NOVEL WEB Chapter 242: [Extra] Alyssa Rosewood (part 1)
Alyssa Rosewood died in pain.
As she was succumbing to the plague-curse, the people around her killed her so that she wouldn’t become undead.
She didn’t struggle. She no longer wanted to struggle. She had been alone for so long: no parents, no brother, no family, no close friends.
She hated the world. She was done with it.
She felt into the blood-red darkness.
Vague thoughts swirled. Would she meet the Goddess?
Vague conversation flowed around her.
“Mistake in the system—”
“Unanticipated soul transfer—”
“Unable to return original soul back to body—”
“Just——no one will know—”
Alyssa’s eyes snapped open.
She saw a plain, flat white ceiling. Where was she?
The next moment, she had a huge headache as information flooded in.
She was in a book.
She was in someone’s body.
The book had a plague-curse in the future, except, they called it a “zombie apocalypse.”
She was in a female body.
Yet, according to the book, her future identity was a man, a man who would die heroically sacrificing himself. The book didn’t even know that the original person was “transgender”!
(What did transgender even mean?)
She laid in bed for a while, trying to ease her headache and sort through everything. She had to separate the original body’s memories from the book’s contents.
The body was currently fourteen years old. The original person was a ‘tomboy’, according to their parents. The parents disapproved.
Because of this parental disapproval, the original owner of this body had a cold, expressionless countenance, was generally withdrawn, and cared only about study.
Alyssa was a woman, so the sex of the body didn’t bother her. (Though, some things would need to change.)
However, she was more concerned about the future.
There was over a decade until the zombie apocalypse would break out, according to the book.
The book followed the perspective of a young man who gained magical powers at the start of the apocalypse, and step-by-step, rose to the top.
According to the book, she’d obtain ‘fire magic’ in the future, but right now, she had no powers. She couldn’t feel or access anything. Being unable to feel her magic felt like a part of her was missing.
Alyssa felt the residual pain of illness and death.
She didn’t want to die a ‘zombie’ again. She didn’t want to sacrifice herself.
She had to decide on what to do.
After integrating memories and understanding the world around her and thinking, Alyssa decided that she wanted to continue to live.
She wanted to grasp this opportunity that the Goddess (—or those voices) had given her. She wanted to become strong and powerful.
She gathered the original body’s money, dressed in feminine clothing (much to her new parents’ shock) and went out.
She came back with dyed-red, curly-permed hair, and a new outfit.
“What—what have you done?” her new parents said, their expressions not very good.
“I’ve decided on a new ‘English’ name for myself. Alyssa,” Alyssa said. “Or would you prefer that I return to wearing boys’ clothes?”
Her new parents’ faces became worse.
Alyssa wasn’t kind enough to care about these two strangers and continued to her new bedroom. The original body had complex feelings towards those parents, and they weren’t Alyssa’s own parents, so she didn’t care about being ‘filial.’
Making money was at the top of her agenda.
According to the book, the apocalypse would occur due to some terrestrial disease on the rocks in a meteor shower. This wasn’t something she could prevent, nor something she could convincingly warn others about. She wasn’t even sure the book’s events would play out—it could be tricking her.
And she had been tricked too many times.
Hence, she needed to build a path for herself, something that would benefit her regardless of whether the apocalypse happened; a path that wouldn’t appear eccentric.
Making money was part of that path.
She studied how to get money and make money, going from small to big.
After assessing her skills and the local job market, she identified that she was reasonably good at languages, music, styling, and upper-class manners, compared to others her age. These were skills she learned in her first life.
She then identified family friends who had once joked about having the original person tutor their younger kids and asked if they were interested. She declined those who wanted tutoring in mathematics and eventually secured two tutoring jobs.
Making her first bit of money was more satisfying than expected. It was her money, and she controlled it. It wasn’t in the hands of her aunt or uncle or that greedy Duke Schauss.
Her current legal age was too young to invest in the stock-market. She didn’t trust her new parents to open an account for her.
She had to be patient and build up her own funds.
Oh, she had compulsory school. After a cost-benefit analysis, Alyssa decided to study enough to pass. Grades weren’t important.
The classes weren’t easy—subjects like science and geography were completely new to her. However, at this age, it was simple for Alyssa to befriend all the children and cut through their little schemes.
Even the social politics of wealthy teenagers were barely comparable to the complex schemes and political undercurrents among the nobility in Alyssa’s first life. They admired something as little as Alyssa’s red curly hair.
After a few months, those wealthy teenagers invited her to one of their parties, and thus her network exploded in size.
Nobility was embedded in her soul. She showed no inferiority among them and gained acquaintances, contacts, friends, and admirers.
These people had more resources than her, and some of them were willing to spend, invest, or collaborate.
She moved from merely tutoring her family friends’ kids to becoming a small-time clothing stylist and designer for the local rich and wealthy. Using all the intricate designs from her first life and combining it with this world’s current aesthetic, she designed exquisite eveningwear, which were then made by others.
Through her connections, she travelled overseas, and her designs and fluent language skills attracted a lot of attention and appearance fees.
The years passed. Alyssa finished compulsory schooling with average grades, a large bank account, and several online business, accounting, and entrepreneurship courses under her belt. She also learned about off-grid living, self-sufficiency, and industrial and agricultural networks.
The moment she ‘turned’ 18, she entered the stock-market and invested in the few key companies she had carefully picked out.
Then, she opened her company. For now, it would begin with sustainability consulting.
With the end of school, her rich friends held big parties to celebrate. It was at one of these parties that she met him—
The book’s male protagonist.
And not only him, but there were also other familiar names, the men who followed the male protagonist, and the women who would later become part of his harem for various reasons in the book.
