My OP Minion System in the Apocalypse

Well, from the looks of things, my army was getting stronger.

"The walls have all been fortified now."

"Ah, thanks, Chloe."

"You're welcome~"

The two of us sat silently as the fire fizzled around in the brick fireplace. I decided to go over to my [wood generators] and collect some of the wood that they generated.

[collect: 912 wood]

Well, it was a decent amount of resources.

I already had more wood than I'd possibly need during Killer Winter. I was producing almost 1000 wood per day with my generators. I was starting to see a way out of this immobile condition. If I could have fire magic Scout Minions walk beside me and keep me warm, it'd allow for me to finally begin moving around and make more progress.

I would have to wait until around the end of the day before they finished their 'learning' so until then, I'd simply wait it out inside of the hut.

"I'm so bored~" said Chloe.

"I'm not really sure what we can do."

"How about this, we'll play rock, paper scissors and the winner gets to dare the loser to do something."

"Um..." I had a bad feeling about this, but then again, I was also quite bored.

"Come on~ it'll be fun."

"I suppose."

She suddenly lightened up and held out her hands.

"Rock... paper... scissors... shoot!"

I picked rock.

She picked paper.

"Haha! You lose."

Ah, this wasn't going to end well.

She took a moment to think about it, before hitting me with a pretty cruel punishment.

"You have to sit outside for five minutes."

"Geh."

"Come on, you're a man of your word, aren't you?"

I wasn't really.

But I guess the punishment wasn't all that bad.

"Fine."

Reluctantly, I opened the door and let in quite a significant amount of cold air.

"Ah, hurry up and close the door!" she shouted.

I walked into the freezer which was the outside world. My body temperature immediately dropped as the heat was sucked out. I slowly closed the door behind me and took a seat beside the hut.

Why did I agree to this?

The cold wind brushed against my body as I huddled up in a ball. This was pure torture, it was like deliberately smearing ice all over your body. It was like taking a shower using the liquid from a slushy machine. My entire body was vibrating as it desperately held onto any heat it still had.

Screw this.

I called over one of my fire magic Scout Minions which were learning the next stage. It walked over to me as I commanded it to produce some fire in front of me. In the palm of its hand, it lit a pretty big flame, one that was around the size of a small campfire. I instantly felt heat brush against my face, although the rest of my body was still suffering from the cold.

To be fair, it was significantly warmer than before, although it still wasn't comfortable. The heat gradient was annoying. My face was fine, even warm, but my legs were freezing cold. It was impossible to get all of my body parts within the warmth of the fire. I decided that I'd just keep my hands and face heated.

This was actually a pretty good experiment. It seemed that with some more development, I would likely be able to use my Minions to keep me warm as I moved around outside. Even just this low-level fire Minion was enough to make the outside significantly more bearable.

I continued to sit, leaning against the ice-cold wood of the hut. There was only a little while left before I'd be able to go inside again.

Suddenly, I heard the door open.

"You can come back in now~"

"Are you sure that was five minutes?"

"Yeah, I don't want you to die out here."

I got up and made my way back inside. I guess Chloe wasn't that cruel.

"Hehe, are you alright?"

"I'm mostly fine."

"Ah, I'm sorry~ that was pretty mean."

"I mean it wasn't really that bad."

"Eh."

I stood in front of the brick fireplace and let my body slowly return to a normal temperature. I put my hands a little too close to the fire, quickly retracting them as I felt a sting in my fingertips. Ah, even the burn felt nice after being out in the cold for so long, well, I guess I wasn't outside for that long.

Finally, I managed to go back to normal and regain my breath.

There were probably a few hours left until night came so there was still some more time to kill.

I took out my pot and began making dinner, actually... I was probably wealthy enough to get some decent ingredients for a nice dinner.

I opened up the Grand Exchange.

-

<Grand Exchange>

Search: [culinary ingredients] , Order: relevance

1. [x2] salt bag - Cost: 4 Tokens - Seller [Jonathon Yelen]

2. [x5] lettuce - Cost 3 Token - Seller [Bavreet Ubhi]

3. [x1] pepper bag - Cost 3 Tokens - Seller [Hugh Hanrahan]

4. [x12] carrot - Cost 3 Tokens - Seller [Michael Smith]

5. [x1] garlic - Cost 2 Tokens - Seller [Hugh Hanrahan]

-

There was a pretty big selection if I just wanted some ingredients to make some strew. I looked through and bought some potatoes and carrots, along with salt and spring onions. It came to 9 Tokens in total which was a pretty significant investment, although it will increase the quality of life by a decent amount.

I placed my newly-purchased vegetables and spices into the pot and placed them above the fire. I also added some meat that I had and let the food slowly boil in the pot. With more ingredients, the aroma of the cooking was significantly better, it smelled like an actual, well-made meal instead of just plain meat.

I could tell that Chloe was also happy about having something different to eat. She used to always ask me about what we were having for dinner.

"Hehe, it's nice that we're having something else for dinner~"

"I guess, it wasn't cheap though."

"Haa, it's worth it, do you want me to pay you back?" she asked.

"No, it's fine."

"Aw~ so you do have a heart."

"This is news...?"

She looked away.