Chương 22: The Five-Day Margin

The five-hour real-world warning flashed a harsh, violent crimson at the corner of Ethan's field of vision. In the brutal, tech-choked slums of his Chinatown grid node, the medical capsule's automated lease protocol was ruthless. The moment the countdown hit zero, the smart-meter would cut power to the sensory-immersion gel, violently ejecting his consciousness straight back into his screaming, sleep-deprived muscles. A forced logout right now would ruin everything.

If his avatar dropped into a helpless, catatonic state in this drainage ditch, any low-level scavenger or passing Pixel Rex scout could strip his inventory clean. I need an exploit, Ethan thought. His thoughts were agonizingly slow, dragging through the sludge of a twenty-six-hour neural overload. He forced his mind to grind through the hardware parameters of his cheap, third-generation capsule. He didn't need to leave the game completely to reset his timer. The capsule ran on a standard high-frequency neural loop.

If he initiated a hard gateway reset, the system would grant him a two-minute terminal grace period while the hardware re-authenticated his Singpass login. Two minutes of real-world time translated to a deep, hyper-compressed neuro-sleep burst if he manipulated the capsule's emergency medical override.

Moving with leaden, mechanical steps, he crawled back into the deepest recess of the earthen bulwark he had just constructed, pulling the clay tiles over his head until his avatar was completely sealed from the outside world. [System Warning: Capsule Hardware Lease Expiring in 04: 59: 52] [Initiating Terminal Bypass Protocol...] Ethan reached into his hidden system interface, bypassing the standard Bereshit Online logout button.

Instead, he forced a diagnostic loop on his physical capsule's nutrient feed lines back in Singapore. He manually triggered a localised cooling surge inside the pod's gel bed, dropping his real-world core body temperature by exactly 1. 2 degrees Celsius while flooding his neural paths with a low-grade sedation sedative designed for emergency power outages. His vision went instantly pitch black. The simulated noise of Hazor vanished, replaced by the deep, hollow hum of the Chinatown grid node.

For exactly ninety real-world seconds, Ethan's brain fell into a profound, ice-cold chemical sleep. Back in his capsule, the automated medical line flushed his burning, bloodshot eyes with sterile saline and pumped a high-density glucose-caffeine shot straight into his physical arm. It wasn't a real night of rest. It was a chemical illusion—a brutal biological tax that would leave his physical body completely shattered when he finally woke up.

But to a mind pushed to the brink of insanity, the freezing shock acted like a total neural reboot. BEEP. [Hardware ID Re-Authenticated] [Singpass Lease Extended: 24 Hours Added via Emergency Medical Credit Line] [Re-entering Virtual Interface...] Ethan's eyes snapped open. The sensory immersion hit him again. The blinding, phantom migraine behind his eyes hadn't disappeared, but the chemical cocktail had pushed it into a dull, manageable ache at the absolute back of his consciousness.

The clinical calculation engine inside his brain was firing on all cylinders again, weaponized by sheer desperation. The moon shifted two degrees to the east, casting the dark shadow of Hazor's mud-brick ramparts deep into the ravine. Ethan did not check his level bar. He knelt in the moist red silt, his eyes locked onto the green decimal points rolling over at the bottom of his field of vision.

The artificial stamina from Bochim's automated food subsidy forced his avatar's muscles to stay taut, his chemically forced focus ready to drive the meat-machine forward. [Arayut Covenant Active] Moon Phase Cycle: 3 Days, 22 Hours remaining. Current Laborer Stamina: 94% Subsidised Satiety Status: Active (Billed to Player: Bochim). Three days twenty-two hours, Ethan calculated, his sluggish, sleep-deprived thoughts forcing themselves into a flat, precise line.

The arduous grind to amass his six hundred and eighty shekels had consumed 26 brutal hours of his original thirty-one-hour window. His five-day immunity shield was shrinking down to exactly 94 hours before the moon phase reset and Bochim's vanguard squads deployed to clear this ditch. He had less than five hours left in his physical capsule before a real-world forced logout, but he was going to squeeze every milligram of value from Pixel Rex's private ledger while he could. He gripped his blunt bronze trowel.

His fingers automatically locked around its worn wooden handle. He didn't have to worry about tool wear anymore. The tool held an Infinite durability rating, its surface smeared with the deep ochre stain of the Adama. A heavy, scratching scrape vibrated down the brickwork of the southern culvert. Out from the tangled thorns of the upper ravine drifted a Level 5 Ridge Leopard. The beast was double the size of the scavenger jackals, its lean, muscular flank covered in coarse, clay-streaked golden fur.

