The corpse king, towering like a small mountain, collapsed with a thunderous crash, half its body smashing into the convenience store. Amid the dust and debris, Qi Lin thought he glimpsed a faint purple glow bursting from the monster's body.
Loot drop from killing monsters? As expected, still following MMO settings...
With a swift roll, Qi Lin vaulted over the counter and walked up to the fallen BOSS. He bent down and picked up the glowing item.
"Acquired item: [Corpse King Serum] — Purple quality item. Dropped from F-rank BOSS [Corpse King]. High-grade serum of unknown purpose. Can be injected directly, or exchanged with the Academy's researchers for Resource Points."
"Corpse King Serum...?"
Qi Lin studied the syringe-shaped object in his hand. Inside it contained about one milliliter of transparent liquid. Unlike the pus and blood seeping from the corpse king, this serum shimmered with a pristine clarity.
Just as Qi Lin slipped the syringe into his pocket, a voice called from outside:
"Hey, bro inside! Which shelter are you from? You saved my life today. I, Luo Chengfeng, will definitely pay you a personal visit one day to express my gratitude!"
Pay a visit? Qi Lin blinked, then stepped out from the shadows of the convenience store.
"What?" This time it was Luo Chengfeng who was stunned.
His eyes swept over Qi Lin's shabby clothing, then fixed on the 98K in his hands. The friendliness in his gaze instantly soured into disdain.
"So you're just a gutter rat from the slums? …Hey! Toss over that gun you picked off Xu Shao, and hand over the BOSS loot. Do that, and I might spare your pathetic life today!"
As expected. Qi Lin's brows furrowed. In the past three years, class conflict inside the shelters had only grown sharper. The wealthy residents constantly complained that the masses of slum-dwellers consumed too many resources, lobbying the Smartbrain to cut down rations for the poor.
Meanwhile, the slums had already erupted in nearly ten uprisings, each crushed bloodily by the administrator-controlled troops. Long term, bigger conflicts were inevitable.
"Hey! Did you hear me?!" Luo Chengfeng barked again, impatience flashing in his eyes as he raised his AK47, aiming directly at Qi Lin.
Qi Lin had no illusions, if he dropped his weapon, the other would pull the trigger without hesitation. Spare his life? If he believed that, he would have died on some battlefield years ago.
"The BOSS didn't drop anything," Qi Lin replied flatly, even as his finger slowly slid toward the trigger.
He had only one bullet left. He needed to strike first, before Luo Chengfeng did.
"Impossible! You low-born trash, you think I don't know the guides? Stop wasting my time!" Luo Chengfeng was already seething. His first real "hunt" had been a disaster, Xu Shao was pulped by the BOSS, the Ouyang heiress he was pursuing had been trampled out of a revive, and now some slum rat dared to defy him?
People from the slums should obediently labor in semi-automated factories or toil in the eco-farms. What business did they have playing this game?
Wasteland Code Survival had been designed for elites like him, training them to be rulers of the surface when humanity returned. As for the slum-dwellers? Just cannon fodder. Give them junk weapons and push them to the frontlines, that would be enough. Why the Smartbrain had ever allowed them entry into this world was baffling, it upset the natural order.
Were it not for Qi Lin's terrifying accuracy, three consecutive headshots, Luo Chengfeng would've already emptied a magazine into him.
"There's another BOSS!" Suddenly, Qi Lin's expression changed, eyes locked behind Luo Chengfeng.
"You think I'll fall for"
Bang!
"Critical hit! Damage dealt: 1997. Effective damage: 100. [Firearms Mastery] proficiency +5%."
"You killed player [Luo Chengfeng]. Experience gained: 245."
Luo Chengfeng's eyes widened in disbelief. A deep bullet hole gaped between his brows, the round tunneling straight out the back of his skull. He twitched, tried to raise a hand toward the wound, then froze and collapsed heavily.
"Actually, the moment you thought you weren't distracted, you already were," Qi Lin murmured, stepping past shattered glass to collect the AK47 and backpack from the corpse.
As expected, the rich kid's loadout was leagues above Qi Lin's own. The bag contained two spare magazines of 7.62mm rounds, several packs of compressed biscuits, a box of anti-radiation pills, a can of beef, and multiple bottles of ultra-purified water.
Qi Lin immediately cracked open the beef can with his Swiss Army knife, grabbed a chunk dripping with savory sauce, and stuffed it into his mouth.
"Satiety +1."
He chewed greedily. It had been three long years since he'd tasted real beef. The rations labeled "meat" were nothing more than soy fiber substitutes.
To get actual meat required spending huge amounts of resource points, and even then, options were scarce. Beef, with its long raising cycle and high feed cost, was reserved almost entirely for the rich districts.
"Not bad at all..." he muttered, eating while surveying the scene. Of Luo Chengfeng's four-person team, the two girls were already dead, and now he himself was gone. Only Qi Lin remained.
This would no doubt make Luo Chengfeng his enemy. But the wasteland was vast, whether they ever crossed paths again was another question.
After filling his stomach, Qi Lin rifled through the other players' bags. As expected, packed full of supplies, even a fragmentation grenade.
He then swept through the convenience store, though most of its food and water had long expired or was tainted with radiation. Such items could raise satiety but would spike radiation levels dangerously—nobody ate them unless desperate.
Thankfully, his new haul from the rich kids already stuffed his own pack to bursting, clean, high-grade supplies enough to last a week.
"Oh right... didn't Smartbrain say I leveled up to 2 and unlocked World Broadcast? Wonder what people are saying there."
Qi Lin opened the channel, only to freeze. His ID was everywhere in the chat feed.
[World] Luo Chengfeng: "Bounty on player ID 9527! Kill him with recorded footage: 1000 Resource Points! Provide verified location: 500 Resource Points!"
[World] Luo Chengfeng: "Bounty on player ID 9527! Kill him with recorded footage: 1000 Resource Points! Provide verified location: 500 Resource Points!"
Qi Lin winced. This Luo Chengfeng really was loaded. Broadcasting on the World Channel cost 1 point per character. A single message like that cost hundreds of points, and he was spamming it nonstop.
"Tsk tsk. What a waste," Qi Lin muttered, half admiring, half pitying the squandering of wealth, while sorting through his bag.
[World] Wanderer: "Who the hell is this guy? So rich?"
[World] Crimson Lotus: "He's Luo Shao of Shelter 71 Rich District, Huaxia sector. First heir of the Luo Consortium. You don't know?"
[World] Wanderer: "What the, that Luo Shao?! I heard the Luo Consortium controls half the synthetic food supply in Huaxia shelters. And this 9527 dares provoke him? Dude must be brain-dead!"
[World] Luo Chengfeng: "That 9527 ambushed us during our BOSS fight, wiped my team, and stole the kill on a low-HP BOSS! That's why I'm putting a bounty on him!"
Qi Lin chuckled coldly. Luo Chengfeng might lack skill, but he was good at twisting the story.
[World] Crimson Lotus: "Luo Shao, why not just find out which consortium backs him and have your dad wreck their business? Wouldn't that be fun?"
As soon as that message appeared, Luo Chengfeng went oddly silent, prompting speculation that he'd logged off to go complain to his father.
But Qi Lin knew the truth: Luo Chengfeng just couldn't stomach anyone finding out that he'd been killed... by a slum rat. He couldn't afford the shame.
Qi Lin ignored it. Why waste resources shouting on World Chat? Better to trade for necessities. IDs were anonymous anyway, unless revealed by the player, no one could trace a handle back to its real-world owner.
(End of Chapter)
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