2026-09-13 23:10:32Nathan couldn't help but curse under his breath at the gleaming, useless faucet.
It was like blowing his entire savings on a brand new truck, only to find out at pickup that the engine was sold separately, and cost as much as the truck itself.
"Another five iron scrap? Plus sealant on top of that?"
He could feel his blood pressure climbing.
He'd just dumped every scrap of iron he had into building that outhouse. And now he'd learned the toilet, the shower, the sink, all of it was completely useless. Decoration. Nothing but decoration.
"Scam artists. This whole system's run by scam artists."
Still fuming, Nathan stomped out and kicked a loose rock across the dirt.
If he'd known this was some kind of bait-and-switch bundle, he never would've jumped the gun. Sure, he'd have to build the water system eventually. But eventually wasn't supposed to mean right now.
Now? Iron reserves: zero. Hot shower dreams: dead on arrival.
"Ugh."
He stood there in the dry heat a few minutes, letting himself cool off and think it through.
Yeah, he'd gotten played. But he still wanted that shower more than almost anything.
In a world where you could feel baked alive even sitting right next to shelter, the idea of standing under real running water was practically paradise.
"Iron scrap..."
"Alright. The only real currency I've got left, besides wood, is those remaining MREs."
He was running low on wood too. And after the bloodbath of day one, the survivors still standing were the ones capable of cutting their own. Wood was losing value fast, everyone had two hands, and if you were willing to work, you could always find more. But food? Actual ready-to-eat meals that tasted like something? That was the real scarcity out here.
"Guess I'm trading MREs for scrap. Already had a taste. Sacrifices have to be made."
Decision made.
Nathan headed back into the warm cabin, sat down on the bed frame, and pulled up the Server Channel again.
Dinner hour, so the channel ran a little busier than during the day. With the system's compensation crates handed out that morning, people weren't quite as desperate as before either.
"Man, that was brutal. Almost got dragged off by some kind of dog thing earlier. Legs still numb. When does this end?"
"Anyone see that STILLUNEMPLOYED guy? Hit Level 2 shelter today. Probably living it up in there right now."
"Ugh, don't even bring him up. We're out here roasting and he's probably eating like a king."
"Give it a rest. System handed out launch rewards this morning. We've got real bread for a few days. Bland, sure, but better than that brick from before."
Reading through it, Nathan raised an eyebrow.
"Sharp instincts, some of these guys," he muttered.
He ignored the jealousy and typed up a new trade post.
"STILLUNEMPLOYED: Selling Beef Stew MRE x1. Hot rice, real meat, ready to eat. Looking for Iron Scrap x3 or Sealant/Resin. DM offers. No lowballing."
The moment it hit the channel, chat went dead silent for half a second.
Then it exploded.
"Wait, did I read that right? Beef stew?!"
"Bro I forgot rice was a thing. He's out here eating meat?!"
"Where'd he even get that? Does Level 2 hand these out daily? That's so unfair."
"Wrong, I'm Level 2 too. Shelters don't give food like that. If anything they just burn more wood."
"This is gross. Guy's hoarding rewards and squeezing everyone dry."
"Quit whining. If you want it, trade for it. I've got spare iron, watch me spend it."
His DMs flooded instantly.
On a night when everyone else was choking down dry bread and lukewarm water, one box of hot, savory beef stew was basically a weapon of mass destruction.
What surprised him was how many others claimed to have hit Level 2 since that afternoon too. But from what they were saying, the first-achiever bonus was a one-time deal, only for whoever crossed the line first. A few kept mentioning random loot crates out in the wild too, which was strange. He still hadn't spotted a single one himself.
Nathan started sifting through the messages.
"NightWanderer: Got 2 iron scrap. That work?"
"Raddish: Need stone at all? I've got plenty."
He scrolled, filtering for the best offers.
Most people were offering scraps of this or that. Anyone willing to part with real iron this early had either gotten lucky with a find or already upgraded their own Core to Level 2.
Everyone was sitting on something different.
He kept scrolling until one message caught his eye.
"LoneWolf: Got 4 iron scrap and a tube of sealant. Two MREs and it's yours."
Nathan's eyes lit up.
Four iron scrap. Plus sealant.
That covered most of the water system's cost. And solved the sealing problem in one shot.
But two MREs.
He thought it over for a moment, then typed back.
"Deal."
To be continued.
