Li Ke stared at the massive list of available merchandise. Canned goods, bandages, cobblestones, concrete mix—there was no doubt about it; every single item was a fundamental resource required to survive this post-apocalyptic wasteland.
But one glaring question remained.
What on earth were "Duke's Casino Tokens"? Were they some kind of universal barter currency, like the bottle caps from the Fallout games?
More importantly...
I actually have a built-in inventory screen?
Staring at the massive grid of empty squares spanning the right side of the trading window, Li Ke found himself deeply amused by the sheer absurdity of his new reality.
With a simple mental command, he pulled out the miniature gold bar he had pocketed earlier as a souvenir. Holding the tiny brick—which was barely the size of his pinky finger—he focused entirely on it and visualized hitting the 'E' key.
The next instant, the physical gold bar vanished into thin air. In its place, a crisp, golden icon materialized within the first empty slot of his newly unlocked digital inventory grid.
Li Ke shifted his focus onto the icon, and a detailed tool-tip instantly flashed before his eyes:
[Gold Nugget: Merchants might find this valuable. Sell Price: 140 Dukes.]
Without a shred of hesitation, Li Ke dragged the item into the merchant's sell window. The moment the transaction cleared, a sharp, holographic notification pinged in the lower corner of his vision:
[EXP +420]
Not only that, but a transparent purple progress bar running horizontally along the very bottom of his field of view visibly ticked forward by a microscopic fraction.
Experience points?
You can seriously grind levels just by trading items?!
The sheer video-game logic of this world was growing more surreal by the second. Intrigued, he shifted his consciousness toward the newly acquired stack of glittering yellow coins labeled "Duke's Casino Tokens" resting in his grid.
Immediately, two standard UI text prompts materialized over the icon:
[Scrap (S)]
[Drop (D)]
Skipping the option to scrap it down for raw brass, Li Ke mentally triggered the drop command. A split second later, a small burlap sack materialized out of thin air and dropped onto Trader Jen's wooden counter with a soft thud.
"..."
Li Ke reached out and wrapped his hand around the physical canvas pouch. A floating prompt reading [Press 'E' to Loot] hovered above it, but rather than vacuuming it back into his digital system, he manually yanked the drawstring open.
He tipped the bag over, letting a small cascade of heavy, yellowish coins spill onto the countertop. Picking one up, he balanced it on his finger; it was crafted from solid brass, stamped with a series of intricate geometric patterns and archaic English lettering.
Unfortunately, because the inscription was entirely in English...
He couldn't read a single word of it.
His college English proficiency had been completely wiped from his brain the moment he graduated. If it weren't for the physical certificate tucked away in a drawer back on Earth, he wouldn't have even believed he had ever studied the language.
Come to think of it, Erina has been speaking Japanese this entire time, hasn't she?
He cast a subtle, sidelong glance at Erina Nakiri. He realized that despite her speaking fluent, natural Japanese, he could understand every syllable perfectly—and his own native Chinese was being translated to her seamlessly.
When the two of them were running for their lives yesterday in a state of absolute terror, such trivial linguistic anomalies hadn't even crossed his mind.
But putting that mystery aside...
Li Ke focused his attention back on his vision. He closed the merchant's storefront layout and mentally tapped the 'B' key.
Instantly, his full character status menu erupted across his field of view. The empty storage grid from before reappeared, but this time, the interface was packed with deeply personal data.
To the left of the grid stood a rotating, 3D paper-doll model of himself—still wearing his tattered business suit and tightly gripping his two fire axes. To the right, a vertical column of crimson status effects hung in the air:
[Concussion]
[Treated Abrasion: 45h 23m 42s remaining]
[Antibiotics Action: 3.5%]
[Treated Infection (Stage 1): 1.5% and falling]
[Hunger]
[Thirst]
Li Ke froze, his eyes locking onto the infection status. He shifted his mental cursor over the text, expanding a detailed system description:
[Treated Infection: Your mild zombie virus infection has been actively countered by a medicinal agent. Maintain dosage until the percentage hits 0%. Warning: Subsequent attacks by infected entities or wildlife will accelerate the infection rate.]
