The convenience store was a mess.
Half the glass front had been shattered inward. Shelves were tilted, snack packets torn open, bottles rolling beneath fallen display racks. Blood had dried in dark streaks near the cashier counter, and one entire aisle had collapsed under the weight of broken metal and scattered goods.
But it had not been emptied.
Not yet.
That alone made everyone's breathing change.
Food.
Water.
A chance.
A real one.
Xu Ren was the first to look relieved, though the fear still clung to his face. "There's still a lot left…"
"Then stop staring and move," Zhao Quan said.
He stepped inside first, his tray already back in its normal shape. His eyes swept across the shelves with the cold speed of someone already counting what mattered and what did not.
Lin Hao followed a second later.
He did not lower his guard.
The silence inside the store felt wrong.
Too still.
Too heavy.
Outside, zombies screamed and beasts hunted.
Inside, the air felt trapped—old, stale, and filled with the faint smell of spoiled food and damp cardboard.
Chen Yu knelt beside the cashier counter and checked the blood on the floor. "At least two people died here."
Liu Ming didn't bother looking at the bodies. He moved straight toward the back shelves, eyes scanning everything.
"Take bottled water first," he said. "Dry food second. Ignore anything that needs refrigeration."
Xu Ren blinked. "Why are you so calm?"
Liu Ming didn't even turn. "Because panic never made inventory easier."
Strange man.
Useful man.
Lin Hao stepped into the nearest aisle and checked both ends before allowing himself to breathe out slowly.
No immediate movement.
No growls.
No hidden shape lunging from the shadows.
For now.
He opened his status window.
Primitive Record
User: Lin Hao
Race: Human (Restricted)
Level: 3
Strength: 9
Agility: 9
Endurance: 10
Intelligence: 8
Magic: 15
Mana: 5
Health: 90/90
Active Skills:
• Strong Spirit (Primitive)
• Blood Rush (Primitive)
Passive Skills:
• Cold Heart (Primitive)
Occupied Territories: —
Unassigned Attribute Points: 2
Two points.
Not much.
Still enough to matter.
After a moment's thought, he placed one into Agility.
One into Endurance.
Agility: 9 → 10
Endurance: 10 → 11
Health: 90 → 95
A subtle current ran through his body.
Lighter feet.
Stronger breath.
A little more life.
He closed the window and turned back toward the others.
"Bags," he said. "Fill bags first. Carrying by hand wastes time."
Zhao Quan glanced at him but didn't argue.
Good.
That meant he understood one thing clearly:
out here, survival mattered more than ego.
For now.
Sunlight never came, but the gray outside the broken windows shifted just enough to remind them time was passing.
Chen Yu opened the cabinet behind the cashier and found painkillers, antiseptic, and packaged bandages. "I'm taking all of this."
"Take batteries too," Liu Ming said from the next aisle. "And flashlights if there are any."
Xu Ren was already stuffing water bottles into a plastic crate, though his hands still shook.
Zhao Quan worked faster than everyone else. He ignored half the shelves and went straight for the highest-value items—protein bars, canned food, sealed water packs.
Efficient.
That made him even harder to like.
Lin Hao moved toward the collapsed back aisle.
Something there bothered him.
Maybe it was the angle of the fallen shelves.
Maybe the way the darkness under them seemed too complete.
Maybe it was just instinct.
He stepped over a broken basket and crouched slightly, eyes narrowing.
There.
Thread.
A single white strand stretched between two fallen boxes near the rear storage door.
Too thick to be dust.
Too clean to be accident.
Lin Hao's gaze sharpened.
Spider silk.
His mind immediately linked it to something else:
the missing food from deeper storage.
the heavy silence in the back.
the fact that the front of the store was damaged…
but the rear section looked strangely untouched.
He straightened at once.
"Stop packing."
No one listened immediately.
So he raised his voice.
"Stop."
This time, everyone froze.
Zhao Quan turned. "What?"
Lin Hao pointed toward the back.
"Don't go near that door."
Xu Ren swallowed. "Why?"
Lin Hao walked forward slowly, never taking his eyes off the nearly invisible strand.
"Because something is living back there."
Chen Yu's expression changed. "A beast?"
"Maybe."
Liu Ming came closer, squinting.
Then he saw it too.
