Life was truly a strange and wondrous thing.
Paige Summers had thought several times that her involvement with Nora Lowell and Shawn Monroe was over. But reality had a way of twisting and turning things around. After so many detours and immense changes, the four of them were once again gathered here.
When she thought about Nora Lowell’s current state, and the original ending Shawn Monroe knew from his dreams, she couldn’t help but feel that life was the ultimate irony.
Take Nora Lowell. Even though she was the female lead of the novel, she was the poster child for someone who brings about their own downfall.
If she hadn’t betrayed Shawn Monroe, if she hadn’t been envious of others and had instead focused on her own growth, her fate might not have been so grim.
It just went to show that nothing in this world was set in stone.
Even a predetermined ending could still be rewritten.
For example, Paige Summers’s fate.
"...I keep dreaming about it, over and over again. The feeling in my heart is just unbearable. It’s only now that I know I was wrong, that I gave up what I should have cherished most. I feel like I’m possessed..."
Shawn Monroe was still talking, but Paige Summers was no longer in the mood to listen. From the day she took over the original owner’s body, she and Shawn were destined never to be together, let alone pine for him pathetically like in the novel!
"I used to have dreams like that, too."
The moment Paige Summers said this, Shawn Monroe froze.
He could hardly believe his ears. "Really?!" As he asked, his eyes slowly began to shine. ’If she dreamed about it too, then could she be like me? Deeply attached to the scenes from the dream, regretting her choices?’
Paige Summers’s lips curled into a smirk. "Really. I dreamed about it a long time ago." Just as Shawn Monroe opened his mouth to ask something, she added abruptly, "But I don’t believe a single thing that happened in them!"
Shawn Monroe stared at her, dumbfounded.
Paige Summers said calmly, "Because I don’t like you, and I would never love you! You probably still don’t understand my personality. If I truly loved a man, how could I tolerate him liking other women? I never would! I would fight for him. If I couldn’t win him, I would give up! There’s no room for compromise. I won’t debase myself by letting a man treat me as some dispensable accessory or a piece of prey! Back in The Dead City, I avoided you like the plague, and that’s because I have zero interest in you! Your looks, your personality—neither of them are my type. It’s as simple as that!"
Her words were so sharp and final that they left Shawn Monroe without a shred of hope for redemption. He understood one thing completely: no matter what he thought, what he did, or how obsessed he became, the woman before him would never be the woman from his dreams.
It was all just his own fevered dream.
As these thoughts flashed through his mind, his entire demeanor became listless and dejected.
Paige Summers gave him one last glance, then stood up and left the reception room without another word. Standing outside, she didn’t leave right away. Instead, she waited for a moment.
A soft sound came from the adjacent room, and Marcus Monroe walked out.
That room had a specially made peephole for observing the reception room. He must have heard everything.
Paige Summers teased him with a half-smile, "Heard enough?"
Marcus Monroe was in an excellent mood and thick-skinned enough not to care that Paige Summers knew. Suppressing a smile, he said calmly, "Enough. Let’s go back."
Paige Summers let out a smiling huff, and the two of them walked out of the hall side by side.
Back at their quarters, Marcus Monroe didn’t care that it was broad daylight. He pulled Paige Summers into a long, tender embrace. Afterward, he held her and whispered, "So? I’m your type from head to toe, right?"
Paige Summers gave him an amused, coquettish glare and said magnanimously, "Of course. Otherwise, I would’ve traded you in for a new model long ago!"
"You dare!"
"Why wouldn’t I dare? The base might be short on some things, but there’s no shortage of good men!"
A moment later, Marcus Monroe cleared his throat. "It’s been a while since we had any enclosed training. I think we’ll have them start rotations in the mountains tomorrow!"
Seeing his dead-serious expression, Paige Summers burst out laughing.
A little jealousy spices things up.
Being constantly on her beloved’s mind, treasured like a precious pearl—it felt really, really good!
After that day, Paige Summers and Marcus Monroe’s relationship grew even stronger. It was like they were making up for a missed honeymoon, so sweet that they nearly blinded everyone around them.
As for Shawn Monroe, he didn’t leave his room for quite some time.
Fortunately, Paige Summers remembered to have a team member bring him meals, lest he starve to death in the base...
About a month later, Shawn Monroe finally had a team member relay a message to Paige Summers: the next time people came from Central City, he would return with them.
Paige Summers only had someone tell him four words: "Good you’ve come around."
Shawn Monroe probably had, truly, come around.
From that day on, he returned to his old routine.
He worked when it was time to work and trained when it was time to train, just like an ordinary team member. The only exception was that he would occasionally leave the base alone to hunt Mutant Beasts, returning with both injuries and spoils.
Marcus Monroe was noncommittal about this.
As long as Shawn Monroe did nothing to threaten Paige Summers or the base, Marcus wasn’t bent on killing him.
A person’s life was their own to earn.
Life went on at a steady pace. Although The Research Institute in Central City had developed a medicine to improve the soil, revitalizing all the land in Astoria would still be a long process. Until then, people in the other bases had to carry on as they always had. But with hope in their hearts, the days naturally seemed to pass more quickly.
With this new beginning, everyone involuntarily quickened the pace of their Mutant Beast exterminations.
They hoped to reclaim as much land as possible, keeping it in human hands to lay the groundwork for future soil improvement.
Three months later, the laboratory at Bloodfall Base achieved a wonderful and surprising result.
With Sean Raines’s assistance, Levi Young finally cracked the Zombie Virus extracted from Nora Lowell. This Zombie Virus was the most powerful they had ever encountered. When they created a corresponding Antidote and began experimenting with it, they discovered a result that astonished even them.
There were three known types of Zombie Virus, and each required a different Antidote.
But the Antidote they developed based on the virus from Nora Lowell’s body could neutralize all three types!
For this reason, Levi Young and Sean Raines made several special requests to the base to visit Southreach, and even went to The Southern Front once.
The Southern Army and Hunting Parties there inevitably had people who were injured in battle with Zombies.
In the past, because they only had single-purpose Antidotes, it was unavoidable that some soldiers would turn into Zombies. But after Levi Young and Sean Raines tested the new Antidote, they found that any infected soldier, as long as they were promptly injected with the new Antidote, could resist the further progression of the virus.
In other words, as long as their Antidote was administered within six hours, the injured had a more than ninety-five percent chance of not turning into a Zombie!
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