“I... I’m reborn?”
Inside the cramped rental room, Shi You lay on the hard bed, looking around in disbelief.
The faded gray walls, cheap furniture, the ceiling lamp cracked down the middle, and the old air conditioner perched atop the wardrobe. Its unit was a dull yellow and groaned and hummed, but it was still working hard.
Everything was both familiar and strange.
Once, he had wanted to escape from all of this more than anything.
But now, it thrilled him so much that his hands trembled, and his eye sockets burned as if he were about to cry.
What a miserable, pathetic life!
When Shi You thought about his life, that was the only assessment he could make.
If time had stopped before he turned six, he could have been called a winner in life.
Loving parents, an adorable younger sister who was one year younger than him, and a reasonably well-off family.
Back then, Shi You never imagined that his beautiful life was already approaching the edge of a cliff.
One more step forward, and it would be a bottomless abyss!
In the winter of his sixth year, his father’s business failed, leaving him heavily in debt. From then on, the family’s financial situation rapidly deteriorated.
Fortunately, his parents were still young and had a chance to turn things around.
The whole family scrimped and saved. But just as they were about to pay off all their debts, his father, who had worked day and night for years, died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage. When his mother received the news, she drove through the rainy night, crashed into a truck, and died on the spot.
In a single day, Shi You lost the two people closest to him, leaving only his younger sister for the two of them to depend on each other.
Even so, fate still refused to let him go.
In the year Shi You was a freshman in high school, his younger sister fell seriously ill.
At the time, Shi You’s grades were fairly good, but he decided to drop out and find every possible way to make money. Even so, his younger sister’s rapidly worsening condition did not improve in the slightest.
Finally, three years after Shi You dropped out of school, his younger sister, unwilling to be a burden to him any longer, chose to end her own life.
From then on, Shi You became depressed and drifted through life in a daze.
Then, on his twenty-fourth birthday, a disaster that spread across the entire world changed his life.
At noon that day, the apocalypse arrived without warning.
Every kind of firearm became useless.
All communications equipment stopped working.
More than ninety percent of humanity became infected and transformed into zombies that knew nothing but killing.
The survivors received a system called the “Doomsday Game.”
People’s physical condition was converted into numbers. Killing zombies granted experience, and they could level up just like in a game.
The social structure collapsed. The law became meaningless. Relationships between people grew fragile and tense. The law of the strong prevailed and was hailed by everyone as the truth.
People became “gu worms.” They slaughtered, looted, and evolved until they eventually became Gu Worm Kings.
Shi You struggled alone through the brutal apocalypse.
He was like a fish in water in that world. Opportunities sprang up like mushrooms, and he naturally built a stronghold and established a new order.
Could I be the protagonist of this world?
Shi You had thought this countless times.
A miserable family, a tragic life, surviving a disaster, then regaining his confidence and growing stronger step by step.
No matter how he looked at it, he fit all those elements.
However, this was merely another joke from heaven—or perhaps it was simply inevitable.
How could someone like him, who looked down on the weak, plundered people’s lives, acted without humanity, and was cunning and treacherous, ever be the protagonist? The true protagonist was someone else.
A messy-haired young man named Li Suoyun, kindhearted and constantly shouting about love and peace all day long.
As for him, he was merely a villain on the protagonist’s path.
In front of the true protagonist, Shi You suffered defeat after defeat until he finally died because of his subordinate’s betrayal.
And yet... strangely enough, after Shi You died, his soul did not dissipate. Instead, he followed the protagonist’s group, watching with his own eyes as Li Suoyun built the largest stronghold and gave everyone a stable life.
The villains were completely eliminated. The protagonist’s group lived happily ever after, and ordinary people enjoyed peaceful lives.
Wasn’t this the standard ending to a story?
But—
Why?!
Why did he have to be the villain defeated by the protagonist? Why did everything he had painstakingly built have to become someone else’s meal!
Whenever he thought about it, his soul would let out a furious roar.
He refused to accept it!
If it was because he was less capable, then he had nothing to say. If he lost, he lost.
