The Eerie Little Prince Just Wants to Lie Low in the Apocalypse - Chapter 5

“What the…”

“What the heck is this?” Yu Yicheng was dumbfounded.

Call it a rabbit, and it was round and plump like a pig. Call it a pig, and it had a pair of long ears.

“A rabbit-pig?” Lu Xihe crouched down to examine it closely, then voiced his guess.

Just as everyone was baffled, Qi Jin’s system suddenly popped out, materializing into a physical form out of thin air. It circled around the orange ball, its mechanical male voice shrieking through the RV.

[Isn’t this a Fluff Beast from the interstellar era? Which system handed out the wrong item?]

S102 materialized into a tiny winged figure only the size of a palm, somewhat like a fairy from a fairy tale. It stared at the Fluff Beast before it, sweating profusely in panic.

[Oh no, oh no. If the main system finds out we gave the wrong item, we’ll all be punished. Take it back, take it back. Hurry up and take it back.] S102 flew over to Yu Yicheng, urging him to quickly retract the orange ball into his bracelet.

“How do I take it back? I don’t know how.” Seeing S102 pressing him so urgently, Yu Yicheng grew anxious too, looking helplessly at the others, only to be met with a chorus of head shakes.

[Which careless idiot conjured this thing up? It’s over, it’s over. We’re going to get punished.] S102 wore a mournful face, plopped down on Qi Jin’s shoulder, and sobbed while clutching its head.

S102 suddenly revealed its physical form, and now the Fluff Beast was no longer the center of attention, instead, everyone was staring at S102.

They had originally assumed the system existed only in the host’s mind, with only the host able to hear it speak. They never expected the system could materialize and appear before everyone.

What intrigued them even more was how such a delicate, pretty little thing could speak with a mechanical, electric buzz that didn’t match its adorable face at all.

The most jarring part was that this chattering little thing that never stopped talking was actually the system of Qi Jin, that quiet, taciturn guy who could barely squeeze out a few words all day. The contrast between host and system was like night and day.

S102 hadn’t even noticed it had become the center of attention, still rambling on, cursing the unreliable system: [Don’t let me find out who it was. Making me take the blame, I’ll transfer all their points away and buy ugly special effects, then slap them all on their host, wah wah wah…]

Hearing S102 say it would put ugly special effects on someone, Cheng Yuchuan recalled how in his past life, a teammate had offended his own system, and the system bought a “crap falling from the sky” special effect, leaving the guy drenched in poop wherever he went.

It wasn’t smelly or physical, but the visual was hardly pleasant.

Cheng Yuchuan frowned and quickly asked his own system, “S101, what’s going on here?”

[…]

A moment later, a tiny winged girl also appeared on Cheng Yuchuan’s shoulder. She sat cross-legged with a look of utter exasperation, glancing sideways at S102. Seeing him cry without end, she finally couldn’t hold back and spoke up.

[What are you crying about? I gave it. So what? It’s not against the rules. If it shows up in the inventory, it can be used. Besides, if the system can activate it, that means there’s no problem.]

S102 exploded the moment it saw S101, flying over to argue with her. The two bickered back and forth endlessly, until finally they both flew over to Yu Yicheng and stopped, demanding his system come out and explain too.

001 was nearly driven mad by those two big fools. Not only did they both materialize in front of everyone, but they also forced him to show himself. It seemed he had no choice but to step in and stop them before they went any further.

[Shut up.]

001 didn’t materialize, it just turned on its external speaker and silenced both systems with a single sentence. They slunk back into their virtual forms and retreated into their hosts’ minds.

Then it added: [The item was obtained through legitimate channels, so it can be used. This is a Fluff Beast, a special spirit pet unique to the interstellar spacetime. Its function…]

When it came to the Fluff Beast’s purpose, 001 suddenly paused, silent for a few seconds before saying: [Cute.]

“…” 001’s words left everyone speechless. All that mystery, and in the end, it’s just “cute”?

“You give me all that buildup just to say ‘cute’?” Yu Yicheng couldn’t hold it in anymore. So, all this was just telling him to raise a rabbit in the apocalypse?

