Chapter 31: Survival Instinct of a Cockroach

[Start a Personal Livestream?]

Summer immediately clicked [Yes].

[Personal Livestream Activated.]

It didn’t even take long before the number beside the viewer icon started climbing.

[Woah, Summer is already doing another livestream?!]

[It’s only been one day! Summer, please rest! Have mercy on this procrastinator!]

[Btw, I heard her ex-fiancé is already dead.]

[No way!]

[Yes way!]

Summer looked at her livestream in disbelief.

To be honest, she hadn’t really expected these people to follow her new livestream now that she wasn’t going with Archer.

Apparently, she had been wrong.

[BaronB sent x1 Star Palace: 500,000 Credits]

[HELL! Bro Baron, calm down! The livestream hasn’t even been on for five minutes!]

[What does this guy even do for a living? He’s always in the livestream, but somehow he still has that much money to throw around.]

[One thing’s for sure, he’s not as poor as you, brother.]

[Bro got attacked for asking a question T_T]

Summer took a deep breath as she watched the chat fly by at ridiculous speed.

People were talking to each other so casually that it almost looked like they had all known one another for years.

"We can enter the polluted zone now," Ilya said as he walked toward her.

Earlier, before their jeep could pass through the gate, Ilya had needed to speak with the guards and hand over several documents.

It wasn’t only because he was acting as Summer’s instructor, but because he also had his own mission to complete once they were inside.

The moment Ilya stepped close enough for his face to appear on the livestream, the chat exploded, like... instantly.

[IS THAT ILYA NOCTIS?!]

[No wayyy. Why is Instructor Noctis here?!]

[Summer, where do you keep finding these men?!]

[I haven’t seen him on a livestream in forever!]

Summer blinked as the messages suddenly flooded the screen.

They were moving so fast that she could barely read anything before the next comment pushed it away. After staring at them for a few seconds, she could already feel a headache coming.

Still, she could understand why everyone was reacting like this.

Ilya rarely appeared on livestreams either. Most people only knew him from old military clips, official training videos, or random recordings uploaded by trainees.

So seeing him casually sitting beside Summer like this was probably a pretty big deal.

[Wait, Ilya is Archer Reed’s brother, right?]

[Yep.]

[Hold on. Are you telling me THESE TWO are brothers???]

[Why do they look nothing alike? LMAO]

[Was Ilya adopted?]

That question barely stayed on the screen for a second before someone immediately replied.

[Bro, BOTH of them are adopted.]

[Exactly! They’re not biological brothers.]

[They grew up together in the same orphanage.]

[They’ve been calling each other brothers since they were kids.]

[So basically: orphanage brothers.]

Summer’s eyes moved between the chat and Ilya.

Oh.

That explained it.

"Your training is about to start, so it’ll be better if you don’t focus too much on the livestream," Ilya reminded her as he got into the jeep and started the engine again.

Summer immediately closed the comment section and turned her attention back to the road ahead. "Got it."

Of course, the viewers still managed to squeeze in a few last comments before the chat disappeared from her view.

[Damn, like brother like brother.]

[Ilya isn’t as cold as Archer. He’s just acting like that in instructor mode.]

[Well, now I wonder how he acts when he’s not being an instructor!]

[You’ll find out once you become one of the elites, Sis!]

On the other side, Summer focused on the road in front of her.

From the moment the jeep passed through the gate, she could already see just how different Zone 41 was from the safe zone.

Long ago, Zone 41 had been known as a fashion city. Designer stores, huge shopping streets, fashion studios, luxury malls, and giant screens showing the newest clothes used to fill almost every corner.

Now? It was nothing more than a ghost town.

Broken mannequins lay scattered across the sidewalks. Torn signs hung from old buildings, and faded advertisements still covered some of the walls.

A few ruined display windows still had dresses inside them, covered in dust like someone had simply left one day and never come back.

Summer looked out the window for a while before asking, "How many teams are still inside Zone 41 right now?"

"Not many," Ilya replied while keeping his eyes on the road. "Only three. And the teams here right now are mostly D- and C-Rank."

With the number of polluted creatures continuing to grow, three teams really was a very small number.

Still, it was better than having no one around at all.

"The noise from the car will attract nearby polluted creatures," Ilya said. "So we’ll have to continue on foot from here."

He slowly drove the jeep toward an abandoned hotel and was just about to park when—CRASH!

Something slammed into the side of the car. Summer’s body jerked from the impact, and before she could even react, her terminal suddenly flashed red.

[Warning! Warning!]

[Mutated Black Cat Detected!]

[Distance: 1 Meter]

[Threat Level: D-Rank]

She slowly lifted her head and saw a black cat standing on the hood of the jeep, except calling it a cat felt wrong.

It was almost as big as a jaguar, with a swollen, twisted head that looked like something had grown inside it over and over again until its whole shape became wrong.

Summer stared at it for a moment and sighed. Yeah, definitely not cute.

"Or... we can start your training from here." Ilya suddenly broke the silence. "Good luck."

Summer hadn’t even said anything yet, but Ilya had already slipped out of the car through the open window.

He barely made any noise, so the mutated cat didn’t even notice that he had left.

[This instructor is NOT playing around!]

[Ilya, your brother protected her yesterday! Why are you throwing her out there to die?!]

[Who’s going to die? Summer? Gosh, did you all watch her with your eyes closed yesterday?]

CRACK!

CRACK!

The mutated cat kept smashing against the car window, making the entire jeep shake. Not long after, Summer started to see cracks spreading across the glass.

"Fuck it." Summer clicked her tongue and immediately pushed the door open.

The mutated creature jumped at her at once, but Summer dropped low and slid under the jeep just before its claws could reach her.

She rolled out from the other side, pushed herself up, and ran.

[Forget what I said about dying! She has the survival instinct of a cockroach!]