The interface that appeared before Lin Wu was very tidy, and the first step was the tutorial description for beginners. Since the game employed Dark Matter Harassment (a term for dark matter that can be simply understood as an enhanced version of quantum entanglement force), most of the tutorial was meaningless, as it was consistent with the daily experiences of encountering zombies.
Then, the system explained the Home Convention. The first rule was: As the game simulates real pain, deliberate infliction of harm on other players' characters (including but not limited to kidnapping, impalement, etc.) might result in severe punishment and might not exclude legal trials in the real world…
In summary, killing was allowed, but torture was not.
Next was character creation, using one's real name. Lin Wu's surname was not Lin; like 95% of the individuals born on Blue Star, he had been transferred to an orphanage by his parents soon after birth. This all stemmed from a breakthrough in genetic technology. After each person was born, their parents would receive a genetic screening report for the baby, detailing the child's physical characteristics. Hence, these 95% of people were also known as ordinary people.
Ordinary people wouldn't inherit poverty or disease, nor would they face discrimination or feel inferior for being brought up in an orphanage, the only complaint they had against Dawn was the lack of imagination in the naming.
Besides using one's real name, height, weight, and appearance were all replicas of the real person, with no choice even in hairstyle. What could be chosen were attributes: strength, agility, intelligence, constitution, and will. Players could pick one as their main attribute and another as their secondary attribute.
Did he need to deliberate? Lin Wu unhesitatingly chose agility as his main attribute. The longer you lived, the higher the score. If you couldn't outrun zombies, at least you should outrun humans, right? The year was 2044— the age of firearms, how much strength did it take to pull a trigger? As for intelligence, if improving intelligence in the game could enhance IQ, wouldn't everyone be an Einstein?
The higher the will, the more pain you could endure. Lin Wu didn't know if others liked it, but he certainly did not. Constitution was basically stamina. Agility plus constitution meant not only running quickly but also for a long distance, so naturally, he picked constitution as his secondary attribute.
After creating his attributes, Lin Wu acquired two system tags: Easy Personality and Marathon Runner. As a Blue Star Butler, the AI Dawn knew everyone like the back of its hand.
…
After finishing the information registration, Lin Wu was teleported to a circular disc with seats for a hundred people. It was evident this was a starship for interstellar passengers, with one door in each cardinal direction. Accompanied by flashes of white light, player after player entered their assigned seats. The central screen displayed a 10-minute countdown.
When the countdown reached five minutes, the system began to distribute starter equipment. The first category was melee weapons, and Lin Wu chose a steak knife—simply because of a misclick.
The second category was backpacks, variously colored, each without exception featuring a special pouch designed for holding basic material packs. The backpacks were humanely designed with hooks to hang one's weapon on the edge for easy access.
The third category of equipment was basic material packs: ammunition, food, building materials, medical supplies, and gasoline, each indispensable for the Survivor's Base. Opening a material pack would yield a number of items.
The system continued to distribute snacks, with choices among peanuts, sunflower seeds, cola, beer and more, some reducing fatigue, others quickly restoring stamina.
When the countdown hit one minute, the system was still distributing equipment: bandages, antibiotics, anti-inflammatory drugs, alcohol—choose one.
By this point, all players had realized that grabbing items as fast as possible was key, the quicker you grabbed, the more you could get. Thus, everyone frantically operated their interfaces, and their backpacks rapidly filled up.
Lin Wu stood aside, coolly observing. These people must not know about Dawn's shamelessness, huh?
The red light on the spaceship died, green light shone, and the four doors began to slowly fall outward. What met their eyes was the magnificent night scene of a shining city, yet beneath the bright lights of the metropolis, not a single person was seen.
…
Ten super cities welcomed a million guests tonight, and the spaceship Number 74 that Lin Wu was aboard set them down at a crossroads in the city. To the east, there was a pedestrian street filled with a dazzling array of goods. To the west, a riverside bar street twinkled incessantly with neon lights that carried magical colors. Southward lay a park, where the outline of a lake could be faintly seen. To the north was a residential area, where standalone villas were matched with high-rise apartments erected on either side of the road.
"Is this what Earth's nights look like?"
"How beautiful."
Everyone was stunned by the beautiful night view. Blue Star also had nights, but Blue Star had six moon-like satellites that diligently reflected the light of the star onto Blue Star, hence, Blue Star only had relative night instead of absolute night.
The sound of glass shattering interrupted everyone's thoughts, and looking in the direction of the noise, they saw an ordinary-looking zombie break through the glass window of a store and slowly stagger towards them. Everyone knew this was a zombie game and weren't panicked at the sight of a zombie.
Two young men pulled out baseball bats and awaited the zombie's approach. Someone on the side analyzed and assessed, "It moves 0.7 meters every two seconds. Both hands are missing, and the only threat—the teeth—are also all gone."
"What's it trying to do?" an uncle asked with a laugh, "Is it trying to scare us to death or make us die laughing?"
The crowd couldn't help but erupt into laughter at these words.
Lin Wu had a bad feeling and, relying on his Agility attribute, climbed up a streetlight to look around. To the east, west, and south lay endless lights as far as the eye could see, but to the north, there was only light for over seven hundred meters before it became sparse and faded into darkness. Lin Wu came down from the streetlight and, without caring about anyone else, fled towards the north. City resources were plentiful, but so were the zombies, and from what Lin Wu knew about "Dawn", one should never take the bait laid out right in front of them.
Good luck, brothers and sisters.
The pitiful zombie stopped a dozen meters away from the nearest player, drooping its head low in front of its chest, and with such fragile a body, the gathered players even worried that its sudden lowering of the head would break its own neck. The zombie lifted its head, facing the starry sky, and a stream of blood was ejected from its mouth, accompanied by an extremely piercing and shrill long sound that echoed to the heavens.
A beacon shot through the clouds, signaling armies to commence their feast.
The city echoed with that piercing long sound from all quarters, and zombies from all directions took to the stage. They appeared out of nowhere around the first zombie within a hundred meters and surged toward the players like a tide. The good news was that they were far less ferocious than the zombies in the movie "World War Z"; the bad news was that they were over a hundred times stronger than the zombies in "The Walking Dead".
The group of standing players scattered like birds, and zombies from all sides converged on them, with Screeching Zombies calling out wave after wave of zombies.
The first to suffer were a group of players whose backpacks were heaviest and who had exhausted their stamina. Their cries of alarm and screams of horror were incessant. The remaining players weren't much better off; even after discarding their backpacks, they had little stamina left. The entire scene affirmed the ancient poem: "All traces of people vanish from the pathways, all becoming meals within the circle."
Lin Wu, lightly equipped and doubling down on Agility, along with the marathon runner's entry bonus, had already made his escape. He left the well-lit area, successfully shaking off all zombies and players. Looking around, apart from a few zombies wandering on their own along the road, there were no other moving things visible. Seeing this, Lin Wu slowed to a walk, allowing his stamina, 20% of which was used up, to start recovering.
The proverb goes, "A fawning dog ends up with nothing," but this is not entirely true. As a first-year, Lin Wu, being a fawning dog trying to win over his goddess, trained hard for a year and finally succeeded in securing the runner-up position in the college marathon organized by the district, thus managing to get the marathon runner entry in the Homeland game. Unfortunately, the goddess was more concerned about the senior who injured his foot less than a kilometer into the run, and in passing, presented Lin Wu, who had a trophy in hand and was confessing his feelings to her, with a "nice guy" card.