Building My Empire in the Frozen Apocalypse | Read Free Preview

Read chapters 1–3 of Building My Empire in the Frozen Apocalypse free. Unlock the full ebook when you are ready to keep going.

Chapter 1 — The Countdown Ends

It was the year 2027, and the end of the world was now less than an hour away. "00:59:23"
Riley Carter stood on a ladder with a screw clenched between her teeth, an impact driver in her hand, securing the last window panel in place.
A month ago, that timer had just appeared out of nowhere, hanging in the corner of everyone's vision like it had always been there.
At first, people wrote it off as some kind of mass hacker prank. The government fed the media soothing statements in an attempt to keep things calm, but there was no way to talk down the panic as prices kept rising and supplies were held in a monopoly in real time. News outlets might spin whatever narrative they wanted, but no one could argue with the price of eggs.
For a while, it was a frenzy. People cleaned out grocery stores like locusts. The government did what they could—price caps, purchase limits, reassurances from the podium—but none of it mattered. The cost of living kept climbing, and bit by bit, the country started coming apart at the seams.
Online, it was a circus. Some people posted doom-laden predictions. Others openly celebrated the thought of the world finally burning. A few just seemed relieved they wouldn't have to clock in on Monday.
In that final hour, things got truly ugly. Both on the streets and on social media, it was chaos.
Some people figured why not went out with a bang? If the world was ending, they'd spend their last hours doing every reckless thing they'd ever fantasized about.
Others, paralyzed by fear of whatever was coming, scrambled for anything they could hoard. Supplies. Weapons. Gasoline. Didn't matter what, as long as they had more of it than the next guy.
Most people just wanted to be with the ones they loved.
Riley didn't have that luxury anymore.
Fresh out of community college, she'd lost both her parents in a highway pileup eighteen months back. The only thing they'd left her was the family hardware store, a cramped little place wedged between a laundromat and a taqueria. She'd been running it solo for just over a year when that d*mn countdown appeared overhead.
At first, she'd thought maybe an apocalypse wouldn't be the worst thing. Maybe there'd be something on the other side. A reunion.
But then she thought about her folks. They'd doted on her. Made her feel like the center of their world. And even though she'd grown a thick skin since going it alone, feeling indifferent to the world, she knew what they'd want. They'd want her to fight. To stay. She was the only piece of them still left in this world.
People always say you aren't really gone until the last person forgets your name.
As long as she kept breathing, kept carrying them with her another day, they weren't truly dead.
Riley spat the screw into her palm, face calm, the impact driver whirring as she sank another fastener into the reinforced frame.
"Flour's three hundred a pound now, and you can't even buy it straight—they make you tack on a bunch of other junk you don't need just to get it," she muttered to herself, shaking her head.
When that timer first flickered into existence, Riley had done something smart. She'd liquidated everything. Converted every dollar she could scrape together into supplies. Unfortunately, by the time she hit the stores, inflation had already done its damage. Her savings didn't go nearly as far as they should have.
Any cash that was left went toward tools. If the world was ending, she thought they could be useful.
Riley pressed the last sheet of thick insulation foam into the window frame, seating it flush against the reinforced plywood beneath. The impact driver snarled as she buried the screws. Then she reached for her pneumatic glue gun—a satisfying pfft as the sealant filled the final gap.
She wiped sweat from her forehead and climbed down off the ladder. Stepped back to admire her work. The little apartment was a fortress now.
Doors reinforced. Windows barricaded. Every interior wall lined with an extra layer of insulation.
She glanced down at herself.
Custom-fit heavy-duty workwear. Slash-resistant fabric. More pockets than she'd ever need. Reinforced padding at the knees and elbows. It wasn't fashionable, but it was practical.
And her real treasure: tools. A chainsaw. A reciprocating saw. The impact driver in her hand. A multi-bit screwdriver that had cost more than she wanted to admit.
She'd brought everything usable from the shop back here, consolidated it into three massive toolboxes. She'd also grabbed some stuff like an air purifier and some spare filters—anything that might matter when civilization took a vacation.
