'd just go with something random. Her fingers tapped across the virtual keyboard—SpicyBurger. "Setting successful. ID locked." The prompt closed. Riley posted her message. "SpicyBurger: Selling wood in bulk. Looking for: Coal, Steel, High-calorie food. DM me with offers—what you have and your rate. Good deals go fast, don't sleep on this." For three seconds after the message appeared, the channel went dead silent. Then it exploded. "SpicyBurger? That name's making me hungry, what the hell." "Never mind the name—'wood in bulk'! We got a whale in here! Everyone else is stressing about the next hour and this person's already running a business?" "I need some! My campfire's down to like two hours. I don't know if I actually die when it hits zero but I don't wanna find out." Suddenly, half the channel was scrambling for wood. But then the skeptics crawled out. "Hang on. Everyone started with the same rusty axe. Chopping a tree in this weather takes twenty, thirty minutes minimum. Where's she getting 'bulk' wood from? Sounds like a scam." "InvincibleWarrior: Everybody chill. Look at that ID—sounds like a girl's handle. I'm a grown man, been busting my ass, and I've only got like ten logs saved up. My hands are shredded. Some girl with a food name claims she's got bulk? She's trying to run a game. Scam people out of their stuff." "Iron_Tough: Agreed. Scammers made it through the apocalypse too, I guess. My advice: ignore her. Don't get played. How much wood can a woman chop anyway? Probably can't even lift the axe right, lol." Riley scrolled through the messages, expression flat. She almost laughed. But some people pushed back. "FishHater44: How is it a scam? If she doesn't deliver, you don't complete the trade. Just 'cause you can't chop that much wood doesn't mean nobody can." Riley nodded slightly. That one had a point. But she didn't waste energy arguing in the channel. Instead, she flipped on Do Not Disturb for private messages—only allowing chat requests that included a trade offer. Some people didn't actually care whether she had wood. They just couldn't stand seeing someone else do well. "Ding. Ding. Ding." Private messages started pouring in like rain. Most players weren't idiots. Faced with the very real threat of freezing to death, they'd try anything for a chance. Riley opened the first one. "Windwalker: I got "Coal x3" from a crate. How much wood can I get for it? I can't chop anymore. The wind out here is insane. I tried to throw the coal in my fire but it just kept popping back out. System says my campfire level's too low, won't let me use it. I'm out of wood. My fire's almost dead." Riley thought for a moment. "Three coal for five wood. Deal?" She hadn't known about that restriction. Coal was supposed to be better fuel than wood—didn't expect the game to lock it behind a level gate. The reply came instantly, "Deal. But five wood feels light. It's coal." The guy was conflicted. He knew coal had value, but he was desperate. "I'll make it six. Final offer." Riley wasn't sure about coal's real value yet. Six was her limit. "Fine. Deal." They both dropped their items into the trade window. A moment later, it completed. A flash of white light. Riley's inventory lost six wood. Gained three chunks of coal, each about the size of a small melon. One down. "CrunchyFrog: Hey, I got two "Iron Ingots" from a crate. System calls them "Scrap Steel". Can I get eight wood for them? Trying to stock up enough to sleep through the night." Riley replied, "Sure. Initiate." In just over ten minutes, her wood stockpile dropped significantly. But her inventory filled up with good stuff. "Coal x10 "Stone x23 "Scrap Steel x5 "Raw Meat x2 "White Bread x2 "Basic Torch Blueprint x1" The blueprint was new. The description said it was required for crafting certain items. Seemed useful, so she'd traded for it. Meanwhile, back in the channel, that "InvincibleWarrior" guy who'd been mocking her earlier seemed to notice that people were actually completing trades. His tone got bitter. "InvincibleWarrior: Whatever. She probably got lucky with a high-tier crate. Let's see how long her stock lasts. Once the wood's gone, she'll be begging me to let her join my group." The people who'd successfully traded with Riley popped into the channel to thank her. That might have been fine—except the thanks caused problems. Since Riley had stopped trading for now, most people hadn't gotten anything. And the sky was darkening. Temperature outside the campfire radius was dropping fast. Gathering wood was getting harder. Trading was their only hope. The ones who'd pinned everything on Riley, seeing her stop, started losing it. "You said 'in bulk'! You did like five trades and quit. What are we supposed to do now?" "Keep trading! My fire's almost out. You want us to go chop trees in the dark?" "If you couldn't deliver, why'd you post? Showing off and then hiding." Whether it was coordinated or just genuine rage, the number of people defending Riley in the channel shrank fast. Mostly it was attacks now. Accusations of being irresponsible. Using scarcity tactics. Playing games with people's lives. Riley closed the channel. She couldn't be bothered. In a life-or-death situation like this, people losing it was normal. If she actually had unlimited resources, she'd trade more. But she didn't. And back on Earth, nobody had ever handed her anything out of charity. She wasn't about to start playing savior now. She looked down at the "Basic Torch Blueprint" in her inventory. "Requirements: Wood x10, Kerosene, Scrap Steel x2" Note: Requires Level 2 Workbench to craft." She leaned back against the crate again. Felt the weight of her stockpile pressing back against that lingering sense of unease. In this world, your ID didn't matter. Your gender didn't matter either. What mattered was who held the resources. She looked at what she had left: 36 units of wood. Plus the steel, coal, and stone from trading. Time to plan. Upgrading to a Level 2 campfire required 55 wood. She had all the other materials. For the wood, she'd just have to use the handsaw tomorrow and gather a little more. That settled, she pulled a few more logs from inventory and arranged them on top of the crate, making a small enclosed space. Curled up inside it, she watched the sky outside slowly darken to black. Her eyes grew heavy. She drifted off. Chapter 4 The Culling Riley woke to the kind of soreness that made you reconsider ever moving again. She'd slept like the dead—no dreams, no blizzard, just nothing. When she opened her eyes, the first things she saw were the logs she'd stacked as a windbreak and the steady glow of the campfire. She tried to stretch. Big mistake. Every muscle in her body lit up at once, screaming in protest. "Sh*t." Riley sucked air through her teeth and pressed a hand to her aching shoulder. Her lower back felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to it. Yesterday's work had been too much. She wasn't weak—far from it—but she was still human. The lactic acid had settled in overnight, and now she moved like an arthritic tin man. At least she was alive. She stowed the windbreak logs back in her inventory and looked around. The world hadn't changed. Same dull gray sky. Same swirling snow. Outside the six-foot radius of the fire, the drifts looked deeper than yesterday. The wind had been busy. Riley pulled out the half-empty water bottle and wet her throat. Then she retrieved the white bread she'd traded for yesterday. Compared to that dense, flavorless black bread, this was practically cake. She tore off small pieces, letting the faint sweetness dissolve on her tongue, and habitually opened the "Server Channel". She stopped chewing. The number in the top left hit her like a physical blow. "Current Online Players: 4968/10000" "Five thousand..." Riley's eyes went wide. In a single night, that number had been cut in half. Five thousand people. Gone. Winked out of existence on this frozen ice field while she slept. "Ding." The system notification cut through her thoughts—cold, emotionless, like it was announcing the weather. "Global Announcement: Congratulations to all survivors for successfully surviving the first day. "This was a culling. Last night eliminated those fools who failed to add fuel to their fires or refused to gather wood. Remember: in this place, tears mean nothing. When you die here, you're dead-dead. "You who remain are the lucky ones. "Grace Period: A five-day 'New Player Support Period' now begins. For the next five days, your initial supply crates will refresh daily with a fixed amount of food. "Special Reward: Each survivor receives one pair of "Standard Issue Snow Boots (Common)". Be grateful for this mercy. Enjoy the game." The words sat there on her screen. Fools. Mercy. The system's tone dripped with contempt. The math was simple. Starting package: five hours of fuel. Initial gift: five units of wood, another five hours. Total ten hours, if you did absolutely nothing. The ones who'd frozen to death last night—they were the ones who'd clung to hope. The ones too scared to move. The ones who'd told themselves someone would save them. Five thousand people. One night. Gone. This wasn't a game. It was a slaughter. In the channel, the survivors who'd made it through were clearly rattled by the numbers too. "Holy sh*t... My friend's icon went dark last night. Does that mean he's dead? Actually dead?" "I can't do this. I don't wanna play anymore, I wanna go home. I swear I'll work today. I'll chop wood, I'll do whatever, just please—" "Everyone move! Don't save your strength! If you die, that's it. No respawns!" Panic spread fast. But almost immediately, the tone shifted. The fear found a target. "That SpicyBurger—if she'd shared more wood yesterday, would so many people have died?" "For real. If she had extra, why not just give it away? Why did it have to be trades? She could've at least loaned some out." "This is what happens when people hoard resources and watch others freeze. Remember that name. Don't trade with her. Ever." Riley frowned. Here we go again. She scrolled up. Sure enough, there it was—that familiar ID: "InvincibleWarrior". He was going hard in the channel. "She's profiting off suffering. That's what some people do. Women like that are the worst—hoarding supplies while people die around them. Wait and see. Someone like her won't last." Riley laughed. Actually laughed out loud. Moral blackmail. In the apocalypse. She typed, "If you want wood, go cut it yourself. I'm not your mommy. No amount of crying in chat is gonna put logs in your inventory. You'd get more done if you just picked up your d*mn axe." The channel went quiet for a second. Then the reasonable voices piped up. "She's right. Nobody owes you anything. Work for it." "Exactly. Just 'cause someone's quiet doesn't mean they're an easy target." In a world where staying alive took everything you had, expecting charity was the dumbest move of all. Riley didn't waste more energy on it. People like that—the more you engaged, the more they thrived. Let him run his mouth. She had bigger things to worry about. She closed the channel and turned to the big wooden crate—her initial supply point. Sure enough, new items had materialized inside. "Bottled Water x3 "White Bread x3 "Fresh Orange Juice x1 "Standard Snow Boots x1" "Orange juice?" Riley picked up the bottle, genuinely surprised. The orange liquid inside sloshed gently. Vitamins. The system was actually giving them vitamins. She pulled off her old shoes—already damp and cold—and swapped into the new boots. They were clunky, sure. But they gripped the snow, and the insulation was real. The chill that had been seeping up through her soles disappeared instantly. Next, she opened her toolbox. Goggles on. Thick cut-resistant gloves. Head-to-toe gear. "Time to work." The channel noise faded from her mind. She had one priority today, and it wasn't arguing with idiots. She picked up the chainsaw and headed back to the tree line. The cold played tricks on batteries. She'd known that, intellectually. But knowing it and feeling it were different things. After just eight trees, the last spare battery gave out. The chainsaw stuttered, died, and went silent in her hands. Riley stared at it. "Son of a b*tch." Chapter 5 Dead Battery Riley stared at the dead chainsaw in her hands and shook her head. Without power, it was just an expensive paperweight. If she wanted more wood, she'd have to do it the old-fashioned way—pick up the axe or the manual handsaw from the toolbox and go to war with frozen timber. But eight more trees were eight more trees. Her stockpile was looking healthy. "First things first. Get these back." She sucked it up, stowed the chainsaw in her inventory, and started hauling. Her body screamed even louder than yesterday. Every muscle felt like it had been replaced with concrete. She dragged each log back one at a time, moving like a zombie. Drag. Rest two minutes. Drag again. The wind howled in her ears. Riley lost track of time, lost track of everything except the mechanical rhythm of work. By the time the sun was high—not that you could really see it through the clouds—she dragged the last log into the campfire's radius. It dissolved into light, absorbed by the system. Riley all but collapsed into the snow. "Acquired: Wood x40" She lay there for a moment, chest heaving, staring at the number in her inventory. A tired smile crept across her face. She had enough. Combined with the coal and steel from yesterday's trades, she had everything she needed for the upgrade. Riley forced herself upright and walked to the campfire. On the floating translucent panel, the "Upgrade" button glowed that tempting gold. "Upgrade Primitive Shelter to Lv.2? "Cost: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Scrap Steel x5 "Remaining after upgrade: Wood x16, Stone x3, Coal x0, Steel x0" "Upgrade." Riley took a breath and pressed it. "Hmmmm—!" A blinding white light erupted from the heart of the campfire, swallowing everything. Riley squeezed her eyes shut. No explosion. No thunder. Just a sound like Legos snapping together. A few seconds later, the light faded. Riley opened her eyes. And stopped breathing. The campfire wasn't just a campfire anymore. The rough stone ring had transformed into something neat and intentional—a proper firepit with a stone border for insulation, a place to set things, even a simple steel grate attached to the side. But that wasn't the big news. The heat that used to push back the cold within a six-foot radius now stretched a full fifteen feet. Inside that circle, snow was actively melting, revealing dark frozen soil underneath. In one corner, she spotted a patch of moss stubbornly poking through. Riley spun around. Behind the big wooden crate, a small log cabin stood waiting. It wasn't much—maybe forty feet square, built from rough-hewn logs. Nothing fancy. But it was solid. Four walls and a roof, blocking wind and snow completely. Riley walked over and pushed open the heavy wooden door. Warm air hit her face. Inside was simple: a wooden bed frame piled with dry grass, a crude workbench, a chair, and a small fireplace connected to a chimney that ran up through the roof. Rustic. But right now, it was heaven. Wood and fire. Four walls. A roof. Home. Riley ran her hand along the rough wall. Her eyes stung a little. She wouldn't have to sleep in the open anymore. Wouldn't have to wake up every few hours to check the fire. Wouldn't have to worry about freezing to death in her sleep. Right on cue, the server announcement chimed. Gold text this time, blazing right in the center of everyone's vision. "Server Announcement: Congratulations to player SpicyBurger for being the first to achieve "Level 2 Shelter". Rewards have been distributed." The chat channel, which had been wallowing in fear and despair, exploded. "Holy sh*t? Level 2 already? What does Level 2 unlock? Can you post pics, big shot?" "That's the wood seller from yesterday? No way. Absolute legend." "Carry me please! SpicyBurger, I'll be your loyal follower. I can cook, I can clean, I can—" "Teach us, master! How'd you gather materials so fast? What's your secret?" Compliments. Pleas. Desperate attempts to get noticed. And then, of course, the sour grapes. "InvincibleWarrior: Big deal. Just profiteering off everyone else's suffering. If she'd shared that wood instead of selling it, maybe those five thousand people would still be alive. How does it feel to climb on corpses?" "GodLovesMeFirst: Seriously. Building your success on other people's deaths. Karma's real. She'll get hers." Riley's jaw tightened. If InvincibleWarrior had been standing in front of her right now, she'd have knocked his teeth out. Guys like him—useless themselves, but always ready to tear down anyone who actually accomplished something. Sewer rats. Her private messages exploded too. She'd set it to only accept trade offers, but people had found a workaround—using the "trade note" function to send spam. "Hey beautiful, I'm a personal trainer. Great shape. Wanna see? Hit me with some wood and I'll do a voice call with you!" A photo of some guy flexing in a mirror, shirt off. Riley glanced at it, unimpressed. Decent abs. Pathetic attitude. Dude was clearly strong enough to chop wood—why was he wasting time on this? She'd never mentioned her gender, so most people probably assumed anyone who'd gathered that much wood must be a guy. The messages reflected that assumption. Some women sent selfies too, trying to flirt their way into favor. Didn't matter. Shameless cut across all demographics. From the backgrounds in the photos, everyone seemed to be in different locations. But one thing was consistent: they all had trees nearby. The system must have arranged that—a new player perk. "A bunch of degenerates." Riley's face went cold. She changed her privacy settings to "Friends Only". Then she added a line to her trading post description. "No spam. Send junk, get blocked." Silence. Blessed silence. She took a breath, let the noise drain away, and focused on what mattered. "First-place upgrade reward..." She opened her inventory. Sitting there, glowing faintly purple, was a gift box. For more exciting content, please download the "JoyRead" app to continue reading.
Chapter 1 The Countdown Ends It was the year 2027, and the end of the world was now less than an hour away. "00:59:23" Riley Carter stood on a ladder with a screw clenched between her teeth, an impact driver in her hand, securing the last window panel in place. A month ago, that timer had just appeared out of nowhere, hanging in the corner of everyone's vision like it had always been there. At first, people wrote it off as some kind of mass hacker prank. The government fed the media soothing statements in an attempt to keep things calm, but there was no way to talk down the panic as prices kept rising and supplies were held in a monopoly in real time. News outlets might spin whatever narrative they wanted, but no one could argue with the price of eggs. For a while, it was a frenzy. People cleaned out grocery stores like locusts. The government did what they could—price caps, purchase limits, reassurances from the podium—but none of it mattered. The cost of living kept climbing, and bit by bit, the country started coming apart at the seams. Online, it was a circus. Some people posted doom-laden predictions. Others openly celebrated the thought of the world finally burning. A few just seemed relieved they wouldn't have to clock in on Monday. In that final hour, things got truly ugly. Both on the streets and on social media, it was chaos. Some people figured why not went out with a bang? If the world was ending, they'd spend their last hours doing every reckless thing they'd ever fantasized about. Others, paralyzed by fear of whatever was coming, scrambled for anything they could hoard. Supplies. Weapons. Gasoline. Didn't matter what, as long as they had more of it than the next guy. Most people just wanted to be with the ones they loved. Riley didn't have that luxury anymore. Fresh out of community college, she'd lost both her parents in a highway pileup eighteen months back. The only thing they'd left her was the family hardware store, a cramped little place wedged between a laundromat and a taqueria. She'd been running it solo for just over a year when that d*mn countdown appeared overhead. At first, she'd thought maybe an apocalypse wouldn't be the worst thing. Maybe there'd be something on the other side. A reunion. But then she thought about her folks. They'd doted on her. Made her feel like the center of their world. And even though she'd grown a thick skin since going it alone, feeling indifferent to the world, she knew what they'd want. They'd want her to fight. To stay. She was the only piece of them still left in this world. People always say you aren't really gone until the last person forgets your name. As long as she kept breathing, kept carrying them with her another day, they weren't truly dead. Riley spat the screw into her palm, face calm, the impact driver whirring as she sank another fastener into the reinforced frame. "Flour's three hundred a pound now, and you can't even buy it straight—they make you tack on a bunch of other junk you don't need just to get it," she muttered to herself, shaking her head. When that timer first flickered into existence, Riley had done something smart. She'd liquidated everything. Converted every dollar she could scrape together into supplies. Unfortunately, by the time she hit the stores, inflation had already done its damage. Her savings didn't go nearly as far as they should have. Any cash that was left went toward tools. If the world was ending, she thought they could be useful. Riley pressed the last sheet of thick insulation foam into the window frame, seating it flush against the reinforced plywood beneath. The impact driver snarled as she buried the screws. Then she reached for her pneumatic glue gun—a satisfying pfft as the sealant filled the final gap. She wiped sweat from her forehead and climbed down off the ladder. Stepped back to admire her work. The little apartment was a fortress now. Doors reinforced. Windows barricaded. Every interior wall lined with an extra layer of insulation. She glanced down at herself. Custom-fit heavy-duty workwear. Slash-resistant fabric. More pockets than she'd ever need. Reinforced padding at the knees and elbows. It wasn't fashionable, but it was practical. And her real treasure: tools. A chainsaw. A reciprocating saw. The impact driver in her hand. A multi-bit screwdriver that had cost more than she wanted to admit. She'd brought everything usable from the shop back here, consolidated it into three massive toolboxes. She'd also grabbed some stuff like an air purifier and some spare filters—anything that might matter when civilization took a vacation. She didn't know what the countdown would bring. Some folks online predicted zombies. Others said asteroid impact. Volcanic winter. Alien invasion. Take your pick. Food. Tools. Shelter. She'd even started working out, building strength she'd never needed before. She'd done everything she could think of to prepare. Whatever was coming, she figured she'd last longer than most. With nothing left to do, she dropped onto one of the big toolboxes laid flat on the floor, wiped her forehead again, and pulled out her phone. Most news apps had crashed. The only things still loading were comment sections, and they were going crazy. [Anyone got rice? I'll pay eight grand for a bag. Please, we got nothing left.] [Forget it, man. Money's toilet paper now. Saw it with my own eyes—some rich assholes cleared out the Costco warehouse last week. All that 'purchase limit' crap was just theater. Shelves were empty 'cause the stock never made it there. It's all sitting in some hedge fund guy's basement.] [No kidding? Same thing happened to me! Store manager kept telling me, 'We're limiting purchases, come back next week, we'll put your name on the list.' So the whole time the back room was empty? They were just jerking us around?] [Of course they were. Rich people cornered the market on everything. So what are normal people supposed to do? Just sit here and die?] [Anyone know what actually happens when the clock hits zero? Like, is it nukes? That virus thing from that old video game?] Riley locked her phone. Tucked it away. She didn't have anything to add to that conversation. A month ago, when the countdown first showed up, prices had spiked instantly. A fifty-pound bag of rice that normally went for thirty bucks jumped to eight hundred overnight. By yesterday, it was breaking two grand. The wealthy had rolled up with trucks and cleaned out supermarkets. Riley had been smart—she'd gone early, bought stuff that would keep, stuff that was calorie-dense and cheap. Chocolate. Survival biscuits. Canned goods. It wasn't much, but it was enough for one person, at least for a while. She took a deep breath and glanced at the timer. "00:01:10" Just over a minute. Riley gripped the toolbox beneath her. Knuckles white. Who knew what would happen when that thing hit zero? Maybe it'd be like 2012—all hype, nothing real. In that last minute, her life flickered past. Her parents' faces. The hardware store. The lonely months since. "00:00:00" The countdown ended. Riley had just started to breathe a sigh of relief—nothing happened, maybe it really was nothing—when the world lurched beneath her. A dizzying weightlessness. A sensation of falling. Everything spun. ***** She didn't know how long she was out. "Whew." A wind like a knife blade sliced across her face. Riley's eyes snapped open. Her warm apartment was gone. In its place, an endless white expanse stretched in every direction. Snow whipped through the air. Wind howled like a wounded animal. And at her feet, a small campfire guttered in the gale, threatening to die at any second. "What the—" Before she could process, a chime rang directly in her skull. Not heard. Known. "Welcome to the Extreme Cold Survival Game. "Earth no longer exists. This is your new home. This is your grave. "Survival rules are as follows. "1. Each player begins with one campfire. It is your only defense against the cold. If the campfire dies, you will be judged deceased by the system. Not that it matters—without the fire, you won't last anyway. "2. This is a real world. You can die from hunger. From exposure. From animal attack. "3. Supplies stockpiled in your previous world do not carry over. Only items on your person, or in direct physical contact at the moment of transfer, are retained. "4. Struggle to survive. It is your only hope." Riley's heart slammed against her ribs. Supplies didn't carry over? Her mind flashed to those wealthy forum posters bragging about their warehouse stockpiles. And then she looked down at herself. Workwear. Intact. And— She was still sitting on the three giant toolboxes. They sat solidly in the snow, dusted with powder, unmistakably here. "Whew." Riley let out a long breath. A white cloud dispersed in front of her face. Pity, though. During her renovations, she'd stocked those boxes with a lot of power tools. The expensive impact driver. The reciprocating saw. In a world with no electrical outlets, once those batteries died, they were just dead weight. But even so. The hand tools. The consumables. The sheer volume of stuff in those boxes—it was a treasure beyond measure in a place like this. Riley forced herself to calm down. She was here. She'd deal with it. Something new lived in her mind now. She concentrated, and a translucent pale-blue screen materialized in front of her eyes. Looked just like a video game HUD. "Personal Panel "Name: Riley Carter "ID: 1120-US "Level: 1 (Standard Survivor) "Strength: 8 (Years of manual labor have made you stronger than average) "Agility: 8 (You've got quick reflexes) "Constitution: 6 (You've been skipping meals lately) "Spirit: 9 (You keep your head when others panic) "Inventory: 16/16 slots (Base capacity)" "Inventory?" Riley studied the sixteen empty squares at the bottom of the display. She reached out, touched one of the toolboxes, and thought the word, "Store." Whoosh. The heavy box vanished. In its place, a tiny icon appeared in the first inventory slot, a miniature "x1" in the corner. "It actually worked." For the first time since arriving, a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. Retrieve. Thud. The toolbox landed back in the snow, puffing up powder. No energy cost. No sense of weight. And in that inventory, she could carry anything, regardless of how heavy it was. Later on, when she went scavenging, that would make all the difference. Riley rubbed her stiff, freezing hands together and turned her attention to the campfire at her feet. It was the only warmth in this frozen wasteland. Hovering above the flames, visible only to her, were a few lines of glowing text. "Basic Campfire (Lv.1) "Remaining Burn Time: 05:28:00 "Current Coverage: Radius six feet (Blocks wind and snow) "Upgrade Requirements: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Steel x5 "Description: This is your life. Do not let it die. Upgrading expands your safe zone and unlocks additional construction options." "Needs upgrading." Riley frowned. Wood and stone she could probably find. But coal? Steel? Out here in the middle of nowhere? A flash of movement caught her eye. A small wooden box, half-buried in the snow not far from the fire. The starter crate. Had to be. Riley didn't rush. First, she pulled the claw hammer from her belt—the one she always kept there, habit from years of work—and gripped it tight. She scanned the tree line. Listened past the wind. Nothing moved. No sounds but the storm. She walked over quickly, crouched by the box. No lock. She pried the lid open with the claw end of her hammer. Inside, a handful of items. "Obtained: Iron Axe x1 "Obtained: Stale Dark Bread x2 "Obtained: 500ml Bottled Water x1 "Obtained: Kindling x5 "Obtained: Insulated Field Jacket x1 "Obtained: Utility Rope (25ft) "Obtained: Thermal Underwear (Set) x2 Not much. Barely anything. Riley picked up one of the dark loaves. It was rock hard. She examined the jacket—basic, but warm-looking. "So this is what a standard survivor starts with." At least the system had thought of everything. Including the underwear. She'd half-expected to wake up naked in the snow; at least she didn't have to worry about that. She stored everything in her inventory, then shrugged on the field jacket. The temperature shift was brutal. Even those few seconds exposed had left her hands numb. Hypothermia would set in fast out here. Jacket on, she hurried back to the campfire. She pulled the five units of Kindling from her inventory and tossed them onto the flames. The fire roared higher. Warmth flooded over her. "Fuel added. Remaining Burn Time: 10:28:00" Ten hours. If she didn't move fast, in ten hours she'd freeze to death on this ice field. And the game had made it clear—if the fire died, the system would judge her dead. Whether she actually froze or not. Riley lifted her head and scanned the landscape. She was in a sparse coniferous forest. Barely alive trees, crusted with frost, dotted the area not far from her position. "Wood." A slow smile spread across her face. She patted the toolbox beside her. "Other people might have axes. But felling a tree with just an axe takes hours. Exhausts you." She unlatched the box. Pulled out the chainsaw. Checked the battery gauge—full. "I've got a handsaw in here too. And a chainsaw with a full charge." The battery wouldn't last forever. But it would last long enough to give her a massive head start. In this race for survival, that was everything. Chapter 2 The Chainsaw The wind screamed across the open ground, picking up loose snow and flinging it against her goggles like sand. It sounded like static. Riley had pulled her basic work gear from the toolbox before heading out. Now she stood in the snow, surrounded by clusters of thin conifers that looked half-dead already. She took a breath. The air burned going down. "Zzzzzzz—!!!" She squeezed the trigger. The orange-and-black lithium-ion chainsaw in her hands roared to life, the chain spinning so fast it blurred. She buried the teeth in the nearest pine trunk. Wood chips exploded everywhere. Fragrant shavings—still wet with resin—scattered across the pristine snow, stark and yellow against all that white. Five seconds. Crack. The pine tree, thick as her arm, groaned and tilted. Then it fell slow and heavy into a drift, sending up a puff of powder. "God bless modern technology." Riley shook out her wrist—the vibration had numbed her fingers—and allowed herself a small smile. Without that chainsaw, with just the basic iron axe the system had given her, felling a tree frozen solid like this would have taken twenty minutes minimum. And it would have left her soaked with sweat. In subzero temps, sweat was a death sentence. Once your base layers got wet, the moment you stopped moving, your body temperature would plummet. Hypothermia would follow fast. Riley didn't waste time celebrating. She knew the saw in her hands was a hungry machine. She'd brought two spare high-capacity batteries, sure, but until she found a way to recharge them, every second the motor ran was borrowed time. She had to gather as much wood as possible before the batteries gave out. "Zzzzz—Zzzzz—" At the edge of the forest, the chainsaw's snarl rose and fell, shattering the frozen silence. Riley worked like she was possessed. Fell a tree. Move to the next. Fell another. But she had to stay alert—watch for hidden snow pits underfoot, keep adjusting her collar against the wind that kept finding its way down her neck. Her stamina drained faster than she'd anticipated. In extreme cold, body burned through calories just to stay alive. Added walking through knee-deep snow, where every step took three times the energy of walking on pavement, and the math got ugly fast. Pretty soon, Riley was breathing hard. Her breath fogged the inside of her goggles, and she had to keep wiping them clear. "Zzzzz..." She was mid-cut on a tree—didn't even know which number anymore—when the chainsaw's roar stuttered. Died. The chain jammed solid in the wood. A red light blinked at her. Dead battery. Riley yanked the saw free and patted its housing. "Good work, buddy." Genuine regret in her voice. She straightened up and looked around. Pine trunks lay scattered across the snow in every direction. A decent haul. She counted silently. "Twenty-three total." Then the next problem hit her. According to the system, until she actually possessed these logs, they were still just natural resources. That meant they didn't qualify for Inventory storage. She couldn't just snap her fingers and make them disappear. She had to drag them back to camp. Riley grabbed the nearest pine and tried to pull. Heavy. Like, unreasonably heavy. Fresh-cut wood was full of moisture. Add the branches catching in the snow, dragging like anchors, and she felt like she was hauling a dead body through mud. "Huff... huff..." She gritted her teeth, looped rope around the trunk, slung it over her shoulder, leaned forward, and started walking. Inch by inch. The tree line to her campfire was maybe fifty yards. Right now, it felt like fifty miles. By the time she'd wrestled the fourth tree back into the fire's warm radius, she was wrecked. Her legs felt like someone had filled them with concrete. Her lungs burned from hauling freezing air through them. "Can't... can't do more." Riley made the call. She stopped. Those nineteen trees still out there in the snow—they called to her. Tempted her. But if she kept pushing without rest, without fuel for herself, she'd collapse out there. And out there, collapse meant death. She dropped down next to the big wooden crate that had held her starter supplies. It was less than three feet from the campfire. The flames danced orange and red, pumping out heat that felt like heaven. The shift from frozen to warm made her shiver violently. She pulled off her goggles and thick gloves, set them near the fire to warm up, then—still shaking—pulled the half-empty water bottle from her Inventory. Took a small sip. Then the bread. Two black bricks that looked more like construction material than food. "Crunch." Riley bit off a piece with effort. It was coarse. Tasted like sawdust with a hint of burnt toast. Bitter. But it was calories. Carbs. Fuel for her own fire. She forced herself to chew, swallow. When the food hit her stomach, warmth finally started spreading through her core. The uncontrollable shaking eased. After half a loaf, Riley leaned back against the crate. Her eyelids drooped. Post-exhaustion crash hit her like a wave. The campfire crackled. The wind seemed farther away now. Muffled. She really wanted to sleep... Her head nodded. Her body started sliding sideways. "Wait—" Some animal instinct jolted her awake just before she went under. She pinched her thigh. Hard. Then looked up at the timer floating above the flames. "Shelter Level 1 "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 06:28:00" Six and a half hours. If she slept too deep, too long, and that fire went out—what then? Even ignoring the obvious—that she'd freeze to death in this hellhole without a heat source—the game rules were clear. When the campfire hits zero, it's game over. "No sleeping. Not allowed." Riley slapped her own cheeks, forced herself upright. She stayed near the fire, but she didn't take off her heavy work clothes. She remembered reading something once, a survival article. "In the late stages of hypothermia, your hypothalamus malfunctions. You get a false sensation of heat. It's called "paradoxical undressing"—people strip down right before they freeze to death." "Okay. Process these four. Keep the fire fed." She pulled a traditional handsaw from the toolbox. Looking at the four thick pine logs on the ground, she almost laughed. Without power tools, breaking these down into burnable pieces would take at least half an hour. Burn the little energy she had left. But what choice did she have? Riley knelt in the snow, positioned the blade against the