January 14
"So what? The only reason I stepped in those two times was because I didn't want you delaying my trip home. If you get yourself into that kind of mess again and I have to save you, I'm charging a fee."
Arms folded across her chest, the system huffed in indignation at Kyoko's thoughts. But with that adorable voice of hers, she didn't sound angry at all—if anything, she sounded like she was pouting.
Miss System was kind of a tsundere, wasn't she? Even if she said things like that now, Kyoko had a feeling that if anything happened to her in the future, the system would still show up with a disgusted expression, act like she hated every second of it, and help her anyway.
That thought immediately made Kyoko think of all those classic tsundere heroines.
Oh no. What was she supposed to do now that she'd started imagining her system as a tsundere childhood friend?
All right, enough of that. Back to serious matters.
The real question was: what was she going to eat for breakfast?
Kyoko was starving. She had already been close to passing out from hunger while talking to the system. Fortunately, the food stores at home were still plentiful—more than enough to keep them going for quite a while.
She slipped into the storage room, cracked open a box of sweet rolls, and began stuffing herself. One bite at a time, one after another, she devoured seven rolls, each about the size of a fist, before the gnawing emptiness in her stomach finally eased a little.
Watching her wolf down food like that, the system couldn't help laughing. She laughed so hard that even Kyoko started finding it irritating.
"Hey, what's that supposed to mean? Are you seriously making fun of me just for eating?"
"It's not that," the system said between giggles. "It's just that the way you eat is really funny."
Then she explained, "As for why you can eat this much and still not feel full, that has to do with your body's traits. At this point, binge eating is basically the material foundation supporting your ridiculous combat ability."
Gluttonous Consumption:
A high-performance body requires massive amounts of food to replenish the energy it burns.
Kyoko didn't really have anything to complain about. If all it took to get a superhuman body was eating a lot, where else was she ever going to find a deal that good?
"These points should be enough for now, right? I'm thinking of getting Huaxiu something nourishing once she wakes up. Help me find some good ingredients."
After finally filling her stomach, Kyoko sat beside Huaxiu's bed with a bottle of water in hand and asked the system.
Now that her balance had multiplied several times over, she intended to start improving their quality of life—and to upgrade her gear a little while she was at it. She wanted a machine pistol as a sidearm, and as for a primary weapon, wasn't the M4A1 from the task reward already perfect?
"You greedy little thing," the system grumbled. "Fine, I'll look. And I've got good news for you too."
"My shop functions have been upgraded again. The regular shop can now sell all real-world human-made goods—industrial products, books, synthetic medicine, cultivated seeds, food, all of it. The random shop, meanwhile, can refresh absolutely anything on the technological side. Anything at all. From starships docked at a harbor all the way down to toilet paper. As long as you've got the points, it can be yours."
"The buying power of reward points scales with how rare the item is in the apocalypse. Hard-to-obtain consumables and industrial products aren't valued the same; generally speaking, consumables are worth more."
Kyoko blinked. "So if I have enough points, I can literally buy anything from the shop?"
"Yes. If you're willing to pay for it, you could even buy a nuclear weapon. Though naturally, some parts of the shop still need to be unlocked through tasks."
"I see. So there really are still tasks tied to that. Let me look."
While speaking, Kyoko was sorting through their remaining fresh water. They had twenty-six liters left. They had used some of it the day before to feed the stove-heated bath system, but she wasn't too worried. After all, there were still a hundred and sixty rooms in the two neighboring towers they hadn't searched yet. The supplies in those buildings alone should be enough to keep her and Huaxiu alive for a very long time.
And once they were better equipped, she fully intended to start exploring outside.
"System, show me the new tasks."
"They're all here," the system replied. "And I've also brought you a little feature to help regulate blood pressure: a lottery system."
Then the task list appeared.
Wilderness Exploration:
In the apocalypse, maintaining adequate supplies is critical to survival. Explore special locations such as convenience stores and bars.
Reward: 3 Blind Box Tokens
Security Perimeter:
Eliminate nearby sources of danger and establish a 100m x 100m safe zone. Clear all infected within the designated safe area.
Reward: 1,000 points, M4A1 rifle, 3 magazines loaded with 30 rounds each, 260 standard rounds
Combat Training:
When facing the infected, you fight. If you don't fight, you don't survive. Kill 10 special infected and hone your combat abilities.
Reward: Unlock access to the System Specialist Shop, 300 reward points
Two new missions had been added. Combined with the previous one, there were now three unfinished tasks.
The difficulty didn't look too bad.
Kyoko didn't bother hesitating. She accepted all of them.
Still, one thing didn't make sense to her. By all rights, the Security Perimeter task should have been finished already. She had slaughtered half the night away yesterday. Unless there were still stragglers somewhere?
System, tell me—where exactly are the infected still hiding?
