Level 2

[16:34:23]

Althea woke up from her alarm after sleeping for a few hours, eyes meeting the weak light of dawn.

After cleaning herself up and eating breakfast, she decided to take an inventory of her space.

A lot had been added as she ventured around her neighborhood. For organization purposes, she divided the space into six areas.

She arranged for a part purely for drinkable water. Another two parts were filled with bags of rice and flour, as well as several cubic centimeters of canned and dried foods, fruits, and meats. She also made sure she had complete sets of seasonings, a lot of them.

She was not a good cook, but she (allegedly) could do some basic meals. Seasoning was essential for her to make a palatable meal.

However, as someone who mixed herbs for a living, she was not without talent. It was just that there had always been someone better at her at this so she let them cook instead.

Now that she didn't have a choice, she made sure recipes were downloaded to her external drive for the sake of her sanity.

In retrospect, she had never ever cooked for her husband before… it had always been the other way around. She swore that when they found each other after this, she would cook him a meal not inferior to what he fed her.

She didn't bother put perishable food though. 

After seeing some of the cooked food lose freshness, she confirmed that the time in the backpack space was not static, hence she did not bother wasting space for easily perishable food.

She went to her laboratory and took her handy custom-made lab equipment. This was custom-made equipment she had done because she was often outside, often in the mountains, gathering specimens.

It was basically a carry-on lab and also very expensive. Half of her earnings last year went to this, how could she be willing to waste it?

She even named it Tori, because she really loved it quite a bit.

She also took her portable external memory which was only as big as a toenail, as well as her state-of-the-art tablet.

It contained terabytes of knowledge automatically downloaded by her AI assistant. Because of her field in science, she had always had the habit of downloading a lot of information that may or may not be useful.

She didn't think she knew everything and she had only skimmed through a small part of this knowledge so far. Not to mention, she often needed to read references, especially in places without signal when she had to explore and camp.

Most importantly, these external drives also contained soft copies of thousands of photos taken through the years. They were all of her family, friends, and her husband.

There were also a few printed pictures in her space.

She also had a small box containing the seeds of the herbs she had, and she also took the herbs in her greenhouse and handled them.

Of course, how could she forget her portable solar panel chargers?

Overall the entire tech collection occupied two parts of the floor space. She placed the clothing, living essentials, and the baby products on top to save space. There were also camping items like flashlights, lighters, tents, and bags.

With this, she still had over one-sixths of the space left.

For now she filled up the remaining space with food and snacks that she could eat on the way. She also took in some raw meat she could maybe use as a decoy.

Although zombie's sense of smell was normal, she thought that maybe they'd be a bit more sensitive to raw meat. 

Ideally, other than some space left for emergencies, the rest should be filled up with legitimate weapons.

Weapons.

If she was to get to even the nearest baby products store, she really couldn't handle so many zombies by herself.

Not to mention there were definitely upgraded zombies and maybe zombie creatures roaming around there.

She must have a good weapon before taking a risk.

Not just any weapon, but hot weapons.

She searched her memory and, after a while, finally remembered a rumor amusedly told to her by Nanny.

They… seemed to have a drug lord for a neighbor? It was just a rumor, yes, but it was worth a try.

Who knows... maybe she'd have some unexpected finds.

...

The drug lord's house was right at the end of the villa area, so she decided to also pass by the villas she hadn't been to by the way.

There were about 12 houses between the two. The first two houses were relatively smooth, earning another bunch of gold and silver coins.

Actually, for the most part, there were thousands of silver coins and only a handful of gold. But there was a very interesting house among them.

In one of the houses, there was a sculpture made of gold. It didn't fit the backpack space so she had thought she may not be able to cash it in. However, she just needed to touch it and will it to cash it in.

[Received! +32 gold]

Smooth.

She did notice her spirit lost 5 points, however, so she definitely had to watch her consumption even closer.

However, what she didn't know was that if level 0 survivors tried this, it wouldn't have worked.

It could be said that Althea was still a little lucky with her timing.

_____

She jumped over the fence of the third house (okay, using the ladder), but she wasn't even able to take a few steps inside.

She immediately backed away by instinct, narrowly avoiding the sharp bite of a dog.

Then by instinct, she ran in another direction and rolled over, avoiding another one.

Two!!!

Although it seemed like a Doberman, its fur had a different texture, definitely a mixed breed.

The other one was definitely a mutt, not owned by the villa owner. Even as she was escaping from their sharp teeth, she couldn't help but think of how dogs with mixed genes were so much stronger than inbred dogs.

Speaking of which, what about the animals outside…? How many mutts, stray cats, and others would be out there? She shuddered at the thought of zombie rats…

Of course, this was with the assumption that they survived the initial transformational forces, which wasn't very likely seeing that most house pets didn't survive.

Roar! 

She flinched and forced herself to concentrate on the fight, holding her katana tightly.

The two dogs charged and she hit one dog while kicking the other one. A second later it was the other mutt that was hit.

This went on for a long time and she could feel her spirit reducing at a palpable rate. When she finally immobilized one zombie mutt, her pregnancy symptoms had begun acting up again.

"This can't go on."

She looked around if there was anything else she could use. Ignoring the body pains, she ran to the shed. Waiting for the dog to enter, she quickly ran out and closed the door. She ran back to the immobilized mutt to finish him off, turning around to hit the other dog.

[+10 copper, +10 experience]

[+10 copper, +10 experience]

[Congratulations on entering Level 2!]

She heaved a sigh of relief when she saw that another 100 points of spirit were added when she leveled up. In turn, the horrible pregnancy symptoms subsided a little so that she could finally walk properly.

Like before, there were no material rewards for leveling up, but her health boosted up again and she felt like she could jump from roof to roof now even with her two babies. She could also see clearly dozens of meters away and could hear noises from afar.

Unfortunately, her sense of smell also sharpened and she immediately felt a little dizzy.

Couldn't she choose which sense to sharpen?!