trunk, and was about to start cutting— A soft white light shot out from the system panel on her chest. It washed over the logs. "Ding! "Detected felled, intact logs within shelter range. "Perform quick recovery?" Riley's hand froze mid-saw. Quick recovery? It took her a second to process. Then relief flooded through her so hard she almost cried. "Yes! Recover!" She didn't hesitate. The next moment, something impossible happened. The four pine trunks—the ones she'd have to saw and split by hand, the ones that represented hours of brutal labor—dissolved into pale blue light particles. Not into dust. Into neat, uniform logs that stacked themselves automatically in her Inventory. The branches, the needles, all the useless parts—purified out of existence. "Recovery successful! "Obtained: Common Wood x20" Riley's eyes went wide, staring at the perfect lumber in her inventory display. Looked like it came straight from a hardware store. "One tree gives five units of wood? "And I don't have to cut it myself?" This changed everything. It meant she only had to handle the felling and the dragging. Once a log crossed into her camp's boundary, the system recognized it as hers. The most time-consuming part—the processing—just... didn't exist anymore. Riley immediately grabbed five units of wood and fed them to the fire. Whoosh. The flames leaped, hungry and grateful. "Fuel added. "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 12:20:00" "Five logs, five hours..." She did the math fast, looking at the fifteen units still on the ground. If she threw all of those in, that'd be another fifteen hours. Total of twenty-seven. She could sleep like the dead right now, and that fire would still be burning when she woke up. Security. For the first time since the world ended, Riley felt something like security. She selected the remaining wood. Deposited it all. Watched the countdown tick up to a very comfortable "27:20:00". Then her nerves finally let go. She dragged one of the toolboxes into position to block the wind, wrapped the field jacket tight around herself, pulled her hat down over her eyes, leaned back against the warm crate, and let the crackle of the fire pull her under. ***** She didn't sleep long. When she opened her eyes again, the sky was still that same dull gray-white. Impossible to tell if it was morning or afternoon. System clock said three hours. Her body ached. Shoulders and arms especially—felt like she'd gone ten rounds with someone. But her head was clear. She stretched her stiff neck and stood up. The snow seemed lighter. The feathery flakes had tapered off into sporadic icy grains. Riley ate a little more, got some fuel back in the tank, then stepped outside the campfire's warmth. The fire's effect wasn't what she'd expected. It wasn't that the temperature gradually dropped as you moved away. It was sharper than that. Like there was an invisible barrier around the flames. Inside, livable. Outside, the cold hit you like a wall. She wandered a little way off. The cold found every gap in her clothing. She thought about going farther, exploring. But there was nothing visible except that stand of trees she'd already worked. Maybe stuff was buried under the snow, but she couldn't see it. "No proper snow boots. Not going far." Riley glanced at the endless white distance with real regret. "Don't get greedy. Get those nineteen trees first." She turned. Looked at the woods. Her loot was still out there. And now she knew: if she could drag them back into the campfire's circle, the system would cash them out automatically. "Time to work." Riley rubbed her hands together. Let the motivation build. For the next few hours, she became a machine. Drag a tree to camp. Recover it. Go back for another. Repeat. It was boring. Exhausting. But watching those logs turn into numbers in her inventory—that feeling was hard to describe. Satisfying, in a way nothing had been satisfying in a long time. When the last pine trunk crossed into the light and dissolved into particles, Riley just collapsed. Lay flat in the snow and stared at the gray sky. She pulled up her Inventory. The once-empty slots were full now. Stack after stack of wood icons. "Item: Common Wood "Quantity: 80 "Description: Basic survival resource. Can be used for fuel or construction." Eighty units. Plus what was already burning in the campfire. Her day's work had yielded a clean hundred. One unit of wood burned for one hour. Riley looked at the flames dancing in front of her. Felt the heat on her face. Let herself smile, wide and real. "One hundred hours." Four full days. While everyone else was probably still panicking. Crying. Begging. Trying to figure out how to survive their first night in this frozen nightmare... She, Riley, had enough fuel stockpiled to last four days. Which meant: for the next ninety-six hours, unless she actively chose to die, nobody and nothing could put her fire out. She pulled the half-empty water bottle from Inventory. The space must have been insulated somehow—the water was still warm. Almost body temperature. She sipped it. Tasted sweet, even though it was just tap water. "Okay. Next step." Her gaze settled on the "Upgrade" button on the campfire panel. This open-air setup was fine for now. But if she was going to survive long-term, she needed something better. A real shelter. All she needed was a little stone. Some coal. Some steel. Then she could build something worth calling home. Chapter 3 The Trading Game The blizzard howled outside, but within the six-foot radius of the campfire, the air stayed surprisingly warm—like the wind had hit an invisible wall and just couldn't reach. Riley leaned back against the dusty wooden crate, holding the half-empty water bottle in her hand. She stared into the flames for a moment, then focused her attention inward. The pale blue system panel unfolded in front of her eyes again. Now that the immediate crisis was handled, she finally had time to sit quietly and really explore this so-called "Survival System". Beyond the personal stats and inventory, the bottom of the panel had a row of function icons: Server Channel, Friends List, Trading Market, and Crafting Manual. Friends List was empty. No surprise there. She hadn't exactly been a social butterfly back in the old world, and she sure as hell wasn't going to make friends easily in a frozen hellscape where everyone was fighting for their next breath. She tapped into the "Server Channel". A line of numbers appeared in the top left. "Server: US-008 "Current Online: 9911/10000" Ten thousand people started. Less than ten hours in, eighty-nine were already gone. "That doesn't add up." Everyone's starter crate came with a rusty iron axe and five units of wood. Plus the initial fuel the campfire had when they arrived—that alone bought them ten hours minimum, even if they just sat there doing nothing. What the hell did those people do to get eliminated so fast? The channel was moving fast, messages scrolling by every second. Desperation dripped from every line. "Someone help, I'm freezing my ass off out here. This stupid axe can't cut sh*t—every swing just bounces off and rattles my whole arm. Can anyone spare a couple logs? My dad's a senior VP at Walker Group. I'll wire you a million dollars when we get back, I swear." "Wake up, buddy. If your dad's still alive, he's out there chopping trees right now too." "Don't even talk to me. I spotted a wooden crate in the snow earlier, got all excited, ran over—and before I got within ten feet, some white rabbit thing jumped out of a drift. Teeth like needles. Almost took a chunk out of my leg. Missed the crate, wasted all that energy for nothing." "I saw that too! Random crates spawn in the wild. I opened a wooden one and got two chocolate bars and some coal." Reading through the chaos, Riley picked out two keywords, "Random Reward Crates" and "Dangerous Creatures". So this world was deeper than she thought. Wooden crates, copper crates—these randomly spawning resource points were the real way to get ahead. Coal came from crates. That was useful to know. And if coal was in crates, steel probably was too. But something bothered her. According to what people were saying, reward crates weren't exactly rare. So why hadn't she found a single one during her lumber run? She doubted it was just bad luck. Riley exited chat and tapped into the "Trading Market". "Seller: MountainMan88 Item: Stone x2 Wants: White Bread x5" "Seller: LoneWolf_21 Item: Cotton Cloth Wants: Clean Water" "Seller: NotDeadYet Item: Wood x3 Wants: Anything edible" Most people were trading for food and wood. The stuff that kept you alive right now. Things like stone and cloth were getting dumped cheap—nobody had the luxury of thinking long-term. Riley looked at her own inventory. Eighty units of wood staring back at her. Her heart beat a little faster. In this opening phase, where wood literally meant the difference between life and death, the resources in her hands were basically gold bars. "Time to trade," she muttered to herself. "Coal, steel—can't get those from chopping trees. And right now, wood's at maximum value. If I wait, the exchange rate shifts." Even with the chainsaw dead, she still had the handsaw. Less efficient, sure, but she could gather more wood if she needed it. Short-term, she wasn't going to run out. She clicked to post a message in the channel. "System Prompt: Detected that you have not set a virtual ID. Please enter your nickname (cannot be changed after setting)." Riley stared at the blank input box. Naming things was the worst. She sat there for a long time, nothing coming to mind. Finally, she gave up. Couldn't think of anything cool or clever, so she'd just go with something random. Her fingers tapped across the virtual keyboard—SpicyBurger. "Setting successful. ID locked." The prompt closed. Riley posted her message. "SpicyBurger: Selling wood in bulk. Looking for: Coal, Steel, High-calorie food. DM me with offers—what you have and your rate. Good deals go fast, don't sleep on this." For three seconds after the message appeared, the channel went dead silent. Then it exploded. "SpicyBurger? That name's making me hungry, what the hell." "Never mind the name—'wood in bulk'! We got a whale in here! Everyone else is stressing about the next hour and this person's already running a business?" "I need some! My campfire's down to like two hours. I don't know if I actually die when it hits zero but I don't wanna find out." Suddenly, half the channel was scrambling for wood. But then the skeptics crawled out. "Hang on. Everyone started with the same rusty axe. Chopping a tree in this weather takes twenty, thirty minutes minimum. Where's she getting 'bulk' wood from? Sounds like a scam." "InvincibleWarrior: Everybody chill. Look at that ID—sounds like a girl's handle. I'm a grown man, been busting my ass, and I've only got like ten logs saved up. My hands are shredded. Some girl with a food name claims she's got bulk? She's trying to run a game. Scam people out of their stuff." "Iron_Tough: Agreed. Scammers made it through the apocalypse too, I guess. My advice: ignore her. Don't get played. How much wood can a woman chop anyway? Probably can't even lift the axe right, lol." Riley scrolled through the messages, expression flat. She almost laughed. But some people pushed back. "FishHater44: How is it a scam? If she doesn't deliver, you don't complete the trade. Just 'cause you can't chop that much wood doesn't mean nobody can." Riley nodded slightly. That one had a point. But she didn't waste energy arguing in the channel. Instead, she flipped on Do Not Disturb for private messages—only allowing chat requests that included a trade offer. Some people didn't actually care whether she had wood. They just couldn't stand seeing someone else do well. "Ding. Ding. Ding." Private messages started pouring in like rain. Most players weren't idiots. Faced with the very real threat of freezing to death, they'd try anything for a chance. Riley opened the first one. "Windwalker: I got "Coal x3" from a crate. How much wood can I get for it? I can't chop anymore. The wind out here is insane. I tried to throw the coal in my fire but it just kept popping back out. System says my campfire level's too low, won't let me use it. I'm out of wood. My fire's almost dead." Riley thought for a moment. "Three coal for five wood. Deal?" She hadn't known about that restriction. Coal was supposed to be better fuel than wood—didn't expect the game to lock it behind a level gate. The reply came instantly, "Deal. But five wood feels light. It's coal." The guy was conflicted. He knew coal had value, but he was desperate. "I'll make it six. Final offer." Riley wasn't sure about coal's real value yet. Six was her limit. "Fine. Deal." They both dropped their items into the trade window. A moment later, it completed. A flash of white light. Riley's inventory lost six wood. Gained three chunks of coal, each about the size of a small melon. One down. "CrunchyFrog: Hey, I got two "Iron Ingots" from a crate. System calls them "Scrap Steel". Can I get eight wood for them? Trying to stock up enough to sleep through the night." Riley replied, "Sure. Initiate." In just over ten minutes, her wood stockpile dropped significantly. But her inventory filled up with good stuff. "Coal x10 "Stone x23 "Scrap Steel x5 "Raw Meat x2 "White Bread x2 "Basic Torch Blueprint x1" The blueprint was new. The description said it was required for crafting certain items. Seemed useful, so she'd traded for it. Meanwhile, back in the channel, that "InvincibleWarrior" guy who'd been mocking her earlier seemed to notice that people were actually completing trades. His tone got bitter. "InvincibleWarrior: Whatever. She probably got lucky with a high-tier crate. Let's see how long her stock lasts. Once the wood's gone, she'll be begging me to let her join my group." The people who'd successfully traded with Riley popped into the channel to thank her. That might have been fine—except the thanks caused problems. Since Riley had stopped trading for now, most people hadn't gotten anything. And the sky was darkening. Temperature outside the campfire radius was dropping fast. Gathering wood was getting harder. Trading was their only hope. The ones who'd pinned everything on Riley, seeing her stop, started losing it. "You said 'in bulk'! You did like five trades and quit. What are we supposed to do now?" "Keep trading! My fire's almost out. You want us to go chop trees in the dark?" "If you couldn't deliver, why'd you post? Showing off and then hiding." Whether it was coordinated or just genuine rage, the number of people defending Riley in the channel shrank fast. Mostly it was attacks now. Accusations of being irresponsible. Using scarcity tactics. Playing games with people's lives. Riley closed the channel. She couldn't be bothered. In a life-or-death situation like this, people losing it was normal. If she actually had unlimited resources, she'd trade more. But she didn't. And back on Earth, nobody had ever handed her anything out of charity. She wasn't about to start playing savior now. She looked down at the "Basic Torch Blueprint" in her inventory. "Requirements: Wood x10, Kerosene, Scrap Steel x2" Note: Requires Level 2 Workbench to craft." She leaned back against the crate again. Felt the weight of her stockpile pressing back against that lingering sense of unease. In this world, your ID didn't matter. Your gender didn't matter either. What mattered was who held the resources. She looked at what she had left: 36 units of wood. Plus the steel, coal, and stone from trading. Time to plan. Upgrading to a Level 2 campfire required 55 wood. She had all the other materials. For the wood, she'd just have to use the handsaw tomorrow and gather a little more. That settled, she pulled a few more logs from inventory and arranged them on top of the crate, making a small enclosed space. Curled up inside it, she watched the sky outside slowly darken to black. Her eyes grew heavy. She drifted off. Chapter 4 The Culling Riley woke to the kind of soreness that made you reconsider ever moving again. She'd slept like the dead—no dreams, no blizzard, just nothing. When she opened her eyes, the first things she saw were the logs she'd stacked as a windbreak and the steady glow of the campfire. She tried to stretch. Big mistake. Every muscle in her body lit up at once, screaming in protest. "Sh*t." Riley sucked air through her teeth and pressed a hand to her aching shoulder. Her lower back felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to it. Yesterday's work had been too much. She wasn't weak—far from it—but she was still human. The lactic acid had settled in overnight, and now she moved like an arthritic tin man. At least she was alive. She stowed the windbreak logs back in her inventory and looked around. The world hadn't changed. Same dull gray sky. Same swirling snow. Outside the six-foot radius of the fire, the drifts looked deeper than yesterday. The wind had been busy. Riley pulled out the half-empty water bottle and wet her throat. Then she retrieved the white bread she'd traded for yesterday. Compared to that dense, flavorless black bread, this was practically cake. She tore off small pieces, letting the faint sweetness dissolve on her tongue, and habitually opened the "Server Channel". She stopped chewing. The number in the top left hit her like a physical blow. "Current Online Players: 4968/10000" "Five thousand..." Riley's eyes went wide. In a single night, that number had been cut in half. Five thousand people. Gone. Winked out of existence on this frozen ice field while she slept. "Ding." The system notification cut through her thoughts—cold, emotionless, like it was announcing the weather. "Global Announcement: Congratulations to all survivors for successfully surviving the first day. "This was a culling. Last night eliminated those fools who failed to add fuel to their fires or refused to gather wood. Remember: in this place, tears mean nothing. When you die here, you're dead-dead. "You who remain are the lucky ones. "Grace Period: A five-day 'New Player Support Period' now begins. For the next five days, your initial supply crates will refresh daily with a fixed amount of food. "Special Reward: Each survivor receives one pair of "Standard Issue Snow Boots (Common)". Be grateful for this mercy. Enjoy the game." The words sat there on her screen. Fools. Mercy. The system's tone dripped with contempt. The math was simple. Starting package: five hours of fuel. Initial gift: five units of wood, another five hours. Total ten hours, if you did absolutely nothing. The ones who'd frozen to death last night—they were the ones who'd clung to hope. The ones too scared to move. The ones who'd told themselves someone would save them. Five thousand people. One night. Gone. This wasn't a game. It was a slaughter. In the channel, the survivors who'd made it through were clearly rattled by the numbers too. "Holy sh*t... My friend's icon went dark last night. Does that mean he's dead? Actually dead?" "I can't do this. I don't wanna play anymore, I wanna go home. I swear I'll work today. I'll chop wood, I'll do whatever, just please—" "Everyone move! Don't save your strength! If you die, that's it. No respawns!" Panic spread fast. But almost immediately, the tone shifted. The fear found a target. "That SpicyBurger—if she'd shared more wood yesterday, would so many people have died?" "For real. If she had extra, why not just give it away? Why did it have to be trades? She could've at least loaned some out." "This is what happens when people hoard resources and watch others freeze. Remember that name. Don't trade with her. Ever." Riley frowned. Here we go again. She scrolled up. Sure enough, there it was—that familiar ID: "InvincibleWarrior". He was going hard in the channel. "She's profiting off suffering. That's what some people do. Women like that are the worst—hoarding supplies while people die around them. Wait and see. Someone like her won't last." Riley laughed. Actually laughed out loud. Moral blackmail. In the apocalypse. She typed, "If you want wood, go cut it yourself. I'm not your mommy. No amount of crying in chat is gonna put logs in your inventory. You'd get more done if you just picked up your d*mn axe." The channel went quiet for a second. Then the reasonable voices piped up. "She's right. Nobody owes you anything. Work for it." "Exactly. Just 'cause someone's quiet doesn't mean they're an easy target." In a world where staying alive took everything you had, expecting charity was the dumbest move of all. Riley didn't waste more energy on it. People like that—the more you engaged, the more they thrived. Let him run his mouth. She had bigger things to worry about. She closed the channel and turned to the big wooden crate—her initial supply point. Sure enough, new items had materialized inside. "Bottled Water x3 "White Bread x3 "Fresh Orange Juice x1 "Standard Snow Boots x1" "Orange juice?" Riley picked up the bottle, genuinely surprised. The orange liquid inside sloshed gently. Vitamins. The system was actually giving them vitamins. She pulled off her old shoes—already damp and cold—and swapped into the new boots. They were clunky, sure. But they gripped the snow, and the insulation was real. The chill that had been seeping up through her soles disappeared instantly. Next, she opened her toolbox. Goggles on. Thick cut-resistant gloves. Head-to-toe gear. "Time to work." The channel noise faded from her mind. She had one priority today, and it wasn't arguing with idiots. She picked up the chainsaw and headed back to the tree line. The cold played tricks on batteries. She'd known that, intellectually. But knowing it and feeling it were different things. After just eight trees, the last spare battery gave out. The chainsaw stuttered, died, and went silent in her hands. Riley stared at it. "Son of a b*tch." Chapter 5 Dead Battery Riley stared at the dead chainsaw in her hands and shook her head. Without power, it was just an expensive paperweight. If she wanted more wood, she'd have to do it the old-fashioned way—pick up the axe or the manual handsaw from the toolbox and go to war with frozen timber. But eight more trees were eight more trees. Her stockpile was looking healthy. "First things first. Get these back." She sucked it up, stowed the chainsaw in her inventory, and started hauling. Her body screamed even louder than yesterday. Every muscle felt like it had been replaced with concrete. She dragged each log back one at a time, moving like a zombie. Drag. Rest two minutes. Drag again. The wind howled in her ears. Riley lost track of time, lost track of everything except the mechanical rhythm of work. By the time the sun was high—not that you could really see it through the clouds—she dragged the last log into the campfire's radius. It dissolved into light, absorbed by the system. Riley all but collapsed into the snow. "Acquired: Wood x40" She lay there for a moment, chest heaving, staring at the number in her inventory. A tired smile crept across her face. She had enough. Combined with the coal and steel from yesterday's trades, she had everything she needed for the upgrade. Riley forced herself upright and walked to the campfire. On the floating translucent panel, the "Upgrade" button glowed that tempting gold. "Upgrade Primitive Shelter to Lv.2? "Cost: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Scrap Steel x5 "Remaining after upgrade: Wood x16, Stone x3, Coal x0, Steel x0" "Upgrade." Riley took a breath and pressed it. "Hmmmm—!" A blinding white light erupted from the heart of the campfire, swallowing everything. Riley squeezed her eyes shut. No explosion. No thunder. Just a sound like Legos snapping together. A few seconds later, the light faded. Riley opened her eyes. And stopped breathing. The campfire wasn't just a campfire anymore. The rough stone ring had transformed into something neat and intentional—a proper firepit with a stone border for insulation, a place to set things, even a simple steel grate attached to the side. But that wasn't the big news. The heat that used to push back the cold within a six-foot radius now stretched a full fifteen feet. Inside that circle, snow was actively melting, revealing dark frozen soil underneath. In one corner, she spotted a patch of moss stubbornly poking through. Riley spun around. Behind the big wooden crate, a small log cabin stood waiting. It wasn't much—maybe forty feet square, built from rough-hewn logs. Nothing fancy. But it was solid. Four walls and a roof, blocking wind and snow completely. Riley walked over and pushed open the heavy wooden door. Warm air hit her face. Inside was simple: a wooden bed frame piled with dry grass, a crude workbench, a chair, and a small fireplace connected to a chimney that ran up through the roof. Rustic. But right now, it was heaven. Wood and fire. Four walls. A roof. Home. Riley ran her hand along the rough wall. Her eyes stung a little. She wouldn't have to sleep in the open anymore. Wouldn't have to wake up every few hours to check the fire. Wouldn't have to worry about freezing to death in her sleep. Right on cue, the server announcement chimed. Gold text this time, blazing right in the center of everyone's vision. "Server Announcement: Congratulations to player SpicyBurger for being the first to achieve "Level 2 Shelter". Rewards have been distributed." The chat channel, which had been wallowing in fear and despair, exploded. "Holy sh*t? Level 2 already? What does Level 2 unlock? Can you post pics, big shot?" "That's the wood seller from yesterday? No way. Absolute legend." "Carry me please! SpicyBurger, I'll be your loyal follower. I can cook, I can clean, I can—" "Teach us, master! How'd you gather materials so fast? What's your secret?" Compliments. Pleas. Desperate attempts to get noticed. And then, of course, the sour grapes. "InvincibleWarrior: Big deal. Just profiteering off everyone else's suffering. If she'd shared that wood instead of selling it, maybe those five thousand people would still be alive. How does it feel to climb on corpses?" "GodLovesMeFirst: Seriously. Building your success on other people's deaths. Karma's real. She'll get hers." Riley's jaw tightened. If InvincibleWarrior had been standing in front of her right now, she'd have knocked his teeth out. Guys like him—useless themselves, but always ready to tear down anyone who actually accomplished something. Sewer rats. Her private messages exploded too. She'd set it to only accept trade offers, but people had found a workaround—using the "trade note" function to send spam. "Hey beautiful, I'm a personal trainer. Great shape. Wanna see? Hit me with some wood and I'll do a voice call with you!" A photo of some guy flexing in a mirror, shirt off. Riley glanced at it, unimpressed. Decent abs. Pathetic attitude. Dude was clearly strong enough to chop wood—why was he wasting time on this? She'd never mentioned her gender, so most people probably assumed anyone who'd gathered that much wood must be a guy. The messages reflected that assumption. Some women sent selfies too, trying to flirt their way into favor. Didn't matter. Shameless cut across all demographics. From the backgrounds in the photos, everyone seemed to be in different locations. But one thing was consistent: they all had trees nearby. The system must have arranged that—a new player perk. "A bunch of degenerates." Riley's face went cold. She changed her privacy settings to "Friends Only". Then she added a line to her trading post description. "No spam. Send junk, get blocked." Silence. Blessed silence. She took a breath, let the noise drain away, and focused on what mattered. "First-place upgrade reward..." She opened her inventory. Sitting there, glowing faintly purple, was a gift box. For more exciting content, please download the "JoyRead" app to continue reading.
Chapter 1 The Countdown Ends It was the year 2027, and the end of the world was now less than an hour away. "00:59:23" Riley Carter stood on a ladder with a screw clenched between her teeth, an impact driver in her hand, securing the last window panel in place. A month ago, that timer had just appeared out of nowhere, hanging in the corner of everyone's vision like it had always been there. At first, people wrote it off as some kind of mass hacker prank. The government fed the media soothing statements in an attempt to keep things calm, but there was no way to talk down the panic as prices kept rising and supplies were held in a monopoly in real time. News outlets might spin whatever narrative they wanted, but no one could argue with the price of eggs. For a while, it was a frenzy. People cleaned out grocery stores like locusts. The government did what they could—price caps, purchase limits, reassurances from the podium—but none of it mattered. The cost of living kept climbing, and bit by bit, the country started coming apart at the seams. Online, it was a circus. Some people posted doom-laden predictions. Others openly celebrated the thought of the world finally burning. A few just seemed relieved they wouldn't have to clock in on Monday. In that final hour, things got truly ugly. Both on the streets and on social media, it was chaos. Some people figured why not went out with a bang? If the world was ending, they'd spend their last hours doing every reckless thing they'd ever fantasized about. Others, paralyzed by fear of whatever was coming, scrambled for anything they could hoard. Supplies. Weapons. Gasoline. Didn't matter what, as long as they had more of it than the next guy. Most people just wanted to be with the ones they loved. Riley didn't have that luxury anymore. Fresh out of community college, she'd lost both her parents in a highway pileup eighteen months back. The only thing they'd left her was the family hardware store, a cramped little place wedged between a laundromat and a taqueria. She'd been running it solo for just over a year when that d*mn countdown appeared overhead. At first, she'd thought maybe an apocalypse wouldn't be the worst thing. Maybe there'd be something on the other side. A reunion. But then she thought about her folks. They'd doted on her. Made her feel like the center of their world. And even though she'd grown a thick skin since going it alone, feeling indifferent to the world, she knew what they'd want. They'd want her to fight. To stay. She was the only piece of them still left in this world. People always say you aren't really gone until the last person forgets your name. As long as she kept breathing, kept carrying them with her another day, they weren't truly dead. Riley spat the screw into her palm, face calm, the impact driver whirring as she sank another fastener into the reinforced frame. "Flour's three hundred a pound now, and you can't even buy it straight—they make you tack on a bunch of other junk you don't need just to get it," she muttered to herself, shaking her head. When that timer first flickered into existence, Riley had done something smart. She'd liquidated everything. Converted every dollar she could scrape together into supplies. Unfortunately, by the time she hit the stores, inflation had already done its damage. Her savings didn't go nearly as far as they should have. Any cash that was left went toward tools. If the world was ending, she thought they could be useful. Riley pressed the last sheet of thick insulation foam into the window frame, seating it flush against the reinforced plywood beneath. The impact driver snarled as she buried the screws. Then she reached for her pneumatic glue gun—a satisfying pfft as the sealant filled the final gap. She wiped sweat from her forehead and climbed down off the ladder. Stepped back to admire her work. The little apartment was a fortress now. Doors reinforced. Windows barricaded. Every interior wall lined with an extra layer of insulation. She glanced down at herself. Custom-fit heavy-duty workwear. Slash-resistant fabric. More pockets than she'd ever need. Reinforced padding at the knees and elbows. It wasn't fashionable, but it was practical. And her real treasure: tools. A chainsaw. A reciprocating saw. The impact driver in her hand. A multi-bit screwdriver that had cost more than she wanted to admit. She'd brought everything usable from the shop back here, consolidated it into three massive toolboxes. She'd also grabbed some stuff like an air purifier and some spare filters—anything that might matter when civilization took a vacation. She didn't know what the countdown would bring. Some folks online predicted zombies. Others said asteroid impact. Volcanic winter. Alien invasion. Take your pick. Food. Tools. Shelter. She'd even started working out, building strength she'd never needed before. She'd done everything she could think of to prepare. Whatever was coming, she figured she'd last longer than most. With nothing left to do, she dropped onto one of the big toolboxes laid flat on the floor, wiped her forehead again, and pulled out her phone. Most news apps had crashed. The only things still loading were comment sections, and they were going crazy. [Anyone got rice? I'll pay eight grand for a bag. Please, we got nothing left.] [Forget it, man. Money's toilet paper now. Saw it with my own eyes—some rich assholes cleared out the Costco warehouse last week. All that 'purchase limit' crap was just theater. Shelves were empty 'cause the stock never made it there. It's all sitting in some hedge fund guy's basement.] [No kidding? Same thing happened to me! Store manager kept telling me, 'We're limiting purchases, come back next week, we'll put your name on the list.' So the whole time the back room was empty? They were just jerking us around?] [Of course they were. Rich people cornered the market on everything. So what are normal people supposed to do? Just sit here and die?] [Anyone know what actually happens when the clock hits zero? Like, is it nukes? That virus thing from that old video game?] Riley locked her phone. Tucked it away. She didn't have anything to add to that conversation. A month ago, when the countdown first showed up, prices had spiked instantly. A fifty-pound bag of rice that normally went for thirty bucks jumped to eight hundred overnight. By yesterday, it was breaking two grand. The wealthy had rolled up with trucks and cleaned out supermarkets. Riley had been smart—she'd gone early, bought stuff that would keep, stuff that was calorie-dense and cheap. Chocolate. Survival biscuits. Canned goods. It wasn't much, but it was enough for one person, at least for a while. She took a deep breath and glanced at the timer. "00:01:10" Just over a minute. Riley gripped the toolbox beneath her. Knuckles white. Who knew what would happen when that thing hit zero? Maybe it'd be like 2012—all hype, nothing real. In that last minute, her life flickered past. Her parents' faces. The hardware store. The lonely months since. "00:00:00" The countdown ended. Riley had just started to breathe a sigh of relief—nothing happened, maybe it really was nothing—when the world lurched beneath her. A dizzying weightlessness. A sensation of falling. Everything spun. ***** She didn't know how long she was out. "Whew." A wind like a knife blade sliced across her face. Riley's eyes snapped open. Her warm apartment was gone. In its place, an endless white expanse stretched in every direction. Snow whipped through the air. Wind howled like a wounded animal. And at her feet, a small campfire guttered in the gale, threatening to die at any second. "What the—" Before she could process, a chime rang directly in her skull. Not heard. Known. "Welcome to the Extreme Cold Survival Game. "Earth no longer exists. This is your new home. This is your grave. "Survival rules are as follows. "1. Each player begins with one campfire. It is your only defense against the cold. If the campfire dies, you will be judged deceased by the system. Not that it matters—without the fire, you won't last anyway. "2. This is a real world. You can die from hunger. From exposure. From animal attack. "3. Supplies stockpiled in your previous world do not carry over. Only items on your person, or in direct physical contact at the moment of transfer, are retained. "4. Struggle to survive. It is your only hope." Riley's heart slammed against her ribs. Supplies didn't carry over? Her mind flashed to those wealthy forum posters bragging about their warehouse stockpiles. And then she looked down at herself. Workwear. Intact. And— She was still sitting on the three giant toolboxes. They sat solidly in the snow, dusted with powder, unmistakably here. "Whew." Riley let out a long breath. A white cloud dispersed in front of her face. Pity, though. During her renovations, she'd stocked those boxes with a lot of power tools. The expensive impact driver. The reciprocating saw. In a world with no electrical outlets, once those batteries died, they were just dead weight. But even so. The hand tools. The consumables. The sheer volume of stuff in those boxes—it was a treasure beyond measure in a place like this. Riley forced herself to calm down. She was here. She'd deal with it. Something new lived in her mind now. She concentrated, and a translucent pale-blue screen materialized in front of her eyes. Looked just like a video game HUD. "Personal Panel "Name: Riley Carter "ID: 1120-US "Level: 1 (Standard Survivor) "Strength: 8 (Years of manual labor have made you stronger than average) "Agility: 8 (You've got quick reflexes) "Constitution: 6 (You've been skipping meals lately) "Spirit: 9 (You keep your head when others panic) "Inventory: 16/16 slots (Base capacity)" "Inventory?" Riley studied the sixteen empty squares at the bottom of the display. She reached out, touched one of the toolboxes, and thought the word, "Store." Whoosh. The heavy box vanished. In its place, a tiny icon appeared in the first inventory slot, a miniature "x1" in the corner. "It actually worked." For the first time since arriving, a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. Retrieve. Thud. The toolbox landed back in the snow, puffing up powder. No energy