Its jaws were parted, revealing long, white incisors that dripped with simulated saliva. [Target Identified: Ridge Leopard (Level 5 — Elite Scavenger)] Health Points: 320 / 320 Aggro Status: Threat Detected (Lock-on Range: 5 Metres) Ethan did not retreat into the brush. He forced his knees to lock, refusing to let the residual tremors of his real-world fatigue ruin his stance.

With his newly expanded Level 3 metrics, his baseline Constitution sat at twenty-four, pushing his default health pool past a hundred and eighty points. He was structurally sturdier than the premium vanguard trainees, but his calculating mind had no intention of letting the beast's claws touch his default burlap apron. He waited, his breathing shallow, until the leopard lowered its shoulders. Its hind legs tensed for a high-velocity pounce across the mud face. Now. His fingers pressed into the wet ochre bank.

He didn't look at a targeting reticle; his artificially sharpened focus didn't need it. He isolated the three-letter consonantal root א-ד-מ inside his mind, channeling his mana straight through the bronze trowel into the silt. The red earth roared. A thick, curved block of hardened, sun-baked terra-cotta erupted from the riverbank, rising a metre and a half into the air with a violent, stone-hard snap.

It didn't just form a shield; Ethan's clinical calculations had tilted the angle of the clay creation code inward, creating a narrow, three-sided rectangular cell right beneath the leopard's landing vector. Thud. The leopard cleared the gap, but its front paws slammed directly into the interior wall of the terra-cotta bulwark. The beast's momentum carried its body weight forward, its hind legs sliding into the tight mud trap before the top-heavy physics engine could even register the impact.

[Genesis Formulation Successful: Primordial Earth Trap] Structural Durability: 500 / 500 Target Status: Motionless (Confined Space Restraint Applied). The leopard thrashed violently, its thick claws raking against the red ceramic lining, spraying sparks and grey dust into the night air. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. Object Integrity: 485 / 500. 472 / 500.

"Scratch all you want," Ethan muttered, standing up from the brush.

"It costs me zero shekels to repair." He stepped to the open lip of the earthen cell, his bare feet sinking into the unpaved earth to trigger his Unyielding Frame passive health multiplier. He pulled his braided hemp sling from his pouch, slotted a heavy, sharp limestone pebble into the pocket, and dropped his shoulder. He didn't need system auto-aim. The leopard's head was pinned between two solid slabs of hardened clay less than two metres from his arm. It was like aiming at an open barrel. The hemp cords spun.

Thrum-thrum-snap. The stone struck the leopard's left eye socket with a sickening, heavy crunch. [Critical Strike! Blindness Status Applied] Target Health: -64 HP Current Target HP: 256 / 320 The beast let out a high-pitched, echoing screech, its golden torso twisting frantically inside the narrow terra-cotta cage. But the 500-durability wall held firm, absorbing the thrashing kinetic energy of the level-5 elite without a single hairline crack appearing on the exterior structure.

Ethan didn't pause to admire his work. His fingers were already digging into his leather pouch, pulling out stone number two. Thrum-thrum-snap. The second rock fractured the creature's jaw, reducing its counter-bite attack value to zero. Thrum-thrum-snap. The third stone tore through the soft cartilage behind its ear, spraying a shower of red pixels against the white mud bricks of the palace wall. Ethan's stamina bar flickered, dropping by four percent from the rapid rotations.

Instantly, a bright green system voucher flashed across his visor as the Arayut contract swept his deficit, draining another 0. 15 shekels directly from Bochim's private ledger in the Upper City to purchase a passive nutrition tick. A fresh surge of energy washed through his avatar's muscles. His green stamina bar surged back to ninety-eight percent before the leopard's health could even reset.

With a final, low rattling groan, the Level 5 Ridge Leopard's golden torso collapsed inside the clay cell, its body dissolving into a dense, sparkling cascade of white data points. [System Alert: Elite Enemy Defeated] Experience Gained: +120 XP Current Level Progress: Level 3 Apprentice Yotzer HaRishon (12. 4% toward Level 4) Loot Acquired: [Premium Spotted Leopard Pelts x1], [Elite Predator Claw x4] Total Maintenance Repair Overhead: 0. 00 Silver Shekels.

Ethan reached into the debris, his fingers sweeping the heavy, spotted hide into his leather bag. A premium pelt of this grade was worth at least three Silver Shekels on the black market—and he hadn't spent a single copper bit on weapon durability kits or health potions to harvest it. He turned back toward the riverbank, his eyes tracking the dark red mire lining the ravine. The Yotzer HaRishon stats were completely broken.

By combining his high-durability clay walls with the free ammunition of the nahal and Bochim's involuntary food subsidy, he didn't just have a leveling node. He had a zero-overhead wealth generator that could scale infinitely through the night. He dug his bronze trowel back into the silt. He had ninety-four hours left on the clock, and he was going to bleed the rich boys dry before the moon reset.