Zombie Girls Revival System-Chapter 160: Living With Two Girls in the Apocalypse… Why Is This the Hardest Part?
Still nothing. She reached for another vial, shaking powdered mushroom caps into the bowl. The mixture sizzled violently, smoke puffing up like angry steam. Sid threw his arms out.
"Evelise! Hello?! I’m trying to talk to you!"
Finally, she snapped not by answering his questions, but by yelling over the bubbling mixture.
"GET OUT OF THE BASEMENT!"
Her voice echoed off the concrete, sharp and commanding. Sid blinked, stunned.
"What—what about you?!" he shot back. "If it’s not safe for me, then why are YOU down here?! You’re breathing all this in!"
Evelise didn’t even look up as she flicked her wrist over the burner.
"I was built to inhale this. I have the lungs of a herbalist. Now leave."
Sid stared at her, torn between terror and disbelief.
"Built—? That’s not how lungs work! That’s not how ANYTHING works!"
"Sid. OUT."
He opened his mouth again, but the look she shot him, brief, cold, and irritated made him snap his jaw shut. She was too deep in her work. Too absorbed. Too determined to make whatever she was crafting perfect. And he had promised himself earlier that he would try... to let her be herself, even if it confused him.
Even if it terrified him.
"Fine," he muttered. "Fine. Do your witchcraft. I’m not dying for this."
He turned and climbed the stairs, coughing hard, shaking his head in disbelief. As he pushed open the basement door and stepped back into the cabin’s fresh air—
A thick, rolling column of smoke drifted right into his face from outside.
Oshan... again. 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢
Sid stared out the window, watching Oshan frantically blowing into the fire, trying to resurrect the empty pot she had annihilated.
He closed the door behind him slowly, eyes dead, spirit cracked.
"I give up."
He whispered to the ceiling, the emotional and physical exhaustion finally catching up.
"Women are so hard to deal with."
He rubbed his temples as more smoke curled through the window.
"And now I’m living with two pyromaniacs."
The cabin was silent save for the subtle boom of Evelise witthcrafting below and the bubbling of what more withcraft cook oshan doing outside, signaling the arrival of midday. Sid finally climbed off his mattress, his head still pounding from the psychic shock of the memory and the lingering fumes from the basement.
"I need coffee. Or maybe therapy."
He muttered, running a hand through his hair. He was still trying to rationalize the horrific backstory of Evelise, and the fact that they’d managed to smoke up the entire cabin without a functional sense of smell.
"Thank God it’s the apocalypse," he thought darkly. "We’re the only ones left. If a neighbor called the fire department on these two..."
Sid stepped into the water-pump area, though it barely looked like one anymore. Thanks to Oshan, the space had transformed into something closer to a kitchen. She stood there like a serene giantess in her borrowed jacket, carefully arranging their lunch on the small wooden table. She had just finished cleaning up, the cooking fire already doused, and outside the door sat a neat collection of cans and jars taken from the basement storage.
The centerpiece was a large bowl filled with a repulsive, black, slimy mixture of canned food mixed with violently green pickled items. It looked, smelled, and moved like something dredged from the bottom of a harbor. Oshan stepped back, her oceanic eyes shining with pride.
"The midday meal is served, Sir Sid. My finest work yet."
Sid stared at the abomination. "Your... finest work yet. Good for you, but not for us, apparently," he muttered. "Oshan, I just hope Lady Evelise survives whatever violent experiment she’s doing downstairs just to come up here and taste this. And seriously—where the hell is she? It’s lunchtime."
As if on cue, the basement hatch creaked open. Evelise climbed out. Her silver hair was standing up in fuzzy tufts, and her face was smudged with black soot and strange, green residue. She looked exactly like she’d survived a small explosion. She grabbed a clean cloth and began furiously rubbing the grime off her face.
Oshan leaned in toward Sid, whispering conspiratorially. "Lady Evelise always emerges like this when she has perfected a difficult synthesis. She must be working on something incredible. But you must never disturb her in that state."
Oshan’s voice dropped to a near inaudible rumble. "I remember one boy, a guard, who peeked into her lab in the mansion. She poured hot, concentrated herbs directly into his eyes, telling him it was the same as peeking at her naked."
