My Romance Game Updated – Chapter 13

Hot Pot¹

Even though the girls were so desperate for a water source that they wanted to drive to H City immediately, the sky was already growing dark. Ren Chenxi was against traveling late at night, and the three girls agreed, saying it was far more dangerous. They were much more likely to be attacked by packs of mutated animals. Besides… they hadn’t even eaten dinner yet!

The supermarket had fallen silent. When Ren Chenxi and the three girls entered, they were met with the sight of Huo Keyu standing stock-still, a bloodstained cleaver in her hand and terrifying streaks of blood on her own face. The floor around her was littered with corpse chunks. Ren Chenxi forced herself to look away, fighting back a wave of nausea, while the other three girls complained with a headache that they’d have to deal with the pieces. After two years in the apocalypse, they had seen all kinds of bodies; a pile of dismembered remains was something they had long since grown used to².

Perhaps because she had killed her enemies with her own hands³, Huo Keyu’s mood had stabilized considerably. When Ren Chenxi and the others came in, she even helped them clean up the bodies in the supermarket. As she and Ren Chenxi were lifting the corpse of the Fire-System Esper whose head Ren Chenxi had smashed flat⁴, Huo Keyu noticed Ren Chenxi’s awkward expression and suddenly asked, “Is this your first time killing someone?”

“Huh?” The abrupt question caught Ren Chenxi off guard, and she stammered out a vague reply, “I’ve only ever killed zombies before.” Today was, in fact, the first time she had killed a person inside the game.

Huo Keyu just smiled faintly at her answer. “The place you used to live must have been very safe, very peaceful… How nice.”

“…” Of course it was! In the three months I was away from the game, I was back in the peaceful real world!

With so many bodies, not to mention all the scattered corpse chunks, the entire supermarket should have reeked of blood. However, the domineering⁵ fragrance wafting from a pot on the other side of the room had completely taken over Ren Chenxi’s senses, drowning out any foul odors.

“That smells amazing… These human scum were living in luxury. Where did they get so much hot pot soup base⁶?” From what the girls had said, these scumbags had been eating hot pot⁷ quite often on their journey.

“They stole it from another group. They said they snatched a whole huge box of it…” Huo Keyu answered Ren Chenxi’s question. “They bragged about it themselves. Basically all the supplies these human scum had, they got by robbing people. In the apocalypse, some humans hunt mutated beasts. They, on the other hand, specialized in hunting humans!”

Seeing the fury in Huo Keyu’s eyes, Ren Chenxi nodded. In the apocalypse two years later, a small team with five espers was likely quite strong. Furthermore, this team was sinister and cunning, their methods despicable and inhumane. An ordinary person, or even another esper, would be in grave danger if they crossed paths with them.

“Sigh, it’s just a shame to waste such a fragrant spicy beef tallow soup base⁸,” Song Xin said, staring wistfully at the crimson broth in the pot.

“Hm? What’s wrong? Can we not eat this soup? Or… did they already… uh… cook meat in it?”

“They hadn’t cooked any meat yet!” Song Xin turned to explain to Ren Chenxi. “It’s just that this pot… it’s been used to cook a lot of human flesh…”

“…” Ren Chenxi was silent for a moment, then let out a long sigh. “Throw out the pot and the soup.”

Fortunately, the group still had over half a box of hot pot soup base left. Ren Chenxi used a pot that Jian Dan and the others normally used to cook a mushroom hot pot. The barreled water was brought down from the bus, and they also found some dried mushrooms and hot pot noodle cakes⁹ that the scumbags hadn’t gotten around to ruining. Ren Chenxi took out three large pieces of Nang Flatbread¹⁰ for everyone to soak in the hot pot soup.

Since they had plenty of mushrooms, Ren Chenxi didn’t take out any of the other local specialties from her Backpack¹¹ to share. Jian Dan and the others told her that in the apocalypse, these kinds of mutated mushrooms were extremely common. Most of the time, they relied on these resilient fungi to fill their stomachs. Of course, they still had to be careful of the poisonous varieties.

In truth, even without Jian Dan’s reminder, Ren Chenxi had already secretly used her Backpack to inspect the mushrooms they put in the pot. All of them were non-toxic.

The Fire-System Esper was dead, but that wasn’t a problem for girls who had survived in the apocalypse for two years. Jian Dan and the others skillfully found a metal rack, broke off a few dry branches from outside, swept up a pile of dead leaves, and stacked it all under the rack. They started a fire and set the pot on top.

That evening, Ren Chenxi finally had a hot meal and a warm soup. Slurping the noodles, chewing the Nang Flatbread, and occasionally taking a sip of the fresh, savory mushroom broth, she was so moved she nearly cried. As it turned out, having a few reliable companions¹² in the apocalypse was a good thing after all.

After dinner, everyone began to sort through the remaining useful supplies in the supermarket. In reality, the store had already been picked clean by other survivors, a fact the human scum had cursed and muttered about for a long time. Although the supermarket looked empty on the surface, the thoroughly frugal¹³ Jian Dan and her friends managed to pull an unopened bag of salt from underneath a few toppled shelves—something the previous scavengers must have missed.

Not only that, but the three girls also went upstairs to the Staff Lounge to strip the bed sheet and duvet cover sets. Even though Ren Chenxi told them she had plenty of those things, the girls were unwilling to use new bedding.

