The Apocalypse Survival Manual (Three Days Before Doomsday, I Stockpiled Billions) novel Chapter 718

Even after holding back, Nicole still impressed the examiner.

"Were you ever in the military?"

"No, but I've trained to military standards."

For the shooting test, she could choose between a crossbow and a gun. After thinking it over, Nicole chose the crossbow and passed easily.

By the time she finished, Zeph had completed his assessment, too.

After passing both rounds, all four of them qualified. But there was still one last step: choosing whether to register as military personnel, ordinary survivors, or scavengers.

Anyone who chose the military would have to go through another round of testing later.

The other two options had no additional requirements. Ordinary survivors could be assigned jobs, while scavengers had more freedom but had to provide their own food and supplies.

Nicole and Zeph didn't hesitate. They registered as scavengers.

The staff member looked slightly surprised but didn't comment. He entered all four of them into the system, then gave them a receipt for the required food contribution.

Each person had to turn over 50 pounds of food. Cola was exempt.

That meant 150 pounds altogether, enough to use up one entire large sack of grain.

Next, they had to go to the administrative hall to rent a place to live. Nothing at the base was free.

The administrative hall was huge. A standard two-bedroom apartment cost ten pounds of food a month, while a private house with a small yard cost fifty. Short-term rentals were also available for one pound of food a day, and people could pay with base points instead.

Nicole and Zeph weren't in a hurry to rent anything. They decided to look around the administrative hall first.

There were public service counters, stores, restaurants, and all kinds of other businesses. It almost felt like a giant shopping mall from before the apocalypse.

Nicole stopped at the trading hall and studied the listings.

Trades were divided into private and official transactions. Private buyers and sellers could post what they had and what they wanted, while the base collected a transaction fee. Weapons couldn't be traded privately.

That was something only the base's specialists could answer, but they had already gone off duty for the day. Nicole would have to wait until tomorrow.

Still intrigued, she stared at the listing for a long time before finally moving on to the scavenger trading section.

The base bought almost everything, but metals were in especially high demand: iron, copper, steel, gold, silver, even raw ore. Rare metals paid the most points.

After so many years of disasters, scavengers had probably picked the surrounding area clean. Metal prices were only going to keep rising.

Just as Zeph predicted, rare metals were now worth a fortune.

Nicole could practically hear her heart pounding. If she took out even one bucket of the rare metals in her storage space, the four of them could live comfortably for years.

Industrial metals really were worth a ridiculous amount.

Between the military base itself and the wide range of goods available, Nicole was tempted.

"I wanna stay here for a while and see what it's like."