The temperature indoors had not changed much during the night, but outside, the wind and snow had grown even fiercer.
The emergency systems that had not completely lost power brought no brief flicker of comfort to the darkness. Instead, they laid that deep, blood-chilling blackness bare before every survivor.
The emergency lights in the stairwell flickered with a murky green glow, like will-o'-the-wisps.
Outside, snowflakes the size of ping-pong balls drifted down from the sky, piling layer upon layer across the ground.
The infected had also started seeking shelter in any place they could find.
Through doors and windows, through manholes and vents, they poured into the interiors of buildings.
The horde, packed so tightly it seemed endless, roared and rushed toward places people imagined were safe. Thousands upon thousands of heads formed a black sea, surging like a tide.
Kyoko discovered all of this when the noise woke her at seven in the morning. The distant sounds of gunfire and artillery from farther away also made her realize there were still other survivors somewhere in the city.
She had no idea whether those people were friend or foe, but she sincerely hoped they would survive.
Even from far away, she could hear the restless dead smashing glass and hammering at doors and windows.
Kyoko felt a little uneasy. The fifteenth floor was comparatively safe, but against a horde of this size, height was no real obstacle.
If some special infected mixed in with them and found her, she would probably be finished.
The banging and crashing from downstairs was getting clearer and clearer, and the monsters inside the building joined in the revelry. One kind of noise rose after another, until the racket started wearing on her nerves.
"Damn it. First thing in the morning and they pull this crap. Bastard monsters."
Still cranky from being woken up, Kyoko ate her breakfast in small bites, in a thoroughly foul mood.
"I really do eat more than I used to. Before, just a little would've been enough."
Only after putting away two chicken legs, a packet of pickled mustard greens, one bottle of cola, and a packet of instant noodles did she finally feel barely full.
It was probably because her body had changed. After all, the physical abilities Kyoko had displayed in yesterday's fight were clearly better than before.
Even at her former peak, she would not have been able to fully reproduce yesterday's performance, let alone now, after turning half into a shut-in.
Just as she was beginning to suspect that the virus might have modified her body, a voice rang out inside her head.
[All reward points from yesterday have been credited. Please check them, Host.]
Since Kyoko had read plenty of system novels before, she was not overly shocked. She immediately began experimenting with ways to open it.
"System, open system. System, are you there? Open sesame…"
After trying several methods and failing to bring it up, Kyoko temporarily gave up studying the system. There was a crowd of lunatics right outside her door; one wrong move and she would be doomed.
Instead, she decided to move more of the large furniture from 1503 and 1504 over to the safety door and block it off completely.
While she was at it, she would throw all the spoiled fresh food out the window and see if it might lure away infected that had already reached the upper floors, thinning out the high-rise zombies a little.
As for how she would get downstairs in the future… that could wait until the infected retreated.
A person had to live in the present. Thinking long-term was important, yes, but staying alive was the capital that made everything else possible.
It was only after she finished working that the system interface finally popped open in front of her.
[Apologies, Host. This system's core is incomplete, most of its functions are damaged, and the intelligence program responds slowly. Please understand.]
A system notice appeared, and Kyoko realized it had not been her fault after all. The system itself was just old and broken.
"So… will you get optimized later?"
[No. The only reason I ended up like this is because of you. I was originally supposed to go to someone else, but your reincarnated soul smashed straight into me and shattered me. I'm just one of the better-preserved pieces, so I had no choice but to bind to a person like you.]
Kyoko felt slightly awkward. So she had apparently snatched away someone else's system. Still, now that she had snatched it, it was hers. She would make good use of it on behalf of its original host.
"Don't worry. I'll take good care of you."
The text on the system screen suddenly began flashing by at high speed. Kyoko could almost hallucinate the sound of machinery spinning furiously.
[Host, I'm crippled, and my brain runs slow, but I'm not stupid. You're the culprit here! Give me back my happy life in that slice-of-life crossover world!]
Seeing the system on the verge of an emotional breakdown, Kyoko hurried to console it.
"Now, now, System. There's an old saying: marry a chicken, follow the chicken; marry a dog, follow the dog. Since you're my system now, just stay with me and I'll treat you well."
[Get lost! Give me back my white-haired loli! You violent medium-breast woman!]
[Forget it. Let's hurry up and teach you the rules, assign you missions, and help me earn enough travel fare to go home.]
Watching the interface rapidly change, Kyoko knew they were finally getting to the important part.
[Reward points can be obtained through the following means: killing organic lifeforms, exploring unknown areas, completing system missions, and system recycling.]
[The Host may use reward points to purchase items from the system shop.]
After getting a rough understanding of the system's functions, Kyoko eagerly opened the system store.
"Why is everything so expensive? Huh? There's even a random shop."
