My Dating Sim Just Got an Update - Chapter 4

Only a few minutes ago, Ren Chenxi had been wallowing in self-pity, mocking herself for being a “level five weakling” who wouldn’t last a single day in the apocalypse. But the moment real danger knocked on her door, her survival instinct flared up with a vengeance.

She wasn’t going to just sit there like an idiot and let a zombie chew her to death without a fight! Even a weakling had to put up a struggle. She decided to treat it like a hyper-realistic game: she’d just survive as many days as she could!

Fueled by this sudden spark of defiance, Chenxi immediately accepted the “Game Update Gift Pack” and opened it.

To help a complete newbie like her survive, surely there would be a weapon inside? What would it be? If it was a gun, would she even know how to use it? And if she did, could she actually land a headshot on a zombie?

As it turned out, Chenxi was still far too naive. When she opened the gift pack, a few system chimes rang out, but the only thing that appeared in her inventory was a small object shaped like a syringe. She checked the item description: Permanent Immunity to the Zombie Virus.

Great. Just great. Chenxi had been counting on the fact that if she accidentally got bitten, she’d just turn into a mindless zombie and wander around without a care. But now, with this antibody in her system, she wouldn’t turn. Instead, she’d get to experience the “slow-slicing” torture of being eaten alive, bite by agonizing bite, while remaining perfectly conscious. To make matters worse, the moment she finished reading the description, the item “thoughtfully” injected itself into her automatically. What, was the game afraid she didn’t have a nursing degree and wouldn’t know how to give herself a shot?

She didn’t have time to process the other system alerts, because she was currently watching a horrific, nauseating sight through the shattered window: a head with rotting flesh hanging off a skeletal frame was swaying back and forth just outside the shop.

Honestly, this was the first time Chenxi had seen such a realistic zombie. Even though she’d seen plenty of monsters in movies and games, they always felt like 3D models or prosthetics. In this world of absolute realism, Chenxi felt that this was a genuine person who had been transformed into a monster. She didn’t have time to dwell on the details, though, because the damn thing was already fumbling at the entrance. If it weren’t for the half-collapsed shutter and the debris scattered across the floor, it would have been inside by now, giving her that “authentic” experience of being eaten.

Thanks to her enhanced vision, she could clearly see the zombie’s jagged, yellowing teeth and the unidentifiable bits of flesh stuck between them as it stumbled past. She definitely didn’t want to be bitten by those! Suppressing her terror and her racing heart, Chenxi scanned her surroundings for an escape route. In her panic, she spotted a mobile phone that had fallen nearby. With a “nothing to lose” attitude, she grabbed it and switched it on.

She had to admit, the quality of these “brick phones” from the previous era was impressive. However, while they were sturdy, their startup jingles were also incredibly loud…

Sure enough, as soon as the chime rang out, the zombie at the door became even more agitated. It lunged forward, its claws tearing a hole right through the thin, warped metal of the shutter. Seeing that arm trapped in the hole, flailing wildly up and down, Chenxi almost dropped the phone in fright. Fortunately, she steadied herself. Looking at the phone now that the startup sound had died down, she thought for a second before quickly navigating to the ringtone settings. she selected a song that started low but exploded into a loud, rhythmic “thump-thump-thump” beat.

This was the alarm tone she had used most often during her time in the game to force her “sleep-deprived” self to get up for university life. Luckily, even after three months back in reality, she hadn’t forgotten how to operate these old-school phones. Once the music started, she threw the phone toward the window with all her might. Perhaps it was the adrenaline of a life-or-death situation, but her aim was true. The phone sailed through a small break in the glass and landed out on the street.

If it had been any phone from her real world, it probably would have stopped working the moment it hit the pavement. But this was the game world’s indestructible brick phone. Not only did the ringtone keep blasting, but Chenxi actually worried for a moment that the phone might have cracked the pavement.

The noise of the ringtone echoed through the silent street, and the stupid zombie’s attention was instantly snatched away. It struggled violently against the door, and when it couldn’t pull its arm free, it simply snapped its own limb off. Leaving the severed arm hanging in the shutter, the creature scrambled toward the source of the sound.

Safe. for now?

Chenxi let out a quiet breath, but she didn’t dare lower her guard. She pulled some bandages from her system inventory to stop the bleeding on her foot and zoomed in on the mini-map to find a safe place to hide. She had stocked up on plenty of medical supplies during her previous travels in the game, stuffing them all into her inventory.

Speaking of the inventory, she found herself thanking her brother for his obsessive-compulsive gaming habits once again. Besides hoarding money, he loved maxing out inventory slots. She didn’t know how many slots the bag started with, but the one she had inherited now had 100 slots per page across 100 pages all of them unlocked by her brother through some unknown means! Furthermore, identical items could stack up to 999! It was a lucky break that the system had only “corrected” her personal info while leaving the rest of the game data intact. All those slots now belonged to her.

However, looking at the mostly empty inventory, Chenxi felt a pang of regret. Why had she spent all her time just sightseeing during her travels? Her brother had hoarded so much money; she should have gone on a massive shopping spree while she had the chance…

Compared to the ten thousand available slots, the items she actually had were quite few. “Few” was relative, though—she still had over a hundred slots filled with various goods. When traveling, most people struggle to fit their clothes into a suitcase, but for Chenxi, it only took up a few inventory slots. Even though she had been dragged into the game barefoot, she actually had several pairs of sneakers, hiking boots, and even slippers tucked away in her bag.

After bandaging her foot and putting on shoes, Chenxi limped toward the back door of the shop. As for how she knew there was a back door… it was marked on the map! According to the map, the area behind the shop was very safe. If she circled around from the back, she would be just around the corner from the hotel she had stayed in on her last day in the game—the one she hadn’t even checked out of yet.

Survival 101: First, find a safe base. Then, figure out how to hunker down and stay alive in this cruel world!

“Sigh…” Chenxi sighed deeply as she bit into a piece of rock-hard naan bread.

She had initially thought she wouldn’t last a day, but in reality, she had been “lying low” for a week now. During this week, she had been chased by zombies and had vomited after seeing the corpses of other humans. But most of the time, she stayed quietly inside her old hotel room. According to her mini-map, this hotel was the area with the fewest red dots. Every other place was dotted with red markers representing danger, though luckily they were scattered and just wandering aimlessly nearby. Further out, however, the red dots became a dense, terrifying swarm.

Over the course of the week, Chenxi had gradually moved past her initial despair. She began to find the courage to scout the immediate vicinity of the hotel to understand the state of the world. The update email in her inbox contained more specific details about the timeline of this “romance-turned-horror” world.

Chenxi had returned to the game in October of the year 2×22. She clearly remembered that when she left three months ago, the in-game clock read October 2×20. While only three months had passed for her in reality, two years had gone by in the game! Even more coincidentally, the update notes stated that on the very day she had left the game, the world was hit by a wave of natural disasters—hurricanes, earthquakes, and tsunamis. A massive portion of the population fell into a coma. When some woke up, they were man-eating zombies; others woke up with various supernatural abilities. Those who never fell into the coma remained ordinary humans, struggling to survive in a world that had turned upside down.

So… had she escaped just in time to avoid the initial chaos? Or  had her departure caused a data glitch that triggered the apocalypse itself?

She quickly dismissed the second possibility. How could her sneaking into her brother’s save file and wooing a goddess cause the end of the world? If she had that kind of power, why were all the other games she’d played just fine? Besides, regardless of why the game had updated, the innocent victim—her had been dragged back in anyway.

Now that she was trapped again, the only thing that mattered was surviving.

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