"System, give me the specs on this Samurai-3. Let me see what kind of thing it is."
[Detailed data has been pulled up. Read it yourself. I'm taking a break.]
Rigging things behind the scenes for Xiangzi took too much processing power. Next time, she could draw on her own luck.
Hopefully she'd have terrible luck, haha.
That was what Miss System was thinking behind the screen.
Xiangzi carefully read through the Samurai-3 single-soldier combat system data frame by frame.
[The "Samurai-3" consists of ten subsystems and more than forty modular components, covering weapons, protection, communications, navigation, life support, and other modules. It can be flexibly configured according to mission requirements.
Weapons system: integrates an assault rifle, sniper rifle, grenade launcher, and more; equipped with laser aiming and automatic ballistic calculation, enabling "one-button firing."**
Protection system: includes body armor, helmet, goggles, and biohazard defense devices; made with ultra-light titanium alloy and ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene, covering the torso, limbs, and joints.**
Smart exoskeleton: uses motors and sensors to assist the soldier's load-bearing capacity (theoretically up to 100 kilograms) and improves movement response speed. However, the power supply endurance is limited; under high-load operation it can only support 3–4 hours of activity.**
Dynamic camouflage and environmental adaptation have also seen significant improvements.
Adaptive camouflage: the combat suit and helmet use electro-induced materials that can imitate surrounding colors and dynamic patterns in real time, such as swaying leaves, achieving visual concealment.**
Infrared suppression: the fabric reduces heat dissipation, preventing recognition by thermal imaging devices and greatly improving concealment at night.**
Physiological monitoring and life support are highly advanced.
Health management system: built-in electronic modules monitor heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, and other physiological data in real time; when necessary, the suit can automatically activate anti-shock packs or use electrical stimulation to rouse the soldier.**
Microclimate regulation: the combat suit contains a temperature-control system that can regulate the internal temperature between -5.6°C and 50°C, making it suitable for polar and desert environments alike.**
Unmanned cooperative combat module:**
Integrated micro-drones: the soldier can carry three to four palm-sized drones, such as the "Eye" system, and deploy them with the press of a button to receive real-time high-definition video for urban combat reconnaissance.**
Robotics support: incorporates portable robots to assist with bomb disposal or material transport, reducing soldier risk.**
Information networking and firepower enhancement:
Tactical datalink: the display built into the goggles can show enemy and friendly positions, mine distribution, and other battlefield information. The helmet integrates night vision and ballistic calculation modules, increasing shooting accuracy by 70%.**
Voice-controlled weapons: through a brain-computer interface and voice commands, weapon manipulation can be carried out with reduced manual delay.]**
These features were so comprehensive they almost felt excessive.
There were so many fully developed subsystems that the whole set seemed absurdly complete.
Xiangzi had never studied anything this seriously before—not game tooltips, not contracts, not anything.
Just reading the description of the set left her deeply impressed.
But just as she was about to retrieve the gear and equip it, she noticed a line of tiny text at the bottom.
[The target equipment has been issued. Please retrieve it yourself.]
"Huh? I have to go pick it up myself?!"
That was way too troublesome. And it went against the whole point of what she had planned to do. She wanted the equipment for going out; now she had to go out to get the equipment.
Wasn't that completely backwards?
"So where did you put it?"
Staring at the system panel, Xiangzi felt a headache coming on.
[Two hundred meters directly ahead of your current location.]
"Within two hundred meters ahead? How am I supposed to know exactly where that is? You want me to guess?"
Was this equipment card really that annoying to use?
Miss System seemed to think for a moment, then made a purchase on Xiangzi's behalf without asking.
[Notice: This system has automatically activated real-time map service for you. Daily fee: 1000 reward points. That solves the problem. From now on, you can view geographic information within a one-kilometer radius centered on yourself at any time.]
"Uh…"
Although she found the system's practice of deducting payment for services without consumer consent absolutely shameless, Xiangzi still obediently opened the real-time mini-map feature the system had just enabled.
And once she saw it, she had to admit—
this thing was good.
Expensive, yes. But good.
"This is my apartment complex… that's the shopping center… and the gas station… there are this many infected on the E4 highway? …It can even track infected movement…"
Xiangzi's mouth fell open in shock at the little function.
Nearby buildings were all clearly displayed, and the 3D model even gave a hazy glimpse into the interiors of larger structures. Everything within a one-kilometer radius was being monitored in real time.
Ten-meter accuracy.
Good.
That money was worth it.
Oh—and she still had a vehicle card she hadn't used yet. She might as well check that too. If it happened to be along the way, she could drive something back.
