My Dating Sim Just Got an Update - Chapter 8

Ren Chenxi didn’t possess the skill to hotwire a car with two wires, but fortunately, she didn’t need to. She simply tried a set of car keys dropped by a hotel zombie, and to her delight, they successfully started a high-performance SUV.

Since she had so boldly taken over her brother’s “estate,” Chenxi insisted on staying in five-star hotels, meaning the abandoned vehicles in the parking lot were all quite high-end. The car was excellent and its performance remained intact; even with a thick layer of dust on the exterior and two years of dormancy, she was able to drive it out of the hotel smoothly. What made her like the car even more was its fuel level; there was a substantial amount of gas left, enough to ensure she could reach the gas station with plenty to spare.

With the guidance of her mini-map, she accurately avoided many unnecessary troubles on the road, even if it meant taking a few detours.

As she left the deserted scenic area, the dilapidated scenery along the way served as a constant reminder: the world outside was far more dangerous and terrifying than the resort.

Furthermore, zombies weren’t the only danger humans were too.

The first living person Chenxi encountered after returning to the game was a relatively young woman. By then, Chenxi had been driving for an hour and had just passed a three-way intersection. The woman was standing by the side of the highway, and the moment she saw the car, she began waving her arms and moving toward it.

Instead of stopping, Chenxi slammed her foot on the accelerator. She drove with a fierce, lethal intent as if she were ready to run the woman down, scaring her back to the shoulder. The woman spat at the back of the retreating car in hatred.

On the mini-map, the marker for this woman was a red dot. Moreover, behind her, hidden in the overgrown weeds along the highway, were five more red dots. Red dots meant enemies. Even if they weren’t zombies, they were humans harboring intense malice. Had she stopped and opened the door, the dots in the grass certainly wouldn’t have given her a warm welcome.

She wondered how many other kind-hearted travelers, lacking the warning of a mini-map, had fallen victim to this gang of thugs.

Leaving the group far behind, Chenxi continued to speed down the highway. This road seemed to be a “prime spot” for these criminals, as many obstacles had been cleared to the side. At the very least, she noticed numerous abandoned vehicles in the weeds along the way. She couldn’t tell if they belonged to victims of the initial outbreak or to those who had met their end at the hands of the gang.

Lacking the energy to worry about the origin of the wrecks, Chenxi increased her speed toward the service area.

The fact that the first human she met was a malicious enemy made her dread how many more sinister people she would encounter. She needed to get to the service area, refuel, grab some spare gas, and make it to the H-City base as quickly as possible.

Humans are social animals. Although Chenxi seemed to be doing fine on her own back at the resort, she hadn’t dared to let herself sleep soundly during those first few nights. She was terrified that a monster would break through the window while she was unconscious. Even when she eventually succumbed to exhaustion, she was frequently jolted awake by nightmares.

Finding a populated base would greatly increase her sense of security. Even if there were still bad people in a base, the presence of a crowd usually forced them to hide their sinister intentions, especially in a place like a base that required a facade of stability to survive the apocalypse.

Pushing through her fatigue, Chenxi finally reached the service area just before dark. She had anticipated that the journey to H-City would be slow, but she hadn’t expected the stretch from the resort to the gas station to take this long.

Aside from the first cleared section of the highway, the road conditions were abysmal. Beyond the chaotic traffic jams, she noticed a high density of red dots in the distance. Regardless of whether they were zombies or humans, she wisely chose to drive through the tall grass on the side of the road, using the mini-map to navigate around them. Finally, she managed to get back onto a somewhat normal section of the highway.

As she approached the gas station, Chenxi’s brow furrowed. She had been too naive. She had just encountered a gang on the road, yet she had wishfully thought this station would be sitting there perfectly intact, waiting for her to refuel. According to the mini-map, there were already many people or zombies at the station. It was highly likely that after two years, the fuel had been siphoned dry.

Despite the red dots, Chenxi decided to risk staying the night. This was the only service area for quite a distance, and the city was still far away. She didn’t want to travel in the dark, making this station her best option for a rest stop.

Furthermore, if this relatively low-traffic suburban area already had this many red dots, she couldn’t imagine what the city would be like, especially since Y-City didn’t have a single survivor base.

One detail caught her eye: among the red dots, there were a few yellow dots.

Based on her experience with other games, yellow dots represented neutral entities. As long as she didn’t attack first, they wouldn’t turn into hostile red dots. This confirmed that these red dots were almost certainly human.

Against humans, she didn’t really need a high-lethality item like an Explosion Card. A fist-sized stone was enough to injure or knock someone unconscious even kill them. Having spent a week adapting and having already killed over thirty zombies, Chenxi had lost her initial timidness. She felt no guilt regarding the fleeting thought of killing someone.

After all, this was a game world, wasn’t it?

Determined to face the group, Chenxi quietly parked the SUV in the weeds. After collecting a pile of stones and bricks larger than her fist and storing them in her inventory, she crouched low and crept toward the service area. It was small: a gas station and a parallel two-story building. One side of the building had a “Supermarket” sign, and a double-decker bus was parked at the entrance. Using the surrounding weeds as cover, she slowly approached the bus.

As she neared the vehicle, a woman’s piercing scream echoed from the supermarket. It was followed by the angry roar of an impatient man. Before Chenxi could even hear what he was shouting, the woman’s scream was cut short.

After a moment of silence, the sounds of men laughing coarsely drifted out. Simultaneously, Chenxi noticed that one of the six yellow dots on the mini-map had vanished.

She didn’t need to see what was happening inside to know.

In this apocalypse, was it true that the most terrifying thing was humanity itself?

She checked her inventory cards one last time. Before leaving the hotel, she had accumulated five Flash Cards. After a brief thought, she pulled one out and gripped it in her left hand, while her right hand held a jagged half-brick.

A Flash Card could blind targets for 20 seconds. Since the red dots were clustered together, one card should be enough—if she could knock them out within that 20-second window.

The supermarket had windows, so she didn’t dare leave the weeds. Two years of neglect had allowed the grass to grow tall enough to hide her frame. Not wanting to expose herself, she continued to crawl through the overgrowth toward the windowless side of the building.

Before she could reach the wall, a man walked out of the supermarket, dragging a girl by her hair toward the bus. He warned her in a grotesque voice, “Stay quiet. Did you see what happened to that bitch just now? If you don’t want to die and then become our lunch—you’d better cooperate.”

The girl’s eyes were red, but she remained silent, her gaze filled with defiance, anger, and hatred.

The man’s words made it clear exactly what kind of group she had stumbled upon. No—they weren’t a group; they were scum, animals.

Facing such monsters who abused women and resorted to cannibalism, Chenxi felt no hesitation in striking. In her eyes, these creatures weren’t even human.

She crept forward a bit more to adjust her angle. A second before the man could haul the girl onto the bus, Chenxi threw the jagged brick. Even with her natural strength, the brick shouldn’t have traveled that far, but it struck the man’s temple with terrifying precision and force.

The man didn’t even have time to make a sound before he toppled over from the impact. On the mini-map, the red dot representing him vanished.

His death didn’t alert the others in the supermarket. When he had left, he had pushed the door nearly shut, and the sound of the brick hitting the ground didn’t catch their attention. Only the girl, suddenly freed from his grip, froze in shock. She then looked warily toward the direction the brick had come from.

Chenxi briefly showed herself in the grass and made a “hush” gesture. The girl immediately understood. She didn’t run or go back inside; instead, she grabbed the man’s body and dragged it onto the bus.

Chenxi noticed that the yellow dot representing the girl on the mini-map had turned green.

Green represented someone who harbored no malice and perhaps even a bit of goodwill.

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