The silk.
His face sharpened slightly. "That's not normal."
"No," Lin Hao said. "It isn't."
For a few seconds, no one moved.
Then something tapped against the storage door from the other side.
Once.
Lightly.
Xu Ren flinched hard enough to almost drop the crate in his hands.
Zhao Quan's tray flashed back into blade form instantly.
"Back," he said.
No one argued with that.
The team retreated several steps, widening the space in front of the storage door.
The silence deepened.
Then the door shook.
Once.
Twice.
On the third impact, the frame cracked and the upper hinge tore free.
The thing that emerged was too large for the space it had come from.
A spider.
At least the size of a large dog.
Its legs were long, black, and sharp at the ends, each one clicking against the tile like a knife tip. Its swollen abdomen was streaked with pale gray markings, and thick threads of white silk clung to its body and the broken doorway behind it.
But the worst part was its eyes.
Too many.
Too still.
Too focused.
Xu Ren's voice came out as a whisper. "No…"
The spider moved first.
Not toward Lin Hao.
Toward the water.
It launched a strand of silk across the room, wrapping instantly around a crate near Xu Ren and dragging it backward with shocking force.
The boy yelped and jumped away.
"Damn thing's stealing it!" Zhao Quan snarled.
Then it came for them.
Its first leap was fast enough to make Chen Yu stumble back in panic. Liu Ming grabbed her shoulder and yanked her sideways just before one of the front legs punched into the floor where her foot had been.
The tile cracked.
Lin Hao's eyes narrowed.
Fast.
Strong.
Not like the dog.
Different.
This thing controlled space.
Not with magic—
with thread.
"Don't let it pin you!" he shouted.
Zhao Quan attacked first, slashing at one of its front legs. The blade connected—but instead of cutting deeply, it skidded off the hard outer shell with a metallic screech.
Tough.
The spider answered by firing silk at close range.
Zhao Quan barely twisted aside, but the strand still wrapped around his forearm and tray. The silk tightened instantly.
He swore and hacked at it with his own blade.
Xu Ren snapped his fingers, throwing a burst of sparks at the spider's face. It flinched—not much, but enough.
Chen Yu grabbed a fallen metal rack and shoved it toward the creature's path. "Slow it down!"
Liu Ming circled wide without speaking, searching for an angle.
Lin Hao activated Strong Spirit.
The world sharpened.
The spider's movements became clearer.
Not slower.
Just clearer.
Thread patterns.
Leg angles.
Weight shifts.
He saw how it leaned slightly left before launching silk.
How its abdomen lowered before it leapt.
How its front-right leg dragged a fraction of a second after each hard landing.
There.
A weakness.
"Right side!" Lin Hao shouted. "Its front leg—hit the joint!"
Zhao Quan reacted instantly, slashing low.
This time the blade struck the joint.
The leg bent wrong.
The spider shrieked.
High.
Violent.
And for the first time, it retreated.
Only two steps.
But enough to prove it could be hurt.
Then it climbed.
Straight up the wall.
Xu Ren cursed in terror. "What kind of nightmare is this?!"
The spider leapt from the wall toward the ceiling beams and shot silk downward in rapid bursts.
One line struck the floor near Chen Yu.
Another wrapped around a shelf and yanked it sideways, sending snacks and bottles crashing everywhere.
A third almost caught Liu Ming, who ducked under it by less than an inch.
Lin Hao used Blood Rush.
The burst hit his body like a violent drumbeat.
He moved fast—fast enough to seize Chen Yu by the arm and pull her behind the fallen shelf before the spider dropped onto their previous position.
Its legs stabbed into the tiles like spears.
Too close.
Way too close.
"Back exit!" Liu Ming shouted suddenly. "There's a service corridor behind storage!"
Lin Hao understood immediately.
If the spider had come from the back storage area, then more silk might already be spread deeper inside. Fighting it here, boxed in by shelves, was suicide.
But retreating empty-handed was just as bad.
He glanced at the supplies they had already packed.
Then at the spider.
Then at Zhao Quan still cutting silk from his arm.
No.
Not yet.
"We take what we already have," Lin Hao said. "Then fall back in formation!"
Zhao Quan looked at him like he wanted to object.
Then the spider lunged again.
That ended the discussion.