"There's no way you killed everything," the system replied flatly. "There are always going to be leftovers. Worms, centipedes, that sort of thing. And you still haven't done a full indoor sweep of the neighboring buildings."
"So I still have to keep killing them," Kyoko muttered. "I can't let those things exist anywhere inside my living space ever again. I need an absolutely safe zone. What happened last night can never happen twice."
At this point, Kyoko loathed the infected with every fiber of her being. If she didn't wipe every last one of those bastards out, then she'd no longer deserve the name Takagi.
"All right, I found the healthy meal plan for you. Go cook it yourself. Win that girl's stomach, and you'll win her heart too. Hahaha…"
Ignoring the teasing, Kyoko turned her attention to Huaxiu's recovery diet. For the next several days, Huaxiu absolutely had to be nourished properly.
Kyoko needed to feed her gradually, starting with easily digestible foods and working back up to a normal diet. After a serious illness, the digestive system would be weak, so meals had to be reintroduced in stages.
She looked down at the still-sleeping Huaxiu. The soft winter sunlight streaming through the window fell over her golden hair, making her look like some fairy-tale princess from a Western fantasy, still waiting to wake. This time Kyoko didn't steal a kiss. She only turned her over gently; staying in one position too long wasn't good for the body.
"After a serious illness, she needs light food. Nothing greasy, nothing heavy."
From the wellness book she had found, Kyoko sketched out the following recovery diet:
Early stage (Days 1–3):
Mostly liquid or semi-liquid food, such as rice water, egg-drop soup, lotus root starch, or vegetable juice, to reduce strain on the digestive system.
Middle stage (Days 3–7):
Soft foods or semi-liquid meals, such as millet porridge, steamed egg custard, soft noodles, or minced meat porridge, to increase protein and carbohydrate intake.
Late stage (After one week):
Gradually resume a normal diet, but still keep it light and avoid oily, salty, spicy, or cold foods.
Not that they even had access to much unhealthy food right now.
It was a fairly balanced plan. On top of that, there were certain key nutrients Huaxiu especially needed for recovery.
Protein was at the top of the list—the core nutrient for tissue repair and immune function. Ideally it should come from high-quality sources. Ordinarily that would have been difficult in the apocalypse, but Kyoko could simply spend points in the system store. Eggs, fish, lean meat, soy products—the shop stocked all of them, and not even at outrageous prices. If Kyoko slaughtered a few more infected and recycled some more loot, she could afford plenty.
"Kyoko," the system reminded her, "you should really start paying attention to gold, silver, gemstones, and other precious metals. I assign those a very high recycling value. Stop feeding me nothing but junk every day."
That actually surprised Kyoko. She had assumed the system wouldn't care about shiny valuables at all, so she had half intended to hoard them for herself.
"Oh? So those can really be exchanged for a lot of points?"
She paused, then asked, "What about antiques? Paper currency?"
The money question was really just thrown in offhand. There was no guarantee the institutions backing that currency still even existed, and if the credit system was dead, then the notes were nothing but worthless scrap paper.
Too stiff even to wipe with.
"That depends on my mood," the system said. "If I happen to like a particular antique, I might give you a high recovery value for it. That decision is mine. But don't give me human paper money. At this point it's just trash."
Kyoko wasn't surprised. She simply nodded and went back to reading.
"Of course," the system added. "Gold mainly comes from supernova explosions and neutron star collisions out in the universe. It's obviously worth more than those infected things you keep dragging back."
Kyoko had seen quite a few valuables while scavenging over the past several days. Once Huaxiu woke up, they could go collect them properly.
Vitamins and minerals were going to be the harder problem. By now, most of the fruit and vegetables in Nihonmatsu's produce shops had probably already rotted away, unless some of them had been preserved in display refrigerators with backup power. There might still be a little left if they got lucky.
Or they could simply plant fast-growing vegetables themselves. Spinach, kale, lettuce, radishes, bok choy, baby greens, cherry radishes—many of those could be harvested in about a month. The system sold seeds for around sixty points a packet.
Those plants would help supplement the nutrients Huaxiu needed. Vitamin A from carrots, iron from spinach, and so on—important for wound healing, immune support, and improving anemia. Leafy vegetables would also provide fiber and support digestive health.
Animal liver and red meat could help too, but where exactly in a city like this was Kyoko supposed to find uninfected, edible livestock? That was asking the impossible.
There were still some nutrients she simply could not source on her own and would have to buy from the system—vitamin C from citrus fruit, for example, or zinc from nuts and seafood.
Nuts were at least plausible. If they got lucky, they might find some in a forgotten pantry somewhere. Nuts kept well and didn't spoil easily, so some might still remain in nearby stores.
As for staples, they still had plenty of safe, unopened rice and flour. Soft rice and noodles would be suitable—easy to digest, and good sources of carbohydrates to supply the body with energy.