My infection is being cured?!
Li Ke stared blankly at the screen. He remembered the blinding panic of getting scratched yesterday and the agonizing onset of the fever. Since spawning into this hellhole, he hadn't taken a single pharmaceutical drug. All he had done was scarf down a few cans of spam and chug...
Wait. Was it the spam... or the honey? Is raw honey considered a literal anti-viral medication in this world?
Is this some kind of Hextech black magic?
The system text was simple and easy to understand, perfectly matching his physical state. He was indeed starving and dying of thirst. The concussion status also made complete sense; he remembered slamming his head pretty hard when he first spawned into this world.
But if there was an actual cure...
With trembling fingers, Li Ke quickly backed out of his character status menu and pulled Trader Jen's inventory back up. He scrolled past the construction blocks and ammunition, diving straight into the medical supplies tab.
There, sitting quietly at the bottom of the column, was the exact data he had been praying for:
[Honey: Food +5, Health +2, Max Stamina +0. Infection Cure: 5%.]
Honey really was the cure for the zombie virus!
Overwhelmed by pure, unadulterated joy, Li Ke instantly spun around and pulled Erina into a fierce hug. In the heat of the moment, he couldn't restrain his excitement and planted a massive kiss right on the beautiful heiress's cheek. He immediately turned back to the screen, ready to buy every single jar of honey the trader had in stock.
Then, a cold realization hit him.
He didn't have enough cash.
Even after liquidating that miniature gold bar, he only possessed 140 Dukes. A single jar of honey in Trader Jen's shop cost a staggering 240 Dukes.
But a split second later, his grin returned. It didn't matter! The very first house they had scavenged this morning was still sitting on a small box containing over a dozen solid gold bars. That hoard would yield more than enough currency to purchase a lifetime supply of honey.
Still locked in his embrace, Erina had absolutely no idea what had triggered his sudden outburst. Dazed and blushing furiously, she cupped her marked cheek, staring at his ecstatic expression in complete bewilderment. She couldn't wrap her head around how his emotions could swing so violently from grim despair to sheer euphoria.
Noticing her utter confusion, Li Ke laughed and kissed her cheek a second time.
"We're saved, Erina! If this interface is real, we're actually going to survive! We don't have to turn into those rotting monsters!"
"Huh?"
Erina blinked, her mind completely blank. She hadn't seen the digital text hovering in the air, leaving her totally in the dark about what he was celebrating.
Looking into her clueless eyes, a sudden, terrifying thought crossed Li Ke's mind.
Wait. Honey works on me because I have the game system... but what if game logic doesn't apply to her? What if she turns anyway?
Anxious to find a loophole, Li Ke's eyes darted toward the horizontal row of master tabs running across the very top of his HUD:
[Crafting]
[Character]
[Map]
[Skills]
[Quests]
[Journal]
[Players]
[Creative]
He quickly began tapping through them one by one, desperate to find a way to bridge the gap.
The Crafting tab opened a completely blank, hollow blueprint frame. Character simply brought up his standard inventory grid. But as he tried to access the deeper system functionalities, things began to go wrong.
The moment he clicked on the Map tab, a glaring crimson error notification popped up:
[Permission Denied.]
Shifting his focus to the Skills tab yielded the exact same result—another prompt informing him his clearance was insufficient. The Journal section was locked down just as tightly. The only menu that actually responded to his mental command was the Players tab, which expanded into a sleek, spreadsheet-like data interface.
[Li Ke]: Level 1, Gamestage 1, Party: None, Allies: None, Zombie Kills: 12, Player Kills: 0.
[Erina Nakiri]: Level 0, Gamestage 0, Party: None, Allies: None, Zombie Kills: 0, Player Kills: 0.
