Waiting to Die

Waiting to Die

She said she was waiting to die, but after lying on the floor for a while with absolutely nothing to do, Ivette obediently crawled back up and began exploring the other floors. She hoped to turn up something like canned food with a long enough shelf life to keep herself alive a little longer.

During the process, using the various scraps of written information left on each floor and combining it with what she had learned in her dreams, she gradually figured out the purpose of every level.

First came levels ten and nine below ground.

In the dream, the project responsible for treating the genetic diseases of orphanage children like Ivette was called the "Metamorphosis Project," while the medicine they took had provisionally been named "Metamorphosis Potion Type II."

The tenth and ninth underground levels were respectively the experimental floor for the Metamorphosis Project and the living quarters for related personnel.

Next were the eighth and seventh underground levels, known as the "Active Rune Laboratory."

As for the so-called "Active Rune Group," Ivette's understanding of it was limited to the AI's description.

According to the information it provided, the Active Rune Group was not only Black Tower Pharmaceuticals' core business, but also the fundamental reason it had become one of the eight supercorporations.

As long as users injected a Rune Elixir into their bodies, they could become powerful spellcasters within mere minutes. Not only would their magic power increase dramatically, but they could also instantly cast spells preloaded into the Rune Elixir. It was basically a fast-track route to becoming a superhero.

Even when the AI had introduced the Meditation Method to Ivette, it had used the Active Rune Group as a comparison—what the Meditation Method required over seven years to achieve, the lowest-grade Active Rune Group could accomplish in just 4.6 minutes. The gap was absurdly vast.

However...

After all these years, even if the laboratories on levels seven and eight below ground still had some Active Rune Group medicine left, it would certainly have long passed its expiration date.

So while it sounded tempting, aside from a small number of readable paper documents, it brought Ivette no substantial gains.

Then came levels six, five, and four below ground.

Level six was a living area like level nine, nothing special. The warehouse for daily supplies was empty as well, leaving Ivette disappointed.

Levels five and four were Rune Elixir laboratories.

This type of drug was similar to the genetic enhancement serum found in science fiction novels. Its effects included, but were not limited to, Eternal Youth, increased strength, optimized metabolism, hair regrowth for baldness... It was Black Tower Pharmaceuticals' second most important business.

As for the medicine developed by the Metamorphosis Project, it was neither an Active Rune Group nor a Rune Elixir. It belonged to the "potion" category, which also happened to be what qualified as medicine in the traditional sense.

She continued upward.

Level three below ground was the experimental animal breeding floor;

Level two below ground was the living area for ordinary staff;

Level one below ground was the inspection floor, where the qualifications of incoming and outgoing personnel were reviewed.

Thus, after spending nearly ten hours painstakingly searching every floor, Ivette had no choice but to face the fact that she had gained absolutely nothing. All she had picked up were scraps of junk that had once been high-end magical equipment.

Of course, she had also tried prying open the metal grating over the ventilation ducts to see whether she could crawl out. But the grating had been welded far too firmly. With the strength of a five- or six-year-old girl, she had no chance of budging it and could only give up.

In the end, exhausted, Ivette lay on the Magic Light Vine covering the floor. Feeling the hunger in her stomach, she let out a long, despairing sigh.

In her dreams, she had already made countless efforts. Besides actively learning the language and gathering information about this other world, she had also told the AI about her circumstances and asked it to help devise solutions.

But insufficient conditions were still insufficient conditions.

Inside this enormous metal cage, apart from the Magic Light Vine that fed on magical elements, no second kind of creature could survive at all. The only way out was to fish at the Water Platform, but there were Fish Monsters in the lake...

Every path was a dead end.

Thinking this, Ivette dejectedly closed her eyes and decided to sleep first.

This time, she had truly prepared herself to die.

She had no idea how long she slept.

After waking, Ivette looked at the shimmering ceiling formed by Magic Light Vine and silently calculated how much time had passed since she had transmigrated.

Six months of real dreams had not starved her to death, nor had her hair grown longer, which meant only a very short time had passed in reality.

But excluding that period, more than twenty-four hours had definitely passed since her transmigration.

After so long, she did not feel weak or exhausted at all. She was still full of vitality and energy, at most a little hungry...

Was this what a young body's durability was like? Such powerful recovery—wouldn't it be unbeatable for gig delivery work?

She muttered inwardly, then stood up. Driven by her desire to survive, she launched a second investigation of the Ruined Base.

The result had not changed. It was still a dead end.

But there was one difference: Ivette sensed something unusual about herself.

By then, at least thirty-six hours should have passed since her transmigration.

Under normal circumstances, as a child still growing, if she went without food for thirty-six hours, she might become dizzy and shaky from low blood sugar, parched and dry-mouthed from dehydration, sleepy, sluggish, or lacking in energy. At the very least, she should have been ravenously hungry, with her chest practically sticking to her back.

But instead, she was still in good spirits, her physical strength had fully recovered, and her hunger was only the ordinary kind of "a little hungry."

Why was that?

Was the original owner some ultimate hunger-resistant champion?

Once she noticed this abnormality, a faint spark lit up deep within Ivette's numb heart. But she did not immediately pop champagne in celebration. Instead, she waited anxiously, constantly feeling for changes in her body.

In that torment, an unknown amount of time passed—perhaps twenty or thirty hours, perhaps several days.

Yet unbelievably, Ivette discovered that all her bodily functions were still completely normal!

Her energy was normal. She was neither dizzy nor dehydrated. Aside from a slight hunger, she could be described in every other respect as—

Lively and kicking!

At last, she could be ninety-nine percent certain that the original owner was indeed no ordinary person. The reason she had awakened from the bed in the body of a child three hundred years after everyone else had turned to dry bones was not because of Ivette's transmigration. It was because she had always been different!

"This is even more outrageous than I expected..." Ivette muttered. She had originally thought the most likely identity of the original owner was a hibernator, someone who had used certain equipment here to endure the apocalypse, only to wake shortly before Ivette's soul took over her body.

But now it seemed that perhaps the original owner had hibernated after all, yet she had not needed any external equipment. Her body alone had endured three hundred years and lasted until after the apocalypse...

Just who was she?