After being busy for more than an hour, Brian Carter made over a dozen trips back and forth before finally moving all the usable supplies to his own place. The girl, having heard the commotion, had already come out and was standing at the bedroom door, blankly watching Brian Carter move things around, lost in thought.

After finishing, Brian Carter wiped the sweat from his brow and walked up to the girl.

“So, what do you plan to do now?” Brian Carter was genuinely glad to see a living survivor. However, he had no intention of letting the girl stay. Not to mention whether there were enough supplies, but just the fact that he was a mage was a secret Brian Carter didn’t want exposed to anyone. As for loneliness, in his previous life he’d lived alone as a lich for centuries, researching without seeing a soul, and never felt it was a problem.

“What to do?” The girl shook her head. “I want to go home and check on things first.”

“Oh, well then, take care.” Brian Carter smiled.

“Thank you for saving me. I’ll repay you. Here’s my phone number.” The girl handed Brian Carter a prepared slip of paper.

“No need, phones and such are useless now.” Brian Carter shook his head. “I suggest you find something for self-defense before you set out. There are zombies everywhere outside. The kind that bite people.”

The girl froze, looking at the bloodstains on the living room floor, then at the two corpses piled outside the open security door. Her face turned pale, and her big eyes filled with despair. She looked at Brian Carter pleadingly.

“Don’t look at me, I can’t help either. There are too many zombies out there.” Brian Carter waved his hands repeatedly. No way—he’d have to be out of his mind to help this girl get home. Well, maybe his mind had been rattled, but it was still working just fine.

The girl was silent for a while, then said,

“My name is Grace Thompson. The ‘妃’ from ‘concubine’. What about you, big brother?”

“I’m Brian Carter. To be honest, Li… Grace Thompson, it’s not that I lack compassion. Just go look out the window and you’ll understand.” Brian Carter spread his hands, indicating he was powerless.

“I live next door, you…” He hesitated, “You can come over to my place. I can tell you about these monsters. Maybe it’ll help you.”

“Okay, thank you, Mr. Carter.” Grace Thompson tidied her long hair and walked to the living room’s floor-to-ceiling window to look outside.

Brian Carter ignored her and went straight back to his own place, but didn’t close the security door. All the supplies he’d moved were piled into the bedroom he’d cleared out for storage. He needed to sort and organize everything, so he wouldn’t be unable to find something when he needed it.

The things from the couple next door had largely solved Brian Carter’s immediate predicament.

With liquefied gas, the large amount of rice could be cooked into meals. The vegetables, fruits, and meats in the fridge, however, left Brian Carter at a loss for what to do. Without a fridge, these things wouldn’t last more than a few days in this heat. The half-barrel of bottled water, if used sparingly, could last Brian Carter a week. Then there were thirteen bottles of various vitamins in the medicine cabinet, a large amount of antibiotics like roxithromycin, and cold medicine. Brian Carter was pleasantly surprised to find a large, nearly intact piece of sheepskin in the storage room. This material, so familiar from his previous life as a spell scroll base, was a godsend for Brian Carter now. The sheepskin he found was enough for him to make over a dozen spell scrolls, which would be a huge help given his current lack of sustained combat ability.

With the sheepskin scrolls, he could store excess mental energy from before meditation, and once he had the means to protect himself, he could devote energy to refining new spells. Although with his current mental strength he could only refine zero-level spells, even among those there were many extremely useful ones.

For example: Detect Poison, which could check if food or water was contaminated. It also worked on living creatures.

Create Water: each level could create two gallons, or nine liters, of water. A half-barrel of bottled water was enough for an adult’s drinking needs for a week. For Brian Carter, who was now facing a severe water shortage, this spell was absolutely vital.

As one of the top spellcasters, even though spells like Create Water were typically in the druid’s domain, Brian Carter had already developed similar spells in his previous life.

Chapter Four

Brian Carter plopped down under the living room window, the earlier inventory check having genuinely cheered him up. With the sheepskin scrolls, he now had more sustained combat power, and his chances of survival had greatly increased. But sheepskin alone wasn’t enough—he still needed special blood ink and a magic rune pen.

Blood ink had to be made from the blood of a magical creature, while the requirements for a magic rune pen were lower: he just needed to find a brush and cast the zero-level spell Magic Rune on it. Of course, each Magic Rune only lasted an hour, so it could only be used once per casting. But the main problem wasn’t that—it was finding a substitute for blood ink.

Brian Carter felt a bit helpless. Sitting on the floor, he brought over a cup of water, dipped his finger in it, and started drawing on the ground. He dipped his finger in the water frequently, leaving faint water marks on the floor, which, under arcane power, came alive and automatically arranged themselves into rows of calculation formulas, producing mysterious runes in a script known only to him in this world.