We decided as a group to take an extra day to recover and plan our assault on the remaining Crimson Zones in the Northern Sector.

  I needed the space to think, so when Siva asked to share a bunk in one of the two-man cells, I waved him off. “Get your own, man” I said. “There’s plenty of room.” He grinned sheepishly and moved off.

  The Safe Room was quiet. The hum of its lights filled the silence, steady and low. For the first time since all this began, there was no screaming, no growling, no crunch of bone. Just stillness.

  Something had been nagging at me. I hadn’t been approaching this the right way. Sungei Buloh had shown me, charging in blind nearly got us both killed. If I kept rushing headlong into every fight, it wouldn’t just be me paying the price. Siva could die too. Andy’s dead friends had already shown there were no respawns in this world. No restarts. No save points.

  I sighed and sat on the bed. Let’s do this. I pulled up the stack of notifications waiting in my HUD. The familiar icons of loot boxes, unread messages and blinking stat prompts floated in the air before me.

  As I scrolled through them, a random memory surfaced. Back when I caught COVID and was stuck at home, I’d decided to 100% Batman: Arkham Knight. I hadn’t felt too bad, just bored. And for once, I took the time to actually learn the systems instead of button-mashing my way through. Upgrading gear, mastering combos, using the various gadgets during fights. That’s what finally let me beat the game.

  Maybe that’s what I’d been missing here too.

  I dove into my stats first. These were the adjusted numbers after factoring in the Urban Ranger bonuses:

  Strength: 14

  Dexterity: 21

  Constitution: 14

  Intelligence: 31

  Wisdom: 22

  Charisma: 14

  I frowned. In Pathfinder, Intelligence mostly meant more spells per day, not much else. But here? Did it really affect anything? My second-highest stat was Dexterity, which, in tabletop terms, would boost my accuracy and evasion. That at least made sense.

  What bothered me was Constitution. Fourteen... That was way too low. That’s why my health bar was so damn short. I needed to get that up. Quickly.

  I swiped over to my skills and traits.

  Passive Skills

  ? Environmental Awareness: +10% damage and accuracy when using terrain features (walls, debris, vehicles, street furniture).

  ? Trap Mastery: Can improvise snares or environmental traps from common objects; +5% chance to immobilize enemies.

  ? Urban Camouflage: Can blend into urban settings; +10% evasion when stationary or using cover.

  ? Hide in Plain Sight: Reduces detection chance when stationary or moving slowly.

  ? Environmental Manipulation: Minor ability to alter surroundings for tactical advantage (shift debris, block paths).

  ? Pathfinder: +10% movement efficiency through difficult terrain or obstacles.

  ? Dodge: Passive bonus to evade attacks; scales with Dexterity.

  Active Skills

  ? Calculated Shot: Aimed ranged attack that ignores partial cover; bonus damage increases with the number of nearby enemies.

  ? Trap Deployment: Instantly deploys a makeshift trap that slows or damages foes.

  ? Overwatch: Stay hidden while tracking enemy movement; gain insight into patterns and weak points.

  ? Rapid Extraction: Move quickly through terrain—walls, rooftops, obstacles—to evade or flank.

  Inventory-Linked Ability

  ? Mechanical Handling: Can manipulate or repurpose mechanical devices (like the Scrap Battery Pack) for efficient use or storage.

  Debuffs (Permanent)

  ? Paperwork Mentality: Occasionally pauses mid-combat to calculate probabilities, losing minor actions.

  ? No Close Combat Love: -10% melee damage unless using improvised environmental weapons.

  ? Obsessive Planning: Maximum effectiveness only when attacking from prepared positions; rushed decisions suffer penalties.

  Alright. So, I was a stealth-ranged fighter. That much was clear. And it fits where I wanted to go with this.

  I thought back to the Lockjaw fight. To the pit trap, the timing, the lure. It wasn’t exactly genius-level planning, but it worked. The kind of plan that came from playground instincts more than from high Intelligence.

  When I was a kid, we used to dig pits in the sand and covered it up with sticks and newspapers and watch our friends fall in, before they changed the playground flooring to that weird rubber material for the more sensitive kids, and let’s be real, the even more sensitive parents.

  Now here I was, doing the same thing to a monster the size of a bus.

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  Still, I couldn’t help wondering how much of that had been me… and how much had been this 31 Intelligence stat quietly guiding the thought process.

  And why hadn’t Andy’s team thought of something similar? They’d been trapped for two days.

  Maybe high stats didn’t make you smart, it just made you aware.

  I didn’t have much in terms of equipment and loot. I have my chainmail shirt disguised as a long-sleeved tee, my longbow, and a dwindling number of arrows, no matter how many I tried to salvage after fights. A dagger. A busted PMD battery. A couple of health and mana potions.

  I realized I’d never even used a mana potion. I hadn’t cast a single spell. Then again, I didn’t have any spells. Another thing to fix... soon.

  Then my eyes hovered over an item in my inventory I’d completely forgotten about. My old lightsaber hilt from home.

  A pang hit my chest. I caught my breath and focused on it. A tooltip appeared.

