Operation Cobalt

"Fuck..."

Axel was looking down from his rooftop that he had climbed and lay now low. The gunshots from afar came ever closer than before.

At some point, he saw soldiers moving around some main streets and clear out most zombies that were coming into firing range.

Especially the tanks close by were pretty useful for that. It basically just drove them dead in masses. And everything else that moved was taken by the soldiers.

At first, Axel thought that it was a very nice and a lucky encounter. After all, now he could join those people in some safe zone and work up from there, right?

But unlike his thought what he saw these soldiers doing was only one thing - Massacre. They just mowed down everything. No discrimination for anything.

Apparently, there were survivors close to his own location that were hiding out. And even those were killed after leaving their safe spots and trying to approach the soldiers.

There was even a small family of three with a kid that was unlucky to have not seen that before they came to them as well. They were also not shown any mercy.

Butchered right there on the spot. So Axel would also end up the same way. His eyes looked at that action with contempt.

"Did I miss something or are these guys completely nuts? Who gave the order to do this shit?"

No matter whose idea it was. It proved itself to Axel now that he had to get out of here.

Luckily the soldiers seemed to stop a few blocks away from his own location and moved back from where they came.

From the sound of it, there was some sort of camp where they came from. It was probably some outpost from them where they operated and cleared everything around.

There were even helicopter rotors starting to activate and the birds flew around dropping some sort of Molotov. Probably napalm bombs.

"I think I will wait it out for now and move at night to get the hell out of this city."

It was one thing to deal with literally braindead zombies but to have to worry about automatic gun-wielding soldiers with heavy weaponry was another matter.

Thinking about this encounter he considered 2 weeks were not yet enough time to get rid of these murdering military guys. Even if the city looked pretty dead already.

But he was sure these guys would run out of supplies very soon or relocate to some other place. Either that or they would get overwhelmed by the sheer numbers that they start to collect at their location with the noise.

Making himself comfortable on the rooftop so that he was both hard to spot but still comfortable enough to sleep and keep an eye on the rooftop door he lay there and took a short nap.

It was not very cold since the region seemed to be a rather high climate one and most of the months seemed to be summer. He had not to worry in that regard.

---

What woke him up next was some sort of alarm bell.

Since he was vigilant and expected to wake up early his look went first over to the door at the rooftop and then to the emergency staircase.

Looking over the small brick wall to the location he presumed the military was he could see some sort of light.

It was easy to spot since night had already started to fall and the sun was pretty much gone.

Making sure everything around him was alright he proceeded to look where that alarm came from.

Suddenly an idea came to his mind and he opened up the STORE.

And just like he thought there was a message left there.

[Store has closed. Time until reopening: 15Hours57minutes.]

[Daily Profit: $3243]

[Employee cost: - $500]

[Restocking: - $1000]

[Net Profit: $1743]

[Employee gained EXP. Cynthia reached LVL 2.]

[Convenience Store LVL 2 Reached. Lucky Rollet Ticket gained.]

'Wait, what is this now?' Axel was genuinely surprised. He did not see anything like that before.

Clicking on the opening time he saw that his store was only open 8 hours.

'Are you kidding me? Can I change that?'

He soon came to a window with a time planner where he could drag employees around and assigned who was working at which time.

Not waiting long he hired another employee and opened the shop after a short 3-hour break in between shifts. He could actually open up 24-Hours but there seemed to be a debuff on his employee's happiness when he did that.

That he actually had to worry about stuff like that was kinda tedious. Even if it gave some realism to it.

First, he gave Cynthia a small rise of $50. That was actually the smallest rise possible. With that he upped her work ethic to a green meter and placed his second employee Bob into the second shift.

Since he now worked two shifts, there was also a need for someone restocking the products in the shelf it seems.

So he had another worker work part-time for 2,5 hours in the time the shop had a break and refill stuff. It increased his cost a little bit but the profit ended up better at the end and the happiness of all workers went up.

Probably because they only needed to take care of their shift and someone did the heavy lifting in between.

Actually, Axel kinda wondered what high-class store this was that employees received 500 bucks per 8 hours.

That was a massive amount of money considering that it would be freaking $15000 a month. And before people asked, his shop was also open on Sundays. He was not going to close just for that while they received that money.

Well, he guessed it was contributed to the game-like operation it had. After all, he also received a certain base amount of money.

Using said the money he received he could actually increase some stats from the store like capacity and for now capacity meant more profit.

So for another $1000, he increased that stat. There were also things like variety and stuff but most of those things were locked behind level and license requirements.

For example, he found out that the gun store he wanted was a level 20 + Gun Merchant license option. That license alone cost fucking $250,000.

There were surprisingly also things like Drug Store, Car Merchant, and Gas Station licenses.

The gas one cost a whole freaking million to buy. But that was to be expected somehow since Axel kinda figured out that the upgrades were more expensive the more it made the store a massive all you want mall.

Especially if it increased the quality of his life in this world. That Drug Store license was also more expensive than the Gun Store one. But it didn't surpass the gasoline and stood at a proud half a million.

Oh, and the Car merchant one? Don't even bother. That shit cost him a whopping 10 million in cash. He was better off stealing cars from the street that basically littered them.

Thinking about it he actually could have scraped the cars into money if he got them. Yeah, that is probably why it was so expensive. He could basically make money without effort as long as he found cars.

So by the looks, the perk did not let him go the easy way. That made him wonder who was behind all this...But he really didn't waste much time thinking about in the end.

Another option for him to buy right now was security. Apparently, he had some goods stolen from his shop. So the remaining money went into CCTV that decreased theft.

Somehow this game ended up more realistic than he thought.

Anyway, that was already about everything he could do.

But before he forgot it, he brought some food and drinks with his money to place into his inventory. He noticed that it would not decrease his projected profit that way.

Being done with that he looked into that ticket he received.

It was a one-time use item that would be received at every level and could end up giving cash, upgrades, and even Stats! And it was his own Stats!

So if he were lucky he could improve his own body with those tickets. But the big fat FAIL region that took about 30% of the wheel kinda bothered him. So there was also a high chance of getting nothing at all.

Shrugging his shoulders he spun the wheel and waited on what it would land on.

To his surprise, he landed on the question mark sign that was the smallest field of them all. How in the hell he did that with his lousy luck was a miracle. (*cough*plot armor)

[Congratulation for obtaining a random ability!]

[Calculating -- Innate Ability - Skill Hunter received.]

Axel was confused at first and checked his skills section and there it really was.

The new ability was depicted as a black human silhouette with a white glittering card hovering over its outstretched hand. The frame around the picture was a golden color.

[Skill Hunter (EX): LVL 1: Dead People drop Skill Cards that can be equipped. The higher the LVL of this ability, the more slots are available. Current slots 1. To gain level, skill cards need to be consumed as a sacrifice. Each 10 level the skill gets upgrades.]

'Okay...I get the gist of this ability. Somehow I got a broken thing with the ticket. But I am not in a fantasy world. So how exactly does it work now? I can't go and kill humans just like that...It would be more trouble.'

Shrugging his shoulders since he had nothing to do anymore he went ahead and climbed back down to street level.

When he was there he noticed that the number of zombies was much thinner and through the darkness, it was easier to sneak past most of them.

But a few still had it coming and tried to snack him. The only result was him dispatching them zombies with his knife.

And what he found after the first zombie died brought another grin to his face.

[Skill -Butcher- absorbed, Common White Grade: The knowledge to prepare meat.]

"Jackpot~~~"