The basin-sized mutated spider flipped over, with its spider legs twitching a few times before stilling completely. Beside the dead spider lay a bronze-colored ring, emitting a dazzling white glow.
The ring looked just like a simple bronze circle with no decoration. Song Jian walked up and picked it up, and as his gaze fell upon the ring, its attributes automatically appeared before his eyes.
Ring of Strength (White): Equipment effect, strength +1, requires level 1 to equip, can be taken out of the game: no.
A ring that could only increase one's strength attribute was better than nothing. After equipping it, Song Jian met the conditions for equipping the pistol, and he could place it into his equipment slot.
Killing the mutated spider, he completed the newbie guidance quest and incidentally leveled up, which went rather smoothly. But to Song Jian's puzzlement, while he leveled up, his own attributes did not increase at all; he gained only one skill point.
He casually allocated this skill point to "Gunpowder Weapon (Pistol) (Basic)," raising this passive skill from level one to level two. Originally, it only increased his pistol's ranged damage by 5%, but with one skill point added, the effect became "10% increase in power."
"Gunpowder Weapon (Pistol) (Basic)," passive, level 2, 10% increase in pistol weapon power
As for the "Thick-skinned" initial skill, Song Jian had selectively forgotten about it.
After slipping the Ring of Strength on his finger, a warm current flooded through his body, and he felt his strength mysteriously increase slightly. The P18C pistol he held felt lighter in his hand.
"This equipment is really useful, oh right, I still have a newbie gift pack," Song Jian thought to himself. He opened his inventory, and the first grid, previously sealed with a newbie gift pack, was now available to open.
After staring at the newbie gift pack for three seconds, two options appeared on it, "Open" and "Destroy." His gaze fell on "Open," and after a short while, the gift pack shone brightly and disappeared, leaving behind three items: a "Zombie City Map," a hundred "0.23mm Universal Pistol Bullets," and a white-quality "Tiger Fang Dagger."
Song Jian first opened the map and examined it carefully;
The map looked somewhat worn, with torn edges, clearly a small section ripped from a larger map. And this small section was precisely the map of the city where Song Jian resided.
The name of the city before the apocalypse was no longer known, now the map simply named it "Zombie City."
Song Jian first located his own position. On the map, he was represented by a little blue triangle, currently in the southeast corner, inside a residential building called the New Garden Residential Area.
North of the residential area was a commercial street, and beyond the residential area, a recreational square named Camel Square.
South of Camel Square was another large residential area, and beyond that, a ring road around the city. Across the ring road was the city's boundary, and the parts beyond the boundary had been torn off, clearly exceeding the city limits.
After carefully examining the map and memorizing a few nearby locations, Song Jian put the map away. The universal pistol bullets were identical to the ones he had found in the room, and the Tiger Fang Dagger made him somewhat reluctant to let go.
The dagger had a blade 16.5 centimeters long, with the blade smooth and curving upwards to a point, following the traditional spear-point design known for its powerful penetrating capability. The back of the blade was thick, with a row of sawtooth-like serrations, the blade surface was thin, and it shimmered with a cold light. As he closely examined the dagger, a chill emanated from it, causing Song Jian to sneeze involuntarily;
"Hey, what a find. If I could take this out and show it to Song Yu, that guy would definitely drool over it," Song Jian chuckled to himself and equipped the dagger in his equipment slot.
It was a pity that he couldn't take the dagger out of the game, nor could he show it off to Song Yu.
Even after obtaining the dagger, Song Jian was keenly aware that the chances to use it were slim to none. He didn't have the guts to wield the Tiger Fang Dagger and engage in close combat with the monsters in this game. Courage wasn't something Fish Leong could give him.
After resting for a bit, Song Jian, holding the pistol, walked towards the living room door. This room no longer held any value for searching; if he wanted to continue playing, he'd have to leave the safe house and venture into the city to search.
Pushing open the hefty security door, Song Jian was hit by a strong smell of blood. Hesitating for a moment, he still stepped out of the room.
Click, a crisp sound came from behind him;
Song Jian's heart sank, and he suddenly thought of something terrible.
"Damn it, I didn't find the keys to this room while searching. Now that the door is closed, if danger arises, won't I have nowhere to hide..."
Bang bang!
He pushed hard on the security door a couple of times. Song Jian was on the verge of tears; it wouldn't open.
"A warm reminder, you have completed the novice task. You only need to stay in the game for twelve hours to choose to leave the game. Before leaving the game, please select a relatively safe place; otherwise, you may find yourself in danger when you log on again. If your game character dies, your body in real life will also be eliminated!" A cold mechanical voice suddenly rang in his ear, startling Song Jian.
Looking at the tightly closed door, Song Jian's face was filled with helplessness. "Why didn't you say so earlier!"
...
The elevators in the entire building were out of order, and all the room doors were tightly closed. With Song Jian's current abilities, he probably couldn't break into any rooms; his only option now was to leave the building.
He pushed open the stairwell door on this floor, and a pungent smell of blood assaulted his nose, along with the stench of rotting corpses, making Song Jian involuntarily wrinkle his brow.
Walking down the dimly lit stairs, just two floors down, Song Jian's body tensed, and he stopped in his tracks. On the next set of stairs, only five or six steps away, lay a ragged corpse that seemed to have been dead for a while. It had a skeletal grin on its cheeks, and one of its arms was missing, seemingly eaten by something. With its torso bare and covered in bite marks, its innards were scattered and rotting, emitting a foul smell.
As Song Jian noticed the corpse, it too began to move, wobbling as if trying to stand up. It struggled for a while without success and, finally resorting to crawling on all fours, it slowly made its way toward Song Jian.
The moment the corpse moved, a row of blood-red text appeared above its head:
"LV1 Mutated Zombie (Weak During the Day) Vitality: 56/112"
"Damn, they really are zombies, and they move!" Song Jian broke into a sweat, raised his pistol, and "bang, bang, bang" kept pulling the trigger. There were nine bullets left in the gun; Song Jian emptied them all, spraying the Mutated Zombie's body with an unknown liquid, and in no time, its Vitality Points hit zero.
After it died, the Mutated Zombie's body rapidly decayed as if a transparent flame was consuming it, quickly reducing to a pile of black ash. Around this pile of ashes, four glowing items materialized—three emitting a grey light and one a white light.
"Huh, the drop rate in this game is pretty high, haha!" Song Jian's eyes lit up as he picked up all four items.
...