Chapter 191: Sleeping Alone (Patreon)

Isac rubbed the swollen ache between his brows and moved the mouse to close the document.

One thing could be inferred from the scraps of information in that shutdown notice: this world had once gone through a large-scale nuclear war, one that had affected, or rather outright changed, the world's climate.

Isac had no interest whatsoever in this world's history and no plans to dig into it. But some things keep affecting you every minute of the day whether you care about them or not.

Radiation, of course.

Still, the fact that it showed up on a shutdown notice at all suggested the situation had stabilized by then. And since the work had only been suspended, not permanently abandoned, the radiation here should be within a controllable range… right?

Isac wasn't sure. But a wise man doesn't stand under a wall that's about to fall, and he'd made up his mind to get out of here as soon as possible.

Only one condition remained before the boat ticket unlocked: survive a full hundred and eighty days. A hundred and twenty-six had already passed, leaving fifty-four.

Even when those fifty-four days were up, though, Isac couldn't leave right away, and the reason was simple: the weather wouldn't allow it.

It was already deep autumn, maybe even early winter. Fifty-four days from now would be the coldest stretch of the entire year.

The current temperature was already too low for them to stay outside for long. In the dead of a harsher winter, even a short trip out the door could mean a risk of hypothermia.

They did have plenty of good cold-weather clothing at home, but the problem was that they couldn't pile it all on at once. Layering has diminishing returns. If a garment's insulation rating isn't high enough, stacking more of them only gets you so far.

Besides, they couldn't wear infinite layers anyway. Whether they could even fit into them was one question, and the other was mobility.

In short, even to reach the coastal town they'd have to wait for warmer weather. Daytime temperatures didn't need to climb back above freezing, but they shouldn't be lower than -10°C.

Preparations, however, could start right now.

As he thought it over, Isac turned to Hayasaka Ai. "What's your take?"

Hayasaka Ai tilted her head, golden strands of hair slipping down across her forehead. After a moment's hesitation, she answered uncertainly, "…Sitting down?"

Perhaps feeling that answer was too flippant, Hayasaka Ai got a little more serious and added, "What I mean is, even if we know there's radiation, there's nothing we can do about it.

"And honestly, compared to the aurora in the sky, radiation doesn't seem like much. At least the aurora gives us instant results."

As she spoke, her gaze drifted downward.

Isac nearly lost it. "What kind of 'instant results' is that?"

"They're about the same."

"They're totally different!"

Hayasaka Ai's way of changing the subject was clumsy, almost transparent, but Isac understood what she was getting at.

Radiation, nuclear winter, whatever. Set it all aside and take care of what's in front of you first.

"So far, we've lived here for four months without any nausea, vomiting, hair loss, or anything like that. So even if there is radiation, the dose is tiny and has no short-term effect on the body. At worst, the long-term cancer risk goes up slightly," Hayasaka Ai said, perfectly calm.

"Besides, we've got a Survival Game now. If modern medicine can't cure a cancer, that doesn't mean the game can't. Rather than worrying about this and that, it's more practical to figure out how to get home sooner."

Isac nodded. You really can't share a bed with someone and think differently. Hayasaka Ai's thinking matched his own without either of them saying a word.

With that, the radiation discussion was set aside. Isac went back to browsing the files stored on the computer while Hayasaka Ai sat quietly beside him, watching, and every so often glanced down at her phone to look something up in its built-in database.

…

Time slipped away, and before he knew it an hour had passed. Isac had more or less gone through everything on the machine. Only a few document attachments were left, and he didn't hold out much hope for them.

It wasn't that he'd found nothing, but there wasn't much information, and it couldn't compare to the laptop they'd brought back from the plane.

That was only to be expected. The desktop Isac was using was, when you got down to it, just an ordinary office computer inside the dam, used for things like attendance sheets. Important files… well, it wasn't impossible that they'd be stored here, just that the odds were rather slim.