She didn't know what the countdown would bring.
Some folks online predicted zombies. Others said asteroid impact. Volcanic winter. Alien invasion. Take your pick.
Food. Tools. Shelter. She'd even started working out, building strength she'd never needed before. She'd done everything she could think of to prepare. Whatever was coming, she figured she'd last longer than most.
With nothing left to do, she dropped onto one of the big toolboxes laid flat on the floor, wiped her forehead again, and pulled out her phone.
Most news apps had crashed. The only things still loading were comment sections, and they were going crazy.
[Anyone got rice? I'll pay eight grand for a bag. Please, we got nothing left.]
[Forget it, man. Money's toilet paper now. Saw it with my own eyes—some rich assholes cleared out the Costco warehouse last week. All that 'purchase limit' crap was just theater. Shelves were empty 'cause the stock never made it there. It's all sitting in some hedge fund guy's basement.]
[No kidding? Same thing happened to me! Store manager kept telling me, 'We're limiting purchases, come back next week, we'll put your name on the list.' So the whole time the back room was empty? They were just jerking us around?]
[Of course they were. Rich people cornered the market on everything. So what are normal people supposed to do? Just sit here and die?]
[Anyone know what actually happens when the clock hits zero? Like, is it nukes? That virus thing from that old video game?]
Riley locked her phone. Tucked it away. She didn't have anything to add to that conversation.
A month ago, when the countdown first showed up, prices had spiked instantly. A fifty-pound bag of rice that normally went for thirty bucks jumped to eight hundred overnight. By yesterday, it was breaking two grand.
The wealthy had rolled up with trucks and cleaned out supermarkets. Riley had been smart—she'd gone early, bought stuff that would keep, stuff that was calorie-dense and cheap. Chocolate. Survival biscuits. Canned goods. It wasn't much, but it was enough for one person, at least for a while.
She took a deep breath and glanced at the timer.
"00:01:10"
Just over a minute.
Riley gripped the toolbox beneath her. Knuckles white.
Who knew what would happen when that thing hit zero? Maybe it'd be like 2012—all hype, nothing real.
In that last minute, her life flickered past. Her parents' faces. The hardware store. The lonely months since.
"00:00:00"
The countdown ended.
Riley had just started to breathe a sigh of relief—nothing happened, maybe it really was nothing—when the world lurched beneath her.
A dizzying weightlessness. A sensation of falling.
Everything spun.
*****
She didn't know how long she was out.
"Whew."
A wind like a knife blade sliced across her face. Riley's eyes snapped open.
Her warm apartment was gone. In its place, an endless white expanse stretched in every direction.
Snow whipped through the air. Wind howled like a wounded animal.
And at her feet, a small campfire guttered in the gale, threatening to die at any second.
"What the—"
Before she could process, a chime rang directly in her skull. Not heard. Known.
"Welcome to the Extreme Cold Survival Game.
"Earth no longer exists. This is your new home. This is your grave.
"Survival rules are as follows.
"1. Each player begins with one campfire. It is your only defense against the cold. If the campfire dies, you will be judged deceased by the system. Not that it matters—without the fire, you won't last anyway.
"2. This is a real world. You can die from hunger. From exposure. From animal attack.
"3. Supplies stockpiled in your previous world do not carry over. Only items on your person, or in direct physical contact at the moment of transfer, are retained.
"4. Struggle to survive. It is your only hope."
Riley's heart slammed against her ribs.
Supplies didn't carry over?
Her mind flashed to those wealthy forum posters bragging about their warehouse stockpiles.
And then she looked down at herself.
Workwear. Intact.
And—
She was still sitting on the three giant toolboxes.
They sat solidly in the snow, dusted with powder, unmistakably here.
"Whew." Riley let out a long breath. A white cloud dispersed in front of her face.
Pity, though. During her renovations, she'd stocked those boxes with a lot of power tools. The expensive impact driver. The reciprocating saw. In a world with no electrical outlets, once those batteries died, they were just dead weight.
But even so. The hand tools. The consumables. The sheer volume of stuff in those boxes—it was a treasure beyond measure in a place like this.