cost. No sense of weight. And in that inventory, she could carry anything, regardless of how heavy it was. Later on, when she went scavenging, that would make all the difference. Riley rubbed her stiff, freezing hands together and turned her attention to the campfire at her feet. It was the only warmth in this frozen wasteland. Hovering above the flames, visible only to her, were a few lines of glowing text. "Basic Campfire (Lv.1) "Remaining Burn Time: 05:28:00 "Current Coverage: Radius six feet (Blocks wind and snow) "Upgrade Requirements: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Steel x5 "Description: This is your life. Do not let it die. Upgrading expands your safe zone and unlocks additional construction options." "Needs upgrading." Riley frowned. Wood and stone she could probably find. But coal? Steel? Out here in the middle of nowhere? A flash of movement caught her eye. A small wooden box, half-buried in the snow not far from the fire. The starter crate. Had to be. Riley didn't rush. First, she pulled the claw hammer from her belt—the one she always kept there, habit from years of work—and gripped it tight. She scanned the tree line. Listened past the wind. Nothing moved. No sounds but the storm. She walked over quickly, crouched by the box. No lock. She pried the lid open with the claw end of her hammer. Inside, a handful of items. "Obtained: Iron Axe x1 "Obtained: Stale Dark Bread x2 "Obtained: 500ml Bottled Water x1 "Obtained: Kindling x5 "Obtained: Insulated Field Jacket x1 "Obtained: Utility Rope (25ft) "Obtained: Thermal Underwear (Set) x2 Not much. Barely anything. Riley picked up one of the dark loaves. It was rock hard. She examined the jacket—basic, but warm-looking. "So this is what a standard survivor starts with." At least the system had thought of everything. Including the underwear. She'd half-expected to wake up naked in the snow; at least she didn't have to worry about that. She stored everything in her inventory, then shrugged on the field jacket. The temperature shift was brutal. Even those few seconds exposed had left her hands numb. Hypothermia would set in fast out here. Jacket on, she hurried back to the campfire. She pulled the five units of Kindling from her inventory and tossed them onto the flames. The fire roared higher. Warmth flooded over her. "Fuel added. Remaining Burn Time: 10:28:00" Ten hours. If she didn't move fast, in ten hours she'd freeze to death on this ice field. And the game had made it clear—if the fire died, the system would judge her dead. Whether she actually froze or not. Riley lifted her head and scanned the landscape. She was in a sparse coniferous forest. Barely alive trees, crusted with frost, dotted the area not far from her position. "Wood." A slow smile spread across her face. She patted the toolbox beside her. "Other people might have axes. But felling a tree with just an axe takes hours. Exhausts you." She unlatched the box. Pulled out the chainsaw. Checked the battery gauge—full. "I've got a handsaw in here too. And a chainsaw with a full charge." The battery wouldn't last forever. But it would last long enough to give her a massive head start. In this race for survival, that was everything. Chapter 2 The Chainsaw The wind screamed across the open ground, picking up loose snow and flinging it against her goggles like sand. It sounded like static. Riley had pulled her basic work gear from the toolbox before heading out. Now she stood in the snow, surrounded by clusters of thin conifers that looked half-dead already. She took a breath. The air burned going down. "Zzzzzzz—!!!" She squeezed the trigger. The orange-and-black lithium-ion chainsaw in her hands roared to life, the chain spinning so fast it blurred. She buried the teeth in the nearest pine trunk. Wood chips exploded everywhere. Fragrant shavings—still wet with resin—scattered across the pristine snow, stark and yellow against all that white. Five seconds. Crack. The pine tree, thick as her arm, groaned and tilted. Then it fell slow and heavy into a drift, sending up a puff of powder. "God bless modern technology." Riley shook out her wrist—the vibration had numbed her fingers—and allowed herself a small smile. Without that chainsaw, with just the basic iron axe the system had given her, felling a tree frozen solid like this would have taken twenty minutes minimum. And it would have left her soaked with sweat. In subzero temps, sweat was a death sentence. Once your base layers got wet, the moment you stopped moving, your body temperature would plummet. Hypothermia would follow fast. Riley didn't waste time celebrating. She knew the saw in her hands was a hungry machine. She'd brought two spare high-capacity batteries, sure, but until she found a way to recharge them, every second the motor ran was borrowed time. She had to gather as much wood as possible before the batteries gave out. "Zzzzz—Zzzzz—" At the edge of the forest, the chainsaw's snarl rose and fell, shattering the frozen silence. Riley worked like she was possessed. Fell a tree. Move to the next. Fell another. But she had to stay alert—watch for hidden snow pits underfoot, keep adjusting her collar against the wind that kept finding its way down her neck. Her stamina drained faster than she'd anticipated. In extreme cold, body burned through calories just to stay alive. Added walking through knee-deep snow, where every step took three times the energy of walking on pavement, and the math got ugly fast. Pretty soon, Riley was breathing hard. Her breath fogged the inside of her goggles, and she had to keep wiping them clear. "Zzzzz..." She was mid-cut on a tree—didn't even know which number anymore—when the chainsaw's roar stuttered. Died. The chain jammed solid in the wood. A red light blinked at her. Dead battery. Riley yanked the saw free and patted its housing. "Good work, buddy." Genuine regret in her voice. She straightened up and looked around. Pine trunks lay scattered across the snow in every direction. A decent haul. She counted silently. "Twenty-three total." Then the next problem hit her. According to the system, until she actually possessed these logs, they were still just natural resources. That meant they didn't qualify for Inventory storage. She couldn't just snap her fingers and make them disappear. She had to drag them back to camp. Riley grabbed the nearest pine and tried to pull. Heavy. Like, unreasonably heavy. Fresh-cut wood was full of moisture. Add the branches catching in the snow, dragging like anchors, and she felt like she was hauling a dead body through mud. "Huff... huff..." She gritted her teeth, looped rope around the trunk, slung it over her shoulder, leaned forward, and started walking. Inch by inch. The tree line to her campfire was maybe fifty yards. Right now, it felt like fifty miles. By the time she'd wrestled the fourth tree back into the fire's warm radius, she was wrecked. Her legs felt like someone had filled them with concrete. Her lungs burned from hauling freezing air through them. "Can't... can't do more." Riley made the call. She stopped. Those nineteen trees still out there in the snow—they called to her. Tempted her. But if she kept pushing without rest, without fuel for herself, she'd collapse out there. And out there, collapse meant death. She dropped down next to the big wooden crate that had held her starter supplies. It was less than three feet from the campfire. The flames danced orange and red, pumping out heat that felt like heaven. The shift from frozen to warm made her shiver violently. She pulled off her goggles and thick gloves, set them near the fire to warm up, then—still shaking—pulled the half-empty water bottle from her Inventory. Took a small sip. Then the bread. Two black bricks that looked more like construction material than food. "Crunch." Riley bit off a piece with effort. It was coarse. Tasted like sawdust with a hint of burnt toast. Bitter. But it was calories. Carbs. Fuel for her own fire. She forced herself to chew, swallow. When the food hit her stomach, warmth finally started spreading through her core. The uncontrollable shaking eased. After half a loaf, Riley leaned back against the crate. Her eyelids drooped. Post-exhaustion crash hit her like a wave. The campfire crackled. The wind seemed farther away now. Muffled. She really wanted to sleep... Her head nodded. Her body started sliding sideways. "Wait—" Some animal instinct jolted her awake just before she went under. She pinched her thigh. Hard. Then looked up at the timer floating above the flames. "Shelter Level 1 "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 06:28:00" Six and a half hours. If she slept too deep, too long, and that fire went out—what then? Even ignoring the obvious—that she'd freeze to death in this hellhole without a heat source—the game rules were clear. When the campfire hits zero, it's game over. "No sleeping. Not allowed." Riley slapped her own cheeks, forced herself upright. She stayed near the fire, but she didn't take off her heavy work clothes. She remembered reading something once, a survival article. "In the late stages of hypothermia, your hypothalamus malfunctions. You get a false sensation of heat. It's called "paradoxical undressing"—people strip down right before they freeze to death." "Okay. Process these four. Keep the fire fed." She pulled a traditional handsaw from the toolbox. Looking at the four thick pine logs on the ground, she almost laughed. Without power tools, breaking these down into burnable pieces would take at least half an hour. Burn the little energy she had left. But what choice did she have? Riley knelt in the snow, positioned the blade against the trunk, and was about to start cutting— A soft white light shot out from the system panel on her chest. It washed over the logs. "Ding! "Detected felled, intact logs within shelter range. "Perform quick recovery?" Riley's hand froze mid-saw. Quick recovery? It took her a second to process. Then relief flooded through her so hard she almost cried. "Yes! Recover!" She didn't hesitate. The next moment, something impossible happened. The four pine trunks—the ones she'd have to saw and split by hand, the ones that represented hours of brutal labor—dissolved into pale blue light particles. Not into dust. Into neat, uniform logs that stacked themselves automatically in her Inventory. The branches, the needles, all the useless parts—purified out of existence. "Recovery successful! "Obtained: Common Wood x20" Riley's eyes went wide, staring at the perfect lumber in her inventory display. Looked like it came straight from a hardware store. "One tree gives five units of wood? "And I don't have to cut it myself?" This changed everything. It meant she only had to handle the felling and the dragging. Once a log crossed into her camp's boundary, the system recognized it as hers. The most time-consuming part—the processing—just... didn't exist anymore. Riley immediately grabbed five units of wood and fed them to the fire. Whoosh. The flames leaped, hungry and grateful. "Fuel added. "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 12:20:00" "Five logs, five hours..." She did the math fast, looking at the fifteen units still on the ground. If she threw all of those in, that'd be another fifteen hours. Total of twenty-seven. She could sleep like the dead right now, and that fire would still be burning when she woke up. Security. For the first time since the world ended, Riley felt something like security. She selected the remaining wood. Deposited it all. Watched the countdown tick up to a very comfortable "27:20:00". Then her nerves finally let go. She dragged one of the toolboxes into position to block the wind, wrapped the field jacket tight around herself, pulled her hat down over her eyes, leaned back against the warm crate, and let the crackle of the fire pull her under. ***** She didn't sleep long. When she opened her eyes again, the sky was still that same dull gray-white. Impossible to tell if it was morning or afternoon. System clock said three hours. Her body ached. Shoulders and arms especially—felt like she'd gone ten rounds with someone. But her head was clear. She stretched her stiff neck and stood up. The snow seemed lighter. The feathery flakes had tapered off into sporadic icy grains. Riley ate a little more, got some fuel back in the tank, then stepped outside the campfire's warmth. The fire's effect wasn't what she'd expected. It wasn't that the temperature gradually dropped as you moved away. It was sharper than that. Like there was an invisible barrier around the flames. Inside, livable. Outside, the cold hit you like a wall. She wandered a little way off. The cold found every gap in her clothing. She thought about going farther, exploring. But there was nothing visible except that stand of trees she'd already worked. Maybe stuff was buried under the snow, but she couldn't see it. "No proper snow boots. Not going far." Riley glanced at the endless white distance with real regret. "Don't get greedy. Get those nineteen trees first." She turned. Looked at the woods. Her loot was still out there. And now she knew: if she could drag them back into the campfire's circle, the system would cash them out automatically. "Time to work." Riley rubbed her hands together. Let the motivation build. For the next few hours, she became a machine. Drag a tree to camp. Recover it. Go back for another. Repeat. It was boring. Exhausting. But watching those logs turn into numbers in her inventory—that feeling was hard to describe. Satisfying, in a way nothing had been satisfying in a long time. When the last pine trunk crossed into the light and dissolved into particles, Riley just collapsed. Lay flat in the snow and stared at the gray sky. She pulled up her Inventory. The once-empty slots were full now. Stack after stack of wood icons. "Item: Common Wood "Quantity: 80 "Description: Basic survival resource. Can be used for fuel or construction." Eighty units. Plus what was already burning in the campfire. Her day's work had yielded a clean hundred. One unit of wood burned for one hour. Riley looked at the flames dancing in front of her. Felt the heat on her face. Let herself smile, wide and real. "One hundred hours." Four full days. While everyone else was probably still panicking. Crying. Begging. Trying to figure out how to survive their first night in this frozen nightmare... She, Riley, had enough fuel stockpiled to last four days. Which meant: for the next ninety-six hours, unless she actively chose to die, nobody and nothing could put her fire out. She pulled the half-empty water bottle from Inventory. The space must have been insulated somehow—the water was still warm. Almost body temperature. She sipped it. Tasted sweet, even though it was just tap water. "Okay. Next step." Her gaze settled on the "Upgrade" button on the campfire panel. This open-air setup was fine for now. But if she was going to survive long-term, she needed something better. A real shelter. All she needed was a little stone. Some coal. Some steel. Then she could build something worth calling home. Chapter 3 The Trading Game The blizzard howled outside, but within the six-foot radius of the campfire, the air stayed surprisingly warm—like the wind had hit an invisible wall and just couldn't reach. Riley leaned back against the dusty wooden crate, holding the half-empty water bottle in her hand. She stared into the flames for a moment, then focused her attention inward. The pale blue system panel unfolded in front of her eyes again. Now that the immediate crisis was handled, she finally had time to sit quietly and really explore this so-called "Survival System". Beyond the personal stats and inventory, the bottom of the panel had a row of function icons: Server Channel, Friends List, Trading Market, and Crafting Manual. Friends List was empty. No surprise there. She hadn't exactly been a social butterfly back in the old world, and she sure as hell wasn't going to make friends easily in a frozen hellscape where everyone was fighting for their next breath. She tapped into the "Server Channel". A line of numbers appeared in the top left. "Server: US-008 "Current Online: 9911/10000" Ten thousand people started. Less than ten hours in, eighty-nine were already gone. "That doesn't add up." Everyone's starter crate came with a rusty iron axe and five units of wood. Plus the initial fuel the campfire had when they arrived—that alone bought them ten hours minimum, even if they just sat there doing nothing. What the hell did those people do to get eliminated so fast? The channel was moving fast, messages scrolling by every second. Desperation dripped from every line. "Someone help, I'm freezing my ass off out here. This stupid axe can't cut sh*t—every swing just bounces off and rattles my whole arm. Can anyone spare a couple logs? My dad's a senior VP at Walker Group. I'll wire you a million dollars when we get back, I swear." "Wake up, buddy. If your dad's still alive, he's out there chopping trees right now too." "Don't even talk to me. I spotted a wooden crate in the snow earlier, got all excited, ran over—and before I got within ten feet, some white rabbit thing jumped out of a drift. Teeth like needles. Almost took a chunk out of my leg. Missed the crate, wasted all that energy for nothing." "I saw that too! Random crates spawn in the wild. I opened a wooden one and got two chocolate bars and some coal." Reading through the chaos, Riley picked out two keywords, "Random Reward Crates" and "Dangerous Creatures". So this world was deeper than she thought. Wooden crates, copper crates—these randomly spawning resource points were the real way to get ahead. Coal came from crates. That was useful to know. And if coal was in crates, steel probably was too. But something bothered her. According to what people were saying, reward crates weren't exactly rare. So why hadn't she found a single one during her lumber run? She doubted it was just bad luck. Riley exited chat and tapped into the "Trading Market". "Seller: MountainMan88 Item: Stone x2 Wants: White Bread x5" "Seller: LoneWolf_21 Item: Cotton Cloth Wants: Clean Water" "Seller: NotDeadYet Item: Wood x3 Wants: Anything edible" Most people were trading for food and wood. The stuff that kept you alive right now. Things like stone and cloth were getting dumped cheap—nobody had the luxury of thinking long-term. Riley looked at her own inventory. Eighty units of wood staring back at her. Her heart beat a little faster. In this opening phase, where wood literally meant the difference between life and death, the resources in her hands were basically gold bars. "Time to trade," she muttered to herself. "Coal, steel—can't get those from chopping trees. And right now, wood's at maximum value. If I wait, the exchange rate shifts." Even with the chainsaw dead, she still had the handsaw. Less efficient, sure, but she could gather more wood if she needed it. Short-term, she wasn't going to run out. She clicked to post a message in the channel. "System Prompt: Detected that you have not set a virtual ID. Please enter your nickname (cannot be changed after setting)." Riley stared at the blank input box. Naming things was the worst. She sat there for a long time, nothing coming to mind. Finally, she gave up. Couldn't think of anything cool or clever, so she'd just go with something random. Her fingers tapped across the virtual keyboard—SpicyBurger. "Setting successful. ID locked." The prompt closed. Riley posted her message. "SpicyBurger: Selling wood in bulk. Looking for: Coal, Steel, High-calorie food. DM me with offers—what you have and your rate. Good deals go fast, don't sleep on this." For three seconds after the message appeared, the channel went dead silent. Then it exploded. "SpicyBurger? That name's making me hungry, what the hell." "Never mind the name—'wood in bulk'! We got a whale in here! Everyone else is stressing about the next hour and this person's already running a business?" "I need some! My campfire's down to like two hours. I don't know if I actually die when it hits zero but I don't wanna find out." Suddenly, half the channel was scrambling for wood. But then the skeptics crawled out. "Hang on. Everyone started with the same rusty axe. Chopping a tree in this weather takes twenty, thirty minutes minimum. Where's she getting 'bulk' wood from? Sounds like a scam." "InvincibleWarrior: Everybody chill. Look at that ID—sounds like a girl's handle. I'm a grown man, been busting my ass, and I've only got like ten logs saved up. My hands are shredded. Some girl with a food name claims she's got bulk? She's trying to run a game. Scam people out of their stuff." "Iron_Tough: Agreed. Scammers made it through the apocalypse too, I guess. My advice: ignore her. Don't get played. How much wood can a woman chop anyway? Probably can't even lift the axe right, lol." Riley scrolled through the messages, expression flat. She almost laughed. But some people pushed back. "FishHater44: How is it a scam? If she doesn't deliver, you don't complete the trade. Just 'cause you can't chop that much wood doesn't mean nobody can." Riley nodded slightly. That one had a point. But she didn't waste energy arguing in the channel. Instead, she flipped on Do Not Disturb for private messages—only allowing chat requests that included a trade offer. Some people didn't actually care whether she had wood. They just couldn't stand seeing someone else do well. "Ding. Ding. Ding." Private messages started pouring in like rain. Most players weren't idiots. Faced with the very real threat of freezing to death, they'd try anything for a chance. Riley opened the first one. "Windwalker: I got "Coal x3" from a crate. How much wood can I get for it? I can't chop anymore. The wind out here is insane. I tried to throw the coal in my fire but it just kept popping back out. System says my campfire level's too low, won't let me use it. I'm out of wood. My fire's almost dead." Riley thought for a moment. "Three coal for five wood. Deal?" She hadn't known about that restriction. Coal was supposed to be better fuel than wood—didn't expect the game to lock it behind a level gate. The reply came instantly, "Deal. But five wood feels light. It's coal." The guy was conflicted. He knew coal had value, but he was desperate. "I'll make it six. Final offer." Riley wasn't sure about coal's real value yet. Six was her limit. "Fine. Deal." They both dropped their items into the trade window. A moment later, it completed. A flash of white light. Riley's inventory lost six wood. Gained three chunks of coal, each about the size of a small melon. One down. "CrunchyFrog: Hey, I got two "Iron Ingots" from a crate. System calls them "Scrap Steel". Can I get eight wood for them? Trying to stock up enough to sleep through the night." Riley replied, "Sure. Initiate." In just over ten minutes, her wood stockpile dropped significantly. But her inventory filled up with good stuff. "Coal x10 "Stone x23 "Scrap Steel x5 "Raw Meat x2 "White Bread x2 "Basic Torch Blueprint x1" The blueprint was new. The description said it was required for crafting certain items. Seemed useful, so she'd traded for it. Meanwhile, back in the channel, that "InvincibleWarrior" guy who'd been mocking her earlier seemed to notice that people were actually completing trades. His tone got bitter. "InvincibleWarrior: Whatever. She probably got lucky with a high-tier crate. Let's see how long her stock lasts. Once the wood's gone, she'll be begging me to let her join my group." The people who'd successfully traded with Riley popped into the channel to thank her. That might have been fine—except the thanks caused problems. Since Riley had stopped trading for now, most people hadn't gotten anything. And the sky was darkening. Temperature outside the campfire radius was dropping fast. Gathering wood was getting harder. Trading was their only hope. The ones who'd pinned everything on Riley, seeing her stop, started losing it. "You said 'in bulk'! You did like five trades and quit. What are we supposed to do now?" "Keep trading! My fire's almost out. You want us to go chop trees in the dark?" "If you couldn't deliver, why'd you post? Showing off and then hiding." Whether it was coordinated or just genuine rage, the number of people defending Riley in the channel shrank fast. Mostly it was attacks now. Accusations of being irresponsible. Using scarcity tactics. Playing games with people's lives. Riley closed the channel. She couldn't be bothered. In a life-or-death situation like this, people losing it was normal. If she actually had unlimited resources, she'd trade more. But she didn't. And back on Earth, nobody had ever handed her anything out of charity. She wasn't about to start playing savior now. She looked down at the "Basic Torch Blueprint" in her inventory. "Requirements: Wood x10, Kerosene, Scrap Steel x2" Note: Requires Level 2 Workbench to craft." She leaned back against the crate again. Felt the weight of her stockpile pressing back against that lingering sense of unease. In this world, your ID didn't matter. Your gender didn't matter either. What mattered was who held the resources. She looked at what she had left: 36 units of wood. Plus the steel, coal, and stone from trading. Time to plan. Upgrading to a Level 2 campfire required 55 wood. She had all the other materials. For the wood, she'd just have to use the handsaw tomorrow and gather a little more. That settled, she pulled a few more logs from inventory and arranged them on top of the crate, making a small enclosed space. Curled up inside it, she watched the sky outside slowly darken to black. Her eyes grew heavy. She drifted off. Chapter 4 The Culling Riley woke to the kind of soreness that made you reconsider ever moving again. She'd slept like the dead—no dreams, no blizzard, just nothing. When she opened her eyes, the first things she saw were the logs she'd stacked as a windbreak and the steady glow of the campfire. She tried to stretch. Big mistake. Every muscle in her body lit up at once, screaming in protest. "Sh*t." Riley sucked air through her teeth and pressed a hand to her aching shoulder. Her lower back felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to it. Yesterday's work had been too much. She wasn't weak—far from it—but she was still human. The lactic acid had settled in overnight, and now she moved like an arthritic tin man. At least she was alive. She stowed the windbreak logs back in her inventory and looked around. The world hadn't changed. Same dull gray sky. Same swirling snow. Outside the six-foot radius of the fire, the drifts looked deeper than yesterday. The wind had been busy. Riley pulled out the half-empty water bottle and wet her throat. Then she retrieved the white bread she'd traded for yesterday. Compared to that dense, flavorless black bread, this was practically cake. She tore off small pieces, letting the faint sweetness dissolve on her tongue, and habitually opened the "Server Channel". She stopped chewing. The number in the top left hit her like a physical blow. "Current Online Players: 4968/10000" "Five thousand..." Riley's eyes went wide. In a single night, that number had been cut in half. Five thousand people. Gone. Winked out of existence on this frozen ice field while she slept. "Ding." The system notification cut through her thoughts—cold, emotionless, like it was announcing the weather. "Global Announcement: Congratulations to all survivors for successfully surviving the first day. "This was a culling. Last night eliminated those fools who failed to add fuel to their fires or refused to gather wood. Remember: in this place, tears mean nothing. When you die here, you're dead-dead. "You who remain are the lucky ones. "Grace Period: A five-day 'New Player Support Period' now begins. For the next five days, your initial supply crates will refresh daily with a fixed amount of food. "Special Reward: Each survivor receives one pair of "Standard Issue Snow Boots (Common)". Be grateful for this mercy. Enjoy the game." The words sat there on her screen. Fools. Mercy. The system's tone dripped with contempt. The math was simple. Starting package: five hours of fuel. Initial gift: five units of wood, another five hours. Total ten hours, if you did absolutely nothing. The ones who'd frozen to death last night—they were the ones who'd clung to hope. The ones too scared to move. The ones who'd told themselves someone would save them. Five thousand people. One night. Gone. This wasn't a game. It was a slaughter. In the channel, the survivors who'd made it through were clearly rattled by the numbers too. "Holy sh*t... My friend's icon went dark last night. Does that mean he's dead? Actually dead?" "I can't do this. I don't wanna play anymore, I wanna go home. I swear I'll work today. I'll chop wood, I'll do whatever, just please—" "Everyone move! Don't save your strength! If you die, that's it. No respawns!" Panic spread fast. But almost immediately, the tone shifted. The fear found a target. "That SpicyBurger—if she'd shared more wood yesterday, would so many people have died?" "For real. If she had extra, why not just give it away? Why did it have to be trades? She could've at least loaned some out." "This is what happens when people hoard resources and watch others freeze. Remember that name. Don't trade with her. Ever." Riley frowned. Here we go again. She scrolled up. Sure enough, there it was—that familiar ID: "InvincibleWarrior". He was going hard in the channel. "She's profiting off suffering. That's what some people do. Women like that are the worst—hoarding supplies while people die around them. Wait and see. Someone like her won't last." Riley laughed. Actually laughed out loud. Moral blackmail. In the apocalypse. She typed, "If you want wood, go cut it yourself. I'm not your mommy. No amount of crying in chat is gonna put logs in your inventory. You'd get more done if you just picked up your d*mn axe." The channel went quiet for a second. Then the reasonable voices piped up. "She's right. Nobody owes you anything. Work for it." "Exactly. Just 'cause someone's quiet doesn't mean they're an easy target." In a world where staying alive took everything you had, expecting charity was the dumbest move of all. Riley didn't waste more energy on it. People like that—the more you engaged, the more they thrived. Let him run his mouth. She had bigger things to worry about. She closed the channel and turned to the big wooden crate—her initial supply point. Sure enough, new items had materialized inside. "Bottled Water x3 "White Bread x3 "Fresh Orange Juice x1 "Standard Snow Boots x1" "Orange juice?" Riley picked up the bottle, genuinely surprised. The orange liquid inside sloshed gently. Vitamins. The system was actually giving them vitamins. She pulled off her old shoes—already damp and cold—and swapped into the new boots. They were clunky, sure. But they gripped the snow, and the insulation was real. The chill that had been seeping up through her soles disappeared instantly. Next, she opened her toolbox. Goggles on. Thick cut-resistant gloves. Head-to-toe gear. "Time to work." The channel noise faded from her mind. She had one priority today, and it wasn't arguing with idiots. She picked up the chainsaw and headed back to the tree line. The cold played tricks on batteries. She'd known that, intellectually. But knowing it and feeling it were different things. After just eight trees, the last spare battery gave out. The chainsaw stuttered, died, and went silent in her hands. Riley stared at it. "Son of a b*tch." Chapter 5 Dead Battery Riley stared at the dead chainsaw in her hands and shook her head. Without power, it was just an expensive paperweight. If she wanted more wood, she'd have to do it the old-fashioned way—pick up the axe or the manual handsaw from the toolbox and go to war with frozen timber. But eight more trees were eight more trees. Her stockpile was looking healthy. "First things first. Get these back." She sucked it up, stowed the chainsaw in her inventory, and started hauling. Her body screamed even louder than yesterday. Every muscle felt like it had been replaced with concrete. She dragged each log back one at a time, moving like a zombie. Drag. Rest two minutes. Drag again. The wind howled in her ears. Riley lost track of time, lost track of everything except the mechanical rhythm of work. By the time the sun was high—not that you could really see it through the clouds—she dragged the last log into the campfire's radius. It dissolved into light, absorbed by the system. Riley all but collapsed into the snow. "Acquired: Wood x40" She lay there for a moment, chest heaving, staring at the number in her inventory. A tired smile crept across her face. She had enough. Combined with the coal and steel from yesterday's trades, she had everything she needed for the upgrade. Riley forced herself upright and walked to the campfire. On the floating translucent panel, the "Upgrade" button glowed that tempting gold. "Upgrade Primitive Shelter to Lv.2? "Cost: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Scrap Steel x5 "Remaining after upgrade: Wood x16, Stone x3, Coal x0, Steel x0" "Upgrade." Riley took a breath and pressed it. "Hmmmm—!" A blinding white light erupted from the heart of the campfire, swallowing everything. Riley squeezed her eyes shut. No explosion. No thunder. Just a sound like Legos snapping together. A few seconds later, the light faded. Riley opened her eyes. And stopped breathing. The campfire wasn't just a campfire anymore. The rough stone ring had transformed into something neat and intentional—a proper firepit with a stone border for insulation, a place to set things, even a simple steel grate attached to the side. But that wasn't the big news. The heat that used to push back the cold within a six-foot radius now stretched a full fifteen feet. Inside that circle, snow was actively melting, revealing dark frozen soil underneath. In one corner, she spotted a patch of moss stubbornly poking through. Riley spun around. Behind the big wooden crate, a small log cabin stood waiting. It wasn't much—maybe forty feet square, built from rough-hewn logs. Nothing fancy. But it was solid. Four walls and a roof, blocking wind and snow completely. Riley walked over and pushed open the heavy wooden door. Warm air hit her face. Inside was simple: a wooden bed frame piled with dry grass, a crude workbench, a chair, and a small fireplace connected to a chimney that ran up through the roof. Rustic. But right now, it was heaven. Wood and fire. Four walls. A roof. Home. Riley ran her hand along the rough wall. Her eyes stung a little. She wouldn't have to sleep in the open anymore. Wouldn't have to wake up every few hours to check the fire. Wouldn't have to worry about freezing to death in her sleep. Right on cue, the server announcement chimed. Gold text this time, blazing right in the center of everyone's vision. "Server Announcement: Congratulations to player SpicyBurger for being the first to achieve "Level 2 Shelter". Rewards have been distributed." The chat channel, which had been wallowing in fear and despair, exploded. "Holy sh*t? Level 2 already? What does Level 2 unlock? Can you post pics, big shot?" "That's the wood seller from yesterday? No way. Absolute legend." "Carry me please! SpicyBurger, I'll be your loyal follower. I can cook, I can clean, I can—" "Teach us, master! How'd you gather materials so fast? What's your secret?" Compliments. Pleas. Desperate attempts to get noticed. And then, of course, the sour grapes. "InvincibleWarrior: Big deal. Just profiteering off everyone else's suffering. If she'd shared that wood instead of selling it, maybe those five thousand people would still be alive. How does it feel to climb on corpses?" "GodLovesMeFirst: Seriously. Building your success on other people's deaths. Karma's real. She'll get hers." Riley's jaw tightened. If InvincibleWarrior had been standing in front of her right now, she'd have knocked his teeth out. Guys like him—useless themselves, but always ready to tear down anyone who actually accomplished something. Sewer rats. Her private messages exploded too. She'd set it to only accept trade offers, but people had found a workaround—using the "trade note" function to send spam. "Hey beautiful, I'm a personal trainer. Great shape. Wanna see? Hit me with some wood and I'll do a voice call with you!" A photo of some guy flexing in a mirror, shirt off. Riley glanced at it, unimpressed. Decent abs. Pathetic attitude. Dude was clearly strong enough to chop wood—why was he wasting time on this? She'd never mentioned her gender, so most people probably assumed anyone who'd gathered that much wood must be a guy. The messages reflected that assumption. Some women sent selfies too, trying to flirt their way into favor. Didn't matter. Shameless cut across all demographics. From the backgrounds in the photos, everyone seemed to be in different locations. But one thing was consistent: they all had trees nearby. The system must have arranged that—a new player perk. "A bunch of degenerates." Riley's face went cold. She changed her privacy settings to "Friends Only". Then she added a line to her trading post description. "No spam. Send junk, get blocked." Silence. Blessed silence. She took a breath, let the noise drain away, and focused on what mattered. "First-place upgrade reward..." She opened her inventory. Sitting there, glowing faintly purple, was a gift box. For more exciting content, please download the "JoyRead" app to continue reading.
