This realization dealt a heavy blow to Li Ke. If this was the hard cap, it meant their daily combined income was strictly limited to 6,000 Duke's Casino Tokens.
While that kind of money was technically enough to scratch together a basic survival living day-to-day, it completely shattered his dreams of achieving unlimited ammunition.
Ammunition in this world wasn't just pricey—it was downright exorbitant, rivaling the eye-watering price tags attached to firearms with colored tier numbers.
A single bullet cost 48 tokens. Even just buying a raw bullet tip cost 30 tokens. Calling it highway robbery was a massive understatement. To make matters worse, a Tier 3 Tactical Assault Rifle on the Trader's shelf carried a staggering price tag of 10,000 Duke's Casino Tokens!
Realistically, Li Ke never intended to rely on the Trader for ammunition. He wanted to mass-produce it himself. Unfortunately, without finding the necessary schematics, they hadn't unlocked the ability to forge metals, let alone craft a proper Workbench.
"What a massive pain in the ass."
Now that his relationship with Erina had deepened, Li Ke felt a much more frantic urgency to secure a proper arsenal. He desperately needed heavy-duty firepower capable of wiping out entire zombie hordes.
Yet, here he was, sitting on a mountain of raw resources but trapped with no viable way to liquidate them into real power.
"Seriously, what is wrong with this world's mechanics? Why does it have to gatekeep progression at such a critical bottleneck?!"
Li Ke simply couldn't wrap his head around it. Relying strictly on scavenging was a dead end; they rarely found anything beyond basic food supplies. The Trader's purchasing limit cut off their primary source of income, and their path to self-sufficiency was completely locked down.
"Is my world exploration progress too low? I'm already approaching Level 20!"
Refusing to accept this setback, Li Ke slammed his fist against the Trader's counter in sheer frustration. He reluctantly counted out his tokens to buy four jars of glue, figuring he might as well try to manually piece together a basic firearm later.
But as he turned to leave the shop, his eyes suddenly caught sight of the Forge sitting in the corner, right next to a heavy table stacked with storage boxes.
He had inspected this Forge and table before. Back then, no matter how hard he tried to mentally press 'E' to interact with them, nothing happened. There were no UI prompts, no menus—absolutely nothing. He had written them off entirely, assuming they were just static background props.
But looking at his newly elevated level, he decided to give it another shot.
He flat-out refused to believe that grinding his way through so many levels had yielded absolutely zero benefits.
Taking a deep, stabilizing breath, Li Ke stepped right up to the Forge and tried pressing 'E' again.
Flash.
A brand-new interface instantly materialized in front of him. Having played his fair share of survival crafting games, Li Ke immediately recognized the layout and functions of the various slots on the screen.
The grayed-out slots at the top were clearly reserved for Forge modifications. The flame icon below designated the fuel slot. At the very bottom left was a running tally list labeled with materials like Brass and Lead—the exact resource reservoir of the forge!
A triumphant grin immediately split across Li Ke's face. But the very next moment, as his gaze drifted over to the workstation beside it, his expression completely morphed into one of unbridled ecstasy.
"It actually works! I knew it! World exploration parameters in this place adapt based on character level! Leveling up genuinely unlocks advanced functionality!"
Grinning with excitement, Li Ke navigated the system's overlay and slotted several scavenged brass components into the interface. He quickly ignited the furnace via the menu, watching intently as a 20-second countdown materialized over a brass doorknob he had placed inside.
The moment the doorknob melted away, the counter for raw Brass jumped up by 50 units. Without skipping a beat, he dragged a stack of dug-up clay into an adjacent slot. He remembered the exact recipes clear as day from the game: whether you were forging brass casings or lead bullet tips, clay was a non-negotiable catalyst.
One unit of brass paired with one unit of clay yielded a casing. Two units of lead paired with one unit of clay yielded a bullet tip.
He hastily dumped two entire stacks of raw lead into the reservoir as well, letting all three crucial components melt down simultaneously.