Riley forced herself to calm down. She was here. She'd deal with it.
Something new lived in her mind now. She concentrated, and a translucent pale-blue screen materialized in front of her eyes. Looked just like a video game HUD.
"Personal Panel
"Name: Riley Carter
"ID: 1120-US
"Level: 1 (Standard Survivor)
"Strength: 8 (Years of manual labor have made you stronger than average)
"Agility: 8 (You've got quick reflexes)
"Constitution: 6 (You've been skipping meals lately)
"Spirit: 9 (You keep your head when others panic)
"Inventory: 16/16 slots (Base capacity)"
"Inventory?"
Riley studied the sixteen empty squares at the bottom of the display.
She reached out, touched one of the toolboxes, and thought the word, "Store."
Whoosh.
The heavy box vanished. In its place, a tiny icon appeared in the first inventory slot, a miniature "x1" in the corner.
"It actually worked."
For the first time since arriving, a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.
Retrieve.
Thud.
The toolbox landed back in the snow, puffing up powder.
No energy cost. No sense of weight. And in that inventory, she could carry anything, regardless of how heavy it was. Later on, when she went scavenging, that would make all the difference.
Riley rubbed her stiff, freezing hands together and turned her attention to the campfire at her feet.
It was the only warmth in this frozen wasteland.
Hovering above the flames, visible only to her, were a few lines of glowing text.
"Basic Campfire (Lv.1)
"Remaining Burn Time: 05:28:00
"Current Coverage: Radius six feet (Blocks wind and snow)
"Upgrade Requirements: Wood x50, Stone x20, Coal x10, Steel x5
"Description: This is your life. Do not let it die. Upgrading expands your safe zone and unlocks additional construction options."
"Needs upgrading."
Riley frowned.
Wood and stone she could probably find. But coal? Steel? Out here in the middle of nowhere?
A flash of movement caught her eye. A small wooden box, half-buried in the snow not far from the fire.
The starter crate. Had to be.
Riley didn't rush. First, she pulled the claw hammer from her belt—the one she always kept there, habit from years of work—and gripped it tight. She scanned the tree line. Listened past the wind.
Nothing moved. No sounds but the storm.
She walked over quickly, crouched by the box. No lock.
She pried the lid open with the claw end of her hammer.
Inside, a handful of items.
"Obtained: Iron Axe x1
"Obtained: Stale Dark Bread x2
"Obtained: 500ml Bottled Water x1
"Obtained: Kindling x5
"Obtained: Insulated Field Jacket x1
"Obtained: Utility Rope (25ft)
"Obtained: Thermal Underwear (Set) x2
Not much. Barely anything.
Riley picked up one of the dark loaves. It was rock hard. She examined the jacket—basic, but warm-looking.
"So this is what a standard survivor starts with."
At least the system had thought of everything. Including the underwear. She'd half-expected to wake up naked in the snow; at least she didn't have to worry about that.
She stored everything in her inventory, then shrugged on the field jacket.
The temperature shift was brutal. Even those few seconds exposed had left her hands numb. Hypothermia would set in fast out here.
Jacket on, she hurried back to the campfire. She pulled the five units of Kindling from her inventory and tossed them onto the flames.
The fire roared higher. Warmth flooded over her.
"Fuel added. Remaining Burn Time: 10:28:00"
Ten hours.
If she didn't move fast, in ten hours she'd freeze to death on this ice field.
And the game had made it clear—if the fire died, the system would judge her dead. Whether she actually froze or not.
Riley lifted her head and scanned the landscape.
She was in a sparse coniferous forest. Barely alive trees, crusted with frost, dotted the area not far from her position.
"Wood."
A slow smile spread across her face. She patted the toolbox beside her.
"Other people might have axes. But felling a tree with just an axe takes hours. Exhausts you."
She unlatched the box. Pulled out the chainsaw. Checked the battery gauge—full.
"I've got a handsaw in here too. And a chainsaw with a full charge."
The battery wouldn't last forever. But it would last long enough to give her a massive head start. In this race for survival, that was everything.

