Day 3. Morning.

  Yu Zhiye snapped awake and dazedly stared up at the shack’s ceiling.

  It wasn’t until he saw the inventory hotbar that has already been cleared out that he remembered what he planned to do today.

  “Scavenge supplies! Time waits for no one! Go! Only early birds get the worms!”

  Yu Zhiye quickly hopped off his hammock and borrowed the blessing of his swiftness buff to rush out at the quickest speed...

  In the store.

  Han Duri yawned and glanced over to the lackey Minho who was half-dozing off while guarding the other end of the store aisles.

  “Tch. What’s even the point… it’s not like anyone will wake up this early to—”

  Fwoosh! His grumble didn’t even finish when a figure rushed out from the back hall and into an aisle!

  It happened so fast that Han Duri almost thought he was imagining things, but he soon reacted.

  “Stop right there!”

  That shout alerted the other guards, but even after Han Duri ran past Minho, the half-awake man still stood there dumbfounded.

  By the time Han Duri arrived at the aisle, he only saw the back of the man exit from the other side.

  Chasing after him, Han Duri checked the shelves on the way and noticed many water bottles still there. He wasn’t sure if any had been taken.

  When he arrived at the other side, he bumped into the last night patrolman, the Baldie Tae.

  Han Duri looked around and didn’t see the man he was chasing. He hurriedly asked the only man awake.

  “Taylor, did you see anyone pass by?”

  “Uh? Yeah? That annoying snot who saved you yesterday. Why?”

  “Why? I’ll like to ask you that! Why didn’t you stop him?!”

  “Stop him? Wha? Why?”

  “Didn’t you see what he took?!”

  “Huh? Did he take anything? His hands were empty though?”

  That immediately shut Han Duri up. Right. Inventory was a thing. It’s too hard to catch anybody in the act!

  Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

  Even if caught red-handed, there wasn’t anything that could be done if they hid everything!

  “Tch. Seems we’ll have to bring this up to the four-eyes and slick-face later.”

  “Aeugh? What was that?”

  Han Duri glared at the man that was more muscle than brains. “Nothing.”

  He then backed off and went back to his post, conveniently grabbing a drink on the way.

  Once he arrived back at the other side, he saw the lackey still standing there dumbfounded.

  “Tch. One is worse than the other.”

  But he didn’t care anymore. He didn’t get paid enough for this. Right, he didn’t get paid at all.

  Back in the secret hideout.

  Yu Zhiye dumped out what he scavenged this time.

  “Six oranges, a choco pie, a bag of gummies, and… five bottles of water.”

  That’s pretty much all the bottles he could grab in a haste.

  “I even made sure to hit the water aisle first to get the jump on them, but that lame Duri reacted too fast. Not cool.”

  But this was good enough. He now had 8 new bottles total, which should be enough to last a week.

  As for food…

  Since there’s no worries on that end, he went for sweets because the ramen aisle happened to be blocked by the Baldie when he circled back.

  The fruits got picked up at the end. Oranges and apples like always.

  The apples got handed off to Jack who only laughed and agreed to stay hush-hush about his adventure.

  Well, even if everybody pointed fingers at him, if they got no way to prove it, what can they say?

  It’s not like they can see what he kept in his inventory. Even if they can…

  Yu Zhiye took stock of the pile decorating his shack.

  “Since nothing is stored in my inventory, I’m innocent. Haha.”

  That excuse won’t work forever, but good enough for now.

  Yu Zhiye packed the usual carry-ons into his inventory hotbar and went through his daily morning routine.

  Take a leak, re-hydrate, stretch… anything else?

  “Oh. That reminds me… my resource generator should be ready to harvest!”

  Yu Zhiye hurried over to check on the lone barrel next to the shed.

  As expected, the mysterious creepy eye on the barrel was now fully opened and the barrel looked like a pet waiting for its owner to check on it.

  He even felt like that eye moved to look at him!

  “Must be my imagination… It’s just an eye… nothing will happen…”

  Gulp. Yu Zhiye steeled his heart and crept up to the barrel.

  No jump scares happened.

  “Phew~” Yu Zhiye breathed a sigh of relief and flipped the lid open.

  At a glance inside, he found the barrel piled full with logs in a ring-like manner.

  “Sweet Stars above! Wood acquired!”

  Yu Zhiye carefully pulled a log out and inspected its firewood-like appearance. “I don’t know what tree this log came from but it looks just like real wood. That’s good enough for me.”

  The wood got added to his inventory and a durability bar immediately showed up.

  “As expected, unit calculations aren’t a perfect one log to one wood ratio.”

  But that didn’t matter in the big picture.

  Once Yu Zhiye packed all the wood from the seemingly-bottomless barrel into his inventory, it added up to a total of exactly 8 units!

  “One core energy, eight hours for eight units. Pretty straightforward. Not bad cost-efficiency either. I’ll take it!”

  Yu Zhiye cheerfully slapped the barrel lid back onto the eyeless barrel, went to drop off all the wood into the shed, and arrived back in the shack.

  Touch the purple core cube and another point of core energy got invested to restart the wood resource generator.

  “Another eight hours and I’ll have the sixteen wood needed to upgrade my shack! Cool, cool.”

  Now it was just a matter of core energy. He’s missing just a simple four.

  “Right then. Go fish! It won’t be long… Once noon passes, it’ll be time to upgrade my shack! Can’t wait to see what wonderful benefits that will bring!”