Chapter 1 The Countdown Ends It was the year 2027, and the end of the world was now less than an hour away. "00:59:23" Riley Carter stood on a ladder with a screw clenched between her teeth, an impact driver in her hand, securing the last window panel in place. A month ago, that timer had just appeared out of nowhere, hanging in the corner of everyone's vision like it had always been there. At first, people wrote it off as some kind of mass hacker prank. The government fed the media soothing statements in an attempt to keep things calm, but there was no way to talk down the panic as prices kept rising and supplies were held in a monopoly in real time. News outlets might spin whatever narrative they wanted, but no one could argue with the price of eggs. For a while, it was a frenzy. People cleaned out grocery stores like locusts. The government did what they could—price caps, purchase limits, reassurances from the podium—but none of it mattered. The cost of living kept climbing, and bit by bit, the country started coming apart at the seams. Online, it was a circus. Some people posted doom-laden predictions. Others openly celebrated the thought of the world finally burning. A few just seemed relieved they wouldn't have to clock in on Monday. In that final hour, things got truly ugly. Both on the streets and on social media, it was chaos. Some people figured why not went out with a bang? If the world was ending, they'd spend their last hours doing every reckless thing they'd ever fantasized about. Others, paralyzed by fear of whatever was coming, scrambled for anything they could hoard. Supplies. Weapons. Gasoline. Didn't matter what, as long as they had more of it than the next guy. Most people just wanted to be with the ones they loved. Riley didn't have that luxury anymore. Fresh out of community college, she'd lost both her parents in a highway pileup eighteen months back. The only thing they'd left her was the family hardware store, a cramped little place wedged between a laundromat and a taqueria. She'd been running it solo for just over a year when that d*mn countdown appeared overhead. At first, she'd thought maybe an apocalypse wouldn't be the worst thing. Maybe there'd be something on the other side. A reunion. But then she thought about her folks. They'd doted on her. Made her feel like the center of their world. And even though she'd grown a thick skin since going it alone, feeling indifferent to the world, she knew what they'd want. They'd want her to fight. To stay. She was the only piece of them still left in this world. People always say you aren't really gone until the last person forgets your name. As long as she kept breathing, kept carrying them with her another day, they weren't truly dead. Riley spat the screw into her palm, face calm, the impact driver whirring as she sank another fastener into the reinforced frame. "Flour's three hundred a pound now, and you can't even buy it straight—they make you tack on a bunch of other junk you don't need just to get it," she muttered to herself, shaking her head. When that timer first flickered into existence, Riley had done something smart. She'd liquidated everything. Converted every dollar she could scrape together into supplies. Unfortunately, by the time she hit the stores, inflation had already done its damage. Her savings didn't go nearly as far as they should have. Any cash that was left went toward tools. If the world was ending, she thought they could be useful. Riley pressed the last sheet of thick insulation foam into the window frame, seating it flush against the reinforced plywood beneath. The impact driver snarled as she buried the screws. Then she reached for her pneumatic glue gun—a satisfying pfft as the sealant filled the final gap. She wiped sweat from her forehead and climbed down off the ladder. Stepped back to admire her work. The little apartment was a fortress now. Doors reinforced. Windows barricaded. Every interior wall lined with an extra layer of insulation. She glanced down at herself. Custom-fit heavy-duty workwear. Slash-resistant fabric. More pockets than she'd ever need. Reinforced padding at the knees and elbows. It wasn't fashionable, but it was practical. And her real treasure: tools. A chainsaw. A reciprocating saw. The impact driver in her hand. A multi-bit screwdriver that had cost more than she wanted to admit. She'd brought everything usable from the shop back here, consolidated it into three massive toolboxes. She'd also grabbed some stuff like an air purifier and some spare filters—anything that might matter when civilization took a vacation. She didn't know what the countdown would bring. Some folks online predicted zombies. Others said asteroid impact. Volcanic winter. Alien invasion. Take your pick. Food. Tools. Shelter. She'd even started working out, building strength she'd never needed before. She'd done everything she could think of to prepare. Whatever was coming, she figured she'd last longer than most. With nothing left to do, she dropped onto one of the big toolboxes laid flat on the floor, wiped her forehead again, and pulled out her phone. Most news apps had crashed. The only things still loading were comment sections, and they were going crazy. [Anyone got rice? I'll pay eight grand for a bag. Please, we got nothing left.] [Forget it, man. Money's toilet paper now. Saw it with my own eyes—some rich assholes cleared out the Costco warehouse last week. All that 'purchase limit' crap was just theater. Shelves were empty 'cause the stock never made it there. It's all sitting in some hedge fund guy's basement.] [No kidding? Same thing happened to me! Store manager kept telling me, 'We're limiting purchases, come back next week, we'll put your name on the list.' So the whole time the back room was empty? They were just jerking us around?] [Of course they were. Rich people cornered the market on everything. So what are normal people supposed to do? Just sit here and die?] [Anyone know what actually happens when the clock hits zero? Like, is it nukes? That virus thing from that old video game?] Riley locked her phone. Tucked it away. She didn't have anything to add to that conversation. A month ago, when the countdown first showed up, prices had spiked instantly. A fifty-pound bag of rice that normally went for thirty bucks jumped to eight hundred overnight. By yesterday, it was breaking two grand. The wealthy had rolled up with trucks and cleaned out supermarkets. Riley had been smart—she'd gone early, bought stuff that would keep, stuff that was calorie-dense and cheap. Chocolate. Survival biscuits. Canned goods. It wasn't much, but it was enough for one person, at least for a while. She took a deep breath and glanced at the timer. "00:01:10" Just over a minute. Riley gripped the toolbox beneath her. Knuckles white. Who knew what would happen when that thing hit zero? Maybe it'd be like 2012—all hype, nothing real. In that last minute, her life flickered past. Her parents' faces. The hardware store. The lonely months since. "00:00:00" The countdown ended. Riley had just started to breathe a sigh of relief—nothing happened, maybe it really was nothing—when the world lurched beneath her. A dizzying weightlessness. A sensation of falling. Everything spun. ***** She didn't know how long she was out. "Whew." A wind like a knife blade sliced across her face. Riley's eyes snapped open. Her warm apartment was gone. In its place, an endless white expanse stretched in every direction. Snow whipped through the air. Wind howled like a wounded animal. And at her feet, a small campfire guttered in the gale, threatening to die at any second. "What the—" Before she could process, a chime rang directly in her skull. Not heard. Known. "Welcome to the Extreme Cold Survival Game. "Earth no longer exists. This is your new home. This is your grave. "Survival rules are as follows. "1. Each player begins with one campfire. It is your only defense against the cold. If the campfire dies, you will be judged deceased by the system. Not that it matters—without the fire, you won't last anyway. "2. This is a real world. You can die from hunger. From exposure. From animal attack. "3. Supplies stockpiled in your previous world do not carry over. Only items on your person, or in direct physical contact at the moment of transfer, are retained. "4. Struggle to survive. It is your only hope." Riley's heart slammed against her ribs. Supplies didn't carry over? Her mind flashed to those wealthy forum posters bragging about their warehouse stockpiles. And then she looked down at herself. Workwear. Intact. And— She was still sitting on the three giant toolboxes. They sat solidly in the snow, dusted with powder, unmistakably here. "Whew." Riley let out a long breath. A white cloud dispersed in front of her face. Pity, though. During her renovations, she'd stocked those boxes with a lot of power tools. The expensive impact driver. The reciprocating saw. In a world with no electrical outlets, once those batteries died, they were just dead weight. But even so. The hand tools. The consumables. The sheer volume of stuff in those boxes—it was a treasure beyond measure in a place like this. Riley forced herself to calm down. She was here. She'd deal with it. Something new lived in her mind now. She concentrated, and a translucent pale-blue screen materialized in front of her eyes. Looked just like a video game HUD. "Personal Panel "Name: Riley Carter "ID: 1120-US "Level: 1 (Standard Survivor) "Strength: 8 (Years of manual labor have made you stronger than average) "Agility: 8 (You've got quick reflexes) "Constitution: 6 (You've been skipping meals lately) "Spirit: 9 (You keep your head when others panic) "Inventory: 16/16 slots (Base capacity)" "Inventory?" Riley studied the sixteen empty squares at the bottom of the display. She reached out, touched one of the toolboxes, and thought the word, "Store." Whoosh. The heavy box vanished. In its place, a tiny icon appeared in the first inventory slot, a miniature "x1" in the corner. "It actually worked." For the first time since arriving, a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. Retrieve. Thud. The toolbox landed back in the snow, puffing up powder. No energy cost. No sense of weight. And in that inventory, she could carry anything, regardless of how heavy it was. Later on, when she went scavenging, that would make all the difference. Riley rubbed her stiff, freezing hands together and turned her attention to the campfire at her feet. It was the only warmth in this frozen wasteland. Hovering above the flames, visible only to her, were a few lines of glowing text. "Basic Campfire (Lv.1) "Remaining Burn Time: 05:28:00 "Current Coverage: Radius six feet (Blocks wind and snow) "Upgrade Requirements: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Steel x5 "Description: This is your life. Do not let it die. Upgrading expands your safe zone and unlocks additional construction options." "Needs upgrading." Riley frowned. Wood and stone she could probably find. But coal? Steel? Out here in the middle of nowhere? A flash of movement caught her eye. A small wooden box, half-buried in the snow not far from the fire. The starter crate. Had to be. Riley didn't rush. First, she pulled the claw hammer from her belt—the one she always kept there, habit from years of work—and gripped it tight. She scanned the tree line. Listened past the wind. Nothing moved. No sounds but the storm. She walked over quickly, crouched by the box. No lock. She pried the lid open with the claw end of her hammer. Inside, a handful of items. "Obtained: Iron Axe x1 "Obtained: Stale Dark Bread x2 "Obtained: 500ml Bottled Water x1 "Obtained: Kindling x5 "Obtained: Insulated Field Jacket x1 "Obtained: Utility Rope (25ft) "Obtained: Thermal Underwear (Set) x2 Not much. Barely anything. Riley picked up one of the dark loaves. It was rock hard. She examined the jacket—basic, but warm-looking. "So this is what a standard survivor starts with." At least the system had thought of everything. Including the underwear. She'd half-expected to wake up naked in the snow; at least she didn't have to worry about that. She stored everything in her inventory, then shrugged on the field jacket. The temperature shift was brutal. Even those few seconds exposed had left her hands numb. Hypothermia would set in fast out here. Jacket on, she hurried back to the campfire. She pulled the five units of Kindling from her inventory and tossed them onto the flames. The fire roared higher. Warmth flooded over her. "Fuel added. Remaining Burn Time: 10:28:00" Ten hours. If she didn't move fast, in ten hours she'd freeze to death on this ice field. And the game had made it clear—if the fire died, the system would judge her dead. Whether she actually froze or not. Riley lifted her head and scanned the landscape. She was in a sparse coniferous forest. Barely alive trees, crusted with frost, dotted the area not far from her position. "Wood." A slow smile spread across her face. She patted the toolbox beside her. "Other people might have axes. But felling a tree with just an axe takes hours. Exhausts you." She unlatched the box. Pulled out the chainsaw. Checked the battery gauge—full. "I've got a handsaw in here too. And a chainsaw with a full charge." The battery wouldn't last forever. But it would last long enough to give her a massive head start. In this race for survival, that was everything. Chapter 2 The Chainsaw The wind screamed across the open ground, picking up loose snow and flinging it against her goggles like sand. It sounded like static. Riley had pulled her basic work gear from the toolbox before heading out. Now she stood in the snow, surrounded by clusters of thin conifers that looked half-dead already. She took a breath. The air burned going down. "Zzzzzzz—!!!" She squeezed the trigger. The orange-and-black lithium-ion chainsaw in her hands roared to life, the chain spinning so fast it blurred. She buried the teeth in the nearest pine trunk. Wood chips exploded everywhere. Fragrant shavings—still wet with resin—scattered across the pristine snow, stark and yellow against all that white. Five seconds. Crack. The pine tree, thick as her arm, groaned and tilted. Then it fell slow and heavy into a drift, sending up a puff of powder. "God bless modern technology." Riley shook out her wrist—the vibration had numbed her fingers—and allowed herself a small smile. Without that chainsaw, with just the basic iron axe the system had given her, felling a tree frozen solid like this would have taken twenty minutes minimum. And it would have left her soaked with sweat. In subzero temps, sweat was a death sentence. Once your base layers got wet, the moment you stopped moving, your body temperature would plummet. Hypothermia would follow fast. Riley didn't waste time celebrating. She knew the saw in her hands was a hungry machine. She'd brought two spare high-capacity batteries, sure, but until she found a way to recharge them, every second the motor ran was borrowed time. She had to gather as much wood as possible before the batteries gave out. "Zzzzz—Zzzzz—" At the edge of the forest, the chainsaw's snarl rose and fell, shattering the frozen silence. Riley worked like she was possessed. Fell a tree. Move to the next. Fell another. But she had to stay alert—watch for hidden snow pits underfoot, keep adjusting her collar against the wind that kept finding its way down her neck. Her stamina drained faster than she'd anticipated. In extreme cold, body burned through calories just to stay alive. Added walking through knee-deep snow, where every step took three times the energy of walking on pavement, and the math got ugly fast. Pretty soon, Riley was breathing hard. Her breath fogged the inside of her goggles, and she had to keep wiping them clear. "Zzzzz..." She was mid-cut on a tree—didn't even know which number anymore—when the chainsaw's roar stuttered. Died. The chain jammed solid in the wood. A red light blinked at her. Dead battery. Riley yanked the saw free and patted its housing. "Good work, buddy." Genuine regret in her voice. She straightened up and looked around. Pine trunks lay scattered across the snow in every direction. A decent haul. She counted silently. "Twenty-three total." Then the next problem hit her. According to the system, until she actually possessed these logs, they were still just natural resources. That meant they didn't qualify for Inventory storage. She couldn't just snap her fingers and make them disappear. She had to drag them back to camp. Riley grabbed the nearest pine and tried to pull. Heavy. Like, unreasonably heavy. Fresh-cut wood was full of moisture. Add the branches catching in the snow, dragging like anchors, and she felt like she was hauling a dead body through mud. "Huff... huff..." She gritted her teeth, looped rope around the trunk, slung it over her shoulder, leaned forward, and started walking. Inch by inch. The tree line to her campfire was maybe fifty yards. Right now, it felt like fifty miles. By the time she'd wrestled the fourth tree back into the fire's warm radius, she was wrecked. Her legs felt like someone had filled them with concrete. Her lungs burned from hauling freezing air through them. "Can't... can't do more." Riley made the call. She stopped. Those nineteen trees still out there in the snow—they called to her. Tempted her. But if she kept pushing without rest, without fuel for herself, she'd collapse out there. And out there, collapse meant death. She dropped down next to the big wooden crate that had held her starter supplies. It was less than three feet from the campfire. The flames danced orange and red, pumping out heat that felt like heaven. The shift from frozen to warm made her shiver violently. She pulled off her goggles and thick gloves, set them near the fire to warm up, then—still shaking—pulled the half-empty water bottle from her Inventory. Took a small sip. Then the bread. Two black bricks that looked more like construction material than food. "Crunch." Riley bit off a piece with effort. It was coarse. Tasted like sawdust with a hint of burnt toast. Bitter. But it was calories. Carbs. Fuel for her own fire. She forced herself to chew, swallow. When the food hit her stomach, warmth finally started spreading through her core. The uncontrollable shaking eased. After half a loaf, Riley leaned back against the crate. Her eyelids drooped. Post-exhaustion crash hit her like a wave. The campfire crackled. The wind seemed farther away now. Muffled. She really wanted to sleep... Her head nodded. Her body started sliding sideways. "Wait—" Some animal instinct jolted her awake just before she went under. She pinched her thigh. Hard. Then looked up at the timer floating above the flames. "Shelter Level 1 "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 06:28:00" Six and a half hours. If she slept too deep, too long, and that fire went out—what then? Even ignoring the obvious—that she'd freeze to death in this hellhole without a heat source—the game rules were clear. When the campfire hits zero, it's game over. "No sleeping. Not allowed." Riley slapped her own cheeks, forced herself upright. She stayed near the fire, but she didn't take off her heavy work clothes. She remembered reading something once, a survival article. "In the late stages of hypothermia, your hypothalamus malfunctions. You get a false sensation of heat. It's called "paradoxical undressing"—people strip down right before they freeze to death." "Okay. Process these four. Keep the fire fed." She pulled a traditional handsaw from the toolbox. Looking at the four thick pine logs on the ground, she almost laughed. Without power tools, breaking these down into burnable pieces would take at least half an hour. Burn the little energy she had left. But what choice did she have? Riley knelt in the snow, positioned the blade against the trunk, and was about to start cutting— A soft white light shot out from the system panel on her chest. It washed over the logs. "Ding! "Detected felled, intact logs within shelter range. "Perform quick recovery?" Riley's hand froze mid-saw. Quick recovery? It took her a second to process. Then relief flooded through her so hard she almost cried. "Yes! Recover!" She didn't hesitate. The next moment, something impossible happened. The four pine trunks—the ones she'd have to saw and split by hand, the ones that represented hours of brutal labor—dissolved into pale blue light particles. Not into dust. Into neat, uniform logs that stacked themselves automatically in her Inventory. The branches, the needles, all the useless parts—purified out of existence. "Recovery successful! "Obtained: Common Wood x20" Riley's eyes went wide, staring at the perfect lumber in her inventory display. Looked like it came straight from a hardware store. "One tree gives five units of wood? "And I don't have to cut it myself?" This changed everything. It meant she only had to handle the felling and the dragging. Once a log crossed into her camp's boundary, the system recognized it as hers. The most time-consuming part—the processing—just... didn't exist anymore. Riley immediately grabbed five units of wood and fed them to the fire. Whoosh. The flames leaped, hungry and grateful. "Fuel added. "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 12:20:00" "Five logs, five hours..." She did the math fast, looking at the fifteen units still on the ground. If she threw all of those in, that'd be another fifteen hours. Total of twenty-seven. She could sleep like the dead right now, and that fire would still be burning when she woke up. Security. For the first time since the world ended, Riley felt something like security. She selected the remaining wood. Deposited it all. Watched the countdown tick up to a very comfortable "27:20:00". Then her nerves finally let go. She dragged one of the toolboxes into position to block the wind, wrapped the field jacket tight around herself, pulled her hat down over her eyes, leaned back against the warm crate, and let the crackle of the fire pull her under. ***** She didn't sleep long. When she opened her eyes again, the sky was still that same dull gray-white. Impossible to tell if it was morning or afternoon. System clock said three hours. Her body ached. Shoulders and arms especially—felt like she'd gone ten rounds with someone. But her head was clear. She stretched her stiff neck and stood up. The snow seemed lighter. The feathery flakes had tapered off into sporadic icy grains. Riley ate a little more, got some fuel back in the tank, then stepped outside the campfire's warmth. The fire's effect wasn't what she'd expected. It wasn't that the temperature gradually dropped as you moved away. It was sharper than that. Like there was an invisible barrier around the flames. Inside, livable. Outside, the cold hit you like a wall. She wandered a little way off. The cold found every gap in her clothing. She thought about going farther, exploring. But there was nothing visible except that stand of trees she'd already worked. Maybe stuff was buried under the snow, but she couldn't see it. "No proper snow boots. Not going far." Riley glanced at the endless white distance with real regret. "Don't get greedy. Get those nineteen trees first." She turned. Looked at the woods. Her loot was still out there. And now she knew: if she could drag them back into the campfire's circle, the system would cash them out automatically. "Time to work." Riley rubbed her hands together. Let the motivation build. For the next few hours, she became a machine. Drag a tree to camp. Recover it. Go back for another. Repeat. It was boring. Exhausting. But watching those logs turn into numbers in her inventory—that feeling was hard to describe. Satisfying, in a way nothing had been satisfying in a long time. When the last pine trunk crossed into the light and dissolved into particles, Riley just collapsed. Lay flat in the snow and stared at the gray sky. She pulled up her Inventory. The once-empty slots were full now. Stack after stack of wood icons. "Item: Common Wood "Quantity: 80 "Description: Basic survival resource. Can be used for fuel or construction." Eighty units. Plus what was already burning in the campfire. Her day's work had yielded a clean hundred. One unit of wood burned for one hour. Riley looked at the flames dancing in front of her. Felt the heat on her face. Let herself smile, wide and real. "One hundred hours." Four full days. While everyone else was probably still panicking. Crying. Begging. Trying to figure out how to survive their first night in this frozen nightmare... She, Riley, had enough fuel stockpiled to last four days. Which meant: for the next ninety-six hours, unless she actively chose to die, nobody and nothing could put her fire out. She pulled the half-empty water bottle from Inventory. The space must have been insulated somehow—the water was still warm. Almost body temperature. She sipped it. Tasted sweet, even though it was just tap water. "Okay. Next step." Her gaze settled on the "Upgrade" button on the campfire panel. This open-air setup was fine for now. But if she was going to survive long-term, she needed something better. A real shelter. All she needed was a little stone. Some coal. Some steel. Then she could build something worth calling home. Chapter 3 The Trading Game The blizzard howled outside, but within the six-foot radius of the campfire, the air stayed surprisingly warm—like the wind had hit an invisible wall and just couldn't reach. Riley leaned back against the dusty wooden crate, holding the half-empty water bottle in her hand. She stared into the flames for a moment, then focused her attention inward. The pale blue system panel unfolded in front of her eyes again. Now that the immediate crisis was handled, she finally had time to sit quietly and really explore this so-called "Survival System". Beyond the personal stats and inventory, the bottom of the panel had a row of function icons: Server Channel, Friends List, Trading Market, and Crafting Manual. Friends List was empty. No surprise there. She hadn't exactly been a social butterfly back in the old world, and she sure as hell wasn't going to make friends easily in a frozen hellscape where everyone was fighting for their next breath. She tapped into the "Server Channel". A line of numbers appeared in the top left. "Server: US-008 "Current Online: 9911/10000" Ten thousand people started. Less than ten hours in, eighty-nine were already gone. "That doesn't add up." Everyone's starter crate came with a rusty iron axe and five units of wood. Plus the initial fuel the campfire had when they arrived—that alone bought them ten hours minimum, even if they just sat there doing nothing. What the hell did those people do to get eliminated so fast? The channel was moving fast, messages scrolling by every second. Desperation dripped from every line. "Someone help, I'm freezing my ass off out here. This stupid axe can't cut sh*t—every swing just bounces off and rattles my whole arm. Can anyone spare a couple logs? My dad's a senior VP at Walker Group. I'll wire you a million dollars when we get back, I swear." "Wake up, buddy. If your dad's still alive, he's out there chopping trees right now too." "Don't even talk to me. I spotted a wooden crate in the snow earlier, got all excited, ran over—and before I got within ten feet, some white rabbit thing jumped out of a drift. Teeth like needles. Almost took a chunk out of my leg. Missed the crate, wasted all that energy for nothing." "I saw that too! Random crates spawn in the wild. I opened a wooden one and got two chocolate bars and some coal." Reading through the chaos, Riley picked out two keywords, "Random Reward Crates" and "Dangerous Creatures". So this world was deeper than she thought. Wooden crates, copper crates—these randomly spawning resource points were the real way to get ahead. Coal came from crates. That was useful to know. And if coal was in crates, steel probably was too. But something bothered her. According to what people were saying, reward crates weren't exactly rare. So why hadn't she found a single one during her lumber run? She doubted it was just bad luck. Riley exited chat and tapped into the "Trading Market". "Seller: MountainMan88 Item: Stone x2 Wants: White Bread x5" "Seller: LoneWolf_21 Item: Cotton Cloth Wants: Clean Water" "Seller: NotDeadYet Item: Wood x3 Wants: Anything edible" Most people were trading for food and wood. The stuff that kept you alive right now. Things like stone and cloth were getting dumped cheap—nobody had the luxury of thinking long-term. Riley looked at her own inventory. Eighty units of wood staring back at her. Her heart beat a little faster. In this opening phase, where wood literally meant the difference between life and death, the resources in her hands were basically gold bars. "Time to trade," she muttered to herself. "Coal, steel—can't get those from chopping trees. And right now, wood's at maximum value. If I wait, the exchange rate shifts." Even with the chainsaw dead, she still had the handsaw. Less efficient, sure, but she could gather more wood if she needed it. Short-term, she wasn't going to run out. She clicked to post a message in the channel. "System Prompt: Detected that you have not set a virtual ID. Please enter your nickname (cannot be changed after setting)." Riley stared at the blank input box. Naming things was the worst. She sat there for a long time, nothing coming to mind. Finally, she gave up. Couldn't think of anything cool or clever, so she'd just go with something random. Her fingers tapped across the virtual keyboard—SpicyBurger. "Setting successful. ID locked." The prompt closed. Riley posted her message. "SpicyBurger: Selling wood in bulk. Looking for: Coal, Steel, High-calorie food. DM me with offers—what you have and your rate. Good deals go fast, don't sleep on this." For three seconds after the message appeared, the channel went dead silent. Then it exploded. "SpicyBurger? That name's making me hungry, what the hell." "Never mind the name—'wood in bulk'! We got a whale in here! Everyone else is stressing about the next hour and this person's already running a business?" "I need some! My campfire's down to like two hours. I don't know if I actually die when it hits zero but I don't wanna find out." Suddenly, half the channel was scrambling for wood. But then the skeptics crawled out. "Hang on. Everyone started with the same rusty axe. Chopping a tree in this weather takes twenty, thirty minutes minimum. Where's she getting 'bulk' wood from? Sounds like a scam." "InvincibleWarrior: Everybody chill. Look at that ID—sounds like a girl's handle. I'm a grown man, been busting my ass, and I've only got like ten logs saved up. My hands are shredded. Some girl with a food name claims she's got bulk? She's trying to run a game. Scam people out of their stuff." "Iron_Tough: Agreed. Scammers made it through the apocalypse too, I guess. My advice: ignore her. Don't get played. How much wood can a woman chop anyway? Probably can't even lift the axe right, lol." Riley scrolled through the messages, expression flat. She almost laughed. But some people pushed back. "FishHater44: How is it a scam? If she doesn't deliver, you don't complete the trade. Just 'cause you can't chop that much wood doesn't mean nobody can." Riley nodded slightly. That one had a point. But she didn't waste energy arguing in the channel. Instead, she flipped on Do Not Disturb for private messages—only allowing chat requests that included a trade offer. Some people didn't actually care whether she had wood. They just couldn't stand seeing someone else do well. "Ding. Ding. Ding." Private messages started pouring in like rain. Most players weren't idiots. Faced with the very real threat of freezing to death, they'd try anything for a chance. Riley opened the first one. "Windwalker: I got "Coal x3" from a crate. How much wood can I get for it? I can't chop anymore. The wind out here is insane. I tried to throw the coal in my fire but it just kept popping back out. System says my campfire level's too low, won't let me use it. I'm out of wood. My fire's almost dead." Riley thought for a moment. "Three coal for five wood. Deal?" She hadn't known about that restriction. Coal was supposed to be better fuel than wood—didn't expect the game to lock it behind a level gate. The reply came instantly, "Deal. But five wood feels light. It's coal." The guy was conflicted. He knew coal had value, but he was desperate. "I'll make it six. Final offer." Riley wasn't sure about coal's real value yet. Six was her limit. "Fine. Deal." They both dropped their items into the trade window. A moment later, it completed. A flash of white light. Riley's inventory lost six wood. Gained three chunks of coal, each about the size of a small melon. One down. "CrunchyFrog: Hey, I got two "Iron Ingots" from a crate. System calls them "Scrap Steel". Can I get eight wood for them? Trying to stock up enough to sleep through the night." Riley replied, "Sure. Initiate." In just over ten minutes, her wood stockpile dropped significantly. But her inventory filled up with good stuff. "Coal x10 "Stone x23 "Scrap Steel x5 "Raw Meat x2 "White Bread x2 "Basic Torch Blueprint x1" The blueprint was new. The description said it was required for crafting certain items. Seemed useful, so she'd traded for it. Meanwhile, back in the channel, that "InvincibleWarrior" guy who'd been mocking her earlier seemed to notice that people were actually completing trades. His tone got bitter. "InvincibleWarrior: Whatever. She probably got lucky with a high-tier crate. Let's see how long her stock lasts. Once the wood's gone, she'll be begging me to let her join my group." The people who'd successfully traded with Riley popped into the channel to thank her. That might have been fine—except the thanks caused problems. Since Riley had stopped trading for now, most people hadn't gotten anything. And the sky was darkening. Temperature outside the campfire radius was dropping fast. Gathering wood was getting harder. Trading was their only hope. The ones who'd pinned everything on Riley, seeing her stop, started losing it. "You said 'in bulk'! You did like five trades and quit. What are we supposed to do now?" "Keep trading! My fire's almost out. You want us to go chop trees in the dark?" "If you couldn't deliver, why'd you post? Showing off and then hiding." Whether it was coordinated or just genuine rage, the number of people defending Riley in the channel shrank fast. Mostly it was attacks now. Accusations of being irresponsible. Using scarcity tactics. Playing games with people's lives. Riley closed the channel. She couldn't be bothered. In a life-or-death situation like this, people losing it was normal. If she actually had unlimited resources, she'd trade more. But she didn't. And back on Earth, nobody had ever handed her anything out of charity. She wasn't about to start playing savior now. She looked down at the "Basic Torch Blueprint" in her inventory. "Requirements: Wood x10, Kerosene, Scrap Steel x2" Note: Requires Level 2 Workbench to craft." She leaned back against the crate again. Felt the weight of her stockpile pressing back against that lingering sense of unease. In this world, your ID didn't matter. Your gender didn't matter either. What mattered was who held the resources. She looked at what she had left: 36 units of wood. Plus the steel, coal, and stone from trading. Time to plan. Upgrading to a Level 2 campfire required 55 wood. She had all the other materials. For the wood, she'd just have to use the handsaw tomorrow and gather a little more. That settled, she pulled a few more logs from inventory and arranged them on top of the crate, making a small enclosed space. Curled up inside it, she watched the sky outside slowly darken to black. Her eyes grew heavy. She drifted off. Chapter 4 The Culling Riley woke to the kind of soreness that made you reconsider ever moving again. She'd slept like the dead—no dreams, no blizzard, just nothing. When she opened her eyes, the first things she saw were the logs she'd stacked as a windbreak and the steady glow of the campfire. She tried to stretch. Big mistake. Every muscle in her body lit up at once, screaming in protest. "Sh*t." Riley sucked air through her teeth and pressed a hand to her aching shoulder. Her lower back felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to it. Yesterday's work had been too much. She wasn't weak—far from it—but she was still human. The lactic acid had settled in overnight, and now she moved like an arthritic tin man. At least she was alive. She stowed the windbreak logs back in her inventory and looked around. The world hadn't changed. Same dull gray sky. Same swirling snow. Outside the six-foot radius of the fire, the drifts looked deeper than yesterday. The wind had been busy. Riley pulled out the half-empty water bottle and wet her throat. Then she retrieved the white bread she'd traded for yesterday. Compared to that dense, flavorless black bread, this was practically cake. She tore off small pieces, letting the faint sweetness dissolve on her tongue, and habitually opened the "Server Channel". She stopped chewing. The number in the top left hit her like a physical blow. "Current Online Players: 4968/10000" "Five thousand..." Riley's eyes went wide. In a single night, that number had been cut in half. Five thousand people. Gone. Winked out of existence on this frozen ice field while she slept. "Ding." The system notification cut through her thoughts—cold, emotionless, like it was announcing the weather. "Global Announcement: Congratulations to all survivors for successfully surviving the first day. "This was a culling. Last night eliminated those fools who failed to add fuel to their fires or refused to gather wood. Remember: in this place, tears mean nothing. When you die here, you're dead-dead. "You who remain are the lucky ones. "Grace Period: A five-day 'New Player Support Period' now begins. For the next five days, your initial supply crates will refresh daily with a fixed amount of food. "Special Reward: Each survivor receives one pair of "Standard Issue Snow Boots (Common)". Be grateful for this mercy. Enjoy the game." The words sat there on her screen. Fools. Mercy. The system's tone dripped with contempt. The math was simple. Starting package: five hours of fuel. Initial gift: five units of wood, another five hours. Total ten hours, if you did absolutely nothing. The ones who'd frozen to death last night—they were the ones who'd clung to hope. The ones too scared to move. The ones who'd told themselves someone would