The Level system was a reference tool, not a combat predictor. He reminded himself of that while looking at the numbers.
The Tumour-Pig had been Level 0.187, the Teddy Tyrant Level 0.149. In a direct fight, the Tumour-Pig’s higher Level hadn’t helped it — the Teddy Tyrant’s speed and agility had kept it almost completely untouchable while the pig lumbered around. Body mass, physical configuration, fighting style — all of these modified what a Level number actually meant in practice. The framework would become more meaningful as development pushed entities further apart on the scale. For now, in the Level Zero Era where everything clustered below 0.8, it was a reference tool.
He was comfortable with that. Reference tools were how systematic understanding began.
He set the laptop aside and picked up the Bull Demon King’s horns.
Level 0.215. The strongest Activity cores he’d physically collected. One meter each, a fifteen-degree curve to each horn, hollow through the center, harder than any alloy steel he’d tested them against. Radiating with an intensity that made holding them feel like holding something alive.
He turned them over and thought about applications.
They were too large for hand weapons — working one as a blade would require cutting it down, which felt wasteful given the Activity concentration. Too large for practical use as Baogai Armor components without significant engineering work. Too valuable to leave as decoration.
Think about it later. He set them in the secured storage rack he’d built for high-value cores and moved on.
Activity injection for the ant eggs. The familiar feeling of proximity, stronger now than it had been a week ago.
The logical framework he’d constructed for understanding it: Activity had a connection property more fundamental than neural signaling, possibly related to the wave-continuity dimension he’d identified. When two entities synchronized their Activity frequency, they established what amounted to a shared informational channel. He received signals from the eggs’ state; the eggs received signals from his. Not the directional control he had over Vajra — more like the difference between a direct nerve connection and a sympathetic response.
What the eggs were transmitting was unambiguous.
Attachment. Dependence. Something very close to what a small creature would feel toward the entity it identified as its caregiver.
He set the incubation box down and stared at it.
They think I’m the queen.
Not in any cognitive sense — they didn’t have the neural architecture for that kind of cognition. But the Activity bond had established a relationship where the eggs oriented toward him the way developing organisms oriented toward the presence that had been sustaining them. He was the source of the Activity they needed. To whatever organizational principle operated in ant egg biology, that made him the functionally relevant maternal figure.
He found this deeply uncomfortable and decided not to examine it too carefully.
He spent the day in the township.
The surveillance objective was simple: see if Zhang Youhai’s group had passed his message up the chain to any of the three factions, and observe how the factions responded if they had.
What he found was Zhang Youhai — alone, slightly apart from the group, wandering in the direction of the areas they’d been the previous time, looking around with the particular alertness of someone who expected to be approached.
He wants me to grab him again.
One capture, one package of valuable supplies. From Zhang Youhai’s perspective, that was an exceptional return on the experience of being briefly held at arm’s length and asked a few questions. He was apparently hoping to make it a recurring arrangement.
I already have what I needed. Why would I pay for it twice?
He watched from behind rubble as Zhang Youhai’s group worked through another section of the township, collected what they could, and eventually headed back south.
The good news: the three factions apparently hadn’t been informed yet. He had more time.
The better news: the Bull Demon King and the river tributary had resolved his immediate pressure to approach the factions for resources. He could wait. Observe. Continue developing. Let his position strengthen before any interaction.
He did his own sweep of two small debris sections on the way back, found nothing significant, and returned to Vajra.
Afternoon and evening: display system restoration.
The camera network came fully online first. Sixteen cameras, their feeds consolidated across the two working displays. The cargo section’s viewport cameras. The four directional cameras around the cab perimeter. The belly cameras that had been instrumental in identifying the first Burrower. The rear and forward long-range cameras.
The coverage was total. Everything within Vajra’s sensor range was visible from the driver’s seat without opening a single hatch.
He sat in the driver’s seat and watched the feeds cycle for a few minutes. The familiar security of complete situational awareness, restored.
The second display came fully online before nightfall. Eight camera feeds per screen, each one crisp. The third display would need component sourcing before he could complete it — he’d exhausted the salvageable parts from the internet café motherboards. He filed the requirement and moved on to other systems.
The six second-generation mutant maggots pupated that evening.
He collected the six cocoons, cleared the rear compartment — scrubbing it thoroughly with water, which he found necessary not for health reasons but because the smell had become genuinely offensive to spend extended time near — and logged the timeline. If the development schedule followed normal fly biology, the adults would emerge in roughly ten days.
He pulled up reference material on the next day’s repair work, studied until his concentration started degrading, then switched to his phone.
Plants vs. Zombies 6.
“A large wave of zombies is approaching!”
“A huge wave of zombies is coming!”
“The zombies ate your brains!”
He closed the app without expression and ate four Honey Peaches.
The impact was familiar now — not the sudden obliteration of consciousness from the early doses, more of a strong warm pressure that built and resolved into sleep over a minute or two. He was in bed before it resolved.
August 4th: Vajra Level 0.387 → 0.437. Self: 0.747 → 0.749.
August 5th: Four more peaches. Vajra: 0.479. Self: 0.750.
August 6th: Four more. Vajra: 0.514. Self: 0.751.
August 7th: Final five. Vajra: 0.555. Self: 0.752.
Twenty-seven peaches, consumed. The Man-eater Peach Tree’s entire yield, exhausted.
He sat with the final numbers and felt the shape of the problem clearly.
Vajra had gone from Level 0.387 to Level 0.555 — a gain of 0.168 over four nights. His own development had gone from 0.747 to 0.752 — five hundredths, barely measurable. The returns had diminished with each dose as his body and Vajra both adapted to the Activity input level.
Level 1 for Vajra was still 0.445 away. Level 1 for himself was 0.248 away.
The ambient Activity concentration had been declining since the apocalypse storms, the density that had enabled rapid early development thinning back toward a new baseline. At current ambient absorption rates, without the peaches, the math didn’t work out to Level 1 within any reasonable planning horizon.
Two paths to faster development: find another evolved-plant fruit source, or find an evolved-beast at sufficient Level to absorb through Devour.
The Man-eater Peach Tree had been unique in his experience. He’d seen no other evolved plants bearing fruit, and the metallic-bark poplars near Yinping had been barren. The Dog-Croc was the only entity he’d catalogued that might have an Activity core at the Level 1 threshold — but approaching it without sufficient development to survive the encounter was circular reasoning.
The path to Level 1 requires finding a Level 1 source. Finding a Level 1 source requires being strong enough to access it.
He noted the constraint without resolving it, gave the ant eggs their evening injection, and put the problem on the shelf where unsolved problems lived.
There was a solution somewhere. He hadn’t found it yet.
(End of Chapter 46)