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Chapter 2 — The Chainsaw

The wind screamed across the open ground, picking up loose snow and flinging it against her goggles like sand. It sounded like static.
Riley had pulled her basic work gear from the toolbox before heading out. Now she stood in the snow, surrounded by clusters of thin conifers that looked half-dead already.
She took a breath. The air burned going down.
"Zzzzzzz—!!!"
She squeezed the trigger. The orange-and-black lithium-ion chainsaw in her hands roared to life, the chain spinning so fast it blurred. She buried the teeth in the nearest pine trunk.
Wood chips exploded everywhere.
Fragrant shavings—still wet with resin—scattered across the pristine snow, stark and yellow against all that white.
Five seconds.
Crack.
The pine tree, thick as her arm, groaned and tilted. Then it fell slow and heavy into a drift, sending up a puff of powder.
"God bless modern technology."
Riley shook out her wrist—the vibration had numbed her fingers—and allowed herself a small smile.
Without that chainsaw, with just the basic iron axe the system had given her, felling a tree frozen solid like this would have taken twenty minutes minimum. And it would have left her soaked with sweat.
In subzero temps, sweat was a death sentence. Once your base layers got wet, the moment you stopped moving, your body temperature would plummet. Hypothermia would follow fast.
Riley didn't waste time celebrating.
She knew the saw in her hands was a hungry machine. She'd brought two spare high-capacity batteries, sure, but until she found a way to recharge them, every second the motor ran was borrowed time. She had to gather as much wood as possible before the batteries gave out.
"Zzzzz—Zzzzz—"
At the edge of the forest, the chainsaw's snarl rose and fell, shattering the frozen silence.
Riley worked like she was possessed.
Fell a tree. Move to the next. Fell another.
But she had to stay alert—watch for hidden snow pits underfoot, keep adjusting her collar against the wind that kept finding its way down her neck. Her stamina drained faster than she'd anticipated.
In extreme cold, body burned through calories just to stay alive. Added walking through knee-deep snow, where every step took three times the energy of walking on pavement, and the math got ugly fast.
Pretty soon, Riley was breathing hard. Her breath fogged the inside of her goggles, and she had to keep wiping them clear.
"Zzzzz..."
She was mid-cut on a tree—didn't even know which number anymore—when the chainsaw's roar stuttered. Died. The chain jammed solid in the wood.
A red light blinked at her.
Dead battery.
Riley yanked the saw free and patted its housing. "Good work, buddy." Genuine regret in her voice.
She straightened up and looked around.
Pine trunks lay scattered across the snow in every direction. A decent haul.
She counted silently.
"Twenty-three total."
Then the next problem hit her.
According to the system, until she actually possessed these logs, they were still just natural resources. That meant they didn't qualify for Inventory storage. She couldn't just snap her fingers and make them disappear.
She had to drag them back to camp.
Riley grabbed the nearest pine and tried to pull.
Heavy.
Like, unreasonably heavy.
Fresh-cut wood was full of moisture. Add the branches catching in the snow, dragging like anchors, and she felt like she was hauling a dead body through mud.
"Huff... huff..."
She gritted her teeth, looped rope around the trunk, slung it over her shoulder, leaned forward, and started walking. Inch by inch.
The tree line to her campfire was maybe fifty yards. Right now, it felt like fifty miles.
By the time she'd wrestled the fourth tree back into the fire's warm radius, she was wrecked.
Her legs felt like someone had filled them with concrete. Her lungs burned from hauling freezing air through them.
"Can't... can't do more."
Riley made the call. She stopped.
Those nineteen trees still out there in the snow—they called to her. Tempted her. But if she kept pushing without rest, without fuel for herself, she'd collapse out there. And out there, collapse meant death.
She dropped down next to the big wooden crate that had held her starter supplies.
It was less than three feet from the campfire.
The flames danced orange and red, pumping out heat that felt like heaven.
The shift from frozen to warm made her shiver violently. She pulled off her goggles and thick gloves, set them near the fire to warm up, then—still shaking—pulled the half-empty water bottle from her Inventory. Took a small sip.
