Chương 18: Chapter 17: Food, Love, and Buffs

I awoke to an obnoxiously loud, metallic hammering ringing right next to my ear.

"Ughhhhh," I growled, burying my face flat into the pillow.

"That is aggressively annoying. How do you turn this damn thing off?"

"Just hit the button on top, honey," Denise murmured lazily from beneath the blankets. I blindly flailed my arm out, violently slapping the top of the clock housing, but my palms met nothing but cold, smooth metal. Grunting in defeat, I forced myself to sit up and picked up the heavy, retro mechanical clock. After a brief struggle, I located the small toggle switch on the back panel and flipped it down. Once again, the bedroom was plunged into a blessedly silent calm.

I let out a heavy huff, collapsing back onto the mattress and aggressively scrubbing the residual sleep out of my eyes. Denise rolled over onto her side, draping a warm arm across my chest before leaning up to plant a soft kiss on my cheek.

"Good morning, baby. I love you."

"Good morning," I smiled, wrapping my fingers through her hair.

"I love you too, my love." After a few minutes of letting the fog clear from my brain, I made a move to toss off the blankets. I had a massive laundry list of tactical priorities to handle if my family was going to survive and thrive in this fractured world. But the second I shifted, Denise applied a sudden, firm pressure to my chest, completely pinning me to the sheets. She deftly cleared her legs from the fabric, straddled my waist in a single, fluid motion, and sat up to look down at me.

A playful, dangerous spark flashed in her eyes.

"I know you were running on absolute empty when you finally stumbled back through the door, and I let you sleep it off. But you've been entirely absent for two days, leaving us stranded in the middle of a literal apocalypse. Now that you're fully rested, it's time to properly greet your wife." I looked up at her, letting my arms rest comfortably around her waist. I thought to myself: You know what? Maybe the world doesn't need to be saved at this exact second.

The grand survival strategy can definitely wait forty-five minutes. By the time I finally extracted myself from the bedroom and ventured down the hallway, the rich, intoxicating aroma of sizzling bacon and eggs was already drifting out of the kitchen. Technically, it was well past noon, making this meal a late lunch, but my stomach didn't care about the clock. It let out an incredibly loud, desperate growl the second I crossed the threshold.

Along with the food, the lovely scent of fresh-brewed coffee filled the air. It was strange—I hadn't given coffee a single thought over the last forty-eight hours. I had packed plenty of instant coffee singles inside the accessory packs of the MREs in my rucksack, and I'd possessed the means to boil water the whole time, but I had never bothered to brew a cup.

What was even more bizarre was that I hadn't suffered from the blinding caffeine withdrawal headaches that normally crushed my skull if I skipped my morning mug. Was that a passive benefit of my elevated Constitution stat, or was my Minor Heal spell subtly scrubbing the chemical dependency from my system? I wasn't entirely sure, but I wasn't going to complain. Denise slid a steaming plate of bacon and eggs onto the table right in front of my chair, accompanied by a heavy ceramic mug of dark coffee.

It was perfectly lightened with our absolute favorite creamer: Cold Stone Creamery's sweet cream.

"Oh my God," I breathed, staring up at her in disbelief.

"We actually still have sweet cream left in the fridge?"

"Not very much," she admitted, leaning against the counter with a soft smile.

"But I figured you earned a serious pick-me-up after surviving two days on the open road."

"God, I fucking love you, baby," I exclaimed, immediately taking a huge, grateful gulp of the coffee. Denise's smile widened.

"I fucking love you too, honey."

"Oh, good grief," a dry female voice cut in from the doorway.

"You two need to take that nauseating romance right back into the bedroom." I looked back over my shoulder to see Denise's mom, Mamo, entering the kitchen area.

"Already done and completely taken care of, Mamo," I shot back with a highly sarcastic, victorious grin. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site. Mamo walked over, leaning down to give me a warm, reassuring hug and a quick kiss on the cheek.

"It is incredibly good to see your face, Derrick," she said sincerely.

"We were all getting a little sick to our stomachs with worry there for a bit. How are your mom and Alex holding up out there?"

"It took a lot of miles to clear the line, but you know me—there ain't an apocalypse on Earth big enough to keep me pinned down," I chuckled, cutting into an egg yolk.

"They're doing great. Alex has a decent defensive setup established for the time being, but we're going to have to coordinate a permanent logistical merger soon. The harsh reality is that they're liable to completely run out of fresh well water in just over a week. Once the pressure dies, they'll have to manually cart buckets up from one of the agricultural canals in the area. Honestly, we're probably tracking toward the exact same crisis here."

Denise pulled out the wooden chair across from me, taking a seat at the table and resting her chin in her hands.

"Speaking of the horizon... what exactly is the game plan, Derrick?"

"Well, first off," I said, setting my fork down for a moment.