Wasn’t that ridiculous? He could barely keep himself alive.

[…It can also be used as a cushion, or a mattress.] 001 felt equally exasperated, but the Fluff Beast really only had “cute” as its selling point in the interstellar spacetime. What functions it would have here depended on how that one set it up, and that one hadn’t told 001, so it didn’t know either.

“What if I sit on it and crush it to death?” Yu Yicheng asked irritably.

[No, as a spirit entity, it won’t die as long as it has energy.]

“Fine, I’ll just treat it as something to pass the time.”

Since there was no way around it, Yu Yicheng could only reluctantly accept that this so-called high-tier item only had “cute” as its sole function.

After all, Yu Yicheng was going to be a teammate assisting Cheng Yuchuan with the main quest, so the team members needed to understand each other’s abilities to coordinate in the future.

Cheng Yuchuan, Qi Jin, and Ning Wanli each stated their abilities and levels in turn, and finally it was Yu Yicheng’s turn to introduce himself.

“What ability? What level?” Yu Yicheng was completely confused. He had just transmigrated in and only knew he had a system, he had no idea about ability levels or anything like that. “How do I even know what ability I have and what level it is?”

Cheng Yuchuan briefly described the method for controlling the energy within one’s body. Yu Yicheng followed his instructions and eventually condensed a ball of white light in his palm.

Before Yu Yicheng could ask what kind of ability this was, he heard Qi Jin and Ning Wanli say in unison: “Healing type, level one.”

“It’s also a very pure healing type. Rumor has it that a level-five healing type can turn aberrants back into humans, but every level-five healing ability user I’ve encountered has never succeeded. I’m not sure if it’s just a rumor or if something’s missing,” Cheng Yuchuan said.

With that, he brought Lu Xihe over to Yu Yicheng and raised his arm to show the wound, asking him to try using a healing spell.

A level-one healing spell could only treat surface wounds, so Lu Xihe’s fractured shoulder and the deep gash on his calf from the knife couldn’t be healed and would still require medication.

After picking up Yu Yicheng, according to Cheng Yuchuan’s original plan, they could now set off for City A.

A City was the safe zone that had lasted the longest in his previous life, and it was also the largest, most resource-rich, and most technologically advanced safe zone on Earth.

In his previous life, the protagonist had chosen to establish a new safe zone in S City, not far from A City. Back then, Cheng Yuchuan’s system task was to assist the protagonist, he just followed whatever the protagonist arranged and did as told, often unaware of the reasoning behind the protagonist’s decisions.

It was only now that he had the protagonist system himself that he learned City S had a spirit stone mountain.

Spirit Stones are a mysterious crystalline substance condensed from a strange external energy. Carrying one on your person provides defense against aberrants drawing near, which counts as a particularly severe world-setting bug in the apocalypse.

If you want to take a shortcut to quickly complete the main quest, exploiting loopholes in the rules is undoubtedly the best choice. Therefore, Cheng Yuchuan also planned to build a new safe zone in S City, but before that, they needed to get to A City and find the map to Spirit Stone Mountain.

A City was over three thousand kilometers from their current location. Without navigation, they could only follow the general direction. The RV was too large, and with the hardened composite armor shell added, although its defense was doubled, its speed inevitably suffered, and they also faced the problem of many small roads being impassable.

Excluding other factors like scavenging for supplies, aberrant surges, and overcast rainy weather, the journey would take at least twenty days.

In his previous life, the departure for A City had been on the third day after Lu Xihe died and turned into an aberrant. Cheng Yuchuan had muddled through the entire journey in a daze. Sometimes when he couldn’t sleep at night, he would get out of the vehicle and kill aberrants all night until he was utterly exhausted and passed out.

This time, however, they spent the journey in laughter and joy.

Two days later, they stopped at a small town to refuel and rest, happened upon a small group of survivors, dropped them off at a safe zone they passed, replenished their supplies, and continued on their way.

After another five days of driving, their supplies gradually ran out, but the next safe zone was still three to four days away by vehicle. With no other choice, Cheng Yuchuan had to resort to the most primitive method of scavenging for supplies.

