"I haven't finished the debrief..." Su Jin stood frozen in his rented room, his jaw slack.
In a fraction of a second, reality had hard-reset.
The oppressive corporate void was gone, replaced entirely by the claustrophobic, familiar clutter of his apartment.
He dry-swallowed repeatedly, his lips trembling as an uncontrollable, manic grin split his face.
He lunged for the window, violently hauling the curtains back. Outside, the city was a sea of neon and headlights, the distant night market crawling with oblivious, living crowds.
"I'm back. I'm back... I'm actually back!!!"
Pure, unadulterated ecstasy overrode his combat conditioning. Su Jin collapsed onto the cheap mattress, burying his face in his hands as he alternated between hysterical laughter and jagged sobs.
It took several minutes for his heart rate to drop back to baseline, but the feral, smug grin remained plastered on his face.
His eyes darted around. Muscle memory kicked in, and he slapped his pockets to check his phone, only to hit empty fabric.
Right. He’d surrendered the device to Fu Qingdai.
The sudden intrusion of her name dragged his euphoria down into the dirt. Su Jin's grin dissolved into a tight, grim line as the silence of his apartment closed in.
The Dying World already felt like a fever dream. He had no intel on their current coordinates—had they breached the military district? Were they fortified for the night?
It didn't matter. He was off the grid. He couldn't provide fire support anymore.
He looked down at his hands. His right fist was still white-knuckling the Company's Vellum contract.
He deliberately flexed his muscles, testing his physical specs.
The hardware upgrades had carried over. His body still possessed that terrifying, feather-light lethality.
However, the Silver Gun and the leather briefcase had been wiped from his inventory. The Company had evidently reclaimed its issued gear.
Besides the weapons, he felt a nagging void in his mental checklist. What had he forgotten to execute before extraction?
Su Jin sat on the edge of the bed, grinding his mental gears.
A minute later, his eyes widened in sheer horror, and he viciously slapped his own forehead.
"Fuck!!"
The capital! He hadn't secured any local currency... and the Company offered an exchange rate!
He had actively drafted a tactical plan to loot a jewelry store before extraction, but the rapid exfil had completely derailed his logistics.
He had been so desperate to clock out, he’d abandoned a literal gold mine!
His briefcase held some local scavenged goods, but it was mostly MREs and rations. That wouldn't yield any serious liquidity.
Worse, the Company had impounded the briefcase. Getting a payout on that scrap was a coin toss.
He was functionally bankrupt!
Panic setting in, Su Jin began tearing his apartment apart, flipping drawers and raiding cabinets.
Finding zero cash, he finally unearthed a plastic debit card.
He sprinted out of the complex, pushing his upgraded stamina to the limit until he reached the nearest ATM.
His hands shook as he fed the plastic into the machine, punching in his PIN.
When the digital readout flashed on the screen, a guttural, choked noise ripped from Su Jin's throat.
1,059,237!
Over one million yuan! The Company's automated exchange had actually cleared!
"A million... where the hell did this capital come from?" Su Jin's brow furrowed.
Massive liquidity was the objective, but a cool million was a statistical anomaly.
He hadn't secured any high-tier loot to justify that payout.
He ran a quick mental audit of his inventory before the realization hit him.
The watch!
The luxury timepiece he’d scavenged from the Longlin Skyscraper. He’d stashed it in his pack when Cheng Du and the others were mobilizing.
And that was after the crystal had been shattered during his CQB with Gao Tianfang.
If the Company appraised a damaged, second-hand watch at a million yuan...
Good god... what was the MSRP on a pristine model?
Shaking off the financial shock, Su Jin checked the ATM's timestamp.
He ran the calculations. He’d been missing from Earth for roughly thirty days—a near 1:1 time dilation with the Dying World.
Acceptable parameters. He hadn't been AWOL long enough to ruin his civilian identity.
Su Jin retrieved his card, his mind pivoting to the next objective.
He was tabling the Company's eldritch agenda for now. A month off the grid meant a massive backlog of comms.
He needed to secure a burner phone before his parents filed a missing persons report.
It was 1900 hours. Retail was still operational.
He popped his SIM card from his wallet and double-timed it toward the tech district.
...
One hour later.
After running a rigid cost-benefit analysis between an nOwa model and a Xiaomi, Su Jin authorized the purchase of a flagship Redmi K80, throwing in two Xiaomi 15s as tactical backups.
