“Brother, she’s not clean,” Brian Cooper said. “And she only got close to you because you always manage to bring back game.”

“Who is clean?” Jason Carter replied calmly. “In this world, anyone who wants to survive can’t stay clean. Everyone is forced by life. Just keep your distance, don’t mess with her.”

In this town, a woman living alone couldn’t survive if she was too clean.

Jason Carter thought for a moment and said, “She never said she liked me or anything. Besides, are you sure she got close to me just because I can hunt? Isn’t it because of my good looks?”

“Brother, none of us have washed our faces in months. We all pretty much look the same…” Brian Cooper looked at Jason Carter speechlessly. “Weren’t you going to sleep? Why aren’t you asleep yet?”

“Just thinking about something,” Jason Carter explained simply.

Jason Carter wasn’t sleeping because he was exploring the secrets of that palace.

Inside that circular palace, the walls were lined with old wooden cabinets, like a giant exhibition hall. Only, the display shelves inside were all shrouded in black mist, making it impossible to see what was inside.

In the center of the hall was just a single table, and on the table sat a brass typewriter that had been obsolete long before the Catastrophe. The kind that clacked loudly when you typed.

This typewriter had only twenty-four brass keys, each engraved with a character: “Justice, Honesty, Sincerity, Friendship, Kindness, Wealth, Strength…”

You could say it was full of positive energy.

But it seemed like the typewriter was stuffed with an endless supply of parchment, and even if no one pressed the keys, it would start clacking away on its own. Now, there were two lines of small characters on it that had appeared that afternoon: “Task: Give your game to someone else; Task completed: Reward—Basic Skill Learning Blueprint, allows you to learn others’ abilities.”

He couldn’t tell if he was imagining this, or if there was some other reason. There were legends of people who could construct memory palaces, and inside those palaces, they could even reshape a fantasy universe according to the strength of their own will.

But Jason Carter felt that his palace… seemed a bit different from the descriptions of memory palaces…

But why did it want him to give his game to others? Did this typewriter want him to be a good person?

Be a good person in a world where even talking about morality is a luxury?

No way.

At that moment, his consciousness stood at the center of the vast palace, looking around at the “display cabinets.” There seemed to be items floating inside the cabinets, but they were obscured by darkness, and the black mist made it impossible for Jason Carter to see what was floating inside.

The display cabinets stretched all the way up to the dome of the palace, like a giant museum. Jason Carter walked up to one of the cabinets and tried to reach in and touch the object floating in the black mist, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t break through the resisting force of the mist.

This was a power he couldn’t access yet.

To find out if the palace really existed, Jason Carter would have to prove it through his actions.

Chapter 4: Luck Is Also a Kind of Ability

“I might have some kind of ability too,” Jason Carter said.

Sitting at the entrance of the shack, holding up the curtain and gazing at the post-rain night sky, Brian Cooper was stunned for a moment. “You mean…”

“I’m not sure yet, I need to test it,” Jason Carter sat down on the ground next to Brian Cooper. “There are rumors in town that some people can make a train travel from nothingness into reality. I never believed it before, but after meeting you, I started to believe a little. Now I might have a strange ability too. It feels weird.”

Brian Cooper’s ability was luck.

It was a very inexplicable ability. When Brian Cooper wished for Jason Carter to catch game, even if Jason Carter did nothing but walk through the wilderness, a sparrow would inexplicably fall right in front of him.

But this ability had backlash. Usually, after making a wish, Brian Cooper would get a persistent high fever, or suffer some other minor illness or misfortune.

That was why Jason Carter had wanted to protect Brian Cooper from the start. At first, he didn’t believe it, but later, he had no choice but to believe.

Suddenly, a shooting star streaked across the sky. Brian Cooper instinctively put his hands together to make a wish, but Jason Carter stopped him. “Don’t make random wishes. Something bad will happen.”

These days, Jason Carter rarely relied on Brian Cooper’s luck anymore. He said it was because he could hunt on his own now and didn’t need Brian Cooper’s ability, and Brian Cooper never argued.

The skinny Brian Cooper stared in a daze at the now-vanished shooting star. “Why do shooting stars fly so fast? What if people don’t have time to make a wish?”

Jason Carter thought for a moment and said, “Maybe it flies fast because it doesn’t want to hear your wishes at all.”

Brian Cooper turned to look at Jason Carter in a daze. “……”

……

Brian Cooper was Jason Carter’s night watchman, but that didn’t mean he had to stay up all night. Jason Carter would take turns with him, since Brian Cooper still had to go to class during the day.

This situation was exhausting. Not getting enough sleep was a big problem, but living in this environment, neither Jason Carter nor Brian Cooper had any other choice.

At dawn, Jason Carter took Brian Cooper out, carrying all their valuables with them, even his big iron pot.