The prices in the system shop were far beyond what Kyoko had expected with her current balance of only 105 reward points.
"A three-day supply pack for one person costs 120 points? A disposable hazmat suit costs 50, and a Japanese 9mm M57A Nambu pistol costs 400—ammo sold separately?"
At that, the system spoke up again to refute her.
[How is that expensive? Setting aside production costs, setting aside transport from my warehouse, setting aside my profit margin—if you think it's expensive, maybe ask what your problem is first.]
[Besides, I was originally a system designed for slice-of-life hosts. The fact that I can even dig up useful items for you from my warehouse is already impressive enough.]
Kyoko stopped talking.
After all, asking a specialist in the wrong field to moonlight as a post-apocalypse survival system really was too much.
"My bad, System. So what can I even do with these 105 points right now?"
[Check the random shop. Maybe there's something you can afford there.]
Kyoko opened the random shop, and sure enough, there were items she could actually buy.
"Perfume, 15 points. Effect: removes body odor caused by prolonged exposure to harsh environments."
"Sun hat, 15 points. Effect: prevents sunburn from a blazing sun."
Neither of those was something Kyoko urgently needed. But one item in particular, though she could not afford it, was something she desperately wanted.
[Weather Forecaster: can predict the weather for the next three days. Purchase price: 300 points. Each use after purchase costs 20 points.]
That was an excellent item.
With human society collapsed, weather observation systems would naturally have fallen apart as well. If she had this, Kyoko could do all sorts of things.
It could help her with weather warnings, for one. She could even set up a radio station, sell information for profit, and help more survivors in the process.
"Three hundred points, huh? What's the reward point acquisition rate like? And can random shop items be reserved?"
[Ordinary infected: 1–10 points. Organic lifeform x1. Special infected: 100–500 points. Exploring an area grants points based on its danger level. System missions also grant points.]
[These are the points the Host can currently obtain safely. More dangerous methods will not be disclosed for now.]
[Items in the random shop can be reserved, but only one may be kept.]
"That sounds simple enough. Do you have any missions suitable for me? And reserve the Weather Forecaster."
[Yes, Host. Yes indeed. This mission was practically tailored for you.]
[Scavenger: Explore one unknown location. Progress: 0/1.]
[Combat Practice: Kill at least 50 ordinary infected. Progress: 3/50.]
Completing those two missions would net her 500 points in rewards. The difficulty was moderate, and counting today, she still had eight days to finish them. Kyoko accepted them without hesitation.
But only afterward did she realize that, at present, completing them by normal means would be rather difficult.
The stairwell was packed with infected, and she herself had already blocked the exit, making it hard to reach other floors. That was when she remembered a documentary she had once watched.
She could try using ropes to reach lower floors.
From above, the apartment building where she lived had a hollow square design. Between Apartments 02 and 03 and the corridor in the middle, there was an inner light well roughly four by six meters in size. With that distance and the help of some tools, Kyoko could absolutely reach other floors.
Her survival gear did include climbing carabiners and a twenty-meter nylon rope.
But the snow outside was falling so hard that outdoor work would still be difficult, so Kyoko decided first to loot 1501, the apartment she had not gotten around to yesterday.
"There probably won't be any problem. Yesterday's mess was huge, and it still didn't stir up anything inside that unit. Looks like there shouldn't be any danger."
Thinking that, Kyoko pulled out the wire and repeated yesterday's trick, but even after fumbling around for a while, she still could not open the door.
"What the hell? I definitely turned the handle."
She could not understand what was going on. The lock was open, yet the door would not budge.
A bad feeling crept over her. Apartment 1501 was not simple. Could there be survivors inside who had reinforced the door? But if that were the case, why not just lock it completely and keep the outside from opening it at all?
Clearly, something was off.
She went back to her own apartment, fetched a crowbar, and forced open the heavy security door. Under the pressure of her prying, some things that felt almost like ropes snapped apart.
Carefully, she slid her blade through the crack in the door first, then pushed it open—
and saw vigorous, flourishing green life covering the entire living room, like all of creation was awakening in spring.
"These are plant vines? This many? So the virus can infect plants too? That's insane."
From the doorway, Kyoko saw an infected plant that had claimed the entire room. Vines sprawled everywhere, from ceiling to floor. God only knew how the thing had grown indoors in winter, with no soil, no sunlight, and no suitable temperature.
Not knowing how dangerous it might be, she retreated back outside.
"System, can you give me a solution?"
[No. That entry in the encyclopedia hasn't been unlocked yet. No strategy available. Go kill one yourself.]
At that moment, Kyoko noticed something wrong.
It looked as though those vines had wrapped around something.
"Those colorful patches look like clothes… Don't tell me that thing has the original family living here wrapped up inside it."
