Lucas Hall hardly slept the entire night.
When morning arrived, he decided to get up, throwing a few rotten bones he had hidden under the bed into the space beneath it.
It's been so long, the captain's skeleton should be completely dead by now.
After a night had passed, Lucas seemed like a different person.
His face was pale, with deep dark circles under his eyes, and his eyeballs were bloodshot.
As he stepped out of the captain's cabin, Lucas noticed a new statue on the deck…
It was a cartoon octopus monster, with wings on its back, squatting on a stone.
"What is this...?"
At the same time, a system message popped up.
[Last night, 13,000 people successfully killed monsters, and one person even achieved a double kill!]
[The system will grant you a special ability based on your performance.]
[Additionally, the Monster Gacha Machine is now open. You can throw monster body parts into the machine to receive gacha rewards, but the bodies will be forcibly recycled.
However, be careful not to throw garbage into the machine or any living creatures, as it will anger the gacha machine!]
The world chat immediately exploded.
"There are monsters in this world? What are they like? Has anyone seen one?"
"Let me out of here, I'll give you anything!"
"There are ability rewards? I missed out!
Last night, a skeleton monster bumped into my door, I didn't open it, should have tried to fight it."
"If you opened it, you might have died."
"Monster Gacha Machine? Has anyone found one?"
"I found mine! It's on the deck, a big face cat, kinda cute."
"Mine is inside the cabin, a cartoon robot!"
"Damn, mine is a clown… really freaked me out, and it's in the captain's cabin!"
"Are you all getting different ones?"
Lucas turned his head and saw his own gacha machine — a cartoon version of the octopus monster, its mouth wide open, eager to be fed, with tentacles all over its face…
[Reward granted: You have received a special ability: ??????]
[Unlock conditions: ??????, Times 0/3.]
What's this?
It needs to be unlocked?
This is a rip-off!
Lucas opened the chat channel.
Others were also asking why the ability required unlocking.
The unlock conditions were different for everyone, some needed tens of thousands or even millions of times, while others only needed a few dozen.
Lucas only needed 3, which was a special case.
Soon, people figured out the unlock conditions, and they were all simple things.
"My unlock condition is walking, I need to walk 100,000 steps, this is ridiculous!"
"Yours is fine, mine is breathing 3 million times, whatever…"
"You guys are lucky, mine is 0/100, I have no clue."
"Maybe it's surviving 100 days..."
"This system… if you don't want the ability, you don't have to take it!"
Lucas looked at his own 0/3, shook his head, and decided to go with the flow. He wasn't going to stress about it.
He walked into the cabin, ready to turn the monster corpses inside into gacha rewards.
The captain's skeleton couldn't be used for gacha, there was only one of them.
So he grabbed a drowned victim's severed hand and tossed it into the octopus gacha machine.
As soon as he put it in, the machine's eyes lit up with red light, and the tentacles under its chin changed color like ribbons.
Lucas twisted the dial on its chest, and the sound of gacha balls clinking filled the air.
The atmosphere was on point…
"Really, what a weird hobby!" Lucas commented.
A glowing ball soon rolled out.
Lucas picked it up, and it turned into a bottle of ghostly blue liquid.
[Name: Drowned's Grudge]
[Type: Consumable]
[Quality: Good]
[Description: When consumed, reduces sanity by 20 points. For one minute, you will be treated as a drowned victim and will not be attacked by lower-tier monsters.]
Lucas' eyes lit up.
This was actually a pretty good life-saving item.
In survival games, such items were definitely valuable.
The world chat also lit up as people showed off their rewards.
"I got a token!"
[Name: Bone Token]
[Type: Relic]
[Quality: Excellent]
[Description: Summons a skeleton that will fight for you for 15 minutes. After the time is up, it will lose control and attack the summoner. The corpse disappears after death.
Cooldown time: 24 hours.
Be sure you can handle the skeleton before using it.]
"Wow, this is strong. Sell it to me, I'll pay a billion!"
"A billion? Useless, you need sea snail coins here, and there's no way to trade unless we meet in person."
"How about this dagger?"
[Name: Serrated Dagger]
[Type: Artifact]
[Quality: Excellent]
[Description: A sharp dagger with a comfortable grip, deals light damage. Its only downside is it's short!]
"Well, we all know it's short."
"I wouldn't buy this weapon from you, you'll make me lose face!"
"..."
Many people showed off their gacha rewards, but few had excellent quality items. The best two were the token and a relic, while most were good-quality.
Overall, relics tended to be better than artifacts, but they came with a risk of reducing sanity and could have side effects.
The rusted flintlock in Lucas' hand could deal medium damage, whereas other excellent weapons mostly dealt light damage.
The power wasn't that impressive.
But they came with restrictions, like one shot per minute and occasional misfires, costing sanity…
It seemed like a balanced system.
Lucas looked away and devoured half a long-legged sardine.
He was starving, and after last night's battle, his concerns had eased considerably.
Surviving mattered more than anything else.
[Eating raw long-legged sardine, your sanity decreases by 2.]
The fish was a bit off, but it wasn't rotten.
It provided some energy and a little hydration.
After finishing the sardine, Lucas felt a bit better and checked his status.
After a night's rest, his energy and sanity had mostly recovered, but because of the nightmares and insomnia, his energy recovery was minimal.
His wounds weren't fully healed either. He wasn't sure if they'd get infected…
Lucas
Status: Injured [Large human-shaped figure with yellowing at the wound]
Sanity: 74/100
Energy: 52/100
Health: 83/100
He entered the cabin.
His top priority now was to create sound traps.
The monsters were not very intelligent, so the traps didn't need to be too discreet.
He only needed to use the simple crafting system to make some long ropes, and put large holes in thin wood panels, then string them together.
Wood panels were easy to come by, they could be taken directly.
In this game, wood could be turned into any cubic shape, one unit being roughly equal to a cubic decimeter of wood.
He tied the wood pieces together, spaced them apart, and hung them in the hallway outside the captain's room and on the door.
Lucas tested it, and the sound difference from wind or someone hitting it was significant, making it a useful early warning system.
By the time he finished, the morning had passed, and the wood and fabric he had collected earlier were used up.
Lucas wasn't in a hurry to gather more resources.
His most urgent task was still fresh water; he had to fish more and keep an eye out for drifting supplies or treasure chests.
Just as he was thinking about this, Lucas suddenly felt something was wrong with his body. He felt a bit hot, his face was burning, and his stomach hurt.
He immediately became alert and checked his status again.
Lucas
Status: Injured / Corpse Poison Infection (Mild) / Food Poisoning (Mild, Diarrhea) [Entire body turned yellow, wounds are darker]
"Damn it!"
The worst situation he didn't want to face had happened.
The drowned monster had corpse poison, and he'd been infected!
But he was out at sea and had no medicine…