Code Zulu Alpha: Nerd in the Apocalypse!

It didn’t take long before noon came and the Philippine version of rice balls after a workout such as this just hits differently.

Tatiana and Kuzma exclaimed in surprise from the first bite, “Woah! I’ve never had this! Why don’t we ever have this?! This is insanely good!/ God, I’m gonna get from the amount of food I’m eating ever since I joined you guys…”

To give a brief description, these rice balls of ours could be made in any number of ways but the gist would be to at least have a… you know, a ball of rice with any type of viand on it, then be wrapped into a ball or any shape with banana leaves.

It’s commonly sold by small shops or vendors that would walk around the area to sell them though their shelf life isn’t that long.

I chuckled as I shook my head, “We never had these because it’s not eaten commonly in the cities… It’s more of a staple around these areas and even though it is delicious, it’s probably the hunger talking…”

“What’s in this anyway? So good…”

Edith answered with a Duchenne smile, “You’re praising me too much! A-Anyway, it’s just like Adobo but I shredded the chicken so it could mush nicely with the rice… Hope you don’t mind the added spiciness—”

A few others then gave more compliments:

“Naw! This is good Miss Edith!”

“I’d love one a tad spicier and with more garlic too!”

“Aren’t you being a little too ungrateful?”

“I’m not, I was just—”

“D-Don’t fight, I just didn’t know what you all like so I brought a few spices here—”

“Dibs on the chili flakes!”

“WOAH! You thought this far ahead?! You’re a godsend!”

“T-Thank you!”

Then Ruben turned to Sebastian, “H-Hey… How close are we a-anyway?”

Sebastian looked a little surprised from the question, “Hmm~ I’d say we’re kind of friends right now but I don’t want to assume—”

“PFFT!”

“HAHAHAHAHA!!!”

Ruben was shaking his head as he replied, “I-I meant the log cabin… H-How far are we—”

“Oh~ I see now, apologies. I’m not exactly sure but it should take us close to two hours if we hike up normally but probably more now because we lost the direct path. On top of watching out for threats, we’d also have to make our own route and it isn’t advisable to just visit it because the view would be obscured by the trees, unfortunately… It used to have this perfect view of the farmland and the mansion too, I might add…”

“Then shouldn’t we work double-time for that?! I love a good workout but experiencing something like that even once is awesome, even more if we worked really hard for it!”

“That’s really admirable, young sir, but it’s rather best to not overexert yourselves… A certain key that almost everyone in the powerlifting, bodybuilding, or any other strength or fitness-related industry forgets is avoiding injury and being as patient as possible. A little bit of ego is good but being unable to do what you want and love is more heartbreaking than not being able to achieve your goals in the time you think you should’ve achieved them… Just my two cents…”

“I-Is that so? If you say so, I-I guess…”

As Ruben and a few others nodded pensively, I turned to Quinn and surprisingly enough, she turned to me at the exact same time before she got startled and looked away in a far corner.

‘Pfft…’

And after a short bit, we topped off our meal with some fresh water and then rested for a bit before we went back to choppin’.

With doing the same work over and over, I tend to land myself in a trance and work and work and work without pause but this time, for some reason, I started to get bored after felling more than a dozen small trees, a handful of medium ones, and one big-ass tree that was at least a couple of decades old.

It might be because I discovered the trick to cut in as deeply and as precisely as I could with my axe or one other reason was that Sebastian started giving me looks when I was progressing faster than we could’ve and making it easy for the cadets who were supposed to be training.

In any case, I can’t just seem to sit still so after cutting down my last large tree for the day, I picked up a few smaller logs and found myself on the exposed root I found Nancy in earlier. After that, I just pulled out a pocket knife I borrowed from Kuzma before I started whittling.

And this time, it finally hit the spot as I decided to start carving out Nem-Nem, Mie-My, and Rogue. The wood I chose and the pocket knife could’ve been a little nicer but I’ll use what I could.

