As a silver moon climbed past the jagged peaks of the ruins to dominate the high sky, darkness instantly swallowed the entire landscape. Amidst the hair-raising grinding sounds of monsters stirring to life, a lean, solitary figure quietly slipped out from that dilapidated, wind-sheltered old mine entrance.
It was Chen Luo. In his hands were a few rough pieces of flint he had just gathered, and the heavy, 「Starter Iron Pickaxe」 hung carefully behind his back, clinking softly. With every step he took, his feet felt heavy; the sheer exhaustion racking his body clearly reflected the severe depletion of his stamina. He let out a soft sigh and muttered to himself:
-"I really didn't expect that just mining a few rough stones would exhaust this 17-year-old body to this extent. It looks like once I'm safe in a bit, I need to distribute my free attribute points immediately."
Looking out, the wasteland before him was already heavily dotted with the shifting, dark shadows of moving ruin monsters. Chen Luo did not panic in the slightest. He immediately activated his life skill, 「Slowed Breathing」. This skill functioned like a biological filter, reducing the life aura radiating from his body to the absolute minimum. It concealed both his body temperature and his expelled carbon dioxide, effectively rendering him a "dead object" in the eyes of the monsters. He began to deftly and inconspicuously weave through the abandoned buildings. Combining this with stealthy, slow-walking techniques, he lightly lifted and placed each heel, ensuring he didn't make any microscopic sound that could alert his surroundings.
After a period of meticulous scouting, Chen Luo selected a two-story building facing the main street that appeared relatively intact. Pressing his body flat against the wall, he gently pushed the door open, slipped inside, and cautiously threw the deadbolt locked. Though the air inside was somewhat moldy, fortunately, the dust accumulation wasn't too thick. With a quick cleanup, it fully met the standards of a safe haven to pass the night.
He glanced at the system interface clock blinking in the corner of his vision: he had just over half an hour of preparation time left before the night completely froze over. Drawing upon his hardcore knowledge as a top-tier power-leveler from his past life, Chen Luo quickly operated the system's crafting interface, combining the raw materials he had gathered to forge several 「Stone Walls」. Although these 「Stone Walls」 looked crude, angular, and completely devoid of aesthetics, the hardness and stability of solid stone blocks were absolutely beyond question.
Daring not to waste a single second, Chen Luo quickly moved to the second floor and other critical structural points. He meticulously stacked the heavy stone walls to seal off all major entrances and exits, then used thin stone slabs to reinforce every surrounding window. He understood the game’s core mechanics all too well; if he allowed climbing-type monsters to smash through the glass and ambush him while he was fast asleep, his fragile life would undoubtedly be plunged into an abyss of no return.
After nearly 20 minutes of a frantic race against time that left him utterly exhausted, sweat completely soaked the back of his leather armor. Fortunately, he had successfully sealed off every single path leading to the outside. Even so, relying on his seasoned experience, he deliberately left a few microscopic gaps in hidden corners of the walls, ensuring proper air circulation while preventing his living human aura from leaking out.
As luck would have it, this randomly chosen abandoned house still contained a fair amount of dry firewood left behind by the previous owner. Combined with the building's built-in, high-tech chimney from the old era—which featured an odor-filtering mechanism—he could fully treat himself to a hot meal tonight without worrying that the campfire smoke or the aroma of food would draw the monsters outside.
A few minutes later, with the strike of flint, a cluster of warm, orange flames began to dance cheerfully in the fireplace. Chen Luo used sharpened wooden skewers to pierce the fresh meat harvested from the Fierce Star Boars, carefully roasting them over the coals. The rich fat dripped onto the embers, producing a mouth-watering sizzling sound. Though the scene looked quite cozy, standing inside this silent, deserted cottage, his shadow—stretched long and projected onto the wall by the firelight—carried a deep, bone-chilling loneliness.
