Ethan watched the mob huddled outside his door, still yapping and scheming.
This time, he didn't even bother aiming.
They wanted his life?
Then he didn't owe them mercy.
Ethan wasn't some saint.
He raised his crossbow and let the bolts fly.
One by one, people started dropping.
Screams pierced the hallway.
"He's got weapons! Watch out!"
Panic exploded in the crowd.
They tried to scatter, but the corridor was jam-packed. Over a hundred people crushed shoulder to shoulder—there was nowhere to run.
And in panic, chaos breeds chaos.
Someone tripped. Then another. A chain reaction.
Bodies tumbled over each other like dominos, piling up on the floor.
And Ethan?
He just kept shooting.
Each whistle of a bolt was like the grim hymn of a reaper. Terrifying. Unstoppable.
More panic. More trampling.
People stepped on the fallen, crushing hands, ribs, faces—desperate to escape the narrow hall.
Tony Chen raised his gun at the stairwell.
"Where do you think you're going? Get back in there!"
His cold eyes and the black barrel of his rifle shoved the cowards back into the bloodbath.
Of course, Tony never intended to risk his own life. The mob? Just human shields. Meant to exhaust Ethan's defenses.
Logan, meanwhile, kept his distance. Far from the line of fire. Safe and untouched.
Ethan emptied dozens of bolts into the swarm. In such a tightly packed mess, he barely missed a shot.
The hallway looked like a slaughterhouse.
But desperate people find ways.
One guy shouted,
"There's a hole in the door! That's where the bolts are coming from! Block it!"
Someone hoisted a mop, someone else a broom—crammed them into the firing slit.
Another tried to chuck a wrench through the hole.
Ethan calmly shut the reinforced steel plate behind the slit.
Locked. Sealed. Impenetrable from the outside.
Just like that, he eliminated dozens of combatants.
With the firing port blocked, the mob finally got a moment to breathe.
The hallway was a warzone.
Bodies lay scattered. Blood pooled. Some writhed. Others didn't move at all.
And the bolts?
Covered in rust.
Tetanus.
They all knew what that meant.
Every wound was a death sentence.
Some had lost family members already. They collapsed, sobbing, screaming at the door.
"Ethan Cross, you goddamn bastard!"
"Come out here! Fight me one-on-one if you dare!"
"You're a monster! I'll kill you with my own hands!"
"ETHAN!!! YOU'RE DEAD!"
Inside, the music blared louder than their screams.
🎵 You only know love when it's gone.🎵 Only know warmth once it's cold… 🎵
Their cries couldn't touch him.
In fact, Ethan grabbed a Coke from the fridge, chugged half the bottle in one go.
"Ahh. Refreshing."
He wiped his mouth and turned his eyes back to the monitor.
Outside, panic gave way to desperation.
"Now what do we do?!"
Logan limped forward, holding his wounded leg, raising a hand.
"Don't panic! I've got an idea!"
Eyes turned toward him.
He pointed at the wall.
"We can't break down the door—it's solid alloy. But these walls? They're just brick and mortar. Smash through them!"
Hope flickered in the crowd.
"Why didn't I think of that?!"
"Yeah! Let's bust the walls open!"
"There's a hundred of us—we'll be inside in no time!"
Inside, Ethan raised a brow.
He couldn't hear them over the music, but their excited body language said plenty.
He wasn't worried.
Let them try.
He knew exactly what was coming.
They grabbed hammers, axes, chisels—whatever they had—and swarmed the outer wall.
One burly guy took a massive swing.
CRACK.
A layer of plaster burst off. White dust clouded the air.
Everyone cheered.
"It's working!"
The man swung again—CLANG!
He screamed in agony. Dropped his hammer.
Blood poured from split palms.
People rushed to see what had stopped the blow.
One wiped off the remaining dust.
Then he froze.
"It's… it's steel."
They scraped more.
What lay beneath the plaster was thick, black metal—the exact same alloy as the front door.
"No way… the walls too?"
Everyone crowded around, wide-eyed in horror.
Another guy screamed,
"Who the hell builds a house like this?!"
Others swung hammers at random spots on the wall.
Everywhere—steel.
Inside, Ethan clicked his tongue.
"You think I didn't plan for that? Please."
"Every wall in this house is 20cm of reinforced steel. You could drop a bomb and still not get through."
Ethan hated death. So he built his home with zero weak points.
He remembered every inch from his last life—every door smashed, every bone broken. He'd made sure that never happened again.
Outside, the mob kept pounding.
Ethan sighed and turned on the room's noise-canceling system.
Silence.
Twenty minutes later, the banging stopped.
They stared at the unbroken wall, eyes hollow.
That steel wasn't just cold. It was hopeless.
A man sat down, clutching his head.
"What kind of madman builds a bunker like this?!"
A couple whispered miserably,
"We saw him doing renovations… but this?"
No one builds homes like this.
No sane person, anyway.
Logan, Peter, and Gareth looked like walking corpses. Bloodshot eyes, cracked lips.
"If we can't break through this," Logan muttered, "we're all dead."
He clenched his jaw so tight it bled.
"Ethan… he knew about the snowstorm from the start. All of this… he built it to keep us out."
The crowd broke into sobs. Accusations.
"Ethan, you selfish bastard!"
"What's the point of surviving alone? You'll die of loneliness eventually!"
"You'll regret this! You'll never sleep in peace!"
Delusions. Lies to soothe their crumbling egos.
They thought guilt would haunt Ethan.
They had no idea—he was living like a king.
Tony Chen watched the steel walls with a dark frown.
This was beyond his expectations.
Now he wanted only one thing: Ethan's fortress.
"Relax," he sneered."So what if the walls are steel? What about the ceiling? The floor? You think he built a damn iron box?"
Inside, Ethan smirked.
"Tony's not dumb. I'll give him that."
"But I'm not dumb either."
The mob scrambled upstairs, downstairs, hammering floors and ceilings.
Axes, chisels, planks, crowbars—everything they had.
They were only twenty centimeters from salvation.
But what they found… was despair.
Every surface—floor, ceiling, walls—steel.
No power tools. No saws. Just manual labor in arctic conditions.
Maybe in a year, they'd crack the shell.
But they'd all be long dead by then.