[Vehicle location marked. Please retrieve it yourself.]
As expected, another self-pickup item.
Xiangzi did not even bother reacting this time.
"Hmm… the powered armor is in the auto repair shop across from the apartment complex. The vehicle is over a kilometer away, so I can't see it on this map…"
Fine. One step at a time.
She would retrieve the equipment first.
She geared up in her standard daily field loadout. After checking the weather predictor she had bought earlier, she saw there would be no especially violent weather fluctuations in the short term—though the current snowfall was already bad enough.
After letting everyone at home know where she was going, Xiangzi headed out.
Because of the gathering corpse tide, she had no intention of relying on firearms the whole way. Snow was falling from the sky, and there was not a bird in sight, let alone a special airborne infected. Guns would have limited usefulness.
Besides, even with a suppressor, firearms still made enough noise to attract infected from nearby.
As for her crossbow…
Heavens. By the time she loaded a bolt and fired, an infected could have bitten her several times over.
It wasn't even worth bringing.
She had no desire to become the infected's lunch.
Because she had cleared the area before, and because most of the infected had gathered near the apartment complex, there were not many wandering inside the semi-enclosed residential grounds.
And with weather like this, the infected themselves did not seem eager to be outside.
Along the way, Xiangzi only ran into a few unlucky ones that tried to block her path.
With her long blade in hand, the infected that lunged at her with jaws spread wide were instead met by cold steel severing their heads.
All that remained on the ground were headless corpses and blood-soaked snow.
"It's kind of cold. This weather is really awful."
Standing on a road exposed to the elements, Xiangzi's face was going numb from the wind despite her heavy clothing.
Yesterday hadn't even been this bad.
The damned weather was only getting worse.
Still—move faster. Grab the gear, change into it, and be done. One of the new armor's functions was temperature regulation, and she wanted to see how good it really was.
Trudging with difficulty through the heavy snow, Xiangzi eventually reached the auto repair shop.
Before the end of the world, it had been a privately run little garage. The whole building wasn't large: the workshop was downstairs, and the owner lived upstairs.
The front shutter was locked tight. Xiangzi circled the building once, but found no glass windows or alternate entrances.
"That's it? Nothing but the rolling shutter? Don't tell me I have to climb up to the second floor."
She stared at the rear wall and the pipe running along it. Since she wasn't carrying the large backpack or wearing heavy defensive armor, Xiangzi slapped the dust off her tactical gloves and decided to climb.
The wall was freezing cold, and the pipe was slick with ice and snow.
Still, none of that was enough to stop Xiangzi.
Using every little protrusion as a foothold, she scrambled up the wall, then nimbly made her way to the window.
The window wasn't locked.
Standing on an exterior ledge barely ten centimeters wide, one hand gripping the pipe, the other working a knife into the frozen frame, Xiangzi pried at the stubbornly jammed window.
A normal glass window with mesh screening was nothing to her.
But just as she slipped into the room, she was greeted by a startling sight.
Inside the transparent bathroom stall stood the infected shop owner, staring directly at the intruder with clouded, filthy eyes.
He had probably gone a very long time without food. Locked inside the room, he was so emaciated that he looked like skin wrapped over bone, and he had not even been able to force open a single glass door.
"Hello there."
Xiangzi was, after all, the one trespassing into someone else's home, so she actually greeted the man politely from outside the bathroom.
Then Takagi Xiangzi twisted the doorknob.
The door opened.
Before the infected owner could step out, Xiangzi thrust her blade down with vicious precision.
"Now would you kindly die?"
Say hello before striking.
A civilized person understood basic etiquette.
The shop owner died on the spot without making a single sound.
Xiangzi's blade had plunged down through the top of his skull, destroying brain, mouth, throat—everything in one brutal line.
His body crumpled to the floor, barely gone cold before Xiangzi was already rummaging through the building in search of her "Samurai-3" combat system.
Not here. Not here either. Not in the kitchen. Not in the living room…
Could it be downstairs?
She searched all three upstairs rooms and found nothing big enough to be the suit.
Which meant it had to be in the workshop.
There were no windows downstairs, and no power either, so she had to switch on her light before going down.
Under the bright white beam, Xiangzi could clearly see dust motes floating through the air. The workshop reeked heavily of machine oil, as expected, and various auto repair tools were arranged neatly on the shelves. Navy-blue work uniforms hung nearby, stained with grease that could never be washed out.
The place was the very image of a classic mechanic's garage.
After a quick look around, Xiangzi spotted a large crate sitting in the bed of the pickup truck parked in the middle of the bay.
That had to be it.
Delighted, she hurried over and popped open the latches.
