The rabbit meat turned out to be very tasty and nutritious, and once the haven residents tried it for the first time, they couldn't live without it anymore. Fortunately, the meat was in abundance and everyone was able to have their fill.
"What's the situation outside?" Boss asked taking a bite of a baked bunny leg.
"A group of survivors was ambushed today, no one survived," said a very indifferent to human deaths Annette, while eating a meat stew. She's seen too many of them lately and... just stopped feeling anything while witnessing deaths through the screen of the computer.
"Hm? Someone tried to get out of the city? It seems like the fun has just begun. Any casualties among the red zombies?" Boss inquired after taking another bite of his meat.
"Yeah, about six specimen, but they quickly compensated their losses at the expense of those survivors..."
"Hm, can you make a napalm bomb, Louis?"
"You planning to burn everything down out there?" The old man asked in surprise.
"Just to burn the "corncob", then they won't be able to replenish their numbers and I can kill all of them and then get the hell out of there."
"Excellent plan! I can do that, however there's gonna be a fire in the city..." Louis answered with an awkward smile. He thought that the boss would be against the fire... And he was wrong!
"Meh, who cares - there are no survivors in that part of the city anyway. Alice, how the things are going in the residential area?"
"In general, everything is fine, but there's an acute shortage of furniture, utensils and household appliances. People aren't complaining or causing any problems, they're just really happy that they can eat well and don't have to fear for their lives."
"Understood. We'll clear out a few residential buildings once we can safely return to the real world. Anything else?"
"Yeah... The brothel workers are complaining about having too many customers," Alice reported in embarrassment.
"So many visitors, really?" Sergei was surprised.
"Almost all of haven's bachelors go to that place," Louis laughed.
"You old perv, you go there too, don't you?" Boss smirked looking at Louis.
"*cough* *cough*... Come on, boss, I'm not that old yet, and I too have needs... Alcohol is a rarity around here, plus there's almost no entertainment and everyone's under a lot of stress," Louis said, trying to justify himself under accusing gazes of the majority of people around the table.
"I understand that, but you should take pity on the girls as well... Alice, tell the girls to specify how many customers they can serve per day. Also, during the harvest days, the brothel will only be open in the evenings."
"Got it!"
"And one more thing... What's up with these two?" Sergei pointed at a very pale looking Gai and Annette who was purposefully not looking in his direction.
"Boss! It's such a story! Yesterday, when everyone was drunk, Annette slept with Gai! And in the morning she was like: "Huh? How did I end up here? I'm naked? Huh? Gai???"
"Anne!" Annette shouted angrily. And then the girl with a long tongue was immediately smacked upside her head by Orianne. The strength of the blow was quite considerable since everyone at the table could hear its sound.
"That was a despicable thing to do, Gai. I get it, hormones and alcohol and all that. But you didn't even drink that much, while she, to my understanding, was absolutely wasted." Sergei sincerely condemned such things. Most drunk women couldn't even think straight and taking advantage of that was... despicable, to put it mildly.
"But I..." Gai wanted to defend himself, but fell silent seeing all the judgmental looks. Annette literally dragged him to her house herself that night... "I know, boss, I'm really sorry..."
"Did anything else happen?" Boss asked looking at the people around the table.
"Old Louis tried to hit on Melanya and got punched in the face! Ha-ha-ha-ha!" Anne spoke again, however didn't get smacked this time, since even Orianne was laughing at Louis. He tried to hit on her as well and his courtship was something else...
Boss looked at Melanya - the quiet and standoffish nineteen year old girl was peacefully eating her meat, simply happy with her delicious meal. She seemed a little distant and not very smart, but kind and honest, which didn't really fit her spectacular appearance. Plump lips, beautiful blond hair, long legs and G cup breasts - add to all that naive face and gentle personality.
She was oftentimes bullied as a kid by the girls who were jealous of her, but it didn't turn her into someone who hated people, just prompted her to care for the animals. When bunnies appeared in the haven, she was the first one who expressed the desire to care for them.
"If someone's bothering you just punch them in the face or call for help. And you should be ashamed of yourself, old perv," boss said, pointing his finger at Louis.
"I just said that if all cars had such safety pillows then people would be happy to get into accidents..." Louis said with an awkward laugh.
"I have no doubt about that," boss smiled but then got serious. "But you hurt the girl's feelings. And I promised all of them that no one will bother or touch them without their consent."
"I'm sorry, boss..."
"Alright, and another thing that I wanted to discuss. I think we should build a school and a daycare. It will take a load off the parents and the kids will have some fun as well..."
