Apocalyptic Flood: My Mom Refused Me a Dime, So I Gave the Ark to Someone Else

I begged my mom for ten dollars, but she smashed my head with a frying pan instead.

The next day, my mother posted on a forum asking:

"Hi everyone. My eldest son lied about the end of the world just to get ten dollars. I want to ask, how can I sell him on the underground black market to pay off his younger brother's $20,000 debt?"

The moment I saw that post, any remaining love I had for them died instantly. I snapped my phone's SIM card in half.

What she didn’t know was that a world-ending acid flood would descend upon New York tomorrow.

I had begged so bitterly for that ten dollars just to trigger the Ten-Million-Fold Return System to build a three-billion-dollar Doomsday Ark.

Since she didn’t want it, I gave the throne of the Ark Queen to the female classmate who casually tossed me some charity.

 ——

It had been raining in New York for fourteen days straight.

That afternoon, while I was studying on a moldy folding bed in the storage room, a blinding white light suddenly exploded in my mind.

A cold, semi-transparent panel radiating a metallic blue glow was branded directly onto my retinas.

[Ten-Million-Fold Investment Return System Activated]

[Host: Arthur Morrison]

[Doomsday Alert: Countdown to the World-Ending Acid Flood — 30 Days 00 Hrs 00 Mins 00 Secs]

[Current Start-up Capital: $0.00]

[System Status: Dormant (First investment required to unlock the Virtual Construction Space)]

I bounced off the bed, slamming the back of my head straight into a rusty water pipe above me.

It hurt like hell, but the panel was still right there blocking my vision.

Holy crap! This isn't a hallucination!

"World-ending... acid flood?" my voice trembled. "...Swallowing the whole city?"

The system didn't respond.

But the blood-red countdown timer in the bottom right corner of my retina ticked: 29 Days 23 Hours 59 Minutes.

With every tick, my heart painfully constricted.

If this was real... if a disaster was really coming in thirty days...

The same second that thought popped into my head, a deep-rooted instinct overwhelmed me—family.

I had to tell my parents! I had to get them to prepare in advance!

I pushed open the door of the storage room. The hallway smelled heavily of cheese and ketchup.

The living room lights were blindingly bright. A deafening car-modification reality show blared on the TV.

I could hear my mom rummaging through the fridge in the kitchen, my dad burping on the couch, and Paul—my younger brother by two years—wearing his $1,200 limited-edition sneakers, arrogantly resting his feet on the coffee table complaining there wasn't enough pizza.

Standing at the end of the hallway, I swallowed hard and walked over.

"Mom."

She didn't look back. Her voice drifted from the kitchen, layered with her usual certainty and coldness. "If you're trying to skip your night shift at the convenience store to go to those classes again, don't call me Mom."

"It's not about that," I said, taking a deep breath. "Mom, a massive disaster is going to hit New York. A flood. A huge, acidic flood. We have to prepare right now..."

The noises in the kitchen stopped.

My mother walked out holding a plate of frozen pizza, looking me up and down with the kind of gaze you’d reserve for a psycho.

"What did you just say?"

"We are going to be submerged. I'm telling the truth!" I blocked her path, my tone bordering on begging. "Mom, can you just give me ten dollars first? Just ten dollars! I need this money to verify something, this is our only way to survive—"

The air fell dead silent for a second.

Then, from the couch, Paul burst into wild, unbridled laughter.

"Ha! Bro, your excuse for begging Mom for ten bucks is absolute trash! You're trying to scam money with a brain that dense? You'd have better luck begging on the streets!"

"Paul, shut up." My mom's voice darkened. "Arthur, your brother has to pay his sports car insurance and installment next month. You work various odd jobs all month and barely scrape together seven or eight hundred bucks—not even a fraction of what we need! Instead of figuring out how to pick up more shifts, you run in here trying to scam money over some 'end of the world' garbage?"

"Mom, I'm not lying to you! I only need ten—"

Smash—!

Without any warning, my mother backhanded the heavy cast-iron frying pan right into my forehead.

A sickening thud echoed.

My vision instantly tilted. My knees gave out, and I slammed hard into the wall, sliding down to the floor.

Warm blood gushed out, pooling past the corner of my eye, dripping onto the floorboards drop by drop.