Then the bread. Two black bricks that looked more like construction material than food.
"Crunch."
Riley bit off a piece with effort. It was coarse. Tasted like sawdust with a hint of burnt toast. Bitter.
But it was calories. Carbs. Fuel for her own fire.
She forced herself to chew, swallow. When the food hit her stomach, warmth finally started spreading through her core. The uncontrollable shaking eased.
After half a loaf, Riley leaned back against the crate. Her eyelids drooped.
Post-exhaustion crash hit her like a wave.
The campfire crackled. The wind seemed farther away now. Muffled.
She really wanted to sleep...
Her head nodded. Her body started sliding sideways.
"Wait—"
Some animal instinct jolted her awake just before she went under.
She pinched her thigh. Hard. Then looked up at the timer floating above the flames.
"Shelter Level 1
"Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 06:28:00"
Six and a half hours.
If she slept too deep, too long, and that fire went out—what then?
Even ignoring the obvious—that she'd freeze to death in this hellhole without a heat source—the game rules were clear.
When the campfire hits zero, it's game over.
"No sleeping. Not allowed."
Riley slapped her own cheeks, forced herself upright.
She stayed near the fire, but she didn't take off her heavy work clothes. She remembered reading something once, a survival article. "In the late stages of hypothermia, your hypothalamus malfunctions. You get a false sensation of heat. It's called "paradoxical undressing"—people strip down right before they freeze to death."
"Okay. Process these four. Keep the fire fed."
She pulled a traditional handsaw from the toolbox.
Looking at the four thick pine logs on the ground, she almost laughed. Without power tools, breaking these down into burnable pieces would take at least half an hour. Burn the little energy she had left.
But what choice did she have?
Riley knelt in the snow, positioned the blade against the trunk, and was about to start cutting—
A soft white light shot out from the system panel on her chest. It washed over the logs.
"Ding!
"Detected felled, intact logs within shelter range.
"Perform quick recovery?"
Riley's hand froze mid-saw.
Quick recovery?
It took her a second to process. Then relief flooded through her so hard she almost cried.
"Yes! Recover!" She didn't hesitate.
The next moment, something impossible happened.
The four pine trunks—the ones she'd have to saw and split by hand, the ones that represented hours of brutal labor—dissolved into pale blue light particles.
Not into dust. Into neat, uniform logs that stacked themselves automatically in her Inventory. The branches, the needles, all the useless parts—purified out of existence.
"Recovery successful!
"Obtained: Common Wood x20"
Riley's eyes went wide, staring at the perfect lumber in her inventory display. Looked like it came straight from a hardware store.
"One tree gives five units of wood?
"And I don't have to cut it myself?"
This changed everything.
It meant she only had to handle the felling and the dragging. Once a log crossed into her camp's boundary, the system recognized it as hers. The most time-consuming part—the processing—just... didn't exist anymore.
Riley immediately grabbed five units of wood and fed them to the fire.
Whoosh.
The flames leaped, hungry and grateful.
"Fuel added.
"Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 12:20:00"
"Five logs, five hours..."
She did the math fast, looking at the fifteen units still on the ground. If she threw all of those in, that'd be another fifteen hours. Total of twenty-seven.
She could sleep like the dead right now, and that fire would still be burning when she woke up.
Security.
For the first time since the world ended, Riley felt something like security.
She selected the remaining wood. Deposited it all.
Watched the countdown tick up to a very comfortable "27:20:00".
Then her nerves finally let go.
She dragged one of the toolboxes into position to block the wind, wrapped the field jacket tight around herself, pulled her hat down over her eyes, leaned back against the warm crate, and let the crackle of the fire pull her under.
*****
She didn't sleep long.
When she opened her eyes again, the sky was still that same dull gray-white. Impossible to tell if it was morning or afternoon.
System clock said three hours.
Her body ached. Shoulders and arms especially—felt like she'd gone ten rounds with someone. But her head was clear.
She stretched her stiff neck and stood up.
The snow seemed lighter. The feathery flakes had tapered off into sporadic icy grains.
