Sorting cores was honestly kind of relaxing.

There was something deeply satisfying about taking a giant pile of glowing apocalypse rocks and organizing them into neat little groups while everyone else stared at me like I had officially lost my mind.

Which, to be fair, I was wondering myself some times. Especially when I realized just how many secrets I was telling to the guys. I might as well just come out and say that I was reborn into this body... surprise?

Yeah. No. That was one of the hard lines I wasn’t crossing anytime soon.

A girl had to keep some mystery.

"The tiny ones first," I reminded the guys while pushing another small white core into a separate pile. "You idiots are not touching anything bigger than your thumbnail until your bodies adjust to the increase powers."

Lingyun looked personally offended. "I feel like you’re underestimating my greatness."

"I think I’m overestimating your survival instincts."

"Rude."

"Accurate," corrected Yuche without looking up from the cores he was helping sort.

I shot Lingyun a smug look. Even Yuche knew I was right.

Making my point, I went back to work, separating the crystals by both size and color across the coffee table. Small, medium, large. Stable growth first. Long-term survival second. Immediate death avoided whenever possible.

Honestly?

The apocalypse was basically one giant resource management game with extra cannibalism.

Red cores went into Lingyun’s pile.

White went to Zhenlan.

Yellow to Chenghai.

Metal-gray and silver-tinted ones went toward Yuche.

The others?

I shoved them into separate containers for later.

"There are way too many," Chenghai muttered as he looked over the growing piles.

"Bite your tongue," I grunted, shooting him a look. "There is no such thing as too many cores. That’s like saying there is too much food or too much air. If anything, we need more."

That earned me four identical looks.

"What?" I asked.

"You genuinely terrify me sometimes," Lingyun admitted.

"That sounds like a you problem."

"It is."

I continued sorting calmly while the baby vine watched from beside me like an overexcited toddler waiting for snacks. Every once in a while it would lean forward hopefully whenever I picked up a bigger core.

"No," I informed it for probably the tenth time.

The vine hissed.

"You already ate one."

It hissed louder.

"Greedy."

Honestly, raising children was exhausting.

Eventually I finished separating the useful cores before shoving nearly half the remaining pile toward the vine. Mostly random colors that none of us could really use efficiently right now.

The vine perked up immediately.

Then absolutely lost its mind.

Crunch.

Crunch crunch.

The little monster started inhaling cores like someone had told it the world was ending tomorrow. Different sized glowing crystals disappeared between rows of white teeth fast enough that even Lingyun looked disturbed.

"...Should it really be eating that many?" Zhenlan asked carefully.

I watched the vine happily devour a blue core before shrugging. "Probably."

"Probably?"

"It’s survived worse."

"That is not reassuring."

"What do you want me to say? I’m pretty sure that it will either puke or stop eating before it blows up. It is smarter than most humans."

The vine swallowed another mouthful before curling happily against my leg like it had just been handed the greatest meal in history.

I let out a soft sigh that I had been holding in.

In our last life, I couldn’t keep up with how many cores it needed. I knew more often than not, it was starving, that it wasn’t nearly as powerful as it could be.

In this life, I would make sure that wasn’t a problem.

I reached for the final pile on the table before my fingers stopped.

The black core sat by itself near the edge of the coffee table.

The room gradually quieted as everyone noticed I had stopped moving.

Yuche’s eyes narrowed slightly. "That one bothering you?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I don’t know."

And honestly?

That irritated me more than the core itself.

I picked it up carefully between my fingers. The black surface didn’t glow like the rest of the cores either. Instead, faint shadows seemed to move slowly beneath the crystal itself like smoke trapped under glass.

"...That can’t be normal," Lingyun muttered.

"No kidding."

The baby vine suddenly lifted its head.

Then immediately locked onto the black core.

Huh. That would be better than keeping this thing around like a ticking timebomb.

Its entire body perked up before it started crawling toward me with far more interest than it had shown toward the other cores.

Reaching forward, I let the vine lunge at the core in my hand before taking it back. The little traitor hissed at me in frustration.

I teased it twice more before Chenghai frowned slightly from across the table. "Should you really give that thing to the vine?"

"I’m not giving it anything yet," I pointed out, dangling the core above the wiggling vine’s head.

"You said yourself you don’t know what it is," Zhenlan added quietly. "Wouldn’t it make more sense to let the scientists study it?"

I looked at him like he had just suggested that he put on a meat suit and dance in front of a horde of zombies.

Talk about a bad idea.

"You want to give unknown apocalypse rocks to the same people who think that bringing living zombies into a house is a good idea? That putting a ’cure all’ into a water source that no one can access is a good thing?"

The room went silent.

Lingyun blinked. "The what?"

"The scientists." I waved one hand dismissively. "They’re trying to make some kind of zombie vaccine or cure or whatever. They dumped it into the city water supply thinking everyone would drink it without asking questions."

Yuche stared at me. "Nobody has running water if they are on city service."

"See?!? Even you know that."

Lingyun slowly lowered the red core he had been examining. "...That’s incredibly stupid."

"Thank you," I said immediately. "Finally. Someone else gets it."

Zhenlan still looked uncertain. "Even so, information has value."

"So does not accidentally creating a second apocalypse."

"That seems dramatic." 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

"Hardly," I corrected flatly. "Dramatic would be trusting those people with something they don’t understand."

The black core sat quietly in my hand while the baby vine continued staring at it with disturbing intensity.

"I don’t trust those people with my socks," I muttered. "Let alone something that even I don’t know about."

Lingyun snorted softly. "Your socks?"

"What?" I demanded defensively. "My snacks are too precious. My house is too precious. You guys are..." I paused briefly. "Useful. The only thing I can think of that isn’t too precious is my socks. But only the ones with the holes in it. I might trust the scientists with those."

"That might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said about us," Chenghai muttered.

"I said useful. Don’t make it weird."

Yuche rubbed one hand slowly over his face while Zhenlan looked dangerously close to laughing.

While I was distracted by the guys, the baby vine suddenly lunged.

Before anyone could react, it snatched the black core directly out of my hand.

"Hey—"

Crunch.

The room froze.

The vine swallowed.

Then sat there happily chewing absolutely nothing while everyone stared at it in horror.

"...Well," Lingyun said weakly after several seconds. "That feels like something we should all be concerned about."