After a long, mournful sigh, Su Jin turned and slid weakly to the floor. He sat there, his chest heaving irregularly.

He had always thought of himself as braver and more optimistic than the average person, and for the most part, that had been true.

Even after entering the workforce and becoming a corporate drone, he had never bowed his head.

But this time, he was truly terrified. Utterly and completely.

Su Jin buried his fingers in his hair, his heart filled with endless regret.

*I was wrong. I was wrong from the very beginning.*

*If I hadn't gone drinking with that client, I wouldn't have pissed him off. If I hadn't pissed him off, I wouldn't have had to find a new job. And if I hadn't been looking for a new job, I wouldn't have been forcibly dispatched by some labor agency to this godforsaken place!*

"Is the company there? Can anyone hear me?" Su Jin swallowed and spoke tentatively, his eyes staring nervously into the empty air.

But disappointment quickly followed. He was just talking to himself.

A person's value in the workplace is basically their market value minus the cost of switching jobs.

Corporate drones who excessively kiss up to their bosses and profess love for their company are just showing how dependent they are on their jobs. Their cost of switching is high, which makes them prime targets for layoffs.

And if they are about to be laid off, revealing their vulnerabilities at the last minute—car loans, mortgages, a wife and kids—only gives the company more leverage, and the severance they get will likely be much less.

From the day he graduated, Su Jin had clung to this theory, constantly honing his skills in managing his superiors. He always appeared confident and self-assured at work, and even clients treated him with a degree of respect.

His company had gone through several rounds of layoffs, but he had always remained unshaken. If he hadn't screwed up so badly, Lao Li would never have fired him.

But this damned Tian Dao Unlimited Liability Company didn't even have a single person in sight. There was no boss to manage, even if he wanted to!

He sat there until the sun went down.

As the last ray of light vanished from above his head, the room plunged into darkness.

In the gloom, Su Jin rubbed his face and let out another heavy sigh.

He stood up, switched on the light, and after a bout of wallowing in self-pity, his expression had softened considerably.

Then, with grim determination, he walked toward the bathroom.

This was his reality now.

He had to abandon all illusions, prepare for the fight, and complete the mission.

The company ignoring him could be a good thing. At the very least, it probably meant no one was spying on him.

The fact that they could speak to him out of thin air had made him feel like countless pairs of eyes were watching him ever since he arrived.

It was so bad he hadn't even dared to use the bathroom, holding it in all day.

He had no idea how the protagonists in those web novels dealt with this problem when they got a system or a spirit mentor.

...

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The next day, sunlight streamed into the room, shining on Su Jin's face.

Su Jin’s brow furrowed. His eyelids twitched. After a long internal struggle, he finally opened his eyes with a sliver of lingering hope.

He was still greeted by the sight of the unfamiliar bedroom. Though he had expected it, he couldn't help but feel a pang of disappointment.

The only silver lining was that the vegetable leaves he had eaten last night had no side effects.

Six days until the apocalypse.

He had slept in his clothes, tossing and turning all night, only managing to get two or three hours of light sleep.

He got up and went to the bathroom to quickly wash up.

Su Jin walked into the living room, glanced at the windows now covered with two sheets of white paper, and turned to sit at the dining table.

He took out a notebook and a piece of bread, eating as he wrote.

He had already made an agreement with Fu Qingdai. He was living across the hall from her, and she would come find him as soon as she got out of the mental hospital.

He would wait for three days. If she hadn't returned by then, he would have to make another trip to the mental hospital himself.

For now, the client wasn't his highest priority. The most important thing was to prepare for the crisis.

There were six days left. It went without saying that he needed to stockpile large quantities of water, food, and medicine.

But the problem was water. It would become contaminated, making it difficult to replenish later.

It was consumed in large quantities, couldn't be compressed, and was much heavier than other supplies.

Storing it in containers meant a huge amount of weight would be concentrated on a small area, putting immense pressure on the floorboards. But storing it spread out would waste space.

The building standards of this world were unclear, and design standards didn't necessarily reflect construction standards.

Construction standards didn't guarantee worker competence, worker competence didn't guarantee the quality of building materials, and there was no telling how much the materials had aged.

It was because of this that he had made the last-minute decision to rent two apartments yesterday.

A normal person needs about two liters of drinking water a day. Used sparingly for drinking alone, one cubic meter of water could last a single person for a year and a half.

But it wasn't that simple. Water consumption would definitely increase under high-stress situations, injuries, or other special circumstances.

He also had to consider Fu Qingdai and her parents... or the possibility of recruiting others to increase their chances of survival.

Two apartments, four cubic meters of water, placed near the load-bearing walls seemed like a reasonable and safe range. That would leave plenty of surplus.

That meant he would need forty 100-liter barrels. He could buy bigger ones and use wooden planks underneath to distribute the pressure.

He would also need water purification tablets and plastic wrap to prevent excessive evaporation.

Su Jin noted everything down, then paused his pen and began to write out a food storage plan.

He definitely had to hoard staple foods. But he would need to buy the grain from a distant store and have them pack it in cardboard boxes for a nighttime delivery.

Otherwise, if people saw him stockpiling food, it would cause a lot of problems. He would need to smooth things over with the security guard at the gate beforehand, using "moving in" as the best excuse.

Besides staple foods, he needed fats and protein. Both bottled vegetable oil and animal fat would work.

The best choice for protein would be protein powder, but he suspected it wasn't available on the market here. Based on what he'd seen of this world, the fitness market was practically nonexistent; he hadn't seen a single gym on his taxi ride.

The next best option would be milk powder. It was nutritionally complex, easy to obtain, highly compressible, and high in calories.

For other nutritional needs, he would have to rely mostly on vitamin pills.

After sketching and planning for over twenty minutes, Su Jin turned the page and continued writing.

After confirming his plans for food and water, the most important thing was weapons. This world's industry was already developed, so the large-scale use of firearms was inevitable.

But the difficulty of obtaining firearms was currently impossible to estimate. He had asked Fu Qingdai about this, and ordinary citizens couldn't own guns.

The channels for acquiring firearms were hard to find, and the legal risks and costs were unbearable.

He had his seven thousand, plus Fu Qingdai's money. He'd counted it last night—a total of just over twenty-five thousand.

That was barely enough for stockpiling supplies. He had to give up on guns. Besides, even if he had them, they wouldn't be that useful.

For one, he was untrained. He would waste a huge amount of ammunition, which would be extremely difficult to replenish.

For another, if gunshots attracted zombies, then it was better not to use them at all. For now, a gun's greatest short-term use was to intimidate the living. Not firing it was more advantageous than firing it.

The one he already had was enough.

Thus, his weapon preparations had to shift to melee weapons. Long weapons were best. He could buy some steel pipes from a hardware store and modify them with knives and axes.

If he could get a bow and arrow, that would be even better. Holed up in his safe house, he would have time to practice.

But...

Su Jin took out a map and started looking for the location of a slaughterhouse.

If he were still a hot-headed youth, the thought of cutting up something living might have excited him instead of scaring him.

But having been through the wringer of society, his reverence for the law, as well as his understanding of life's fragility, had grown with each passing day.

He wasn't afraid of a fight, but being forced to kill someone, even a zombie... he would most likely panic.

But when that time came, his aim couldn't waver, and his hand couldn't tremble.

Otherwise, one moment of carelessness would mean death.

A mature man's greatest virtue is to never overestimate himself.

Perhaps, besides spending a day familiarizing himself with the environment, his most urgent task was to find an opportunity to go to a slaughterhouse and kill some live animals for desensitization training.