Reborn With Infinite Supplies System in Apocalypse

Chapter 6 - Monopoly

The city died faster than I remembered.

That was the first thing I noticed as I moved through the streets—how little resistance there was. In my first life, panic had stretched things out. People argued. Organized. Pretended order still mattered. This time, the collapse was efficient, like a body shutting down unnecessary systems to preserve the brain.

Shutters were half-lowered. Doors hung open. Glass crunched under my shoes.

I walked alone.

The air smelled wrong already—metallic, sour, layered with smoke and something sweeter beneath it. Rot is beginning its quiet work. Sirens were gone. Power flickered in patches, some buildings lit, others already dark, as if the grid itself were deciding who deserved a future.

I didn’t rush.

Hunger was there, a dull pressure in my gut, but it was controlled. I had eaten in Paradise before stepping out—just enough to steady my hands, not enough to forget the cost. The system allowed it once the points were paid. Generous, in its own way.

I passed a convenience store first.

The glass doors had been smashed inward. Inside, shelves were stripped bare, not methodically, but violently. Chips crushed into the floor. Refrigerators stood open, warm air spilling out, empty except for broken plastic and spilt milk. Someone had clawed at the counter drawers, nails leaving pale grooves in the wood.

Nothing edible remained.

I crouched and checked behind the counter anyway. Old habit. In my first life, I’d found half a candy bar taped under a register once. It had tasted like salvation.

This time, there was dust.

I stood and moved on.

A restaurant farther down the block had been looted more thoroughly. Chairs overturned. Tables shoved aside. The kitchen was a wreck of smashed cabinets and scattered utensils. The freezer door gaped open, its contents gone entirely.

I stared into the empty freezer longer than necessary.

In my mind, I saw myself from the first timeline, standing in a place just like this, fingers numb, staring at frost-coated metal and trying not to cry. Trying not to imagine food where none existed.

I closed the freezer door gently.

“Efficient,” I muttered.

I checked a pharmacy next. Then a small grocery store. Then, a vending machine someone had torn open with brute force, shattering glass to get at snacks that were already gone.

Everywhere I went, the answer was the same.

Nothing.

No food.

No water.

No reserves.

The city hadn’t been emptied over time. It had been stripped in hours, by desperation and instinct working together. People didn’t hoard neatly when they were afraid. They grabbed, fought, and fled.

And still, it hadn’t been enough.

I leaned against a lamppost and closed my eyes briefly, letting the truth settle fully into place.

This wasn’t just scarcity.

It was extinction.

Whatever supply chains had once fed this place were gone. Trucks weren’t coming. Warehouses would be overrun if they weren’t already. Even places untouched by violence would starve within days.

I opened my eyes.

In my first life, I had believed this realisation was universal. That everyone would understand, eventually, that food was the only real power left.

I had been wrong.

Most people didn’t understand until it was too late.

I crossed an intersection carefully, stepping around a body slumped against a traffic light. The man’s eyes were open, unfocused. His mouth was stained dark. A bite mark marred his neck.

I didn’t stop.

There was no need to check. I already knew.

Further ahead, a group of survivors argued loudly outside an apartment building. Four men, two women. One held a metal pipe. Another clutched a backpack so tightly his knuckles were white.

“I told you there was food here,” the man with the pipe shouted.

“You lied,” one of the women screamed back. “You always lie!”

I watched from a distance as the argument escalated, voices rising, bodies pressing closer. The backpack hit the ground in the struggle. Someone screamed. Someone else fell.

I turned away.

Not because I didn’t care.

Because I didn’t need to.

I walked for another hour, mapping the destruction mentally. Routes. Patterns. Which areas collapsed first? Which held out slightly longer. Which would become death traps when night fell.

Everywhere, the same truth repeated itself.

No food.

No water.

Nothing that could sustain life beyond a few desperate hours.

I slipped into an alley and leaned against the brick wall, letting myself breathe.

Then I smiled.

It wasn’t wide. It wasn’t joyful. It was small and precise, like a lock clicking into place.

“Monopoly,” I said quietly.

The word felt right.

In Paradise, shelves were full. Tanks overflowed. Crates waited patiently, untouched, preserved in a place where time itself had been paused. Fresh food. Clean water. Medical supplies. Things people would kill for. Had already killed for.

And only I could access them.

The system hadn’t given me abundance by accident. It had waited until the world burned away every alternative. Until scarcity was total. Until choice vanished for everyone else.

Only then did it open the door.

I pushed off the wall and started walking back toward the sealed campus.

The girls’ dorm complex loomed in the distance, walls intact, lights still on. An island of life surrounded by death. Hundreds of people trapped inside, fear mounting by the minute.

Fear-generated points.

Hunger sharpened it.

Hope twisted it into something richer.

I thought of Lina’s face when I told her the truth. The way fear had surged, raw and undeniable. The way the system had responded instantly, eagerly.

Emotion was the currency.

And food was the key.

I stopped at the edge of the street and looked once more at the ruined city, at the bodies and broken stores and empty hands.

In my first life, I had begged for scraps.

In this one, I would never beg again.

I would not hand food out to be kind.

I would not trade it for promises.

I would not waste it on people who offered nothing in return.

I exhaled slowly, the plan forming cleanly in my mind.

If no one else had food—

Then I decided who ate.