Card Draw1
After the game update, Ren Chenxi could now see the zombies’ information and health bars.2
Just now, the fruit knife she had thrown from the third floor had landed perfectly, embedding itself right in the skull of that 1st-rank zombie. And yet… not even a sliver of blood skin3 had been shaved off its health!
That zombie’s skull… is seriously hard!
Faced with such a thick-skulled zombie, in a move that was truly breaking the great wilderness,4 Ren Chenxi was only disappointed for a few seconds before calling up the Game Panel5 again. She remembered the notification chimes she’d heard after opening the Game Update Big Gift Pack.6 Besides that Skill Advancement Book,7 there had to be something else she’d missed.
After meticulously studying every function on the Game Panel all over again, Ren Chenxi finally found the features the system had just added. She clearly remembered that before the game update, she had never seen these two functions. Besides… a Card Center8 and an Apocalypse Mall?9 Setting aside the Card Center for a moment, that Apocalypse Mall was obviously prepared for players trying to survive the apocalypse, right?
As for the other one, the Card Center, Ren Chenxi glanced at the cards available in the lottery prize pool.10 A Critical Hit Card,11 a Shapeshift Card,12 an Explosion Card13… these weren’t exactly cards you could just casually use in a time of peace!
Ren Chenxi only gave the lottery prize pool a brief look. Compared to the cards, she was more concerned about what kinds of goods would be for sale in the Apocalypse Mall. In the end, she clicked into the mall full of hope, only to retreat, disheartened and cold.
It was for no other reason than the prices of the goods in the Apocalypse Mall were so fucking expensive!!!
The various weapons Ren Chenxi wanted most were all fully stocked in the mall, from cold steel to firearms and cannons. It even had heavy-firepower weapons she wouldn’t dare to dream of; the mall had everything one could wish for. It was just a pity that the long string of 00000000s after the price tag made her heart turn to ice.
The universal currency in the game system was the Crystal Stone,14 which could be exchanged from Crystal Cores.15 Without even needing to check the item information, Ren Chenxi, having read a great many apocalypse novels, knew that these Crystal Cores definitely grew inside zombie brains. According to the mall’s help guide, she learned that a level 1 Crystal Core from a 1st-rank zombie could only be exchanged for 1 Crystal Stone. A level 2 core could be exchanged for 10 Crystal Stones, a level 3 for 100, and so on and so forth. A level 4 core got you 1,000 Crystal Stones, a level 5 got you 10,000…
So, to buy one of those weapons from the mall with all the zeroes, killing a single 9th-rank zombie would be more than enough. But… if she already had the ability to kill a 9th-rank zombie, would she still need these criminally expensive weapons from the mall? With that many Crystal Cores, she’d be better off exchanging them for more practical daily necessities! After all, the prices for those useful supplies were also deathly expensive!
After exiting the Apocalypse Mall, Ren Chenxi returned to the Card Center. It was mainly divided into two parts: Card Lottery Draw16 and Card Synthesis.17 Compared to the ridiculously expensive Apocalypse Mall, the Card Center seemed much more humane. Although the price of a draw was still very expensive—1,000 Crystal Stones for a single try—the Card Synthesis and upgrade functions didn’t consume any Crystal Stones! Furthermore, whether it was a 10-consecutive-draw or ten accumulated single draws, you were guaranteed to get at least one R-Rank18 card or higher.
More importantly, the Card Center gave out five free draw chances every day, refreshing once every ten minutes, with the draw count resetting at dawn the next day. See! Compared to your mall’s criminally expensive goods, at least the card draws gave you free chances!
As the saying goes, he who doesn’t take advantage is a turtle.19 Ren Chenxi didn’t hesitate for a second and immediately went for a draw. And then, she got an N-Card20—a Greasy Card…
The moment she saw this Greasy Card, her mind’s eye filled with all those male actors in TV dramas with their exaggerated acting and greasy expressions. She couldn’t help but pull the face of the Subway Grandpa Looking at Phone Emoji Pack21 at the card.
Still, no matter how much she disliked it, it was a free draw. Ren Chenxi curiously clicked back into the lottery prize pool to check the detailed information for all the cards.
The cards in the prize pool were divided into four ranks. The easiest to get from a single draw was, of course, the N-Card. These cards usually seemed bizarre and useless at first glance, just like that Greasy Card she’d just gotten. Others included the Outfit Change Card, the Flash Card, and the Leading a goat away in passing Card.22 Although these strange cards seemed useless on the surface, after carefully checking their descriptions, Ren Chenxi was able to discover their practical functions.
Take the Greasy Card that had disgusted her at first. According to its description, any target hit by it would continuously ooze oil from its entire body for five minutes. If you killed a target affected by the Greasy Card, it would drop an extra bottle of gasoline.
Compared to this card that could make a target drop extra loot, the Flash Card’s effect was truly just to emit light. A target hit by it would glow with a blinding light. Although there was no extra drop for killing a flashed target, it would blind the target for twenty seconds, and any creature within five meters would also be affected.
