Chapter 96 – Survival

After a few minutes, she expressed her discoveries.

"It seems that the game intentionally put players in the town center at the start of the game, where the largest number of zombies spawn. If they decide to stay, they will soon get overwhelmed by the number of zombies and die. Experienced players recommend taking some risks at the start, leaving the initial house, and finding a place to stay on the outskirts of town or even out of the city."

"Ah, so that was it. How vicious."

"No wonder the horde of zombies around the house grew larger every day."

"Now that we know this, the next game will be much easier."

"Right. Of course, they still recommend building a wall and some defenses for our base. And also to craft or find weapons to take care of large hordes of zombies, like Molotov cocktails or shotguns, as well as getting a car to make it easier to move around the map."

"So we were not completely wrong. But we didn't know we could use cars too. We should make that one of our priorities."

"I agree. Can't wait for the next game. Is it done soon, Ben?"

"Ten minutes more. Set the table if you want things to go quicker."

A few of his sisters went to set the table while the rest continued to talk about the game with passion. Ten minutes later, the meal was ready and they swiftly devoured everything to go back to play even one second faster. They cleaned the table and the dishes and were finally ready for round two of the game.

They started their first day in the game differently from the first time, a small team of two people going out to get a car while the rest explored their initial house and took everything they could from it. Fortunately, things went well for the expedition team that managed to get two cars by the end of the day, due to avoiding zombies instead of fighting them, increasing their stealth skill level at the same time. They had noticed that cars in the game could only fit four people and had used most of the day to find two of them. Everybody boarded the cars and went to search for a good starting location.

After looking around in one direction for a long time, they found an abandoned farm outside of town but still at a reasonable distance from it. There were only a couple of zombies roaming around and they dispatched them quickly before deciding to use the farm as their main base. The building was large and it already had a plot with some vegetables growing as well as a few animals. Except for the fact that it was relatively far from the town center and the shops, it was the perfect place to use as a base. It was late in the night and they all decided to go to sleep and be ready for the next day.

After that discovery, the game went well with a few team members going on expeditions every day while the rest worked on improving the farm, building a wall as well as some defenses, or cooking meals in advance for the rest of the team. Several days passed like this. They accumulated materials and the corresponding skill levels to work with, slowly transforming their base into a fortress. They found several books which they used to get better at what they were doing, as well as other seeds that could be used to grow more vegetables and fruits. They were also close to a forest and one of them started hunting for food there.

The number of zombies in their area increased a lot more slowly than in the town center and they were always able to keep their place safe. By day twenty, their situation was very stable. They had a moment of panic when the water and electricity were suddenly cut. They urgently built rain collectors but had to do with bottled water and sodas that they found in town for the following few days. As for the electricity, they found a broken reactor in one of the shops in town that they transported back to the farm. Thankfully, one of them had enough repair skills to fix it. They still had to get two team members to go fetch the materials needed to repair it as well as some fuel necessary to make it work. They managed to do both on the following day and were able to restore the electricity in the farm, which they mainly used for the fridge and the freezer, to keep the food from spoiling too quickly.

By midnight in reality, they finished their first month in the game with things going quite well. They decided to stop here and regrouped one last time in the living room, happily discussing the game, what they did well and what they could have done better as well as what they should do next. Seeing everyone enjoying themselves together in family put a smile on their mother's and grandmother's faces. They whispered to each other for a bit while grinning and looking at the children. It was also the first time Benjamin saw everyone so sincerely cheerful and he thought that inviting them to do something together had been the correct choice.

After a lot more discussions and talks about strategies and things they could try, they finally decided to go to sleep when Chloe started having trouble keeping her eyes open.

"It was super fun, we should do this another time."

"I agree. Sometimes, it's good to have a large family. We had people for each type of job."

"We had great teamwork going on here. Call me next time if you want to play again."

"Thank you Olivia for choosing such an interesting game."

"You're welcome. I had a lot of fun too."

They all went back up the stairs and separated to go to their respective rooms. Benjamin changed into pajamas and fell asleep almost as soon as he laid down on the bed, tired after a very fulfilling day.