From Doormat to Doomsday Billionaire!

Chapter 31: Hail

The night before the end of the world, Rhys couldn’t sleep.

He lay on his back, staring at the ceiling, Duke curled warm against his ribs. Tomorrow, the sky would break. 

He felt like a pregnant woman in her tenth month, swollen with dread and anticipation, waiting for something that had already been promised.

But what if…

What if his rebirth had changed something? What if the world, now that he had returned to it, simply… didn’t end?

The thought circled in his head all night, until at some point he finally slid into sleep.

Morning arrived bright and clean.

Rhys barely ate breakfast. The closer the clock crept to nine, the tighter his stomach wound.

Eight o’clock.

Eight-thirty.

Eight-fifty.

Nine.

He sat at the window and looked up.

The sky was bright blue, a few soft clouds and not a single hailstone.

His jaw loosened almost in disbelief.

Did I actually stop it?

It would be ridiculous. But if the apocalypse had been canceled, it wouldn’t be the end of anything. He had enough supplies for hundreds of lifetimes and a pocket dimension. 

There was plenty he could still build.

Bang!

Something smashed against the glass.

Rhys jolted. He looked down.

A ball of ice the size of a fist lay on the pavement outside. It was dark green, glistening like old poison.

Hail.

His heart clenched. Then, slowly, relief flooded him. Right on schedule.

Bang! Another stone slammed into the roof with a metallic clang. Overhead, the clean blue sky began to darken at a terrifying speed. A thick fog rose from the ground.

Rhys smiled.

The whole fortress had been reinforced. Even a hailstone the size of a man’s head wouldn’t trouble it, let alone these. The windows were special glass. A hammer wouldn’t break them after hundreds of blows. And at the press of a button, steel shutters could descend and turn the house into a solid metal box.

The hail wasn’t falling fast, but a direct hit was no joke. A fist-sized stone to the head could crack a skull like an egg.

Outside, the neighborhood erupted.

Pedestrians struck by the stones screamed. Car alarms blared. Electric scooters howled in a dozen pitches. People ran in every direction with bags over their heads.

Even with the doors shut, Rhys could feel the temperature falling.

It had been a scorching summer. Thirty-two degrees, with people sleeping under the air conditioner. In one hour, the temperature in the house dropped to fifteen. 

By noon, it was five.

Everyone who had been in shorts at breakfast was digging sweaters out of drawers by lunch.

Rhys lit the fireplace and fed it a stack of logs. The room warmed past twenty degrees, nearly too much. He cracked the vent to let in a little cold air and humidity.

He sighed. So Comfortable.

Ding. Ding. Ding.

His phone buzzed. Messages from Nancy and Yvonne, both shocked by the sudden hailstorm, both thankful they’d been indoors when it began.

He chatted with them briefly, reassured them, and let them get back to their own business.

He switched on the television.

In his first life, he’d never had time to watch. The moment the disaster had hit, he’d been trapped in a routine of cooking, cleaning, and looking after a son who wasn’t his.

Now he could sit in his warm living room and watch the world scramble.

Nearly every station had interrupted its programming to cover the storm.

And they were all saying the same thing.

The hail is poisonous.

Experts on screen urged viewers not to touch the stones out of curiosity and certainly not to lick them. Exposure could cause anything from diarrhea to death on the spot.

Rhys switched to the national channel, the most authoritative. Three experts sat in a studio live, specialists in climate, chemistry, and astronomy.

The astronomer speculated that the poisonous hail might be linked to a strange burst of radiation from the sun a few days earlier. The climate expert suggested Earth might have entered an ice age early and warned temperatures could fall ten degrees below normal winters. The chemist had tested meltwater from the stones and couldn’t identify the toxin. All he could say was: Do not drink water contaminated by the hail.

All three agreed on one thing despite their arguments:

“Do not go outside. The stones were dangerous enough even without poison. Stay indoors until it passes.”

Rhys shook his head.

A nice hope.

In his last life, the hail hadn’t stopped for at least fifteen days. It had thinned, shrunk, and finally ceased, but very few households had prepared enough food and clean water to outlast it.

“You’ll all learn the hard way.” He thought.

He opened the dimensional space and took out several dishes: meat, shrimp, vegetables, soup. He ate them with rice at the dining table. Duke got a bowl of his own. Whatever Rhys ate, the dog ate too.

After lunch he worked out, because that was a habit he couldn’t drop. Then he took a hot shower. The house had a five-cubic-meter water tank. As long as he kept it filled, the taps, the showers, and the toilets all worked normally.

That evening, he finished the leftovers from lunch.

Despite having enough supplies for hundreds of lifetimes, Rhys hated wasting food. Ten years of famine had burned that into his bones.

After dinner, he dressed warmly, clipped a leash to Duke’s collar, and went down to the basement.

He checked the security cameras, unlocked a steel door, and stepped into a narrow passage that connected his house to the neighborhood’s underground parking garage.

The garage was packed.

Elderly residents had nowhere else to stroll. Dog owners walked their pets in tight loops. A few young men were bouncing a ball between the pillars. What had looked spacious a week ago was now shoulder to shoulder with people.

“Huh?”

Rhys stopped.

Four people were walking toward him through the crowd.

“Isn’t that my ex-wife’s family?”

Lexi led the group, tall in her heels, shoulders high, wearing her new stiff face like a mask. Michael, Britt, and Henry flanked her like bodyguards, their faces overflowing with flattery.

Rhys understood at once.

They’re after her compensation money.

He had lived with this family long enough to know how they smelled blood.

But they didn’t know that Lexi was already broke.

“Perhaps, I should help them discover the truth.

I hate to see people being deceived.”

Rhys thought, a slow smile spreading across his face