Once dinner was finished, Li Ke trotted into the tree line to fell a few more massive oaks. Armed with a healthy stack of generic Wood, he began snapping Wood Frame blocks into place all along the outer chassis of the RV. Since his system recipes implicitly stated that a Stone Axe was capable of material upgrades, he experimentally messed with his mouse commands until he easily cracked the logic.
Specifically, it required a Right-Click.
Upgrading a hollow Wood Frame into a solid, reinforced wooden block consumed exactly eight units of Wood and boosted its structural health to a respectable 500 HP. Curious to see how far the engineering rabbit hole went, Li Ke cued up another upgrade, only to be met by a prompt requiring a new material: [Cobblestone Rocks]. According to his recipe index, synthesizing cobblestone required a blend of Stone and raw Clay.
After a moment of quick calculation, Li Ke cued a primitive Stone Shovel into production. He stepped out to a patch of dirt and experimentally slammed the blade into the ground. A split second later, a structural health bar erupted directly from the earth, accompanied by a crisp UI loot notification:
[Clay Soil +15]
He delivered two more quick, mechanical scoops, and with a soft pop, a massive, pixelated crater yawned open in the dirt. Li Ke stared down into the deep trench—which was easily a meter wide and a meter deep—and scratched his head in sheer disbelief.
"Well... talk about user-friendly mechanics."
He had literally only swung the shovel three times, and the system engine had aggressively hollowed out a massive pit. Honestly, it left him a bit stunned, but it solidified one crucial reality: surviving this apocalypse wasn't going to be an impossible nightmare as long as he relied on game logic and didn't pull any suicidal stunts.
Li Ke pulled up his crafting queue to manufacture ten Cobblestone Rocks. He would have pushed for a larger batch, but their afternoon haul had completely depleted his supply of Stone. Targeting a 500-HP reinforced wood block, he mentally executed the upgrade command. With a clean digital flash, the wooden slats smoothly transformed into a thick, rock-solid wall built entirely from heavy brick mason blocks.
He delivered a soft, experimental tap with his Stone Axe to inspect the numerical properties:
[1457 / 1500 HP]
"The durability tripled!"
Li Ke was thoroughly ecstatic. But the moment he tried to push the wall into its next material tier, a familiar flashing prompt shut him down, stating he lacked the necessary resources. The engine required [Cement] for the final stage of fortification.
The cement requirement gave Li Ke a massive headache. Unlike basic rocks and clay, raw cement couldn't be hand-crafted in the field; it required a heavy, industrial [Cement Mixer], which was a specialized station locked strictly behind the Workbench tech tree. The rigid progression gate was incredibly frustrating.
"Looks like I'm officially doomed to a glamorous career as a full-time miner tomorrow," he muttered, casting a long look at the darkening sky.
Realizing the light was failing, he abandoned his manual labor chores for the evening. Over by the fire pit, Erina had already safely put out the campfire. She was currently helping him out by utilizing her own Stone Axe to upgrade the remaining perimeter frames into solid wood planks.
They had successfully ringed the entire RV in a protective wooden stockade, complete with a basic system-fabricated Wooden Door to ensure a clean point of entry and exit. After all, once a Wood Frame was upgraded into a physical block, it could no longer be vacuumed back into a player's inventory grid.
"Time for bed," Li Ke stretched his stiff shoulders, and the two of them stepped back through the reinforced chassis of the vehicle.
They retreated to their respective compartments to lock down for the night. Erina drifted off into a deep, peaceful slumber almost instantly, but Li Ke wasn't nearly as fortunate.
The lingering internal warmth triggered by her supernatural stew hadn't been depleted by his heavy carpentry work. If anything, the moment his body went still and lay flat on the mattress, the roaring, feverish heat pulsing through his core became impossible to ignore.
Granted, he was still running a baseline virus fever, but a distinct, intensely distracting physical reaction was inevitably settling in.
"Damn it..."
Li Ke sat up in the pitch-black room halfway through the night, burying his face in his hands with a weary groan. He literally couldn't sleep a single wink!
The intense, burning restlessness kept crashing over his senses, leaving him thoroughly at a loss.