The dinner went on, as did the discussion and planning of the haven's further development. Everyone agreed that they needed to strengthen their security. They needed people to keep order and those who will defend the haven against another attack from the fog.
After finishing their meal, everyone went back about their business. Alice and Solomon's wife began cleaning and washing the dishes, Annette decided to sit behind the computer for a while and then go and take a shower. Brothers left in an unknown direction, while the rest headed to the lake.
Sergei got cozy in his hammock, closed his eyes and just enjoyed some peace and quiet. However the quiet didn't last long - in half an hour he suddenly caught the sound of music. He could barely hear it, but it intrigued him and he decided to go and check it out.
Following the sound he reached the lake. There, Kathrine was performing on a small stage. This fragile girl was playing the guitar and singing some ballad in French. Near her stood a young man and played the violin or something that looked like it. On her other side stood a girl, who looked around twenty-twenty five years old, with a pixie hair cut, who played the electric guitar.
Kathrine was really good at singing and it gathered a lot of people, no less than a hundred, by the looks of it! There were no free seats, so boss sat down on the grass far from the others and listened to the concert. There were no thoughts about problems and work - just enjoying the music.
The song ended after a few minutes and boss was about to leave when the girl announced a new song and the melody started playing again. He had to return back to sitting on the grass...
Half an hour went by, the girl and her group left the stage to a thunderous ovation. Even boss clapped along.
When everyone left the stage, boss stood up once more and was about to leave, when an elderly married couple appeared on the stage to the applause of the audience. Someone helped them to turn on the music track and they started singing. To Sergei's surprise, the couple sounded incredible.
Only by midnight Sergei was able to escape from captivity of music and return home. He got changed and went to sleep. Tomorrow will be a new day and new victories!
August 8, 2024.
After waking up and having some breakfast, boss got to work. First thing he checked the fields and rabbits. Today was the harvesting day of potatoes, wheat and vegetables. The rabbits were breeding as much as they could - they could've been slaughtering at least 400 rabbits a day, but due to the shortage of butchers, people could barely manage a hundred per day. Boss decided not to expand the rabbits' pen and went to check the proceeding of the meat processing factory.
The process was organized according to the conveyor principle - two people skinned, gutted and drained the carcasses of blood. They thought about making soap along the way, but there was an abundance of it already, and zero people who knew how to make it.
Next, some of the carcasses were sent to the refrigerator, the rest went to the butcher's table, where they were chopped up and cut down into paws, fillet and small pieces of meat from the stomach.
The omnivorous rabbits were much bigger than their earthly brethren and weighed ten kilos on average and the final meat output was somewhere around eight kilos, so it all took a decent amount of work.
After the carcasses were cut, the meat was sorted and sent to the fridge, where it was kept in cold state. Just like the cellar, the fridge could preserve the meat for eternity.
Originally they planned to dispose of the waste, but the people who experienced starvation in the past just couldn't force themselves to do it. Thus it was decided to add another step to the production process - guts and bones were cleansed, packaged and stored refrigerated. And when the opportunity arises, boss will give them away for free to the hungry.
As a child, Sergei always dreamed of getting out of poverty and becoming the owner of a large business: he'll be producing the goods and everyone will be happily buying those goods and praising him. So looking at the small factory in front of him, he could say that the dream almost came true...
After praising the butchers for their work, the boss went to inspect the public dining hall.
Every residential area had its own dining hall. Each of them had a capacity of 400 people and were organized on a principle of a buffet. Sergei believed that a well-fed and happy worker is a good worker, so he spared no resources to feed his people.
People, who were dying of starvation just a week ago, really appreciated that. Of course all bad things are quickly forgotten and good things are very easy to get used to and the gratitude will fade away over time. But the boss never asked to be worshipped or something - it was enough for him when the people were loyal to him and worked hard.
The dining halls seemed a bit unappealing to look at: some simple furniture, brick walls and floor. Rooms were lit by the chandeliers, that were obtained by the way of looting the apartments, so they looked rather ridiculous in some cases. But the building of the dining halls would've been much more expensive otherwise.
The kitchen staff had an access to the fridge and the cellar, so there was no need for them to go fetch the ingredients - they just had to send a mental command for some potatoes and a piece of meat to appear in front of them.
All the drinks consisted of tea and coffee, and they were almost out of the last one, because, as it turned out, two-thirds of the haven residents were avid coffee drinkers... And if the coffee drinkers were that good at surviving the zombie apocalypse or Sergei was just that lucky, he wasn't sure.