Level zero? Is it because she hasn't personally killed any undead yet?
Li Ke studied her entry, attempting to click the 'Invite to Party' icon next to her name, but the button remained entirely grayed out and unresponsive.
Closing the dashboard, he kept the active aura of the system humming in his vision. He locked his gaze onto Erina. Under her deeply confused and intensely bashful stare, he focused his consciousness entirely on her person and mentally simulated a 'Long Press E' command.
The next instant, a massive system prompt erupted in the center of his vision:
[Would you like to expend 11,240 Experience Points to awaken Erina Nakiri as a Player?]
A massive, triumphant smile spread across Li Ke's face. He leaned in and kissed her cheek a third time, his adrenaline-fueled euphoria making him completely oblivious to the absolute emotional chaos he was inflicting on the teenage girl.
"Mr. Li Ke! Have you completely lost your mind?!" Erina squeaked, frantically covering her crimson face with both hands. She was thoroughly convinced his fever had finally cooked his brain.
"Long story short—it looks like we're actually going to live through this wasteland together!"
Li Ke laughed, pulling her back into a tight hug. This time, Erina didn't have the strength to fight him off, though her flushed face twisted into a deeply judgy, thoroughly unimpressed grimace.
"W-Who would ever want to live with you?!" Erina stammered, her voice shaking as her thoughts descended into total chaos.
Back in her old life, she had occasionally fantasized about her ideal partner. Naturally, she had always assumed he would be a legendary chef—a culinary genius capable of creating a masterpiece sublime enough to finally break the curse of her "God's Tongue."
Yet, facing the harsh light of the apocalypse, a strange realization began to take root. Even if her curse were never broken, spending the rest of her days by Li Ke's side didn't sound entirely terrible. After all, cold canned spam drenched in raw honey wasn't completely inedible... right? She just needed to adapt!
Yes, exactly. In a lawless wasteland like this, the proud Erina Nakiri was more than capable of adapting to survive!
"Anyway, come outside with me for a second!" Li Ke called out, completely missing her internal crisis as he scooped the scattered Dukes off the counter. The brass coins vanished directly into his digital inventory grid. He grabbed her hand, practically dragging her out of the trailer. "Erina, I need you to personally take down a few zombies so we can verify a theory!"
If solid gold bars could be liquidated for immediate cash, and the trader's store catalog was packed with elite survival gear, it meant they could scrap almost anything in this town to make a profit.
However, as they crossed the threshold of the safe zone and stepped back out onto the dirt road, a lingering question nagged at the back of his mind.
Wait... do I really not have a custom, overpowered cheat code of my own?
This "Player System" was clearly built into the fabric of this survival world itself. If it weren't, the interface wouldn't have given him a prompt to unlock her status using raw experience points. While one could argue that his ability to "awaken" other transmigrators was his unique ability, it still felt heavily tied to the sandbox game rules of this reality.
Did that mean that as far as transmigrators went, he was just a regular, run-of-the-mill nobody?
"Well, that's incredibly depressing," he muttered under his breath.
Shaking off the mild disappointment, Li Ke quickly prioritized the task at hand. He led Erina in a dead sprint back toward the first house they had scavenged that morning.
Diving back through the broken entryway, he strode over to the table and focused his mind on the heavy lockbox. Click. The remaining gold bars dissolved out of physical reality, instantly neatly stacking themselves within his digital inventory.
Eager to maximize their haul, Li Ke frantically ran around the living room, trying to see what else the system would let him pocket. Unfortunately, the game mechanics proved rigid. When he tried to focus his interaction command on the massive fabric sofa or the heavy refrigerator, nothing happened. The environment remained anchored to the floorboards.
However, when he aimed his mental cursor at a stray metal folding chair leaning against the wall and a decorative clay flowerpot sitting on the windowsill, the system rewarded him with a clean ping. Both items vanished instantly into his grid.