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Chapter 15 - Flagged for Review
The attack came three nights later, and it didn't announce itself the way the last one had.No distant howling building slowly to a crescendo. No warning chime from the system giving him time to prepare. Nathan only noticed because the winch he'd left propped against the outer wall of the workshop scraped against stone, a small, wrong sound that shouldn't have happened entirely on its own in the still night air.He was up and moving before he'd fully processed why his body had already decided to react.Outside, in the thin margin between the Core's glow and the workshop's cold steel shadow, three shapes moved low and fast, closer to the ground than the creatures from his first night here. Not the same species at all. Longer limbs, patchy hide the color of the cracked earth around them, moving in a coordinated pattern that felt less like blind animal instinct and more like something closer to tactics."Warning: hostile group detected within camp perimeter."The alert came a full two se
Chapter 14 - Static on the Line
Back at camp, Nathan did something he hadn't done since setting his handle nearly two weeks ago: he actually tried to talk to someone, honestly, instead of just trading.He scrolled through his trade history until he found RUSTLINE, a survivor he'd dealt with twice now, always straightforward, no games, no spam messages disguised as trade notes. If anyone in this world might have noticed something as strange as what he'd found today, it would be someone paying close attention rather than someone just trying to survive the next hour at a time."STILLUNEMPLOYED: Random question. You ever notice your gear doing something it shouldn't? Like knowing things it has no way of knowing?"The reply took longer than usual to arrive, long enough that Nathan found himself watching the little indicator that showed a message was being typed, then not typed, then typed again."RUSTLINE: Why are you asking that."Not really a question. A statement dressed up as one, careful in a way that made Nathan's
Chapter 13 - Handwriting That Isn't Mine
The symbol nagged at him for two full days before Nathan finally admitted he needed to see it again in person, not just from memory replaying on a loop every time he closed his eyes.He geared up properly this time. Boots, jacket, the hatchet on his belt, and the folded map tucked into an outer pocket where he could reach it fast without fumbling through his inventory under pressure. The winch stayed behind at camp, too heavy to be worth hauling on foot for a scouting trip this far.He picked a direction from the map, a mark a little further out than he'd ever gone before, close to what looked like a cluster of low structures sketched into the paper's rough grid.The walk took most of the morning, longer than he'd planned for. The terrain shifted the farther he went, cracked flatland slowly giving way to broken slabs of stone jutting up at odd, unnatural angles, like the ground itself had buckled violently under something enormous a very long time ago, long before the countdown had ev
Chapter 12 - Six Thousand and Falling
Morning came the way it always did out here, gray light bleeding slowly into a sky that never quite committed to blue, the heat already pressing in before the horizon had finished lightening.Nathan checked the Server Channel before he'd even fully sat up, the habit worn into him by now like brushing his teeth used to be."Current Online Survivors: 4,401 / 10,000"The decline had slowed since the first brutal culling on day one, but it hadn't stopped, and something about the steadiness of that decline felt worse than a single dramatic spike would have. Five hundred more gone in the last two days alone, picked off one or two at a time by heat, by wildlife, by disputes between survivors that the channel only ever hinted at in vague, uneasy fragments.He scrolled through the chatter while he ate a piece of the pale bread from his supply crate, the taste still bland but at least familiar now."Anyone else's Core acting weird at night? Mine dims for like a second around the same time every
Chapter 11 - What the Journal Already Knew
Three days into the workshop's existence, Nathan finally had a night with nothing urgent left to do.The Core sat steady at Level 2, humming its low blue pulse. The water system ran clean. The outhouse no longer felt like a punchline. Even the workbench, still bristling with bolted-on power tools, had settled into something like routine.For the first time since arriving in the Shattered Flats, Nathan had a quiet evening with no fire to feed and no trade to close.He sat on the stool near the Core, pulled his jacket open, and finally took the journal out of his chest pocket.He hadn't opened it since the day he arrived. Not really. He'd flipped past the cover once, seen the blueprint for the Core, and gone straight into survival mode. There'd never been time to actually sit with it.Now there was.He turned past the first few pages, the ones he remembered from his old life, half-finished sketches of buildings he'd designed for IRONVEIL before the project died. A watchtower with a spir
Chapter 10 - Ahead of Schedule
The night stretched on. Wind rattled softly against the cabin's shutters, a steady, almost rhythmic sound.Wrapped in his robe, Nathan was like a kid in a hardware store on Christmas morning. He kept hauling tools over to the workbench, one after another, seemingly without a trace of fatigue."Drill. Bind."Angle grinder. Bind."Nail gun. Bind."Level... okay, can't bind that one. Fine. Set it aside."Reciprocating saw. Bind. Bind. Bind."Every time another piece of gear touched the workbench, the system chimed like it was having a small seizure."High-precision drilling equipment detected. Binding successful. Unlocked: Precision Drill Press Module.""High-impact fastening equipment detected. Binding successful. Unlocked: Pneumatic Nailer Integration Module.""High-speed grinding equipment detected. Binding successful. Unlocked: Multi-Purpose Grinder Module."The once-simple workbench had transformed completely.Its smooth timber surface was now buried under steel gears, linkage rods,
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