2026-06-22 12:40:49The glowing blue screen hovered before Ethan's eyes.
Nobody else seemed to notice it. Around him, survivors were panicking. Some cried. Others desperately called family members whose phones no longer connected. A few argued over food and bottled water. Yet Ethan could only stare at the floating screen. [Infinite Rebate System Activation: 45%...] His heart pounded. "What is this?" he whispered. Sophia looked up from beside him. "What?" Ethan quickly shook his head. "Nothing." The screen continued flashing. [60%...] [75%...] [90%...] Then a sharp ringing sound echoed inside his mind. DING! [Infinite Rebate System Successfully Activated.] A flood of information rushed into Ethan's brain. He nearly stumbled backward. When the dizziness faded, several lines of text appeared before him. HOST: ETHAN KANE LEVEL: 1 DESIGNATED FEMALES: 0 AVAILABLE REBATES: 0 SPECIAL ABILITY: INFINITE REBATE Another window appeared. System Rules 1. Gift supplies to designated female survivors. 2. Receive rewards multiplied by 100x. 3. Chance to trigger 1000x Critical Rebate. 4. Higher loyalty increases reward quality. 5. Expand territory to unlock advanced features. Ethan blinked. "This can't be real." The system immediately responded. [Would Host like a demonstration?] A yes-or-no option appeared. Ethan hesitated. Then selected YES. Another notification appeared. [Scanning nearby survivors...] Several seconds passed. Then the screen locked onto Sophia. Sophia Hart Age: 24 Profession: Nurse Loyalty: 42 Destiny Value: A Status: Eligible Designated Female Ethan almost choked. "What the hell?" Sophia frowned. "Are you okay?" "Yeah." He absolutely was not okay. A second notification appeared. [Would you like to designate Sophia Hart as your first Rebate Target?] YES / NO Ethan selected YES. DING! [Designation Successful.] [Current Designated Females: 1] [Reward Functions Unlocked.] For a moment, nothing happened. Then the system issued a new prompt. [Please gift an item to the designated female.] Ethan looked around. The supermarket shelves were still mostly stocked. People were too scared to loot properly. Yet. That wouldn't last. His eyes landed on a bottle of water near a checkout counter. He picked it up. Sophia watched him curiously. "What are you doing?" "You look thirsty." She blinked. "What?" "Take it." Sophia accepted the bottle. "Thanks." The moment her fingers wrapped around it— DING! A brilliant flash exploded inside Ethan's mind. Gift Successful! Item: One Bottle of Water Reward Multiplier Activated! 100x Rebate Triggered! Ethan nearly shouted. The screen transformed again. Congratulations! You received: 100 Bottles of Premium Mineral Water "What?!" Several nearby survivors glanced at him. Ethan quickly covered his mouth. The system opened a storage window. Inside was an enormous inventory grid. One section contained row after row of bottled water. Exactly one hundred bottles. Stored in some mysterious dimensional space. Ethan's breathing quickened. The system was real. Actually real. One bottle had become one hundred. This was insane. Sophia gave him a strange look. "You sure you're okay?" "I'm fine." "No, you're definitely not." Ethan ignored her. Instead, he focused on the inventory. A new message appeared. [Inventory Function Unlocked.] [Host may store and retrieve rewards at any time.] Ethan experimentally selected one bottle. The water instantly appeared in his hand. His eyes widened. He stored it again. It vanished. Sophia stared. "...Where did it go?" Ethan froze. Oops. "I dropped it." "You literally didn't." "You're imagining things." She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. Before she could question him further, a loud crash echoed through the supermarket. Everyone jumped. The barricaded entrance shook violently. A woman screamed. "They're trying to get inside!" Outside, dozens of infected had gathered. Their bloody hands slammed repeatedly against the glass. The doors groaned. Cracks spread across the surface. Fear swept through the survivors. "We need stronger barricades!" "Move the shelves!" "Quick!" People rushed to reinforce the entrance. Ethan joined them. Not because he wanted to help. Because if the zombies broke through, everyone would die. Including him. As survivors pushed heavy shelves into position, a middle-aged man suddenly grabbed an entire shopping cart full of supplies. Food. Water. Medicine. Enough for weeks. "I'm taking this!" The crowd exploded. "You can't take all that!" "We need to share!" "Are you crazy?" The man sneered. "Share?" He pulled a handgun from his waistband. Instant silence. Several people backed away immediately. "I found these supplies." "They belong to me." Nobody argued after that. The apocalypse had only begun. Already, people were turning against each other. Ethan watched quietly. This was how civilization collapsed. Not just because of monsters. Because humans became monsters too. A child's crying echoed nearby. The sound made the supermarket feel even darker. Sophia crouched beside the frightened little girl and comforted her. Ethan noticed something. Even surrounded by chaos, Sophia was helping others. Risking herself. Trying to keep people calm. Maybe that was why the System chose her. Another notification appeared. Sophia Hart Loyalty Increased. 42 → 45 Ethan blinked. Interesting. So loyalty could rise naturally. And if loyalty affected rewards... Then keeping Sophia alive suddenly became very important. A deafening crash interrupted his thoughts. The glass entrance shattered. The infected surged forward. People screamed. The barricade had failed. "The zombies are inside!" Panic erupted. The supermarket became a battlefield. And Ethan's first day in the apocalypse had only gotten worse.