As she said that, a wave of rotten stench came wafting out. Kyoko decided this thing could not be left alive.
She began thinking about how to deal with it. As things stood, cold weapons would not be very efficient.
She tried hacking at the vines a few times and found them surprisingly tough.
"This won't be easy to deal with using a blade. Looks like I'll need something else."
She decided to burn the thing.
As for putting out the fire, there were still several buckets of undrinkable water left in 1503 and 1504. And even if she failed to extinguish it, the freezing temperature outside and the building's fire-resistant partitions could serve as a last line of defense.
It just meant the supplies in this apartment would be a total loss.
At her current level, she was not willing to risk that much just to loot an ordinary residence.
She hurried to the kitchen of 1503, grabbed the cooking oil, soaked some clothing to make decent tinder, and soon had a proper ignition bundle ready.
She also cautiously dragged over the corpses of the monsters she had killed yesterday, planning to burn them all too. That would save her from having to clean them up later, and cremation would probably also help prevent the spread of the virus.
After another round of busy work, the preparations were complete.
"Whew. Now I can finally play with fire."
Red firelight fell across Kyoko's face, throwing a terrifying shadow on the wall behind her.
She lit a strip of cloth with the lighter, then tossed it into 1501.
The moment it landed, the situation changed.
The scorched vines began writhing. Kyoko hurriedly splashed in more cooking oil to feed the flames, then threw in cardboard and anything else combustible. A wall of fire roared up, forming a safe barrier in front of her. The burning tendrils thrashed wildly, but they could not reach her. All they could do was howl and die in the blaze.
"That should do it. Shame there'll be no supplies left to loot."
She shut the door tightly.
Standing in the shared corridor outside 1501, Kyoko looked out the window. Thick smoke was pouring from 1501's windows, glaringly obvious against the cityscape. It would very likely expose the fact that someone was here.
"Whatever. The whole of Nihonmatsu has places burning anyway. It's not like someone can really cross a horde just to come assassinate one poor survivor like me."
She comforted herself like that, hoping her worries would not come true.
The crackling sounds from inside and the slowly rising temperature actually cheered her up a little, washing away some of her darker mood.
And then she suddenly had an excellent idea.
Even while 1501 burned, Kyoko had not been idle. It was still only ten in the morning, and there was plenty left to do.
For example, she could make herself a handy window-breaking tool in preparation for working at height.
And while she was at it, she might as well make the whole thing bigger.
A household hammer. A rope around sixteen meters long.
Bound tightly together, they became a crude meteor hammer.
Once it was finished, Kyoko swung it hard and hurled the improvised glass-breaker from the fifteenth-floor corridor, smashing the windows on the thirteenth floor.
The shattering glass was piercingly loud. The horde immediately became agitated, and Kyoko could already hear those wretches clanging up the stairs.
[Host, what exactly are you doing now? I can tell you clearly that your noise has already attracted no fewer than a hundred monsters.]
[There is a real possibility of drawing in special infected. Also, infected killed indirectly may not count toward your reward total.]
"Relax. I know what I'm doing. Special infected can apparently overturn military vehicles, sure, but things are already like this—so why not gamble? Even if I get fewer reward points, it's fine."
An unhealthy flush colored Kyoko's face as she rested her chin on both hands and looked down from the fifteenth floor toward the lower levels.
The infected above were slamming at windows too, and every so often one would fall, sending up plumes of snow.
Swing after swing, the meteor hammer smashed corridor windows on the fourteenth, thirteenth, twelfth, eleventh… all the way down to the ninth floor.
Once she judged the timing about right, Kyoko took all the remaining cooking oil she had prepared and poured it down through the light well windows onto the infected crowding the lower floors.
Some of the infected spotted the living human above and went mad, shrieking up at her from the corridors on the thirteenth and fourteenth floors and from the stairwell by the fifteenth. The prize pool was still growing. Some infected tried climbing higher in hopes of throwing themselves at Kyoko, but without exception, they fell back down.
Watching the number of infected keep increasing, Takashiro Kyoko was overjoyed.
She even brought out the liquor bottles she had found yesterday and threw them down too, along with a huge amount of paper.
When it came time to throw down her textbooks and winter homework, Kyoko did it with even greater enthusiasm.
That irritating but relatively harmless provocation only drove the infected into a greater frenzy.
At last, Kyoko hurled down a burning cloth bundle.
With a boom, the flames caught on their clothes and hair. Drenched in cooking oil and strong liquor, the infected might as well have been meat laid out on a grill. In a moment of particularly wicked humor, Kyoko even sprinkled some of the neighbors' seasonings onto the horde.
Now it really did look like a barbecue.
After finishing all that, Takashiro Kyoko returned to her own apartment and went out onto the balcony to eat.
