The Doomsday Plan

After lamenting for a long while, Su Jin turned and slid down helplessly, landing on the floor, his chest rising and falling unevenly.

Ever since he was little, he had considered himself braver than most and optimistic about life. And he really was!

Even after entering the workforce and becoming a corporate workhorse, he had never lost his backbone.

But this time, he was genuinely scared. Scared out of his wits...

Su Jin buried all ten fingers in his hair, overwhelmed by regret.

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

If I hadn't gone drinking with the client, I wouldn't have pissed him off. If I hadn't pissed him off, I wouldn't have had to find another job. And if I hadn't looked for another job, I wouldn't have been forcibly dispatched to work in this godforsaken place!!

"Company, are you there... can anyone hear me?" Su Jin swallowed and ventured the question, staring nervously into empty space.

But disappointment soon followed. He was only talking to himself.

A person's value in the workplace was essentially their market value minus the cost of changing jobs.

When corporate workhorses sucked up excessively to their bosses and professed their love for the company, it only showed how dependent they were on their jobs and how much changing jobs would cost them, making them prime targets for layoffs.

If they really were about to get laid off and revealed weaknesses like car loans, mortgages, wives, and children at the crucial moment, the company would have an even tighter grip on them, and their severance would probably shrink.

From the day he left school, Su Jin had held firmly to this theory and kept delving into the art of managing upward. He always projected confidence at work, and even clients thought more highly of him for it.

Several rounds of layoffs had swept through his colleagues, while he remained secure as a mountain. If he hadn't screwed up so badly, Old Li would never have laid him off.

But this bullshit Heavenly Dao Unlimited Liability Company didn't have a single person in sight. He couldn't even find a boss to manage!

He sat there until sunset.

The last trace of light vanished from above Su Jin's head, leaving the room dim.

In the darkness, Su Jin rubbed his face and let out another heavy breath.

He got up and switched on the light. After that bout of self-pity, his expression had eased considerably.

Then he strode resolutely toward the bathroom.

What's done is done!

All I can do is abandon my illusions, prepare for the struggle, and finish the assignment!

The company ignoring him was a good thing, too. At least it probably meant nobody was spying on him.

They could speak to him out of thin air, and ever since arriving here, he had felt as though countless eyes were secretly watching him.

It had made him too afraid even to use the bathroom. He had been holding it all day.

He wondered how the protagonists in webnovels dealt with this problem when they acquired systems or old men's souls.

The next day, sunlight streamed into the room and fell across Su Jin's face.

Su Jin frowned, his eyelids twitching. After a long internal struggle, he finally opened his eyes with a trace of hopeful expectation.

The unfamiliar bedroom still greeted him. Though he had expected it, disappointment was inevitable.

His only consolation was that the leafy vegetables he had eaten last night had caused no side effects.

There were six days left until doomsday!

He had slept in his clothes, tossing and turning all night, and managed only two or three hours of fitful sleep.

He got up and went to the bathroom for a quick wash.

Su Jin walked into the living room, glanced at the window where he had already taped up two sheets of white paper, then turned and sat at the dining table.

He took out his notebook and a bread roll, recording his plans as he ate.

He had already arranged things with Fu Qingdai. He was living across the hall from her, and once she was successfully discharged, she would come to him immediately.

He would wait and see for three days. If she still hadn't returned, he would have to visit the psychiatric hospital again.

For now, the client wasn't his highest priority. Preparing for the crisis was the most urgent matter.

With six days remaining, he would undoubtedly need to stockpile plenty of water, food, and medicine.

But the problem was water... the water supply would be contaminated, making it difficult to replenish later.

He would need large quantities, it couldn't be compressed, and it weighed far more than other supplies.

Stored in containers, that immense weight would bear down on a very small area. Stockpiling enough water would put enormous pressure on the floor slab. Spreading it out, however, would waste space.

This world's building standards were still unclear, and design standards didn't necessarily reflect construction standards.

Construction standards didn't guarantee the workers' competence, their competence didn't guarantee the quality of the building materials, and even then, he had no idea how badly those materials had aged.

That was why he had decided on the spot to rent two apartments yesterday.

A normal person needed roughly two liters of drinking water a day. For drinking alone, one metric ton could last a person a year and a half if used sparingly.

But he couldn't rely on such a simple calculation. Stress, injuries, or other unusual circumstances would inevitably increase water consumption.

He also had to account for Fu Qingdai and her parents... or perhaps other people he might need to recruit to improve their chances of survival.

Four metric tons of water across two apartments, spread out along the load-bearing walls, should be a reasonably safe amount, with more than enough to spare.

That meant forty hundred-liter barrels... he could buy larger barrels and put wooden boards underneath to distribute the load.

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

Su Jin noted everything down. His pen paused briefly before he began drafting a food-storage plan.

Staple foods were a must, but he needed to buy them somewhere far away. He would also have to purchase cardboard boxes and have the grain shop pack everything up and deliver it at night.

Otherwise, being seen stockpiling food would cause plenty of problems... he would need to smooth things over with the guard booth at the entrance beforehand. Moving house would be the best excuse.

Beyond staple foods, he would need fats and protein. Both bottled vegetable oil and animal fat would do.

Protein powder would probably be the best choice, but he suspected it wasn't available here. Judging by conditions in this world, the fitness market was practically nonexistent. At least, he hadn't seen any gyms during his taxi rides.

The next-best choice would be powdered milk: a range of nutrients, easy to obtain, compact to store, and high in calories.

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

After more than twenty minutes of thinking and jotting things down, Su Jin turned the page and continued writing.

With food and water settled, weapons were the next priority. Industry had already developed in this world, so firearms would inevitably be in widespread use.

But he couldn't yet judge how hard acquiring firearms would be. He had asked Fu Qingdai about it, and ordinary civilians weren't allowed to own guns.

Finding a source for firearms would be difficult, and he couldn't afford the legal risks or the expense.

He had counted his seven thousand and Fu Qingdai's money last night. Altogether, they had a little over twenty-five thousand.

That was barely enough to stockpile supplies. He would have to give up on buying guns, and even if he had them, they wouldn't be much use.

First, without practice, he would inevitably waste huge numbers of bullets, and replenishing them would be extremely difficult.

Second, if gunshots attracted zombies, he would be better off not firing... for now, a gun's greatest short-term value was intimidating the living. Not shooting would pay off more than shooting.

The one gun he already had was enough.

That meant shifting his weapon preparations toward melee weapons. Long weapons would be best. He could buy steel pipes at a hardware store and modify them with knives and axes.

Getting a bow and arrows would be even better. Holed up in his safe house, he would have time to practice.

But...

Su Jin took out the map and looked for the slaughterhouse.

If he were still at the age when he fancied himself a young gangster, being told to hack up some living creatures wouldn't have frightened him. He might even have been excited.

But after spending years out in the world, he had developed not only respect for the law, but an ever-growing understanding of life's fragility.

He wasn't afraid of a fight, but if he had to hack at a person, even a zombie... he would probably panic and be terrified when the time came.

But if that moment really came, his aim couldn't stray, and his hands couldn't shake!

Otherwise, a single lapse could cost him his life.

An adult's... greatest virtue was never overestimating himself.

Perhaps his most urgent task, besides first spending a day getting familiar with his surroundings, was to find a chance to visit the slaughterhouse and hack up some living creatures as desensitization training.