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Wet Ground
The rain lasted three more days.By the time it finally broke, the side stretch had turned into a dark, sucking mire and tempers along the junction had started to fray. Lira’s people complained that Rhess’s fighters still treated every hand-over like a military briefing. Rhess’s people said nothing, which somehow made it worse.Ethan rode out on the twentieth morning with Sophia and Fenrir. The air smelled clean for the first time in days. Water still ran in the low folds, but the sky had the washed-out brightness that usually meant a short stretch of decent weather.They found the problem before they even reached the side stretch.One of the shared patrol pairs — a young fighter from the Stone Line named Pell and a lean woman from Rhess’s group — had gotten into it at the hand-over point. Nothing physical yet, but voices were sharp enough to carry.“—don’t need a lecture on how to walk a wet line—”“Then stop leaving your interval wide every time the ground softens. That’s how people
The space between
The rain came back on the seventeenth day, soft and steady, the kind that turned the ground into dark paste and made every sound travel farther than it should.Ethan stood under the edge of the Stone Line’s covered position with Lira and watched Rhess’s people move along their outer screen. Even in the wet they kept clean intervals. No clustering. No complaining. One of them slipped on a soft patch, caught himself without dropping his rifle, and kept walking as if the stumble had never happened.Lira pulled her collar higher. “They make my people look loud.”“They make everyone look loud,” Ethan said.Fenrir sat at the dripping edge of the roof, ears wet, eyes fixed on the side stretch. He had started doing that more often — not growling, not approaching, just watching like he was waiting for the newcomers to do something he could understand.Sophia came up from the main marker path, hood up, a small wrapped bundle under one arm. She nodded toward Rhess’s nearest fighting position.“I
Midpoint
Day sixteen of Rhess’s trial arrived without ceremony.Ethan rode out early with Sophia and Fenrir, the System already presenting the side stretch in clean, cold lines. The provisional threads had climbed with the same disciplined consistency as the first ten days — no surges, no soft spots, no internal fractures. In pure performance terms, Rhess’s people were the strongest trial group the corridor had seen. In every other term, they remained strangers living on the edge of the claim.Lira met them at the junction between the Stone Line and the side stretch. Her expression was tighter than usual.“They had contact again last night,” she said. “Six crystal-forms this time. Came in quieter than the first probe. Rhess’s people broke them in under four minutes. No signal to us until it was already over. Clean after-action report arrived before dawn. No losses. No requests for support.”Sophia frowned. “They’re supposed to light the pattern if the contact is larger than a scouting probe.”
Cold edges
By the tenth day of Rhess’s trial, the side stretch looked like it had always belonged to people who expected to be attacked.The fighting positions had been deepened and connected by low crawl trenches. Sight lines were clean without being obvious from a distance. The two carts had been broken down into a single reinforced storage bunker dug into the notch. Everything was efficient. Everything was joyless.Ethan stood on the rise with Sophia and Lira, feeling the provisional threads in the System. They were strong for this stage — tighter and more coherent than most groups managed by day ten — but they carried almost none of the warmth that had characterized Lira’s people or Yelena’s family. The System registered discipline, low internal friction, high external vigilance. It did not register belonging in the same way.Lira spat into the grass.“They don’t talk to my patrols unless they have to. When they do, it’s all situation reports and clean hand-offs. No extra words. My people ar
Side stretch
Rhess’s people did not waste the first day.By the time Ethan and Sophia rode out on the second morning of the new trial, the side stretch already looked different. The group had dug shallow fighting positions at the natural choke points, cleared sight lines without butchering the scrub for no reason, and set their two carts into a tight, defensible notch that could be watched from a single post. No banners. No wasted motion. The discipline was obvious and a little cold.Lira was already there when they arrived, standing on a low rise with her arms folded.“They’re competent,” she said without greeting. “That’s not the same as trustworthy, but it’s better than the alternative. They posted watches before they slept. They asked for the signal protocols once and had them memorized by the second rotation. No one tried to friendly-up to my patrols.”Fenrir paced the edge of the new stretch, nose working. The provisional threads in the System felt tighter than Yelena’s had at the same stage
Parley at the marker
First light found them at the outer marker of the Stone Line.Ethan arrived with Sophia, Fenrir, Lira, and two of her steadiest fighters. No larger show of force. The continuous line behind them was statement enough. The System sat alert in his mind, the full chain of anchors quiet and ready, already tasting the new presence on the edge of recognized territory.The strangers were already there.Eight people. Two carts with solid, well-maintained wheels. The animals looked tired but not starved. The group itself had the lean, controlled look of people who had been traveling hard and sleeping in shifts. They had stopped a respectful distance beyond the marker — close enough to speak clearly, far enough to show they understood boundaries.A woman stepped forward as the primary voice. Mid-forties, short-cropped gray-brown hair, a healed scar running through one eyebrow, clothes patched with the kind of careful stitching that said she expected to keep wearing them for a long time. She carr
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