Chương 150: There Are No Gamblers Unafraid of Losing, Only Those Afraid to Bet

With that, Zoe stopped her playful pestering. Mimicking Vince's posture, she sat down cross-legged beside him. Feeling emboldened by her own abilities, she casually dangled her legs off the edge of the high-rise balcony, scooting her butt over to press as tightly against Vince as possible. By now, she had grown accustomed to the acrid stench of burning ozone in the air. Sitting next to him, bathed in the radiant orange light of the firestorm, she actually found the ambient heat surprisingly comfortable.

She stared out at the apocalyptic sea of fire, quietly waiting for his answer.

"I'm keeping watch on a monster down there. I don't know why, but I have a gut feeling it isn't dead..." Vince said, his eyes never leaving the distant crater. The firelight cast a deep orange glow across his face. Only then did Zoe notice that his hair had been entirely singed into tight, frizzy curls by the superheated wind. Unable to resist, she reached out and lightly pressed down on the curls. But the moment his words registered, her hand froze. She looked at him nervously, her eyes wide with shock.

"A monster? What kind of monster could possibly survive that?!"

"Yeah... I'm trying to figure that out myself..." Vince genuinely believed the monstrosity had survived. It wasn't some mystical intuition or a calling of destiny. It was simple math: the Max HP scaling didn't add up. Right now, his status readout showed his health at [1226/1640]. Even his Energy pool had skyrocketed to [89/500]... Compared to his previous baseline of nine hundred-something, his Max HP had spiked by a staggering seven hundred points! He had nearly doubled his health pool in a single blast!

And that wasn't even factoring in the waterfall of loot notifications. Not only had he wiped out dozens of elite mutant zombies incubating in the pit, but the blast radius had also instantly atomized over a thousand standard zombies, flooding his inventory with a massive haul of basic crafting materials. He had even acquired the highly sought-after Rare Metal needed for higher-tier weapon upgrades, along with several entirely new material drops.

He didn't know if those new materials dropped from the incubating mutants or the [500] HP elites caught in the blast. Since the epicenter was packed with the 500-HP variants, they were the most likely source. Vince had been so hyper-focused on staring down the crater that he hadn't even opened his inventory to run a full audit. But even with a cursory glance at his stats, the math was wrong. It was an undeniable discrepancy.

If he assumed there were fifty mutant zombies incubating in the pit, an average scaling of 15 Max HP per kill perfectly matched his previous farming data. But that perfect match was exactly what bothered him. If that 10, 000-HP Boss had actually died in the blast, there was absolutely no way it only yielded a measly 30 Max HP increase, right? The numbers simply didn't reconcile. But aside from his gut feeling, he had no concrete proof that the leviathan had survived.

Besides, if a literal thermobaric detonation and the resulting inferno couldn't kill it, Vince didn't exactly have a Plan B. He was staking out the balcony purely to observe the blast zone a little longer, just to confirm that nothing crawled out of the flames. Seeing Zoe's burning curiosity, Vince decided to verbally reconstruct the entire operation, walking her through the events from the moment he spotted the stalled APC......

until the Armor Crystal's energy pool completely bottomed out and it shattered into nothingness. Vince took a direct hit from the extreme heat for a fraction of a second before immediately hot-swapping to a Complete Armor Crystal—one that ran on his own Energy points. Draining another three hundred-plus points from his pool, he finally survived the initial wave of the thermal flash and blasted his way out of the inferno! Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

But even the Armor Crystal had limits. It successfully deflected the kinetic shrapnel and the concussive force, but it couldn't entirely negate the absolute, ambient thermal radiation of the blast. As he outran the expanding fireball, his back was heavily scorched by the radiant heat, resulting in severe tissue damage. However, thanks to the stacked effects of all four active potions, Vince had pushed his physical limits to the absolute extreme.

He bolted from the epicenter, launched himself onto the roof of the commercial block, used the lower parapet as a springboard, and vaulted straight through the window of this high-rise apartment. The primary reason he suspected the Boss survived was because his Max HP continued to incrementally tick up for a solid minute after he had safely landed in the apartment.

This meant that a few of the incubating mutant zombies in the pit had actually survived the initial shockwave and detonation, only dying moments later as they were slowly incinerated by the residual firestorm. As for the two titanic "antennae"... they had been completely engulfed in the blast, transforming into two colossal whips of fire. They thrashed wildly in the night sky, hurling showers of white-hot embers and burning flesh in every direction, looking like absolute demons from hell.

