My fingers never stopped.
Left hand cupped the heavy cluster of nightberries, right thumb and forefinger pinching just below the stem with the exact pressure needed. Twist. Pull. The ripe ones came free with that familiar, wet pop, releasing a burst of dark juice that stained my skin a deep, poisonous blue-black. Another berry joined the woven basket at my hip. Then another. Then another.
In the top-left corner of my vision, the system counter flickered.
[EXP: 0.01 / 100,000]
Fourteen thousand six hundred and twenty-two berries since dawn. I kept the running total alive inside my head like a second heartbeat. Numbers didn't lie. Numbers didn't get tired. Numbers didn't cry or beg or break. They simply added up.
The field stretched forever under a washed-out sky. Rows of waist-high bushes heavy with fruit rolled out in perfect, soul-crushing order. On the eastern horizon, the zone barrier shimmered like a wall of angry sapphires—beautiful, deadly, and completely impassable. Its constant low hum vibrated in my teeth even from this distance.
Tap-tap. Tap-tap.
Overseers walked the rows in their heavy boots, leather crops slapping against their thighs in that same merciless rhythm. Never faster. Never slower. Just enough to remind every slave that they were watched.
I didn't look up. I didn't need to. I had memorized their patrol patterns weeks ago.
"Oi, Nara," Dort whispered from the next row over. The boy couldn't have been older than fourteen, but the Zero Grounds aged everyone quickly. His voice came out cracked and dry. "Heard the overseers talking earlier. Someone tried to cross the barrier last night. Lightning took 'em apart. Left nothing but smoke and burnt meat."
I kept picking.
Fourteen thousand six hundred and twenty-three.
"Yeah," Dort continued, voice dropping even lower.."Did you hear someone tried to escape the barrier again yesterday. I also heard that the barrier flickered a little." he sounded hopeful at this.
"Flickered my ass." I muttered because only i knew the truth because i was the girl who tried to escape and was burnt toast. I remembered the exact moment the barrier had killed me. At 3:14 this morning, under a moonless sky, I had sprinted straight into that glowing wall of light with everything I had. For three glorious seconds I actually believed I might make it.
Then the lightning came.
White-hot agony had ripped through every nerve at once. My muscles locked. My heart seized. The last thing I felt was my own skin blistering and cracking before the system mercifully dragged me into darkness.
[You have died.][Death Penalty: No EXP lost (Slave Class Penalty)][Respawn Location: Zero Grounds — Slave Shed 7][Time until respawn: 47 seconds]
I had woken up on the cold stone floor of the shed, gasping, every inch of me still tingling with phantom burns. The other slaves had looked away. They always did. Dying was just part of life here.
I pinched another berry so hard the juice ran down my wrist.
Fourteen thousand six hundred and twenty-four.
One hundred thousand EXP. That was the price of freedom. The system had made it brutally simple: reach that number and you could request transfer out of the Zero Grounds. Until then, you were livestock. Berry-picking, EXP-generating livestock.
Most slaves gave up counting after the first year. They let their minds rot along with their bodies. Not me. I counted everything.
Berries picked. Overseers' steps. Heartbeats between patrols. Days since I woke up in this hell with nothing but a slave collar and a basic gathering class.
The sun crawled higher, baking the back of my neck and turning the field into a shimmering oven. Sweat rolled down my spine and mixed with berry juice, making my ragged tunic stick to my skin. My bare feet were calloused and stained purple from the constant trampling of fallen fruit. Every breath tasted like sweet overripe berries and dust.
I hated the smell.
A girl two rows over started crying quietly. She was new maybe only here three weeks. She'd learn. They always learned or they broke. Either way, the fields kept producing.
"Keep moving!" an overseer barked from the west side. "Quota's not gonna fill itself!"
I adjusted my basket and kept working. My shoulders burned. My fingers were starting to cramp. Good. Pain was data. Pain meant I was still alive and still capable of improvement.
I started calculating again.
At my current average, I needed roughly nine hundred and seventy more days of perfect quotas to hit one hundred thousand EXP. But perfect quotas were impossible. The bushes thinned. The berries grew smaller toward the end of the season. The system sometimes reduced returns just to keep slaves desperate.
So I would do better than perfect.
Fifteen thousand berries tomorrow. Sixteen thousand the day after. I would become more efficient than the system believed possible. I would turn myself into a machine of spite and mathematics until the counter finally rolled over.
Because the alternative was spending the rest of my life here—decades of picking, dying, respawning, and picking again while the rest of the world leveled up, conquered dungeons, and lived actual lives beyond this blue-walled prison.
No. Not me.
I would count until the numbers set me free.
"Pack it in!" The head overseer's voice cracked across the field like a whip. "All pickers to the shed! Move!"
The long, miserable procession began. Hundreds of slaves shuffled between the rows toward the massive wooden shed at the edge of the field. I fell into line, keeping my eyes on the barrier one last time as the sun began to set behind it. The glowing wall looked almost peaceful in the twilight. Almost inviting.
I would visit it again tonight.
Dort tried to walk beside me, but I lengthened my stride until the gap between us widened. I didn't need friends. Friends asked questions. Friends noticed when you stopped breathing for three seconds every time you remembered what death felt like.
We reached the shed doors. Two overseers stood guard, scanning faces as we filed inside. Thick-necked Gorr was laughing at something, his belly shaking under his leather vest.
"—yeah, found another crispy one in the east field this morning," Gorr grunted to his partner. "Girl this time. Real stubborn one. Barrier cooked her good. She respawned in Shed 7 at dawn, still twitching like a half-squashed bug."
My steps didn't falter.
They were talking about me.
The memory of lightning flashed behind my eyes again, but I shoved it down. I kept walking forward, bare feet silent on the packed dirt, then onto the cold stone floor of the shed.
Inside, the usual scene greeted me: bodies already claiming spots along the walls, thin scraps of cloth or bare stone serving as beds. The air stank of sweat, overripe berries, and hopelessness. Someone had left a ragged piece of sacking at my usual corner. I ignored it and lowered myself onto the bare floor, back against the wall, knees drawn up.
The system message appeared as my daily quota finalized.
[Daily Berry Quota: 82% Complete][EXP Gained Today: 0.01][Total EXP: 47.32 / 100,000]
I stared at the ceiling beams, counting the cracks for the four hundred and nineteenth time.
Tomorrow I would pick more. Tomorrow I would run faster toward the barrier. Tomorrow the lightning might burn a little less, or maybe it would kill me cleaner. Either way, I would keep coming back.