They hadn’t bathed in a long time and felt dirty and smelly. It was better to make do with old sheets and covers for now. The new ones… they could save those for when they reached the base in H City. Even the filthy Huo Keyu refused the new clothes Ren Chenxi offered her. They weren’t used to putting on clean new clothes while their bodies were still dirty.

With the H City base mentioned again, Ren Chenxi began to look forward to it along with the girls. At the same time, she asked for Huo Keyu’s opinion. With her sister gone and her enemies dead, Huo Keyu had no other goals. She decided to follow Jian Dan’s suggestion and go to H City with them.

The upper level of the double-decker bus could be used for sleeping, but normally, only the human scum slept up there. The girls they captured could only make do on the seats of the first floor. The upper level also stored a large amount of supplies the scumbags had stolen: jars and bottles of seasonings, three barrels of water, two bags of rice, two boxes of compressed biscuits, half a case of canned beer, and two cartons of cigarettes.

They had food and water, and even cigarettes and alcohol! These scumbags had been living a truly comfortable life. But no matter how comfortable, that life had come to an end.

After hearing from the girls that the second floor of the bus was where those scumbags usually stayed, Ren Chenxi felt a strong aversion to the sleeping berths up there. And if she was against it, the girls were even more so. In the end, everyone decided to just spend the night in the Staff Lounge above the supermarket. The lounge only had two beds. They insisted Ren Chenxi take one, and the other was given to Huo Keyu.

The girls said that Huo Keyu had suffered more than any of them on this journey, so she deserved a good night’s sleep. As for the three of them, they didn’t even lay down a blanket, simply lying on the floor in their clothes with a single quilt thrown over them. They said that when they couldn’t stand sleeping in the bus seats anymore, they would just lie down like this in the aisle between the rows.

As everyone agreed to spend the night in the Staff Lounge, Song Xin and Chang Ling, those two airheads¹⁴, showed a caution born from the apocalypse, despite their usual carefree nature. The moment they got off the bus, they worriedly suggested, “Should we leave two people behind to stand guard? What if zombies or mutated beasts attack during the night, or other survivors try to steal the bus? It would be a shame to lose such a good transportation tool¹⁵.”

Jian Dan turned to look at Ren Chenxi and joked, “Xi-jie¹⁶, is your Space¹⁷ big enough? Why don’t you just put this bus into your Space?”

Jian Dan’s comment sparked an idea in Ren Chenxi’s mind. That’s right! Why don’t I try putting the bus into my Backpack? In other online games I’ve played, you could always store your mount¹⁸! No matter how realistic this world is, it’s still a game, right?

With that thought, Ren Chenxi smiled back at Jian Dan. “I’ll give it a try.” She walked over to the bus and used the same method she used for any other item. Sure enough, the bus was successfully stored in her Backpack. A massive double-decker bus like that only took up a single slot.

The sight of such a huge bus vanishing into thin air left the other girls standing there, dumbfounded. After a long moment, Song Xin finally let out a gasp of admiration. “Xi-jie, your… your Space is huge, isn’t it?”

Huo Keyu, however, gave Ren Chenxi a deep look before warning her, “You’d better not show that trick to anyone whose background you don’t know¹⁹.”

Ren Chenxi glanced at Huo Keyu in surprise, then at the yellow dot²⁰ representing her on the mini-map²¹, and nodded seriously.

After stowing the bus, Ren Chenxi thought for a moment and put the off-road vehicle she had hidden in the tall grass into her Backpack as well.

That night, as she lay in bed, Ren Chenxi called up her Backpack panel²². She looked at the two vehicles, which only occupied two slots, and once again praised how convenient and practical the system Backpack was. Her already quite empty Backpack now had a few more slots filled with supplies. She scanned them casually and suddenly noticed something odd. Her Crystal Cores²³ were originally placed in the top few rows of the second page, so why were there now three more slots of Crystal Cores in the empty spaces behind the supplies on the third page? She immediately checked the item information. Heh, well now. Two 1st-Grade Crystal Cores, two 2nd-Grade Crystal Cores, and one 3rd-Grade Crystal Core.

Ren Chenxi instantly realized that these five extra Crystal Cores must have belonged to the five espers from that group of scumbags. The system Backpack had an Auto-Loot²⁴ function; it must have picked up the dropped Crystal Cores when she passed by without noticing. The numbers matched up perfectly, too: one 3rd-Order Petrification Esper, one 2nd-Order Fire-System Esper, one 2nd-Order Strength-Type Esper, and the remaining 1st-Order espers she had killed with stone blocks… Wait, that’s not right. I only knocked one of the 1st-Order espers out. Jian Dan was the one who killed him!

Could it be a mechanic like in other online games, where as long as I’ve hit a target, I get a share of the item drops²⁵? But since there’s no Party System²⁶, I ended up getting to monopolize the loot²⁷?

After thinking it over, the only conclusion Ren Chenxi could reach was that she had indeed monopolized the loot from the targets. She checked her Backpack again and found, in addition to the five Crystal Cores, a few bottles of Seal Pills²⁸, several boxes of sleeping pills and XX Medicine²⁹, half an uneaten bag of betel nuts³⁰, and other assorted junk she had definitely not put in there herself. There was even a finger bone necklace.

Pah, what a bunch of human scum and beasts!

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