In his past life, ever since entering university, he had moved out to live completely alone. He chose a reclusive lifestyle, evading all real-world social interactions and keeping company only with his computer screen. Therefore, even though he had transmigrated into this very real wasteland world, standing before the roaring campfire burning brightly in front of him, his gaze remained somewhat hollow and lost, unable to truly feel a single shred of human warmth.
A sudden aroma of slightly charred meat wafted into his nose, abruptly snapping Chen Luo out of his boundless thoughts. Snapping back to reality, he hurriedly pulled the meat skewers away from the fire, eagerly stuffed them into his dry novice bread, and began to wolf it down in massive bites. A whole day of high-intensity physical labor—from dismembering monsters to heading down the shaft to mine—had left this young body nearly drained of all energy. Although this makeshift meat sandwich lacked salt or any seasoning, perhaps because it was tainted with a bit of wood ash and smoke, a faint hint of salty bitterness emerged in his mouth, which greatly stimulated his already starving appetite.
Meanwhile, outside the cottage, the late-night winter wind began to howl and roar frantically. Mixed within it were the venomous, low growls of zombies and the bizarre, clicking collisions of skeleton bones moving through the dark. They roamed blindly like the walking dead, occasionally letting out hair-raising shrieks that violently tore through the dead silence of the night sky.
Chen Luo pressed his eye against a tiny gap in the stone wall, peer-viewing through the hole toward the main road outside. Upon witnessing the terrifying horde of monsters packed tightly like a rising tide, he truly understood why the native NPCs in the game always chose to sleep very early and absolutely never ventured out at night, even within the safety zones. In a land dominated by demons, who would have the confidence to face that crazed horde without absolute, overwhelming strength? Even if a team had top-tier gear, being tightly surrounded by hundreds of Level 2 monsters could easily cost a Level 5 player party their lives if they failed to break through the perimeter instantly.
An overwhelming wave of drowsiness and physical fatigue crashed over him like a tide. Chen Luo dragged his heavy steps up to the second floor. Fortunately, the second-floor bedroom still retained a spring mattress that possessed decent elasticity and comfort. After working at high intensity for an entire day in a dark, damp underground mine, being able to lie on a warm, comfortable bed was like finding water in a desert. He closed his eyes and quickly fell into a deep sleep.
The night quietly slipped away in a bizarre silence punctuated by the distant roars of monsters. Yet right at this moment, on the rooftop of a ruined skyscraper quite far from his building and facing directly north, a blurry, illusory figure materialized out of thin air beneath the moonlight. That mysterious entity stood quietly at the edge of the rooftop, its indifferent eyes overlooking the kingdom of monsters ruled by darkness. It spoke not a word, then vanished back into the void as if it had never appeared.
-"............"
Upon its departure, the mysterious figure left behind only an extremely cryptic, indecipherable whisper. The voice sounded incredibly raspy and muffled, akin to some ancient curse. Yet bizarrely, not a single trace of killing intent or hostility could be heard within it. The tone resembled a murmur emerging from the deepest depths of the demon world, from some incredibly distant land.
However, the wandering monster hordes below shuddered violently the instant they heard this voice, as if the control centers inside their bodies had been instantly taken over by a supreme, absolute will. They did not fall into a frenzy or go berserk; instead, they abruptly stiffened in place, turning into unmoving stone statues. Thousands of hideous monsters stood silently across the ruined streets, no longer making a single sound, causing the entire space within a several-mile radius to instantly plunge into a terrifying, heart-stopping silence.
It took a long time before the bodies of these monsters regained their mobility. This time, however, they all seemed to have lost their targets, beginning to drift and wander blindly into various side streets and alleys in all directions. At this moment, the sole and most incredible commonality among them was that every single monster seemed to be deliberately avoiding something—not a single creature dared to step into or draw near the shelter cottage Chen Luo had chosen.
At the same time, in the various dark corners of this desolate city, anomalies were quietly unfolding.