But as he kept his eyes locked on the rendering progress bar, Li Ke couldn't help but sigh. The smelting speed was agonizingly slow.
Then again, a slow progress bar was a million times better than a locked menu.
Experimenting further, his eyes drifted down to the Duke's Casino Tokens sitting in his inventory. He dragged a handful into the prompt and discovered a brilliant loophole: the currency itself could be smelted back down into pure, high-grade brass!
This meant that if they entirely bypassed the Trader's inventory and focused purely on self-sufficiency, they could realistically churn out over a thousand rounds of ammunition in a single day.
Li Ke let out a long, heavy breath. The suffocating anxiety that had kept his nerves completely shot over the last few days finally began to melt away.
"What's going on, Li Ke? Did you find something else? You look ecstatic."
Erina walked over, carrying a few selected food ingredients she had been browsing at the counter. She looked on with genuine curiosity, her eyes darting between Li Ke's broad grin and the humming, active Forge.
When they had first cleared out this Trader outpost, they hadn't found a single useful thing here. Both workstations had failed to respond back then, so they had completely written them off as static background props.
Meanwhile, Li Ke had already utilized the instant system crafting queue to piece together an iron pipe machine gun. Equipping it straight to his hotbar, he pulled it out immediately, desperate to test it.
In an instant, a ragged, makeshift firearm materialized in his grip. Calling it a piece of junk was a compliment—the bolt was literally substituted with a rusty screwdriver.
Visually, it looked like a pile of garbage. It defied all logic that a handful of wood blocks, glue, and scrap iron could instantly coalesce into a fully functional weapon. The design carried a distinctly crude, Orkish aesthetic straight out of Warhammer 40K.
But logic meant absolutely nothing against the laws of a game system.
And what made it even more ridiculous was the sudden appearance of a glowing crosshair right in the center of his vision the moment he held the weapon.
As he manually dragged the crosshairs around, his body instinctively adjusted its posture to accommodate the weight and recoil. Activating the secondary targeting function caused the crosshairs to instantly tighten, magnifying his view of the target area. It completely bypassed the need for years of firearms training; with this system override, he could essentially act as a certified dead-shot sniper right out of the gate.
Staring down at the machine gun in his hands, an overwhelming rush of pure relief and joy washed over him. He bolted straight toward Erina—who was still staring in utter shock at the deadly weapon he had just conjured out of thin air—and scooped her into a tight, fierce embrace.
He buried his face deeply into her chest, pressing himself against her soft, full figure and inhaling her sweet, calming scent as he swung her around in a dizzying circle.
"Our survival is finally guaranteed!"
A profound, bone-deep sense of relief washed over Li Ke. For the first time since he had been thrust into this unforgiving wasteland, he finally felt a genuine sense of safety.
"W-What are you doing all of a sudden?!"
Feeling Li Ke's hot breath puffing against her bare collarbone, Erina's face flushed completely crimson. She weakly pounded her fists against his shoulder, looking thoroughly flustered and adorable.
"We don't need to keep searching anymore! There's a fully functional Workbench and a Forge right here! We can craft every single thing we need to survive! Better yet, as long as we keep grinding our levels, we'll be able to unlock even more of this world's hidden anomalies!"
Though a massive portion of the system interface remained grayed out, Li Ke was confident. As long as they kept building up their momentum, they could absolutely carve out a happy, stable life together in this world.
"What?!"
Erina was completely taken aback. She hastily wriggled out of his tight embrace and rushed over to the humming Forge to inspect the glowing interface herself. Once she verified the crafting mechanics for herself, she let out a joyous cheer and threw her arms right back around him.
Firearms are the absolute ultimate source of security for humanity. Staring at the newly unlocked weapon queues and the realization that they could mass-produce their own ammunition, both Li Ke and Erina were completely swept away by pure, unadulterated ecstasy.
"Yes! We can finally build our own arsenal!"
