Yang Yi barely slept during the second half of the night.
When dawn finally arrived, he simply got up and tossed the few rotten bones from under the mattress beneath the bed.
After all this time, the captain's skeleton should be completely dead by now.
After one night, Yang Yi looked like a different person.
His face was pale, heavy dark circles hung under his eyes, and his eyes were filled with bloodshot veins.
The moment he stepped out of the captain's room, he noticed something new on the bow deck.
A statue.
It was a cartoonish octopus monster with wings, squatting on a rock.
"What is this…?"
At the same moment, a system announcement appeared in the log.
[Last night, a total of 13,000 players successfully killed Aberrations.Among them, one player even achieved an astonishing double kill!]
[The system will reward you with a special talent based on your performance.]
[At the same time, the Monster Gacha Machine is now unlocked.You may insert monster corpse materials into the machine to receive gacha rewards. The corpses will then be forcibly recycled.
However, please do not throw random trash into the gacha machine.And do NOT insert living creatures. Doing so will anger the machine.]
The world chat immediately exploded.
"Wait, there are monsters in this world? What do they look like? Has anyone seen them?"
"Send me back! I'll give you anything!"
"There's actually a talent reward? D*mn it!A skeleton knocked on my door last night but I didn't open it. If I had known, I would've fought it!"
"If you had opened it, you might've died."
"Monster Gacha Machine? Has anyone found one?"
"I did! Mine's on the bow deck. It's a big-faced cat—kinda cute."
"Mine's in the cabin. It looks like a cartoon robot!"
"D*mn it, mine's a clown… almost scared me to death sitting in the captain's room!"
"Wait… are they all different?"
Yang Yi turned to look at his own gacha machine.
A cartoon octopus creature with its huge mouth wide open, as if begging for food. Its lips were covered in writhing tentacles.
[Reward granted.You obtained Talent: ????]
[Unlock Condition: ????Progress: 0 / 3]
"What the hell is this?"
It even needed to be unlocked?
What a scam!
Yang Yi opened the chat channel again.
Many others were asking the same question.
Why did the gifted talent still require unlocking?
Everyone's unlock conditions were different.
Some needed tens of thousands or even millions of actions. Others required only dozens.
Yang Yi only needed three.
That was extremely low compared to most.
Soon someone discovered their unlock condition.
"Mine is walking—I need to walk 100,000 steps. What a scam!"
"You're lucky. Mine is breathing 3 million times… guess I'll unlock it eventually."
"At least you have a goal. Mine just says 0/100. No clue what that means."
"Maybe survive 100 days?"
"This system… if you don't want to give us talents, just don't!"
Yang Yi looked at his 0/3, shook his head, and decided not to worry about it for now.
Instead, he went into the cabin to exchange the monster corpses for gacha rewards.
The captain's skeleton couldn't be used—there was only one.
So he took the severed hand of the Drowned One and tossed it into the octopus gacha machine.
The moment it went in, the octopus machine's eyes lit up bright red.
The tentacles beneath its chin began cycling through colors like glowing ribbons.
Yang Yi turned the dial on its chest, and the sound of capsules rattling echoed inside.
The atmosphere was completely over the top.
"What terrible taste," Yang Yi commented.
Soon, a glowing orb rolled out.
When he picked it up, it transformed into a dark blue potion.
[Name: Resentment of the Drowned One]
[Type: Consumable]
[Quality: Fine]
[Description:After consumption, Sanity −20.For one minute, you will be treated as a Drowned One and will not be actively attacked by low-level Aberrations.]
Yang Yi's eyes lit up.
This was actually a pretty good life-saving item.
In a survival game, items like this were extremely valuable.
Meanwhile, the world chat was buzzing with people showing off their gacha rewards.
"I got a token!"
[Name: Bone Token]
[Type: Relic]
[Quality: Excellent]
[Description:Summons a skeleton to fight for you for 15 minutes.After the time expires, it will lose control and attack the summoner.
Cooldown: 24 hours.
You should make sure you can defeat the skeleton before using it.]
"That's insanely strong! Sell it to me! I'll pay a hundred million!"
"What's the point of money? You need Shell Coins here.And there's no trading system unless you meet in person."
"How about this dagger?"
[Name: Serrated Dagger]
[Type: Treasure]
[Quality: Excellent]
[Description:A sharp dagger with a comfortable grip.Deals minor damage.
Its only flaw is that… it's short.]
"Well, now we all know you're short."
"I wouldn't take that weapon even if you paid me. Too embarrassing!"
"…"
Many players were showing their gacha loot, but excellent-quality items were rare.
Only those two appeared so far. Most others were merely fine-quality.
Generally speaking, relics had stronger effects than treasures—but they often reduced sanity and sometimes had side effects.
Yang Yi's rusted flintlock pistol dealt moderate damage, while most excellent weapons only dealt minor damage.
It was far stronger than them.
But it had heavy limitations.
One shot per minute.
Frequent misfires.
Sanity cost.
A form of balancing, perhaps.
Yang Yi withdrew his attention and swallowed half a Long-Legged Sardine.
He was starving.
And after last night's battle, he cared far less about the risks.
To survive, none of that mattered.
[You ate a Long-Legged Sardine raw. Sanity −2]
The fish had started to spoil slightly, but fortunately it hadn't rotted yet.
It provided energy and a little moisture.
Yang Yi finished the entire sardine before finally feeling a bit full.
Then he checked his status.
After resting overnight, both stamina and sanity had recovered somewhat. But because of the nightmare and insomnia, the recovery was poor.
His wounds hadn't healed either.
He wondered if they might get infected.
Yang Yi
Status: Injured
Sanity: 74 / 100Stamina: 52 / 100Health: 83 / 100
He went down into the cabin.
Today's top priority was building noise traps.
These Aberrations weren't very intelligent, so the traps didn't need to be well hidden.
Using the simple crafting system, he made several long ropes, punched holes into thin wooden boards, and strung them together.
Wood was easy to obtain.
In this game, wood could be shaped into any cube form. One unit was roughly a 10-centimeter wooden block.
After finishing the strings, he tied knots between the boards and hung them along the corridor outside the captain's room and on the door.
He tested them.
The sound produced by wind movement and someone bumping into them was quite different.
Good enough as a warning system.
By the time he finished, the entire morning had passed.
The wood and cloth he had gathered earlier were completely used up.
Yang Yi wasn't in a hurry to gather more.
The real priority now was fresh water.
He needed to fish more and keep watch for floating resources or treasure chests.
Just as he was thinking about it, Yang Yi suddenly felt something wrong with his body.
He felt hot.
His face was burning.
His stomach hurt.
He immediately became alert and checked his status again.
Yang Yi
Status: Injured / Corpse Poison Infection (Minor) / Food Poisoning (Minor – Diarrhea)(The entire body indicator had turned yellow, with darker yellow at the wound sites.)
"D*mn it…"
The situation Yang Yi feared the most had finally happened.
The Drowned One carried corpse poison.
And he had been infected.
But out here on the open sea, he had no medicine at all…