"Actually, your timing is absolutely perfect," Li Ke said, a cold grin flashing across his face.
But that confidence instantly evaporated the moment his eyes locked onto the front entrance.
It wasn't just one or two wandering stragglers waiting outside. A dense, suffocating wall of flesh was pressing toward the structure—there had to be at least several dozen zombies packing the front yard.
"Okay... yeah. We are definitely having a serious chat about your little mistake later."
Despite the overwhelming numbers, Li Ke didn't let panic paralyze him. Unlike the hyper-aggressive, lightning-fast monsters that had haunted the night hours, these daytime zombies were still bound by the rigid laws of the sun. They shuffled forward at a sluggish, agonizingly predictable walking pace.
More importantly, the architecture of the house gave them a massive tactical advantage. The layout forced the undead into a single, narrow entry lane: the front door.
"Come and get it..."
Li Ke took a deep, steady breath. As long as he held the threshold and kept his composure, he wouldn't have to fight a massive crowd all at once. He would only ever have to square off against one single zombie at a time.
The only real wild card was the flimsy construction of these American suburban homes. Built mostly from light wooden framing and drywall, the structure lacked serious durability. He was genuinely worried the rotting walls wouldn't hold up under the weight of the crowd.
Right on cue, his fears materialized. With a series of violent, splintering crashes, multiple decaying arms punched straight through the glass windowpanes, wooden shutters and drywall, flailing wildly into the living room.
Then, proving that game logic reigned supreme, the monsters began doing something that separated them from standard cinematic zombies: they started actively climbing over the frames.
He had noticed this climbing behavior during the chaotic midnight wolf brawl, but he hadn't expected these slow-moving daytime variations to possess the exact same terrain-scaling programming.
Watching the horde split their forces between the breached windows and the main door, Li Ke gritted his teeth and called out over his shoulder.
"Erina! You hold the windows! I've got the front door! If your line gets overwhelmed, yell out immediately and we fall back to the RV!"
Without waiting for a reply, Li Ke charged the entrance. He swung his fire axe in a vicious downward arc, burying the heavy iron blade directly into the skull of the first zombie stumbling across the threshold.
The creature's semi-decayed skull offered little resistance, splitting open instantly. It was clear this specific specimen was a low-tier construct; its tattered clothes hung off a heavily rotted frame, causing it to collapse into a heap immediately.
Sensing the tactical momentum, Li Ke didn't hesitate. He dropped the axe handle, whipped his heavy iron hammer from his belt, and smashed it squarely into the forehead of the next encroaching monster. The blunt-force trauma sent the second zombie crashing backward into the doorway, creating a temporary roadblock that tripped up the creatures crowding behind it.
Taking advantage of the traffic jam, Li Ke planted his boot firmly onto the first fallen zombie's head to stabilize himself. Wrenching his fire axe free from the splintered skull, he brought it down with everything he had onto the forehead of the tripped attacker, permanently silencing it.
Seizing the microsecond of breathing room before the next wave pushed through the bottleneck, Li Ke swiveled his head to check on Erina's position.
He had fully expected Erina to freeze or hesitate in a panic. Instead, what met his eyes was a spectacle that left him utterly shell-shocked. Facing a zombie that was actively shoving its head through the window frame to crawl inside, Erina maintained a textbook-perfect stance. She swung her fire axe with flawless form, delivering a clean, merciless strike right to the creature's neck.
With a sickening crunch, the zombie's head was severed instantly, sending its body tumbling back outside.
But she didn't stop there. With a fluid transition, she used her other hand to drive a kitchen knife into a second encroaching zombie. With a swift, practiced motion, she disabled the creature. A surge of dark fluid followed the strike, yet with remarkable precision, she managed to keep herself completely clean.
With a final, sharp movement, she freed her blade, and the second zombie collapsed, no longer a threat.
Li Ke stood frozen for a moment. This seamless execution and lack of wasted motion—even in the heat of a desperate struggle—showed a level of skill that left him completely floored.
A clumsy swipe from another zombie snapped him back to reality. He narrowly dodged the lunge and brought his axe down in a heavy counter-strike, neutralizing the threat, though the impact sent a spray of dark fluid across his own clothes.
Noticing his stunned expression, Erina's face flushed. She called out, "What are you looking at?! Pay attention! I am a professional chef! Of course I understand how to handle a blade!"
Of course...
Li Ke felt the heavy ache settling into his own tired arms. He looked back at Erina, who had already found a rhythm, efficiently handling several more threats with her axe without showing signs of exhaustion.
A realization took hold in his mind.
This girl... her combat ability is actually higher than mine.
Whether it was speed, agility, or the precision of her strikes, her movements outclassed his own untrained efforts. While it was clear she was still frightened, her physical capability was undeniable.
Li Ke initially found it surprising, but he quickly understood why.
Erina Nakiri might be a sheltered heiress, but she was also an elite chef.
