Glacial Monopoly: My Gifts Return Hundredfold

Chapter 1: The Price of a Calorie

At minus sixty degrees Celsius, steel doesn't just get cold. It becomes carnivorous. Touch an exposed subway rail without gloves, and the metal will skin your hand alive.

Alex Ryder kept his hands buried deep in the pockets of his duct-taped parka. He sat in the darkest corner of Platform 3, listening to the wind howl through the collapsed ventilation shafts above. It sounded like a dying god.

Four months. The sun had disappeared behind a veil of atmospheric ash four months ago, taking the old world down with it. The government had promised rescue. Then the radio towers froze. Then the screaming stopped. Now, there was only the ice.

His stomach gave a dull, hollow throb. The sharp pain of hunger had vanished a week ago; now, his body was simply eating its own muscle tissue to keep his core temperature up. Slowly. Methodically.

Hunger was a calculator. Every step cost energy. Every word spoken cost heat.

Alex pulled a crumpled silver foil wrapper from his chest pocket.

Two dense, chalky protein bars. Eight hundred calories. His entire net worth. Enough fuel to keep his heart beating for another forty-eight hours if he lay perfectly still.

Across the dark platform, a wet, rattling cough broke the silence.

It came from a huddle of filthy blankets near the edge of the tracks. Elena Vance was sitting there, pressing a seven-year-old boy against her chest. She was shivering violently.

Elena was a med student before the freeze. She knew exactly what was happening to the kid's lungs. But right now, all her anatomical knowledge was useless. She was burning her own dwindling calories to keep a dying kid warm.

Stupid. Inefficient.

But... it was the only human thing left in this concrete tomb. The other survivors on the far side of the platform were already looking at the boy not with pity, but with the hollow, predatory stare of starving wolves.

Alex stared at the foil in his hand. He breathed out a cloud of white frost, stood up, and walked over.

The crunch of his boots on the ice drew Elena’s attention. Her eyes were sunken, surrounded by bruised, exhausted flesh. She tightened her grip on the boy, expecting the worst. In the apocalypse, a man approaching you in the dark usually meant violence.

Alex stopped a foot away. He tossed the two bars onto the blanket.

Elena flinched, staring at the foil as if it were a loaded gun. "Alex... what is this? You need these."

"The kid needs them," Alex said, his voice scraping like gravel. "Don't argue. Just feed him."

He didn't wait for her gratitude. In the wasteland, "thank you" was a useless currency. He turned to walk back to his corner, calculating how many hours he had left before the lethargy became permanent.

Then, his vision glitched.

A sharp, electric blue light flared in the bottom left corner of his retinas. It wasn't a hallucination born of starvation. It was hard, geometric, and perfectly focused.

[ Gift Confirmed: Protein Bar x 2 → Elena Vance ] [ Multiplier Triggered: 187x ] [ Reward: Military-Grade MRE (3000 Cal) x 374 ] Status: Deposited in Maintenance Locker 04.

Alex froze. His breath caught in his throat.

He blinked hard, rubbing his eyes with his gloved hands. The text didn't fade. It hung in his vision, cold and absolute, functioning like a tactical HUD.

Three hundred and seventy-four.

He slowly turned his head toward the rusted steel door of Maintenance Locker 04, located thirty feet down the platform. It was a utility closet he had personally scavenged and emptied two weeks ago. There was nothing inside but dust and dead rats.

Without looking back at Elena, Alex drew his hunting knife and walked toward the door. Every instinct screamed at him that this was a trick of a dying brain, but the blue text in his peripheral vision remained stubbornly real.

He gripped the frozen handle. It was stuck fast by a layer of solid ice.

Alex braced his boots against the wall, took a deep breath, and pulled with everything he had left.

With a harsh screech of tearing metal and shattering ice, the heavy door gave way.

Alex stopped breathing.

The locker wasn't empty. It was packed from floor to ceiling with heavy, olive-drab vacuum-sealed bags. The stamped black lettering on the front of the nearest package was unmistakable: U.S. Armed Forces - Meal, Ready-to-Eat. Menu 4: Beef Stew.

Three hundred and seventy-four of them. Over a million calories.

For a second, the sheer impossibility of it threatened to break his mind. Magic? A glitch in reality? Alien technology?

Alex forcefully shoved the questions down. In the apocalypse, philosophy didn't keep you alive. Calories did. And right now, he was standing in front of the largest stockpile of food within a hundred miles.

He reached out, his hand trembling slightly, and grabbed the nearest bag.

It was heavy. Dense. Real. The thick plastic crinkled under his grip.

He looked back down the platform. Elena was desperately breaking off tiny pieces of his old, chalky protein bar, trying to force them into the coughing boy’s mouth. She had no idea that the rules of the world had just been rewritten.

Alex shoved his hunting knife back into its sheath. He grabbed three of the heavy MRE bags, slung them under his arm, and walked back to their meager campfire.

He threw them at Elena’s feet. The heavy thud echoed through the silent station, sounding like dropping bricks.

Elena stared at the massive olive-drab packages, recognizing the military markings. Her breath hitched. She slowly raised her eyes to Alex, absolute shock written across her pale face.

"Where..." Her voice cracked. "Where did you get these? The station is empty. We checked everywhere."

"You trust me?" Alex asked, his face completely expressionless.

Elena looked at the boy, then at the mountain of calories sitting on the dirty blanket, and finally nodded. "Yes."

"Then don't ask questions," Alex said, sitting down across from her. He pulled one of the bags toward him and ripped open the heavy plastic seal. "You need something, you tell me. Now, pay attention."

He pulled out the main entrée pouch and the Flameless Ration Heater (FRH) sleeve.

"These don't need fire," Alex explained, his voice low and steady. He poured a tiny splash of melted ice water into the heater sleeve and slid the beef stew pouch inside. He folded the top over and set it on the concrete.

Within five seconds, a violent chemical hiss began to echo in the silent subway station.

Thick, white steam poured from the vent hole of the heater. And then came the smell.

In a world that had smelled of nothing but frozen dust, ozone, and decaying flesh for four months, the sudden, overwhelming aroma of hot beef stew, rich gravy, and sodium was like a physical blow.

It hit the back of the throat. It made the salivary glands scream.

Elena gasped, covering her mouth with her hands as tears instantly welled in her eyes. The little boy stopped coughing, his head snapping toward the steaming pouch like a compass needle finding north.

But Alex wasn't smiling.

He pulled his hunting knife back out and rested it casually across his thigh. His eyes drifted away from the food, piercing the deep shadows of Platform 2.

In the freezing air, heat travels fast. But scent travels faster.

In the darkness, the rustle of dirty sleeping bags breaking apart sounded like dry leaves. Three sets of hollow, predatory eyes snapped open.

The wolves had smelled the meat.