CHAPTER 76: THE INEVITABLE

They were merely pawns in a vast, incomprehensible game. But pawns could become more than just that, couldn’t they? He wasn’t ready to give up, never.

Around the continent, people’s reactions varied. Some survivors collapsed into despair, some grew desperate to please the System, and there were very few who silently vowed to turn the game to their own advantage.

But all of them knew one truth:

The age of humanity had ended.

The age of the Disaster and Chaos had now officially begun.

Silence followed, one that felt heavy and suffocating.

Ru Feifei clutched her sword tighter, her hands trembling. He Xun lowered his head, the weight of responsibility settling on his shoulders like an iron yoke. Around them, the survivors whispered in fear, some weeping quietly, others already arguing about what to do next.

****

Ling Yu stood in the shadows of the ruined street, her slender form half-hidden by a crumbled wall, as the holographic projection dissolved into the air like mist. The horned man’s final words echoed in her ears, chilling and familiar:

"Obey the System. Survive, fight, and entertain. Those who resist will perish."

The moment the hologram vanished, the atmosphere of the world shifted. It wasn’t the same hushed confusion as when the first wave had ended. This was something sharper, darker, like a knife that dragged against stone.

All across the ruined cityscape, she could hear it. Shouts. Cries. The sound of fists pounding against locked doors. Gunshots and the clang of metal against metal.

The inevitable had begun.

Ling Yu knew it better than anyone else.

In her last life, she had witnessed this exact moment. The System’s announcement that resources would be required before the next wave wasn’t a mere guideline; it was the catalyst for human greed, desperation, and betrayal to bloom in full.

The monsters had not even claimed the most lives in that period. Rather, it was humans who became heartless and scarier than the monsters.

She closed her eyes briefly, forcing herself to recall the details.

Back then, after the second wave ended and the horned man’s cruel introduction was broadcast to the world, the System had issued a survival task. It sounded deceptively simple:

[System Task: Collect sufficient resources to last through the next wave.]

[Time Limit: 72 hours]

[Penalty for Failure: Forced Entry into Random Dungeon]

On the surface, it seemed like something anyone could manage. But when food was scarce, when water supplies had been poisoned by monsters’ blood, when medicine was already depleted by the wounded, the scramble for survival had transformed ordinary civilians into ravenous wolves.

Groups were formed overnight, temporary alliances that broke apart the moment greed outweighed loyalty.

Grocery stores, warehouses, abandoned houses, anywhere that might have held food or supplies turned into battlegrounds. Knives were drawn, awakened abilities flared, and lives were lost over a single can of beans.

Ling Yu still remembered it: the smell of smoke and blood clinging to the air, the sight of people bludgeoning each other with broken chair legs, mothers fighting over medicine while their children cried at their feet.

And this history was about to repeat itself.

But this time, Ling Yu had an advantage.

Unlike the others, she was not stumbling blind into this chaos. She had lived it once before, and she knew exactly what would happen.

She had no intention of joining the scavenging frenzy or fighting tooth and nail over scraps. If she drew too much attention, the wrong kind of eyes might fall on her, especially his.

The strongest hunter in the world to ever exist. The one who knew more than he should. He was a man who had once haunted her past life like a distant phantom, always searching for something. If it were him, then he would notice the anomalies faster than anyone.

No, Ling Yu had to be careful.

She glanced at the dimming sky. Evening shadows stretched across the ruined city, deepening the air of unease. Already, distant screams echoed like a chorus of despair.

She stood in the empty street, the cracked asphalt beneath her boots littered with old papers fluttering in the evening wind. Around her, distant shouts and the sound of hurried footsteps echoed. Groups of survivors were already banding together, scavenging what little food and supplies they could pry from shattered stores and abandoned homes. Some worked in uneasy cooperation, while others had already given in to base instincts, robbing, striking, even killing for the sake of filling a sack of rice or a jug of water.

"It begins," she murmured softly, her voice laced with irony.

The system’s penalty was clear: those who failed to gather resources before the third wave would be erased. Not slain by monsters or starved, but completely erased from existence. Removed as if they had never existed, their souls crushed beneath the rules of this nightmare game.

Ling Yu adjusted the strap of her pack and kept walking, her silver eyes calm and unreadable. Unlike the others, she didn’t panic, didn’t shout, didn’t run from store to store in desperation. She already knew how the next sequence of events would unfold. The horned man’s words were a script she had memorized from the ashes of her last life.

As she was thinking and walking through the street aimlessly, a faint coo vibrated from within her cloak, muffled by the folds of dark fabric. Ling Yu’s steps paused as she glanced down. Hidden against her chest, inside the pouch she had fashioned from torn cloth, the small, round creature stirred.

The fluffball was no bigger than a rabbit, its fur impossibly soft and faintly glowing in the dim light, like starlight caught in threads of silk. Its large, watery eyes blinked up at her, reflecting her pale face like tiny pools.

The system had warned her when she first found it in the basement that it was "a source of unknown danger." But danger was relative. Compared to the hordes of zombies and abominations waiting in the shadows of the world, this fragile little creature hardly qualified.