Chapter 71 Killer Winter Nights

I slowly pushed open the door to take a sneak peek outside.

Within the forest, I definitely saw silhouettes of zombies—and a lot of them at that. Even in the brief few seconds where the door was open, I felt as if I had opened the door to a refrigerator which blasted ice-cold air into my warm chamber. I quickly shut the door again before shivering up beside the fire.

It was very cold.

Even if I wanted to, I wouldn't be able to help my Minions fight against the zombies. I hoped that my current number of Minions was enough to protect me through the night. I would literally die of frostbite before I died of being killed by a zombie if I were to go outside. I was still able to micromanage from within the hut, but without a good view of the battlefield, it wouldn't be very effective for me to do so.

I heard the loud footsteps and blood-chilling groans of the zombies outside. All of my Minions had been placed on defence, I had no idea how much the difficulty had increased in terms of the night-time hordes.

My main plan was to focus on using my archers to whittle down the zombies as much as possible before engaging them, even if that meant constantly retreating away from the border. For the most part, Chloe and I would be safe as long as we stayed inside. I kept my weapon on hand in case a zombie did somehow manage to break inside.

"Chloe, you should hold out your weapon."

"Yeah~ I guess so."

She pulled out her [Platinum Bow] and placed it on her lap.

After a few minutes, I could hear the sounds of combat outside of the hut. The squelching of sword blades on flesh, the pinging of arrows and the thumping of bodies hitting the ground. Even without seeing what was going on, I had a pretty good idea of what was happening just from the sounds.

I decided to monitor the health of my Minions while I was inside the hut.

From what I could see, most of my front-line Minions hadn't taken much damage yet, meaning the archers were culling them fast enough. However, as time went on, my front-line Minions were sustaining more and more damage.

I didn't want to have to use my resource gathering Minions but at this point, I needed them to act as meat shields along with the front-line Minions because if the zombies managed to break through and attack my archers, my army would be as good as gone. I wanted to take another look at the battlefield.

Once again, I very slightly slid the wooden door open and peeked outside. I was met by the sight of a humungous army of zombies slowly approaching from the distance. Dark blood was strewn and splattered all over the ground. Arrows rained upon them from my archers but they were only making a very small dent in the horde. My front line was still at the very border of my settlement but they were definitely going to have to pull back as the zombies got closer.

The cold air was sneaking itself in once again so I closed the door and allowed the heat to fill the room. I added some more wood to the fire so it was as strong as it possibly could be.

"William, how's the outside..."

"I think my Minions are holding up, just barely though."

"I'll go outside and help."

"You shouldn't, you'll die from the cold before you can do anything."

"Ugh... I don't want to just sit here..."

I thought about what she could do. Until I was able to find some way for us to stay warm whilst we were outside, we were basically trapped in here. Even during the day, the cold is unbearable, let alone at night.

I wanted to start building a wall around the perimeter of the settlement tomorrow, hopefully, that'd help with defence and a little with heat preservation.

However, until then, there was basically nothing we could do.

The two of us stayed inside the hut and listened to the sound of combat in the background. It was the sound of utter chaos as more and more zombies were approaching. I decided to stare at the fire and try to lose myself in its movements. At the moment, all I was doing was worrying about the fighting outside, without any real way to change the outcome.

I had a look on the Grand Exchange to see if there were any clothes for sale at a reasonable price.

-

<Grand Exchange>

Search: related [clothing] , Order: top

1. [x1] thick snow gear - Cost: 259 Tokens - Seller [Noah Gait]

2. [x2] wool sweater - Cost 122 Tokens - Seller [Elanor Richards]

3. [x1] puffer jacket - Cost 90 Tokens - Seller [John Guju]

4. [x10] colour-changing t-shirt - Cost 43 Tokens - [Blake Reg]

5. [x5] white hoodie - Cost 42 Tokens [Canto Hendri]

-

Yeah, I definitely wasn't going to be buying any of the clothing. As expected, prices were definitely quite inflated, at this point, there's way too much demand and way too little supply. However, I didn't have a way of crafting my own clothing either, it seemed the system you received upon coming here really determines quite a lot.

Maybe it was better to work in a bigger group...

No, it's fine. Once I survive until tomorrow, I'll look to rapidly increase my living conditions, by upgrading my production speed and training my Minions. Things are not as perilous as I thought before the start of Killer Winter.

"Chloe, how much space do you need to use your system."

"I probably can't use it inside, it'd destroy the ground."

"Ah, so how long do you have to be outside for."

"Usually, my system requires me to stand in an open space for quite a while."

"Oh, I'll try to think of a way."

p "Haa, you're as insensitive as always."

"Huh?"

She still probably hadn't forgiven me for ditching her. I hoped that I'd be able to get along with her once again. This time, we would properly work together.