Task completion

Initially, he had planned to return home for a night’s sleep. However, a second thought struck him: if he were to sleep alone, he might not even realize if zombies infiltrated his home. It would be far better to head to the assembly point; with more people around, he could sleep soundly.

With that thought, Chi Bai tapped open the district group chat. A pinned announcement at the top urged everyone to proceed to the assembly point. The assembly point was marked by a location pin, which, when tapped, opened a map pop-up.

Chi Bai found himself wondering if he should even be surprised that this system inexplicably included a map function.

After all, the assembly point being near his company was even more astonishing to him. His company was located south of his home, and S City bordered the sea; anything further south would be ocean. He couldn’t fathom why they would gather in that direction.

Were they perhaps planning to travel elsewhere by boat? He had initially assumed they would be taking a bus north.

Turning off his screen, Chi Bai tightened his grip on the metal baseball bat he held. He descended cautiously. There seemed to be no movement downstairs for the moment. Upon reaching the next floor, he found all the doors ajar and no zombies in sight.

He continued his descent. As he reached the stairwell on the next floor, he spotted a zombie shuffling aimlessly down the corridor.

The zombie clearly caught his scent, immediately turning feral. It lunged towards him, arms outstretched. Chi Bai retreated two steps, leveraging his advantage on the staircase. He raised the metal baseball bat with both hands and leaped down, bringing it crashing onto the creature. With a resounding thud, the zombie was knocked to the ground. It wasn’t dead, however; its stiff limbs rendered it unable to rise, leaving it flailing like a flipped turtle.

Seeing this, Chi Bai let out a breath of relief. He then held the bat vertically and slammed it down with force onto the zombie’s left chest. The sound of bones grinding and shattering sent shivers down his spine. He stopped only after hearing a sound akin to a heart being crushed. Yet, he found it odd that the zombie was still struggling to get up.

Though he wasn’t a medical professional, he knew the heart was typically on the left side. He lifted the bat and examined the large hole in the zombie’s chest. It was mostly rotten flesh, easy to pierce, and he had indeed pierced through it. He had also distinctly heard something burst a moment ago.

Recalling some novels he had read, an idea suddenly struck him. He lifted the baseball bat and brought it down with full force onto the zombie’s head. The bat shattered the zombie’s skull and hit the ground, the recoil leaving his hand numb. He shook his hand, gazing at the now motionless zombie. ‘Finally, I know this thing’s weakness,’ he thought to himself. He opened his screen panel to check his mission progress; sure enough, it had increased by 10%, prompting him to resume his search for more zombies.

As he searched, he couldn’t help but feel perplexed. Only an hour had passed since he received the mission. He had spent about 45 minutes showering and packing his belongings. Why was the building so eerily quiet?

Then he considered: it was a weekday. His company started at 9:30 AM, and the building was usually this quiet when he left for work. He thus lamented the hardships of ‘ox-horses’ (TL Note: A Chinese slang term for overworked individuals) before resuming his search.

It wasn’t until he reached the ground floor and saw the building exit that he finally exhaled. He hadn’t found any living people throughout his descent. Most of the zombies were found in rooms where only one person had been present. The bodies he encountered were primarily elderly individuals, as younger people would have been at work. Some had also perished right outside their doors, with the zombies responsible for their deaths now aimlessly wandering the corridors.

Considering that Chinese zombies, once reanimated, have stiff bodies and cannot jump over thresholds, these zombies, though not limited to hopping like traditional jiangshi (TL Note: Chinese hopping vampires/zombies), also suffered from stiff limbs that prevented them from descending stairs properly; if they did, they would simply tumble down. Indeed, Chi Bai encountered one such zombie sprawled on a landing in the stairwell.

‘Strike while the iron is hot,’ he thought. As the zombie struggled to rise, a single swing of his bat crushed its head.

His previously pristine metal baseball bat was now smeared with zombie brain matter and putrid green blood.

Before exiting the building, Chi Bai randomly kicked open a locked door. He went inside, rinsed the bat with water, and used the residents’ paper towels to wipe it clean. Then, finding a suitable sling bag—the only one he’d managed to locate after searching the entire building—he slipped the bat through its center and strapped it across his back before stepping out.