Worse still, his hyper-fixated brain kept looping back to a highly specific, entirely realistic target—a companion in this world upon whom he could project his physical frustrations without triggering a single real-world consequence.
He wasn't thinking about Erina. Li Ke had absolutely zero intention of forcing any untoward advances on the teenage heiress; his long-term plan was to let a genuine, healthy affection blossom naturally between them over a sustained period of time.
Instead, his mind had locked completely onto the merchant woman.
Trader Jen's remarkably voluptuous contour, her heavy chest, and her undeniably striking figure made her a completely ideal subject. While her face couldn't hold a candle to Erina's peerless beauty, she possessed one massive, overriding advantage over any living human companion.
An NPC came with zero emotional baggage or complex relationship maintenance.
Erina was breathtakingly beautiful, and she was clearly beginning to rely on him psychologically. But to Li Ke, she was a true sister-in-arms, not an object. She was his partner, struggling alongside him to survive in this broken world.
"Am I seriously considering lowering my moral standards for an exploit?"
Li Ke stared at his palms in the dark. He had scrubbed them raw with clean water, but a phantom stench of putrid zombie blood still seemed to linger in his mind. Heaven only knew if a moment of self-indulgence might accidentally re-infect his system. If he ended up succumbing to the virus because of something that ridiculous, it would be the most embarrassing death sentence in history.
Ultimately, the relentless, burning restlessness proved entirely too much to bear. Groaning, he pulled the tattered blanket over his head, trying to suffocate the distracting thoughts.
What he didn't realize was that in the neighboring compartment, Erina was listening to his heavy, restless breathing, equally unable to sleep.
The human body is a fascinating, biologically driven machine. After surviving high-stakes life-or-death combat and enduring intense physical exertion, primal reproductive instincts naturally spike. Activities that trigger a massive surge of adrenaline fundamentally rewire your subconscious, screaming at your biology to preserve your lineage before it's too late.
Because of this, elite athletes and highly active individuals often experience a much higher baseline physical drive. Meanwhile, sedentary office drones who never push their limits or experience real danger rarely touch these raw, primal sensory extremes.
The heavy, restless night eventually dissolved into a series of vivid dreams. When Li Ke woke up, his mind was an absolute blur of the stolen kisses he had planted on Erina's cheek and the soft texture of Trader Jen's lab coat.
"Screw this world," he muttered, rolling out of bed feeling thoroughly exhausted and unrefreshed.
Desperate for a distraction, he stepped outside the RV into the crisp morning air to inspect their wooden stockade. He placed a single Wood Frame block onto the dirt and lightly hopped on top of it. Looking at the block, a classic trick utilized by every veteran sandbox building gamer back on Earth flashed across his mind.
He prepped his footing and leaped straight up into the air, pushing his vertical jump as close to a meter high as possible. At the exact apex of his leap, he targeted the space beneath his boots and mentally executed the placement command.
Snap.
With a clean mechanical thud, his feet landed solidly on top of a newly materialized second block, stacked perfectly on top of the first.
"No way... the jump-stacking exploit actually works out here!"
Li Ke's eyes lit up with tactical excitement. Mastering the classic tower-stacking mechanic opened up a world of gameplay advantages! Whether they needed to rapidly scale a sheer mountain cliffside or instantly elevate themselves out of a zombie's physical reach, they could just spam this exact sequence in a pinch.
"Which means getting onto that gas station roof is going to be infinitely easier than I thought!"
Buoyed by the discovery, Li Ke paced along the top of their reinforced perimeter fence, scanning the brush for any roaming infected or predatory wildlife. Fortunately, the morning was dead silent. A quick glance at the structural health bars confirmed that not a single wooden block had sustained damage during the night.
Right on cue, Erina stepped out from the RV's chassis, carefully carrying the metal kettle containing yesterday's leftover stew. Li Ke smoothly hopped down from the block tower and offered her a brief, reassuring nod.
"We'll finish breakfast and head straight into the main commercial sector to scavenge. Keep an eye out for short iron pipes, rolls of duct tape, and anything else that looks mechanically functional."