save them. Five thousand people. One night. Gone. This wasn't a game. It was a slaughter. In the channel, the survivors who'd made it through were clearly rattled by the numbers too. "Holy sh*t... My friend's icon went dark last night. Does that mean he's dead? Actually dead?" "I can't do this. I don't wanna play anymore, I wanna go home. I swear I'll work today. I'll chop wood, I'll do whatever, just please—" "Everyone move! Don't save your strength! If you die, that's it. No respawns!" Panic spread fast. But almost immediately, the tone shifted. The fear found a target. "That SpicyBurger—if she'd shared more wood yesterday, would so many people have died?" "For real. If she had extra, why not just give it away? Why did it have to be trades? She could've at least loaned some out." "This is what happens when people hoard resources and watch others freeze. Remember that name. Don't trade with her. Ever." Riley frowned. Here we go again. She scrolled up. Sure enough, there it was—that familiar ID: "InvincibleWarrior". He was going hard in the channel. "She's profiting off suffering. That's what some people do. Women like that are the worst—hoarding supplies while people die around them. Wait and see. Someone like her won't last." Riley laughed. Actually laughed out loud. Moral blackmail. In the apocalypse. She typed, "If you want wood, go cut it yourself. I'm not your mommy. No amount of crying in chat is gonna put logs in your inventory. You'd get more done if you just picked up your d*mn axe." The channel went quiet for a second. Then the reasonable voices piped up. "She's right. Nobody owes you anything. Work for it." "Exactly. Just 'cause someone's quiet doesn't mean they're an easy target." In a world where staying alive took everything you had, expecting charity was the dumbest move of all. Riley didn't waste more energy on it. People like that—the more you engaged, the more they thrived. Let him run his mouth. She had bigger things to worry about. She closed the channel and turned to the big wooden crate—her initial supply point. Sure enough, new items had materialized inside. "Bottled Water x3 "White Bread x3 "Fresh Orange Juice x1 "Standard Snow Boots x1" "Orange juice?" Riley picked up the bottle, genuinely surprised. The orange liquid inside sloshed gently. Vitamins. The system was actually giving them vitamins. She pulled off her old shoes—already damp and cold—and swapped into the new boots. They were clunky, sure. But they gripped the snow, and the insulation was real. The chill that had been seeping up through her soles disappeared instantly. Next, she opened her toolbox. Goggles on. Thick cut-resistant gloves. Head-to-toe gear. "Time to work." The channel noise faded from her mind. She had one priority today, and it wasn't arguing with idiots. She picked up the chainsaw and headed back to the tree line. The cold played tricks on batteries. She'd known that, intellectually. But knowing it and feeling it were different things. After just eight trees, the last spare battery gave out. The chainsaw stuttered, died, and went silent in her hands. Riley stared at it. "Son of a b*tch." Chapter 5 Dead Battery Riley stared at the dead chainsaw in her hands and shook her head. Without power, it was just an expensive paperweight. If she wanted more wood, she'd have to do it the old-fashioned way—pick up the axe or the manual handsaw from the toolbox and go to war with frozen timber. But eight more trees were eight more trees. Her stockpile was looking healthy. "First things first. Get these back." She sucked it up, stowed the chainsaw in her inventory, and started hauling. Her body screamed even louder than yesterday. Every muscle felt like it had been replaced with concrete. She dragged each log back one at a time, moving like a zombie. Drag. Rest two minutes. Drag again. The wind howled in her ears. Riley lost track of time, lost track of everything except the mechanical rhythm of work. By the time the sun was high—not that you could really see it through the clouds—she dragged the last log into the campfire's radius. It dissolved into light, absorbed by the system. Riley all but collapsed into the snow. "Acquired: Wood x40" She lay there for a moment, chest heaving, staring at the number in her inventory. A tired smile crept across her face. She had enough. Combined with the coal and steel from yesterday's trades, she had everything she needed for the upgrade. Riley forced herself upright and walked to the campfire. On the floating translucent panel, the "Upgrade" button glowed that tempting gold. "Upgrade Primitive Shelter to Lv.2? "Cost: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Scrap Steel x5 "Remaining after upgrade: Wood x16, Stone x3, Coal x0, Steel x0" "Upgrade." Riley took a breath and pressed it. "Hmmmm—!" A blinding white light erupted from the heart of the campfire, swallowing everything. Riley squeezed her eyes shut. No explosion. No thunder. Just a sound like Legos snapping together. A few seconds later, the light faded. Riley opened her eyes. And stopped breathing. The campfire wasn't just a campfire anymore. The rough stone ring had transformed into something neat and intentional—a proper firepit with a stone border for insulation, a place to set things, even a simple steel grate attached to the side. But that wasn't the big news. The heat that used to push back the cold within a six-foot radius now stretched a full fifteen feet. Inside that circle, snow was actively melting, revealing dark frozen soil underneath. In one corner, she spotted a patch of moss stubbornly poking through. Riley spun around. Behind the big wooden crate, a small log cabin stood waiting. It wasn't much—maybe forty feet square, built from rough-hewn logs. Nothing fancy. But it was solid. Four walls and a roof, blocking wind and snow completely. Riley walked over and pushed open the heavy wooden door. Warm air hit her face. Inside was simple: a wooden bed frame piled with dry grass, a crude workbench, a chair, and a small fireplace connected to a chimney that ran up through the roof. Rustic. But right now, it was heaven. Wood and fire. Four walls. A roof. Home. Riley ran her hand along the rough wall. Her eyes stung a little. She wouldn't have to sleep in the open anymore. Wouldn't have to wake up every few hours to check the fire. Wouldn't have to worry about freezing to death in her sleep. Right on cue, the server announcement chimed. Gold text this time, blazing right in the center of everyone's vision. "Server Announcement: Congratulations to player SpicyBurger for being the first to achieve "Level 2 Shelter". Rewards have been distributed." The chat channel, which had been wallowing in fear and despair, exploded. "Holy sh*t? Level 2 already? What does Level 2 unlock? Can you post pics, big shot?" "That's the wood seller from yesterday? No way. Absolute legend." "Carry me please! SpicyBurger, I'll be your loyal follower. I can cook, I can clean, I can—" "Teach us, master! How'd you gather materials so fast? What's your secret?" Compliments. Pleas. Desperate attempts to get noticed. And then, of course, the sour grapes. "InvincibleWarrior: Big deal. Just profiteering off everyone else's suffering. If she'd shared that wood instead of selling it, maybe those five thousand people would still be alive. How does it feel to climb on corpses?" "GodLovesMeFirst: Seriously. Building your success on other people's deaths. Karma's real. She'll get hers." Riley's jaw tightened. If InvincibleWarrior had been standing in front of her right now, she'd have knocked his teeth out. Guys like him—useless themselves, but always ready to tear down anyone who actually accomplished something. Sewer rats. Her private messages exploded too. She'd set it to only accept trade offers, but people had found a workaround—using the "trade note" function to send spam. "Hey beautiful, I'm a personal trainer. Great shape. Wanna see? Hit me with some wood and I'll do a voice call with you!" A photo of some guy flexing in a mirror, shirt off. Riley glanced at it, unimpressed. Decent abs. Pathetic attitude. Dude was clearly strong enough to chop wood—why was he wasting time on this? She'd never mentioned her gender, so most people probably assumed anyone who'd gathered that much wood must be a guy. The messages reflected that assumption. Some women sent selfies too, trying to flirt their way into favor. Didn't matter. Shameless cut across all demographics. From the backgrounds in the photos, everyone seemed to be in different locations. But one thing was consistent: they all had trees nearby. The system must have arranged that—a new player perk. "A bunch of degenerates." Riley's face went cold. She changed her privacy settings to "Friends Only". Then she added a line to her trading post description. "No spam. Send junk, get blocked." Silence. Blessed silence. She took a breath, let the noise drain away, and focused on what mattered. "First-place upgrade reward..." She opened her inventory. Sitting there, glowing faintly purple, was a gift box. For more exciting content, please download the "JoyRead" app to continue reading.
Chapter 1 The Countdown Ends It was the year 2027, and the end of the world was now less than an hour away. "00:59:23" Riley Carter stood on a ladder with a screw clenched between her teeth, an impact driver in her hand, securing the last window panel in place. A month ago, that timer had just appeared out of nowhere, hanging in the corner of everyone's vision like it had always been there. At first, people wrote it off as some kind of mass hacker prank. The government fed the media soothing statements in an attempt to keep things calm, but there was no way to talk down the panic as prices kept rising and supplies were held in a monopoly in real time. News outlets might spin whatever narrative they wanted, but no one could argue with the price of eggs. For a while, it was a frenzy. People cleaned out grocery stores like locusts. The government did what they could—price caps, purchase limits, reassurances from the podium—but none of it mattered. The cost of living kept climbing, and bit by bit, the country started coming apart at the seams. Online, it was a circus. Some people posted doom-laden predictions. Others openly celebrated the thought of the world finally burning. A few just seemed relieved they wouldn't have to clock in on Monday. In that final hour, things got truly ugly. Both on the streets and on social media, it was chaos. Some people figured why not went out with a bang? If the world was ending, they'd spend their last hours doing every reckless thing they'd ever fantasized about. Others, paralyzed by fear of whatever was coming, scrambled for anything they could hoard. Supplies. Weapons. Gasoline. Didn't matter what, as long as they had more of it than the next guy. Most people just wanted to be with the ones they loved. Riley didn't have that luxury anymore. Fresh out of community college, she'd lost both her parents in a highway pileup eighteen months back. The only thing they'd left her was the family hardware store, a cramped little place wedged between a laundromat and a taqueria. She'd been running it solo for just over a year when that d*mn countdown appeared overhead. At first, she'd thought maybe an apocalypse wouldn't be the worst thing. Maybe there'd be something on the other side. A reunion. But then she thought about her folks. They'd doted on her. Made her feel like the center of their world. And even though she'd grown a thick skin since going it alone, feeling indifferent to the world, she knew what they'd want. They'd want her to fight. To stay. She was the only piece of them still left in this world. People always say you aren't really gone until the last person forgets your name. As long as she kept breathing, kept carrying them with her another day, they weren't truly dead. Riley spat the screw into her palm, face calm, the impact driver whirring as she sank another fastener into the reinforced frame. "Flour's three hundred a pound now, and you can't even buy it straight—they make you tack on a bunch of other junk you don't need just to get it," she muttered to herself, shaking her head. When that timer first flickered into existence, Riley had done something smart. She'd liquidated everything. Converted every dollar she could scrape together into supplies. Unfortunately, by the time she hit the stores, inflation had already done its damage. Her savings didn't go nearly as far as they should have. Any cash that was left went toward tools. If the world was ending, she thought they could be useful. Riley pressed the last sheet of thick insulation foam into the window frame, seating it flush against the reinforced plywood beneath. The impact driver snarled as she buried the screws. Then she reached for her pneumatic glue gun—a satisfying pfft as the sealant filled the final gap. She wiped sweat from her forehead and climbed down off the ladder. Stepped back to admire her work. The little apartment was a fortress now. Doors reinforced. Windows barricaded. Every interior wall lined with an extra layer of insulation. She glanced down at herself. Custom-fit heavy-duty workwear. Slash-resistant fabric. More pockets than she'd ever need. Reinforced padding at the knees and elbows. It wasn't fashionable, but it was practical. And her real treasure: tools. A chainsaw. A reciprocating saw. The impact driver in her hand. A multi-bit screwdriver that had cost more than she wanted to admit. She'd brought everything usable from the shop back here, consolidated it into three massive toolboxes. She'd also grabbed some stuff like an air purifier and some spare filters—anything that might matter when civilization took a vacation. She didn't know what the countdown would bring. Some folks online predicted zombies. Others said asteroid impact. Volcanic winter. Alien invasion. Take your pick. Food. Tools. Shelter. She'd even started working out, building strength she'd never needed before. She'd done everything she could think of to prepare. Whatever was coming, she figured she'd last longer than most. With nothing left to do, she dropped onto one of the big toolboxes laid flat on the floor, wiped her forehead again, and pulled out her phone. Most news apps had crashed. The only things still loading were comment sections, and they were going crazy. [Anyone got rice? I'll pay eight grand for a bag. Please, we got nothing left.] [Forget it, man. Money's toilet paper now. Saw it with my own eyes—some rich assholes cleared out the Costco warehouse last week. All that 'purchase limit' crap was just theater. Shelves were empty 'cause the stock never made it there. It's all sitting in some hedge fund guy's basement.] [No kidding? Same thing happened to me! Store manager kept telling me, 'We're limiting purchases, come back next week, we'll put your name on the list.' So the whole time the back room was empty? They were just jerking us around?] [Of course they were. Rich people cornered the market on everything. So what are normal people supposed to do? Just sit here and die?] [Anyone know what actually happens when the clock hits zero? Like, is it nukes? That virus thing from that old video game?] Riley locked her phone. Tucked it away. She didn't have anything to add to that conversation. A month ago, when the countdown first showed up, prices had spiked instantly. A fifty-pound bag of rice that normally went for thirty bucks jumped to eight hundred overnight. By yesterday, it was breaking two grand. The wealthy had rolled up with trucks and cleaned out supermarkets. Riley had been smart—she'd gone early, bought stuff that would keep, stuff that was calorie-dense and cheap. Chocolate. Survival biscuits. Canned goods. It wasn't much, but it was enough for one person, at least for a while. She took a deep breath and glanced at the timer. "00:01:10" Just over a minute. Riley gripped the toolbox beneath her. Knuckles white. Who knew what would happen when that thing hit zero? Maybe it'd be like 2012—all hype, nothing real. In that last minute, her life flickered past. Her parents' faces. The hardware store. The lonely months since. "00:00:00" The countdown ended. Riley had just started to breathe a sigh of relief—nothing happened, maybe it really was nothing—when the world lurched beneath her. A dizzying weightlessness. A sensation of falling. Everything spun. ***** She didn't know how long she was out. "Whew." A wind like a knife blade sliced across her face. Riley's eyes snapped open. Her warm apartment was gone. In its place, an endless white expanse stretched in every direction. Snow whipped through the air. Wind howled like a wounded animal. And at her feet, a small campfire guttered in the gale, threatening to die at any second. "What the—" Before she could process, a chime rang directly in her skull. Not heard. Known. "Welcome to the Extreme Cold Survival Game. "Earth no longer exists. This is your new home. This is your grave. "Survival rules are as follows. "1. Each player begins with one campfire. It is your only defense against the cold. If the campfire dies, you will be judged deceased by the system. Not that it matters—without the fire, you won't last anyway. "2. This is a real world. You can die from hunger. From exposure. From animal attack. "3. Supplies stockpiled in your previous world do not carry over. Only items on your person, or in direct physical contact at the moment of transfer, are retained. "4. Struggle to survive. It is your only hope." Riley's heart slammed against her ribs. Supplies didn't carry over? Her mind flashed to those wealthy forum posters bragging about their warehouse stockpiles. And then she looked down at herself. Workwear. Intact. And— She was still sitting on the three giant toolboxes. They sat solidly in the snow, dusted with powder, unmistakably here. "Whew." Riley let out a long breath. A white cloud dispersed in front of her face. Pity, though. During her renovations, she'd stocked those boxes with a lot of power tools. The expensive impact driver. The reciprocating saw. In a world with no electrical outlets, once those batteries died, they were just dead weight. But even so. The hand tools. The consumables. The sheer volume of stuff in those boxes—it was a treasure beyond measure in a place like this. Riley forced herself to calm down. She was here. She'd deal with it. Something new lived in her mind now. She concentrated, and a translucent pale-blue screen materialized in front of her eyes. Looked just like a video game HUD. "Personal Panel "Name: Riley Carter "ID: 1120-US "Level: 1 (Standard Survivor) "Strength: 8 (Years of manual labor have made you stronger than average) "Agility: 8 (You've got quick reflexes) "Constitution: 6 (You've been skipping meals lately) "Spirit: 9 (You keep your head when others panic) "Inventory: 16/16 slots (Base capacity)" "Inventory?" Riley studied the sixteen empty squares at the bottom of the display. She reached out, touched one of the toolboxes, and thought the word, "Store." Whoosh. The heavy box vanished. In its place, a tiny icon appeared in the first inventory slot, a miniature "x1" in the corner. "It actually worked." For the first time since arriving, a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. Retrieve. Thud. The toolbox landed back in the snow, puffing up powder. No energy cost. No sense of weight. And in that inventory, she could carry anything, regardless of how heavy it was. Later on, when she went scavenging, that would make all the difference. Riley rubbed her stiff, freezing hands together and turned her attention to the campfire at her feet. It was the only warmth in this frozen wasteland. Hovering above the flames, visible only to her, were a few lines of glowing text. "Basic Campfire (Lv.1) "Remaining Burn Time: 05:28:00 "Current Coverage: Radius six feet (Blocks wind and snow) "Upgrade Requirements: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Steel x5 "Description: This is your life. Do not let it die. Upgrading expands your safe zone and unlocks additional construction options." "Needs upgrading." Riley frowned. Wood and stone she could probably find. But coal? Steel? Out here in the middle of nowhere? A flash of movement caught her eye. A small wooden box, half-buried in the snow not far from the fire. The starter crate. Had to be. Riley didn't rush. First, she pulled the claw hammer from her belt—the one she always kept there, habit from years of work—and gripped it tight. She scanned the tree line. Listened past the wind. Nothing moved. No sounds but the storm. She walked over quickly, crouched by the box. No lock. She pried the lid open with the claw end of her hammer. Inside, a handful of items. "Obtained: Iron Axe x1 "Obtained: Stale Dark Bread x2 "Obtained: 500ml Bottled Water x1 "Obtained: Kindling x5 "Obtained: Insulated Field Jacket x1 "Obtained: Utility Rope (25ft) "Obtained: Thermal Underwear (Set) x2 Not much. Barely anything. Riley picked up one of the dark loaves. It was rock hard. She examined the jacket—basic, but warm-looking. "So this is what a standard survivor starts with." At least the system had thought of everything. Including the underwear. She'd half-expected to wake up naked in the snow; at least she didn't have to worry about that. She stored everything in her inventory, then shrugged on the field jacket. The temperature shift was brutal. Even those few seconds exposed had left her hands numb. Hypothermia would set in fast out here. Jacket on, she hurried back to the campfire. She pulled the five units of Kindling from her inventory and tossed them onto the flames. The fire roared higher. Warmth flooded over her. "Fuel added. Remaining Burn Time: 10:28:00" Ten hours. If she didn't move fast, in ten hours she'd freeze to death on this ice field. And the game had made it clear—if the fire died, the system would judge her dead. Whether she actually froze or not. Riley lifted her head and scanned the landscape. She was in a sparse coniferous forest. Barely alive trees, crusted with frost, dotted the area not far from her position. "Wood." A slow smile spread across her face. She patted the toolbox beside her. "Other people might have axes. But felling a tree with just an axe takes hours. Exhausts you." She unlatched the box. Pulled out the chainsaw. Checked the battery gauge—full. "I've got a handsaw in here too. And a chainsaw with a full charge." The battery wouldn't last forever. But it would last long enough to give her a massive head start. In this race for survival, that was everything. Chapter 2 The Chainsaw The wind screamed across the open ground, picking up loose snow and flinging it against her goggles like sand. It sounded like static. Riley had pulled her basic work gear from the toolbox before heading out. Now she stood in the snow, surrounded by clusters of thin conifers that looked half-dead already. She took a breath. The air burned going down. "Zzzzzzz—!!!" She squeezed the trigger. The orange-and-black lithium-ion chainsaw in her hands roared to life, the chain spinning so fast it blurred. She buried the teeth in the nearest pine trunk. Wood chips exploded everywhere. Fragrant shavings—still wet with resin—scattered across the pristine snow, stark and yellow against all that white. Five seconds. Crack. The pine tree, thick as her arm, groaned and tilted. Then it fell slow and heavy into a drift, sending up a puff of powder. "God bless modern technology." Riley shook out her wrist—the vibration had numbed her fingers—and allowed herself a small smile. Without that chainsaw, with just the basic iron axe the system had given her, felling a tree frozen solid like this would have taken twenty minutes minimum. And it would have left her soaked with sweat. In subzero temps, sweat was a death sentence. Once your base layers got wet, the moment you stopped moving, your body temperature would plummet. Hypothermia would follow fast. Riley didn't waste time celebrating. She knew the saw in her hands was a hungry machine. She'd brought two spare high-capacity batteries, sure, but until she found a way to recharge them, every second the motor ran was borrowed time. She had to gather as much wood as possible before the batteries gave out. "Zzzzz—Zzzzz—" At the edge of the forest, the chainsaw's snarl rose and fell, shattering the frozen silence. Riley worked like she was possessed. Fell a tree. Move to the next. Fell another. But she had to stay alert—watch for hidden snow pits underfoot, keep adjusting her collar against the wind that kept finding its way down her neck. Her stamina drained faster than she'd anticipated. In extreme cold, body burned through calories just to stay alive. Added walking through knee-deep snow, where every step took three times the energy of walking on pavement, and the math got ugly fast. Pretty soon, Riley was breathing hard. Her breath fogged the inside of her goggles, and she had to keep wiping them clear. "Zzzzz..." She was mid-cut on a tree—didn't even know which number anymore—when the chainsaw's roar stuttered. Died. The chain jammed solid in the wood. A red light blinked at her. Dead battery. Riley yanked the saw free and patted its housing. "Good work, buddy." Genuine regret in her voice. She straightened up and looked around. Pine trunks lay scattered across the snow in every direction. A decent haul. She counted silently. "Twenty-three total." Then the next problem hit her. According to the system, until she actually possessed these logs, they were still just natural resources. That meant they didn't qualify for Inventory storage. She couldn't just snap her fingers and make them disappear. She had to drag them back to camp. Riley grabbed the nearest pine and tried to pull. Heavy. Like, unreasonably heavy. Fresh-cut wood was full of moisture. Add the branches catching in the snow, dragging like anchors, and she felt like she was hauling a dead body through mud. "Huff... huff..." She gritted her teeth, looped rope around the trunk, slung it over her shoulder, leaned forward, and started walking. Inch by inch. The tree line to her campfire was maybe fifty yards. Right now, it felt like fifty miles. By the time she'd wrestled the fourth tree back into the fire's warm radius, she was wrecked. Her legs felt like someone had filled them with concrete. Her lungs burned from hauling freezing air through them. "Can't... can't do more." Riley made the call. She stopped. Those nineteen trees still out there in the snow—they called to her. Tempted her. But if she kept pushing without rest, without fuel for herself, she'd collapse out there. And out there, collapse meant death. She dropped down next to the big wooden crate that had held her starter supplies. It was less than three feet from the campfire. The flames danced orange and red, pumping out heat that felt like heaven. The shift from frozen to warm made her shiver violently. She pulled off her goggles and thick gloves, set them near the fire to warm up, then—still shaking—pulled the half-empty water bottle from her Inventory. Took a small sip. Then the bread. Two black bricks that looked more like construction material than food. "Crunch." Riley bit off a piece with effort. It was coarse. Tasted like sawdust with a hint of burnt toast. Bitter. But it was calories. Carbs. Fuel for her own fire. She forced herself to chew, swallow. When the food hit her stomach, warmth finally started spreading through her core. The uncontrollable shaking eased. After half a loaf, Riley leaned back against the crate. Her eyelids drooped. Post-exhaustion crash hit her like a wave. The campfire crackled. The wind seemed farther away now. Muffled. She really wanted to sleep... Her head nodded. Her body started sliding sideways. "Wait—" Some animal instinct jolted her awake just before she went under. She pinched her thigh. Hard. Then looked up at the timer floating above the flames. "Shelter Level 1 "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 06:28:00" Six and a half hours. If she slept too deep, too long, and that fire went out—what then? Even ignoring the obvious—that she'd freeze to death in this hellhole without a heat source—the game rules were clear. When the campfire hits zero, it's game over. "No sleeping. Not allowed." Riley slapped her own cheeks, forced herself upright. She stayed near the fire, but she didn't take off her heavy work clothes. She remembered reading something once, a survival article. "In the late stages of hypothermia, your hypothalamus malfunctions. You get a false sensation of heat. It's called "paradoxical undressing"—people strip down right before they freeze to death." "Okay. Process these four. Keep the fire fed." She pulled a traditional handsaw from the toolbox. Looking at the four thick pine logs on the ground, she almost laughed. Without power tools, breaking these down into burnable pieces would take at least half an hour. Burn the little energy she had left. But what choice did she have? Riley knelt in the snow, positioned the blade against the trunk, and was about to start cutting— A soft white light shot out from the system panel on her chest. It washed over the logs. "Ding! "Detected felled, intact logs within shelter range. "Perform quick recovery?" Riley's hand froze mid-saw. Quick recovery? It took her a second to process. Then relief flooded through her so hard she almost cried. "Yes! Recover!" She didn't hesitate. The next moment, something impossible happened. The four pine trunks—the ones she'd have to saw and split by hand, the ones that represented hours of brutal labor—dissolved into pale blue light particles. Not into dust. Into neat, uniform logs that stacked themselves automatically in her Inventory. The branches, the needles, all the useless parts—purified out of existence. "Recovery successful! "Obtained: Common Wood x20" Riley's eyes went wide, staring at the perfect lumber in her inventory display. Looked like it came straight from a hardware store. "One tree gives five units of wood? "And I don't have to cut it myself?" This changed everything. It meant she only had to handle the felling and the dragging. Once a log crossed into her camp's boundary, the system recognized it as hers. The most time-consuming part—the processing—just... didn't exist anymore. Riley immediately grabbed five units of wood and fed them to the fire. Whoosh. The flames leaped, hungry and grateful. "Fuel added. "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 12:20:00" "Five logs, five hours..." She did the math fast, looking at the fifteen units still on the ground. If she threw all of those in, that'd be another fifteen hours. Total of twenty-seven. She could sleep like the dead right now, and that fire would still be burning when she woke up. Security. For the first time since the world ended, Riley felt something like security. She selected the remaining wood. Deposited it all. Watched the countdown tick up to a very comfortable "27:20:00". Then her nerves finally let go. She dragged one of the toolboxes into position to block the wind, wrapped the field jacket tight around herself, pulled her hat down over her eyes, leaned back against the warm crate, and let the crackle of the fire pull her under. ***** She didn't sleep long. When she opened her eyes again, the sky was still that same dull gray-white. Impossible to tell if it was morning or afternoon. System clock said three hours. Her body ached. Shoulders and arms especially—felt like she'd gone ten rounds with someone. But her head was clear. She stretched her stiff neck and stood up. The snow seemed lighter. The feathery flakes had tapered off into sporadic icy grains. Riley ate a little more, got some fuel back in the tank, then stepped outside the campfire's warmth. The fire's effect wasn't what she'd expected. It wasn't that the temperature gradually dropped as you moved away. It was sharper than that. Like there was an invisible barrier around the flames. Inside, livable. Outside, the cold hit you like a wall. She wandered a little way off. The cold found every gap in her clothing. She thought about going farther, exploring. But there was nothing visible except that stand of trees she'd already worked. Maybe stuff was buried under the snow, but she couldn't see it. "No proper snow boots. Not going far." Riley glanced at the endless white distance with real regret. "Don't get greedy. Get those nineteen trees first." She turned. Looked at the woods. Her loot was still out there. And now she knew: if she could drag them back into the campfire's circle, the system would cash them out automatically. "Time to work." Riley rubbed her hands together. Let the motivation build. For the next few hours, she became a machine. Drag a tree to camp. Recover it. Go back for another. Repeat. It was boring. Exhausting. But watching those logs turn into numbers in her inventory—that feeling was hard to describe. Satisfying, in a way nothing had been satisfying in a long time. When the last pine trunk crossed into the light and dissolved into particles, Riley just collapsed. Lay flat in the snow and stared at the gray sky. She pulled up her Inventory. The once-empty slots were full now. Stack after stack of wood icons. "Item: Common Wood "Quantity: 80 "Description: Basic survival resource. Can be used for fuel or construction." Eighty units. Plus what was already burning in the campfire. Her day's work had yielded a clean hundred. One unit of wood burned for one hour. Riley looked at the flames dancing in front of her. Felt the heat on her face. Let herself smile, wide and real. "One hundred hours." Four full days. While everyone else was probably still panicking. Crying. Begging. Trying to figure out how to survive their first night in this frozen nightmare... She, Riley, had enough fuel stockpiled to last four days. Which meant: for the next ninety-six hours, unless she actively chose to die, nobody and nothing could put her fire out. She pulled the half-empty water bottle from Inventory. The space must have been insulated somehow—the water was still warm. Almost body temperature. She sipped it. Tasted sweet, even though it was just tap water. "Okay. Next step." Her gaze settled on the "Upgrade" button on the campfire panel. This open-air setup was fine for now. But if she was going to survive long-term, she needed something better. A real shelter. All she needed was a little stone. Some coal. Some steel. Then she could build something worth calling home. Chapter 3 The Trading Game The blizzard howled outside, but within the six-foot radius of the campfire, the air stayed surprisingly warm—like the wind had hit an invisible wall and just couldn't reach. Riley leaned back against the dusty wooden crate, holding the half-empty water bottle in her hand. She stared into the flames for a moment, then focused her attention inward. The pale blue system panel unfolded in front of her eyes again. Now that the immediate crisis was handled, she finally had time to sit quietly and really explore this so-called "Survival System". Beyond the personal stats and inventory, the bottom of the panel had a row of function icons: Server Channel, Friends List, Trading Market, and Crafting Manual. Friends List was empty. No surprise there. She hadn't exactly been a social butterfly back in the old world, and she sure as hell wasn't going to make friends easily in a frozen hellscape where everyone was fighting for their next breath. She tapped into the "Server Channel". A line of numbers appeared in the top left. "Server: US-008 "Current Online: 9911/10000" Ten thousand people started. Less than ten hours in, eighty-nine were already gone. "That doesn't add up." Everyone's starter crate came with a rusty iron axe and five units of wood. Plus the initial fuel the campfire had when they arrived—that alone bought them ten hours minimum, even if they just sat there doing nothing. What the hell did those people do to get eliminated so fast? The channel was moving fast, messages scrolling by every second. Desperation dripped from every line. "Someone help, I'm freezing my ass off out here. This stupid axe can't cut sh*t—every swing just bounces off and rattles my whole arm. Can anyone spare a couple logs? My dad's a senior VP at Walker Group. I'll wire you a million dollars when we get back, I swear." "Wake up, buddy. If your dad's still alive, he's out there chopping trees right now too." "Don't even talk to me. I spotted a wooden crate in the snow earlier, got all excited, ran over—and before I got within ten feet, some white rabbit thing jumped out of a drift. Teeth like needles. Almost took a chunk out of my leg. Missed the crate, wasted all that energy for nothing." "I saw that too! Random crates spawn in the wild. I opened a wooden one and got two chocolate bars and some coal." Reading through the chaos, Riley picked out two keywords, "Random Reward Crates" and "Dangerous Creatures". So this world was deeper than she thought. Wooden crates, copper crates—these randomly spawning resource points were the real way to get ahead. Coal came from crates. That was useful to know. And if coal was in crates, steel probably was too. But something bothered her. According to what people were saying, reward crates weren't exactly rare. So why hadn't she found a single one during her lumber run? She doubted it was just bad luck. Riley exited chat and tapped into the "Trading Market". "Seller: MountainMan88 Item: Stone x2 Wants: White Bread x5" "Seller: LoneWolf_21 Item: Cotton Cloth Wants: Clean Water" "Seller: NotDeadYet Item: Wood x3 Wants: Anything edible" Most people were trading for food and wood. The stuff that kept you alive right now. Things like stone and cloth were getting dumped cheap—nobody had the luxury of thinking long-term. Riley looked at her own inventory. Eighty units of wood staring back at her. Her heart beat a little faster. In this opening phase, where wood literally meant the difference between life and death, the resources in her hands were basically gold bars. "Time to trade," she muttered to herself. "Coal, steel—can't get those from chopping trees. And right now, wood's at maximum value. If I