David woke up drenched in sweat. He’d forgotten to turn on the air conditioner again. Damn heat—haha.

  He sat up in bed and started laughing. At first quietly, then louder, until his laughter turned into a full-blown hysterical fit. What an idiot he'd been in the last iteration! Programming a waiter robot with a gun and not accounting for the fact that its first target would be the nearest human… Genius. Truly genius!

  Once he calmed down, David exhaled and stretched. Actually, that failure had been useful. Now he knew for sure that the waiter bots could shoot fast, accurately, and without hesitation. So well, in fact, that such things would never work in the real world. Any modern army would have long since learned how to jam drones, hack their systems, and turn them against their owners. But in his new reality? In a city with no people left, where the only threats were monsters relying on brute strength, not tech? These little waiters could become the perfect weapons.

  Of course, first he’d have to fix them (like teaching them not to shoot him).

  Wiping his face, David once again reflected on how casually he was treating his own deaths.

  “Alright, thanks, System. Just don’t crawl any deeper into my head, okay?”

  With that thought, he got out of bed, ready for a new day and another attempt to survive… a little longer.

  David wiped the sweat from his forehead and looked proudly at the group of waiter bots gathered in the conference room. Their round bodies on treads and display screens for faces looked almost friendly… if he didn’t know how fast they could aim.

  On the table in front of him lay one of the robots, fitted with an UNLOADED pistol. David stood across from it and, launching a test script, said:

  “Well then, shall we dance?”

  The robot turned around, its screen flashing the familiar message: “Please select a dish.” Then it aimed at David and pulled the trigger. Click. “Bon appétit!” David instinctively flinched to the side, even though the gun wasn’t loaded.

  “Alright, got it. Let’s try that again.”

  He adjusted the script slightly and ran it once more.

  The robot turned again, blinked its pixelated eyes, and once more attempted to fire.

  “You little bastard,” David muttered, quickly scrolling through the code for a solution. “Where is it… aha!” A blacklist for service personnel...

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  Skimming through the settings, he found the necessary parameter and added himself to the exception list. After uploading the update, he once again stood in front of the robot and slowly waved his arms.

  “Well? What now?”

  The robot turned, its screen flickered, but this time the weapon stayed still.

  “Perfect. At least I won’t die immediately from my own army,” David chuckled and pushed the updated script to the rest of the units.

  Everything was moving faster than in the last iteration. Maybe this time he’d even get a useful skill, and not just combat traits? As he pondered, the printers kept churning out pistol adapters. Soon, he’d have his first fully automated defense system.

  David stretched wearily, surveying his small mechanized garrison. A dozen waiter bots now stood guard, each armed and programmed to patrol the building’s perimeter. He’d made sure their algorithms properly recognized dogs and didn’t just fire at anything that moved. He also set up a system for the bots to return to base for recharging—though for now, David still had to reload their pistols by hand.

  As if to mock his confidence, a stray monster dog wandered too close to the fence near the parking lot. One of the bots swiveled, raised its pistol with mechanical precision, and fired. The thing yelped once before collapsing, and the bot calmly returned to its patrol route as if nothing had happened. David winced from a phantom pain, but at least he knew the system worked.

  After making one last round of the complex and watching one of the bots methodically turn on its patrol route, David allowed himself to relax. His brain was demanding rest after so many iterations and revisions, but for the first time in a while, he felt like he’d actually done something useful for his survival.

  Climbing up to his improvised bedroom in the employee break room, he collapsed onto a beanbag and with an already well-practiced effort of will, he suppressed his Sleep Resistance skill and fell into a deep sleep. He didn’t even dream of giant dog-monsters, and that was nice.

  Meanwhile, in the corner of his mind, a system notification popped up quietly:

  “Your level has increased to 3.”

  Interlude 2

  The South Korean soldier gripped the steering wheel tightly, his emotionless eyes scanning the road ahead. The vehicle bounced over potholes, barely maintaining balance. He’d long since stopped looking at the map—every inch of this route was burned into his memory after countless iterations. Minefields, border fortifications, collapsed bridges—he had studied it all, step by step, death by death.

  When the cycle first began, he tried to be cautious. He thought he could save people. He defended checkpoints, organized defenses, searched for other survivors. But eventually, he realized—it was pointless. The creatures that appeared after the giant dogs were far harder to kill. Each iteration reminded him of his own insignificance. He had wasted so much time on meaningless efforts.

  Now, his tactics had changed. He turned the minefields into his own traps. The vast strip of the Demilitarized Zone between the Koreas—overgrown, desolate, and littered with decades-old explosives—became his hunting ground. He had become the predator.

  The vehicle screeched to a halt in front of a cleared area. The soldier slowly stepped out, slung his rifle off his shoulder, and looked around. A sinister silence hung in the air.

  “They're here,” he thought, feeling for a grenade at his waist.

  But even knowing how to fight them, he felt hollow inside. Every morning he woke up with the same realization—he was too late. No matter what he did, he couldn’t progress.

  If only he had known...

  If only he had known that the loop wasn’t endless, he would have done everything differently from the very beginning.