Erina raised no objections. Still sporting faint dark circles under her purplish-red eyes from her own sleepless night, she set about reheating the broth while listening closely as Li Ke explained his new physics discovery. The concept of instantly materializing structures mid-air to create floating platforms brought a rare, excited spark to her tired face.
But just as the two of them raised their spoons to take their very first bite, a piercing, blood-curdling feminine shriek violently shattered the morning silence.
The sound tore through the tree line from somewhere down the block. It was loud, desperate, and entirely agonizing.
And it didn't sound human.
Li Ke and Erina snapped into high alert instantly. Vaulting onto the wooden stockade fence, Li Ke scanned the road toward the source of the noise.
The moment he saw the entity, any hope of finding a living human survivor evaporated. Shuffling down the street was a scarred, deathly pale female zombie draped in tattered white fabric.
She looked identical to Sadako from the classic horror movie The Ring. One glance was all it took for Li Ke to realize she was a completely different beast altogether.
Locking her hollow, greedy eyes onto him, the creature opened her jaws and let out another glass-shattering, high-pitched shriek.
The next microsecond, a catastrophic chain reaction rippled through the abandoned town. The sounds of wooden doors splintering and windowpanes shattering erupted from multiple houses down the block. A dozen dormant zombies burst into the open, instantly locking onto their coordinates and charging down the road in a dead sprint.
It was an absolute rampage. Despite the bright, blinding sunlight, these monsters completely broke their daytime speed limits, tearing down the pavement like Usain Bolt on an adrenaline rush.
"Damn it!"
Li Ke didn't waste a single millisecond. He leaped down from the fence, a primitive Stone Spear materializing directly into his palm as he simultaneously pulled his Tier 4 steel fire axe from his digital inventory. Weapon in each hand, he charged straight out of their compound to intercept the source of the noise.
Within five seconds, he closed the distance to the Screamer zombie. Seeing her chest heave as she prepared to release another horde-summoning wail, Li Ke thrust his spear forward with everything he had. The stone tip drove straight through her gaping mouth, pinning her flailing body violently to the asphalt.
Dropping the spear shaft, Li Ke gripped his steel fire axe with both hands and brought it down in a brutal arc. The heavy blade embedded itself deep into her forehead, instantly crushing her brain. Her pale limbs went entirely limp.
But her death didn't abort the script she had initialized. The wave of sprinting infected didn't break their stride, continuing their terrifying charge down the center lane. They were less than a hundred meters away and closing fast!
Wrenching his axe free, Li Ke spun on his heel and bolted back toward their perimeter fence. But just as his boots hit the grass bordering their stockade, the front runners of the running horde had already closed the gap to a mere ten meters, their rotting fingers practically snapping at his back.
"Grab my hand!"
There was no time to pull off his vertical jump-stacking exploit, let alone manually cycle the wooden door open. Fortunately, Erina was already half-kneeling along the top of the stockade, her arm extended over the edge toward him.
Li Ke launched himself upward in a desperate leap, locking his fingers around Erina's grip while his other hand clawed for purchase along the wooden frame. Relying on her surprising, high-stamina strength, she hauled his weight up, allowing him to cleanly roll over the barrier just in time.
A split second later, a succession of heavy, violent impacts shook the wood as the sprinting zombies slammed full-force into the exterior of their base.
"Shit... so specialized variants really do exist out here," Li Ke panted, his chest heaving as his heart battered against his ribs. If those running monsters had managed to tackle him to the blacktop out in the open, his story would have ended right then and there. It wouldn't have been a simple infection countdown—he would have been torn to pieces and consumed on the spot.
Sprawled on top of the fence to catch his breath, a sickening sound of bone and decaying nails scraping aggressively against the lumber filtered up from below. Peeking over the ledge, he and Erina watched the zombies frantically clawing at the stockade blocks, with several already pathfinding toward their system-built wooden door.
But a closer look revealed a critical saving grace. The moment the creatures hit their perimeter wall, their movement scripting abruptly reset. The hyper-aggressive nocturnal sprint faded, and they reverted back to their sluggish, predictable daytime walking speed.
"Well... at least there's one piece of good news."
