Chapter 314 - 304: Frigid Daily Life

Ever since they learned that the extreme cold disaster would last for at least a year, Moira Lynch and the others had been in low spirits.

However, this mood didn’t last for very long.

After all, they had plenty of supplies and also had the game. Compared to everyone else, their lives were already as good as they could possibly be.

Gradually, the group returned to their usual routine.

It was just that the temperature was dropping faster than they had anticipated.

The day before, the temperature inside the room was still above freezing. This morning, it had dropped below.

Moira Lynch felt her ice-cold covers. ’Thankfully I’m not afraid of the cold,’ she thought. ’Otherwise, at this temperature, I would have frozen awake long ago.’

Then she looked at her hair. As expected, it had all turned snow-white.

Moira Lynch stood before the mirror, looking at her own reflection—ashen and pale, like a corpse.

’No exaggeration, if I saw this at night, I’d probably scare myself to death.’

She took out the cosmetics she had prepared and began to put on her makeup.

After about half an hour of painstaking work, she was finally finished.

Looking at herself in the mirror again, she breathed a sigh of relief. ’Finally, I look like a living person. That wasn’t easy.’

Before leaving her room, Moira Lynch glanced out the window. The snow still hadn’t stopped.

Huge, goose-feather-like snowflakes drifted down from the sky. Moira Lynch had never seen snowflakes so large.

Even the snow on Glacius hadn’t been this big.

Outside, everything was a vast expanse of white.

’If you could ignore the life-threatening temperature, this scene would actually be quite beautiful. No wonder so many people enjoy watching the snow.’

When she reached the first floor, Shane Rhodes and the other two were already awake. They were nestled in beanbag chairs, each cradling a cup of steaming hot water.

In front of the fireplace sat a pile of skewers loaded with a balanced mix of meat and vegetables. A robot was diligently grilling them, handing the cooked ones over to the group.

"You guys sure know how to enjoy yourselves."

Hearing Moira Lynch’s voice, the three of them turned around. Shane Rhodes and Kai York jumped when they saw the snow-white figure.

"Moira. How did you end up like this too? Don’t tell me it’s the same as Hugh Finch."

Moira Lynch nodded. "I ate a Snow Chestnut, too. It’s a side effect. My whole body turns white whenever the temperature drops."

Kai York looked Moira Lynch up and down, then offered his frank assessment after a moment. "It’s actually pretty nice. Much better than Hugh Finch’s ghastly, dead-looking face."

As if that wasn’t enough, Kai York sidled up to Hugh Finch and continued, "You agree with me, right?"

For his troubles, he was promptly slapped by Hugh Finch.

Hugh Finch then looked over at Moira Lynch and immediately noticed something was off.

After all, he knew what the whitening from the cold was supposed to look like.

"You’re wearing makeup?"

Moira Lynch nodded. "I was afraid I’d scare you if I didn’t."

The extreme cold meant they couldn’t go outside, but this didn’t really affect Moira Lynch and her friends, since they weren’t in the habit of going out often anyway.

Watching the snow outside, a thought suddenly occurred to Moira Lynch. ’Is this snow clean?’

"Patience, analyze this snow."

「A few minutes later.」

[Analysis complete. Snow contains trace amounts of dust. Ingestion in small quantities will not cause harm. Ingestion in large quantities may lead to symptoms of food poisoning, such as diarrhea. It is recommended to heat before use.]

Moira Lynch nodded upon receiving the results. ’Alright, seems like it’s not a big deal.’

Meanwhile, in her shop, the clothes she’d brought back from the clothing factory had become hot-ticket items.

These clothes all offered some degree of warmth. While they couldn’t compare to temperature-regulating clothes, they were a great deal cheaper.

For a time, demand soared to the point that a single article of clothing was hard to come by.

In addition, the blind boxes were also a huge hit.

With everyone trapped at home, people got bored. Once they were done eating and sleeping, they needed something to kill time.

Moira Lynch’s blind boxes perfectly fit the bill.

The average person couldn’t afford the spaceship blind boxes, but the other, more common ones were well within their means.

Because Moira Lynch’s blind boxes were from outer space, whatever came out of them was always a novelty.

And it wasn’t unheard of for people to unbox some genuinely good items.

The base even issued a new regulation: they would buy back items unboxed from the blind boxes, offering different prices for different goods.

Generally, the buy-back price for these items was higher than the cost of the blind box.

If people unboxed something they didn’t need, they would turn around and sell it to the base or to someone else who wanted it.

By doing this, they could cure their boredom and earn some money at the same time—killing two birds with one stone.

The internet hadn’t completely collapsed yet, so some people began posting their unboxing videos, which garnered a lot of attention.

Kai York was one of them.

Thanks to their previous transactions, none of the other three were short on cash, though they weren’t on the same ridiculously wealthy level as Moira Lynch.

Moira Lynch glanced at Kai York, who had bought a huge pile of blind boxes, then at the mountain of opened items beside him. She turned to Shane Rhodes. "Are you really not going to stop him?"

’Even though the money for the blind boxes ultimately ends up in my pocket, is Kai really okay?’

’Has he gone stir-crazy from not being able to shop for so long?’

’But that can’t be right. My shop didn’t just open yesterday.’

Shane Rhodes just glanced over nonchalantly and said airily, "Don’t mind him. He’ll stop once he’s had his fun."

The words had barely left his mouth when the surrounding scenery began to change.

The walls and floor transformed into a forest and a grassy field, and the beanbag chairs beneath them became rocks.

Shane Rhodes was startled by the sudden transformation.

Hugh Finch, just emerging from the kitchen, saw the change in the living room. His hand went slack, and with a CLATTER, the object he was holding fell to the floor, splashing hot water everywhere.

Quickly, the surrounding scenery flickered and, in the blink of an eye, returned to normal.

Shane Rhodes’s and Hugh Finch’s gazes both landed on Kai York.

Kai York was in the middle of removing an "atmosphere-creation chip" from his person. Sensing two intense stares, he looked up blankly. "What are you looking at me for?"

"What was that just now?" Shane Rhodes asked first.

"An atmosphere-creation chip. I just got it from a blind box. There have been a ton of videos like this online lately. I thought it was just special effects at first, but it turns out people are getting these from blind boxes, so I bought one to try."

"Videos online?"

With one of them obsessed with training, another with fortune-telling, and the last with anime, the other three had truly paid no attention to what Kai York was talking about.