My Romance Game Updated – Chapter 5

Skill¹

Perhaps it was because she had successfully faced a zombie head-on for the first time, wittingly escaping danger using the red dots on the mini-map², and successfully fleeing to a relatively safe hotel room—whatever the reason, a fierce desire to survive sprouted within Ren Chenxi.

Look at that, she thought. These brainless zombies aren’t anything special. No matter how fast they are, they aren’t faster than me. Perhaps she really could struggle through ten years in this apocalypse, complete the Main Mission, and return to the real world? Recalling the beautiful reality waiting for her, Ren Chenxi solidified her resolve to survive.

So, immediately after fleeing to the hotel, returning to her previous room, and locking the door tight, Ren Chenxi called up the Game Backpack Panel³.

To guarantee survival, the most important thing was food. Upon opening the backpack, Ren Chenxi checked her food stocks first. Thanks to her travels, whenever she visited a new place, she loved buying local specialties and tossing them directly into the game package to satisfy her cravings on the road. Or, to improve her meals when she didn’t want to eat cafeteria food back at university. Aside from various snacks and unique local specialties like ham, jerky, and sausages, Ren Chenxi had even bought several large jars of pickled vegetables. It couldn’t be helped; the pickled vegetables made by that shop owner were just too delicious. Ren Chenxi was afraid she wouldn’t be able to eat them after her trip ended, so she bought several jars in one breath.

Anyway, there was no need to worry about food rotting or spoiling inside the backpack. After all, for items stored in the backpack, time stood still.

Confirming that the food in her backpack was enough to last her half a year without issue, Ren Chenxi breathed a sigh of relief. But she quickly remembered something else and rushed to the bathroom. Soon, she came out with a mourning face⁴, sat back on the sofa, and began carefully checking how much drinking water was in her backpack. After all, food was important, but drinking water was even more critical!

It was already the second year of the apocalypse when Ren Chenxi returned to the game world. She didn’t know about other places, but in the hotel where she was currently staying, the water flowing from the tap had turned turbid and green. Just looking at it, one knew it was definitely undrinkable! When traveling before the game update, Ren Chenxi never had to worry about water issues. Thus, after inspecting her package, she despaired to find that despite the backpack being full of odds and ends, she only had two bottles of the most important resource: water.

To be precise, Ren Chenxi’s backpack only contained two thermos bottles of drinking water: one 3L bottle and one 800ml bottle.

Fortunately, although the backpack only held these 3800ml of water, the room still had mineral water provided by the hotel. Hmm, maybe the apocalypse arrived during the off-season? Anyway, there weren’t many guests in the hotel, and for some unknown reason, no other survivors had broken in. The two bottles of mineral water provided in Ren Chenxi’s room were still sitting perfectly fine on the table. Ren Chenxi believed there must be leftover water in the other rooms as well.

For the sake of water, out of the week she spent here, Ren Chenxi used two days to search room by room. Luckily, she actually managed to find over 60 bottles of mineral water.

As for the fact that two years had passed—had the water expired? Was it still drinkable?

Heh. She was facing death by thirst; did she care if the water was expired? Besides, the system determined these bottles were still drinkable, so what was there to fear? As for how the system determined this…

It was simple. She just had to store the mineral water in a backpack slot and view the item details to see very, very specific information. For example: Expired Mineral Water provided by XX Hotel x1 (Drinkable).

Other item information in the backpack included:

Jar of Pickled Vegetables personally marinated by Auntie Chen⁵ x6 (Very Delicious)

Large Bag of Rock-Hard Nang Flatbread⁶ hand-roasted by Uncle Maimaiti⁷ x3 (Edible)

Back when Ren Chenxi was traveling, she had frequently used the system backpack’s inspection function to dodge dangers from those harboring evil intentions⁸.

Yes, even before the game updated and this world was still in a peaceful era, Ren Chenxi never lowered her guard against this overly realistic world just because it was a “brain-dead”⁹ romance game. Most of the time, Ren Chenxi absolutely refused to go fooling around in nightclubs late at night. As for the “Donkey Friends”¹⁰ she traveled with, no matter how honest and simple their faces looked, Ren Chenxi never took them lightly.

Because of this caution, regarding the drinks offered by those travelers, Ren Chenxi had seen: 100ml Fruit Wine laced with sedative from So-and-So, 200ml Cola laced with OO Pill¹¹ from So-and-So, and 100ml Juice laced with super-strength laxative from So-and-So.

She didn’t know what the person who added the laxative was thinking. Were they jealous of her handsomeness and wanted her to suffer explosive diarrhea and lose face in front of a crowd of girls? Regardless, Ren Chenxi quietly returned these spiked drinks to their owners.