wait, the exchange rate shifts." Even with the chainsaw dead, she still had the handsaw. Less efficient, sure, but she could gather more wood if she needed it. Short-term, she wasn't going to run out. She clicked to post a message in the channel. "System Prompt: Detected that you have not set a virtual ID. Please enter your nickname (cannot be changed after setting)." Riley stared at the blank input box. Naming things was the worst. She sat there for a long time, nothing coming to mind. Finally, she gave up. Couldn't think of anything cool or clever, so she'd just go with something random. Her fingers tapped across the virtual keyboard—SpicyBurger. "Setting successful. ID locked." The prompt closed. Riley posted her message. "SpicyBurger: Selling wood in bulk. Looking for: Coal, Steel, High-calorie food. DM me with offers—what you have and your rate. Good deals go fast, don't sleep on this." For three seconds after the message appeared, the channel went dead silent. Then it exploded. "SpicyBurger? That name's making me hungry, what the hell." "Never mind the name—'wood in bulk'! We got a whale in here! Everyone else is stressing about the next hour and this person's already running a business?" "I need some! My campfire's down to like two hours. I don't know if I actually die when it hits zero but I don't wanna find out." Suddenly, half the channel was scrambling for wood. But then the skeptics crawled out. "Hang on. Everyone started with the same rusty axe. Chopping a tree in this weather takes twenty, thirty minutes minimum. Where's she getting 'bulk' wood from? Sounds like a scam." "InvincibleWarrior: Everybody chill. Look at that ID—sounds like a girl's handle. I'm a grown man, been busting my ass, and I've only got like ten logs saved up. My hands are shredded. Some girl with a food name claims she's got bulk? She's trying to run a game. Scam people out of their stuff." "Iron_Tough: Agreed. Scammers made it through the apocalypse too, I guess. My advice: ignore her. Don't get played. How much wood can a woman chop anyway? Probably can't even lift the axe right, lol." Riley scrolled through the messages, expression flat. She almost laughed. But some people pushed back. "FishHater44: How is it a scam? If she doesn't deliver, you don't complete the trade. Just 'cause you can't chop that much wood doesn't mean nobody can." Riley nodded slightly. That one had a point. But she didn't waste energy arguing in the channel. Instead, she flipped on Do Not Disturb for private messages—only allowing chat requests that included a trade offer. Some people didn't actually care whether she had wood. They just couldn't stand seeing someone else do well. "Ding. Ding. Ding." Private messages started pouring in like rain. Most players weren't idiots. Faced with the very real threat of freezing to death, they'd try anything for a chance. Riley opened the first one. "Windwalker: I got "Coal x3" from a crate. How much wood can I get for it? I can't chop anymore. The wind out here is insane. I tried to throw the coal in my fire but it just kept popping back out. System says my campfire level's too low, won't let me use it. I'm out of wood. My fire's almost dead." Riley thought for a moment. "Three coal for five wood. Deal?" She hadn't known about that restriction. Coal was supposed to be better fuel than wood—didn't expect the game to lock it behind a level gate. The reply came instantly, "Deal. But five wood feels light. It's coal." The guy was conflicted. He knew coal had value, but he was desperate. "I'll make it six. Final offer." Riley wasn't sure about coal's real value yet. Six was her limit. "Fine. Deal." They both dropped their items into the trade window. A moment later, it completed. A flash of white light. Riley's inventory lost six wood. Gained three chunks of coal, each about the size of a small melon. One down. "CrunchyFrog: Hey, I got two "Iron Ingots" from a crate. System calls them "Scrap Steel". Can I get eight wood for them? Trying to stock up enough to sleep through the night." Riley replied, "Sure. Initiate." In just over ten minutes, her wood stockpile dropped significantly. But her inventory filled up with good stuff. "Coal x10 "Stone x23 "Scrap Steel x5 "Raw Meat x2 "White Bread x2 "Basic Torch Blueprint x1" The blueprint was new. The description said it was required for crafting certain items. Seemed useful, so she'd traded for it. Meanwhile, back in the channel, that "InvincibleWarrior" guy who'd been mocking her earlier seemed to notice that people were actually completing trades. His tone got bitter. "InvincibleWarrior: Whatever. She probably got lucky with a high-tier crate. Let's see how long her stock lasts. Once the wood's gone, she'll be begging me to let her join my group." The people who'd successfully traded with Riley popped into the channel to thank her. That might have been fine—except the thanks caused problems. Since Riley had stopped trading for now, most people hadn't gotten anything. And the sky was darkening. Temperature outside the campfire radius was dropping fast. Gathering wood was getting harder. Trading was their only hope. The ones who'd pinned everything on Riley, seeing her stop, started losing it. "You said 'in bulk'! You did like five trades and quit. What are we supposed to do now?" "Keep trading! My fire's almost out. You want us to go chop trees in the dark?" "If you couldn't deliver, why'd you post? Showing off and then hiding." Whether it was coordinated or just genuine rage, the number of people defending Riley in the channel shrank fast. Mostly it was attacks now. Accusations of being irresponsible. Using scarcity tactics. Playing games with people's lives. Riley closed the channel. She couldn't be bothered. In a life-or-death situation like this, people losing it was normal. If she actually had unlimited resources, she'd trade more. But she didn't. And back on Earth, nobody had ever handed her anything out of charity. She wasn't about to start playing savior now. She looked down at the "Basic Torch Blueprint" in her inventory. "Requirements: Wood x10, Kerosene, Scrap Steel x2" Note: Requires Level 2 Workbench to craft." She leaned back against the crate again. Felt the weight of her stockpile pressing back against that lingering sense of unease. In this world, your ID didn't matter. Your gender didn't matter either. What mattered was who held the resources. She looked at what she had left: 36 units of wood. Plus the steel, coal, and stone from trading. Time to plan. Upgrading to a Level 2 campfire required 55 wood. She had all the other materials. For the wood, she'd just have to use the handsaw tomorrow and gather a little more. That settled, she pulled a few more logs from inventory and arranged them on top of the crate, making a small enclosed space. Curled up inside it, she watched the sky outside slowly darken to black. Her eyes grew heavy. She drifted off. Chapter 4 The Culling Riley woke to the kind of soreness that made you reconsider ever moving again. She'd slept like the dead—no dreams, no blizzard, just nothing. When she opened her eyes, the first things she saw were the logs she'd stacked as a windbreak and the steady glow of the campfire. She tried to stretch. Big mistake. Every muscle in her body lit up at once, screaming in protest. "Sh*t." Riley sucked air through her teeth and pressed a hand to her aching shoulder. Her lower back felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to it. Yesterday's work had been too much. She wasn't weak—far from it—but she was still human. The lactic acid had settled in overnight, and now she moved like an arthritic tin man. At least she was alive. She stowed the windbreak logs back in her inventory and looked around. The world hadn't changed. Same dull gray sky. Same swirling snow. Outside the six-foot radius of the fire, the drifts looked deeper than yesterday. The wind had been busy. Riley pulled out the half-empty water bottle and wet her throat. Then she retrieved the white bread she'd traded for yesterday. Compared to that dense, flavorless black bread, this was practically cake. She tore off small pieces, letting the faint sweetness dissolve on her tongue, and habitually opened the "Server Channel". She stopped chewing. The number in the top left hit her like a physical blow. "Current Online Players: 4968/10000" "Five thousand..." Riley's eyes went wide. In a single night, that number had been cut in half. Five thousand people. Gone. Winked out of existence on this frozen ice field while she slept. "Ding." The system notification cut through her thoughts—cold, emotionless, like it was announcing the weather. "Global Announcement: Congratulations to all survivors for successfully surviving the first day. "This was a culling. Last night eliminated those fools who failed to add fuel to their fires or refused to gather wood. Remember: in this place, tears mean nothing. When you die here, you're dead-dead. "You who remain are the lucky ones. "Grace Period: A five-day 'New Player Support Period' now begins. For the next five days, your initial supply crates will refresh daily with a fixed amount of food. "Special Reward: Each survivor receives one pair of "Standard Issue Snow Boots (Common)". Be grateful for this mercy. Enjoy the game." The words sat there on her screen. Fools. Mercy. The system's tone dripped with contempt. The math was simple. Starting package: five hours of fuel. Initial gift: five units of wood, another five hours. Total ten hours, if you did absolutely nothing. The ones who'd frozen to death last night—they were the ones who'd clung to hope. The ones too scared to move. The ones who'd told themselves someone would save them. Five thousand people. One night. Gone. This wasn't a game. It was a slaughter. In the channel, the survivors who'd made it through were clearly rattled by the numbers too. "Holy sh*t... My friend's icon went dark last night. Does that mean he's dead? Actually dead?" "I can't do this. I don't wanna play anymore, I wanna go home. I swear I'll work today. I'll chop wood, I'll do whatever, just please—" "Everyone move! Don't save your strength! If you die, that's it. No respawns!" Panic spread fast. But almost immediately, the tone shifted. The fear found a target. "That SpicyBurger—if she'd shared more wood yesterday, would so many people have died?" "For real. If she had extra, why not just give it away? Why did it have to be trades? She could've at least loaned some out." "This is what happens when people hoard resources and watch others freeze. Remember that name. Don't trade with her. Ever." Riley frowned. Here we go again. She scrolled up. Sure enough, there it was—that familiar ID: "InvincibleWarrior". He was going hard in the channel. "She's profiting off suffering. That's what some people do. Women like that are the worst—hoarding supplies while people die around them. Wait and see. Someone like her won't last." Riley laughed. Actually laughed out loud. Moral blackmail. In the apocalypse. She typed, "If you want wood, go cut it yourself. I'm not your mommy. No amount of crying in chat is gonna put logs in your inventory. You'd get more done if you just picked up your d*mn axe." The channel went quiet for a second. Then the reasonable voices piped up. "She's right. Nobody owes you anything. Work for it." "Exactly. Just 'cause someone's quiet doesn't mean they're an easy target." In a world where staying alive took everything you had, expecting charity was the dumbest move of all. Riley didn't waste more energy on it. People like that—the more you engaged, the more they thrived. Let him run his mouth. She had bigger things to worry about. She closed the channel and turned to the big wooden crate—her initial supply point. Sure enough, new items had materialized inside. "Bottled Water x3 "White Bread x3 "Fresh Orange Juice x1 "Standard Snow Boots x1" "Orange juice?" Riley picked up the bottle, genuinely surprised. The orange liquid inside sloshed gently. Vitamins. The system was actually giving them vitamins. She pulled off her old shoes—already damp and cold—and swapped into the new boots. They were clunky, sure. But they gripped the snow, and the insulation was real. The chill that had been seeping up through her soles disappeared instantly. Next, she opened her toolbox. Goggles on. Thick cut-resistant gloves. Head-to-toe gear. "Time to work." The channel noise faded from her mind. She had one priority today, and it wasn't arguing with idiots. She picked up the chainsaw and headed back to the tree line. The cold played tricks on batteries. She'd known that, intellectually. But knowing it and feeling it were different things. After just eight trees, the last spare battery gave out. The chainsaw stuttered, died, and went silent in her hands. Riley stared at it. "Son of a b*tch." Chapter 5 Dead Battery Riley stared at the dead chainsaw in her hands and shook her head. Without power, it was just an expensive paperweight. If she wanted more wood, she'd have to do it the old-fashioned way—pick up the axe or the manual handsaw from the toolbox and go to war with frozen timber. But eight more trees were eight more trees. Her stockpile was looking healthy. "First things first. Get these back." She sucked it up, stowed the chainsaw in her inventory, and started hauling. Her body screamed even louder than yesterday. Every muscle felt like it had been replaced with concrete. She dragged each log back one at a time, moving like a zombie. Drag. Rest two minutes. Drag again. The wind howled in her ears. Riley lost track of time, lost track of everything except the mechanical rhythm of work. By the time the sun was high—not that you could really see it through the clouds—she dragged the last log into the campfire's radius. It dissolved into light, absorbed by the system. Riley all but collapsed into the snow. "Acquired: Wood x40" She lay there for a moment, chest heaving, staring at the number in her inventory. A tired smile crept across her face. She had enough. Combined with the coal and steel from yesterday's trades, she had everything she needed for the upgrade. Riley forced herself upright and walked to the campfire. On the floating translucent panel, the "Upgrade" button glowed that tempting gold. "Upgrade Primitive Shelter to Lv.2? "Cost: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Scrap Steel x5 "Remaining after upgrade: Wood x16, Stone x3, Coal x0, Steel x0" "Upgrade." Riley took a breath and pressed it. "Hmmmm—!" A blinding white light erupted from the heart of the campfire, swallowing everything. Riley squeezed her eyes shut. No explosion. No thunder. Just a sound like Legos snapping together. A few seconds later, the light faded. Riley opened her eyes. And stopped breathing. The campfire wasn't just a campfire anymore. The rough stone ring had transformed into something neat and intentional—a proper firepit with a stone border for insulation, a place to set things, even a simple steel grate attached to the side. But that wasn't the big news. The heat that used to push back the cold within a six-foot radius now stretched a full fifteen feet. Inside that circle, snow was actively melting, revealing dark frozen soil underneath. In one corner, she spotted a patch of moss stubbornly poking through. Riley spun around. Behind the big wooden crate, a small log cabin stood waiting. It wasn't much—maybe forty feet square, built from rough-hewn logs. Nothing fancy. But it was solid. Four walls and a roof, blocking wind and snow completely. Riley walked over and pushed open the heavy wooden door. Warm air hit her face. Inside was simple: a wooden bed frame piled with dry grass, a crude workbench, a chair, and a small fireplace connected to a chimney that ran up through the roof. Rustic. But right now, it was heaven. Wood and fire. Four walls. A roof. Home. Riley ran her hand along the rough wall. Her eyes stung a little. She wouldn't have to sleep in the open anymore. Wouldn't have to wake up every few hours to check the fire. Wouldn't have to worry about freezing to death in her sleep. Right on cue, the server announcement chimed. Gold text this time, blazing right in the center of everyone's vision. "Server Announcement: Congratulations to player SpicyBurger for being the first to achieve "Level 2 Shelter". Rewards have been distributed." The chat channel, which had been wallowing in fear and despair, exploded. "Holy sh*t? Level 2 already? What does Level 2 unlock? Can you post pics, big shot?" "That's the wood seller from yesterday? No way. Absolute legend." "Carry me please! SpicyBurger, I'll be your loyal follower. I can cook, I can clean, I can—" "Teach us, master! How'd you gather materials so fast? What's your secret?" Compliments. Pleas. Desperate attempts to get noticed. And then, of course, the sour grapes. "InvincibleWarrior: Big deal. Just profiteering off everyone else's suffering. If she'd shared that wood instead of selling it, maybe those five thousand people would still be alive. How does it feel to climb on corpses?" "GodLovesMeFirst: Seriously. Building your success on other people's deaths. Karma's real. She'll get hers." Riley's jaw tightened. If InvincibleWarrior had been standing in front of her right now, she'd have knocked his teeth out. Guys like him—useless themselves, but always ready to tear down anyone who actually accomplished something. Sewer rats. Her private messages exploded too. She'd set it to only accept trade offers, but people had found a workaround—using the "trade note" function to send spam. "Hey beautiful, I'm a personal trainer. Great shape. Wanna see? Hit me with some wood and I'll do a voice call with you!" A photo of some guy flexing in a mirror, shirt off. Riley glanced at it, unimpressed. Decent abs. Pathetic attitude. Dude was clearly strong enough to chop wood—why was he wasting time on this? She'd never mentioned her gender, so most people probably assumed anyone who'd gathered that much wood must be a guy. The messages reflected that assumption. Some women sent selfies too, trying to flirt their way into favor. Didn't matter. Shameless cut across all demographics. From the backgrounds in the photos, everyone seemed to be in different locations. But one thing was consistent: they all had trees nearby. The system must have arranged that—a new player perk. "A bunch of degenerates." Riley's face went cold. She changed her privacy settings to "Friends Only". Then she added a line to her trading post description. "No spam. Send junk, get blocked." Silence. Blessed silence. She took a breath, let the noise drain away, and focused on what mattered. "First-place upgrade reward..." She opened her inventory. Sitting there, glowing faintly purple, was a gift box. For more exciting content, please download the "JoyRead" app to continue reading.
Chapter 1 The Countdown Ends It was the year 2027, and the end of the world was now less than an hour away. "00:59:23" Riley Carter stood on a ladder with a screw clenched between her teeth, an impact driver in her hand, securing the last window panel in place. A month ago, that timer had just appeared out of nowhere, hanging in the corner of everyone's vision like it had always been there. At first, people wrote it off as some kind of mass hacker prank. The government fed the media soothing statements in an attempt to keep things calm, but there was no way to talk down the panic as prices kept rising and supplies were held in a monopoly in real time. News outlets might spin whatever narrative they wanted, but no one could argue with the price of eggs. For a while, it was a frenzy. People cleaned out grocery stores like locusts. The government did what they could—price caps, purchase limits, reassurances from the podium—but none of it mattered. The cost of living kept climbing, and bit by bit, the country started coming apart at the seams. Online, it was a circus. Some people posted doom-laden predictions. Others openly celebrated the thought of the world finally burning. A few just seemed relieved they wouldn't have to clock in on Monday. In that final hour, things got truly ugly. Both on the streets and on social media, it was chaos. Some people figured why not went out with a bang? If the world was ending, they'd spend their last hours doing every reckless thing they'd ever fantasized about. Others, paralyzed by fear of whatever was coming, scrambled for anything they could hoard. Supplies. Weapons. Gasoline. Didn't matter what, as long as they had more of it than the next guy. Most people just wanted to be with the ones they loved. Riley didn't have that luxury anymore. Fresh out of community college, she'd lost both her parents in a highway pileup eighteen months back. The only thing they'd left her was the family hardware store, a cramped little place wedged between a laundromat and a taqueria. She'd been running it solo for just over a year when that d*mn countdown appeared overhead. At first, she'd thought maybe an apocalypse wouldn't be the worst thing. Maybe there'd be something on the other side. A reunion. But then she thought about her folks. They'd doted on her. Made her feel like the center of their world. And even though she'd grown a thick skin since going it alone, feeling indifferent to the world, she knew what they'd want. They'd want her to fight. To stay. She was the only piece of them still left in this world. People always say you aren't really gone until the last person forgets your name. As long as she kept breathing, kept carrying them with her another day, they weren't truly dead. Riley spat the screw into her palm, face calm, the impact driver whirring as she sank another fastener into the reinforced frame. "Flour's three hundred a pound now, and you can't even buy it straight—they make you tack on a bunch of other junk you don't need just to get it," she muttered to herself, shaking her head. When that timer first flickered into existence, Riley had done something smart. She'd liquidated everything. Converted every dollar she could scrape together into supplies. Unfortunately, by the time she hit the stores, inflation had already done its damage. Her savings didn't go nearly as far as they should have. Any cash that was left went toward tools. If the world was ending, she thought they could be useful. Riley pressed the last sheet of thick insulation foam into the window frame, seating it flush against the reinforced plywood beneath. The impact driver snarled as she buried the screws. Then she reached for her pneumatic glue gun—a satisfying pfft as the sealant filled the final gap. She wiped sweat from her forehead and climbed down off the ladder. Stepped back to admire her work. The little apartment was a fortress now. Doors reinforced. Windows barricaded. Every interior wall lined with an extra layer of insulation. She glanced down at herself. Custom-fit heavy-duty workwear. Slash-resistant fabric. More pockets than she'd ever need. Reinforced padding at the knees and elbows. It wasn't fashionable, but it was practical. And her real treasure: tools. A chainsaw. A reciprocating saw. The impact driver in her hand. A multi-bit screwdriver that had cost more than she wanted to admit. She'd brought everything usable from the shop back here, consolidated it into three massive toolboxes. She'd also grabbed some stuff like an air purifier and some spare filters—anything that might matter when civilization took a vacation. She didn't know what the countdown would bring. Some folks online predicted zombies. Others said asteroid impact. Volcanic winter. Alien invasion. Take your pick. Food. Tools. Shelter. She'd even started working out, building strength she'd never needed before. She'd done everything she could think of to prepare. Whatever was coming, she figured she'd last longer than most. With nothing left to do, she dropped onto one of the big toolboxes laid flat on the floor, wiped her forehead again, and pulled out her phone. Most news apps had crashed. The only things still loading were comment sections, and they were going crazy. [Anyone got rice? I'll pay eight grand for a bag. Please, we got nothing left.] [Forget it, man. Money's toilet paper now. Saw it with my own eyes—some rich assholes cleared out the Costco warehouse last week. All that 'purchase limit' crap was just theater. Shelves were empty 'cause the stock never made it there. It's all sitting in some hedge fund guy's basement.] [No kidding? Same thing happened to me! Store manager kept telling me, 'We're limiting purchases, come back next week, we'll put your name on the list.' So the whole time the back room was empty? They were just jerking us around?] [Of course they were. Rich people cornered the market on everything. So what are normal people supposed to do? Just sit here and die?] [Anyone know what actually happens when the clock hits zero? Like, is it nukes? That virus thing from that old video game?] Riley locked her phone. Tucked it away. She didn't have anything to add to that conversation. A month ago, when the countdown first showed up, prices had spiked instantly. A fifty-pound bag of rice that normally went for thirty bucks jumped to eight hundred overnight. By yesterday, it was breaking two grand. The wealthy had rolled up with trucks and cleaned out supermarkets. Riley had been smart—she'd gone early, bought stuff that would keep, stuff that was calorie-dense and cheap. Chocolate. Survival biscuits. Canned goods. It wasn't much, but it was enough for one person, at least for a while. She took a deep breath and glanced at the timer. "00:01:10" Just over a minute. Riley gripped the toolbox beneath her. Knuckles white. Who knew what would happen when that thing hit zero? Maybe it'd be like 2012—all hype, nothing real. In that last minute, her life flickered past. Her parents' faces. The hardware store. The lonely months since. "00:00:00" The countdown ended. Riley had just started to breathe a sigh of relief—nothing happened, maybe it really was nothing—when the world lurched beneath her. A dizzying weightlessness. A sensation of falling. Everything spun. ***** She didn't know how long she was out. "Whew." A wind like a knife blade sliced across her face. Riley's eyes snapped open. Her warm apartment was gone. In its place, an endless white expanse stretched in every direction. Snow whipped through the air. Wind howled like a wounded animal. And at her feet, a small campfire guttered in the gale, threatening to die at any second. "What the—" Before she could process, a chime rang directly in her skull. Not heard. Known. "Welcome to the Extreme Cold Survival Game. "Earth no longer exists. This is your new home. This is your grave. "Survival rules are as follows. "1. Each player begins with one campfire. It is your only defense against the cold. If the campfire dies, you will be judged deceased by the system. Not that it matters—without the fire, you won't last anyway. "2. This is a real world. You can die from hunger. From exposure. From animal attack. "3. Supplies stockpiled in your previous world do not carry over. Only items on your person, or in direct physical contact at the moment of transfer, are retained. "4. Struggle to survive. It is your only hope." Riley's heart slammed against her ribs. Supplies didn't carry over? Her mind flashed to those wealthy forum posters bragging about their warehouse stockpiles. And then she looked down at herself. Workwear. Intact. And— She was still sitting on the three giant toolboxes. They sat solidly in the snow, dusted with powder, unmistakably here. "Whew." Riley let out a long breath. A white cloud dispersed in front of her face. Pity, though. During her renovations, she'd stocked those boxes with a lot of power tools. The expensive impact driver. The reciprocating saw. In a world with no electrical outlets, once those batteries died, they were just dead weight. But even so. The hand tools. The consumables. The sheer volume of stuff in those boxes—it was a treasure beyond measure in a place like this. Riley forced herself to calm down. She was here. She'd deal with it. Something new lived in her mind now. She concentrated, and a translucent pale-blue screen materialized in front of her eyes. Looked just like a video game HUD. "Personal Panel "Name: Riley Carter "ID: 1120-US "Level: 1 (Standard Survivor) "Strength: 8 (Years of manual labor have made you stronger than average) "Agility: 8 (You've got quick reflexes) "Constitution: 6 (You've been skipping meals lately) "Spirit: 9 (You keep your head when others panic) "Inventory: 16/16 slots (Base capacity)" "Inventory?" Riley studied the sixteen empty squares at the bottom of the display. She reached out, touched one of the toolboxes, and thought the word, "Store." Whoosh. The heavy box vanished. In its place, a tiny icon appeared in the first inventory slot, a miniature "x1" in the corner. "It actually worked." For the first time since arriving, a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. Retrieve. Thud. The toolbox landed back in the snow, puffing up powder. No energy cost. No sense of weight. And in that inventory, she could carry anything, regardless of how heavy it was. Later on, when she went scavenging, that would make all the difference. Riley rubbed her stiff, freezing hands together and turned her attention to the campfire at her feet. It was the only warmth in this frozen wasteland. Hovering above the flames, visible only to her, were a few lines of glowing text. "Basic Campfire (Lv.1) "Remaining Burn Time: 05:28:00 "Current Coverage: Radius six feet (Blocks wind and snow) "Upgrade Requirements: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Steel x5 "Description: This is your life. Do not let it die. Upgrading expands your safe zone and unlocks additional construction options." "Needs upgrading." Riley frowned. Wood and stone she could probably find. But coal? Steel? Out here in the middle of nowhere? A flash of movement caught her eye. A small wooden box, half-buried in the snow not far from the fire. The starter crate. Had to be. Riley didn't rush. First, she pulled the claw hammer from her belt—the one she always kept there, habit from years of work—and gripped it tight. She scanned the tree line. Listened past the wind. Nothing moved. No sounds but the storm. She walked over quickly, crouched by the box. No lock. She pried the lid open with the claw end of her hammer. Inside, a handful of items. "Obtained: Iron Axe x1 "Obtained: Stale Dark Bread x2 "Obtained: 500ml Bottled Water x1 "Obtained: Kindling x5 "Obtained: Insulated Field Jacket x1 "Obtained: Utility Rope (25ft) "Obtained: Thermal Underwear (Set) x2 Not much. Barely anything. Riley picked up one of the dark loaves. It was rock hard. She examined the jacket—basic, but warm-looking. "So this is what a standard survivor starts with." At least the system had thought of everything. Including the underwear. She'd half-expected to wake up naked in the snow; at least she didn't have to worry about that. She stored everything in her inventory, then shrugged on the field jacket. The temperature shift was brutal. Even those few seconds exposed had left her hands numb. Hypothermia would set in fast out here. Jacket on, she hurried back to the campfire. She pulled the five units of Kindling from her inventory and tossed them onto the flames. The fire roared higher. Warmth flooded over her. "Fuel added. Remaining Burn Time: 10:28:00" Ten hours. If she didn't move fast, in ten hours she'd freeze to death on this ice field. And the game had made it clear—if the fire died, the system would judge her dead. Whether she actually froze or not. Riley lifted her head and scanned the landscape. She was in a sparse coniferous forest. Barely alive trees, crusted with frost, dotted the area not far from her position. "Wood." A slow smile spread across her face. She patted the toolbox beside her. "Other people might have axes. But felling a tree with just an axe takes hours. Exhausts you." She unlatched the box. Pulled out the chainsaw. Checked the battery gauge—full. "I've got a handsaw in here too. And a chainsaw with a full charge." The battery wouldn't last forever. But it would last long enough to give her a massive head start. In this race for survival, that was everything. Chapter 2 The Chainsaw The wind screamed across the open ground, picking up loose snow and flinging it against her goggles like sand. It sounded like static. Riley had pulled her basic work gear from the toolbox before heading out. Now she stood in the snow, surrounded by clusters of thin conifers that looked half-dead already. She took a breath. The air burned going down. "Zzzzzzz—!!!" She squeezed the trigger. The orange-and-black lithium-ion chainsaw in her hands roared to life, the chain spinning so fast it blurred. She buried the teeth in the nearest pine trunk. Wood chips exploded everywhere. Fragrant shavings—still wet with resin—scattered across the pristine snow, stark and yellow against all that white. Five seconds. Crack. The pine tree, thick as her arm, groaned and tilted. Then it fell slow and heavy into a drift, sending up a puff of powder. "God bless modern technology." Riley shook out her wrist—the vibration had numbed her fingers—and allowed herself a small smile. Without that chainsaw, with just the basic iron axe the system had given her, felling a tree frozen solid like this would have taken twenty minutes minimum. And it would have left her soaked with sweat. In subzero temps, sweat was a death sentence. Once your base layers got wet, the moment you stopped moving, your body temperature would plummet. Hypothermia would follow fast. Riley didn't waste time celebrating. She knew the saw in her hands was a hungry machine. She'd brought two spare high-capacity batteries, sure, but until she found a way to recharge them, every second the motor ran was borrowed time. She had to gather as much wood as possible before the batteries gave out. "Zzzzz—Zzzzz—" At the edge of the forest, the chainsaw's snarl rose and fell, shattering the frozen silence. Riley worked like she was possessed. Fell a tree. Move to the next. Fell another. But she had to stay alert—watch for hidden snow pits underfoot, keep adjusting her collar against the wind that kept finding its way down her neck. Her stamina drained faster than she'd anticipated. In extreme cold, body burned through calories just to stay alive. Added walking through knee-deep snow, where every step took three times the energy of walking on pavement, and the math got ugly fast. Pretty soon, Riley was breathing hard. Her breath fogged the inside of her goggles, and she had to keep wiping them clear. "Zzzzz..." She was mid-cut on a tree—didn't even know which number anymore—when the chainsaw's roar stuttered. Died. The chain jammed solid in the wood. A red light blinked at her. Dead battery. Riley yanked the saw free and patted its housing. "Good work, buddy." Genuine regret in her voice. She straightened up and looked around. Pine trunks lay scattered across the snow in every direction. A decent haul. She counted silently. "Twenty-three total." Then the next problem hit her. According to the system, until she actually possessed these logs, they were still just natural resources. That meant they didn't qualify for Inventory storage. She couldn't just snap her fingers and make them disappear. She had to drag them back to camp. Riley grabbed the nearest pine and tried to pull. Heavy. Like, unreasonably heavy. Fresh-cut wood was full of moisture. Add the branches catching in the snow, dragging like anchors, and she felt like she was hauling a dead body through mud. "Huff... huff..." She gritted her teeth, looped rope around the trunk, slung it over her shoulder, leaned forward, and started walking. Inch by inch. The tree line to her campfire was maybe fifty yards. Right now, it felt like fifty miles. By the time she'd wrestled the fourth tree back into the fire's warm radius, she was wrecked. Her legs felt like someone had filled them with concrete. Her lungs burned from hauling freezing air through them. "Can't... can't do more." Riley made the call. She stopped. Those nineteen trees still out there in the snow—they called to her. Tempted her. But if she kept pushing without rest, without fuel for herself, she'd collapse out there. And out there, collapse meant death. She dropped down next to the big wooden crate that had held her starter supplies. It was less than three feet from the campfire. The flames danced orange and red, pumping out heat that felt like heaven. The shift from frozen to warm made her shiver violently. She pulled off her goggles and thick gloves, set them near the fire to warm up, then—still shaking—pulled the half-empty water bottle from her Inventory. Took a small sip. Then the bread. Two black bricks that looked more like construction material than food. "Crunch." Riley bit off a piece with effort. It was coarse. Tasted like sawdust with a hint of burnt toast. Bitter. But it was calories. Carbs. Fuel for her own fire. She forced herself to chew, swallow. When the food hit her stomach, warmth finally started spreading through her core. The uncontrollable shaking eased. After half a loaf, Riley leaned back against the crate. Her eyelids drooped. Post-exhaustion crash hit her like a wave. The campfire crackled. The wind seemed farther away now. Muffled. She really wanted to sleep... Her head nodded. Her body started sliding sideways. "Wait—" Some animal instinct jolted her awake just before she went under. She pinched her thigh. Hard. Then looked up at the timer floating above the flames. "Shelter Level 1 "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 06:28:00" Six and a half hours. If she slept too deep, too long, and that fire went out—what then? Even ignoring the obvious—that she'd freeze to death in this hellhole without a heat source—the game rules were clear. When the campfire hits zero, it's game over. "No sleeping. Not allowed." Riley slapped her own cheeks, forced herself upright. She stayed near the fire, but she didn't take off her heavy work clothes. She remembered reading something once, a survival article. "In the late stages of