I should’ve been guarding the cadets and everyone else but there’s no denying that Kaley’s almost unstoppable with a high-powered rifle. Besides, chances were, most of the threats would head over to the other side of the log cabin because of the noise chainsaws were making all day.

In any case, I only have a couple of hours and then some before our time limit for the day but the moment I entered the zone, time passed like a snap of a finger and I was also brought back from hearing the same metaphor.

Funnily enough, the first thing I saw was Kaley leaning and looking down on me with a huge smile on her face but there seemed to be a few people fighting behind her.

“You started something again, you should fix it… Pfft…”

“What now?”

“Just look behind me…”

Turns out, I did more than just carve out my newly-tamed pets, and Elsa, Edith, Alexa, Quinn, Ruben, Isaac, and even Kuzma were having a fight as to who gets what.

Alexa was pleading for dear life, “You two already got the dogs, why can’t I have this tiny wittle chick?!”𝗈𝓋𝔩xt.𝗇𝓔t

Elsa put her put down, “First off, it’s Nem-Nem and Mie-My and secondly, can’t you understand how cute that is?! YOU BASICALLY ANSWERED YOUR QUESTION!”

Quinn just exploded and raised my carvings up in the air so no one could reach them, “FUCK ALL YOU ALL! I DON’T CARE WHO GETS WHAT BUT I’M KEEPING ROGUE AND ROGUE JR.! I’LL BREAK YOUR NECK IF I HAVE TO!”

And Kuzma was doing almost the same thing, “GIVE ME ROGUE JR. AT LEAST! I PROVIDED HIM WITH THE KNIFE! I SHOULD GET SOMETHING! HEY! WHO STOLE THE COW I HAVE ON THIS PILE?! HUH?!”

Edith pouted, “B-But I… I r-really wanted it…”

Sebastian cut in, “My guest, I would do everything in my power to give you anything in exchange for the lady’s desire. How about a banana?”

“WHAT?! THAT’S NOT EVEN A REAL BANANA!”

“I apologize… I’ve already eaten the one I brought but this is just to show that I can do a little bit of carving if I say so myself…”

Then Ruben got into it as well, “Can I please~ have the axe head?! It’s gonna look so cool if I use it as a pendant! Wha— For real?! Thanks Sebastian!”

“No worries, now convince Kuzma to lay off on the lady—”

“We’re not even in the same unit— We are now but I’ve seen him fight, he’ll kill me!”

“Ruben, young sir, need I remind you that I can also commit atrocities and if the lady wishes something, she shall have it!”

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO~!!! JUST TAKE THE AXE HEAD BACK, I DON’T WANT IT ANYMORE~!!! TAKE IT, ISAAC!”

“HAAAH?! I DON’T WANT YOUR CURSED AXE HEAD! I’M ALREADY FINE WITH THIS LEAF! I’LL WANT ANYTHING THE SENSEI PROVIDED!”

“PROVIDED?! ARE YOU GUYS INSANE?! NONE OF YOU ASKED HIM IF THEY’LL GIVE IT TO Y’ALL AND Y’ALL JUST TOOK IT WITHOUT PERMISSION!”

Seeing the mess I made—no they made for themselves, I was a little afraid to show them my last work for the day—which was a five-leaf clover—but I threw it a good distance away as a distraction so Kaley and I could get ahead of everybody. Because if they knew that I already “woke up”, I would be barraged with different requests and that’s something I would’ve wanted to do at the moment.

With that said, five days went on just like this without incident but it didn’t take long before the people from the other side reached the log cabin before us. Granted it was fairly obvious they’d achieve that with their equipment and their numbers, but Sebastian eventually deemed it that the rest of our time in this place shouldn’t be spent on chopping wood manually.

We’ve already established that lifting heavy circles wasn’t the only way to get stronger but everyone still wanted to see the view they were longing for.

But to achieve the best way to see such a view, we would need to spend the sixth day hiking up and reaching the log cabin we still hadn’t seen, doing some intense spring cleaning, tons of repairs, and then sleeping there for the night to get the perfect view tomorrow morning.