Riley ate a little more, got some fuel back in the tank, then stepped outside the campfire's warmth.
The fire's effect wasn't what she'd expected. It wasn't that the temperature gradually dropped as you moved away. It was sharper than that. Like there was an invisible barrier around the flames. Inside, livable. Outside, the cold hit you like a wall.
She wandered a little way off. The cold found every gap in her clothing.
She thought about going farther, exploring. But there was nothing visible except that stand of trees she'd already worked. Maybe stuff was buried under the snow, but she couldn't see it.
"No proper snow boots. Not going far."
Riley glanced at the endless white distance with real regret.
"Don't get greedy. Get those nineteen trees first."
She turned. Looked at the woods.
Her loot was still out there.
And now she knew: if she could drag them back into the campfire's circle, the system would cash them out automatically.
"Time to work."
Riley rubbed her hands together. Let the motivation build.
For the next few hours, she became a machine.
Drag a tree to camp. Recover it. Go back for another. Repeat.
It was boring. Exhausting. But watching those logs turn into numbers in her inventory—that feeling was hard to describe. Satisfying, in a way nothing had been satisfying in a long time.
When the last pine trunk crossed into the light and dissolved into particles, Riley just collapsed. Lay flat in the snow and stared at the gray sky.
She pulled up her Inventory.
The once-empty slots were full now. Stack after stack of wood icons.
"Item: Common Wood
"Quantity: 80
"Description: Basic survival resource. Can be used for fuel or construction."
Eighty units.
Plus what was already burning in the campfire. Her day's work had yielded a clean hundred.
One unit of wood burned for one hour.
Riley looked at the flames dancing in front of her. Felt the heat on her face. Let herself smile, wide and real.
"One hundred hours."
Four full days.
While everyone else was probably still panicking. Crying. Begging. Trying to figure out how to survive their first night in this frozen nightmare...
She, Riley, had enough fuel stockpiled to last four days.
Which meant: for the next ninety-six hours, unless she actively chose to die, nobody and nothing could put her fire out.
She pulled the half-empty water bottle from Inventory. The space must have been insulated somehow—the water was still warm. Almost body temperature.
She sipped it. Tasted sweet, even though it was just tap water.
"Okay. Next step."
Her gaze settled on the "Upgrade" button on the campfire panel.
This open-air setup was fine for now. But if she was going to survive long-term, she needed something better. A real shelter.
All she needed was a little stone. Some coal. Some steel.
Then she could build something worth calling home.

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Chapter 3 — The Trading Game

The blizzard howled outside, but within the six-foot radius of the campfire, the air stayed surprisingly warm—like the wind had hit an invisible wall and just couldn't reach.
Riley leaned back against the dusty wooden crate, holding the half-empty water bottle in her hand. She stared into the flames for a moment, then focused her attention inward. The pale blue system panel unfolded in front of her eyes again.
Now that the immediate crisis was handled, she finally had time to sit quietly and really explore this so-called "Survival System".
Beyond the personal stats and inventory, the bottom of the panel had a row of function icons: Server Channel, Friends List, Trading Market, and Crafting Manual.
Friends List was empty. No surprise there. She hadn't exactly been a social butterfly back in the old world, and she sure as hell wasn't going to make friends easily in a frozen hellscape where everyone was fighting for their next breath.
She tapped into the "Server Channel".
A line of numbers appeared in the top left.
"Server: US-008
"Current Online: 9911/10000"
Ten thousand people started. Less than ten hours in, eighty-nine were already gone.
"That doesn't add up."
Everyone's starter crate came with a rusty iron axe and five units of wood. Plus the initial fuel the campfire had when they arrived—that alone bought them ten hours minimum, even if they just sat there doing nothing.
What the hell did those people do to get eliminated so fast?
The channel was moving fast, messages scrolling by every second. Desperation dripped from every line.
"Someone help, I'm freezing my ass off out here. This stupid axe can't cut sh*t—every swing just bounces off and rattles my whole arm. Can anyone spare a couple logs? My dad's a senior VP at Walker Group. I'll wire you a million dollars when we get back, I swear."