  [Lightsaber – Inactive. Approach a Blacksmith to activate.]

  What the fuck…

  I’d stashed it in my inventory just to get it out of the way. Could I… actually turn it into a weapon? And where do I even find a blacksmith?

  I’d have to ask Andy later if he knew about that blacksmith thing. For now, I moved on and opened my achievements and loot boxes.

  As expected, there were plenty of stupid achievements, things like [Taking a Shower] and [Nut Collector]. That one was for the nuts I’d received from the squirrel fight. But among the noise, a few stood out.

  [Sniper – Awarded for hitting 80% of small, moving targets. Your accuracy with ranged weapons increases by 20%.]

  [Trick Shot – Awarded for hitting a target using terrain advantage. Your Environmental Awareness skill has increased to Level 3.]

  [Trap Mastery – Skill advanced to Level 2. You can now detect traps in your surroundings. Higher levels will grant the ability to disarm and recover them.]

  Huh. I had expected more, but this was a decent start. The description for the Trap Mastery skill gave me pause, though. We’d only been fighting feral mobs so far. Did that mean there were intelligent ones ahead, things smart enough to set traps? Or... No. I don't want to go there.

  I swallowed at that thought and moved on. Time to open the loot boxes.

  The items materialized one by one, each flashing briefly in front of me before sliding neatly into my inventory.

  [Good Nut x200 – Consuming one increases Health by 30% over 5 minutes.]

  I blinked. Seriously? I’d thought it was a joke prize when Siva opened his loot box after the squirrel fight. But now, seeing the regeneration rate, thirty percent over time instead of a flat heal, I could already see how this might be more useful than a direct potion in drawn-out fights.

  I let the rest of the boxes open.

  [Ring of Boar’s Hide – Increases Constitution by 10%.]

  [Spellbook: Haze – Creates a blinding haze over a five-meter radius for (0.5 x Intelligence Level) minutes. Enemy melee attacks have a 20% miss chance, and enemy ranged attacks have a 50% miss chance. Allies within the haze are unaffected. The spell centres on you and moves with you. Cost: 5 Mana.]

  [Scroll of Heal x3 – Restores user to full health. Can also be used on a party member within touch range. Cost: 10 Mana.]

  [Potion of Haste – Increases movement speed by 10% for (0.5 x Intelligence Level) minutes.]

  [Deadeye Scope – Increases accuracy with ranged weapons by 10%.]

  [Trap-Making Kit – Includes basic tools for constructing traps.]

  I eyed the Ring of Boar’s Hide in my inventory hesitantly, but figured the benefit was too good to pass on. I retrieved it and put it on my right pointer finger. The health bar in my HUD immediately extended by ten percent.

  The spellbook was a literal book when I materialized it. It dropped into my hand with a satisfying thud. When I focused on it, a new prompt shimmered across my HUD.

  [Learn Spell? Yes / No]

  I selected Yes, and warmth spread through my chest like liquid caffeine. My HUD flickered briefly. I checked my menu and found the spell neatly listed under the Spells tab. I moved it into my hotlist.

  The Deadeye Scope looked like something a watchmaker would wear, a single monocle with a thin band of wire meant to wrap behind my head. I tried it on. Not uncomfortable, but I probably looked ridiculous. Still, between this and the Sniper skill, my accuracy had just gone up twenty percent. It will just sit in my inventory until I need it. It too got added to my hotlist.

  Finally, I examined the Trap-Making Kit. It came in a matte metal box with a faded camouflage pattern. Inside were a spool of tripwire, a pair of scissors, a camping axe, and five slim tubes that, on closer inspection, turned out to be signal flares, designed to launch skyward when a trap was triggered.

  Now that was useful. Especially if we ever needed to guard our backs or set up an early warning system against anything sneaking up behind us.

  On top of all that, I’d also received 1,550 Gold and a small mountain of Health Potions.

  I frowned. We could still eat hawker food. Andy said the supermarket shelves were fair game for scavenging. And now we were being topped up with Health Potions like some safety net. The system clearly wanted to keep us alive, just long enough to throw us into more lethal fights.

  A shiver ran down my spine as the image of the bodies at Sungei Buloh crept back into my mind.

  What do you want from us?

  With the achievements and loot out of the way, I’d officially hit Level 4. What had Eva said again? I’d get to choose a subclass at Level 5. If we made it through the next few days, that shouldn’t be a problem.

  Siva came over and knocked playfully on the metal cell door.

  “Knock, knock. So… what’s the plan?” he asked.

  He had on a new pair of boots. I almost asked him about it, but stopped myself. Everyone was entitled to their own privacy here.

  “Tonight, we rest,” I said. “Tomorrow, we head out early and grind the lower-level mobs near the prison. I’ve got a few on my map already, they’re just circling the area. Then at night, well, whatever passes for night here, we move on to the next Crimson Zone.”

  Siva nodded. “Which one?”

  “Birds Paradise.”

  He gave a wry grin. “Great. Always wanted to visit the new bird sanctuary. Can’t wait to get dive bombed by exploding pigeons.”

  I actually laughed. A real, long, laugh.