Alyssa made a little calculation in her heart. These people who followed the male protagonist were supposed to be smart, skilful, useful, and beautiful (in the case of the women).
Why couldn’t she poach them for her own company?
Alyssa calmly approached and greeted them, one-by-one, and got to know them.
The most interesting person was a particular young woman. She had recently graduated from university with a science degree, with a specialisation in sustainability.
Her English name was Lily, and Alyssa liked how she didn’t bother to politely smile.
“Have you found a job yet?” Alyssa asked her.
“I have some options,” Lily said.
“Then allow me to extend another offer,” Alyssa said. “I have a consulting company with a focus on sustainability. We want to help other organisations achieve their mandated sustainability requirements and more. I want you to be our chief technology officer.”
Lily raised an eyebrow. “Oh? And how big is your company right now?”
“There is only one person, myself, the CEO.”
Lily’s eyes swept down Alyssa’s body, and back up again. “You formed a technical consulting company without being able to do the research yourself. Who would trust you?”
“I believe in the division of expertise. I bring in the contracts, you take scientific lead.”
“And my hypothetical salary?”
“An appropriate portion of shares, a negotiable salary, and clothes designed by me. Join my team and you won’t regret it.”
Lily snorted. “I’ll think about it.”
“My email inbox is always open,” Alyssa said.
Alyssa found others in her network to join her new company. She used her network to secure the first few consulting contracts. Slowly, she poached various people from the male protagonist’s side.
When there was enough money, Alyssa bought a plot of land in the countryside and hired builders and a small filming crew. The builders would build, and the filming crew would film and document the process and upload it online to generate another revenue stream. She bought more and more of the surrounding land as money rolled in.
In Alyssa’s heart, she called it a “base”, but in public, she called it “a living example of a self-sufficient, secure, off-grid community living with no compromises.”
In just a few years, Alyssa’s company was big enough to be consultants for the government. They advised on improving the country’s sustainability, self-reliance in case of disrupted imports, preparations for future natural disasters.
Lily finally agreed to join at this point.
Alyssa didn’t let Lily join as the CTO though. She made Lily work in the research team, and for several months, they rarely saw each other outside of big company meetings.
However, Lily had strong work and presentation abilities. She soon took on bigger and bigger roles, and thus appeared in more meetings with Alyssa.
In addition, Lily started coming to the company gym at the same times as Alyssa.
The company gym was less of a typical gym and more of an adventure course and martial arts training area. It emphasised being able to run and quickly traverse built environments and being able to fight.
(All in preparation for the apocalypse, not that anyone aside from Alyssa knew that. Alyssa had forced herself to train physically, since she didn’t have magic yet.)
At first, they trained in different parts of the gym. But somehow, one day, Lily helped her with some weights, and then they practised combat together, and then they started racing through the adventure course area. Lily’s competitiveness made Alyssa improve.
Lily ascended in the company and spent increasingly more time with Alyssa both during work and outside of work.
They trained together, they networked together. The company grew and grew and develop numerous small industries on their growing plot of land, including the R&D and production of solar panels and wind turbines.
The number of interested men also grew and grew, but neither were interested.
Alyssa was focused on preparing for the apocalypse. She didn’t know what Lily was thinking, but she was secretly glad that Lily declined all romantic invitations.
Alyssa also vaguely kept an eye on the male protagonist.
It seemed that he was also building a base, which seemed counter to the book’s description of him at the start of the apocalypse. The book was probably a trick. He likely knew that the apocalypse was coming in the same way that Alyssa knew.
But Alyssa looked down on the male protagonist’s behaviour. Building a fortress, walls, and hoarding like that? How unsustainable. What would happen once the hoarded food ran out? What would happen once resources were used up or became broken?
In Alyssa’s mind, her base was akin of a fief; in her first life, fiefs were largely independent and self-sufficient.
The base needed more than high walls. It also needed agriculture, energy production, goods production, housing, schooling, water treatment and processing, and so forth.
As the years passed, her base employed more and more people. Her company became a role-model among others. Their buildings won sustainability awards. They secured larger consultation contracts, received government grants to expand, and helped others to improve their own self-sufficiency…
The date of the apocalypse loomed.
Alyssa’s base was now a small town. The property was ringed with fences and walls. There were gate houses at four points. Inside the property, there were production factories and residential accommodation, including residents’ long-term accommodation and several hotels and dormitories. Some of these factories and housing were built by other investors and organisations, which saved Alyssa money. External investors and business owners also built supermarkets and shops. There was a university research building, affiliated with the major local university, several company buildings, a library, and a hospital/medical clinic.
The entire property was powered entirely by their own solar and wind power generation, as well as bio-mass burning (i.e., how most of their waste was disposed of) and supported by numerous commercial batteries. All buildings had solar panels and independent water filtration systems.
There were massive warehouses storing raw materials, shelf-stable food, cloth, daily goods, solar panels, and more.
There were indoor greenhouses as well as outdoor fields.
Residents are encouraged to plant things at home, and the base provided materials. All residents also had to participate in at least one physical fitness activity—they could learn martial arts, boxing, hand-to-hand combat, archery, fencing, etc. This was advertised as improving physical fitness, self-defence, as well as a community activity to improve community bonding.
There were no firearms, but there were chainsaws and armoured vehicles.
And the community also had its own internal communication network and mobile tower and its own databases.
More would have been better, but this was better than nothing.
Alyssa was ready for the zombie apocalypse.
Dum dum dum! I’ve been thinking about Alyssa’s story line for a while 🤔🤔🤔
(I re-purposed some old ideas for a zombie apocalypse story 🤭 )
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