As for the other rooms—well, sorry about that. The apartment next door was running a little hot right now.
Since she had already started so many fires, she no longer bothered to be overly cautious. So for lunch, she put a smaller pot inside a larger iron pot and cooked two packets of instant noodles, adding the last chicken leg to make a sort of chicken noodle soup.
After eating her fill, she drank another two bottles of cola while watching the infected burn, occasionally throwing in more flammable materials to keep the fire going.
The flames grew larger and larger.
Some infected that caught fire even attacked others of their own kind, causing a chain reaction. Some, acting on instinct, tried to flee out into the snow, but the floors were so jammed with bodies that there was nowhere to go. Others fell from the upper levels.
Dense black smoke billowed upward. The smell of roasting flesh mixed with a host of other harsh odors. It was a grand barbecue in full swing, and the falling snow looked almost like salt being sprinkled over the meat.
[I have to admit, Host, you and Curtis LeMay both seem to have a lot of Japanese acquaintances.]
"Hahaha. Fire's the only method I have right now for killing large numbers of infected at once.
Honestly, I don't even want to be doing this. It's dangerous for me too. One mistake and I'll turn into barbecue myself.
Still… if this method is so simple and effective, why didn't the military use it?"
Kyoko answered the system's teasing with a laugh.
[I can tell you a little of what I know. I actually woke up a month ago, and I spent some time roaming around your internet. As for government action… I can only say this: people can make plans, but success depends on heaven. With internal unrest and natural disasters happening together, even the machinery of the state has a hard time functioning. There have been large-scale operations against the infected, but not here in Fukushima Prefecture. And beyond that, the outbreak was simply too sudden. Besides, ordering the use of devastating incendiaries on one's own city is not an easy decision for any policymaker to make.]
"I see. In that case, has the random shop refreshed yet?"
[No. The refresh time is the same as the reward credit time: 8:00 AM the following day.]
Seeing that answer, Kyoko did not dwell on it further.
Next, she needed to check on what had become of 1501.
By now, the fire below had turned most of the infected into at least half-charred husks. Presumably the infected plant in 1501 had fared the same.
Kyoko reached out with her gloved hand and touched the security door of 1501. Even through the tactical glove, she could still feel the intense heat.
When she opened the door, a wave of hot air rushed out. The ash from the burned interior was stopped by her face shield, sparing her from getting a faceful of soot.
Since the temperature was still too high, she went to the apartments of her two helpful neighbors in 1503 and 1504 and took the trays from their freezer compartments.
There was still water in the trays from partially melted ice. Kyoko planned to use it to cool the place down.
The sound of splashing water rang out, and under its dousing, the temperature inside gradually dropped.
Only then did Kyoko get a proper look at what she had done.
The once well-furnished apartment had become a blackened ruin. Expensive furniture was reduced to wreckage. Everything that had once been there was now only a phantom of the past.
Kyoko stepped into the home of her last neighbor. Her boots thudded heavily on the charred black floor. Everything that had once existed there was now carbonized.
Living room, kitchen, bathroom, master bedroom, spare bedroom, shower room—nothing useful had survived.
The plant that had once sprawled across the entire interior had not even left behind a complete scrap.
Unlike the settings in novels from her previous life, these infected did not leave behind any strange crystals. Kyoko let out a slight sigh of relief.
"If this really were the kind of apocalypse where everyone had bizarre superpowers, surviving would be way harder."
Tightening her grip on her weapon, Kyoko left 1501.
One great fire had all but wiped out the danger on her floor. There were no supplies left to scavenge, but the speed of the cleanup made up for it.
The sun was about to set. The horde had suffered heavy losses in the blaze, and aside from some occasional pounding on doors and a few lucky stragglers, the nearby floors were basically cleared out.
Still, because of all the noise, some infected from neighboring apartment buildings had braved the heavy snow and gathered below Kyoko's building.
Kyoko planned to buy some equipment from the system tomorrow, then use her drone to lure the infected away when the snowfall lightened.
Cradling the beautiful dream of wiping out every infected in the neighborhood in a single day, Kyoko drifted off into yet another sleep.
Today's suffering was over.
What would tomorrow bring?
January 9 arrived.
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 178)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 115)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League ( 126 )
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter110)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter108)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter82)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter144)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 65
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 70
From Junkman to Wasteland 66
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 46
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 99
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 65
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 95
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass 99
The Way the Umamusume Look at 68
Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 92
Naruto: Weaving the Future, Be 65
Zenless Zone Zero, but Kamen R 76
Multiverse Crossover: The Perf 66
My Cyberpsycho Girlfriend 65
Uma Musume: The Dark Trainer 47
Uma Musume: A Calamity Born fr 44
I, a Reincarnation-Loop Player 43
The Violent Girl Group Is Beat 26
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