And yes—it was exactly what she had come for.
"So high-tech… the texture, the design… this is really good."
The whole set was done in a star-gray finish from top to bottom. It looked extremely high-end.
Xiangzi could hardly wait to pull it out of the crate and try it on right there.
But first she had to get everything upstairs.
At that very moment—
"Ahhh!"
Something suddenly grabbed her lower leg from beneath the truck.
It coiled around her with alarming force, nearly yanking her off balance.
"What the hell has this much strength?!"
Xiangzi almost fell. Instinctively, she slashed downward with the knife, hacking blindly and cutting through whatever had wrapped around her.
She staggered back against the wall and dropped into a crouch. One hand tore her sidearm from its quick-draw holster, and she immediately sprayed the underside of the truck with gunfire.
Clang-clang-clang-clang!
The floor below the vehicle was torn apart under the barrage. Xiangzi didn't dare raise her aim any higher.
The last thing she wanted was to pepper her own new armor with bullets before she had even worn it.
The screaming under the truck did not stop until her magazine ran dry.
Only then did Xiangzi step forward with her blade ready.
The creature under the truck was dead beyond any doubt. Under the beam of her headlamp, Xiangzi finally saw what it had been.
A grotesque infected with a body covered in tentacle-like appendages, like some kind of octopus mutation.
"How did something like this even fuse together?"
Maybe it had just come back from the seafood market when it got infected.
After casually harvesting a few useful bits from the dead octopus-mutant infected, Xiangzi hurried upstairs with her new armor.
Even without the rest of the crate, the combined suit and helmet were very heavy. Along with the remaining subsystems still packed in the box, it took her a long while to haul everything upstairs and put it on.
Her old equipment was ruthlessly recycled, transformed from battered armor into warm, comforting reward points.
"Ugh… I look kind of dumb."
Using the shop owner's mirror, Xiangzi looked herself over after donning the suit.
Far from looking imposing, it made her look almost adorable in a clunky way.
The rounded helmet and bulky profile did not resemble the sleek Russian-style single-soldier systems she had expected at all.
It had zero intimidation factor.
Whatever. Time to test it.
The suit's internal operating panel was nothing like Xiangzi's own system interface. It was crude and straightforward—very much in line with the design philosophy one might expect from Slavic engineering.
"The battery only has this much charge left? Three hours of endurance? System, explain."
[It didn't have much power to begin with. Five hours is the theoretical maximum, so three hours is already plenty. Take it or leave it.]
"How do I recharge it?"
[Plug the port into a power source. Now go downstairs and bring the rest of the components back. You can study them later.]
Only then did Xiangzi realize she had left a whole pile of small accessories in the crate downstairs.
But the robot system she had been hoping for was nowhere to be found.
"So I have to buy that separately too, System?"
[Obviously. And I'd suggest you don't bother with the robots right now. They're not very good yet.]
So much for that thought.
Xiangzi shifted her attention to the vehicle.
The battery in the armor was enough for a round trip at least.
She switched to high-output mode.
Super-soldier Xiangzi, deploying.
This armor might look a little silly, but once it was actually running, it felt amazing.
She sprinted across the snow with almost no effort, and the support system even analyzed the optimal route for her.
This suit was incredible.
After a two-kilometer dash, Xiangzi arrived near the location indicated for the vehicle.
"System… you're telling me I'm supposed to drive that?"
The moment she saw it, she froze.
That thing?
She was supposed to drive that?
Was this some kind of joke?
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 178)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 138)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League ( 126 )
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter110)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter155)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter98)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter172)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 65
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 77
From Junkman to Wasteland 66
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 46
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 158
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 65
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 144
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass 100
The Way the Umamusume Look at 68
Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 165
Naruto: Weaving the Future, Be 65
Zenless Zone Zero, but Kamen R 76
Multiverse Crossover: The Perf 66
My Cyberpsycho Girlfriend 65
Uma Musume: The Dark Trainer 140
Uma Musume: A Calamity Born fr 120
I, a Reincarnation-Loop Player 69
The Violent Girl Group Is Beat 90
Uma Musume: The Horse Girl Who 66
Uma Musume: From Beginner 95
Becoming a Horse Girl, I Will 70
Uma Musume: I Want All 80
I Can Copy Unique Skills 65
Summoning an Evil God, but the 52
Supernatural Multiverse 65
My Harem Is Indescribable 50
Jujutsu Kaisen: Heroic Spirit 55
"I'm just a Valkyrie passing through." 40
Uma Musume: Today Is Another Romantic Battlefield 50
Still playing traditional Honk 30
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