For reasons unknown—whether driven by underlying core logic or the intervention of a mysterious force—the internal structures of all surrounding abandoned buildings were quietly being replaced and filled by siphoned Safes and Monster Cores refreshing out of thin air.
True to their name, Safes were a highly unique random treasure chest mechanic in this game. As long as players found and opened them within the ruins, they could obtain various rewards randomly generated inside—ranging from top-tier equipment and rare materials to vital survival necessities across all levels and rarities. In the game settings, this was one of the core resource streams that lone wolves and major guild players scrambled for, second only to daily mob grinding.
As for the Monster Cores, while their essential attributes remained unchanged, the greatest variable now was that they no longer refreshed exclusively in high-danger Dungeons or specific deep underground zones like in the original game. Instead, they began to distribute themselves randomly and without pattern across various high-rises, floors, and corners throughout this ruined city.
Although this process directly interfered with and forcibly modified the architectural foundations and internal layouts of these public structures, not a single trace of violent shaking or collapse occurred as these mysterious entities integrated into the buildings. These newly mutated Monster Cores continuously spawned wave after wave of monster tides into the outside world during the dark. Yet, after maintaining this state for a fixed duration, these monsters automatically dissolved into thin air. Clearly, this new strain of mutated monster cores was operating under a mystical mechanism that currently remained unknown to anyone.
Looking out, the exterior walls of some peripheral buildings had long cracked into several startling, massive fissures under the weathering of wind and rain. Yet at this very moment, they still stood firmly in place, completely unaffected by the physical laws of weathering and gravity. Furthermore, as the Monster Cores and Safes embedded themselves inside, some deep fractures on the concrete walls began to miraculously self-heal like living tissue. Gradually, a profound, transformative structural mutation began to take place inside these skyscrapers and across the entire ecosystem of the ruined city.
Moreover, the number of monsters on the outside streets showed no signs of decreasing; instead, it began to exhibit a skin-crawling, explosive surge, growing at a speed that defied imagination. However, just as a sliver of pale light broke on the horizon and dawn was about to break, the monsters spawned by these mutated Monster Cores began to dissipate on a massive scale into the void like wisps of blue smoke. This was an eerie phenomenon completely unprecedented in the game's history. Normally, the vast majority of dark-attributed nocturnal monsters had to be burned to ashes by the first rays of morning sunlight to die and vanish, rather than collectively evaporating into thin air before the sunlight could even fully penetrate the area.
When the first gentle, golden rays of morning sunlight pierced through the gaps in the rubble, shining straight into the cold, lonely bedroom and onto the only young man lying on the bed, Chen Luo opened his eyes right on time. Unaccustomed to the brightness, he squinted slightly and held up a hand to block the light.
Gazing at the broken, cold, and unfamiliar ceiling of the ruins above him, Chen Luo's tightly wound nerves relaxed completely. At this moment, his heart had truly accepted and compromised with reality: he might never have the chance to return to that real world of the year 2150 for the rest of his life.
-"Since there's no turning back, why can't I write my own myth and become the most supreme, legendary NPC in this entire world of Infinite Class?"
Muttering a low sentence while lying on the bed to psych himself up, he performed a kipping get-up and flipped out of bed, walking quickly down to the first floor. Deftly and familiarly stretching out his hands, Chen Luo dismantled the crude Stone Walls he had stacked tightly against the main entrance the night before, block by block, and stepped outside.
However, when he clearly saw the scene before him, he froze entirely in sheer shock.
Right before his eyes, stretching across the entire ruined street and every corner outside his shelter cottage, the ground was densely blanketed with countless shining strategic supply crates and loot sacks. They had dropped on the spot when the monsters dissolved during last night's urban mutation, radiating enticing glows of various equipment rarities. Chen Luo stood there dumbfounded. He never dreamed that by simply sleeping soundly inside his room, opening the door first thing in the morning would welcome such a massive, terrifyingly immense stroke of sudden fortune.
It looked like this so-called lethal night didn't seem that scary to him after all!