Chapter 28: Patching Things Up—Introducing the Weapon Mystery Box

After dealing with the survivors, Qiao Jia didn’t leave the robbers’ house immediately. Instead, she sat on the bloodstained sofa and asked the system for a needle, thread, and a mirror.

“Do you need help, Host?” the system asked.

“No need,” she replied.

Qiao Jia took off her shirt, revealing a patchwork of crooked stitches across her body.

Her stomach, collarbone, arm — and now, a fresh wound on her neck.

“You really ought to practice your technique when you have time. This is hideous,” she said, flexing her arm. That arm had been torn off by a zombie when she and the system were wandering. That zombie had been an incredible fighter.

They had been teleported into this world by the system, hadn’t even opened their beginner’s weapon box before being inexplicably beaten to a pulp. Worse, there were two of them and only one zombie, and still, they lost.

They’d both been a mess. Only when the zombie was distracted did the system manage to steal her arm back for her. They found a sewing kit in an abandoned car, and after half a day’s struggle, she and the system managed to stitch her arm back on.

Today, she’d used her arm a lot and the stitches had started to come loose. They needed to be redone.

She checked her other injuries. During that same fight, her collarbone had been smashed. She’d used glue and nails and whatever else she could find to piece the bone back together. It sounded horrific, but Qiao Jia was already dead — as long as her body worked, that was enough.

She didn’t care, and the system cared even less. The system didn’t even have a physical form.

“That’s not my main function, though…” the system muttered, feeling a bit aggrieved by her criticism, squatting beside her and mumbling plaintively.

They didn’t teach this in class.

Basking in the sunlight streaming through the French windows, Qiao Jia threaded the needle and, without a change of expression, stabbed it into her arm.

“Host, your stitching is even worse than mine,” the system remarked mercilessly, observing her handiwork.

“As long as it holds,” she replied.

She flexed her arm again. Solid. It wouldn’t be coming apart anytime soon.

After stitching up her arm, Qiao Jia moved on to the wound on her neck. It wasn’t large; after inspecting it in the mirror for a while, she decided glue would do the trick.

Once she won first prize in the competition, she’d wish for a new body and resurrection. For now, this would have to do.

She told the system to put away the needle and thread, put her clothes back on, shouldered her pack, and left.

After she and the system departed, the entire wall of that spacious apartment had been torn apart, and the floor was strewn with corpses, blood flowing in rivers. The stench drew a horde of zombies.

Qiao Jia, with the system in tow, set off once again in search of customers, distributing flyers for the town wherever they went. The flyers, written by the system, were updated at Qiao Jia’s request to include new resident benefits.

Every time they found a place where survivors might be hiding, they’d slap a flyer on the wall. Supermarkets and wholesale markets with abundant supplies were plastered with their ads.

The glue she used was left over from treating her neck wound.

Every time they entered one of these places, Qiao Jia would selectively fill her and the system’s packs with daily necessities. The town didn’t lack food or water, but it was probably short on things for everyday living.

She didn’t want her little town to reek. She couldn’t smell it herself, but town hygiene counted toward their overall score.

To maintain a clean, orderly environment — with actual people — was a rare thing in the apocalypse.

Qiao Jia and the system wandered through the zombie-infested supermarket to the warehouse, picking through the supplies inside.

Their packs grew increasingly monstrous. The thin outer layer looked ready to burst at any moment.

But there was no need to worry — it was system-made, after all. The system had snatched it from the system mall while everyone else was busy fighting over goods.

It was a bit pitiful, really, for a dignified mid-level system—

“That’s enough. Let’s go,” Qiao Jia said, cutting off the system’s lament.

So far, they’d only been circling the outskirts of Jumu City, never venturing into the city center.

She’d gone into the city once, but the monsters there were beyond her ability to handle.

That area was likely now a true no-man’s land.

“Okay,” the system answered, hurrying to keep up.

Qiao Jia kicked open the warehouse door and, under the gaze of countless zombies and monsters, strode out with the system, eyes fixed ahead.

But before they’d gone two steps, a drone swooped down from the sky, carrying a note.

Qiao Jia tilted her head up, trying to see, but the pack on her back was too heavy and toppled her straight onto her back, arms and legs in the air.

The system shrank down beneath the pack, mortified.

But Qiao Jia herself wasn’t the least bit embarrassed. If she didn’t feel embarrassed, then it was others who had to.

She squinted up at the note on the drone.

“Hello, we are students from Jumu University. Sorry to disturb you, but could you please inform any remaining human communities that there are over 3,800 survivors inside Jumu University?”

Qiao Jia read the message aloud, word by word, and blinked slowly.

More than 3,800 survivors.

They weren’t dead, but they couldn’t get out.

“These people are probably being kept as a food reserve by some monster,” the system reminded her.

Regular zombies they could handle, but if it was one of those advanced monsters, they’d need the system’s — no, the main god’s — power to take it down. That would cost a hefty sum in points.

“Can you hear me?” Qiao Jia waved at the drone. The lights flashed, signaling they could.

“Don’t count on anyone rescuing you. You’re being kept as a food reserve by an advanced monster. No one can save you,” she said honestly. Anyone who tried would die.

It was a harsh truth, but it was the truth.

Even the protagonists from the town wouldn’t make it; plenty of would-be heroes had met their end on such missions, cut down before their time.

In the grand hall of Jumu University, a group of students and teachers listened to Qiao Jia’s words and felt a surge of despair.

Yet her next words rekindled a faint hope.

“No one can save you, but you might want to consider saving yourselves. Maybe check out a weapon blind box,” she said.

She groped through her enormous pack for a long while, finally extracting a crumpled weapon blind box.

It was almost flattened.