The game granted Ryan a long reprieve, longer than he had imagined.
In a flash, 11 days had passed, and it had been a month since he entered the game.
Ryan had recovered long ago, and his left arm could move normally as long as he didn't do too much heavy work.
But the strange thing was that apart from the wind and rain getting stronger, no disaster occurred, which gnawed at him.
As early as a week ago, Ryan began to be on full alert and didn't even dare to sleep too deeply, fearing that some bad thing would happen again in this crappy game.
But a week passed, and nothing happened. Even the white wolf disappeared and never appeared again.
Ryan kept his guard up, figuring that surviving the White Wolf ordeal and the infection scare might have warranted this extended breather.
He was not idle during these 11 days. He went down the mountain, found another truck, and moved the mansion supplies a little bit every day.
Then, besides reading every day, he ran and exercised in the gym at the mansion.
The past half month has made Ryan fully aware of the importance of a strong body.
Although exercising now felt like a last-minute effort, he clearly felt that his physical strength and energy significantly increased after more than ten days of high-intensity training.
During this period, Ryan scavenged a truck, began relocating supplies from the mansion to Regent Business Tower, and then moved them from the bottom of the building to the top.
The total investment in Regent Business Tower exceeded 20 billion dollars, and the total construction area was about 800,000 square meters.
It integrates CR Headquarters, the six-star Aurea Hotel, high-end complexes, the Nexus Club, the New Science and Technology Museum, the Innovation Center, and other fashionable comprehensive places. It is currently the most extensive urban complex.
This was a comprehensive trade building that was even more high-end than Nexus Emporium, integrating sports, home use, business, office, residence, and culture.
His new fortress stood at the 240-meter summit of the six-star Aurea Hotel in Regent Business Tower.
The first thing Ryan carried was some dry goods, canned food, and vacuum-packed food that could be preserved for a long time, because he guessed that the hotel restaurant must also have food and water.
Even after a month, staples like flour, and water held up just fine – no worries about them going bad.
After Ryan carried them up, he quickly found the hotel's warehouse.
As he'd guessed, the flour and cooking oil were all intact – still perfectly good after all that time.
Only the fish in the cold storage and refrigerator went bad due to the power outage.
What surprised Ryan was that Aurea Hotel had its large generator in the warehouse. Although it could not support the power system of the entire building, it was enough to maintain the guest rooms on the hotel's five floors.
So when moving supplies next, Ryan was mainly moving diesel.
Hauling over 50 pounds of diesel jugs up 200-meter-plus skyscrapers was backbreaking work.
Ryan needed to rest several hours after each climb to recover his strength before continuing to do the job.
He didn't feel it was hard; he just regarded it as another exercise method.
Ryan worked like a pack mule for eleven days, hauling belongings nonstop. Upon returning to the mansion each evening, he'd collapse into bed, utterly drained.
It made him have no time and energy to scratch lottery tickets.
It was not until the 31st day that Ryan felt that he had moved most of the necessities, and then he drove to the military compound in Fallford. What Ryan moved this time was natural weapons, as all the grenades and bullets were used up.
If the white wolf or other ferocious beasts appeared again, his ability to protect himself would be in jeopardy.
The military's weapons are definitely superior to the police's, he thought. If he could get his hands on assault rifles, submachine guns, and the like, he wouldn't have to fear white wolves at all.
He could just grab an automatic rifle and spray away. No matter how many wolves came, they wouldn't stand a chance.
But it had been raining nonstop for a month, and the roads were severely flooded. In some low-lying areas, the water was over half a meter deep. Ordinary cars would stall from engine flooding as soon as they drove through.
Ryan finally found a Mercedes-Benz G-Class, an SUV with a half-meter-high chassis, which allowed him to drive unimpeded to the military compound.
Ryan's eyes lit up at seeing the armory full of weapons in the military compound.
As an ordinary person, he could only see such scenes on TV and in movies; he'd never had the chance to access a military armory.
Now that the entire armory was his, Ryan naturally became excited instantly.
Unfortunately, there were no weapon tutorials here, so he could only rely on what he'd seen on TV and in movies to guess.
Fortunately, firearms weren't overly complex weapons; he could master them with some practice.
After fumbling around for half a day, Ryan finally figured out how to use the assault rifle and submachine gun. The only problem was that both guns had significantly more recoil than a pistol, which made them extremely uncomfortable for him to use.
But it didn't matter if he was used to them; power was what counted.
Ryan practiced in the military compound for a whole morning. Once he felt confident in his skills, he began loading the weapons onto the SUV.
Besides those two types of guns, he also loaded sniper rifles, pistols, and grenades, along with boxes of ammunition, until the entire SUV was packed full.
Ryan drove back to Regent Business Tower and started carrying the weapons upstairs.
To prepare for unexpected emergencies so he wouldn't be caught without a gun in a crisis, Ryan followed the example of the game PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds and placed guns and ammunition in different rooms on various floors.
For example, he put one in the lobby on the first floor, another in a room several floors up, and so on, all the way to the 400-meter-high top floor. In total, he placed no fewer than thirty guns.
At this point, Ryan finally felt that he was fully prepared. He immediately moved from Jasper's mansion to the Regent Business Tower and resumed his scratch-off lottery tickets journey.
As Ryan scratched off tickets, another five days passed, bringing him to the 36th day in the game world.
To Ryan's dismay, he had only won 200,000 dollars from scratch-off tickets, adding to the previous 280,000 dollars, for a total of nearly 500,000 dollars.
After deducting the 20% personal income tax, he was left with less than 400,000 dollars.
On the 37th day, Ryan looked out at the torrential rain and howling winds, realizing it probably wasn't suitable to venture out for more scratch-off tickets.
By this time, the entire city was flooded, with water at least a meter deep everywhere, making it impossible to see the road conditions.
Ryan hesitated for a moment, but still felt unwilling to give up.
He hadn't expected the scratch-off tickets to be such a rip-off. In these five days, he had scratched off no fewer than 100,000 tickets, yet he had earned less money than on the first day.
After a moment of contemplation, Ryan couldn't bear to let the money slip through his fingers.
With the height of the Mercedes-Benz G-Class, he could barely wade through the water.
"Just one more day of scratching off tickets, just one day!" he said.