Apocalypse: Transmigrated with an Overlord System
Chapter 141: Frog in the Well

Chapter 141: Chapter 141: Frog in the Well

Eli stood still, his eyes fixed on the space where Atlas had been just moments ago. And just like that—he was gone. Not a trace of him remained. It wasn’t dramatic. There was no flash of light, no gust of wind, not even the faintest shimmer of how he disappeared just like that.

The silence he left behind was total, oppressive in a way that made the world feel a little colder. It was as if someone had reached into the room and snuffed out a candle without warning, leaving the shadows untouched and undisturbed.

Eli’s small hands balled into fists at his sides, not from anger but because he didn’t know what else to do with them. There was something tight in his chest, something heavy pressing down on his ribs that made it hard to breathe.

It wasn’t grief exactly—not the kind he understood—but something close. He didn’t cry. He just stood there quietly, watching Aunt Liora out of the corner of his eye.

She hadn’t moved. Not even a little. She was standing frozen in place, eyes locked on the empty space where his dad had vanished, as if she were still trying to see him.

As if staring hard enough might bring him back. A full minute passed, maybe more, and she didn’t blink. She didn’t speak. It was like the wind had blown right through her and taken all her thoughts with it.

He looked up at her, his voice barely a whisper when he spoke, but his words were clear. "Pretty Sister," he murmured, tugging at her sleeve with his small fingers, "I hear footsteps. A lot of them. They are coming this way."

That was enough to break the trance. Liora blinked as though waking from a dream she couldn’t quite remember. Her gaze lowered to meet his, startled at first, then sharpening as her senses kicked in. She left all her thoughts in the back of her mind.

She turned her head toward the staircase behind them, and now that she was listening for it, she could hear the sound too—multiple footsteps, hurried and uneven, echoing through the stairwell as they climbed higher.

She moved toward the edge of the fourth floor, peering down over the railing. It didn’t take long for familiar faces to come into view.

Chen Wei, Liang Zihan, and Zhou Yinuo.

All three of them were racing up the stairs, their expressions tight with urgency and worry. To them, this was still just a high-stakes practice. They hadn’t seen what she had. Hadn’t gone where she’d gone. And when they reached her, panting and flushed from the climb, their voices were full of concern.

"Liora! Are you alright?" Liang Zihan asked first, his wide eyes searching Liora’s face for injuries or exhaustion.

Chen Wei was scanning the room quickly, his stance half-defensive, half-relieved. "We got worried when we saw you took the whole fourth floor alone. We cleared our floors fast and came straight up to back you up."

Zhou Yinuo nodded, bouncing slightly on her heels as if still riding a wave of adrenaline. "Yeah! We didn’t want you to be overwhelmed or outnumbered!"

They crowded around her, each of them offering their presence like a shield. But before any of them could get another word in, Liang Zihan looked around the floor and asked the obvious question. "Did you already clear it?"

Liora gave a small nod. "Yeah. It’s done."

For a moment, the three of them just stared at her. Not in disbelief, but in stunned amazement that didn’t quite know how to express itself.

"You did it alone?" Chen Wei asked finally, his voice filled with genuine astonishment.

Zhou Yinuo opened his mouth to say something but faltered when Liora cut in, her tone casual. "How about you? Everything alright on your floors?"

None of them noticed the difference in her voice. Not even Liora herself. But something about her had changed. Her words came out softer and filled with worry and emotions.

"We’re good!" Liang Zihan said brightly, eager to bring back normalcy. "We even managed to kill two Level 6 zombies!"

Chen Wei grinned, his earlier tension replaced with excitement as he reached into his pocket. "And we got a high-grade crystal! Look at this!"

He held it out proudly, the small, shimmering crystal cradled in his palm like a rare gem.

Liora looked at it, and her lips curved into a smile, warm and genuine for their sake. "That’s great," she said.

But inside, her mind had already begun to calculate.

The crystal Chen Wei held sparkled with the sharp, pulsing glow of power, and once, she might have marveled at it.

But now, her trained eyes could see what others couldn’t. That high-grade crystal, valuable as it was, couldn’t compare to the ones she had taken from the beasts in the Misty Forest.

Those had been different—heavier, more concentrated, as if packed with a kind of energy that hadn’t been dulled by time or scattered by mutation. The ones she’d collected didn’t just glow. They radiated and pulsed with a pure energy of aether.

She said nothing aloud. There was no point in explaining. To her friends, this was a victory worth celebrating. To the base, defeating a Level 6 zombie was an achievement that very few could claim.

Most awakeners couldn’t even survive an encounter with one. Even now, nearly a full year into the apocalypse, the majority of awakeners had only reached Level 3 or 4.

A handful had pushed their way into Level 5 or 6, but those were the exceptions—the prodigies or the desperate. Even among the officers who commanded respect and authority at their base, Level 5 was often considered the ceiling of power.

They had never seen anything stronger.

They had never imagined anything beyond.

But Liora had.

She had stood in a place where even a normal mutated beast was not less than a Level 8. Then only she realized they were just frogs in the well who had not seen the world at all.

She had fought creatures in that forest that made Level 6 zombies look like insects. She had survived, learned, and returned from a place where time stretched and bent, where her powers had evolved without any leap or bound. She no longer feared what others did.

And so, she didn’t correct them. She didn’t tell them what she had seen. She didn’t try to explain the weight of the crystals in her bag or the difference in energy between their world and the one she had briefly lived in. She simply nodded, letting their chatter wash over her like warm rain.

Because deep down, beneath her smile and quiet gaze, she already knew the truth—that she had seen the far more dangerous world and realized that it was only possible because of him.

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