Unfortunately, it was impossible for now to produce tea and coffee - he didn't have any of their seeds. But they could make juice out of different fruits and vegetables, such as carrots and tomatoes, etc. But then again, they needed people who knew how to do it, or any free cooks who could try and learn on their own. And as it turned out, the situation with the cooking staff was rather depressing, the majority of them were former housewives.
After writing down the list of problems and flaws, that he noticed during his rounds, the boss headed towards the garage. At the moment, the haven owned four civilian vehicles and three military SUVs, two combat ones and one armored one, designed for transporting officers. Three more SUVs were in process of being repaired. Well and a few motorbikes, mostly dismantled or broken.
"Where are you, old man?" Boss shouted bypassing a completely dismantled military SUV.
"Over here."
Following the direction of the sound, boss saw a very focused Louis who was in the middle of soldering something.
"What are you doing?"
"Do not distract me, boss, I'm making a fuse with a timer. The bomb will be ready in an hour," Louis answered without turning back.
Boss nodded and resumed his journey, making a visit to the barracks. There were two of them, each designed for forty people, but considering that they only had fifty three soldiers for now and they were guarding the perimeter in shifts, the barracks were hardly used.
On the shooting range Solomon was teaching his men to accurately hit the target - even those who had a parody on magic and transformation; the archers also couldn't avoid the training. For now the shooters were learning to shoot a gun, then they would switch to submachine guns, then to shotguns, and only after all that training the best shooters would get the assault riffles, of which they had twenty two units already.
Solomon also didn't forget about hand-to-hand combat - which was especially relevant to beastmen. Growing up in a country, in which the democracy has been victorious, they didn't know what it was like to "fight", only laying their hands on women and children while drunk. Physical exercises were not forgotten as well. The System's paradox - a muscular man with 15 points of strength could easily beat up his thin as a twig opponent with 20 or 25 points of strength.
As it turned out, the system altered bone and muscle tissue properties based on the level of the stats of the owner. But if a person didn't do any physical activities and lazed around a lot, then they couldn't channel even eighty percent of their maximum power. It was also one of the reasons why there weren't that many system users among women - they just died quickly - and those who didn't were generally huge and manlike. Professor Curie came to this conclusion after extensive study of system users in the Louvre and in the haven.
Dexterity also affected muscle characteristics, nervous system and sensory organs. This stat enhanced flexibility, mobility, reaction speed, improved the sight and sense of smell.
Stamina expanded lungs, improved blood circulation and saturation of the body with oxygen. Durability strengthened the body in general, increasing immunity, healing rate and the resistance of internal organs to damage, bones became stronger as well. But no one knew what the magic stat did... Well, everyone knew that it affected the power of magic skills and the number of mana points, but how it did that remained unknown.
After wandering around the haven for a while, boss returned to his "place of execution". After seizing the dimensional shard the haven received 2 000 experience points and reached level 11. As a reward, the range of available goods was expanded, but at the time Sergei had neither time nor desire to go through the store. It would have been much easier if there was a "Show new products" button...
After spending half an hour surfing through thew store, Sergei finally found an interesting novelty. It was a wearable camera - at least that's was it was called. It looked like a badge that can be attached to someone's clothes. According to the description, it was possible to tune in the laptop to a certain "badge", and then, depending on the amount of laptops and "badges", it would become possible to watch two people and more.
There was no opportunity to test it out, but boss decided to buy three such "badges" beforehand, along with a few radios with a bunch of headsets.
"Annette, did you find more people to mind the cameras?" Boss asked, his eyes glued to the laptop. Annette was sitting nearby as usual, playing on her phone.
"Only one girl was attentive and patient enough. The rest didn't qualify," the girl answered, remembering that awful selection of candidates. Every girl who thought she was pretty enough to seduce the boss showed up that day. Showed up and started to get on Annette's nerves... Most of them didn't even know how to turn on the laptop and never saw a computer mouse in their lives... As a result, Annette became a public enemy number one, since everyone thought that she wanted to seduce the boss herself...
"I see, but do not limit yourself by only searching among the girls. If a person has the right skills, it doesn't matter what gender or age they are. This is a very important job and I need a lot of people to watch the cameras. You'll get what I'm saying once there's an opportunity to return to Paris."
Annette didn't know what the boss was talking about but still nodded.
Fifteen minutes later came a very tired and a little burnt Louis. He was carrying a huge gas can with an electric device attached to it.
"Hey, is that a bomb!?" Boss shouted upon seeing his mechanic. Louis got taken aback and stopped.
"Yes, but you don't have to worry! It won't explode unless I press this button," the aspiring bomber answered happily.
"That's what everyone says!" Sergei barked and quickly looked into the camera - on the outside everything remained as usual.