"Wake up, buddy. If your dad's still alive, he's out there chopping trees right now too."
"Don't even talk to me. I spotted a wooden crate in the snow earlier, got all excited, ran over—and before I got within ten feet, some white rabbit thing jumped out of a drift. Teeth like needles. Almost took a chunk out of my leg. Missed the crate, wasted all that energy for nothing."
"I saw that too! Random crates spawn in the wild. I opened a wooden one and got two chocolate bars and some coal."
Reading through the chaos, Riley picked out two keywords, "Random Reward Crates" and "Dangerous Creatures".
So this world was deeper than she thought. Wooden crates, copper crates—these randomly spawning resource points were the real way to get ahead.
Coal came from crates. That was useful to know.
And if coal was in crates, steel probably was too.
But something bothered her. According to what people were saying, reward crates weren't exactly rare. So why hadn't she found a single one during her lumber run?
She doubted it was just bad luck.
Riley exited chat and tapped into the "Trading Market".
"Seller: MountainMan88 Item: Stone x2 Wants: White Bread x5"
"Seller: LoneWolf_21 Item: Cotton Cloth Wants: Clean Water"
"Seller: NotDeadYet Item: Wood x3 Wants: Anything edible"
Most people were trading for food and wood. The stuff that kept you alive right now. Things like stone and cloth were getting dumped cheap—nobody had the luxury of thinking long-term.
Riley looked at her own inventory. Eighty units of wood staring back at her. Her heart beat a little faster.
In this opening phase, where wood literally meant the difference between life and death, the resources in her hands were basically gold bars.
"Time to trade," she muttered to herself. "Coal, steel—can't get those from chopping trees. And right now, wood's at maximum value. If I wait, the exchange rate shifts."
Even with the chainsaw dead, she still had the handsaw. Less efficient, sure, but she could gather more wood if she needed it. Short-term, she wasn't going to run out.
She clicked to post a message in the channel.
"System Prompt: Detected that you have not set a virtual ID. Please enter your nickname (cannot be changed after setting)."
Riley stared at the blank input box. Naming things was the worst.
She sat there for a long time, nothing coming to mind.
Finally, she gave up. Couldn't think of anything cool or clever, so she'd just go with something random.
Her fingers tapped across the virtual keyboard—SpicyBurger.
"Setting successful. ID locked."
The prompt closed. Riley posted her message.
"SpicyBurger: Selling wood in bulk. Looking for: Coal, Steel, High-calorie food. DM me with offers—what you have and your rate. Good deals go fast, don't sleep on this."
For three seconds after the message appeared, the channel went dead silent. Then it exploded.
"SpicyBurger? That name's making me hungry, what the hell."
"Never mind the name—'wood in bulk'! We got a whale in here! Everyone else is stressing about the next hour and this person's already running a business?"
"I need some! My campfire's down to like two hours. I don't know if I actually die when it hits zero but I don't wanna find out."
Suddenly, half the channel was scrambling for wood.
But then the skeptics crawled out.
"Hang on. Everyone started with the same rusty axe. Chopping a tree in this weather takes twenty, thirty minutes minimum. Where's she getting 'bulk' wood from? Sounds like a scam."
"InvincibleWarrior: Everybody chill. Look at that ID—sounds like a girl's handle. I'm a grown man, been busting my ass, and I've only got like ten logs saved up. My hands are shredded. Some girl with a food name claims she's got bulk? She's trying to run a game. Scam people out of their stuff."
"Iron_Tough: Agreed. Scammers made it through the apocalypse too, I guess. My advice: ignore her. Don't get played. How much wood can a woman chop anyway? Probably can't even lift the axe right, lol."
Riley scrolled through the messages, expression flat. She almost laughed.
But some people pushed back.
"FishHater44: How is it a scam? If she doesn't deliver, you don't complete the trade. Just 'cause you can't chop that much wood doesn't mean nobody can."
Riley nodded slightly. That one had a point.
