The Air Raid Shelter

The enhanced physical strength after leveling up was indeed extraordinary! Facing these zombies, Henry was like a tiger among sheep, easily dispatching all thirty-one zombies with unstoppable force. Thanks to the Enhanced Harvesting core, the items obtained from killing zombies went directly into his storage ring. Only when there was no more space in the storage ring would items drop outside.

Henry still had plenty of space in his storage, and the zombies mostly dropped the same few items: Energy Cores, Mutant Fertilizer, Clean Cloth, and some other miscellaneous personal belongings. Henry kept the Cold Storage Key and discarded some useless items like Business Cards and Student IDs to save storage space.

Not far beyond the cafeteria's back door, he encountered a thick, heavy iron door. Water continuously flowed from beneath it, indicating that this was likely the cold storage. Henry focused on the cold storage door, and soon, another prompt appeared:

The frozen meat in the cold storage has just thawed and has not spoiled, it is safe to eat!

This was good news! Henry was pleased. In the apocalypse, the most common foods were processed items like instant noodles and self-heating ready meals. While tasty occasionally, eating them meal after meal was unbearable. If it were other survivors who struggled even to find food, they wouldn't be picky, having anything to eat would be good enough. But Henry was different.

He had an abundance of Meat Potatoes, Beef Cans, and a plethora of food items from the supermarket. With a wide variety and no worry about running out of food, Henry focused more on the quality of the food. Undoubtedly, freshly grilled or stewed meat was leagues above instant foods in both taste and texture!

While others were still worrying about survival in the apocalypse, Henry was already planning a life of quality...

He opened the cold storage. Inside, four large, headless, processed whole pigs were hanging, along with a cow and two sheep. In the corner, boxes of semi-prepared foods were stacked. Henry swiftly stored everything in his storage space.

He lightly touched the boxes of food.

*Ding!* Harvest successful!

Congratulations, you have obtained: Fried Fries *72 bags, Fried Squid Rings *48 bags, Nutritional Shrimp Cakes *96, Fried Chicken Wings *72, Cheese 500g *30, Grilled Sausages 6-pack *100, Swordfish 1000g *24, Dory Fish 1000g *82, Synthetic Steaks 300g *48, Chicken Nuggets 300g *20, Chicken Legs 2-pack *66!

What a grand harvest!

Henry then moved to the storage room. Previously, during a trade, Clarissa had given him a set of keys, including one for the cafeteria storeroom, so he easily opened the door.

This small room was about fifty square meters and crammed with shelves from floor to ceiling, four levels in total. The lowest level was filled with staples like flour and rice, which, without exception, had been contaminated by red mushrooms. Only the well-sealed, unopened items had been preserved.

Harvesting...

Ding! Harvest successful!

Additionally, items already present in the storage space were of the same type. Stacking them together saved a lot of space! After another round of scavenging, before leaving the cafeteria, Henry also took the gas cylinders.

Ding! Congratulations, you have obtained Gas Cylinders *6.

Exiting the cafeteria, Henry returned to the playground. He recalled from a previous diary entry that its owner had escaped from a shelter underneath the school playground, having stolen one of the three stored armed mechs. The mech used to escape was left at the entrance of the shelter. The owner died almost immediately upon emerging, illustrating just how terrifying the outside world could be!

This also indicated that the other two armed mechs should still be properly stored in the shelter. Such powerful weapons of war had to be secured!

Henry approached the shelter's main entrance. The shelter had been converted from an air raid shelter, with the entrance located beneath the flag-raising platform on the playground. The large iron door was severely damaged, and inside it was pitch black. Standing at the doorway, he could feel bursts of chilly air blowing out from within.

It's frighteningly dark here, but the good news is there's no threat...

Oh... Henry was slightly disappointed. He had hoped to find some more cores here. No zombies? On second thought, that made sense. The shelter had been breached by undead creatures that likely consumed all the people inside, which is why there were no zombies. Now, with the world in a state of suppression against monsters, it wasn't their time to emerge yet. So, naturally, there wouldn't be any creatures more terrifying than zombies here. It was just dark!

Henry, stepping on the stairs covered with thick dust and debris, slowly made his way downward.

With each step, a creaking noise echoed through the silent air raid shelter, creating faint echoes that made the silence seem eerily profound. Henry had only walked three or four meters when the world in front of him plunged into darkness, the light from the entrance fading to near insignificance.

Henry took out a night vision goggle and placed it on his head.

Hiss...

The night vision goggles activated! 

The pitch-black shelter immediately lit up, albeit everything was now covered in a green hue, giving it a somewhat sinister look.

In such conditions, even though Henry knew there was no threat, his body instinctively reacted. Every hair stood on end, and his nerves were highly strung. Even his energy armor, responding to the surge in adrenaline, quickly enveloped his entire body.

Henry continued to walk forward, step by step. The walls along the way were covered in graffiti. The colors were indistinct, but they seemed like blood, smeared with the palms of hands. The messages read: "Help... this is hell... curse you... death!" There were also many other graffiti patterns that were unintelligible.

Along the way, there were many small rooms isolated by iron doors. Most of these doors were left open, and inside, remnants of various food packaging and trash were piled up. The floor was covered with a thick layer of red mushrooms that had spread to the walls. Some of the iron doors were deformed from the inside, bulging outward with a significant arc.