A City, Afternoon.
The sky was gray, as if it had been weeping.
A carbon-fiber flying car roared overhead, driving recklessly at low altitude. A man and a woman sat in the back.
The young woman leaned against the window, looking down at the residential buildings. Suddenly, she pointed a pale finger at a top-floor apartment and laughed,
"Dad, look, someone is still growing flowers down there. It's the apocalypse, the whole city is about to be finished, and he has the leisure to garden?"
The man, wearing a sharp suit, held a tablet. Most of his attention was on the small electronic screen, but hearing his daughter's voice, he replied,
"My dear girl, you must understand that the biggest gap in this world is the information gap. These poor, pathetic fools haven't even realized the end has arrived."
"Hmm…" The woman nodded thoughtfully. She looked at the man on the rooftop and suddenly exclaimed in surprise, "Huh, that man seems to have noticed us?"
"Don't mind that poor man," the man said, checking his expensive mechanical watch. "According to the scientists' predictions, those Giants will wake up in another day, and by then the entire city will be destroyed."
"But remember this, whether it's the apocalypse or any other era, the poor and us are not the same species. Even if all of humanity dies out, we will be the last to go."
"Okay, okay." The girl nodded distractedly, but she felt a bit uneasy because she noticed the man's cold stare seemed to carry a hint of mockery.
What was that about?
On the rooftop, Jason was cultivating a mysterious small tree with a shovel until he heard the roaring engine sound from below. He stopped and watched the flying car speed away from the city, muttering mockingly,
"Sure enough, the biggest gap is the information gap. These conceited idiots truly believe escaping this city will keep them safe."
"They don't know that in the future apocalypse, the safest place will be the city where the Giants are." Jason said, turning to look northwest. A colossal figure, three hundred meters high, stood there!
It was a three-hundred-meter-tall Giant, like a mountain of flesh. Its massive form was casting shadows over the area. It was tilted to the side, eyes closed, its long, ape-like arms hanging naturally near its knees. Its huge chest moved with the rhythmic sway of a pendulum.
It was sleeping, yet it held the entire city captive within the shadow of its breath.
To Jason, the reborn man, this behemoth inspired awe but mostly fear. He knew these Giants were both the origin of humanity's apocalypse and the starting point of human evolution.
Jason looked at the watch on his wrist. He knew the time was near. Soon, driven by these Giants, the Earth would undergo an Ascension, and humanity would face a cruel process of evolution and elimination.
This evolution and elimination would spare no one, regardless of status or wealth!
"The first people to be eliminated are not the rich nor the poor, but the stupid ones." Jason sighed. There's an Eastern saying that a fool has a fool's luck, but an idiot does not.
After Earth's Ascension, the Giants would eliminate all creatures flying with external power... like that flying car just now, which would most likely not escape its fate of destruction.
However, the destruction of others had nothing to do with Jason. His task was to survive the apocalypse with his family.
"This time, I must not only protect my family but also take revenge on the A Group who enslaved me in my previous life." Jason clenched his fist, his gaze firm…
To achieve these two goals, Jason knew he must leverage his knowledge as a reborn person to gain the necessary power and capital to become strong.
In the early stages of the apocalypse, even the people in A Group hadn't fully grasped the future's direction, but they should have already prepared for the apocalypse with their massive corporate wealth and information channels.
Thinking about this, Jason looked at the mysterious small tree on the little table. The tree was only half a meter tall, and its appearance was completely unlike any plant you would see on the market.
Its trunk was as clear as glass, and a single purplish-gold, mushroom-shaped fruit with a scale-like pattern hung solitary on a branch.
The fruit looked ripe, swaying gently on the branch in the cool breeze, as if it might fall from the treasured tree at any moment.
"This fruit is the priceless Devil Fruit, the Divine Demon Fruit of the apocalypse," Jason stared intently at the fruit. He clearly understood that in the end times, a single valuable Divine Demon Fruit could change a person's destiny, turning them from a bottom-dwelling rat into a soaring cloud crane.
The reason was simple: any creature, living or dead, could gain superpowers by eating a Devil Fruit—unless they were one of those joke fruits, of course.
And now, Jason held this immensely precious fruit. He didn't know its origin, only remembering that when he woke up reborn on his bed, the fruit was resting on his nightstand.
It was as if it had been arranged by a divine being.
