BEFORE THE WORLD FROZE, I BUILT MY OWN KINGDOM

Chapter 2: Another Dimension

Ethan's mind hung in the blinding white void, completely stunned.

It took a long while before he forced himself to calm down. Slowly, carefully, he began to study this strange place.

Everywhere he looked, there was only endless white. It felt like a pure, boundless little world. Nothing lived here. Nothing existed here at all.

Then his expression tightened.

The notebook from before was floating there, perfectly still, right in front of him.

"This..." Ethan stared, unable to make sense of any of it.

He was only a mind here, a drifting thought with no body to speak of. Even so, he couldn't stop himself from reaching out to grab it.

The moment the thought formed, the notebook vanished again.

Before he could process his shock, the white world rushed backward around him, and his consciousness snapped back into reality.

He looked down. The notebook was already in his hand.

His fingers trembled.

He forced himself to replay everything that had just happened, step by step, and tried to recreate it.

Using the same method, he sent the sofa into that mysterious space. Then the wardrobe. Then the computer. Even the bed. With one thought, he slipped back inside.

Just as he expected, everything he had stored was floating quietly in the white void.

With another thought, the furniture reappeared in the real world, exactly where it had been before.

Only when he was certain he wasn't dreaming did the excitement truly hit him. His heart hammered in his chest.

"Could it be... I've awakened some kind of superpower?"

But he shook the idea off almost at once.

In three years of apocalypse, he had never heard of a single person with supernatural powers. How could an ordinary man like him be chosen?

If not a power, then what?

A virtual world? Some kind of advanced technology? A strange gift from beyond this world?

He gave up and let the questions fall away.

Who cares what it is? As long as it works for me!

He had already been reborn from the end of the world. Why should he waste time worrying about such small mysteries now?

*Ring-ring... Ring-ring...*

A sharp, impatient ringtone cut through his thoughts.

Ethan picked up the phone and frowned.

The screen showed a contact saved as "Boss." Even after three years in hell, he still remembered that man perfectly.

His name was Victor Hargrove, owner of a building supplies company, and Ethan's boss.

The "company" was really just a tiny shop with three people. Besides Ethan, there was only Victor and his wife.

As the only employee, Ethan had become the couple's personal workhorse. They made him do all the dirty, backbreaking jobs. They docked his pay for any excuse they could invent.

And what could he do about it? He was an orphan with no family and no one to stand behind him. He could only swallow his anger and stay silent.

It was as if the man had planned it all along. After every deduction, Ethan's monthly wages were barely enough to survive on.

Worse, Victor was holding back three full months of his pay, so Ethan had no leverage at all.

Victor's wife, Linda Hargrove, was no better. She treated him like a mule and never once spared him a kind look. Every time he went to ask her for his wages, she wore the face of someone who had swallowed a fly. It was as if Ethan had been eating her food for free, and she would have loved to pay him nothing.

Even after the apocalypse began, that woman had swindled away the little food he had left.

Remembering all of it, Ethan's anger surged.

He answered the call. Before he could say a word, Victor's squawking voice exploded through the speaker.

"Ethan Cole, do you know what time it is?! Customers are calling me and the shop is still closed! Get here right now! If that door isn't open in ten minutes, you're fired!"

"Idiot," Ethan said flatly.

Victor froze.

He could not believe it. The same Ethan who always lowered his head like an obedient dog had just insulted him.

His face burned with fury. "What did you say?! Say that again, you little bastard! Forget your salary this month!"

Ethan almost laughed. After everything he had lived through, did this man really think a threat like that could scare him?

"I said, you stupid dog, get lost. I quit. Talk back to me one more time and I'll kill you." His voice was ice, empty of all emotion.

In his three years of apocalypse, there had been blood on his hands. He wasn't pretending. He felt nothing as he said it.

Victor's spine went cold.

Ethan had always seemed timid, quiet, and honest. But Victor knew one thing about honest people: when pushed too far, they could do anything. And a young man with no family, no friends and no ties had nothing left to lose.

"You owe me three months of back pay, plus this month, for a total of [amount] dollars. You have three days to transfer it to my account, or you'll face the consequences."

Before Victor could answer, Ethan hung up.

---

Ethan had no time to waste on a man like Victor. His plate was full, and every minute mattered. A petty, insignificant bully wasn't worth tangling with.

Victor owed him four months of wages. If the man simply paid it honestly, that would be the end of it.

If not, Ethan would take him straight to the Labor Board and fight for every cent.

As for that threat to kill him, it was only empty talk. The world hadn't ended yet. Laws still ruled this society. Throwing his life away in a prison cell over someone as worthless as Victor would make a mockery of his second chance.

So he pushed the matter aside and turned his full attention to the extradimensional space he had just gained.

It was truly miraculous. If he could master it, it would be his greatest weapon in the coming apocalypse.

Ethan spent five full hours on it, from nine in the morning until two in the afternoon. By the end, he had a clear understanding of how it worked.

Put simply, it was an independent world that existed outside reality.

Its interior was vast, at least one thousand cubic kilometers. It was bound to his forehead, and he could store and retrieve anything inside it with nothing but a thought.

But it had limits.

There was no air in the space, and no flow of time. Only his consciousness could enter and leave. His physical body could not.

That crushed his hope of hiding inside it when the apocalypse came.

Still, no air and no time meant something else: anything stored inside would never spoil.

That thought brought him real comfort. In the frozen apocalypse, he would never have to worry about starvation or rotting food.

The wonder of it swept away the darkness of those three brutal years. He had been so absorbed in exploring it that he lost track of everything else.

Then his stomach growled, loudly and angrily.

It was already two in the afternoon, and he hadn't eaten a single bite since his rebirth.

In the apocalypse, food was everything. And yet the shock of coming back had made him forget it completely.

Ethan had survived three years of hell, and it was no exaggeration to say he had eaten worse than a dog in that time. Worse than a starving stray mutt in the gutter.

He remembered what clean, delicious food tasted like before the world ended. His throat tightened, and he swallowed hard.

He couldn't hold back any longer.

Like a man possessed, he bolted for the kitchen.

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