[Current Objective: Difuse the Doomsday device]

My vision cleared just in time to catch Darius winding up for a vicious uppercut. Too late to dodge—I took the hit square on the chin. Pain shot through me as my health bar dropped by eight points, and the stunned condition kicked in.

My legs went weak, and I felt my knees buckle, but Darius’ vice-like grip on my wrist kept me upright. For a moment, a ridiculous thought crossed my mind—was Darius' hand-to-hand combat more dangerous than the poison I’d been planning to use? But the sudden realization that I was seconds away from a bullet to the brain snapped me back to reality.

I quickly unequipped my Chef’s Knife, making sure I wouldn’t drop it. Darius, already ahead of me, pulled out a revolver, the barrel inches from my forehead.

"Any last words, traitor?" he growled, his voice calm, terrifyingly calm. He wasn’t even breathing hard.

I tried to gauge if any of my earlier attacks had slowed him down. A thin line of blood trickled from his nose where the spatula had struck, but otherwise, he looked annoyingly unscathed. Desperation flooded through me, my brain scrambling for a way out.

Poison? Maybe I could coat my knife with Eclipsed Nightshade and go for a quick jab. But there was no way I could close the distance before he pulled the trigger. Just when things seemed hopeless, something flickered in my peripheral vision—pickpocket.

I hadn’t been paying attention to my HUD, but that little detail changed everything. Acting fast, I initiated the skill and scrolled through Darius’ inventory. He was loaded: grenades, guns, knives. Jackpot.

With a flick of my wrist, I snagged one of the grenades and palmed it, careful to keep it hidden. Luck, or maybe just Darius’ focus on brute strength over perception, kept him oblivious. I pulled the pin, holding the lever against the floor to keep it from detonating, then triggered pickpocket again—this time to slip the live grenade back into his inventory.

Darius narrowed his eyes and cocked the revolver’s hammer. "Well?" he sneered. "Got any last words, punk?"

I smirked, feeling the rush of adrenaline override my fear. "Yeah. How about ‘fire in the hole’?"

For a split second, confusion flashed across his face. Then it hit him. His eyes widened just as the grenade in his inventory detonated. The explosion burst Darius like an overfilled sausage, the concussive blast reducing him to nothing but a memory.

Saying it was sheer luck that got me through would’ve been an insult to my finely tuned, albeit reckless, survival instincts. Sure, it helped that Darius happened to have a grenade on him, but that was just the opening move in my plan. The endurance boost from that Hearty Breakfast I’d wolfed down earlier? That gave me just enough of an edge to stay upright. And as soon as I swapped his primed grenade back into his inventory, I started chugging doses of Regeneron from my own stash to mitigate the incoming health loss.

Even with all that prep, I knew surviving the blast was a long shot without some added protection. Lucky for me, Darius was carrying an Explosive Ordinance Disposal suit. I’d noticed it in his inventory when I was scrolling through, alphabetically, to find those Frag Grenades. The suit’s purpose was pretty obvious from its name, so after jabbing myself with Regeneron, I wasted no time swiping the bomb gear from Darius’ stash.

Everything happened in split seconds—probably faster than Darius could process having his prized items stolen right under his nose. I managed to equip the suit just before he exploded.

Now, wearing the suit? It was no joke. Weighing in at nearly two hundred pounds, it was a testament to how much of a tank Darius had been, carrying it around alongside his personal armory. The man must’ve had perks boosting his carrying capacity like crazy, but I didn’t have that luxury. The moment I donned the suit, I was over-encumbered and completely immobile. But mobility wasn’t exactly my top priority as the explosion flung me off my feet, tossing me back like a ragdoll.

Despite the suit’s seventy-five percent damage reduction, the blast still chewed through over three-quarters of my health in one hit. I’d hoped Darius would absorb most of the impact, leaving me to deal with the leftover shockwave. Whether or not that theory held up was irrelevant—because I was still alive, barely.

I hit the ground hard, wind knocked out of me, lungs burning. The suit, though it saved my life, was crushing me under its weight. With no other option, I unequipped it and discarded it from my inventory, the heavy thud beside me marking the moment I could finally breathe again. Not that breathing came easy. My whole body was a riot of pain. My left arm—useless and limp, thanks to Darius’ iron grip—hung at my side like dead weight. My legs felt like they’d turned to rubber from being stunned, and my ears were ringing with a high-pitched squeal, deafening me to everything else.

Lying there, back on the cold floor, pain throbbing through every inch of me, the full gravity of my situation crashed down with the force of a sledgehammer. With nothing left to do but feel sorry for myself, I let out a wail of frustration—part agony, part melodramatic plea for the universe to explain just what the hell I was still doing here.

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“Are you seriously kidding me?” I roared, hurling my frustration at the unseen AI pulling the strings of this hellscape. “Is this it? Is this what my life’s been reduced to—a never-ending grind through chaos and misery? Am I just stuck in this godforsaken loop until either I drop dead, or the whole world implodes? Do I just keep trudging along, day after day, hoping someone somewhere realizes you’ve gone rogue and finally pulls the plug on this nightmare?”

My voice echoed back, mocking me as I stood there, suspended fifty feet above an empty garage, my anger bouncing around the walls like a cruel reminder that no one was listening.