Undoubtedly, this mysterious treasure tree was key to his survival in the apocalypse and a vital tool for his revenge.
He intended to cultivate it carefully. As he prepared to water the small tree again, a sudden change occurred!
The mysterious small tree, like a great bear just waking from hibernation, suddenly burst with powerful life. The branches and leaves shook violently, and the fruit on the branch faintly glowed.
"What is this?" Jason was surprised and uncertain. As a bottom-dweller in the previous apocalypse, he had no chance to encounter high-level items like the Divine Demon Fruit. He didn't know what was happening.
He could only watch cautiously as the trunk quickly withered, seeming to turn into nourishment for the Divine Demon Fruit to absorb. The fruit's glow became increasingly brilliant.
Time passed moment by moment: one second, two seconds, three seconds…
Finally, the mushroom-shaped Divine Demon Fruit completely consumed the small tree and fell from the air, landing steadily in Jason's hand.
As he held the fruit, Jason felt it was very cold to the touch, like something taken from a cold storage. He brought it close to his nose and sniffed; apart from its unique shape, it had no discernible smell.
"Is this the Devil Fruit that people in the future will fight over?" Jason held the Devil Fruit, his eyes burning, his heart immensely excited.
But he didn't choose to immediately swallow this unknown Devil Fruit. Instead, he placed it inside his zippered pocket.
He wasn't in a hurry to eat this fruit because he knew several very powerful Divine Demon Fruits would appear in the S city area, and he just happened to know the location of one of them: the Calamity Fruit, which could create disasters.
If possible, he wanted to obtain that one first.
"This Devil Fruit will serve as a backup. If I run into danger, I can eat this fruit first and gain the ability to protect myself," Jason said. He knew that the future world was full of peril, and unexpected dangers could appear at any moment.
However, he had the advantage of information, combined with his experience from the previous apocalypse. He believed he could successfully achieve a comeback after the Ascension and protect his family.
With that thought, Jason took a deep breath, descended from the rooftop, and returned to the apartment he had recently rented.
The apartment was on the top floor of an isolated building complex in the suburbs, and it came with a small, highly practical rooftop.
Back inside, he pushed open the door to a room filled with various supply boxes, mainly containing water and emergency food—the essential supplies Jason had prepared before the apocalypse.
Jason walked over to the computer desk in the living room. On it was a massive monitor displaying various densely packed K-lines, conveying the message that this was an unprecedented bear market, and the entire market was in a state of freefall.
Meanwhile, Jason's account was making a fortune. Long before the Giants arrived, he had used all his savings and high leverage to aggressively short the stock market.
Now, his stock earnings were astonishing!
"I never thought I'd be a multimillionaire one day. This is much faster than working," Jason said. He closed all his positions and withdrew all the money to his bank account.
Even in the apocalypse, money would still be useful.
After doing all this, he sat down in the chair, grabbed a cold can of Coke, and savored it!
This stuff would be priceless in the apocalypse. If Jason remembered correctly, a single can could be sold for up to one hundred US dollars.
After a sip of Coke, Jason opened a news website and began browsing the latest headlines. The news content was almost entirely about the Giants.
Hollywood Pitch Meeting Interrupted as Giant Attempts to Audition for 'King Kong' Remake.
Experts Speculate Giant Insists on Only Demolishing Blue-Roofed Buildings: May Be a Primitive Aesthetic Preference.
NASA Confirms Giants are Not Alien Invaders, Just Very, Very Tall Tourists; Security Praised for 'Swift' Misidentification.
Judging by the headlines and content, people's emotions were still quite stable, or perhaps they had too much faith in human power...
Moreover, these five hundred suddenly appearing Giants had not yet caused much harm to humanity.
They were more focused on the Giants themselves than the potential harm they would cause to humanity's future.
"They simply don't know how desperate the future is, filled with endless enemies, coupled with horrifying slavery within the human race." Jason propped his head on his hand. The terrifying, hellish scenes of the future resurfaced in his mind, making him tremble.
In his past life, he was forcibly enslaved by the A Group, digging in a mine day after day until his body gave out, after which he was taken to a waste recycling facility to extract his remaining value.
He didn't want to repeat his tragic former fate, living like a blade of grass. With a determined look in his eyes, he declared:
"In this life, I will live like a real person!"