Chapter 3

Chapter 3

POV: Amara

The hours that followed rolled by like a scene from a long, tedious nightmare, everyone acting out their scripted roles with a predictable precision that was almost laughable.

The armored 4x4 groaned under the weight of the canned goods and weapons they had looted from the warehouse. Kyllian continued to play his petty tyrant act as an invincible leader, while Tiffany clung to her pathetic, trembling damsel routine, sticking close to him for protection. As for me, I sat quietly in the back seat, watching this cheap circus play out with cold, detached eyes. I knew damn well I wasn't just a random traveler in this world; I was standing right on top of the pages of a pre-written novel—a story where a foolish author wanted me to meet a miserable, bloody end as zombie fodder to teach the main characters a lesson!

But I was reading the events like someone holding the secret map.

"Amara! Are you just going to stare blankly into space all day?" Tiffany snapped from the front passenger seat, her eyes narrowing with hidden malice as she forced herself to take ragged, theatrical breaths. "The road is long, and you're supposed to be helping Kyllian sort the supplies instead of sitting back there like some queen."

I ignored her grating tone, slowly lifting my gaze to meet hers with that absolute, unsettling chill that always throws unstable consciences off balance. I replied in a quiet, provoking voice: "If I were you, Tiffany, I wouldn't waste energy on idle chatter and whining. The red mist out there doesn't care about lazy complainers."

Tiffany stumbled over her words, her eyebrows knitting together in a mix of shock and boiling rage. She wasn't used to the original Amara talking back with such calm, unyielding confidence. Up front, Kyllian was steering the truck through a highway clogged with wrecked cars. He frowned in the rearview mirror and warned us in a gruff voice: "Stop bickering, both of you. We're almost at the main gas station on the edge of the district. We'll stop for twenty minutes to top off the tanks and grab any intact medical supplies or canned goods from the adjacent store. Play your parts and don't give me any trouble."

The engine sputtered to a slow halt in front of a quiet, deathly silent gas station, framed by rusted signs swaying in the biting wind.

The moment Kyllian and the rest of the team stepped out to check the pumps, my mental radar flared with sharp, rhythmic pulses.

Three… five… eight...

The station wasn't abandoned after all. Beneath the shattered glass canopy of the convenience store, a cluster of early-mutation zombies lurked, alongside a hidden corridor leading straight to a back storage room packed with rare medical supplies that Tiffany had droved over in the original novel just to show off her heroine privilege.

I opened the truck door quietly and stepped out, moving with steady paces toward the store entrance, entirely ignoring Tiffany's sharp, panicked calls: "Where do you think you're going, Amara? Stay here, don't hold us up!"

I didn't answer her. I knew I was inside a strictly directed scenario, but I had every intention of rewriting the scene's climax myself.

Inside the dim store, the thick stench of decay hung heavy in the air. I snapped my head toward a faint rustling sound echoing between the aisles of scattered canned goods. A zombie with a torn face and muscles bloated by the red mist lunged at me out of nowhere, its jaws wide open and dripping with dark, viscous saliva.

In the original novel, this exact moment was supposed to send Amara spiraling into a blind panic, dropping her weapon and waiting for Kyllian's heroic intervention to save her skin—an intervention Tiffany would later use to hook the male lead even deeper while keeping Amara locked in eternal debt.

But I wasn't the old Amara.

I didn't take a single step back. With razor-sharp focus, I tracked the creature's exact trajectory via my mental radar, grabbed a heavy iron pipe from the collapsed shelves with practiced speed, and swung it with devastating, calculated force straight into the zombie's right temple.

CRACK!

The dull, sickening thud of a shattered skull echoed through the dark store. The grotesque creature collapsed instantly to the floor, motionless. A warm, swift spark of energy flared from its dead body, slipping straight into the depths of the infinite dimension inside my pendant, making the roots of the Ability Tree flare with a brilliant green glow.

I stood over the corpse, breathing steadily as I wiped a bead of sweat from my forehead, whispering to myself with unwavering cynicism: «Looks like the author never imagined his substitute heroine would take care of Chapter Twenty's obstacle in a matter of seconds.»

Right at that exact second, Kyllian and the rest of the team stormed into the store, drawn by the sound of the blow. They raised their rifles, looking around in sudden panic to spot the threat. Kyllian froze dead in his tracks when he saw the lifeless body at my feet, his eyes widening in pure disbelief as he stared at a girl who, just hours ago, had been crying over the howling wind, now standing firmly over a zombie she'd taken down with a single professional strike.

"Amara… did… did you do this all by yourself?" Kyllian stammered, suspicion lacing his voice, while Tiffany stepped up from behind, her face pale with genuine shock and blinded by sheer jealousy.

I looked back at them with absolute calm, kicking the corpse aside with the tip of my boot, and answered with a sarcastic edge loaded with meanings they couldn't possibly grasp yet:

"Why are you so surprised? The outside world isn't a fantasy novel where we just play victim roles, guys… the real world requires a lot more than just crying."

I turned away to inspect the remaining shelves, and with chilling efficiency, began sweeping every medical crate, bottled water case, and precious supply into my hidden dimension in utter silence. The two of them stood frozen where they were, utterly incapable of explaining the radical transformation of the girl they had assumed was nothing more dead weight on a survival trip.

The rules of the game were shifting, and the true match had just begun.