"One more wish to go," Aiden sighed. "I really should stop making these and give generic rewards instead."

[Well, you seemed to be enjoying that in the moment, Host.]

"...if a guy complains about having too much sex, then he’s either a virgin or a wannabe playboy. Since I’m neither, I can complain about it."

Any man would like women throwing themselves at him. However, for someone like Aiden, it gets boring too quickly. At this rate, there would come a time when his favorite thing would become a chore, and all the problems would come down to the stupid restriction of him not being able to leave the barrier.

[Hm, Host, how about you explore the facilities instead? You have installed them but never bothered to use them yourself.]

He stared at the ceiling of his room for a long moment before shooting off the bed.

"Hm... might as well. First stop, the gym!"

Before the apocalypse, the building’s gym just had some treadmills, free weights, a couple of benches, some cables, and pulleys along the far wall.

However, all that had changed when Aiden made a new gym, replacing the old one to supplement the growth of the tenants.

Normal weight had been replaced by heavier plates and, on Karina’s insistence, a reinforced squat rack made from scrap steel was added there.

The normal punching bag with sand had been replaced with one that used metal fillings because the sand kept getting everywhere as the bags kept breaking.

Aiden changed into an outfit the system gave to him and walked in.

"Why is it so empty?" he mumbled, looking at the two wolves working out in the distance.

The wolves saw him and were surprised and immediately stood up. Knowing they would rush to greet him, Aiden quickly waved them off, telling them to continue as usual.

[Everyone is busy with the clean-up outside, Host.]

Aiden nodded and moved straight to the most basic exercise station: weightlifting. He picked up the heaviest dumbbells in the rack without checking the number on the side. He did twenty reps with each arm like he was lifting a small bag of feathers.

"Not enough," he grumbled. "I can’t feel a thing."

Before the system got to say anything, he put them back and looked at the barbell loaded up on the squat rack, which one of the bigger wolves had been using for a serious session, judging by the plates stacked on each side.

Aiden was impressed, but it wasn’t enough for him. So he grabbed all the plates around the station and put them on. The ones he couldn’t fit on the bar got tied to his body.

Only after that did he get under the bar and unracked it to get some squats in. This time, he felt something. A faint tingling in his legs after performing a hundred or so squats.

[So?]

"Nope, not feeling it."

Saying so, he racked the bar back and then grabbed the dumbbells, but not to use them as they were intended to. Instead, he tied them to the bar as well.

Aiden might not have flinched under their combined weight, but there was a limit to how much the bar could take. As he kept adding weight, the bar bent slightly in the middle.

The two wolves at the far end had stopped their sets and were watching the show, wondering if they should be impressed or concerned about Aiden as he unracked the bar.

This time, as he squatted, veins popped all over his legs, but Aiden’s expression didn’t change. After getting his fill, he undid the plates around his body and then returned everything to its place. After all, doing so was the cardinal rule of any decent gym.

With that, he walked out, but not before telling the system to get something for him.

[What would that be, Host?]

"Heavier plates," he said.

[You sound like a man with too much time and too little to do, Host.]

"Took you long enough to know that," Aiden scoffed. "And before you say I should get used to it, I already know."

[I wasn’t going to say that.]

"What were you going to say?"

[Just that the rooftop has a good view today. If you look hard enough, maybe you’ll find some of those birds to hunt.]

"Hm... maybe you’re right."

[Hehe, when have I ever been wrong, Host?]

Aiden ignored her words and went to the terrace, and the view was indeed good. The sunset painted the sky in colors Aiden had forgotten even existed, as the sunsets on the Otherworld were always pale blue.

However, instead of enjoying the scene, he walked up to the unused water tanks and effortlessly removed them from their spot and began... you guessed it, lifting them like weights.

"Still not enough," he muttered. 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

[You are genuinely a problem, Host.]

Meanwhile, the few guys who were selected for the plumbing job were stunned. They had been trying to remove the rust-ridden tanks since the afternoon, but couldn’t get it done, only for Aiden to show up and do it like it meant nothing.

Once that was done, he finally turned his eyes towards the broken city. Even the broken city had its own charm under the lights of the setting sun.

Buildings that used to define a clean skyline were now half swallowed by vegetation. It had just been a year since it all began, but nature seemed too hungry to reclaim what it had lost hundreds of years ago.

Vines thick as a man’s forearm climbed the sides of glass towers. Trees had punched through the rooftops of shorter structures. At this rate, it would take less than three years for all the rubble to be buried with vegetation.

Unfortunately, there were no monstrous birds for him to hunt. The wolves hadn’t reported any nests nearby either. Just as he sighed in disappointment, Aiden noticed some movement far away in the ’unmapped’ region.

He leaned over the railing to get a better look and could see the occasional flash of something white and fast cutting between two collapsed storefronts nearly twelve kilometers out.

[Host, is something the matter?]

Aiden didn’t say a word, just opened the shop and bought a sniper rifle and a foldable table to act as a stand. Aiden set up the foldable table against the railing, propped the rifle on it, and pressed his eye to the scope.

Even a man of Aiden’s caliber could barely see the ’monster’ at that distance. The scope didn’t help him with that either.

"What a strange creature," Aiden mumbled.

Most creatures out there moved on instinct, which meant they had patterns, whether they knew it or not. Predictable rhythms that you could learn in under a minute if you watched carefully enough.

However, the thing he was seeing did not. Whatever it was, it was moving in erratic patterns as if it knew someone was watching it.

He tracked it for a full two minutes without taking a shot, just watching. It wasn’t until the thing moved into a patch of open ground between two collapsed buildings that Aiden got his first look at the thing.

[Host?]

The system asked as Aiden stopped himself from pulling the trigger.

"That thing looks like a child," he said. "It seems that’s the creature that nearly killed Dexter."

[Yeah. Whatever it is, it isn’t a child.]

"To think I’d find it this way... stupid fucker," Aiden smirked, his eyes becoming one with the scope.

The creature had stopped moving. It was crouching over something in the rubble, doing something with its hands that he couldn’t quite make out at this distance. Its back was to him.

Aiden adjusted the rifle so as not to miss. He had to make his shot count, as he most likely wouldn’t get another chance. Even so, taking a show that far was impossible, yet Aiden wanted to take the chance.

"Tsk, if only I had my skills from the Otherworld, this wouldn’t have been an issue," he mumbled, getting his breathing under control.

[...sorry, Host.]

Aiden didn’t reply, just exhaled and squeezed his finger around the trigger. With a loud bang, the shot covered twelve kilometers in just over three seconds.

The creature heard it too and wanted to move, but the bullet was much faster than its reaction speed. A few moments later, Aiden noticed the creature’s leg buckle as it fell sideways on the ground, its leg nearly snapping off from the rest of its body.

It tried to get up. The leg wouldn’t budge, forcing it to claw at the ground in pain and desperation while its head turned sideways rapidly as if trying to locate where the shot had come from.

While the beast was down, Aiden quickly sent a new mission to everyone, regardless of their social standing in the apartment.

He wanted the beast to be brought back to the apartment... alive.

"Since you don’t like fighting crowds," he smiled. "Let’s see what you’ll do when over three hundred people come charging at you."