To his further disappointment, there were no glowing treasure chests or loot crates waiting to be uninstalled from the environment. Whether it was a wardrobe or a kitchen counter, no matter how hard he focused on the mental command to interact with them, the objects remained entirely inert.
By this point, the initial paralyzing fear of the undead had completely evaporated from Li Ke's mind. As they moved through the structure, he laid out every single discovery to Erina, walking her through the internal logic of their new reality.
"So, what you're saying is... we've been thrown into a literal video game world?" Erina asked, raising a trembling hand to her forehead as she tried to digest the information. "And as long as we perform actions that align with the game's mechanics, we can unlock actual player abilities? And that raw honey we found... it's a literal antidote designed to purge the infection from our bodies?"
She let out a long, ragged breath, her eyes locking onto his. "Does this mean... neither of us has to die? We can actually survive this?"
A surge of profound relief rushed through her chest, though it was still heavily laced with anxiety. It was one thing to witness the impossible—like watching solid brass tokens vanish into thin air, or seeing a terrifyingly frozen merchant woman, or watching steel shutter doors slide open without a human hand touching them. But until she personally felt that digital power flowing through her own veins, a part of her still struggled to fully believe it.
"Exactly," Li Ke agreed, nodding firmly. "But just to be absolutely safe, we need to officially initiate your status as a player first. Until your system is active, I can't guarantee the game's anti-viral mechanics will work properly on your body."
He could still feel the lingering heat of the fever pulsing beneath his skin. The newly unlocked character panel hadn't instantly cured his physical symptoms, making it even more vital to confirm whether this system was a tangible reality or the final, elaborate delusion of a dying mind.
"Which means... you're going out there to hunt those monsters?" Erina's voice dipped, a clear note of worry cutting through her resolve. Even though she had spent the morning steeling her heart for violence, the thought of him deliberately seeking out those decaying creatures made her stomach twist.
"Yeah. Think about it—if this system is real, the threat of a permanent zombie infection is completely off the table. And without that looming death sentence, these monsters stop being terrifying predators. As long as we don't pick fights under the moonlight or let ourselves get backed into a blind corner, the infected are nothing but raw experience points waiting to be harvested. There's no reason to stress. Besides, triggering your player awakening doesn't even require that much EXP. It was only... wait, how much was it again?"
Li Ke placed a comforting hand on her shoulder, attempting to reassure the flustered girl. To double-check the exact numbers, he mentally summoned the player roster menu once more, focusing his consciousness on her form to execute the long-press command.
However, his first mental prompt met a strange wall of latency. Confused by the lack of an immediate menu pop-up, Li Ke rapidly spammed the interaction command in his mind, executing a frantic sequence of rapid-fire clicks directly at Erina.
The next microsecond, a blinding system glitch rippled across reality.
With a sharp, digital snap, every single thread of fabric covering Erina's body vanished into thin air. Her winter coat, her tailored school uniform shirt, her pleated skirt, her dark socks, and her leather boots dissolved instantly out of physical existence.
"Huh?"
A breathtaking, once-in-a-lifetime sight appeared before Li Ke's eyes. In an instant, every piece of clothing — her elegant top, skirt, shoes, and even her socks — disappeared without a trace under the effect of his repeated mental "E" command.
His hand, which had been resting on her shoulder, suddenly made direct contact with skin as smooth and soft as the finest silk. His gaze greedily drank in the stunning view: her large, perfectly shaped snow-white breasts that defied gravity, standing proud and full with a beautiful, natural bounce. The cute, delicate pink nipples atop those magnificent mounds were stiff from the sudden exposure to cool air.
Lower down, beneath a sparse, elegant patch of soft golden pubic hair that looked like a neatly trimmed wheat field, hid her pretty pink pussy — the delicate folds slightly glistening under the light.
"Amazing… they're not sagging at all… As expected of…"
He muttered unconsciously, completely captivated.
