William Clark hurriedly said, “That countdown! It says ‘waiting for game activation’ on it!”

　　“What? This thing can be a game console?”

　　“Move, move, Mr. Harris has bad eyesight, let me take a look.”

　　Another roommate took the helmet and put it on, but after a while, just like the previous person, he took it off looking completely baffled.

　　“Nothing.”

　　“Let me try.”

　　Now all three roommates had tried it, and without exception, none of them saw anything.

　　They exchanged glances and, as if by agreement, all looked at William Clark with strange expressions.

　　“Bro.”

　　William Clark: “…What?”

　　“How about… you go to the hospital for a checkup?”

　　“Get lost!”

　　William Clark snatched the helmet back, cursing, and put it on again, refusing to believe it.

　　The pale blue small text appeared as expected.

　　[Waiting for game activation: 71 hours 17 minutes]

　　The countdown had advanced by 2 minutes.

　　And not only that…

　　At that moment, he suddenly realized that no matter how he turned the helmet, the countdown always appeared right in the center of his field of vision.

　　Even when he closed his eyes.

　　William Clark took off the helmet, looking as if he’d seen a ghost.

　　What the hell?

　　He really had seen a ghost!

Chapter 4 Brian Carter and the Lollipop

　　Two hundred years ago.

　　To be precise, in the year 2125, a war broke out on this prosperous planet.

　　Both sides in the war were determined to utterly destroy each other, using almost every means at their disposal.

　　The war lasted only three years.

　　But in just those three years, everything on the surface was destroyed.

　　A long nuclear winter nearly extinguished the spark of civilization; both sides succeeded in sending each other to hell, and also managed to bury themselves.

　　From then on, an era of wasteland began, even more desolate than the Great Depression.

　　Although two centuries have passed since that doomsday war, and the nuclear winter ended more than a century ago, humanity has not returned to the top of the food chain.

　　Rampant nuclear weapons, biological weapons, and even genetic weapons caused the planet’s entire ecosystem to evolve in extreme directions.

　　And those mutants known as “aberrants” became the main threat faced by the survivors struggling among the ruins.

　　For example, when Brian Carter first arrived in this world, he encountered a two-headed wolfdog—one of these aberrants.

　　But even among aberrants, there are differences in strength.

　　Mutants like the two-headed hyena, deformed by gamma rays, usually aren’t very strong; except for a lucky few, they’re even weaker than before mutation.

　　By contrast, the Eaters, Crawlers, and other aberrants created by biological weapons—mutated to the point their ancestors can’t be traced—are true monsters born for slaughter.

　　Their nervous systems are invaded by mutant fungi; during the day, they usually hide in ruins, sewers, or subways where no light reaches, only coming out to hunt when night falls.

　　The suburbs are much safer than the city.

　　Especially the far suburbs.

　　In the past five months, the most dangerous aberrant Brian Carter had encountered was a mutated brown bear. That thing was powerful, but its reactions were slow.

　　Before it noticed him, Brian Carter carefully avoided it.

　　The dawn’s faint light shone through broken concrete walls, casting shadows of rebar and debris onto streets littered with car wrecks and rubble.

　　It was now eight in the morning.

　　The time here was about twelve hours different from the East Eight time zone back in the real world.

　　Watching the two mutant hyenas wandering the street, Brian Carter gripped the pointed water pipe in his hand and carefully circled behind the ruins.

　　Although he was confident he could take them both out, there was no need to make trouble.

　　Besides, these beasts were smart, even using their own kind as bait—no one knew how many more were hiding in the shadows of the nearby ruins.

　　He followed a small path through the ruined neighborhood.

　　When he saw the sign for Bet Street Children’s Park, Brian Carter finally breathed a sigh of relief.

　　Ahead was “Bet Street”—the largest survivor settlement in the area, home to over a hundred families.

　　Before the war, this had been a children’s amusement park, with lots of rides and a wide lawn.

　　After the war, the military designated it as a temporary shelter, housing many citizens who had fled from the city center of Springwater City.

　　What happened to those refugees later was unknown, but over two hundred years later, this place had grown into a “small town.”

　　People used discarded plastic panels, awnings, wood, and metal frames to cobble together makeshift shacks on the bare muddy ground.

　　It looked just like something out of the “Era of Rogues.”

　　The amusement park’s walls served as natural barriers, and after some rough repairs, were reinforced with barbed wire and planks studded with nails.

　　At the center of the park stood a five-story classical castle, with a fairytale feel. But the paint had long since peeled off, and the side facing the city center had mostly collapsed, leaving only the northern half and a rickety lone tower.

　　Even if it was a fairytale, it was a dark one.

　　But even in its ruined state, this was still the “most luxurious” building on Bet Street.