More and more people began to realize something was off about Ethan Cross.
In this frozen-apocalypse hellscape, everyone was starving and freezing. Even households that had stocked up were struggling just to survive. But Ethan? He was well-fed, warm, and living in a house in Bayview City that just so happened to be equipped with a fireplace—something almost no one in this southern city had ever bothered with.
And then there was his armored door. Clearly not just some random precaution. He'd been prepared. That was the only explanation.
Logan scowled and spat onto the ground. "If he really knew this was coming and didn't say a word to warn the rest of us, then he's an even bigger piece of shit than I thought!"
Nobody responded to him. Even Peter looked a little embarrassed. If they were in Ethan's shoes, they'd have looked out for themselves too. Who wouldn't?
"So... what now?" asked Claire, arms crossed. "Picking the lock didn't work. Do we try forcing it open?"
She looked over at Logan, Peter, and that weasel-faced finance guy, Zack. They were the only men in the group who might be able to brute-force their way in.
Ethan watched it all unfold through his security feed, sipping from a thermos and twirling a crossbow bolt between his fingers. He could've just gunned a few of them down, ended it right then and there—but where was the fun in that? No, he wanted to see what else they had planned. It was all research for future encounters anyway.
A while later, they returned—this time carrying a thick wooden beam, probably ripped from a bedframe. The women stood behind umbrellas, probably to block water or tear gas. The men set up like a battering ram.
BOOM!
They slammed the beam against Ethan's door. The whole wall shook. But the door—20 centimeters of reinforced alloy—didn't so much as dent.
Again and again, they slammed the door. Ethan, lounging on his couch, scrolled through his WarFort app. Built by DragonShield Security, it tracked real-time structural integrity for every part of his fortress.
When five minutes passed and the door still held strong, the group started to panic.
"What the hell is this door made of?!"
"Is this guy living in a bank vault or something?!"
"Who the fuck spends this kind of money on a door!?"
Ethan chuckled. Good. Let them know exactly what they were up against.
He stood, set down his coffee, and opened a small metal case.
Inside: twenty rusty-looking crossbow bolts.
They weren't actually rusted by age. Ethan had carefully treated them to give that effect. Why? Because the rust would cause infections—specifically, tetanus. In a world with no hospitals or antibiotics, that meant certain death, slow and painful. These bolts weren't just weapons—they were a death sentence.
A lesson he'd learned from Tony Chen, whose crippled leg had barely survived the first week.
Ethan climbed up to his shooting hatch, loaded a bolt, and aimed through the slits in the reinforced wall.
Whoosh!
The bolt punched through the umbrella and buried itself in someone's leg.
"Aaaghhh!"
Another shot. Another scream.
Then another.
Panic.
The group scattered, but Ethan wasn't in a hurry. He kept calmly reloading, firing at limbs, avoiding vital organs. He didn't want them dead just yet. He wanted them injured, suffering, slowly wasting away as the cold and infection consumed them.
By the time they escaped his line of sight, four of them were wounded—one of them had taken two bolts.
Ethan shrugged. "That'll do."
He wasn't going to risk stepping outside to finish them off. Not even with a 0.01% chance of getting hurt. He was the king of calculated survival. No risks. No loose ends.
"The only problem," he muttered, "is bolt consumption."
He'd started with 300 steel bolts and 300 hunting arrows. But every shot was single-use, and he couldn't exactly go outside to collect them.
Then it hit him.
Ethan opened his interdimensional stash and dug around. Jackpot.
Ball bearings. Dozens of them. Metal marbles. Glass marbles. All usable with his custom hand crossbow. Not as lethal, but still plenty of stopping power at close range.
He grinned.
"These bastards will keep me well-fed for a long, long time."
But not everyone was feeling so comfortable.
The group that had attacked him returned to their hideout—one short. Peter was dead. And three others had been hit with his special arrows.
They didn't even dare to go back and retrieve his corpse.
Ethan leaned back in his chair, his expression calm as ever.
Game on.