Erina finally sensed something was wrong. She looked down at her own body, then at Li Ke, whose eyes were shamelessly locked onto her exposed chest. The next second, a sharp, high-pitched scream escaped her lips.
"Li Ke!!"
In a panic, Erina hurriedly covered her breasts with one arm, her delicate hand sinking deep into the soft, overflowing flesh of her massive tits. The adorable pink nipples disappeared from Li Ke's view, completely buried beneath her fingers. At the same time, her other hand shot down between her thighs, desperately covering her golden pubic mound, while she tightly pressed her smooth legs together, trying to hide her most private pink slit from his hungry stare.
"What on earth do you think you're doing?!"
Erina practically lost all semblance of rationality. The sheer shock of the situation was entirely too much for her mind to process! It was one thing to tolerate erratic hand-holding or emotional hugs given the apocalyptic circumstances, but this crossed a massive line!
"Uh, sorry! I completely messed up the interface commands..."
Li Ke hurriedly spun around to give her privacy. Accessing his digital inventory grid, he immediately selected her missing gear. With a faint digital shimmer, her items spawned onto the floorboards inside a standard burlap drop-sack. He manually tore the canvas open and held it out behind his back to the crimson-faced girl.
"Here are your clothes! I swear to God I didn't mean to do that!"
Even with his back turned, Li Ke couldn't entirely wipe the vivid image from his mind. Yet, his practical brain didn't linger on her physical beauty—instead, his thoughts locked onto the terrifying tactical implications of his newly discovered "skill."
If I had dropped into a normal medieval fantasy world with this ability, it would be completely broken, wouldn't it?
He began mentally theory-crafting the utility of an instant, long-range unequip command. In a regular society, it was a tool for absolute social execution or flawless, undetected espionage. But on a literal battlefield? If a heavily armored knight or an elite warrior charged him in a duel, he could strip them entirely bare of their plate armor and weapons in a single microsecond!
What a terrifying, god-tier capability!
"This is basically a divine superpower... It's just a shame it's practically useless against mindless zombies," Li Ke muttered to his open palms, completely lost in his own thoughts. "If I had been transmigrated into a historical era of swords and shields, I could have used this exact glitch to become a legendary hero immortalized in the history books..."
He voiced the thought with total sincerity. As for getting worked up over Erina's exposed figure right now?
Indulging in those kinds of thoughts in a zombie wasteland would only distract him and bring unnecessary frustration. He glanced down at his own hands, which were already caked in dirt, calloused from swinging tools, and marred by a scabbed zombie scratch.
If they were going to survive long enough to build a real life together out here, he couldn't afford to let raw impulses ruin their partnership. He didn't want to force or rush anything with the only other living human around. They were going to rely on each other for a very long time, and fracturing their trust over a UI glitch would be a death sentence.
Erina, meanwhile, was absolutely furious. While her reliance on him had blossomed into a fragile, unspoken layer of affection, that baseline appreciation absolutely did not authorize him to strip her bare!
But as she sat there, frantically pulling her uniform back on, she overheard his quiet, clinical self-muttering. Realizing he was literally standing there analyzing the military combat efficiency of her missing clothes instead of panicking or apologizing like a normal guy, a wave of sheer, unadulterated embarrassment-turned-rage erupted in her chest!
"You utter jerk! What is wrong with your brain?!" her voice cracked, her cheeks burning a violent shade of pink. "How can you be calculating tactical theories at a time like this?! Jerk, jerk, jerk! You absolute idiot!"
Furious, Erina marched up and began aggressively kicking Li Ke in the shin. But before he could even wince, a low, curdling zombie roar echoed from right outside the house.
The sound instantly froze Erina in her tracks. Her anger evaporated, replaced by an immediate chill of panic. She scrambled to snatch Li Ke's fire axes off the floor, thrusting one directly into his hand.
"Li Ke!" she whispered, her eyes wide with terror as she realized her earlier glass-shattering shriek had traveled right through the broken windows. "I... I think I just made a huge mistake!"