She had to praise how convenient the system backpack was. Items in containers could be stored directly; items without containers could also be stored. Ren Chenxi often pretended to drink, stored a few hundred milliliters of liquid into the backpack, checked the item info, and then took it out—still in its container-less state. However, the convenience lay in the fact that Ren Chenxi could specify where to place the item within a 3-meter visual range, depositing it into any container.

Relying on this convenient function, Ren Chenxi directly caused the man who tried to give her laxatives to have a “good time” in the bathroom in front of all the girls. As for the others harboring evil intentions with their drugs, she let them eat their own fruit¹².

One could say that this system-produced backpack was one of Ren Chenxi’s greatest supports for surviving this apocalypse!

The other support allowing Ren Chenxi to survive was a skill she had leveled up blindly just to win the favor of a Goddess—Sure Hit¹³!

Actually, considering it was a brain-dead romance game, none of the player skills were combat-oriented. They basically revolved around studying, lifestyle, and pleasing the Goddess. Ren Chenxi had never upgraded Sure Hit expecting to use it for fighting. The reason she leveled it up was because during a school anniversary festival, a certain class organized a shooting game. The grand prize was a giant, human-sized teddy bear.

At that time, Ren Chenxi was competing with another suitor of the wooden¹⁴ Goddess to offer her gifts. Seeing that the rival’s accuracy was so high, popping ninety percent of the balloons on the wall, Ren Chenxi frantically flipped through her player skills in a panic and actually found the Sure Hit skill. Fortunately, she had plenty of skill points exchanged via Favorability Values¹⁵, so she dumped all her remaining points into upgrading Sure Hit, maxing it out in one breath.

Then, relying on her 100% accuracy, Ren Chenxi won the teddy bear. Unfortunately, the Goddess immediately turned around and gave the bear Ren Chenxi had won to a little girl watching eagerly nearby. The heartbroken Ren Chenxi never imagined that the random skill she leveled up back then would now become her reliance for survival in the apocalypse.

Of course, if Ren Chenxi only had this 100% accuracy skill, it wouldn’t necessarily be much use in this crisis-filled apocalypse. After all, she didn’t have any long-range shooting weapons. The only baseball bat in her backpack was bought for self-defense during her travels. Without a weapon, barely substituting other objects—whether smashing people or zombies—lacked killing power. Moreover, with Ren Chenxi’s strength, whether the thrown object could even reach the enemy was a problem!

Luckily, when Ren Chenxi was organizing her backpack, a slot she had initially ignored containing university textbooks caught her attention during a second sweep. A single, lonely book occupied a slot all by itself. Since Ren Chenxi usually grouped books of the same subject into one slot for convenience, this solitary book naturally made her curious to check its item info. She wanted to see what kind of book received such special treatment.

One look, and it was quite a shock. Ren Chenxi realized that the “System Upgrade Big Gift Pack” actually contained a Skill Advancement Book¹⁶ she had completely missed.

After the initial joy, Ren Chenxi quickly fell into depression. Skill advancement was for upgrading an already maxed-out skill, but her few skills were either lifestyle-related or study-related. What was the point of advancing them? Advance Cooking to become the King of Chefs? Or advance Study to become a Study Tyrant¹⁷?

Of course, despite her depression, Ren Chenxi didn’t give up. She flipped back and forth through her Skill Bar¹⁸ and finally, hesitantly, selected the maxed-out Sure Hit. At the very least, accuracy was a very important attribute in the online games she used to play! Surely it had something to do with combat?

After using the Skill Advancement Book on the maxed-out Sure Hit, the skill underwent a massive change. First, the name changed from white to red. Then, the skill information for Sure Hit updated:

Sure Hit (Advanced) Level 1: Within 10 meters, hits the target 100% of the time.

Reading the skill info, Ren Chenxi was amused. Did this mean that as long as a zombie was within 10 meters, even if she lacked the strength to throw an object that far, she would still accurately hit the zombie? To verify the power of this advanced skill, Ren Chenxi immediately grabbed a fruit knife from the room to experiment. Coincidentally, a zombie was staggering by downstairs. Ren Chenxi, on the third floor, was exactly within the 10-meter range~

Pa!

The fruit knife thrown from upstairs accurately plunged into the exact center of the zombie’s head.

“Ao!!!” The zombie first let out an angry roar, then looked around. Failing to spot Ren Chenxi, who was secretly observing from beside the third-floor window, it simply swayed away, the fruit knife still sticking out of its head.

---

---