But she didn't waste energy arguing in the channel. Instead, she flipped on Do Not Disturb for private messages—only allowing chat requests that included a trade offer.
Some people didn't actually care whether she had wood. They just couldn't stand seeing someone else do well.
"Ding. Ding. Ding."
Private messages started pouring in like rain.
Most players weren't idiots. Faced with the very real threat of freezing to death, they'd try anything for a chance.
Riley opened the first one.
"Windwalker: I got "Coal x3" from a crate. How much wood can I get for it? I can't chop anymore. The wind out here is insane. I tried to throw the coal in my fire but it just kept popping back out. System says my campfire level's too low, won't let me use it. I'm out of wood. My fire's almost dead."
Riley thought for a moment. "Three coal for five wood. Deal?"
She hadn't known about that restriction. Coal was supposed to be better fuel than wood—didn't expect the game to lock it behind a level gate.
The reply came instantly, "Deal. But five wood feels light. It's coal."
The guy was conflicted. He knew coal had value, but he was desperate.
"I'll make it six. Final offer."
Riley wasn't sure about coal's real value yet. Six was her limit.
"Fine. Deal."
They both dropped their items into the trade window. A moment later, it completed.
A flash of white light. Riley's inventory lost six wood. Gained three chunks of coal, each about the size of a small melon.
One down.
"CrunchyFrog: Hey, I got two "Iron Ingots" from a crate. System calls them "Scrap Steel". Can I get eight wood for them? Trying to stock up enough to sleep through the night."
Riley replied, "Sure. Initiate."
In just over ten minutes, her wood stockpile dropped significantly. But her inventory filled up with good stuff.
"Coal x10
"Stone x23
"Scrap Steel x5
"Raw Meat x2
"White Bread x2
"Basic Torch Blueprint x1"
The blueprint was new. The description said it was required for crafting certain items. Seemed useful, so she'd traded for it.
Meanwhile, back in the channel, that "InvincibleWarrior" guy who'd been mocking her earlier seemed to notice that people were actually completing trades. His tone got bitter.
"InvincibleWarrior: Whatever. She probably got lucky with a high-tier crate. Let's see how long her stock lasts. Once the wood's gone, she'll be begging me to let her join my group."
The people who'd successfully traded with Riley popped into the channel to thank her. That might have been fine—except the thanks caused problems.
Since Riley had stopped trading for now, most people hadn't gotten anything. And the sky was darkening. Temperature outside the campfire radius was dropping fast. Gathering wood was getting harder. Trading was their only hope.
The ones who'd pinned everything on Riley, seeing her stop, started losing it.
"You said 'in bulk'! You did like five trades and quit. What are we supposed to do now?"
"Keep trading! My fire's almost out. You want us to go chop trees in the dark?"
"If you couldn't deliver, why'd you post? Showing off and then hiding."
Whether it was coordinated or just genuine rage, the number of people defending Riley in the channel shrank fast. Mostly it was attacks now. Accusations of being irresponsible. Using scarcity tactics. Playing games with people's lives.
Riley closed the channel. She couldn't be bothered.
In a life-or-death situation like this, people losing it was normal. If she actually had unlimited resources, she'd trade more. But she didn't. And back on Earth, nobody had ever handed her anything out of charity. She wasn't about to start playing savior now.
She looked down at the "Basic Torch Blueprint" in her inventory.
"Requirements: Wood x10, Kerosene, Scrap Steel x2" Note: Requires Level 2 Workbench to craft."
She leaned back against the crate again. Felt the weight of her stockpile pressing back against that lingering sense of unease.
In this world, your ID didn't matter. Your gender didn't matter either.
What mattered was who held the resources.
She looked at what she had left: 36 units of wood. Plus the steel, coal, and stone from trading.
Time to plan.
Upgrading to a Level 2 campfire required 55 wood. She had all the other materials. For the wood, she'd just have to use the handsaw tomorrow and gather a little more.
That settled, she pulled a few more logs from inventory and arranged them on top of the crate, making a small enclosed space. Curled up inside it, she watched the sky outside slowly darken to black.
Her eyes grew heavy. She drifted off.

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