Eggs and fish provided high-quality protein, and fish also offered omega-3 fatty acids. Steamed or made into soup, they would be easy for a weakened patient like Huaxiu to absorb.
Soy products such as tofu, soy milk, and dried bean curd would be valuable too. They provided plant protein, and paired with grains they became even more nutritionally effective—ideal for someone with poor digestion who had just come through a major illness.
Yes, Huaxiu. I mean you.
And of course, classic recovery dishes like chicken soup or fish soup could not be forgotten. Those were rich in amino acids and minerals.
While Kyoko sat there making detailed notes for Huaxiu's food plan, the system popped back up again.
"I think you're trying to nourish Huaxiu to death," she said. "And honestly, you may be the first person in the apocalypse living this extravagantly."
"I've got points, and I intend to use them on myself and the people closest to me. Huaxiu confessed to me before she blacked out. She's my girlfriend now. Do I need another reason to spend money on her?"
"I swear, the lot of you lesbians," the system groaned. "At least save some as backup. If you spend everything now and then get into a real emergency later, won't you just be an idiot?"
The warning was oddly gentle. The system clearly did not want to end up giving Kyoko a loan later—because if she did, she already knew she'd probably go soft and never make her pay it back.
"I know," Kyoko said. "Don't worry. I'll be careful."
She continued reading and found another important point: during recovery, the patient should eat small, frequent meals—ideally five or six a day, with each meal only about seventy percent full, so as not to burden the digestive system.
Spicy food, alcohol, and caffeine should also be avoided. They could irritate the digestive tract or interfere with sleep.
Low-intensity rehabilitation exercise would eventually matter as well. Light movement would promote circulation, but only when balanced with sufficient rest and sleep so the body had time to repair itself.
When she finally finished writing the last line in her notebook, Kyoko closed the book.
Now another issue came to mind:
Electricity.
She found herself missing the age of electrical power with real bitterness. During the last few days of scavenging, she had discovered that a fair number of households had solar panels.
Japan's latitude wasn't exactly ideal for solar power, and the weak winter sun wouldn't yield much, but choices were limited. They hadn't found a fuel generator, and stripping car batteries for energy required too much technical skill—not to mention the fuel problem that came afterward. Buying power-related supplies from the system nonstop would eat through their points too fast. She had to economize where she could and spend only when it mattered.
After all, electricity wasn't absolutely essential right now.
Other than lights.
And charging phones.
"…Damn. The radio."
Kyoko suddenly remembered. In the apocalypse, whether official broadcasts or private survivors' channels, radio transmissions might still be active.
She had remembered that at the beginning—but after meeting Huaxiu, all her plans had been thrown into disarray. If the subject of power hadn't come up just now, it might have taken her much longer to realize what she had neglected.
She hurriedly powered on her phone. It had not been charged in ages, and the battery was effectively fake life—displaying fifty percent, but likely to die in less than fifteen minutes. She opened the built-in radio app.
No signal.
Whether that was lucky or unlucky was hard to say.
The good news was that she had not missed any radio transmissions.
The bad news was that there weren't any.
Huaxiu still showed no sign of waking. So Kyoko headed out and started gathering gold and jewelry instead.
Her wallet was about to swell.
Not really.
Anyone with the means to flee had likely taken their valuables with them. What remained in most homes would probably be limited.
She spent the entire morning and well into the afternoon searching. From the seventh floor upward, there were fifty-two households in this tower alone. Altogether, the gold and silver she found from those families came to just over three kilograms, most of it jewelry of one sort or another. The system bought them at a rate of one point per gram.
There were quite a few diamonds as well, but the system bought those at an insultingly low rate—one point per hundred grams.
By a little after two in the afternoon, Kyoko had earned another 3,455 points through all of it. Added to the previous total, that brought her up to 8,507 points.
If she pushed just a little harder, she could probably buy that exoskeleton from a few days ago.
Of course, that wasn't actually possible. She still had expenses to think about.
Today's random shop refresh was worthless, so she ignored it.
After lunch, Kyoko sat down in a chair, administered a bit of glucose to Huaxiu, and then finally allowed herself a short nap.
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 178)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 115)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League ( 126 )
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter110)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter116)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter82)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter144)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 65
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 77
From Junkman to Wasteland 66
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 46
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 118
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 65
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 111
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass 80
The Way the Umamusume Look at 68
Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 112
Naruto: Weaving the Future, Be 65
Zenless Zone Zero, but Kamen R 76
Multiverse Crossover: The Perf 66
My Cyberpsycho Girlfriend 65
Uma Musume: The Dark Trainer 80
Uma Musume: A Calamity Born fr 74
I, a Reincarnation-Loop Player 48
The Violent Girl Group Is Beat 50
Uma Musume: The Horse Girl Who 47
Uma Musume: From Beginner 42
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