When he'd first brought this computer back, it had been with a "worth a shot" mentality.

If it held anything useful, great. If not, an extra computer at home could serve as a spare.

Isac planned to open the attachments in those last few documents and look them over, then shut the computer down and head upstairs to discuss the trip to the coastal town with Yukinoshita Yukino and the others, so they could start on whatever preparations they could.

What he hadn't expected was that those last few attachments would hand him a huge surprise.

It was less an attachment than a rough investigative report, and Isac recognized many of the photos in it. He'd seen them somewhere before.

No, not just somewhere. He had definitely seen them.

Isac clicked on one of the photos. Wasn't this from the investigative report on the bear spirit, the one on the laptop?

Compared with that streamlined report, though, the one in front of him was cruder, like a first draft of it.

But a draft or not, the information it recorded was in no way less than the final version. If anything, precisely because it was a draft, it contained plenty of details the final report hadn't disclosed.

For example, the origin of the bear spirit, the local legends connected to it, and the sources of those legends.

It even included a reading list.

Isac didn't have to say a word. Hayasaka Ai had already copied every title into the little notebook she carried with her.

With her memory, she'd probably memorized most of the titles the moment she saw the list, but to be safe she wrote them down anyway.

The faintest ink beats the best memory, after all.

As for how to find those books… that would be left to luck.

They'd collected quite a few books at home, but whether they could find the whole set was still unknown. Of course, Isac figured that even if they couldn't find them all, locating a few of them shouldn't be a problem.

After all, in his quick skim just now, he'd already spotted several titles that looked familiar.

Isac might not have opened them, but he had definitely handled them, or the names wouldn't have left an impression.

Having a list made things much easier. Otherwise, with that whole room full of books, even the four of them reading together might not finish in three months.

They couldn't spend all their time reading, after all.

Isac had two reasons for taking the bear spirit so seriously. One was that the route to the coastal town had to pass the lakeside cabin, the place where they'd first met Brother Bear. If he knew more about it and they got attacked on the road, they'd have a countermeasure.

The other was the Survival Game's hidden quest reward.

At first, Isac hadn't cared whether a reward was hidden or not. He wasn't even a completionist when he played games, let alone in a deadly real-life survival game.

But the effect of the special venison from this game had far exceeded everyone's expectations. If the materials dropped by a special aurora creature were that good, what would the reward be worth for taking down a bear spirit, something even more special than a special aurora creature?

Isac was a little curious, and his attitude toward the bear spirit had begun to shift in subtle ways.

One thing was certain: he still wouldn't go looking for trouble with that bear spirit. But if he found its weakness later on, he wouldn't mind pocketing the hidden reward.

Otherwise, with physical enhancement alone, once he got back to the original world he'd be nothing more than an ordinary person who happened to be a bit stronger.

There was an invisible, intangible, but very real class gap between him and Kaguya, Yukinoshita Yukino, and even Hayasaka Ai.

Maybe the gap wouldn't change how they felt about him, but what about their families?

Yukinoshita Yukino's side was manageable, but the Shinomiya family was a genuine world-class conglomerate dynasty. Even if Kaguya didn't carry as much weight in the family as people imagined because of her bloodline, she was still the main house's only young lady, and they wouldn't let her do whatever she pleased.

Even if her father approved the marriage, he'd certainly make a list of demands of Isac. Whatever they were, one thing was sure: no harem.

In that case, what would happen to Yukinoshita Yukino and Hayasaka Ai?

So what Isac had to do was make himself as outstanding as possible, so outstanding that even a world-class dynasty like the Shinomiya family couldn't ignore him.

He knew it would be hard, practically impossible on personal ability alone. But luckily, there's always a way out. The Survival Game brought not just hope of going home but also a chance to overtake everyone on the curve.

Low-Tier Physical Enhancement alone already put his physique on par with the world's top athletes. With Mid-Tier and even High-Tier enhancement still ahead, he might turn into a little Superman.