It took them five or six minutes to finally burn through their remaining vitality. They collapsed entirely, smashing across the avenue and burning down into the charred, blackened husks Zoe had seen earlier. Because Vince hadn't dealt the final blow with a direct attack, he couldn't see their HP bars deplete. But when the massive trunks finally fell, he didn't receive a single point of Max HP scaling. The entire scenario was riddled with inconsistencies.

His stakeout continued until Zoe's voice crackled over the radio, prompting him to jump down and have her telekinesis fly them back up. He recounted the story in a flat, detached tone, as if narrating someone else's life. But the distant firelight cast dancing, erratic shadows across his face, occasionally revealing the deep, lingering anxiety hidden in his eyes. Zoe was completely captivated by the tale.

Looking out at the apocalyptic, burning sky, she was violently reminded of the day she first met Vince—when that massive mutant hound was blown into a shower of blood and gore. Subconsciously, her body leaned closer to Vince. She pulled her dangling legs back in from the balcony edge, tucking them beside her. Her eyes were wide as saucers, occasionally letting out a tiny gasp during the most harrowing parts of the story.

Without realizing it, her hand had tightly gripped the sleeve of his purple, sequined trench coat. Vince's calm voice intertwined with the endless, deafening roar of the firestorm in the distance, pulling Zoe right back into the exact moment of the detonation.

"So... if it's been this long and there's still no movement... doesn't that prove it's completely dead...?" Zoe asked, mimicking Vince's intense stare at the base of the fire pillar, murmuring softly. Only after hearing the full story did she truly comprehend the sheer scale of the crisis that explosion had averted. If Vince was right, there were forty or fifty elite mutant zombies simultaneously incubating at the bottom of that pit, surrounded by an army of specialized [500] HP infected.

Even Zoe understood they weren't just evolving for fun. Once that incubation cycle finished, they were going to swarm the surface. Even now, the street below was packed with a massive, pitch-black ocean of standard zombies. The only reason they hadn't dispersed was because they were mesmerized by the roaring flames.

Once the horde scattered—especially if they were reinforced by dozens of newly evolved, hyper-lethal mutant elites—the fragile survivor community they had barely begun to build would face absolute annihilation. And Vince had single-handedly strangled that apocalyptic tide in its crib. He had struck the absolute core of the threat. By betting his own life." Dage... you..." Zoe turned her head, looking at Vince's profile. A thousand words clogged her throat, but she couldn't articulate a single one.

Only in this exact moment did she truly understand what this sometimes-lazy, teasing man had meant during his speech at dinner. They weren't just empty words. That abstract, theoretical concept of "war" he had spoken of had manifested tonight as an all-consuming, apocalyptic inferno. An indescribable wave of emotion—a complex mix of sorrow, pride, and overwhelming affection—surged through her chest. Words felt completely inadequate to express what she was feeling.

So, while Vince was hyper-focused on the distant flames, Zoe suddenly leaned in. Her soft lips gently, yet incredibly firmly, pressed against his soot-stained, sweaty cheek. It was a fleeting touch. Vince froze. He turned his head, looking at her in sheer bewilderment for a split second, before quickly turning back to stare at the fire. Zoe wasn't sure if it was a trick of the light, but she could have sworn the tips of his ears turned red.

But regardless of how Vince reacted, Zoe's own face was burning hotter than the inferno outside. She stared at his profile, her eyes shining with an unprecedented, brilliant resolve. She felt like she had finally achieved enlightenment. She completely understood now. Earlier that afternoon, when Claire had sworn her loyalty, Zoe had simply echoed, "Same here!" At the time, she thought she understood the weight of those words. But only now did she realize what that vow truly meant.

She didn't spout any childish praises like,"Dage, you're so amazing!" She just watched the corner of his eye, noticing how his peripheral vision kept darting back to her. In a tone that was soft, yet as clear and binding as a sacred oath, she said:" Dage, from now on... I'm going in with you..." But then, she let out a small giggle. With a hint of her usual slyness, mixed with a bizarre, profound tenderness, she leaned her weight entirely against him, burying half her body into his chest.

"If we fly in together, it won't be nearly as sketchy next time, right...?"