"I need to get a comprehensive diagnostic read on everyone's individual skills and abilities so I know how to allocate our human capital. Let's start with you, my love. What exact profile did you pull during the initialization phase?" Denise sighed, rubbing her temples.

"I didn't receive much of anything in the way of direct combat traits, except for baseline Beginner ranks in Axes and Hand-to-Hand."

"I'm guessing the System granted those baseline ranks to almost everyone," I reasoned, taking a bite of bacon.

"We've been throwing tactical axes and hatchets out in the yard for years during family barbecues. And the kids have all taken some variation of structured self-defense, whether it was boxing, high school wrestling, or defensive tactics drills."

"True," Denise nodded.

"The interface logged automated levels in Bow Mastery and Sword Mastery on the boys' sheets, too. The text block literally cited it was a direct result of you constantly beating them over the knuckles with your bamboo sticks."

"They are absolutely not sticks," I huffed defensively, pointing my fork at her.

"They're called Shinais. They are traditional martial arts training implements. And I never beat them! I mean... okay, technically I did, but it was structured combat conditioning! I didn't beat them beat them." Denise just raised an eyebrow, an amused smirk plastered across her face.

"Moving on," I muttered sheepishly, coughing into my hand.

"As for the spells or whatever you want to call them..." Denise continued, her tone clearly betraying how much she absolutely loathed having to explain complex video game mechanics in relation to her actual soul.

"I unlocked a permanent passive ability called Nourishment." I stopped chewing, a giant giggle bubbling up in my throat.

"Wait, let me guess. For fifteen years, you've constantly told me that you 'make every dish with love.' Don't tell me the System literally generated a passive ability that proves it?" Denise was, without a shadow of a doubt, one of the most phenomenal cooks I had ever encountered in my life. She could take standard pantry ingredients and manifest absolute magic on a plate, always tossing in her own unmeasured, instinctual 'something' to elevate the flavor profiles.

Whenever I tried to replicate the exact same recipes step-by-step, it never tasted the same. When I'd inevitably ask her what secret ingredient I missed, she'd just smile and say,"I make mine with love."

"That is exactly what happened," she said, giving me a smug, triumphant 'I told you so' look.

"In fact, if you look at your active interface right now, finishing that breakfast should trigger a flat ten percent modifier boost to your Strength and Constitution attributes for the next four hours." Intrigued, I swallowed my food and focused my mind to call up my personal status tracker. Sure enough, a pair of bright green status icons were pulsing in the corner of my vision: [Active Buff: Nourishment — +10% Strength, +10% Constitution. Duration: 3h 52m.] [Active Buff: Well Rested — +15% Health Regeneration, +15% Skill Training Gain, +15% Experience Gain. Duration: 3h 52m.]"Wow, okay," I murmured, genuinely impressed.

"Those are some incredibly substantial mechanical buffs, baby. What else did the initialization calculate for you?"

"I pulled an active spell called Charm," she said.

"The description says it temporarily alters human perception to make targets significantly more friendly and cooperative toward me." I held up a single finger, narrowing my eyes.

"Wait just a darn minute. You pulled a literal Charm spell that forces people to be friendly? Like... they instantly want to bend over backwards to hand you free merchandise? The exact phenomenon that has naturally occurred literally everywhere you walk into a store?"

"Oh, come on," she scoffed, waving a hand.

"That didn't happen nearly as much as you claim."

"Oh, really?" I countered, leaning forward.

"Then please explain to me exactly how many free pizzas the manager at Little Caesars handed you over the counter before the power grid fried?" Denise didn't even attempt a rebuttal. She just let out a soft giggle, a knowing, wicked smirk dancing on her lips.

"Like I said—moving on," I chuckled, shaking my head.

"What about your primary core attributes? What do your raw numbers look like?"

"My two highest calculated stats by a landslide," Denise responded, "are Intelligence and Charisma." I leaned back in my chair, tapping my chin as the systemic logic began to click together.

"Okay, let me think this through from a structural standpoint. A high-tier intelligence pool, maximum Charisma scaling, a natural Charm spell, and a passive Nourishment modifier. The System is almost certainly translating your real-world vocational footprint and personality matrix into a high-tier Merchant archetype. Probably with a hyper-specific specialization toward operating an independent eatery, a trading post, or a secure tavern."

"What exactly do you mean by 'translating'?" Denise asked, her brow furrowing.

"It's just a strong hypothesis right now," I explained, gesturing with my mug.

"But I'm convinced the System actively audited our entire lifetime of training, occupational skills, and personal experiences prior to the initialization event. It took that raw data and grouped it into the specific pre-existing class structures that aligned closest with who we already were. For instance, my profile dialed straight into the Ranger archetype. It fits me to an absolute T—a hybrid warrior crossed with a practical woodsman, tracker, and hunter."

Denise looked at me for a long beat, her expression softening into agreement.

"Yeah... when you put it that way, that definition describes you perfectly."