If the two N-Cards mentioned before were for use against enemies, then the Outfit Change Card was undoubtedly for use on oneself. Ren Chenxi used her free draws and got a few more Outfit Change Cards, concluding that its greatest function was to add clothes to her body. Mmm… based on her experiments, even if you were wearing absolutely nothing, using an Outfit Change Card could randomly get you a set of clothes.
Of course, besides various outfits, you could also end up with a three-point style bikini, or various embarrassing lingerie sets. In short, it was best to use the Outfit Change Card when no one else was around.
The most useless of the N-Cards, Ren Chenxi felt, was the Leading a goat away in passing Card. At least for her, hiding out in this deserted scenic area, it was completely useless. The card allowed her to randomly pilfer one or two items from a target she hit. But so far, she hadn’t met a single other living person. Was she supposed to steal from zombies? What could a zombie possibly have to steal? If she really wanted something from a zombie, wouldn’t it be more convenient to just kill it and loot the body?
Within a week, Ren Chenxi had figured out the uses for all the N-Cards she managed to draw, but the slightly higher-grade R-Cards weren’t so easy to obtain. Fortunately, five N-Cards could be randomly synthesized into one R-Card, and accumulating ten single draws would also guarantee a card of R-Rank or higher. The only R-Cards Ren Chenxi had drawn were the Explosion Card and the Acceleration Card. As for others like the Shapeshift Card, Critical Hit Card, or the Position-Swap Card, she hadn’t even seen a shadow of them.
Although she couldn’t get these relatively higher-grade cards, based on their descriptions, it wasn’t hard to see that these R-Rank cards all had some sort of offensive property or provided support in battle. However, their effects were decent on low-rank zombies, but if used on high-rank zombies, the damage would be greatly reduced. For example, the R-Rank Explosion Card’s description read: Ignores the defense of enemies below 3rd-rank, causing the impacted body part to explode.
Therefore, if an Explosion Card was used on a 4th-rank zombie, its effect would be to give a big discount.23 It might take several R-Rank Explosion Cards in a row to achieve the damage of a single SR-Rank24 Explosion Card.
Furthermore, according to the Card Center’s help tips, N-Cards could be randomly synthesized into an R-Card, but R-Cards could not be randomly synthesized into an SR-Card. You could only upgrade five R-Cards of the same type into an SR-Card of that same type. Likewise, five identical SR-Cards could be upgraded into an SSR-Card.25 Each time a card was upgraded, its damage increased by dozens or even hundreds of times. However, as the highest-grade golden SSR-Cards, they could not be upgraded any further.
As for the relatively advanced SR-Cards, aside from those upgraded from R-Cards, the rest could only be obtained through the Card Lottery Draw. Ren Chenxi took a careful look and immediately felt that high-grade cards were in a league of their own. Just looking at their functions, they were far more powerful than any R-Card. There was the Shield Card that could raise a transparent shield lasting thirty minutes, the Puppet Card that let you control a zombie, the Invisibility Card that lasted for a full hour, and the Recovery Card that could restore 70% of your health bar, among others.
Of course, the health bar restoration was something only a player like Ren Chenxi could see. To others in this game world, it would just look like accelerated wound healing.
You could say that every single SR-Rank card made Ren Chenxi’s heart race. Every time she drew, she fantasized about staking her moral character26 to pull just one of them. After all, any one of these cards could increase her chances of survival when facing danger in this apocalypse. As for the highest-rank SSR-Cards, they were an existence Ren Chenxi yearned for but did not dare to ask for. She wouldn’t even let herself dream of getting such high-level cards.
Cards like the Storm Card and the Devouring Darkness Card, which could unleash large-area, continuous attacks; the Slumber Card, which could induce group hypnosis; and even more powerful, the Rejuvenation Card, which could bring a person on their last breath back to full health and grant them ten minutes of invincibility!!!
That Rejuvenation Card especially—how Ren Chenxi wished she could draw one to keep for saving her own life!
But, it’s an SSR-Card after all. As an African Chief,27 it was better to just think about it in her heart.
After drawing cards for two days, Ren Chenxi got the idea to wander around the hotel’s vicinity. She even mustered up the courage to kill a zombie.
The first zombie Ren Chenxi killed was a 1st-rank zombie locked in a room on the second floor of the hotel. At that time, she was tightly clutching a synthesized R-Rank Explosion Card. After using a baseball bat to smash open the hotel room door, and just before the roaring zombie inside could lunge out, she accurately shot the card right at its head.
The instant the card hit the zombie’s head, its forehead exploded.
Truthfully, when the zombie had roared and lunged, Ren Chenxi’s arms and legs had inevitably gone soft with fear. If it weren’t for the hundred-percent Sure Hit,28 who knows where her trembling hand would have sent that Explosion Card flying. Moreover, after the zombie’s head burst open, she inevitably vomited again, violently. But after she finished, Ren Chenxi forced herself to slowly walk toward the now-headless zombie corpse.
She had to survive in this apocalypse, after all. She would have to get used to little scenes like this! Besides, she still needed to dig out the Crystal Core from the zombie’s brain to save up for card draws and shopping!
Wait a minute… if the zombie’s head was blown right off, then where’s the Crystal Core?
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