The moment he opened the door, a notification sound, much like a Steam game achievement unlock, echoed in his mind. He opened his panel to see a pulsating red dot next to his missions. Tapping it, he saw that his first task was complete.

His main mission still showed 0% progress. The side mission had just been completed, with no new tasks appearing for now. Chi Bai glanced at his watch; two hours had passed since he received the mission.

His alarm had been set for 9 AM, and it was now 11 AM. Normally, he would be ordering takeout by now. He hadn’t eaten breakfast, and after expending so much energy, he was starting to feel hungry.

He recalled that completing a mission would reward him with some kind of potion. He had just noticed a red dot flashing on his inventory icon. Tapping it, he saw the twelfth slot glowing yellow. A long press opened a pop-up, revealing, to Chi Bai’s surprise, a Level 2 Body Enhancement Potion. The description stated that different potion levels were awarded based on mission completion. A Level 2 potion was already quite impressive, especially considering he had taken down at least ten zombies in just an hour.

Well, it was a body enhancement potion after all. He had been quite exhausted from battling zombies with the bat, his hands trembling. It was a metal bat, after all, and he estimated it weighed at least four jin (TL Note: A traditional Chinese unit of weight, approximately 0.5 kg or 1.1 lbs, so 4 jin is about 2 kg or 4.4 lbs).

Without hesitation, Chi Bai opted to drink the potion. Before consuming it, he took a rare moment to examine it. It was housed in a typical game-style potion bottle, trapezoidal at the bottom. The liquid inside was a vibrant blue, yet it tasted of nothing.

He couldn’t tell if it was his imagination, but after drinking it, he felt as though his body had become slightly stronger. The baseball bat in his hand no longer felt as heavy as before. To him, it now felt as light as holding a long-handled umbrella.

Finally, he wouldn’t need both hands to swing the bat.

He usually commuted to work by subway. However, he had no idea if any subways were still running at this hour. The zombie outbreak had been incredibly sudden. One moment, a fellow commuter might have been sitting beside you; the next, they could have transformed into a howling zombie. The subway system might very well be a hellscape by now.

Shaking away the grim images from his mind, Chi Bai opened the assembly point map from the district group chat’s announcement. After confirming his destination, he initially thought of scanning a shared bicycle (TL Note: ‘Xiao Huang Che’ literally ‘little yellow bike’, referring to shared bicycles often yellow in color) to ride to his company, but then realized he had forgotten his phone.

He slapped his forehead again. Even if he had his phone, it would be useless without an internet connection.

Considering the distance of over twenty kilometers, he knew it would take an unknown amount of time to walk there. Running was his only option.

This would be a perfect opportunity to test the effects of the Body Enhancement Potion. He could also gain experience by encountering zombies along the way. And if they dropped crystal cores or anything similar, that would be an added bonus.

Once his mind was made up, he acted. Chi Bai adjusted the baseball bat on his back and knelt to tie his shoelaces tightly. These were his only pair of athletic shoes; all his others were flip-flops or Crocs, which were practical for daily life in Guangdong Province (TL Note: ‘Yue Sheng’ is the abbreviation for Guangdong Province). Since he primarily went to work and didn’t exercise much, he hadn’t bought many shoes, leaving him with only this one usable pair now.

‘If only I had known, I would have bought more pairs,’ he mused, ‘but who could have ever predicted something like this?’

Chi Bai ran, his eyes constantly scanning his surroundings. As he turned left at an intersection, he keenly sensed danger. He slammed to a halt and sidestepped, narrowly evading a zombie that lunged at him. Drawing the bat from his back, he swung it. With excessive force, the zombie’s head simply exploded. Fortunately, he had moved quickly, otherwise he would have been splattered with brain matter.

Chi Bai felt that this particular zombie had been slightly more agile than those he encountered in his building. He surveyed the numerous bodies strewn around him. He couldn’t help but wonder: if humans could level up using zombie crystal cores, did zombies also level up by consuming humans?