Ahem. He was getting off track. Back to the point.

Once he'd finished copying the reading list, Isac went through the remaining attachments again, and after confirming there was nothing else to find, he shut the computer down.

He picked up the charcoal bucket by his feet and headed back up to the second floor with Hayasaka Ai.

In the master bedroom on the second floor, the laptop was back on Kaguya's lap. Her pretty face was tense as her two index fingers slowly tapped away at the laptop's built-in keyboard.

It was the long-lost art of hunt-and-peck typing!

Isac looked at Yukinoshita Yukino, curiosity in his eyes. The message was simple.

"Did you teach her to type like that?"

Yukinoshita Yukino answered with a helpless look: "I didn't want to teach her this way. It's just that she can only type like this for now. Not one more finger."

Maybe Kaguya noticed the silent exchange between the two of them, or maybe she herself felt that typing this way looked a bit goofy.

The moment she saw Isac and Hayasaka Ai come back, she stopped tapping, calmly shut the laptop, and said to Isac, "Did you two find anything over there?"

"Quite a bit, actually." Isac answered as he used the fire tongs to scoop the charcoal from the bucket back into the fireplace. "One piece of good news and one piece of bad news. Which do you want first?"

Yukinoshita Yukino thought for a moment. "The bad news first."

"We might be in a radiation zone."

"?" ×2

Kaguya and Yukinoshita Yukino each sprouted a question mark above their heads.

"Wait, is the radiation you mean the radiation I'm thinking of?" Kaguya couldn't help asking.

"The very same," Isac confirmed.

Hearing this, Yukinoshita Yukino quickly connected it to the world's abnormal weather. "So what's making the weather get worse and worse… is a nuclear war?"

"It's very possible." Isac didn't jump to conclusions. When it came down to it, the nuclear war theory was only inferred from scraps in a dam shutdown notice, and the source wasn't guaranteed.

"I see… and the good news?" Yukinoshita Yukino didn't say anything more and went straight to the good news.

"The good news is that we found more leads on the bear spirit, and there's even a reading list. We won't have to go through the books one by one like before." Isac paused, then gave in to his curiosity and asked, "By the way, about the radiation just now… aren't you two worried?"

"Worried about what? If worrying did any good, what would we need radiation for?" Kaguya shot back. "Besides, we haven't lost any hair or shown any other early symptoms of radiation sickness. That means even if there is radiation around here, the dose can't be much. So what's there to worry about?"

Yukinoshita Yukino nodded along beside her. Clearly she felt the same way. She'd been a little rattled when she first heard it, but once she calmed down, she realized there was no need to worry at all.

After all, rather than worry about radiation, they'd be better off thinking about how to earn more survival points. It would be a real laugh if the boat ticket unlocked and they found they couldn't afford it.

"Let's talk about the bear spirit instead. That reading list you mentioned…"

"Here it is."

Hayasaka Ai opened her notebook to the page with the list and handed it to Yukinoshita Yukino.

Yukinoshita Yukino took the notebook and scanned the titles. "I've read two of these. Of the ones I haven't, I recognize most of the titles. They should be in the study."

"I'll go down and look for them tomorrow. It's getting late, so you should all get some rest." Isac glanced out the window as he spoke. During their conversation, the aurora outside had already neared its end, and the lights overhead were flickering faster and faster.

"So Hayasaka Ai is sleeping in here with us tonight?" Kaguya asked.

After all, Hayasaka Ai had bought Physical Enhancement this aurora night. If nothing went wrong, by the time she woke tomorrow she'd be stuck in bed unable to move, just like the others on their first day.

So there was no way she could go sleep in the guest bedroom next door with Isac anymore.

And that also meant that for at least the next four or five days, Isac would be sleeping alone in the guest bedroom.

"Should be." Isac nodded, and then he felt Hayasaka Ai tug at his sleeve and tap the back of his hand lightly with her finger, three times.

This was…