Sid gulped, the memory of his recent accidental nudity in her memory flashing into his mind.
"Ugh. The collateral damage from the Mayor’s bullshit!"
He said, shuddering. Evelise finally sat down, still slightly fuming, but clean. Sid took a seat opposite her, and he couldn’t help but stare. Now that he knew her past, he saw her through a different lens. Stripped of the zombie pallor, in her natural human color, she was startlingly beautiful— a genuine 5 star rarity design. He focused on her delicate features, thinking of the immense pressure she endured as a child to become "The Perfect Human." Evelise caught his stare, her ruby eyes narrowing.
"What are you looking at, Sid? If you’ve got an issue with my face, keep it to yourself."
Sid immediately deflected, adopting his usual crass humor.
"Just checking to see if your face was symmetrical after the detonation. Don’t want my healer looking like a Picasso painting."
Oshan sat down, her presence anchoring the room. Sid looked at the food, then at Evelise. He was too afraid to even look closely at the black sludge again.
Evelise, however, raised her spoon. Sid instantly saw the ghostly image of her mother’s stern face in his mind— the memory of her childhood scolding on how to properly hold silverware. Evelise’s grip was indeed exquisitely elegant, her wrist arched precisely. As she brought the spoon toward her lips, Sid panicked.
"Wait! Don’t! Evelise, Oshan tried to cook it! It’s—"
He was too late. Evelise had already taken a measured, delicate taste. Sid braced himself for the gagging, the collapse, the punishment Oshan was about to receive.
Evelise chewed slowly, her face completely neutral. Then, she swallowed and nodded.
"It is... good, Oshan," Evelise stated, her voice calm. "Did you remember to use the anti toxin herb I handed you this morning? The one for neutralizing rancid compounds?"
Oshan beamed with pride. "Yes, Lady Evelise. I did not forget my instructions."
Sid stared, dumbfounded. He had missed the key detail. Oshan wasn’t the cook; she was a puppet. Evelise was aware of the dangers and had secretly directed Oshan to use a counter agent for the spoiled canned food. Evelise was eating it casually, knowing she had rendered it safe with her advanced herbology.
"That’s... genius," Sid muttered under his breath. "You used spoiled food and added your herbs to make it... edible?"
He shook his head, still baffled by her unpredictable methods
.
"But the cooking part was still dumb," he added, eyeing the pot of bubbling black sludge. "F*ck, I’m dead. This is how I get poisoned. I didn’t see that coming."
Evelise glared at him, her beautiful features hardening.
"Why aren’t you eating, Sid? Are you wasting food?"
"This isn’t food, Evelise."
Sid retorted automatically. Oshan stopped chewing, her massive oceanic eyes turning toward him. Her gaze was completely innocent, yet utterly insistent.
Sid swallowed hard. He couldn’t resist the unspoken peer pressure of the huge, earnest woman. He conceded.
"Okay, fine."
He reluctantly took a small bite of the slimy, black concoction.
It hit his tongue. It was shockingly not bad, though the texture was terrible and the flavor profile was a bizarre mix of savory, bitter, and metallic. It was edible, a testament to Evelise’s unseen work. Evelise rolled her eyes.
"You’re so dramatic."
Sid was about to retort when a wave of pure, comforting warmth washed over him, spreading from his core outward. The dull ache in his head, the fatigue from the night, and the persistent spiritual exhaustion from the memories instantly vanished.
[Instant Relief Activated]
The system pinged the skill activation. Sid blinked, feeling completely fresh, as if he’d slept for twelve hours.
"It... it’s not bad," he admitted, stunned. "In fact, I feel... great."
Evelise’s concoction, even when consumed via Oshan’s disastrous method, had served as a powerful restorative potion.
Sid leaned back in his chair, a complex mix of lingering disgust from the meal and buzzing vitality from the Instant Relief washing over him. The system effect hummed pleasantly beneath his skin. Oshan watched him with wide, expectant eyes, like a large, oceanic puppy waiting for the approval she desperately craved. Evelise calmly ate another spoonful of the dark, slimy dish, as if it were a perfectly normal plate of vichyssoise.
Sid stared between the two of them, the two extremes of his new reality, and sighed loudly.
"I swear the both of you are going to be the death of me."