"Crazy. You've really gone crazy," my mother panted, gripping the pan without a shred of remorse. "Lazy all day, and now you've learned to make up lies to scam money? How did I ever give birth to something as disgusting as you?"

I crouched on the floor, clutching my bleeding forehead, my vision turning a hazy red.

Just then, a pair of $1,200 sneakers stopped right in front of my face.

Paul squatted down, a mocking grin plastered on his face. Without a word, he shoved his hand straight into my pants pocket.

"Don't..." I tried weakly to block him, but the blinding pain in my forehead made me half a beat too slow.

With ease, he pulled out a neatly folded stack of bills from my pocket.

Fifty dollars.

That was the money I earned pulling six night shifts this week. It was my food money for tomorrow and my school material fees.

"Woah, you’ve been holding out on us." Paul flicked the cash under the light. "Thanks, bro. My car is just about out of gas."

"That's mine..."

I tried to stand up and snatch it back, but my dad simply stretched out his leg from the couch, planted his foot firmly on my chest, and pinned me to the ground.

"Don't fight with your brother." My dad never even looked at me; his eyes were glued to the TV screen. "Isn't the money you earn supposed to be for this family anyway?"

"Dad... that's my food money for tomorrow..."

"Just skip a meal and lose some weight," my mom said, slamming the frying pan heavily onto the table. "Get inside! Don't come out tonight! Don't you dare speak to me until you scrape together the money for your brother’s car repairs next month!"

A pair of hands grabbed me by the collar, dragging me like a piece of trash back into the cold, leaky storage room.

The door slammed shut behind me.

Click. It was deadbolted from the outside.

Complete darkness.

Above my head, the water pipe leaked with a rhythmic drip, drop.

I slumped against the mildew-covered wall, using my sleeve to wipe the blood off my face. My cuff quickly turned bright red.

It was then that the icy-blue panel lit up in the pitch black once again.

[System Shop Preview Unlocked.]

Numbly, with trembling, blood-stained fingers, I tapped the golden icon in the center of the panel.

A breathtakingly massive holographic blueprint instantly unfolded within this cramped, sixty-square-foot crumbling room.

I saw a city.

No, it was a fortress of steel floating upon a deep abyss.

[Heavy-Duty Amphibious Doomsday Ark · "Judgment" Class]

Hull: TiAl-7075 Acid-resistant Titanium Alloy Armor (Capable of withstanding a 100-meter tsunami)

Propulsion: Four Turbo Diesel-Electric Hybrid Thrusters

Defense: 50,000V High-Voltage Grid / Rotary Machine Gun Turrets ×6 / CIWS Sonic Array

Ecology: Thermostatic Survival Pods / Water Purification Matrix / Soil-less Farm

[Total Construction Cost: $2,870,000,000]

Nearly three billion dollars to build!

However, at the very bottom of the panel, glaring golden text spelled out the system's true core rule:

[Core Rule: Ten-Million-Fold Investment Return!]

[Any $10 investment from outside sources → The System will immediately convert and return $100,000,000 (One Hundred Million USD in construction funds)]

[Note: Returned funds can only benefit the investor (i.e., the Legal Beneficiary). The Host will act as the highest-authority Proxy Manager of the Ark. The Host cannot invest in themselves.]

Ten dollars.

As long as one person, just one person, was willing to give me ten dollars right now, that ten bucks would mutate into a hundred million dollars in Doomsday funds!

But my own family wouldn't spare me a single dollar—they even robbed me of my hard-earned cash!

My fingernails dug deeply into my palms as I stared dead at that line of text, feeling utterly powerless.

Just a wall away, clear laughter echoed from the living room. The soundproofing in this crappy apartment was like wet paper.

"Mom, this pizza is great," Paul mumbled, chewing loudly.

"If it’s good, eat more. You're still growing, Mommy wants the best for you," my mother's voice was suddenly as soft as if she were a different person altogether. "As for the trash in there, ignore him. Starve him for a couple of days and he'll obediently go back to work..."

"Hahaha, he was still talking about the apocalypse earlier, cracked me up..."

The apocalypse is real!

A suffocating sense of injustice swelled in my chest.

But after taking a deep breath, I threw away all useless emotions. My brain shifted into overdrive.

Since I couldn't rely on my family, I would go to school tomorrow and see who would be willing to fund me for the apocalypse!