hypothermia, your hypothalamus malfunctions. You get a false sensation of heat. It's called "paradoxical undressing"—people strip down right before they freeze to death." "Okay. Process these four. Keep the fire fed." She pulled a traditional handsaw from the toolbox. Looking at the four thick pine logs on the ground, she almost laughed. Without power tools, breaking these down into burnable pieces would take at least half an hour. Burn the little energy she had left. But what choice did she have? Riley knelt in the snow, positioned the blade against the trunk, and was about to start cutting— A soft white light shot out from the system panel on her chest. It washed over the logs. "Ding! "Detected felled, intact logs within shelter range. "Perform quick recovery?" Riley's hand froze mid-saw. Quick recovery? It took her a second to process. Then relief flooded through her so hard she almost cried. "Yes! Recover!" She didn't hesitate. The next moment, something impossible happened. The four pine trunks—the ones she'd have to saw and split by hand, the ones that represented hours of brutal labor—dissolved into pale blue light particles. Not into dust. Into neat, uniform logs that stacked themselves automatically in her Inventory. The branches, the needles, all the useless parts—purified out of existence. "Recovery successful! "Obtained: Common Wood x20" Riley's eyes went wide, staring at the perfect lumber in her inventory display. Looked like it came straight from a hardware store. "One tree gives five units of wood? "And I don't have to cut it myself?" This changed everything. It meant she only had to handle the felling and the dragging. Once a log crossed into her camp's boundary, the system recognized it as hers. The most time-consuming part—the processing—just... didn't exist anymore. Riley immediately grabbed five units of wood and fed them to the fire. Whoosh. The flames leaped, hungry and grateful. "Fuel added. "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 12:20:00" "Five logs, five hours..." She did the math fast, looking at the fifteen units still on the ground. If she threw all of those in, that'd be another fifteen hours. Total of twenty-seven. She could sleep like the dead right now, and that fire would still be burning when she woke up. Security. For the first time since the world ended, Riley felt something like security. She selected the remaining wood. Deposited it all. Watched the countdown tick up to a very comfortable "27:20:00". Then her nerves finally let go. She dragged one of the toolboxes into position to block the wind, wrapped the field jacket tight around herself, pulled her hat down over her eyes, leaned back against the warm crate, and let the crackle of the fire pull her under. ***** She didn't sleep long. When she opened her eyes again, the sky was still that same dull gray-white. Impossible to tell if it was morning or afternoon. System clock said three hours. Her body ached. Shoulders and arms especially—felt like she'd gone ten rounds with someone. But her head was clear. She stretched her stiff neck and stood up. The snow seemed lighter. The feathery flakes had tapered off into sporadic icy grains. Riley ate a little more, got some fuel back in the tank, then stepped outside the campfire's warmth. The fire's effect wasn't what she'd expected. It wasn't that the temperature gradually dropped as you moved away. It was sharper than that. Like there was an invisible barrier around the flames. Inside, livable. Outside, the cold hit you like a wall. She wandered a little way off. The cold found every gap in her clothing. She thought about going farther, exploring. But there was nothing visible except that stand of trees she'd already worked. Maybe stuff was buried under the snow, but she couldn't see it. "No proper snow boots. Not going far." Riley glanced at the endless white distance with real regret. "Don't get greedy. Get those nineteen trees first." She turned. Looked at the woods. Her loot was still out there. And now she knew: if she could drag them back into the campfire's circle, the system would cash them out automatically. "Time to work." Riley rubbed her hands together. Let the motivation build. For the next few hours, she became a machine. Drag a tree to camp. Recover it. Go back for another. Repeat. It was boring. Exhausting. But watching those logs turn into numbers in her inventory—that feeling was hard to describe. Satisfying, in a way nothing had been satisfying in a long time. When the last pine trunk crossed into the light and dissolved into particles, Riley just collapsed. Lay flat in the snow and stared at the gray sky. She pulled up her Inventory. The once-empty slots were full now. Stack after stack of wood icons. "Item: Common Wood "Quantity: 80 "Description: Basic survival resource. Can be used for fuel or construction." Eighty units. Plus what was already burning in the campfire. Her day's work had yielded a clean hundred. One unit of wood burned for one hour. Riley looked at the flames dancing in front of her. Felt the heat on her face. Let herself smile, wide and real. "One hundred hours." Four full days. While everyone else was probably still panicking. Crying. Begging. Trying to figure out how to survive their first night in this frozen nightmare... She, Riley, had enough fuel stockpiled to last four days. Which meant: for the next ninety-six hours, unless she actively chose to die, nobody and nothing could put her fire out. She pulled the half-empty water bottle from Inventory. The space must have been insulated somehow—the water was still warm. Almost body temperature. She sipped it. Tasted sweet, even though it was just tap water. "Okay. Next step." Her gaze settled on the "Upgrade" button on the campfire panel. This open-air setup was fine for now. But if she was going to survive long-term, she needed something better. A real shelter. All she needed was a little stone. Some coal. Some steel. Then she could build something worth calling home. Chapter 3 The Trading Game The blizzard howled outside, but within the six-foot radius of the campfire, the air stayed surprisingly warm—like the wind had hit an invisible wall and just couldn't reach. Riley leaned back against the dusty wooden crate, holding the half-empty water bottle in her hand. She stared into the flames for a moment, then focused her attention inward. The pale blue system panel unfolded in front of her eyes again. Now that the immediate crisis was handled, she finally had time to sit quietly and really explore this so-called "Survival System". Beyond the personal stats and inventory, the bottom of the panel had a row of function icons: Server Channel, Friends List, Trading Market, and Crafting Manual. Friends List was empty. No surprise there. She hadn't exactly been a social butterfly back in the old world, and she sure as hell wasn't going to make friends easily in a frozen hellscape where everyone was fighting for their next breath. She tapped into the "Server Channel". A line of numbers appeared in the top left. "Server: US-008 "Current Online: 9911/10000" Ten thousand people started. Less than ten hours in, eighty-nine were already gone. "That doesn't add up." Everyone's starter crate came with a rusty iron axe and five units of wood. Plus the initial fuel the campfire had when they arrived—that alone bought them ten hours minimum, even if they just sat there doing nothing. What the hell did those people do to get eliminated so fast? The channel was moving fast, messages scrolling by every second. Desperation dripped from every line. "Someone help, I'm freezing my ass off out here. This stupid axe can't cut sh*t—every swing just bounces off and rattles my whole arm. Can anyone spare a couple logs? My dad's a senior VP at Walker Group. I'll wire you a million dollars when we get back, I swear." "Wake up, buddy. If your dad's still alive, he's out there chopping trees right now too." "Don't even talk to me. I spotted a wooden crate in the snow earlier, got all excited, ran over—and before I got within ten feet, some white rabbit thing jumped out of a drift. Teeth like needles. Almost took a chunk out of my leg. Missed the crate, wasted all that energy for nothing." "I saw that too! Random crates spawn in the wild. I opened a wooden one and got two chocolate bars and some coal." Reading through the chaos, Riley picked out two keywords, "Random Reward Crates" and "Dangerous Creatures". So this world was deeper than she thought. Wooden crates, copper crates—these randomly spawning resource points were the real way to get ahead. Coal came from crates. That was useful to know. And if coal was in crates, steel probably was too. But something bothered her. According to what people were saying, reward crates weren't exactly rare. So why hadn't she found a single one during her lumber run? She doubted it was just bad luck. Riley exited chat and tapped into the "Trading Market". "Seller: MountainMan88 Item: Stone x2 Wants: White Bread x5" "Seller: LoneWolf_21 Item: Cotton Cloth Wants: Clean Water" "Seller: NotDeadYet Item: Wood x3 Wants: Anything edible" Most people were trading for food and wood. The stuff that kept you alive right now. Things like stone and cloth were getting dumped cheap—nobody had the luxury of thinking long-term. Riley looked at her own inventory. Eighty units of wood staring back at her. Her heart beat a little faster. In this opening phase, where wood literally meant the difference between life and death, the resources in her hands were basically gold bars. "Time to trade," she muttered to herself. "Coal, steel—can't get those from chopping trees. And right now, wood's at maximum value. If I wait, the exchange rate shifts." Even with the chainsaw dead, she still had the handsaw. Less efficient, sure, but she could gather more wood if she needed it. Short-term, she wasn't going to run out. She clicked to post a message in the channel. "System Prompt: Detected that you have not set a virtual ID. Please enter your nickname (cannot be changed after setting)." Riley stared at the blank input box. Naming things was the worst. She sat there for a long time, nothing coming to mind. Finally, she gave up. Couldn't think of anything cool or clever, so she'd just go with something random. Her fingers tapped across the virtual keyboard—SpicyBurger. "Setting successful. ID locked." The prompt closed. Riley posted her message. "SpicyBurger: Selling wood in bulk. Looking for: Coal, Steel, High-calorie food. DM me with offers—what you have and your rate. Good deals go fast, don't sleep on this." For three seconds after the message appeared, the channel went dead silent. Then it exploded. "SpicyBurger? That name's making me hungry, what the hell." "Never mind the name—'wood in bulk'! We got a whale in here! Everyone else is stressing about the next hour and this person's already running a business?" "I need some! My campfire's down to like two hours. I don't know if I actually die when it hits zero but I don't wanna find out." Suddenly, half the channel was scrambling for wood. But then the skeptics crawled out. "Hang on. Everyone started with the same rusty axe. Chopping a tree in this weather takes twenty, thirty minutes minimum. Where's she getting 'bulk' wood from? Sounds like a scam." "InvincibleWarrior: Everybody chill. Look at that ID—sounds like a girl's handle. I'm a grown man, been busting my ass, and I've only got like ten logs saved up. My hands are shredded. Some girl with a food name claims she's got bulk? She's trying to run a game. Scam people out of their stuff." "Iron_Tough: Agreed. Scammers made it through the apocalypse too, I guess. My advice: ignore her. Don't get played. How much wood can a woman chop anyway? Probably can't even lift the axe right, lol." Riley scrolled through the messages, expression flat. She almost laughed. But some people pushed back. "FishHater44: How is it a scam? If she doesn't deliver, you don't complete the trade. Just 'cause you can't chop that much wood doesn't mean nobody can." Riley nodded slightly. That one had a point. But she didn't waste energy arguing in the channel. Instead, she flipped on Do Not Disturb for private messages—only allowing chat requests that included a trade offer. Some people didn't actually care whether she had wood. They just couldn't stand seeing someone else do well. "Ding. Ding. Ding." Private messages started pouring in like rain. Most players weren't idiots. Faced with the very real threat of freezing to death, they'd try anything for a chance. Riley opened the first one. "Windwalker: I got "Coal x3" from a crate. How much wood can I get for it? I can't chop anymore. The wind out here is insane. I tried to throw the coal in my fire but it just kept popping back out. System says my campfire level's too low, won't let me use it. I'm out of wood. My fire's almost dead." Riley thought for a moment. "Three coal for five wood. Deal?" She hadn't known about that restriction. Coal was supposed to be better fuel than wood—didn't expect the game to lock it behind a level gate. The reply came instantly, "Deal. But five wood feels light. It's coal." The guy was conflicted. He knew coal had value, but he was desperate. "I'll make it six. Final offer." Riley wasn't sure about coal's real value yet. Six was her limit. "Fine. Deal." They both dropped their items into the trade window. A moment later, it completed. A flash of white light. Riley's inventory lost six wood. Gained three chunks of coal, each about the size of a small melon. One down. "CrunchyFrog: Hey, I got two "Iron Ingots" from a crate. System calls them "Scrap Steel". Can I get eight wood for them? Trying to stock up enough to sleep through the night." Riley replied, "Sure. Initiate." In just over ten minutes, her wood stockpile dropped significantly. But her inventory filled up with good stuff. "Coal x10 "Stone x23 "Scrap Steel x5 "Raw Meat x2 "White Bread x2 "Basic Torch Blueprint x1" The blueprint was new. The description said it was required for crafting certain items. Seemed useful, so she'd traded for it. Meanwhile, back in the channel, that "InvincibleWarrior" guy who'd been mocking her earlier seemed to notice that people were actually completing trades. His tone got bitter. "InvincibleWarrior: Whatever. She probably got lucky with a high-tier crate. Let's see how long her stock lasts. Once the wood's gone, she'll be begging me to let her join my group." The people who'd successfully traded with Riley popped into the channel to thank her. That might have been fine—except the thanks caused problems. Since Riley had stopped trading for now, most people hadn't gotten anything. And the sky was darkening. Temperature outside the campfire radius was dropping fast. Gathering wood was getting harder. Trading was their only hope. The ones who'd pinned everything on Riley, seeing her stop, started losing it. "You said 'in bulk'! You did like five trades and quit. What are we supposed to do now?" "Keep trading! My fire's almost out. You want us to go chop trees in the dark?" "If you couldn't deliver, why'd you post? Showing off and then hiding." Whether it was coordinated or just genuine rage, the number of people defending Riley in the channel shrank fast. Mostly it was attacks now. Accusations of being irresponsible. Using scarcity tactics. Playing games with people's lives. Riley closed the channel. She couldn't be bothered. In a life-or-death situation like this, people losing it was normal. If she actually had unlimited resources, she'd trade more. But she didn't. And back on Earth, nobody had ever handed her anything out of charity. She wasn't about to start playing savior now. She looked down at the "Basic Torch Blueprint" in her inventory. "Requirements: Wood x10, Kerosene, Scrap Steel x2" Note: Requires Level 2 Workbench to craft." She leaned back against the crate again. Felt the weight of her stockpile pressing back against that lingering sense of unease. In this world, your ID didn't matter. Your gender didn't matter either. What mattered was who held the resources. She looked at what she had left: 36 units of wood. Plus the steel, coal, and stone from trading. Time to plan. Upgrading to a Level 2 campfire required 55 wood. She had all the other materials. For the wood, she'd just have to use the handsaw tomorrow and gather a little more. That settled, she pulled a few more logs from inventory and arranged them on top of the crate, making a small enclosed space. Curled up inside it, she watched the sky outside slowly darken to black. Her eyes grew heavy. She drifted off. Chapter 4 The Culling Riley woke to the kind of soreness that made you reconsider ever moving again. She'd slept like the dead—no dreams, no blizzard, just nothing. When she opened her eyes, the first things she saw were the logs she'd stacked as a windbreak and the steady glow of the campfire. She tried to stretch. Big mistake. Every muscle in her body lit up at once, screaming in protest. "Sh*t." Riley sucked air through her teeth and pressed a hand to her aching shoulder. Her lower back felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to it. Yesterday's work had been too much. She wasn't weak—far from it—but she was still human. The lactic acid had settled in overnight, and now she moved like an arthritic tin man. At least she was alive. She stowed the windbreak logs back in her inventory and looked around. The world hadn't changed. Same dull gray sky. Same swirling snow. Outside the six-foot radius of the fire, the drifts looked deeper than yesterday. The wind had been busy. Riley pulled out the half-empty water bottle and wet her throat. Then she retrieved the white bread she'd traded for yesterday. Compared to that dense, flavorless black bread, this was practically cake. She tore off small pieces, letting the faint sweetness dissolve on her tongue, and habitually opened the "Server Channel". She stopped chewing. The number in the top left hit her like a physical blow. "Current Online Players: 4968/10000" "Five thousand..." Riley's eyes went wide. In a single night, that number had been cut in half. Five thousand people. Gone. Winked out of existence on this frozen ice field while she slept. "Ding." The system notification cut through her thoughts—cold, emotionless, like it was announcing the weather. "Global Announcement: Congratulations to all survivors for successfully surviving the first day. "This was a culling. Last night eliminated those fools who failed to add fuel to their fires or refused to gather wood. Remember: in this place, tears mean nothing. When you die here, you're dead-dead. "You who remain are the lucky ones. "Grace Period: A five-day 'New Player Support Period' now begins. For the next five days, your initial supply crates will refresh daily with a fixed amount of food. "Special Reward: Each survivor receives one pair of "Standard Issue Snow Boots (Common)". Be grateful for this mercy. Enjoy the game." The words sat there on her screen. Fools. Mercy. The system's tone dripped with contempt. The math was simple. Starting package: five hours of fuel. Initial gift: five units of wood, another five hours. Total ten hours, if you did absolutely nothing. The ones who'd frozen to death last night—they were the ones who'd clung to hope. The ones too scared to move. The ones who'd told themselves someone would save them. Five thousand people. One night. Gone. This wasn't a game. It was a slaughter. In the channel, the survivors who'd made it through were clearly rattled by the numbers too. "Holy sh*t... My friend's icon went dark last night. Does that mean he's dead? Actually dead?" "I can't do this. I don't wanna play anymore, I wanna go home. I swear I'll work today. I'll chop wood, I'll do whatever, just please—" "Everyone move! Don't save your strength! If you die, that's it. No respawns!" Panic spread fast. But almost immediately, the tone shifted. The fear found a target. "That SpicyBurger—if she'd shared more wood yesterday, would so many people have died?" "For real. If she had extra, why not just give it away? Why did it have to be trades? She could've at least loaned some out." "This is what happens when people hoard resources and watch others freeze. Remember that name. Don't trade with her. Ever." Riley frowned. Here we go again. She scrolled up. Sure enough, there it was—that familiar ID: "InvincibleWarrior". He was going hard in the channel. "She's profiting off suffering. That's what some people do. Women like that are the worst—hoarding supplies while people die around them. Wait and see. Someone like her won't last." Riley laughed. Actually laughed out loud. Moral blackmail. In the apocalypse. She typed, "If you want wood, go cut it yourself. I'm not your mommy. No amount of crying in chat is gonna put logs in your inventory. You'd get more done if you just picked up your d*mn axe." The channel went quiet for a second. Then the reasonable voices piped up. "She's right. Nobody owes you anything. Work for it." "Exactly. Just 'cause someone's quiet doesn't mean they're an easy target." In a world where staying alive took everything you had, expecting charity was the dumbest move of all. Riley didn't waste more energy on it. People like that—the more you engaged, the more they thrived. Let him run his mouth. She had bigger things to worry about. She closed the channel and turned to the big wooden crate—her initial supply point. Sure enough, new items had materialized inside. "Bottled Water x3 "White Bread x3 "Fresh Orange Juice x1 "Standard Snow Boots x1" "Orange juice?" Riley picked up the bottle, genuinely surprised. The orange liquid inside sloshed gently. Vitamins. The system was actually giving them vitamins. She pulled off her old shoes—already damp and cold—and swapped into the new boots. They were clunky, sure. But they gripped the snow, and the insulation was real. The chill that had been seeping up through her soles disappeared instantly. Next, she opened her toolbox. Goggles on. Thick cut-resistant gloves. Head-to-toe gear. "Time to work." The channel noise faded from her mind. She had one priority today, and it wasn't arguing with idiots. She picked up the chainsaw and headed back to the tree line. The cold played tricks on batteries. She'd known that, intellectually. But knowing it and feeling it were different things. After just eight trees, the last spare battery gave out. The chainsaw stuttered, died, and went silent in her hands. Riley stared at it. "Son of a b*tch." Chapter 5 Dead Battery Riley stared at the dead chainsaw in her hands and shook her head. Without power, it was just an expensive paperweight. If she wanted more wood, she'd have to do it the old-fashioned way—pick up the axe or the manual handsaw from the toolbox and go to war with frozen timber. But eight more trees were eight more trees. Her stockpile was looking healthy. "First things first. Get these back." She sucked it up, stowed the chainsaw in her inventory, and started hauling. Her body screamed even louder than yesterday. Every muscle felt like it had been replaced with concrete. She dragged each log back one at a time, moving like a zombie. Drag. Rest two minutes. Drag again. The wind howled in her ears. Riley lost track of time, lost track of everything except the mechanical rhythm of work. By the time the sun was high—not that you could really see it through the clouds—she dragged the last log into the campfire's radius. It dissolved into light, absorbed by the system. Riley all but collapsed into the snow. "Acquired: Wood x40" She lay there for a moment, chest heaving, staring at the number in her inventory. A tired smile crept across her face. She had enough. Combined with the coal and steel from yesterday's trades, she had everything she needed for the upgrade. Riley forced herself upright and walked to the campfire. On the floating translucent panel, the "Upgrade" button glowed that tempting gold. "Upgrade Primitive Shelter to Lv.2? "Cost: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Scrap Steel x5 "Remaining after upgrade: Wood x16, Stone x3, Coal x0, Steel x0" "Upgrade." Riley took a breath and pressed it. "Hmmmm—!" A blinding white light erupted from the heart of the campfire, swallowing everything. Riley squeezed her eyes shut. No explosion. No thunder. Just a sound like Legos snapping together. A few seconds later, the light faded. Riley opened her eyes. And stopped breathing. The campfire wasn't just a campfire anymore. The rough stone ring had transformed into something neat and intentional—a proper firepit with a stone border for insulation, a place to set things, even a simple steel grate attached to the side. But that wasn't the big news. The heat that used to push back the cold within a six-foot radius now stretched a full fifteen feet. Inside that circle, snow was actively melting, revealing dark frozen soil underneath. In one corner, she spotted a patch of moss stubbornly poking through. Riley spun around. Behind the big wooden crate, a small log cabin stood waiting. It wasn't much—maybe forty feet square, built from rough-hewn logs. Nothing fancy. But it was solid. Four walls and a roof, blocking wind and snow completely. Riley walked over and pushed open the heavy wooden door. Warm air hit her face. Inside was simple: a wooden bed frame piled with dry grass, a crude workbench, a chair, and a small fireplace connected to a chimney that ran up through the roof. Rustic. But right now, it was heaven. Wood and fire. Four walls. A roof. Home. Riley ran her hand along the rough wall. Her eyes stung a little. She wouldn't have to sleep in the open anymore. Wouldn't have to wake up every few hours to check the fire. Wouldn't have to worry about freezing to death in her sleep. Right on cue, the server announcement chimed. Gold text this time, blazing right in the center of everyone's vision. "Server Announcement: Congratulations to player SpicyBurger for being the first to achieve "Level 2 Shelter". Rewards have been distributed." The chat channel, which had been wallowing in fear and despair, exploded. "Holy sh*t? Level 2 already? What does Level 2 unlock? Can you post pics, big shot?" "That's the wood seller from yesterday? No way. Absolute legend." "Carry me please! SpicyBurger, I'll be your loyal follower. I can cook, I can clean, I can—" "Teach us, master! How'd you gather materials so fast? What's your secret?" Compliments. Pleas. Desperate attempts to get noticed. And then, of course, the sour grapes. "InvincibleWarrior: Big deal. Just profiteering off everyone else's suffering. If she'd shared that wood instead of selling it, maybe those five thousand people would still be alive. How does it feel to climb on corpses?" "GodLovesMeFirst: Seriously. Building your success on other people's deaths. Karma's real. She'll get hers." Riley's jaw tightened. If InvincibleWarrior had been standing in front of her right now, she'd have knocked his teeth out. Guys like him—useless themselves, but always ready to tear down anyone who actually accomplished something. Sewer rats. Her private messages exploded too. She'd set it to only accept trade offers, but people had found a workaround—using the "trade note" function to send spam. "Hey beautiful, I'm a personal trainer. Great shape. Wanna see? Hit me with some wood and I'll do a voice call with you!" A photo of some guy flexing in a mirror, shirt off. Riley glanced at it, unimpressed. Decent abs. Pathetic attitude. Dude was clearly strong enough to chop wood—why was he wasting time on this? She'd never mentioned her gender, so most people probably assumed anyone who'd gathered that much wood must be a guy. The messages reflected that assumption. Some women sent selfies too, trying to flirt their way into favor. Didn't matter. Shameless cut across all demographics. From the backgrounds in the photos, everyone seemed to be in different locations. But one thing was consistent: they all had trees nearby. The system must have arranged that—a new player perk. "A bunch of degenerates." Riley's face went cold. She changed her privacy settings to "Friends Only". Then she added a line to her trading post description. "No spam. Send junk, get blocked." Silence. Blessed silence. She took a breath, let the noise drain away, and focused on what mattered. "First-place upgrade reward..." She opened her inventory. Sitting there, glowing faintly purple, was a gift box. For more exciting content, please download the "JoyRead" app to continue reading.
Chapter 1 The Countdown Ends It was the year 2027, and the end of the world was now less than an hour away. "00:59:23" Riley Carter stood on a ladder with a screw clenched between her teeth, an impact driver in her hand, securing the last window panel in place. A month ago, that timer had just appeared out of nowhere, hanging in the corner of everyone's vision like it had always been there. At first, people wrote it off as some kind of mass hacker prank. The government fed the media soothing statements in an attempt to keep things calm, but there was no way to talk down the panic as prices kept rising and supplies were held in a monopoly in real time. News outlets might spin whatever narrative they wanted, but no one could argue with the price of eggs. For a while, it was a frenzy. People cleaned out grocery stores like locusts. The government did what they could—price caps, purchase limits, reassurances from the podium—but none of it mattered. The cost of living kept climbing, and bit by bit, the country started coming apart at the seams. Online, it was a circus. Some people posted doom-laden predictions. Others openly celebrated the thought of the world finally burning. A few just seemed relieved they wouldn't have to clock in on Monday. In that final hour, things got truly ugly. Both on the streets and on social media, it was chaos. Some people figured why not went out with a bang? If the world was ending, they'd spend their last hours doing every reckless thing they'd ever fantasized about. Others, paralyzed by fear of whatever was coming, scrambled for anything they could hoard. Supplies. Weapons. Gasoline. Didn't matter what, as long as they had more of it than the next guy. Most people just wanted to be with the ones they loved. Riley didn't have that luxury anymore. Fresh out of community college, she'd lost both her parents in a highway pileup eighteen months back. The only thing they'd left her was the family hardware store, a cramped little place wedged between a laundromat and a taqueria. She'd been running it solo for just over a year when that d*mn countdown appeared overhead. At first, she'd thought maybe an apocalypse wouldn't be the worst thing. Maybe there'd be something on the other side. A reunion. But then she thought about her folks. They'd doted on her. Made her feel like the center of their world. And even though she'd grown a thick skin since going it alone, feeling indifferent to the world, she knew what they'd want. They'd want her to fight. To stay. She was the only piece of them still left in this world. People always say you aren't really gone until the last person forgets your name. As long as she kept breathing, kept carrying them with her another day, they weren't truly dead. Riley spat the screw into her palm, face calm, the impact driver whirring as she sank another fastener into the reinforced frame. "Flour's three hundred a pound now, and you can't even buy it straight—they make you tack on a bunch of other junk you don't need just to get it," she muttered to herself, shaking her head. When that timer first flickered into existence, Riley had done something smart. She'd liquidated everything. Converted every dollar she could scrape together into supplies. Unfortunately, by the time she hit the stores, inflation had already done its damage. Her savings didn't go nearly as far as they should have. Any cash that was left went toward tools. If the world was ending, she thought they could be useful. Riley pressed the last sheet of thick insulation foam into the window frame, seating it flush against the reinforced plywood beneath. The impact driver snarled as she buried the screws. Then she reached for her pneumatic glue gun—a satisfying pfft as the sealant filled the final gap. She wiped sweat from her forehead and climbed down off the ladder. Stepped back to admire her work. The little apartment was a fortress now. Doors reinforced. Windows barricaded. Every interior wall lined with an extra layer of insulation. She glanced down at herself. Custom-fit heavy-duty workwear. Slash-resistant fabric. More pockets than she'd ever need. Reinforced padding at the knees and elbows. It wasn't fashionable, but it was practical. And her real treasure: tools. A chainsaw. A reciprocating saw. The impact driver in her hand. A multi-bit screwdriver that had cost more than she wanted to admit. She'd brought everything usable from the shop back here, consolidated it into three massive toolboxes. She'd also grabbed some stuff like an air purifier and some spare filters—anything that might matter when civilization took a vacation. She didn't know what the countdown would bring. Some folks online predicted zombies. Others said asteroid impact. Volcanic winter. Alien invasion. Take your pick. Food. Tools. Shelter. She'd even started working out, building strength she'd never needed before. She'd done everything she could think of to prepare. Whatever was coming, she figured she'd last longer than most. With nothing left to do, she dropped onto one of the big toolboxes laid flat on the floor, wiped her forehead again, and pulled out her phone. Most news apps had crashed. The only things still loading were comment sections, and they were going crazy. [Anyone got rice? I'll pay eight grand for a bag. Please, we got nothing left.] [Forget it, man. Money's toilet paper now. Saw it with my own eyes—some rich assholes cleared out the Costco warehouse last week. All that 'purchase limit' crap was just theater. Shelves were empty 'cause the stock never made it there. It's all sitting in some hedge fund guy's basement.] [No kidding? Same thing happened to me! Store manager kept telling me, 'We're limiting purchases, come back next week, we'll put your name on the list.' So the whole time the back room was empty? They were just jerking us around?] [Of course they were. Rich people cornered the market on everything. So what are normal people supposed to do? Just sit here and die?] [Anyone know what actually happens when the clock hits zero? Like, is it nukes? That virus thing from that old video game?] Riley locked her phone. Tucked it away. She didn't have anything to add to that conversation. A month ago, when the countdown first showed up, prices had spiked instantly. A fifty-pound bag of rice that normally went for thirty bucks jumped to eight hundred overnight. By yesterday, it was breaking two grand. The wealthy had rolled up with trucks and cleaned out supermarkets. Riley had been smart—she'd gone early, bought stuff that would keep, stuff that was calorie-dense and cheap. Chocolate. Survival biscuits. Canned goods. It wasn't much, but it was enough for one person, at least for a while. She took a deep breath and glanced at the timer. "00:01:10" Just over a minute. Riley gripped the toolbox beneath her. Knuckles white. Who knew what would happen when that thing hit zero? Maybe it'd be like 2012—all hype, nothing real. In that last minute, her life flickered past. Her parents' faces. The hardware store. The lonely months since. "00:00:00" The countdown ended. Riley had just started to breathe a sigh of relief—nothing happened, maybe it really was nothing—when the world lurched beneath her. A dizzying weightlessness. A sensation of falling. Everything spun. ***** She didn't know how long she was out. "Whew." A wind like a knife blade sliced across her face. Riley's eyes snapped open. Her warm apartment was gone. In its place, an endless white expanse stretched in every direction. Snow whipped through the air. Wind howled like a wounded animal. And at her feet, a small campfire guttered in the gale, threatening to die at any second. "What the—" Before she could process, a chime rang directly in her skull. Not heard. Known. "Welcome to the Extreme Cold Survival Game. "Earth no longer exists. This is your new home. This is your grave. "Survival rules are as follows. "1. Each player begins with one campfire. It is your only defense against the cold. If the campfire dies, you will be judged deceased by the system. Not that it matters—without the fire, you won't last anyway. "2. This is a real world. You can die from hunger. From exposure. From animal attack. "3. Supplies stockpiled in your previous world do not carry over. Only items on your person, or in direct physical contact at the moment of transfer, are retained. "4. Struggle to survive. It is your only hope." Riley's heart slammed against her ribs. Supplies didn't carry over? Her mind flashed to those wealthy forum posters bragging about their warehouse stockpiles. And then she looked down at herself. Workwear. Intact. And— She was still sitting on the three giant toolboxes. They sat solidly in the snow, dusted with powder, unmistakably here. "Whew." Riley let out a long breath. A white cloud dispersed in front of her face. Pity, though. During her renovations, she'd stocked those boxes with a lot of power tools. The expensive impact driver. The reciprocating saw. In a world with no electrical outlets, once those batteries died, they were just dead weight. But even so. The hand tools. The consumables. The sheer volume of stuff in those boxes—it was a treasure beyond measure in a place like this. Riley forced herself to calm down. She was here. She'd deal with it. Something new lived in her mind now. She concentrated, and a translucent pale-blue screen materialized in front of her eyes. Looked just like a video game HUD. "Personal Panel "Name: Riley Carter "ID: 1120-US "Level: 1 (Standard Survivor) "Strength: 8 (Years of manual labor have made you stronger than average) "Agility: 8 (You've got quick reflexes) "Constitution: 6 (You've been skipping meals lately) "Spirit: 9 (You