"I should press here?" Boss asked after taking the bomb.
"Yes."
Boss nodded and teleported to Paris, there he immediately pressed the button and threw the item into the building with a meaty "corncob".
Red zombies instantly came to life and began to fuss upon seeing a human, but to their chagrin, the human immediately vanished - but his "present" remained...
The canister with a detonator broke through the window and flew inside the building. The zombies guarding the "corncob" scrutinized the unexpected gift with a serious gaze, but quickly lost interest seeing that it was just an inanimate object. They shouldn't have done that - the timer went off and the bomb exploded, having created a localized little hell on earth. From the force of the explosion a small five-story building collapsed in on itself, raising a lot of dust - anything that wasn't burnt to the atoms was crushed...
"What the fuck is that, Louis? Did you build a nuclear warhead?"
"I guess I might have overdone a little..." the old man laughed awkwardly.
"What is that bomb even made of?" Boss asked, giving Louis an angry look. What if it detonated earlier than planned? He could've been blown to smithereens...
"I mixed gasoline with biofuel..." Louis acknowledged reluctantly, averting his gaze.
"What the hell is biofuel?"
"Well... Bioreactor recycles biomatter into biofuel. I took some of that fuel, for the sake of experiment of course, and learned that it's a very flammable and explosive thing! Then I figured out the proportions in which gasoline is fully blended with biofuel, and what I got was... this..."
"Can you make more?" Sergei asked excitedly after a moment of thought.
"...Of course!"
"But first we are gonna build an underground bunker for you, so that you won't blow up half of the city, if, God forbid, there's an accident."
"Okay..."
After the discussion, men sat down behind the computer and started watching what was going on outside.
"Is it normal that steel is melting?" Boss asked looking at the monitor.
"Of course it is," Louis answered confidently.
"What about the fact that the neighboring buildings are turning into sand?"
"That's a good thing, that way the fire won't spread to the whole neighborhood."
"Makes sense."
The fire lasted for only an hour, but the flames were so intense that during that time all the neighboring buildings were either severely damaged or reduced to rubble; the trees that grew nearby burned to the ground in a matter of seconds and the asphalt melted into magma - or rather it looked that way...
It wasn't smart to leave the haven in the near future, so everyone decided to go and take a rest until it was time to have lunch. Fortunately, it didn't take too long. Annette filmed the moment when the building exploded and everything around it was melting and getting destroyed by fire. Everyone was eager to watch it.
"Solomon, get half of our soldiers ready after the lunch. We are gonna head towards the Basilica, looting the apartment buildings on our way. We are taking everything that isn't nailed down. People need furniture, household appliances, bedding, in short - everything that is required for a comfortable housing," boss said raising his head from his bowl of spaghetti.
"Got it, boss."
"And one more thing. Natasha, since you're our leading architect, you need to design a bunker suitable for testing explosions for our Louis - he'll explain you everything. Any questions?" He asked, getting ready to devour his marinated meat. No one answered and the lunch proceeded in silence.
***
Annette has been closely inspecting the vicinity of the explosion for the last ten minutes. Having received the confirmation of the coast being clear, boss finally exited the haven.
"...It was a good bike," Sergei sighed, observing the melted remnants of his motorcycle. It wasn't possible to bring it to the haven with him, so now boss was yet again left without his transport, and moving through the city on a car would potentially cause him a lot of problems...
Interesting fact - after the destruction of the meaty "corncob" all the red zombies in that area went completely crazy. They were apathetic for some time first, then started running around and it all ended when they began destroying everything around them, including each other. After approximately one hour, all red ones froze and then just collapsed on the spot, without any signs of life.
The asphalt was still hot, as was the air that burned his lungs, so the former biker decided to hurry off - it seemed like for each second spent there, he's been losing half a liter of fluids, no less...
The surrounding area was cleared by the red ones, so the nest 300 meters he passed without any problems, and only after that he started seeing the first small groups of zombies.
Sergei summoned Solomon and they quickly fought their way into the nearest apartment building. It was a well preserved looking ten-story building. after returning to the haven Sergei handed Solomon a wearable camera.
"Is that what you were talking about?" The haven's head of security asked, looking closely at the "badge" in his hands.
"Yes. It's a wearable camera. I don't know how it works yet, so lets test it out. Annette, go fetch the girl that you've picked for watching the cameras," the "watcher" nodded and ran off.
(rus) "It would've been nice to establish communication... Running back and forth is getting really annoying," Sergei thought out loud.
Four minutes later arrived two girls: Annette and a skinny girl who looked around 16 years old.
"This is Nica," Annette announced, pointing to a confident young girl.