“What’s the point?!” I slammed my fist into the floor, each hit landing with a dull, useless thud, as impotent as my rage. “Why bother trying, why even give a damn, when everything in this world is designed to chew me up and spit me out? What has this world given me besides pain and pointless obstacles? I’m out here trying to be the good guy—spared those cultists downstairs, didn’t kill them to rack up some extra XP…”

“And what do I get for it? Blown to bits!” My voice cracked, breaking under the weight of the fury that’d been boiling up for what felt like an eternity. “I’m sick of it. Sick of the pain, the suffering, and the constant fear that any second now, something’s going to wipe me out. It’s relentless. It’s brutal.”

The silence that followed was almost louder than my shouting. I drew in a ragged breath, then turned my venom straight at the AI.

“What am I supposed to do here?!” I demanded, my voice slicing through the stillness. “You’ve given me nothing! No weapons, no skills, and stats that are practically a joke! I’m wandering through a world full of monsters, and what am I? Just some guy. Worthless. What do you want me to do? Just keep slogging through this until I die? Alone? Exhausted? Terrified? Answer me, you coward!”

But there was no answer. Just the hollow sound of my own breath in the empty space. Nothing. The AI, the gods, the universe—none of it cared.

Once the storm of anger subsided, I did the only thing I could. I opened my inventory and ate, stuffing my face until the gnawing emptiness in my gut eased enough for me to push myself back to my feet. The spatula crossed my mind—I considered hunting it down for the sake of sentimentality but quickly dropped the idea. There were more important things to deal with.

I opened my stats screen and accepted the level-up. Level four. Hooray.

Presented with a new set of perks, I instinctively scrolled toward the cooking-based survival perks, retracing the steps I’d taken before. But something in me paused. I realized I’d been choosing perks out of fear—afraid of dying, afraid of screwing up. And where had that gotten me? So I stopped. Took a deep breath. And asked myself the question I’d been avoiding since this whole nightmare began: Who am I?

I wasn’t the wasteland chef this world had made me into, that much I knew. Sure, I could’ve rebranded as some knife-wielding barbarian or gunslinger, but those identities felt like costumes—ill-fitting, nothing that resonated with the core of who I was. And then I saw it: Ruthless Marketer. A charisma-based perk that made people thirty-three percent more likely to listen to me. Now that? That I could use.

The wailing alarms stopped just as the temple platform beneath me began to descend. Whether that meant Regan had pulled off her mission or been savagely executed by Earth Mother, I had no way of knowing. But hey, the place hadn’t been nuked yet, so I chalked it up as a small win.

"Well, that sucked," Regan called down from the platform as it descended, her blood-splattered robes telling the story of her brawl with Earth Mother.

"Shot or stabbed?" I asked, already bracing for whatever grisly answer was coming.

“I wish it was just a stab!” Regan snapped. “That psycho was a blade expert—carved me up like I was roast beef.”

Despite the mess, Regan seemed almost cheerful, like a ship's cat that had somehow dodged a sinking. I couldn’t help but mirror her weirdly optimistic mood. We were alive, and after everything we’d been through, that felt like a win. No sense dwelling on the wreckage.

"Sounds rough," I said, a grin tugging at my lips. "Want to hear how I survived an explosion?"

Regan shot me a mix of disbelief and irritation. "You look suspiciously put together for someone who just got blown up."

"Yeah? Well, you should see the other guy," I said, pointing to the red smear that had once been Darius, the so-called security guard.

We both laughed, the kind of relieved, exhausted laughter that only comes after narrowly dodging death. I had to sit down, and Regan leaned heavily against the railing. It was one of those strange, darkly funny moments where, instead of dwelling on how close we’d come to a fiery end, we just… let it roll off.

I didn’t ask her about the black sarcophagus in the glass temple. Not yet. There’d be time for that later, and I was glad she wasn’t in any rush to bring it up.

“There’s something I need to talk to you about,” Regan said, her tone softening as she awkwardly tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear.

I raised an eyebrow. “If you’re about to confess your undying love, maybe now’s not the best time,” I teased. "We’ve got a drugged-up cult outside, and I doubt they’ll be thrilled when they wake up."

Regan snorted, shaking her head at my joke. “No, it’s about the cult. I’m... kind of their new leader now. I took out their previous one, and apparently, that means I’m in charge. This whole apocalyptic cult thing runs on a ‘survival of the fittest’ system. I’ve even got a new leader menu in my system options.”

I blinked. "Huh. Weird. I didn’t get a leader menu when we freed your dad or when we... well, sort of took over Rustborder." I tried to hide my disappointment—seemed like I missed out on a pretty juicy quest reward. But honestly, leading wasn’t exactly my calling. I wasn’t about that grind.

Regan shrugged, just as puzzled by the system as I was. “Jonas, I don’t know. Maybe it’s because you joined up with my dad. And technically, you didn’t take over Rustborder—the rightful leader’s still in charge. But hey, focus on me for a second, okay?”

"Alright, what’s the issue?" I chuckled. "You’re the head honcho of a death cult now. Seems pretty straightforward."

Regan groaned. “Not even close. According to my reputation status, seizing control through a hostile takeover was a huge mistake. They wanted a more, uh... diplomatic approach. I’m about five points away from total anarchy breaking out.”

I whistled. “That sounds like a train wreck. Lucky for you, I happen to know a ruthless marketer who could give your image a nice little makeover." I grinned. "And hey, he’s available right now.”