End of the World? I'm the Boss novel Chapter 419

Chapter 419 Gratitude

The chocolate had been pressed against her skin for a long time, kept warm by her own body heat until it melted through the wrapper, leaving dark, sticky residue seeping through the

paper

But in this world that had ended, that little piece of chocolate was among the most precious things a child could carry.

Robin patted the girl on the head and accepted it. “Thank you for the chocolate. I’ve got something for you too.”

The woman shook her hands in a panic. “Oh, we couldn’t possibly. Miss, that chocolate was our way of saying thank you. You saved our lives. We already don’t know how we could ever repay that. We absolutely cannot take anything from you.”

Robin smiled. “It’s fine. It goes both ways.”

She pulled a box of freshly made fried hush puppies from her storage, and the little girl’s eyes went glassy with longing on the spot.

The girl pressed her lips together very deliberately, as though her mouth was trying to make a decision her manners weren’t quite ready to endorse.

“We really shouldn’t accept this…”

The woman reached for her daughter’s hand to leave, but Robin pressed the box directly into the girl’s arms. “Actually, I wanted to ask you something, and this is the payment for your time. Ma’am, your daughter hasn’t eaten in a while, has she?”

The woman’s resolve wobbled immediately.

She could hold onto the etiquette and principles she carried from before all of this. She could do that. But she wasn’t going to let her pride keep her child hungry when food was right in front of them.

Her expression softened reluctantly. “What do you want to know?”

Were all of you hiding inside this shopping center?” Robin asked. “Your whole group?”

The woman nodded.

The little girl had already torn the box open, and despite the obvious, desperate pull of hunger, she lifted the first piece to her mother’s lips. “Mom, eat.”

The woman’s eyes went red at the corners. “I’m not hungry, sweetheart. You eat.”

The little girl held her arm up and kept the food right at her mother’s mouth, completely unmoved.

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11:23 Mon, 6 Jul 00.

Chapter 419 Grafın

“She has a generous heart. You’ve raised her beautifully, ma’am”

The woman managed a small, warm smile, but the weight of their situation pressed back in almost immediately and it faltered almost immediately.

“Is there a base set up here?”

“A base?” The woman shook her head

“Someone brought it up early on, but the group never really agreed on it. For a lot of people, a base meant giving up their independence, so even though everyone was living here together. it stayed loose. Everyone kept to themselves mostly. There weren’t many conflicts.”

“So what caused the collapse?”

The woman sighed. “Ms. Neel, it’s quite a story. This area had a serious undead problem for a long time, and they were making life very difficult for everyone here. There’s a subway station directly underneath this shopping center. About a month ago, a very capable group was passing through and got caught in a surge. They were forced down into the subway tunnels, and rather than fight their way out, they blew the whole station up and buried most of the undead in the collapse.

“At first everyone was thrilled. The threat was gone, and nobody stopped to think about what that might mean for the building above. But the explosion damaged the foundation, and yesterday the whole thing just came down. Everyone inside got buried.”

“A subway station. A capable group.”

“Right. I heard one of them mention where they were from. Something north. North… what was it again?”

Robin said, “Northreach Base?”

“Yes! That’s it!” The woman brightened and nodded. “You’ve heard of them?”

“A little,” Robin said.

That was quite the understatement.

She knew Northreach Base very well.

In her previous life, it stood alongside Redwood Military Base as one of the five great survivor strongholds. Formidable, disciplined, and notoriously unyielding in how it operated.

Northreach ran on a single principle: only the strong were welcome.

Every single person from that base could hold their own against a Level 3 undead in solo

combat.

M

11:23 Mon, 6 Jul (7) ·

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