Chapter 305: Chapter 293: New Rules
Flora Bloom released the six people she had stored in her space. Along with the 50 new recruits, she had them move into the villas located within the safe zone’s partition walls.
Flora Bloom had also arranged for Yue Mao to be moved there.
The fifty newcomers, upon entering the villa district, had expected to join Flora Bloom’s team on their hunting expeditions. To their surprise, however, the entire group was assigned to Villa District Two to clean up the neighborhood.
They had figured that getting three free meals a day was worth the hard work of sweeping streets. What they hadn’t anticipated, however, was that this "cleaning duty" involved more than just the neighborhood streets and public areas. They were also required to scrub every single villa in the district, inside and out.
This was too much for some of them to bear.
They may have been ordinary people without superpowers, but this level of work was nothing short of back-breaking, exploitative labor. Who could possibly stand it? To make matters worse, their supervisors carried notebooks, meticulously recording each person’s output, as lunch was distributed entirely based on the amount of work completed.
With Zane Locke dead, the newcomers he had planted in Flora Bloom’s team lost their backer. They could only swallow their anger, and they no longer had any intention of causing trouble or gathering intelligence. They also hadn’t expected the environment in the villa district to be incomparably better than the main base outside.
For lunch, which was distributed based on work completed, the minimum allotment was a bowl of white rice. The best meal, however, included two meat dishes, a vegetable dish, a soup, and even a bright red tomato.
David Warren looked at the food and fruit in his hands, and tears welled up in his eyes. In a single morning, he had single-handedly cleaned the entire first floor of a villa and its yard. His sister, still a small girl of ten, didn’t have much strength, but she had helped him clean the yard and wipe down the furniture inside. In the end, she was given a bowl of white rice and one vegetable dish.
David Warren looked at the meal in his sister’s hands and scooped a generous portion of the dishes from his own lunchbox into hers. The two of them savored every single bite and split the tomato, each eating half.
Seeing that David Warren had a tomato, the others’ eyes burned with jealousy. They hadn’t eaten a full meal in nearly two months, let alone any fruit. They had almost forgotten what fruit even tasted like. That afternoon, everyone worked with renewed diligence, hoping their dinner might include meat and fruit.
When evening came, everyone waited for their meal, their bodies aching from the day’s labor. Instead of food, however, they were informed that the slowest worker among them would have to leave the villa district and return to where they came from.
The supervisors for the day were Ethan Monroe and Shauna Wallace. Ordinarily, the two of them couldn’t possibly have monitored everyone’s work. However, Shauna Wallace had a bee swarm, a gift from Flora Bloom, and she could communicate with them using her spiritual power.
The bees were large, but their great advantage was their ability to monitor everyone’s movements from the air. Shauna Wallace was perfectly aware of who worked diligently without complaint and who cut corners to slack off.
The man chosen for expulsion was indignant at first. But when Shauna Wallace announced that he had slacked off and napped for over two hours that afternoon, that the street he claimed to have swept had already been cleaned by someone else, and that he hadn’t touched the inside of the villa at all, he hung his head in shame, unable to meet anyone’s gaze.
"I’m sure you all remember the terms of our recruitment. In this day and age, who else would dare guarantee you three meals a day? Most people can’t even feed themselves, so where would they get extra food for you? This is how our team works: the more you work, the more you earn. You get food and water based on your own efforts. And if you work hard, other resources won’t be scarce either. If one of you awakens a superpower, our boss might even provide you with enough Crystal Cores to upgrade it to a high level—free of charge! And you’re complaining that this work is too tiring? You’re slacking off? Most of you came here fleeing disaster from the outside. Have you already forgotten what your lives were like before you got here?"
Seeing the man glance back regretfully with every few steps, Ethan Monroe bellowed, "Don’t even think about hiding in one of the villas or public areas. If you don’t leave quietly, you know what will happen."
Shauna Wallace waved her hand, and a swarm of worker bees, each the size of a human head, flew toward the man’s retreating figure. Not even thirty seconds later, his miserable screams echoed through the air, making everyone’s skin crawl.
"Don’t be so alarmed. These bees won’t attack you without reason. Don’t worry!"
"Starting tomorrow, the best performer of each day will receive a piece of fruit and will also have the chance to join a hunting team, heading out with the superpower users to kill zombies."
Ethan Monroe’s words didn’t cause much of a stir among the group. After all, the remaining 49 were all ordinary people. Their fear of zombies and their gnawing hunger made them want nothing more than to survive peacefully. ’Hunting zombies is a job for people with superpowers. If we go, we’ll probably just die... or worse, become one of them!’
But just as the crowd was feeling underwhelmed, a gruff yet earnest voice piped up from among the 49 recruits.
"Um, sir... if we join a hunting team, do we still get free food?"
Ethan Monroe laughed. "Of course! And the food only gets better, never worse."
"Then... then great! I wanna join! I cleaned more than anyone today. Does that mean I can join right away?" David Warren looked at Ethan Monroe, his eyes shining with eagerness. He was about the same height as Ethan and spoke with a hearty, rustic accent that was somewhat amusing.
"Today was just about laying down the rules. But of course, those who performed well today will be considered for the hunting teams. Don’t you worry."
David Warren grinned, so moved he was on the verge of tears as he held his sister Millie’s hand. After days of starvation, he had been at his absolute limit. Ever since the base leader, Morgan Sterling, had died, he and his sister hadn’t been able to get even the most basic rations.
Every day, he would lead his little sister just outside the base to scavenge for any expired scraps of food they could find.
His sister, Millie, was already starved down to skin and bones. If things had continued like that, it was likely they both would have perished in this apocalyptic world.
But at the height of their unbearable hunger, they saw the recruitment notice Flora Bloom had posted outside the partition wall’s gate. Nothing else on it mattered to him. The moment he saw the five words "three meals a day provided," he immediately grabbed his sister and signed them both up.
He was born with immense strength. It was as if what nature had given him in brawn, it had taken back in brains. Both before and after the apocalypse, the only work he could ever hold onto for long was mindless physical labor.
Thankfully, the notice had been telling the truth. He endured his hunger and worked diligently for half a day, earning himself a sumptuous lunch. If things continued like this, he and his sister might actually be able to survive peacefully in this new world.
This was survival. The very concept of *living* had departed from their world the day the apocalypse began.
Standing before the group, Ethan Monroe spoke with soaring spirits.
"Let me tell you, as long as you work hard, we aren’t short on anything in this team. What’s more, once you join a hunting team, every member can bring one family member with them. That family member can join our logistics department and will no longer have to do this grueling cleaning work to earn their food.
"But you all need to understand that you’re still in a probationary period. If you slack off or do anything to harm our team, you will be kicked out. And if it’s something serious... well, too bad for you. Our captain has a saying: ’Those who bring harm to others will be harmed in turn.’ You can forget about ever having a peaceful life in this base again. Do you understand?"
