The dream was perfect. In it, Daniel was a cloud floating over a silent ocean of marshmallows. No Mana Death, no purple fog, and absolutely no high-ranking military officers pointing rifles at his sternum.
Then, a heavy, metallic thud vibrated through the floorboards.
"They're at the door," Kafka hissed. Her voice was a sharp blade cutting through his cloud. "The barricade is holding, but there are dozens of them."
Daniel groaned, pressing a silk throw pillow over his face. "Tell them to leave a message. Or come back in four to six business days."
"Daniel, get up!" Sophia was hovering over him, her eyes glued to her tablet. The device was chirping frantically. "My sensors show nearly a hundred biological signatures in the hallway. These isn't the Infected—these are 'The Scavengers.' They're a gang of deserters and criminals who've been raiding high-rise apartments for supplies... and women."
Mia was trembling, her knuckles white as she gripped her medical bag. "They've heard there are survivors here. If they get through that door..."
BOOM.
The heavy oak door of the penthouse groaned. A massive axe blade buried itself in the wood, followed by the sound of raucous, guttural laughter.
"Open up, ladies!" a voice bellowed from the hall. "We know you've got food, medicine, and some very pretty faces in there. Make it easy on yourselves, and maybe we'll let you keep your tongues!"
Kafka braced herself, her finger on the trigger. "I can take ten of them. Maybe fifteen in this choke point. But a hundred? We're dead."
Daniel finally sat up. His hair was a bird's nest, and one side of his face was red from the sofa cushions. He looked less like a savior and more like a hungover student facing a Monday morning exam.
"A hundred?" Daniel asked, rubbing his eyes. "That's a lot of noise. If I go talk to them, will you let me sleep for the rest of the afternoon?"
"Talk to them?" Sophia stared at him like he'd lost his mind. "They have sledgehammers and Mana-infused shotguns, Daniel! You'll be turned into red paste!"
Daniel didn't answer. He stood up, his legs slightly shaky from exhaustion, and wandered toward the door. Every step he took felt like a chore. He reached the door just as the lock finally shattered inward.
The door swung open, revealing a literal sea of filth-covered men. They were armed to the teeth, their eyes bloodshot and hungry. The leader, a massive man with a scarred throat and a spiked club, stopped mid-laugh when he saw Daniel.
"What's this?" the leader sneered, looking past Daniel at the three breathtaking women standing in the kitchen. His tongue ran over his yellowed teeth. "A snack before the main course? Out of the way, kid."
Daniel leaned against the doorframe, yawning so wide his jaw clicked. "Look... Mr. Scavenger... please. Don't do this. There's a perfectly good apartment building three blocks over. Go rob that one. I just found a rhythm with my breathing, and you're ruining it."
The gang erupted in laughter. The leader raised his club. "You've got guts, I'll give you that. Too bad I'm gonna paint the walls with 'em."
He swung.
At that exact microsecond, the [Lucky Charm] attribute flared. To the girls, it looked like a faint, golden shimmer around Daniel's silhouette.
The leader's foot slipped on a patch of spilled, high-end floor wax. His swing went wide, the heavy club smashing into a decorative marble pillar instead of Daniel's head.
The pillar was the primary load-bearing support for the penthouse's mezzanine level. It had already been weakened by the Mana Death erosion Sophia had mentioned.
Crr-ack.
"What the—" the leader started.
Suddenly, the ceiling groaned—not a small groan, but a catastrophic, structural scream. A massive slab of reinforced concrete, weighing several tons, sheared off from the floor above.
It didn't fall on Daniel. It didn't even graze the three women.
It fell with the precision of a guillotine, flattening the leader and the first twenty men instantly. The force of the impact caused the entire hallway floor to give way. Because the building was old and the mana-rot had eaten the steel beams, a "pancake collapse" began.
One by one, the floors beneath the 100 thugs crumbled into a dark, bottomless pit of dust and debris, carrying the screaming gang down to the lobby twenty stories below.
The dust cleared.
Daniel was standing on a tiny, jagged ledge of remaining floorboard, his toes literally hanging over a twenty-story drop. Behind him, the apartment was perfectly intact. In front of him, there was nothing but a gaping hole where a hundred men had been standing seconds ago.
Daniel looked down at the abyss, blinked once, and then turned around.
"They're gone," he mumbled, shuffling back toward the sofa. "Sophia, close the door. Or what's left of it. The draft is giving me a chill."
He flopped back onto the velvet, pulled the blanket over his head, and was snoring before the dust had even settled on the floor.
Sophia, Mia, and Kafka stood in total, deafening silence.
Sophia looked at her tablet. The "Probability" sensor was literally smoking. It couldn't calculate what had just happened.
"He... he didn't even move," Kafka whispered, her rifle hanging limp in her hand.
Mia walked over to the edge of the collapse, looking down at the wreckage. Then she looked at Daniel. Her face flushed a deep, rosy red, and her heart began to hammer against her ribs. "He's not just lucky," she breathed. "He's... a sanctuary."
The three women looked at each other. The fear of the apocalypse was still there, but it was being rapidly replaced by a new, intense realization.
They weren't just going to follow him. They were going to make sure he never had to sleep alone again.