Chapter 8 - 7: So Poor!

Opening her watch and logging into the original owner’s account, even though she already knew from memory that she was poor, seeing the mere 3,774 Contribution Points made Sev’s face turn green.

For the poor of the Ninth Security Zone, autumn was the best season to stockpile supplies and earn money in bulk. It was already late autumn, yet she had so little savings in her account, and the ingredients hoarded in the cupboard were pitifully scarce. How could she survive the long winter like this?

The wasteland’s winter was a severe test for ordinary people. Scavenging in the wilderness easily led to freezing to death, or encountering starving Mutant Beasts. In short, most of the poor relied on the Contribution Points and food gathered in the autumn to endure the winter.

Sev didn’t remember how Seventeen in the original novel managed to get through the winter with the four little cubs. But right now, based on a rough calculation, there was no way to get through this season.

First, at the end of every year, a unified maintenance and usage fee for the courtyard walls would be deducted, costing 1,200 points. If an account balance was insufficient, the owner would be sent to the mines to work off the debt.

Second, the poor in the Ninth Security Zone had to hand over 1,000 points in taxes. This funded the salaries of official personnel and the military expenses of The Guard Corps. The Guard Corps was the security guarantee of the zone. When a Beast Tide struck, they would resist the offensive and try their best to protect the residents’ safety.

This "try their best" was actually quite watered down, because their first priority was protecting the higher-ups of the security zone, followed by The Gilded Ward. As for The Slums where Seventeen and the others lived, it ranked dead last. They would only be looked after if The Guard Corps had the manpower to spare.

Even so, the poor of the security zone willingly handed over the 1,000-point tax. Failure to pay meant being exiled from the security zone, leaving them to wait for death in the wilderness.

Of course, the most important point was that with The Guard Corps present, a Beast Tide usually wouldn’t cause a large-scale disaster. When a Beast Tide occurred, as long as the poor stayed indoors as much as possible, fiercely defended their homes, and immediately killed any Mutant Rats, mutant cockroaches, or similar creatures that burrowed up from the ground, they could eke out a living.

In The Gilded Ward, the floors of all the houses were hardened. Except for pangolin-like Mutant Beasts, ordinary Mutant Rats and the like simply couldn’t burrow through the hardened ground.

Aside from these two mandatory expenses, there was also the monthly purified water bill. The drinking water in the security zone was treated through professional equipment. Unpurified river or well water contained moderate to high levels of radiation and was completely undrinkable. Except for the water used to flush toilets, everything else—like washing up and cooking—required purified water.

Purified water cost 0.1 points per liter, meaning a whole ton came to 100 points. This was exactly why the original owner had gone out of her way to lock the faucet before going scavenging. With almost no income for the entire three-plus months of winter, even if the whole family desperately conserved water, the monthly purified water bill would still come to at least 200 points.

After roughly tallying up the bills, Sev wanted to howl at the sky!

"Damn heavens! It’s bad enough you made me transmigrate into an evil adoptive mother, but did she have to be this incredibly poor?" she fumed.

She was starting to understand why the original owner had treated the four cubs so harshly. Fortunately, in addition to receiving ten Nutrition Blocks from the government each month, every cub also received 250 points in child support. Thinking about it carefully, this was just barely enough to keep them alive.

No wonder ordinary families weren’t willing to adopt orphans. If the original owner hadn’t experienced the benefits her own adoptive parents gained from mistreating her, she absolutely wouldn’t have adopted any orphans—let alone four!

But now the adoptive mother was Sev Steele. She couldn’t possibly mistreat the children, nor could she bear to see them go hungry, so she had no choice but to go all out!

"No, I have to visit the trading hall tomorrow and sell the mutated wild yam I just got for a good price to add a little savings to my account," she resolved.

Many goods in the trading hall had clearly marked prices, but a few rare items allowed for face-to-face negotiation between buyers and sellers. This included mutated wild yams. They were not only filling but also delicious. Naturally, their prices couldn’t be compared to ordinary wild vegetables.

To ensure her wild yam fetched a high price, Sev decided to process it extensively. Her twenty-four years of life experience told her that agricultural products could only sell for high prices after deep processing. This price markup could range anywhere from twenty percent to twenty times the original value—just like potato chips.

A 50-gram bag of potato chips cost on average over a dollar, while 500 grams of its main ingredient, potatoes, cost less than 50 cents. That was a solid twenty-fold increase!

Of course, she didn’t expect the price of her processed wild yam to multiply by twenty, but even doubling it would be fantastic! With this in mind, she decided to hurry up and get some sleep so she could start processing her wild yam first thing in the morning.

The next day, Sev woke up right at dawn. Stepping out of her room, she found that the four little cubs were already up as well.

"Are wasteland children all this hardworking? They don’t even sleep in?" she wondered.

She quickly found the answer in the original owner’s memories. This evil adoptive mother had never allowed the children to sleep in. If they dared to wake up later than her, they would either be beaten and scolded, or simply denied food.

The eldest, Rusty, had once worked a full day for the owner of the junkyard, earning a measly three points. After begging repeatedly, he had also managed to get a discarded mechanical alarm clock. The boy was perhaps naturally gifted with machinery; somehow, he tinkered with it and actually managed to fix the clock. From then on, he set the alarm every day to wake up his younger siblings, ensuring they were washed and dressed before their adoptive mother got out of bed.

Unfortunately, he didn’t know that "waking up late" was just a random excuse the original owner used to beat them and withhold their food. Without that excuse, she would just arbitrarily find other reasons to punish them, all to satisfy her twisted psychological need to oppress the weak.

Looking at the four little ones standing in a neat row before her, Sev’s heart ached terribly. She didn’t want to break character, so she had to hold back and try not to be nice to them. But seeing them act so obedient only made her feel even worse.

Since they were all up, she didn’t want to waste any time. She spoke coldly.

"Eldest, Second, go to the rubble pile in the northwest corner and bring back a few flat stones.

"Third, Fourth, you’ll be my assistants. I need to process the wild yam I brought back yesterday."

The four little ones didn’t understand what exactly she was trying to do, but they could only obediently follow her orders.

Right before leaving, Rusty shot a meaningful glance at Zephyr. The latter hurriedly blinked back, signaling that he would keep a close eye on the bad woman and absolutely wouldn’t give her a chance to poison them!

Sev didn’t notice the look the cubs exchanged. She went straight into the kitchen and handed their only peeler to Zephyr. "You’re in charge of peeling. Make sure you peel it clean!"

Then, she glanced at Rose. "Collect all the peels Zephyr makes into the wooden basin, then take them out to the yard and dry them on the mat."

After saying this, she added in her mind, "I’m sorry, my little cuties. Mom has to stay in character, so you’ll just have to work hard!"