But what was so great about that brat?
Naive, stupid, brainless—if not for the protagonist aura, would he have survived Shi You’s hands every single time?
But... even if he refused to accept it, what could a soul do?
Shi You could only roar curses from his throat, like a tiger without claws or fangs.
Until the protagonist’s first child was born and his family became complete and happy. At that moment, Shi You’s soul began to dissipate.
He thought he would finally be able to rest.
He never imagined that when he opened his eyes again, he would have returned ten years into the past.
Now, the Doomsday Game had yet to arrive. Shi You had not yet been branded a villain, and the protagonist was still just an ordinary boy.
Three paths lay before Shi You.
First... continue fighting the protagonist and use his knowledge of the future to find a way to eliminate him.
Second... stop opposing the protagonist, become an ordinary person, and live quietly, asking only for stability.
Third... join the protagonist’s group and become his subordinate, hoping to bask in his glory.
The second and third options didn’t seem so bad. That was the protagonist, after all. In the face of the protagonist aura, what meaning did being reborn even have?
Then I’ll join the protagonist’s group.
Inside Shi You’s mind, a tiny person prattled on about the benefits of joining the protagonist’s group.
The faster the tiny person spoke, the tighter Shi You clenched his fist.
“Bullshit!”
Shi You slammed his fist into the bed. His jaw clenched tightly, veins bulging on his forehead. His bloodshot eyes were filled with such intense hatred that it nearly became tangible.
If I can’t kill that damn protagonist, then what meaning does my rebirth have?!
His fate had been so miserable. Why should he accept all of this? Why should he submit?
As his enemy, he acknowledged the protagonist’s strength—or rather, even the word “strength” could not describe it. That heaven-defying fate had long since exceeded the boundaries of strength.
Ordinary methods would never be enough to kill the protagonist.
Shi You was absolutely certain of that. During the years he spent as a soul, he had seen countless people die at the protagonist’s hands because of sheer luck.
But... there had to be a way.
There had to be a way to kill him!
“Bzzzzzz...”
Suddenly, the vibration coming from beneath his pillow pulled Shi You back to reality.
He lifted the pillow. Beneath it was a phone set to silent vibration, and an unfamiliar number was calling. The system identified it as a food delivery number.
Shi You answered the call, and the voice at the door rang out at the same time as the one on the phone.
“Food delivery. Is anyone home? I’ve been knocking for ages, but no one’s answering.”
Did I order food?
Shi You was momentarily dazed. It had been so long since his life before the apocalypse that he couldn’t remember these little details.
“Just leave it outside the door.”
“Sure. Please leave us a review, too.”
Shi You opened the food delivery app and checked inside. Sure enough, he really had ordered food.
A birthday cake!
Shi You froze. He had never eaten anything like this before. Could it be...?
Shi You looked at the date, and sure enough, today was his birthday—and the same day the Doomsday Game would arrive.
At nine in the morning, he had to work in the afternoon and evening, so he could only celebrate his birthday in the morning.
He had originally planned to use his rebirth to prepare before the apocalypse arrived, such as taking out loans to buy supplies and various cold weapons. Now it seemed he had been overthinking it.
Shi You rolled off the bed. He had just lifted one leg when he nearly fell over.
“Is it because I haven’t used a body in too long?”
Shi You braced himself against the table and stood up. After spending so long as a wandering soul, using a real body again felt unfamiliar.
Shi You limped to the door and opened it to bring in the cake.
He placed the cake on the object in the room that could barely be called a table, then slowly unwrapped its cheap packaging.
The sweet fragrance of low-quality cream rushed into his nose. A scent that rich people would find disgusting was, in the apocalypse, an unaffordable luxury—no matter how much money one had!
The cake box also came with a plate and a plastic fork, along with a cardboard birthday hat that was obviously the wrong size.
Shi You put on the hat ceremoniously, stuck a candle into the cake, lit it with a lighter, clasped his hands together, and slowly closed his eyes.
“Happy birthday.”