It had been years since he’d upgraded his hardware. The corporate grind had entirely killed his interest in tech specs.
He wasn't an IT specialist, but the nOwa sales rep had clearly identified him as a high-value mark, aggressively cycling through bloatware to simulate high performance.
Even with his outdated tech knowledge, Su Jin recognized a grift when he saw one. The Xiaomi hardware was mathematically superior.
He booted up the device and immediately dialed his parents' landline.
It rang twice before a sharp female voice cut through the line.
"Son, what kind of massive project is this?! You ghost me for a month, and you only authorize a call now?" Mother Su fired off, her tone lethal. "Is the contract fulfilled? If you hadn't checked in by tomorrow, your father and I were calling the authorities!"
A heavy knot loosened in Su Jin's chest. "Mom, it was a massive project! High-risk, high-reward. The contract is closed... and I secured the bag. A million-yuan payout!"
The entire Xiaomi store went dead silent. Heads swiveled toward him, eyes filled with a mix of awe, pity, and muted disgust.
"You don't see schizophrenic beggars this devoted to their parents often," a teenager whispered.
"Wait, the hobo actually has a family?"
"Keep your voice down, he looks like he bites."
"This is exactly the demographic that buys Xiaomi. Disgusting. We need to switch brands... I'm not carrying the same hardware as a mental patient."
...
"Look, I'm not running a scam... brief Dad on the situation. I'll deploy back to the hometown in a few days. Ping me if you need immediate assistance. Out."
Su Jin terminated the call, a profound sense of operational relief washing over him.
He stood in the center of the store, letting the civilians gawk for another minute, before grabbing his tech and stepping out into the neon-lit night market.
He scanned the throngs of people navigating the food stalls. A terrifying, genuine smile hijacked his face.
The grin stretched ear to ear, his facial muscles locked in pure joy.
The sheer value of a mundane life could only be quantified after you'd survived the apocalypse.
The sensory overload of this perfectly normal street hit him with the force of a flashbang, violently purging the trauma and corporate paranoia from his system.
To hell with the Company. To hell with the Dying World... he just wanted to exist in the crowd.
Su Jin wiped a stray tear from his eye and deployed to an empty stool at a street-side noodle stand.
"Boss, two bowls of Ban Mian. One wide, one thin. Maximize the noodle volume, double the eggs, heavily saturate with chili oil, and add two chicken quarters... and I need a two-liter of iced tea, immediately."
"Swipe your card first!"
Su Jin executed the transaction, snapped a pair of cheap wooden chopsticks, and waited in a state of euphoric anticipation.
Minutes later, the steaming bowls hit the plastic table.
The aggressive, spicy aroma of the Ban Mian hit his receptors, and Su Jin let out another psychotic chuckle. He grabbed a massive clump of noodles and shoved them into his mouth.
The hyper-processed, glorious MSG flavor detonated on his tongue. Su Jin threw his head back in sheer, unadulterated bliss.
Then, he dropped his head and began inhaling the food with the frantic efficiency of a starving animal.
By the time he neutralized the first bowl, his biological and emotional metrics had stabilized. As he worked on the second, he pulled out his new K80 to clear his debts, then booted up WeChat.
A massive wall of encrypted notifications flooded the screen.
A quick scan confirmed his former corporate unit had been trying to ping him.
The primary aggressor was his old manager, Old Li. The notification badge read 99+.
Su Jin scrolled through the backlog, tracking Old Li’s descent into complete psychological meltdown.
The initial messages were standard corporate hostility, demanding Su Jin return to the office and beg for his job back. The subsequent messages devolved into severe threats.
[Su Jin, I'll fucking kill you.]
[You son of a bitch!! The entire department is tanking because of your stunt!]
[Stop playing dead and get your ass in here...&@……]
The timeline ended with three weeks of pure, unhinged verbal abuse. The most recent ping was from seventy-two hours ago.
Su Jin smirked as he read.
The tactical situation was obvious. The VIP client, Wang, had lost his primary target, so he’d pivoted his corporate wrath onto Old Li.
Old Li was clearly taking heavy casualties to break protocol like this.
Su Jin polished off the remaining broth, entirely unbothered. He casually swiped through the digital wreckage, his cold, cynical smile fully restored.
It was time to prep his gear and fall back to his hometown for some R&R.
But before he initiated that transfer, he needed to make a quick tactical detour to his old office. This time... he was going to liquidate his assets and collect exactly what he was owed.