NOVEL WEB Chapter 17
Chapter 17
Jake walked down the middle of a street, holding the semiautomatic shotgun at the ready. Except for the whistling of the wind and his footsteps, all was quiet. Yet he remained alert, constantly scanning his surroundings for any threats. Rusted old car frames lined both sides of the road. Tall grass pushed through the cracks in the asphalt, and long vines blanketed the building fronts. Jake continued to traverse the post-apocalyptic city streets, taking in the sight of abandonment and devastation.
It had been a couple of hours since he woke up in the building where he’d spent the night. For the next several minutes, he had been checking the building for threats, but just like the previous day, there were no enemies within the premises. Jake was relieved that no mutants had entered the building while he slept as he’d feared could happen. After returning to the second-floor room, he pondered for a bit and decided to use this place as his secret hideout. This room was as good for storing his belongings as any. He left behind most of the canned food and bottled water as well as the sleeping bag and the pump-action shotgun. After picking up a few essentials and packing them into his rucksack, he hoisted it onto his shoulders.
He took out his PDA and marked the location of the building on the map. The operating system of his PDA allowed him to input a short text limited to fourteen characters to use as a label. Taking advantage of this function, he labeled the pin as HIDEOUT.
He then noticed that there was an asterisk above the Diary tab, indicating there was something new in there. He tapped on the tab to open it. There were two entries in the Diary.
Day 1: The Awakening
It’s been six years since the event known as the Collapse turned Earth into a post-apocalyptic wasteland. I was fortunate enough to live through the Collapse, but now I have to learn to survive in this dangerous new world.
Jake recalled having seen the short piece of text yesterday. However, below it was a new entry that caught his interest. Jake proceeded to read it.
Day 2: Survival of the Fittest
Despite all the dangers that I encountered during the previous day, I managed to survive. I faced various types of mutants and had to defend myself against another survivor who tried to steal my supply drop before attacking me. In the evening, I found a good place where I could crash. Nothing woke me up or attacked me during the night. I slept like a baby and now feel refreshed and ready to handle whatever the new day may throw at me.
Just like the first entry, Jake hadn’t written it himself—it was added to the Diary of its own volition. And it’d apparently happened after Jake woke up, though he hadn’t heard his PDA emit any sounds to inform him about it. He racked his brain, trying to remember if the device had emitted a sound when the first entry appeared in the Diary. As far as he could remember, it hadn’t, but he wasn’t one hundred percent sure about that. He came to the conclusion that his PDA likely emitted audible alerts solely for critical notifications that required attention.
Giving the matter no more thought, Jake switched to the map. Those parts of the city that he’d explored yesterday were visible, but the rest of the city remained obscured by the gray mist. He placed a marker on a misted-over, unexplored part of the city and then stowed his PDA in his inner jacket pocket. Next, he picked up the semiautomatic shotgun. He briefly contemplated leaving the submachine gun behind to avoid carrying too much weight. Ultimately, he opted to bring both weapons, draping the submachine gun around his neck before exiting the building.
For the next couple of hours, Jake had been exploring the city. Every now and then, he took out his PDA to consult the map. However, he didn’t do it too often for fear of being jumped by mutants while he was distracted.
At some point, he entered a building that seemed vaguely familiar. He stepped in for a quick look. After taking a moment to glance around, he realized he’d indeed already explored this building yesterday. He recalled finding a spare pistol mag in one of the decrepit cabinets inside the room he was in. Without any particular reason, simply on a whim, he decided to look into the same cabinet. He made his way across the room and opened the cabinet door. When he looked inside, he was surprised to find an autoinjector resting on a shelf in the precise spot where the pistol magazine had been the day before.
This discovery made him think. Did it mean that the system reset this world at the beginning of each new day, causing all previously looted locations to refresh and new items to reappear in the same places? Since it was a game-like world, he wouldn’t be all that surprised if that was the case.
He decided to put this theory to the test and over the next hour, retraced his steps through the familiar streets he had explored yesterday. He entered the buildings he’d looted the day before and found new items in them, mostly ammo or canned food. It became evident that the system did indeed refresh this game-like world every twenty-four hours, causing new items to respawn in previously looted locations at the start of a new day.
The same went for mutants as Jake found out a little later on. When he arrived at the high-rise building where he’d completed a mission yesterday, he saw that the empty supply drop and the dead body of the survivor he’d killed remained in the same spots. However, when he entered the building, there were no dead bodies of the mutants he’d killed the day before. Instead, living ones wandered around the hall as if they had been resurrected, which might have been the case. Or the dead bodies had simply disappeared, and new mutants had materialized where the corpses of the previous ones had once lain.
Anyway, Jake left the building before the resurrected mutants could spot him. For a moment, he just stood on the sidewalk, contemplating the situation. That new items reappeared every new day was a good thing. Thanks to that, he would always be able to find ammo and food. Living as a scavenger wasn’t his dream life, but at least, he would be able to survive. But it was a bad thing that previously killed mutants respawned every day too. It meant he wouldn’t be able to find a peaceful place anywhere in this world, requiring him to constantly remain vigilant and prepared to fight monsters.
He then studied the map on his PDA for a moment. He located the marker he had placed earlier and oriented himself. With his bearings set, he resumed his trek to the unexplored parts of the city.