She spent her life mastering the use of knives and handling heavy kitchen equipment. In a world where people rarely handle cold weapons, a chef's daily training in butchery and precise cutting translates surprisingly well to this kind of defense.
A chef as a weapon master? Li Ke was struck by the irony of the thought.
As more zombies entered his range, he pushed the thought aside and focused. He swung his axe again, neutralizing the next threat with a heavy blow. He took a few ragged breaths, feeling the weight of the struggle as he prepared for the next wave.
Even if these creatures were decaying, swinging a heavy fire axe and an iron hammer was brutal, bone-deep cardio. For a wounded, out-of-shape desk worker like him, his physical stamina was practically non-existent.
"I can't let myself get totally outclassed here!" Li Ke grunted.
Taking a microsecond to steady his breathing, he hoisted his axe once more and cleaved into another incoming zombie. He rolled his stiff shoulders, executing a quick follow-up strike to crush its skull on the floor before it could twitch.
Having a bit of breathing room now, a sudden thought struck him. He focused his mind, summoning the semi-transparent game interface right back into his field of vision. He needed to calculate exactly how much experience points a single daytime kill provided.
The instant his HUD booted up, Li Ke stepped forward and buried his axe straight into the crown of the next zombie's skull. The creature instantly dropped dead, and a crisp text notification flashed across the edge of his vision:
[EXP +1250]
At the bottom of his view, the purple progress bar surged forward noticeably, leaving him just a hair's breadth away from hitting Level 2.
Twelve hundred and fifty? That means cutting down just nine zombies is enough to harvest the eleven thousand experience points I need to awaken Erina! Wait... actually, it's even less than that, because she already has... huh?
Li Ke glanced back over his shoulder toward the windows, and his brain completely stalled.
In the brief window of time he had spent running his calculations, a mountain of over a dozen severed zombie heads had already piled up around Erina's boots. Yet, she was still standing tall—not a single hair out of place, completely catching her breath, and miraculously free of any biological stains.
The undead possessed a rudimentary pathfinding intelligence; they would actively claw and drag the corpses of their fallen comrades out of the way to clear a path forward.
But their AI scripting was rigidly simple. They continued to blindly shove their heads through the breach one by one, desperately trying to scramble their stiff limbs over the windowsill. It was a tactical disaster for them, essentially handing Erina a continuous loop of effortless, stationary decapitations.
Because the incoming infected were actively clearing the bottleneck for her, that broken window frame had effectively been converted into a hyper-efficient, fully automated zombie guillotine.
Seriously, with a combat efficiency like this, how on earth did you manage to get chased down the street by just three zombies earlier?!
Staring at the absolute carnage she was unleashing, Li Ke found himself thoroughly bewildered. With this level of sheer martial prowess, forget about zombies—if he ever tried to pull any untoward light-novel moves on her, she would probably cleave him in half before he could even apologize.
How does a slender, delicate frame like that pack that much raw kinetic horsepower?
Glancing at her pale, elegant arms, Li Ke simply couldn't map the physics of it. But he didn't have the luxury to ponder it for long; another growl pulled his attention back to his own station.
Thanks to Erina running her high-speed window execution line, the pressure on Li Ke's front door choke point was incredibly manageable. Unfortunately, the monsters crowding the front porch didn't possess the civilized virtue of waiting in a single-file line. Driven into a frenzy, they began violently slamming their decaying arms against the exterior drywall, shuffling in erratic circles around the house as they desperately path-found for an alternate way inside.
Just as Li Ke took down another zombie, a decaying arm with exposed bone punched violently through the drywall right next to the doorframe. The rotting wood splintered under the impact, further compromising their already battered doorway.
The wall hadn't completely breached yet, but it served as a stark reminder: these wooden suburban houses were completely useless as long-term bastions. If they wanted a base capable of surviving this apocalypse, reinforced iron and thick concrete were non-negotiable.
Still, facing the monsters frantically trying to squeeze through the narrowing gap, Li Ke forced his aching muscles to move. He swung his axe, splitting another skull wide open.
I can't even guarantee this world doesn't have specialized variants, he thought grimly. What if there are entities capable of digging straight through solid concrete, or tanky monsters completely immune to gunfire?
Everything was still a guessing game. He had seen firearms and ammunition listed in Trader Jen's catalog, which meant getting your hands on guns wasn't an impossible feat. But that raised a terrifying question.
Would a survival game ever give you guns without scaling up the danger?
Holding onto his skepticism, Li Ke kept mechanically swinging his weapon.
Then, as the next infected collapsed into the dirt, a sharp chime resonated in his mind. He had officially leveled up.
Yet, there was no magical burst of energy. His stamina bar didn't instantly refill, his health didn't replenish, and his negative status effects weren't cleared. His body remained thoroughly exhausted, feverish, and starving. Li Ke had no idea what hitting Level 2 actually accomplished, but he didn't have the luxury to browse his stats right now.