keep your head when others panic) "Inventory: 16/16 slots (Base capacity)" "Inventory?" Riley studied the sixteen empty squares at the bottom of the display. She reached out, touched one of the toolboxes, and thought the word, "Store." Whoosh. The heavy box vanished. In its place, a tiny icon appeared in the first inventory slot, a miniature "x1" in the corner. "It actually worked." For the first time since arriving, a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. Retrieve. Thud. The toolbox landed back in the snow, puffing up powder. No energy cost. No sense of weight. And in that inventory, she could carry anything, regardless of how heavy it was. Later on, when she went scavenging, that would make all the difference. Riley rubbed her stiff, freezing hands together and turned her attention to the campfire at her feet. It was the only warmth in this frozen wasteland. Hovering above the flames, visible only to her, were a few lines of glowing text. "Basic Campfire (Lv.1) "Remaining Burn Time: 05:28:00 "Current Coverage: Radius six feet (Blocks wind and snow) "Upgrade Requirements: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Steel x5 "Description: This is your life. Do not let it die. Upgrading expands your safe zone and unlocks additional construction options." "Needs upgrading." Riley frowned. Wood and stone she could probably find. But coal? Steel? Out here in the middle of nowhere? A flash of movement caught her eye. A small wooden box, half-buried in the snow not far from the fire. The starter crate. Had to be. Riley didn't rush. First, she pulled the claw hammer from her belt—the one she always kept there, habit from years of work—and gripped it tight. She scanned the tree line. Listened past the wind. Nothing moved. No sounds but the storm. She walked over quickly, crouched by the box. No lock. She pried the lid open with the claw end of her hammer. Inside, a handful of items. "Obtained: Iron Axe x1 "Obtained: Stale Dark Bread x2 "Obtained: 500ml Bottled Water x1 "Obtained: Kindling x5 "Obtained: Insulated Field Jacket x1 "Obtained: Utility Rope (25ft) "Obtained: Thermal Underwear (Set) x2 Not much. Barely anything. Riley picked up one of the dark loaves. It was rock hard. She examined the jacket—basic, but warm-looking. "So this is what a standard survivor starts with." At least the system had thought of everything. Including the underwear. She'd half-expected to wake up naked in the snow; at least she didn't have to worry about that. She stored everything in her inventory, then shrugged on the field jacket. The temperature shift was brutal. Even those few seconds exposed had left her hands numb. Hypothermia would set in fast out here. Jacket on, she hurried back to the campfire. She pulled the five units of Kindling from her inventory and tossed them onto the flames. The fire roared higher. Warmth flooded over her. "Fuel added. Remaining Burn Time: 10:28:00" Ten hours. If she didn't move fast, in ten hours she'd freeze to death on this ice field. And the game had made it clear—if the fire died, the system would judge her dead. Whether she actually froze or not. Riley lifted her head and scanned the landscape. She was in a sparse coniferous forest. Barely alive trees, crusted with frost, dotted the area not far from her position. "Wood." A slow smile spread across her face. She patted the toolbox beside her. "Other people might have axes. But felling a tree with just an axe takes hours. Exhausts you." She unlatched the box. Pulled out the chainsaw. Checked the battery gauge—full. "I've got a handsaw in here too. And a chainsaw with a full charge." The battery wouldn't last forever. But it would last long enough to give her a massive head start. In this race for survival, that was everything. Chapter 2 The Chainsaw The wind screamed across the open ground, picking up loose snow and flinging it against her goggles like sand. It sounded like static. Riley had pulled her basic work gear from the toolbox before heading out. Now she stood in the snow, surrounded by clusters of thin conifers that looked half-dead already. She took a breath. The air burned going down. "Zzzzzzz—!!!" She squeezed the trigger. The orange-and-black lithium-ion chainsaw in her hands roared to life, the chain spinning so fast it blurred. She buried the teeth in the nearest pine trunk. Wood chips exploded everywhere. Fragrant shavings—still wet with resin—scattered across the pristine snow, stark and yellow against all that white. Five seconds. Crack. The pine tree, thick as her arm, groaned and tilted. Then it fell slow and heavy into a drift, sending up a puff of powder. "God bless modern technology." Riley shook out her wrist—the vibration had numbed her fingers—and allowed herself a small smile. Without that chainsaw, with just the basic iron axe the system had given her, felling a tree frozen solid like this would have taken twenty minutes minimum. And it would have left her soaked with sweat. In subzero temps, sweat was a death sentence. Once your base layers got wet, the moment you stopped moving, your body temperature would plummet. Hypothermia would follow fast. Riley didn't waste time celebrating. She knew the saw in her hands was a hungry machine. She'd brought two spare high-capacity batteries, sure, but until she found a way to recharge them, every second the motor ran was borrowed time. She had to gather as much wood as possible before the batteries gave out. "Zzzzz—Zzzzz—" At the edge of the forest, the chainsaw's snarl rose and fell, shattering the frozen silence. Riley worked like she was possessed. Fell a tree. Move to the next. Fell another. But she had to stay alert—watch for hidden snow pits underfoot, keep adjusting her collar against the wind that kept finding its way down her neck. Her stamina drained faster than she'd anticipated. In extreme cold, body burned through calories just to stay alive. Added walking through knee-deep snow, where every step took three times the energy of walking on pavement, and the math got ugly fast. Pretty soon, Riley was breathing hard. Her breath fogged the inside of her goggles, and she had to keep wiping them clear. "Zzzzz..." She was mid-cut on a tree—didn't even know which number anymore—when the chainsaw's roar stuttered. Died. The chain jammed solid in the wood. A red light blinked at her. Dead battery. Riley yanked the saw free and patted its housing. "Good work, buddy." Genuine regret in her voice. She straightened up and looked around. Pine trunks lay scattered across the snow in every direction. A decent haul. She counted silently. "Twenty-three total." Then the next problem hit her. According to the system, until she actually possessed these logs, they were still just natural resources. That meant they didn't qualify for Inventory storage. She couldn't just snap her fingers and make them disappear. She had to drag them back to camp. Riley grabbed the nearest pine and tried to pull. Heavy. Like, unreasonably heavy. Fresh-cut wood was full of moisture. Add the branches catching in the snow, dragging like anchors, and she felt like she was hauling a dead body through mud. "Huff... huff..." She gritted her teeth, looped rope around the trunk, slung it over her shoulder, leaned forward, and started walking. Inch by inch. The tree line to her campfire was maybe fifty yards. Right now, it felt like fifty miles. By the time she'd wrestled the fourth tree back into the fire's warm radius, she was wrecked. Her legs felt like someone had filled them with concrete. Her lungs burned from hauling freezing air through them. "Can't... can't do more." Riley made the call. She stopped. Those nineteen trees still out there in the snow—they called to her. Tempted her. But if she kept pushing without rest, without fuel for herself, she'd collapse out there. And out there, collapse meant death. She dropped down next to the big wooden crate that had held her starter supplies. It was less than three feet from the campfire. The flames danced orange and red, pumping out heat that felt like heaven. The shift from frozen to warm made her shiver violently. She pulled off her goggles and thick gloves, set them near the fire to warm up, then—still shaking—pulled the half-empty water bottle from her Inventory. Took a small sip. Then the bread. Two black bricks that looked more like construction material than food. "Crunch." Riley bit off a piece with effort. It was coarse. Tasted like sawdust with a hint of burnt toast. Bitter. But it was calories. Carbs. Fuel for her own fire. She forced herself to chew, swallow. When the food hit her stomach, warmth finally started spreading through her core. The uncontrollable shaking eased. After half a loaf, Riley leaned back against the crate. Her eyelids drooped. Post-exhaustion crash hit her like a wave. The campfire crackled. The wind seemed farther away now. Muffled. She really wanted to sleep... Her head nodded. Her body started sliding sideways. "Wait—" Some animal instinct jolted her awake just before she went under. She pinched her thigh. Hard. Then looked up at the timer floating above the flames. "Shelter Level 1 "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 06:28:00" Six and a half hours. If she slept too deep, too long, and that fire went out—what then? Even ignoring the obvious—that she'd freeze to death in this hellhole without a heat source—the game rules were clear. When the campfire hits zero, it's game over. "No sleeping. Not allowed." Riley slapped her own cheeks, forced herself upright. She stayed near the fire, but she didn't take off her heavy work clothes. She remembered reading something once, a survival article. "In the late stages of hypothermia, your hypothalamus malfunctions. You get a false sensation of heat. It's called "paradoxical undressing"—people strip down right before they freeze to death." "Okay. Process these four. Keep the fire fed." She pulled a traditional handsaw from the toolbox. Looking at the four thick pine logs on the ground, she almost laughed. Without power tools, breaking these down into burnable pieces would take at least half an hour. Burn the little energy she had left. But what choice did she have? Riley knelt in the snow, positioned the blade against the trunk, and was about to start cutting— A soft white light shot out from the system panel on her chest. It washed over the logs. "Ding! "Detected felled, intact logs within shelter range. "Perform quick recovery?" Riley's hand froze mid-saw. Quick recovery? It took her a second to process. Then relief flooded through her so hard she almost cried. "Yes! Recover!" She didn't hesitate. The next moment, something impossible happened. The four pine trunks—the ones she'd have to saw and split by hand, the ones that represented hours of brutal labor—dissolved into pale blue light particles. Not into dust. Into neat, uniform logs that stacked themselves automatically in her Inventory. The branches, the needles, all the useless parts—purified out of existence. "Recovery successful! "Obtained: Common Wood x20" Riley's eyes went wide, staring at the perfect lumber in her inventory display. Looked like it came straight from a hardware store. "One tree gives five units of wood? "And I don't have to cut it myself?" This changed everything. It meant she only had to handle the felling and the dragging. Once a log crossed into her camp's boundary, the system recognized it as hers. The most time-consuming part—the processing—just... didn't exist anymore. Riley immediately grabbed five units of wood and fed them to the fire. Whoosh. The flames leaped, hungry and grateful. "Fuel added. "Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 12:20:00" "Five logs, five hours..." She did the math fast, looking at the fifteen units still on the ground. If she threw all of those in, that'd be another fifteen hours. Total of twenty-seven. She could sleep like the dead right now, and that fire would still be burning when she woke up. Security. For the first time since the world ended, Riley felt something like security. She selected the remaining wood. Deposited it all. Watched the countdown tick up to a very comfortable "27:20:00". Then her nerves finally let go. She dragged one of the toolboxes into position to block the wind, wrapped the field jacket tight around herself, pulled her hat down over her eyes, leaned back against the warm crate, and let the crackle of the fire pull her under. ***** She didn't sleep long. When she opened her eyes again, the sky was still that same dull gray-white. Impossible to tell if it was morning or afternoon. System clock said three hours. Her body ached. Shoulders and arms especially—felt like she'd gone ten rounds with someone. But her head was clear. She stretched her stiff neck and stood up. The snow seemed lighter. The feathery flakes had tapered off into sporadic icy grains. Riley ate a little more, got some fuel back in the tank, then stepped outside the campfire's warmth. The fire's effect wasn't what she'd expected. It wasn't that the temperature gradually dropped as you moved away. It was sharper than that. Like there was an invisible barrier around the flames. Inside, livable. Outside, the cold hit you like a wall. She wandered a little way off. The cold found every gap in her clothing. She thought about going farther, exploring. But there was nothing visible except that stand of trees she'd already worked. Maybe stuff was buried under the snow, but she couldn't see it. "No proper snow boots. Not going far." Riley glanced at the endless white distance with real regret. "Don't get greedy. Get those nineteen trees first." She turned. Looked at the woods. Her loot was still out there. And now she knew: if she could drag them back into the campfire's circle, the system would cash them out automatically. "Time to work." Riley rubbed her hands together. Let the motivation build. For the next few hours, she became a machine. Drag a tree to camp. Recover it. Go back for another. Repeat. It was boring. Exhausting. But watching those logs turn into numbers in her inventory—that feeling was hard to describe. Satisfying, in a way nothing had been satisfying in a long time. When the last pine trunk crossed into the light and dissolved into particles, Riley just collapsed. Lay flat in the snow and stared at the gray sky. She pulled up her Inventory. The once-empty slots were full now. Stack after stack of wood icons. "Item: Common Wood "Quantity: 80 "Description: Basic survival resource. Can be used for fuel or construction." Eighty units. Plus what was already burning in the campfire. Her day's work had yielded a clean hundred. One unit of wood burned for one hour. Riley looked at the flames dancing in front of her. Felt the heat on her face. Let herself smile, wide and real. "One hundred hours." Four full days. While everyone else was probably still panicking. Crying. Begging. Trying to figure out how to survive their first night in this frozen nightmare... She, Riley, had enough fuel stockpiled to last four days. Which meant: for the next ninety-six hours, unless she actively chose to die, nobody and nothing could put her fire out. She pulled the half-empty water bottle from Inventory. The space must have been insulated somehow—the water was still warm. Almost body temperature. She sipped it. Tasted sweet, even though it was just tap water. "Okay. Next step." Her gaze settled on the "Upgrade" button on the campfire panel. This open-air setup was fine for now. But if she was going to survive long-term, she needed something better. A real shelter. All she needed was a little stone. Some coal. Some steel. Then she could build something worth calling home. Chapter 3 The Trading Game The blizzard howled outside, but within the six-foot radius of the campfire, the air stayed surprisingly warm—like the wind had hit an invisible wall and just couldn't reach. Riley leaned back against the dusty wooden crate, holding the half-empty water bottle in her hand. She stared into the flames for a moment, then focused her attention inward. The pale blue system panel unfolded in front of her eyes again. Now that the immediate crisis was handled, she finally had time to sit quietly and really explore this so-called "Survival System". Beyond the personal stats and inventory, the bottom of the panel had a row of function icons: Server Channel, Friends List, Trading Market, and Crafting Manual. Friends List was empty. No surprise there. She hadn't exactly been a social butterfly back in the old world, and she sure as hell wasn't going to make friends easily in a frozen hellscape where everyone was fighting for their next breath. She tapped into the "Server Channel". A line of numbers appeared in the top left. "Server: US-008 "Current Online: 9911/10000" Ten thousand people started. Less than ten hours in, eighty-nine were already gone. "That doesn't add up." Everyone's starter crate came with a rusty iron axe and five units of wood. Plus the initial fuel the campfire had when they arrived—that alone bought them ten hours minimum, even if they just sat there doing nothing. What the hell did those people do to get eliminated so fast? The channel was moving fast, messages scrolling by every second. Desperation dripped from every line. "Someone help, I'm freezing my ass off out here. This stupid axe can't cut sh*t—every swing just bounces off and rattles my whole arm. Can anyone spare a couple logs? My dad's a senior VP at Walker Group. I'll wire you a million dollars when we get back, I swear." "Wake up, buddy. If your dad's still alive, he's out there chopping trees right now too." "Don't even talk to me. I spotted a wooden crate in the snow earlier, got all excited, ran over—and before I got within ten feet, some white rabbit thing jumped out of a drift. Teeth like needles. Almost took a chunk out of my leg. Missed the crate, wasted all that energy for nothing." "I saw that too! Random crates spawn in the wild. I opened a wooden one and got two chocolate bars and some coal." Reading through the chaos, Riley picked out two keywords, "Random Reward Crates" and "Dangerous Creatures". So this world was deeper than she thought. Wooden crates, copper crates—these randomly spawning resource points were the real way to get ahead. Coal came from crates. That was useful to know. And if coal was in crates, steel probably was too. But something bothered her. According to what people were saying, reward crates weren't exactly rare. So why hadn't she found a single one during her lumber run? She doubted it was just bad luck. Riley exited chat and tapped into the "Trading Market". "Seller: MountainMan88 Item: Stone x2 Wants: White Bread x5" "Seller: LoneWolf_21 Item: Cotton Cloth Wants: Clean Water" "Seller: NotDeadYet Item: Wood x3 Wants: Anything edible" Most people were trading for food and wood. The stuff that kept you alive right now. Things like stone and cloth were getting dumped cheap—nobody had the luxury of thinking long-term. Riley looked at her own inventory. Eighty units of wood staring back at her. Her heart beat a little faster. In this opening phase, where wood literally meant the difference between life and death, the resources in her hands were basically gold bars. "Time to trade," she muttered to herself. "Coal, steel—can't get those from chopping trees. And right now, wood's at maximum value. If I wait, the exchange rate shifts." Even with the chainsaw dead, she still had the handsaw. Less efficient, sure, but she could gather more wood if she needed it. Short-term, she wasn't going to run out. She clicked to post a message in the channel. "System Prompt: Detected that you have not set a virtual ID. Please enter your nickname (cannot be changed after setting)." Riley stared at the blank input box. Naming things was the worst. She sat there for a long time, nothing coming to mind. Finally, she gave up. Couldn't think of anything cool or clever, so she'd just go with something random. Her fingers tapped across the virtual keyboard—SpicyBurger. "Setting successful. ID locked." The prompt closed. Riley posted her message. "SpicyBurger: Selling wood in bulk. Looking for: Coal, Steel, High-calorie food. DM me with offers—what you have and your rate. Good deals go fast, don't sleep on this." For three seconds after the message appeared, the channel went dead silent. Then it exploded. "SpicyBurger? That name's making me hungry, what the hell." "Never mind the name—'wood in bulk'! We got a whale in here! Everyone else is stressing about the next hour and this person's already running a business?" "I need some! My campfire's down to like two hours. I don't know if I actually die when it hits zero but I don't wanna find out." Suddenly, half the channel was scrambling for wood. But then the skeptics crawled out. "Hang on. Everyone started with the same rusty axe. Chopping a tree in this weather takes twenty, thirty minutes minimum. Where's she getting 'bulk' wood from? Sounds like a scam." "InvincibleWarrior: Everybody chill. Look at that ID—sounds like a girl's handle. I'm a grown man, been busting my ass, and I've only got like ten logs saved up. My hands are shredded. Some girl with a food name claims she's got bulk? She's trying to run a game. Scam people out of their stuff." "Iron_Tough: Agreed. Scammers made it through the apocalypse too, I guess. My advice: ignore her. Don't get played. How much wood can a woman chop anyway? Probably can't even lift the axe right, lol." Riley scrolled through the messages, expression flat. She almost laughed. But some people pushed back. "FishHater44: How is it a scam? If she doesn't deliver, you don't complete the trade. Just 'cause you can't chop that much wood doesn't mean nobody can." Riley nodded slightly. That one had a point. But she didn't waste energy arguing in the channel. Instead, she flipped on Do Not Disturb for private messages—only allowing chat requests that included a trade offer. Some people didn't actually care whether she had wood. They just couldn't stand seeing someone else do well. "Ding. Ding. Ding." Private messages started pouring in like rain. Most players weren't idiots. Faced with the very real threat of freezing to death, they'd try anything for a chance. Riley opened the first one. "Windwalker: I got "Coal x3" from a crate. How much wood can I get for it? I can't chop anymore. The wind out here is insane. I tried to throw the coal in my fire but it just kept popping back out. System says my campfire level's too low, won't let me use it. I'm out of wood. My fire's almost dead." Riley thought for a moment. "Three coal for five wood. Deal?" She hadn't known about that restriction. Coal was supposed to be better fuel than wood—didn't expect the game to lock it behind a level gate. The reply came instantly, "Deal. But five wood feels light. It's coal." The guy was conflicted. He knew coal had value, but he was desperate. "I'll make it six. Final offer." Riley wasn't sure about coal's real value yet. Six was her limit. "Fine. Deal." They both dropped their items into the trade window. A moment later, it completed. A flash of white light. Riley's inventory lost six wood. Gained three chunks of coal, each about the size of a small melon. One down. "CrunchyFrog: Hey, I got two "Iron Ingots" from a crate. System calls them "Scrap Steel". Can I get eight wood for them? Trying to stock up enough to sleep through the night." Riley replied, "Sure. Initiate." In just over ten minutes, her wood stockpile dropped significantly. But her inventory filled up with good stuff. "Coal x10 "Stone x23 "Scrap Steel x5 "Raw Meat x2 "White Bread x2 "Basic Torch Blueprint x1" The blueprint was new. The description said it was required for crafting certain items. Seemed useful, so she'd traded for it. Meanwhile, back in the channel, that "InvincibleWarrior" guy who'd been mocking her earlier seemed to notice that people were actually completing trades. His tone got bitter. "InvincibleWarrior: Whatever. She probably got lucky with a high-tier crate. Let's see how long her stock lasts. Once the wood's gone, she'll be begging me to let her join my group." The people who'd successfully traded with Riley popped into the channel to thank her. That might have been fine—except the thanks caused problems. Since Riley had stopped trading for now, most people hadn't gotten anything. And the sky was darkening. Temperature outside the campfire radius was dropping fast. Gathering wood was getting harder. Trading was their only hope. The ones who'd pinned everything on Riley, seeing her stop, started losing it. "You said 'in bulk'! You did like five trades and quit. What are we supposed to do now?" "Keep trading! My fire's almost out. You want us to go chop trees in the dark?" "If you couldn't deliver, why'd you post? Showing off and then hiding." Whether it was coordinated or just genuine rage, the number of people defending Riley in the channel shrank fast. Mostly it was attacks now. Accusations of being irresponsible. Using scarcity tactics. Playing games with people's lives. Riley closed the channel. She couldn't be bothered. In a life-or-death situation like this, people losing it was normal. If she actually had unlimited resources, she'd trade more. But she didn't. And back on Earth, nobody had ever handed her anything out of charity. She wasn't about to start playing savior now. She looked down at the "Basic Torch Blueprint" in her inventory. "Requirements: Wood x10, Kerosene, Scrap Steel x2" Note: Requires Level 2 Workbench to craft." She leaned back against the crate again. Felt the weight of her stockpile pressing back against that lingering sense of unease. In this world, your ID didn't matter. Your gender didn't matter either. What mattered was who held the resources. She looked at what she had left: 36 units of wood. Plus the steel, coal, and stone from trading. Time to plan. Upgrading to a Level 2 campfire required 55 wood. She had all the other materials. For the wood, she'd just have to use the handsaw tomorrow and gather a little more. That settled, she pulled a few more logs from inventory and arranged them on top of the crate, making a small enclosed space. Curled up inside it, she watched the sky outside slowly darken to black. Her eyes grew heavy. She drifted off. Chapter 4 The Culling Riley woke to the kind of soreness that made you reconsider ever moving again. She'd slept like the dead—no dreams, no blizzard, just nothing. When she opened her eyes, the first things she saw were the logs she'd stacked as a windbreak and the steady glow of the campfire. She tried to stretch. Big mistake. Every muscle in her body lit up at once, screaming in protest. "Sh*t." Riley sucked air through her teeth and pressed a hand to her aching shoulder. Her lower back felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to it. Yesterday's work had been too much. She wasn't weak—far from it—but she was still human. The lactic acid had settled in overnight, and now she moved like an arthritic tin man. At least she was alive. She stowed the windbreak logs back in her inventory and looked around. The world hadn't changed. Same dull gray sky. Same swirling snow. Outside the six-foot radius of the fire, the drifts looked deeper than yesterday. The wind had been busy. Riley pulled out the half-empty water bottle and wet her throat. Then she retrieved the white bread she'd traded for yesterday. Compared to that dense, flavorless black bread, this was practically cake. She tore off small pieces, letting the faint sweetness dissolve on her tongue, and habitually opened the "Server Channel". She stopped chewing. The number in the top left hit her like a physical blow. "Current Online Players: 4968/10000" "Five thousand..." Riley's eyes went wide. In a single night, that number had been cut in half. Five thousand people. Gone. Winked out of existence on this frozen ice field while she slept. "Ding." The system notification cut through her thoughts—cold, emotionless, like it was announcing the weather. "Global Announcement: Congratulations to all survivors for successfully surviving the first day. "This was a culling. Last night eliminated those fools who failed to add fuel to their fires or refused to gather wood. Remember: in this place, tears mean nothing. When you die here, you're dead-dead. "You who remain are the lucky ones. "Grace Period: A five-day 'New Player Support Period' now begins. For the next five days, your initial supply crates will refresh daily with a fixed amount of food. "Special Reward: Each survivor receives one pair of "Standard Issue Snow Boots (Common)". Be grateful for this mercy. Enjoy the game." The words sat there on her screen. Fools. Mercy. The system's tone dripped with contempt. The math was simple. Starting package: five hours of fuel. Initial gift: five units of wood, another five hours. Total ten hours, if you did absolutely nothing. The ones who'd frozen to death last night—they were the ones who'd clung to hope. The ones too scared to move. The ones who'd told themselves someone would save them. Five thousand people. One night. Gone. This wasn't a game. It was a slaughter. In the channel, the survivors who'd made it through were clearly rattled by the numbers too. "Holy sh*t... My friend's icon went dark last night. Does that mean he's dead? Actually dead?" "I can't do this. I don't wanna play anymore, I wanna go home. I swear I'll work today. I'll chop wood, I'll do whatever, just please—" "Everyone move! Don't save your strength! If you die, that's it. No respawns!" Panic spread fast. But almost immediately, the tone shifted. The fear found a target. "That SpicyBurger—if she'd shared more wood yesterday, would so many people have died?" "For real. If she had extra, why not just give it away? Why did it have to be trades? She could've at least loaned some out." "This is what happens when people hoard resources and watch others freeze. Remember that name. Don't trade with her. Ever." Riley frowned. Here we go again. She scrolled up. Sure enough, there it was—that familiar ID: "InvincibleWarrior". He was going hard in the channel. "She's profiting off suffering. That's what some people do. Women like that are the worst—hoarding supplies while people die around them. Wait and see. Someone like her won't last." Riley laughed. Actually laughed out loud. Moral blackmail. In the apocalypse. She typed, "If you want wood, go cut it yourself. I'm not your mommy. No amount of crying in chat is gonna put logs in your inventory. You'd get more done if you just picked up your d*mn axe." The channel went quiet for a second. Then the reasonable voices piped up. "She's right. Nobody owes you anything. Work for it." "Exactly. Just 'cause someone's quiet doesn't mean they're an easy target." In a world where staying alive took everything you had, expecting charity was the dumbest move of all. Riley didn't waste more energy on it. People like that—the more you engaged, the more they thrived. Let him run his mouth. She had bigger things to worry about. She closed the channel and turned to the big wooden crate—her initial supply point. Sure enough, new items had materialized inside. "Bottled Water x3 "White Bread x3 "Fresh Orange Juice x1 "Standard Snow Boots x1" "Orange juice?" Riley picked up the bottle, genuinely surprised. The orange liquid inside sloshed gently. Vitamins. The system was actually giving them vitamins. She pulled off her old shoes—already damp and cold—and swapped into the new boots. They were clunky, sure. But they gripped the snow, and the insulation was real. The chill that had been seeping up through her soles disappeared instantly. Next, she opened her toolbox. Goggles on. Thick cut-resistant gloves. Head-to-toe gear. "Time to work." The channel noise faded from her mind. She had one priority today, and it wasn't arguing with idiots. She picked up the chainsaw and headed back to the tree line. The cold played tricks on batteries. She'd known that, intellectually. But knowing it and feeling it were different things. After just eight trees, the last spare battery gave out. The chainsaw stuttered, died, and went silent in her hands. Riley stared at it. "Son of a b*tch." Chapter 5 Dead Battery Riley stared at the dead chainsaw in her hands and shook her head. Without power, it was just an expensive paperweight. If she wanted more wood, she'd have to do it the old-fashioned way—pick up the axe or the manual handsaw from the toolbox and go to war with frozen timber. But eight more trees were eight more trees. Her stockpile was looking healthy. "First things first. Get these back." She sucked it up, stowed the chainsaw in her inventory, and started hauling. Her body screamed even louder than yesterday. Every muscle felt like it had been replaced with concrete. She dragged each log back one at a time, moving like a zombie. Drag. Rest two minutes. Drag again. The wind howled in her ears. Riley lost track of time, lost track of everything except the mechanical rhythm of work. By the time the sun was high—not that you could really see it through the clouds—she dragged the last log into the campfire's radius. It dissolved into light, absorbed by the system. Riley all but collapsed into the snow. "Acquired: Wood x40" She lay there for a moment, chest heaving, staring at the number in her inventory. A tired smile crept across her face. She had enough. Combined with the coal and steel from yesterday's trades, she had everything she needed for the upgrade. Riley forced herself upright and walked to the campfire. On the floating translucent panel, the "Upgrade" button glowed that tempting gold. "Upgrade Primitive Shelter to Lv.2? "Cost: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Scrap Steel x5 "Remaining after upgrade: Wood x16, Stone x3, Coal x0, Steel x0" "Upgrade." Riley took a breath and pressed it. "Hmmmm—!" A blinding white light erupted from the heart of the campfire, swallowing everything. Riley squeezed her eyes shut. No explosion. No thunder. Just a sound like Legos snapping together. A few seconds later, the light faded. Riley opened her eyes. And stopped breathing. The campfire wasn't just a campfire anymore. The rough stone ring had transformed into something neat and intentional—a proper firepit with a stone border for insulation, a place to set things, even a simple steel grate attached to the side. But that wasn't the big news. The heat that used to push back the cold within a six-foot radius now stretched a full fifteen feet. Inside that circle, snow was actively melting, revealing dark frozen soil underneath. In one corner, she spotted a patch of moss stubbornly poking through. Riley spun around. Behind the big wooden crate, a small log cabin stood waiting. It wasn't much—maybe forty feet square, built from rough-hewn logs. Nothing fancy. But it was solid. Four walls and a roof, blocking wind and snow completely. Riley walked over and pushed open the heavy wooden door. Warm air hit her face. Inside was simple: a wooden bed frame piled with dry grass, a crude workbench, a chair, and a small fireplace connected to a chimney that ran up through the roof. Rustic. But right now, it was heaven. Wood and fire. Four walls. A roof. Home. Riley ran her hand along the rough wall. Her eyes stung a little. She wouldn't have to sleep in the open anymore. Wouldn't have to wake up every few hours to check the fire. Wouldn't have to worry about freezing to death in her sleep. Right on cue, the server announcement chimed. Gold text this time, blazing right in the center of everyone's vision. "Server Announcement: Congratulations to player SpicyBurger for being the first to achieve "Level 2 Shelter". Rewards have been distributed." The chat channel, which had been wallowing in fear and despair, exploded. "Holy sh*t? Level 2 already? What does Level 2 unlock? Can you post pics, big shot?" "That's the wood seller from yesterday? No way. Absolute legend." "Carry me please! SpicyBurger, I'll be your loyal follower. I can cook, I can clean, I can—" "Teach us, master! How'd you gather materials so fast? What's your secret?" Compliments. Pleas. Desperate attempts to get noticed. And then, of course, the sour grapes. "InvincibleWarrior: Big deal. Just profiteering off everyone else's suffering. If she'd shared that wood instead of selling it, maybe those five thousand people would still be alive. How does it feel to climb on corpses?" "GodLovesMeFirst: Seriously. Building your success on other people's deaths. Karma's real. She'll get hers." Riley's jaw tightened. If InvincibleWarrior had been standing in front of her right now, she'd have knocked his teeth out. Guys like him—useless themselves, but always ready to tear down anyone who actually accomplished something. Sewer rats. Her private messages exploded too. She'd set it to only accept trade offers, but people had found a workaround—using the "trade note" function to send spam. "Hey beautiful, I'm a personal trainer. Great shape. Wanna see? Hit me with some wood and I'll do a voice call with you!" A photo of some guy flexing in a mirror, shirt off. Riley glanced at it, unimpressed. Decent abs. Pathetic attitude. Dude was clearly strong enough to chop wood—why was he wasting time on this? She'd never mentioned her gender, so most people probably assumed anyone who'd gathered that much wood must be a guy. The messages reflected that assumption. Some women sent selfies too, trying to flirt their way into favor. Didn't matter. Shameless cut across all demographics. From the backgrounds in the photos, everyone seemed to be in different locations. But one thing was consistent: they all had trees nearby. The system must have arranged that—a new player perk. "A bunch of degenerates." Riley's face went cold. She changed her privacy settings to "Friends Only". Then she added a line to her trading post description. "No spam. Send junk, get blocked." Silence. Blessed silence. She took a breath, let the noise drain away, and focused on what mattered. "First-place upgrade reward..." She opened her inventory. Sitting there, glowing faintly purple, was a gift box. For more exciting content, please download the "JoyRead" app to continue reading.