My Dating Sim Just Got an Update - Chapter 6

After the game update, Ren Chenxi was finally able to see zombie information and health bars.

Just moments ago, the fruit knife she had dropped from the third floor had landed squarely in the skull of that Level 1 zombie, but  the creature hadn’t lost a single sliver of health!

Their skulls were incredibly thick.

Faced with such a hard-headed monster, Chenxi allowed herself a few seconds of disappointment before pulling up the game panel again. She remembered those notification chimes from when she first opened the “Update Gift Pack.” Surely, there was something else she had overlooked besides that skill advancement book.

After meticulously studying every feature of the new panel, she finally found the new additions. She was certain these hadn’t existed before the update: a Card Center and a Doomsday Mall. The Mall was obviously designed for survival, but the Card Center was a complete mystery.

She glanced at the prize pool for the Card Center and saw names like Critical Strike Card, Illusion Card, Explosion Card.  these definitely weren’t items meant for a peaceful era.

Chenxi only gave the draw pool a cursory look. She was far more interested in what the Doomsday Mall had to offer. However, she entered the store full of hope only to retreat in utter dejection.

The prices in that mall were too damn high!

The Mall did have all the weapons she could ever want everything from melee blades to firearms and even heavy artillery she wouldn’t dare dream of using. Unfortunately, the long strings of zeros behind the price tags made her heart go cold.

The universal currency was “Crystals,” which could be exchanged for crystal nuclei. Even without checking the item info, Chenxi knew from countless apocalypse novels that these nuclei would be found inside zombie brains. According to the Mall’s help section, a Grade 1, Level 1 crystal nucleus only exchanged for 1 Crystal. A Level 2 nucleus gave 10, Level 3 gave 100, and so on—Level 4 was worth 1,000, and Level 5 was worth 10,000.

In theory, if she could kill a single Level 9 zombie, she could afford the high-end weapons. But… if she already had the power to take down a Level 9 monster, would she even need the overpriced gear from the shop? She’d be better off spending those crystals on practical daily necessities—which, incidentally, were also ridiculously expensive.

Exiting the Mall, Chenxi turned her attention back to the Card Center. It was divided into two sections: Card Draw and Card Fusion. Compared to the Mall, the Card Center felt much more “player-friendly.” While drawing cards was still expensive at 1,000 Crystals per pull, the fusion and upgrading processes didn’t cost a single cent. Furthermore, a ten-pull (or ten cumulative single pulls) guaranteed at least one R-rank card or higher.

Most importantly, the Card Center offered five free draws every day, refreshing every ten minutes until the daily reset at midnight. At least the Card Center gave her a chance to get something for nothing!

As the saying goes, only a fool turns down a freebie. Chenxi immediately took her first free draw and received an N-rank card: the Greasy Card.

The moment she saw it, images of overacting, “greasy” male actors with exaggerated expressions flashed through her mind. She instinctively made a face like that famous meme of an old man squinting at a phone in disgust.

Despite her disdain, it was free. Curiosity got the better of her, and she dived into the card pool details to check the specifics of each rank.

The cards were divided into four tiers. N-rank cards were the most common and usually seemed bizarre or useless at first glance. Besides the Greasy Card, there were Dress-up Cards, Flash Cards, and “Pickpocket” Cards. However, after reading the fine print, Chenxi realized even these “useless” cards had potential.

Take the Greasy Card: any target hit by it would start secreting oil from their entire body for five minutes. If she killed the target while the card was active, it would drop an extra bottle of gasoline.

In contrast, the Flash Card was exactly what it sounded like—it made the target emit a blinding light. It didn’t provide extra loot, but it blinded the target for twenty seconds and affected anything within five meters of them.

While those two N-cards were for enemies, the Dress-up Card was for personal use. After using a few of her free draws to test them, Chenxi discovered their main purpose was to provide clothing. Even if she were wearing nothing at all, the card would randomly generate a full outfit. Of course, the “random” part was a gamble; she could end up in a three-piece bikini or some incredibly embarrassing “roleplay” lingerie. It was best used when no one else was around.

The most useless N-card, in her opinion, was the Pickpocket Card. It allowed her to randomly “swipe” one or two items from a target she hit. Since she hadn’t seen another living soul in this abandoned resort area, what was she going to swipe? Zombie guts? If she wanted something from a zombie, it was much easier to just kill it and loot the body.

During her first week, she spent her time figuring out the N-cards, but R-rank cards were harder to come by. Fortunately, five N-cards could be fused into one random R-card. So far, her R-rank collection only included Explosion and Haste cards. She had yet to see a glimpse of Illusion, Critical Strike, or Transposition cards.

According to the item descriptions, R-rank cards were mostly offensive or combat-supportive. They worked well on low-level zombies but lost effectiveness against high-level ones. For example, the R-rank Explosion Card ignored the defense of any enemy below Level 3, causing the hit area to detonate. Against a Level 4 zombie, she would likely need several R-rank cards to equal the damage of a single SR-rank version.

According to the help tips, five identical R-rank cards could be upgraded into one SR-rank card of the same type, and five SRs could become a SSR. Each tier increased damage by dozens or even hundreds of times. The golden SSR cards were the pinnacle and could not be upgraded further.

The high-tier SR cards—those not obtained through fusion could only be found via the gacha draw. Chenxi looked over the SR list and was immediately enticed. They were on a completely different level. There were Shield Cards that provided a 30-minute transparent barrier, Puppet Cards that let her control a zombie, Invisibility Cards lasting an hour, and Recovery Cards that restored 70% of a health bar.

To anyone else in this world, a Recovery Card would just look like rapid wound healing, but to Chenxi, it was a visible jump in her HP bar.

Every SR card made her heart race. She fantasized about her luck holding out long enough to pull one, as any of them would significantly increase her chances of survival. As for the SSR cards, they were things she didn’t even dare to hope for—Legendary items like the Storm Card or Dark Devourer Card for massive Area of Effect (AoE) attacks, or the Slumber Card for mass hypnosis. And then there was the most powerful of all: the Spring Return Card, which could fully heal a person on the brink of death and grant ten minutes of invincibility.

She wanted a Spring Return Card more than anything, just to keep as a final insurance policy. But she knew her “African” luck as a non-spender meant she should probably keep her expectations low.

After two days of drawing cards, Chenxi felt brave enough to wander a bit further from the hotel. She even worked up the courage to actually kill a zombie.

Her first kill was a Level 1 zombie trapped inside a room on the hotel’s second floor. She gripped a fused R-rank Explosion Card tightly in her hand. Using her baseball bat, she smashed the door open. As the zombie lunged out with a roar, she used her 100% accuracy to fire the card directly at its forehead.

The moment the card connected, the zombie’s head exploded.

Even though she knew she had the shot, Chenxi’s legs still turned to jelly the moment the creature lunged. If it hadn’t been for that 100% Accuracy skill, her trembling hands would have sent the card flying into a wall. After the head burst, she couldn’t help but double over and vomit. Once she was finished, she forced herself to walk toward the headless corpse.

She had to survive. She had to get used to these “minor” scenes. Besides, she needed to dig out the crystal nucleus to save up for more draws and supplies.

Wait. the head was completely gone. Where was the crystal?

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