Otherwise, he wouldn’t have had the chance to stand here and act cool.

“Falcon?! That big?” Gale exclaimed in surprise, completely overturning his understanding of birds.

Abbot swallowed hard.

“Because of gamma rays?”

“Not just gamma rays. Viruses, bacteria, genetic weapons... all sorts of factors have led to everything we see today. Of course, mutants are only one of the threats we face. In some cases, people can be even more dangerous than them.”

Brian Carter glanced up at the pine tree in front of the four players and continued.

“That falcon just now probably made its nest in this tree. No wonder it didn’t leave even with so many of you around.”

Generally speaking, birds rarely provoke ground creatures much larger than themselves. Their diet mainly consists of mutated cockroaches, or mice and squirrels.

That beast may have flown away, but not far—most likely waiting to die on a nearby tree.

These pointed pipes, though not very penetrating, have natural hollow grooves inside that act as blood channels. As long as you get stabbed, it’s almost certain death.

Not just birds—even if a person got hit, it would be very hard to stitch up the wound.

Ethan Reed lowered his head in shame.

“Sorry... I was too focused on chopping wood and didn’t notice.”

“No need to apologize,” Brian Carter looked up, “Bird eggs are a good thing.”

They’d have a treat soon.

……

Brian Carter’s judgment was quickly proven right.

Under a crooked tree, he found the dead black bird.

He bled it with a knife, plucked it clean, then tossed it into an iron pot, set it on a stove made of bricks, stuffed dry branches and dead leaves underneath, and lit it with the matches he’d bought earlier.

Smoke began to rise.

Before the water boiled, Brian Carter took the scalded bird out of the pot, skewered it on a steel rod, and roasted it directly over the fire.

He also roasted those bird eggs.

No salt, no spices.

But even so, it was far better than the half-cooked green wheat porridge.

“Is this thing... edible?”

Looking at the “mutant” on the iron rack, Ethan Reed instinctively felt repulsed, but the aroma kept tempting him, and he couldn’t help but swallow.

You can actually eat in this game!

For a foodie, this was an unexpected surprise.

It made him instantly feel that all the hard work that morning was worth it.

“Once it’s cooked, you can eat it. I’ll tell you which things aren’t edible.” Brian Carter slowly turned the spit, making sure every side of the food was evenly heated.

Opportunities to eat wild game on the wasteland were rare.

Even if you occasionally caught something edible, it would spoil quickly due to lack of preservation methods.

Here, salt was even scarcer than electricity.

Especially for survivors living in inland cities like Springwater City, it wasn’t realistic to use large amounts of salt to preserve food.

As for refrigerators, rumor had it that the mayor’s castle had one, but Brian Carter had only heard about it and never actually seen it.

Of course, survivors weren’t completely without options.

For example, the neighboring survivor outpost—Mr. Brown’s farm—produced a type of tobacco rich in tar and aromatic compounds like aldehydes and ketones. Even without salt, smoking food with it could extend its shelf life by several months.

“Administrator, may I ask how much wood we actually need?”

Waiting for the food to cook was torture.

To distract himself from the food, Long took the initiative to start a conversation.

Hearing the question, Brian Carter casually replied.

“As much as you can chop.”

The players looked at each other, not very motivated.

At first, Brian Carter didn’t pay much attention, but then he suddenly realized something.

They were “players,” in other words, “outsiders.”

Unlike himself, who had crossed over to this world, they could leave at any time and didn’t have the same sense of survival urgency.

Even if he told them how important it was to stockpile wood, they wouldn’t truly understand what that meant.

Their identity as players meant they saw things differently. Even if they didn’t mind grinding, it was hard to keep working at something with no reward.

If there’s a task,

There should naturally be a reward.

“Let me think...”

Brian Carter stroked his chin, lost in thought.

Suddenly, he came up with an idea.

“At four o’clock this afternoon, we’ll tally up today’s results.”

“For trees as thick as an arm, every meter gets 1 contribution point. For trees as thick as a thigh, every meter gets 2 contribution points—”

But before Brian Carter could finish, the four salted fish holding their bowls suddenly shot to their feet.

“Administrator, I suddenly don’t feel very hungry.”

“Me neither.”

“There’s still a while before we eat, I’ll go chop a couple more trees!”

“I suddenly feel like chopping something!”

Brian Carter: “...?”

He hadn’t even said what those contribution points could be used for yet...

Chapter 9: Gene Sequences and Player Levels

The amount of work completed in the afternoon was nearly three times that of the morning.