Taking a sharp, steadying breath, Li Ke rolled off the fence into the interior courtyard. Hoisting his steel axe, he unlatched their system-built wooden door. The moment the frame swung open, a female zombie was already clawing at the gap; Li Ke delivered a swift, vertical chop that split her skull wide open.
As putrid blood splattered across the dirt, Li Ke fluidly sidestepped to clear the lane. Erina moved into the opening instantly, her fire axe descending with textbook form to put down the next encroaching monster. Operating in a seamless, high-efficiency tag-team rhythm, the two of them systematically slaughtered every single infected trying to push through the door bottleneck. Once the entrance was clear, they marched out into the yard, executing the remaining stragglers who were still blindly scratching at the walls.
When the final zombie collapsed into an immobile heap, Li Ke let go of his weapons and collapsed flat onto the grass, panting heavily without a shred of dignity left. Erina, still miraculously free of any physical stains or respiratory fatigue, walked over and looked down at him, her purplish-red eyes clouded with genuine worry.
What the sheltered young heiress didn't realize, however, was that from his flat perspective on the lawn, the low-angle view offered a completely unhindered, crystal-clear line of sight right up her tattered skirt.
Li Ke froze for two solid seconds. The lingering, high-octane adrenaline rushing through his veins sent his thoughts racing into highly distracting territory. Terrified that his hyped-up state would push him into making a massive, relationship-ruining mistake, he violently ripped his gaze away. Pushing himself up into a seating position, he snatched his heavily chipped, dulled fire axe off the lawn and stared grimly toward the town center.
"We need to find firearms, and we need them fast," he said, his voice hard with urgency. "More importantly, we need to establish a strict watch rotation. Erina, hunker down in the RV is way too dangerous until we fully patch up the engine and tires. We need a permanent, fortified base with a proper watchtower, and a non-negotiable 24-hour guard schedule."
If he had possessed a functional rifle or submachine gun just minutes ago—and actually knew how to aim it—the entire encounter would have been a walk in the park. He could have sniped that pale female entity before her vocal cords could even warm up for a second shriek!
With proper firepower, he could have cleared that entire sprinting wave right from the safety of their perimeter fence.
And if someone had been active on sentry duty, the advantage would be even greater. The absolute microsecond that Sadako-looking monster drifted into their sector, they could have put a bullet through her skull before she even realized they were there.
"Right. I'll follow your lead," Erina nodded in total agreement. Li Ke's tactical breakdown was incredibly grounded; there was absolutely no room to argue with his logic.
After quickly forcing down the rest of their breakfast rations, the duo marched back out into the commercial sector. Li Ke navigated the streets with double the caution, keeping their footprints tight. Massive swaths of the local architecture remained completely unexplored. If another Screamer zombie blindsided them in a tight alley, they had no way of knowing if they would survive a second wave.
But before crossing into the danger zone, Li Ke utilized his system index to execute a few critical preparations.
Because they lacked bird feathers to manufacture arrows—and because neither of them possessed any real archery training—Li Ke skipped the wooden bow recipes entirely. However, his system blueprint notes explicitly stated that the primitive Stone Spear featured a dedicated throwing mechanic. Taking advantage of his inventory grid, he mass-produced a heavy stack of spears, packing his inventory slots to the brim. If another Screamer ever showed up shielded behind a wall of meat shields...
He would simply have Erina chuck a high-velocity stone javelin straight through her chest!
Yes, exactly. Li Ke had manually stress-tested the throwing logic earlier, only to discover that even in the field of ranged athletics, Erina threw harder, faster, and with infinitely superior accuracy compared to him.
The biological gap was a massive blow to Li Ke's pride. As they began tossing drawers and ransacking closets inside a newly entered suburban home, he looked over at Erina. Every time she bent forward to scour the lower shelves, her exceptionally voluptuous frame triggered a series of highly distracting movements, causing his brain to spiral into a deep, insecure existential crisis.
Wait a minute... Is Erina actually the main character of this story?
And as for him, Li Ke...?
Was he just the low-tier, useless corporate drone whose sole narrative purpose was to die horribly in chapter three just to trigger the heroine's ultimate awakening?