He and Erina kept running their brutal execution lines until, finally, the last straggler wobbled and crashed heavily to the floorboards. Silence fell over the ruined house.
His arms were burning with lactic acid, to the point where he could barely maintain his grip on the axe handle. Turning to face Erina, who was finally showing signs of physical fatigue, he gestured toward the pile of bodies.
"Should we find a cleaner spot, or do you want to rest here for a minute?"
Erina shook her head in sheer disgust. As her breathing slowed, her face suddenly turned deathly pale.
The overwhelming stench of putrid blood and decaying flesh hit her all at once, sending her stomach into a violent spin. Waving a hand dismissively, she immediately turned on her heel and sprinted toward the rear exit.
During the hyper-focus of the battle, her brain had completely tuned out the horror. But now that the adrenaline was fading, the reality of the carnage she had unleashed—and the suffocating odor surrounding them—was entirely too much to bear.
Li Ke wasn't thrilled about loitering in a slaughterhouse either. He had only suggested staying because his body was screaming for rest, and moving while drained increased the risk of getting ambushed. But since Erina was already fleeing the stench, he followed her lead.
He caught up with her as she reached the back door. But just as they were about to step across the threshold into the yard, Erina suddenly froze like a statue.
Li Ke opened his mouth to ask what was wrong, but the words died in his throat. Right before his eyes, the back door—completely untouched by either of them—snapped wide open on its hinges.
"Oh? Looks like you officially unlocked the system too."
Even though he had been actively planning to spend his own experience points to awaken her later, seeing the player system automatically initialize within her after she slaughtered that many zombies left him with a complex mix of emotions. He felt deeply relieved that she was safe, but a small, irrational part of him felt a strange sense of loss.
"Yes... I can see it," Erina whispered, her expression a mix of awe and profound existential dread. As her mind wrestled with reality, the back door rapidly clicked open and shut several times in response to her frantic mental inputs, making the scene look like a classic ghost movie.
"Don't overthink it. This interface is the only thing that's going to keep us alive out here," Li Ke said.
He instinctively reached out, wanting to pat the proud heiress on the head to comfort her, but he caught sight of the dark, coagulated fluid coating his knuckles and quietly dropped his hand back to his side.
"Oh, by the way—check your character status panel to see if you have a treated infection or anything similar," Li Ke reminded her. "Just focus on the concept of hitting the 'B' key in your mind, same way you handle the doors."
Erina followed his instructions, focusing her thoughts until her system overlay materialized. After a moment of careful reading, she shook her head.
"No. Aside from a 'Treated Abrasion,' 'Hunger,' and 'Thirst,' I don't have any other negative status effects."
"Ah... well, that's just fantastic."
Li Ke's mouth twitched. He had fully assumed they were in the exact same boat, but Erina hadn't even contracted the virus.
Wait, she was definitely showing signs of a fever and a headache earlier. Does that mean her baseline immune system is just that much stronger than mine?
The realization left him completely speechless, though it made perfect sense when he actually thought about it. She spent every day of her life consuming world-class, nutrient-dense gourmet cuisine, maintained a disciplined training routine, and literally had a personal assistant dedicated to crafting flawless medicinal tonics for her. Meanwhile, he survived on cheap, greasy takeout, practically lived in a dark office cubicle working forced overtime, and went weeks without seeing a single ray of actual sunlight.
It would be a medical miracle if his physical conditioning were anywhere near hers!
"Well, it looks like you don't have to stress about the ticking clock like I do," Li Ke said, flashing her a weary, self-deprecating smile as he turned and stepped out into the yard.
Erina couldn't quite fathom why his shoulders suddenly looked a bit slumped, but she quickly hurried to keep pace with him.
"Hey, pervy mister! Do you think... do you think we'll ever be able to go back home?"
Erina clutched a fistful of his heavy winter coat. Despite personally severing over a dozen zombie heads, her hands remained flawlessly clean—a stark contrast to Li Ke, whose knuckles were completely caked in dark fluid and grime.
Li Ke fished a few tattered rags out of his pockets and began roughly scrubbing the gore off his hands, shaking his head grimly.
"Honestly, I have no clue. No one knows what kind of entity dropped us into this wasteland or what their endgame is. If this is some sick cosmic trial, maybe we'll get a prompt to leave once we beat the game. Then again, we might be trapped here forever... And what's with the 'pervy mister' title? I'm not even close to being old enough for you to call me a mister!"
"Because you are a massive perv!" Erina retorted, sticking her cute, pink tongue out at him. But the sudden draft of putrid, zombie-scented air hit her tastebuds, forcing her to instantly retract it with a gag. "Stripping all my clothes off was bad enough, but then you went right ahead and did... that to that terrifying merchant woman!"
The mere memory of Li Ke boldly grabbing Trader Jen's tattered coat made a sudden surge of irrational anger flare up in her chest.
Though deep down, she had absolutely no idea why she was feeling so jealous.