He parked the RV near a large shopping mall, had Qi Jin and Ning Wanli stay behind to look after Yu Yicheng and the two little ones, and got out with Lu Xihe to search for supplies.

Although there were many aberrants in the mall, they were all ordinary and low-tier ones. Cheng Yuchuan didn’t even need to raise his hand, he took care of them with just a few casual moves.

After clearing out the aberrants in a snack shop, Lu Xihe went inside to look for anything edible. Under a shelf, he found a pack of instant noodles that hadn’t expired and whose packaging was still intact. He turned around and called out to Cheng Yuchuan to grab a bag to hold them.

Cheng Yuchuan nodded and turned to get one from the checkout counter. Suddenly, an ordinary aberrant darted in from behind, charging straight at Lu Xihe.

Hearing the abnormal footsteps, Lu Xihe quickly turned to look and saw an aberrant flash right up to him.

With no time to dodge, Lu Xihe instinctively swung a punch, and to his surprise, it went straight through the aberrant’s chest.

Lu Xihe was stunned by the sight, and Cheng Yuchuan, who rushed over upon hearing the commotion, was so frightened his breath stopped, until he saw Lu Xihe’s hand protruding from the aberrant’s chest.

It wasn’t that Lu Xihe had been bitten; it was that Lu Xihe had killed the aberrant.

Pulling his hand out of the aberrant’s chest and watching it fall straight to the ground, Lu Xihe stared in utter shock, his eyes fixed on his own hand as a piece of information slowly registered in his mind.

He could kill aberrants.

He’d never actually fought an aberrant head-on before. After reuniting with Cheng Yuchuan, he’d just lain back and coasted, letting Cheng Yuchuan protect him, never knowing he could kill aberrants too.

Wait, the day he fell off the big truck, it seemed he had also been able to shove through aberrants and break out of the horde.

Could it be… he was a hidden big shot?

A hidden big shot who could beat up aberrants without any ability or system?!

To verify his theory, Lu Xihe went back out and actively sought out a few aberrants to test the waters.

After half an hour of experimentation, the results proved that Lu Xihe could kill aberrants with his bare hands.

Ordinary aberrants were one per hand, while low-tier aberrants were slightly harder to kill, but as long as you were careful not to let them bite you, then struck swiftly at their necks and extracted the crystal core, you could successfully take them down.

Having made this major discovery, Lu Xihe couldn’t suppress the grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. He tore through the mall in a frenzy of slaughter, avenging in one go all the humiliation he’d suffered when those aberrants had scared him half to death earlier.

“Now that’s satisfying!” Lu Xihe let out a triumphant shout.

He wiped the sweat from his brow and glanced back at Cheng Yuchuan, who was trailing behind him lugging several large bags of supplies. A surge of exhilaration bubbled in his chest.

So this was what it felt like to protect someone.

He flashed Cheng Yuchuan a carefree smile, turned, and walked into a supermarket. Grabbing a bag, he loaded up several more bundles of supplies before returning to the car, thoroughly content.

Fighting those aberrants had splattered him with sticky black blood, so the first thing Lu Xihe did upon returning was take a shower.

Cheng Yuchuan followed him into the bathroom. As Lu Xihe stripped off his clothes, Cheng Yuchuan manipulated his water-type ability to conjure a small dark cloud overhead, drizzling down like a showerhead.

It was even better than a showerhead, no need to turn or move. The cloud drifted on its own to wherever the soap bubbles were, and if the water pressure was too weak, it could swell into a bigger mass and drench him from all 360 degrees.

With Cheng Yuchuan acting as a human water regulator, even the step of towel-drying was unnecessary. A wave of his hand and the water droplets automatically peeled off Lu Xihe’s body and fell to the floor.

Lu Xihe chuckled as he dressed, pulling on his shorts before turning to face Cheng Yuchuan directly. He was just about to tease the guy about what it felt like to watch him shower the whole time when Cheng Yuchuan suddenly grabbed his arm.

There it was, bright red all over. His arm, his face, his neck too.

Cheng Yuchuan’s brows furrowed tightly, his tone serious. “You’ve got a sunburn.”