Early the next morning...
Ashira began clearing the area in front of the steel mesh of the air-raid shelter.
This time, she decided to try a different method. She cleared out all the Zombies from the area extending from in front of her position all the way to the road, and then erected a stone tablet inscribed with: 'Private Territory, Beware of Vicious dogs Ahead!'
She set up a sign to serve as a boundary marker. You have to understand, at this point in time, not many people could still walk out alive, and those who could see her and argue about land ownership were practically nonexistent!
She would just plant her sign here, and this place would be hers! Who would dare to complain?
[Ding—Detected a territory increase of five mu!
Reward 500 points!]
Ashira immediately became happy when she heard the system prompt. Indeed, her idea was not wrong. She could expand into these uninhabited areas, even areas that previously had owners.
But there was a prerequisite. It had to be land that she or her dogs had cleared and measured.
Today, Ashira walked with her dogs from the Base to where she erected the tablet, which was about five mu of land. (Note: One mu is roughly 666.7 square meters, or about 0.16 acres, so five mu is around 3,300 square meters.)
She marked the areas she and her dogs had explored. This was somewhat like an exploration game where the protagonist had to walk through an area for that part of the map to light up.
Fortunately, her dogs were considered part of her team, significantly increasing her exploration range. She planted her sign into the ground, clapped her hands, and the territory map in her mind expanded to include this area.
Ashira stood there, contemplating the direction for future expansion. By now, the entire hill where her air-raid shelter was located was essentially conquered by her.
To the left of where she was located was a road, and to the right was a sparsely populated mountainous area. Within this mountainous area were an abandoned quarry and a few scattered mountain villas.
To the north along the road on the left was City A, where the terrain was flat and easy to conquer. Conquering the mountainous area on the right would be more troublesome.
After a short period of thought, Ash decided to start from the right. Of course, she would choose the right side!
She was someone who sought stability over speed in her actions. The terrain on the right was complex but she was confident she could secure it. Why go to the road on the left without first securing the areas she could grasp?
One person would come for a while, then a group of Zombies would come, and she would have to diligently clear them out!
Yes. There were safety requirements within her territory. All Zombies had to be cleared out. If an area was not cleared for a long time, the system would automatically remove that area from her territory.
This was easy to understand; if your territory was full of Zombies or other Alien Creatures, could it really be called your territory? However, this also put an end to her idea of raising a few Zombies to guard the gate.
Fortunately, she now had many helpers. The fifteen military dogs, Summer and Storm, were highly intelligent and capable, making them very useful for guarding and clearing out any Zombies that accidentally entered.
She still needed to raise more dogs! Especially as the territory grew larger in the future. These were far from enough! Ashira put away her other thoughts and steadily began heading towards the mountainous area on the right.
By the time she returned in the evening, she had successfully expanded by another hill. Her points increased by one thousand, bringing her current points total to 2,656!
"You've all worked hard, time to eat!"
With a grand wave of her hand, Ashira released the fresh beef from her space for the dogs to eat. She was never stingy with her companions. If she ate meat, the ones under her would definitely have meat too.
Ash herself took out a steaming hot Korean fried chicken meal to eat. She had stocked up on this back in the mall. She had too many supplies to eat them all, so she changed flavors for every meal.
Today she ate Korean fried chicken, tomorrow she would eat beef stew, and the day after she would eat crispy, shiny Cantonese roasted meats.
When exploring territory outside, she would casually eat ready-made foods from her space like hand-held Onigiri, gimbap, sushi etc., to fill her stomach.
All the food remained in the freshest and hottest state it was in when she put it in. Even while tearing the fried chicken with gloves on, Ashira could feel the crispiness of the fish-scale-like skin, as if it had just come out of the oil.
With just one tear. The tender and juicy chicken leg meat began to burst with juice, paired with the garlic soy sauce flavor, the intense aroma rushed into all her sensory cells.
And a sip of ice-cold cola. It was truly satisfying! Especially in a time like the apocalypse, being able to eat the delicious food from before the apocalypse was truly as enjoyable as it could get!
Ashira's fatigue from the day vanished at this moment. She ate the fried chicken heartily, able to eat the amount for three people by herself!
Storm and Summer smelled the aroma and also wanted to eat, so Ashira threw the leftover half of what she was eating to them. The dogs surrounded her, eating happily.
After eating and feeling full, Ash decided to got up to move around, aiding digestion while also checking on her chickens, ducks, fish pond, vegetable patch, and fruit trees.
The eggs she had left in the chicken coop had accumulated more and more, and in the past two days, some chicks had already hatched.
The poultry, strengthened by the system, were incredibly robust, and their reproduction speed was also astonishing.
The ducklings' incubation period was slower than chicks. Ducklings take about 40 days to hatch, while chicks take about 20 days. Currently, there were no ducklings hatched in the duck coop, but Ashira had already noticed many mother ducks sitting on nests.
Her two little goats, however, were a pleasant surprise. Their size was increasing rapidly, and their bodies were starting to develop. Ash remembered the owner saying these two goats were bred for goat milk farming. It seemed she would have goat milk to drink soon.
Then there was her vegetable patch. Fast-growing and high-yield vegetables like chicken feather vegetables and chives had already started to produce explosive harvests.
Ash had to come and harvest a batch every day. If she harvested today, there would still be more tomorrow, and she would have to come again, but not harvesting was also not an option. She couldn't stand waste.
No matter how hard or busy she was, she had to make time to harvest the vegetables. She specifically set aside one room in her air-raid shelter's warehouse to store fresh vegetables.
Additionally, her planted radishes, spinach, sweet potato, lettuce, etc., were also successively approaching their harvest period, and later, tomatoes and potatoes would also reach their peak production time.
As for the fish pond, the number of fish had doubled compared to before, and a large number of small fry had appeared. Ash actually hadn't managed the fish pond much because she didn't know how, but with the system's enhancement, she didn't have to worry about it at all.
All the small fish were lively and jumping, getting fatter day by day. Everything in her Base was developing for the better, and her territory was also expanding.
The future was promising!