The two of them were so deeply intoxicated by the unexpected discovery that they stood by the workstation like a pair of absolute fools, eagerly staring down the ticking countdown timers. They watched as the scrap brass doorknobs and copper items melted down one by one. In their excitement, they even dumped all 6,000 of the Duke's Casino Tokens they had earned that day straight into the crucible, keeping a mere 1,000 tokens on hand from yesterday for emergencies. While waiting for the metals to refine, they used the system menu to grind their dug-up coal and nitrate powder together into black gunpowder.
But while they had an absolute abundance of lead and gunpowder, their raw brass supply was severely lacking. In the end, they could only squeeze out enough refined alloy to press exactly one thousand brass casings.
Next, they spent the rest of the evening staring at the Workbench like idiots, watching the progress bar steadily turn those one thousand casings and lead bullet tips into live ammunition.
As the neat, lethal stacks of bullets steadily filled their inventory slots, the wide grins on their faces didn't falter for a single second.
Eventually, Li Ke slotted his newly minted pipe machine gun into his hotbar to test-fire a single round. Just as he suspected from his gaming days, the system override was absolute—the moment a thought crossed his mind, his body and fingers adjusted automatically, aiming and firing with perfect, unnatural precision. Witnessing this seamless transition, Erina proudly declared that their immediate crisis was solved.
Before heading back to the RV, they melted down a final batch of scrap iron to forge a few short iron pipes, which they would need to repair their makeshift firearms.
That night, Li Ke finally got to savor Erina's authentic, legendary culinary skills. However, neither of them could finish the massive portion of meat before they eagerly threw themselves under the bedsheets.
Fortunately, they had the foresight to extinguish the kindling under the bath drums earlier, ensuring the smoke wouldn't give away their position. They spent a deeply passionate, profoundly reassuring night wrapped in each other's arms.
The next morning, Li Ke let out a long, lazy stretch, thoroughly eager to wake up and jumpstart his survival empire. But as he opened his eyes, he was greeted by an unnervingly pitch-black sky.
Is it not dawn yet?
Reaching over, he casually fondled the sleeping Erina's chest, playfully pinching a slightly tender, swollen peak just to tease her before resolving to go back to sleep. After all, both of them had been a little too swept up in the excitement yesterday and had gone quite a few rounds. His lower back was completely shot, and his knees felt entirely hollow.
But just as he was about to lie back down, a sight through the window caught his eye—stiffening his posture so violently he nearly screamed aloud.
Zombies. Endless, unfathomable hordes of zombies.
A sea of undead stretched across the entire landscape, their shambling, rhythmic footsteps beating a terrifying drum against the earth as they marched relentlessly past the rear of their RV. It was only then that Li Ke finally realized what was wrong with the murky, suffocating atmosphere.
It wasn't night. It was an apocalyptic sandstorm. Thick, rolling walls of yellow dust completely choked the air, blotting out the sun entirely. Beneath this swirling veil of grit, an immeasurable sea of zombies was advancing forward. As far as the eye could see, there was no end to them.
Desperately slapping a hand over his own mouth to stifle his breathing, Li Ke crept toward the front windshield, looking out toward the nose of the RV. His heart sank into his stomach. In that direction, an equally infinite number of rotting corpses were marching onward. The horde blanketed the hills and valleys, stretching past the horizon.
It was a vision of absolute, paralyzing despair. He couldn't see the vanguard of this massive army, nor could he see its rearguard. He had absolutely no idea what could have triggered an anomaly of this magnitude.
But there was one terrifying reality he knew with absolute certainty.
The moment they were spotted...
They were dead.
Yet, it wasn't just the endless marching horde that felt wrong. As Li Ke cast his eyes up toward the darkened sky, another bizarre anomaly chilled him to the bone. High above the dust storm, a massive moon hung suspended in the heavens. Despite the sun's brilliance being entirely choked out by the raging sand, the moon's radiance remained blindingly, piercingly bright.
And its light was a deeply unsettling, malevolent crimson.