Chapter 15: Romantic Survivalist
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 15: Romantic Survivalist
– This is a base-exclusive mode. You will not be infected inside the Safe Base. The maximum range applies regardless of the Safe Base's actual range.
– Inside the Safe Base, Strength, Agility, Stamina, and Mana increase by ★★★. This applies independently of existing stat limits.
– Staying in the Safe Base for 4 hours or more increases one random stat by ★★ for 8 hours.
– If you take a fatal blow inside the Safe Base, you will release "Adrenaline."
(Restores up to 50% of your health within 3 seconds.)
(Cooldown: 30 days)
"Holy... shit..."
The impact of the Safe Base itself had been so massive that, honestly, I didn't think anything about Base Invincibility could surprise me.
At most, I figured it would just boost one more stat.
To be fair, even that would have been an incredible option.
Considering the sheer hell a player has to go through just to raise a stat by one level, getting a free level-up—even with conditions—is a fucking broken ability. But this raises all stats.
Right now, inside the Safe Base, my base stats are Level 4, and my Strength is Level 5.
Even the Rest Bonus requirements and duration have improved, shrinking to 4 hours of rest for an 8-hour duration.
If my Strength gets the bonus, I'll have Level 7 Strength, even though it's only been a few days since the server started.
Of course, stats alone aren't enough to survive a Zombie Apocalypse.
If that were the case, the veterans would have grinded their stats right from the start, maxed everything to Level 10, and gone on a one-man army rampage.
But no matter how experienced a veteran is, after one, two, or three years of in-game time...
The reason so many of them fail to survive that long and end up dying halfway through is because zombies stronger than the stat limits eventually appear, and there comes a point where stats don't mean much in the face of overwhelming numbers.
But that's a problem for future me.
Right now, in the present...
In a world crawling almost entirely with Level 1 Zombies, having at least one Level 7 stat makes it hard to die even if you wanted to.
And then there's the Adrenaline option.
This was the exact overpowered option that made me lose my composure right after promising myself I wouldn't be surprised.
I would have bowed in gratitude if they had given me this as a standalone mode, yet here it is as just one of the sub-options within a mode.
"To think they'd give me a get-out-of-jail-free card."
There are countless brutal aspects to a Zombie Apocalypse, but the most famous is its absolute lack of mercy.
Setting aside complete newbies who just started, even experienced semi-newbies who have built their own houses and gotten used to the game will face instant, merciless death if they get bitten by a stray zombie while stepping outside to look for food.
It's so brutal that over 95% of players install a separate Vaccine Mode just to minimize dying like a fragile sunfish.
Dying itself isn't the problem.
You can always just start over.
What's scarier than death is all your invested time vanishing into thin air.
But here, even death itself is terrifying.
A world where it wouldn't be strange to die anytime, anywhere.
Having an extra life would let you live with at least a little less trembling, but any Zombie Apocalypse player knows...
That such a thing doesn't exist.
And yet, I just got exactly that.
"Fucking awesome."
Even though it only works inside the Safe Base and has a massive 30-day cooldown—making it hard to rely on as a true extra life—still, who am I to complain?
With a Zombie Rush just around the corner, there couldn't be a better mode than this.
"The 1st Zombie Rush is in the bag."
Whether you're a 100,000-hour player or not, getting bitten means death all the same.
Besides, this isn't a game anymore; it's reality.
To protect my one and only life, I had been preparing diligently, calculating every single variable.
But the Cheat Modes are boosting my tight survival odds far more than any of my own efforts ever could.
"Now this is what I call a Cheat Mode."
This is exactly what a Cheat Mode should be.
After all, that's what Cheat Modes are made for in the first place.
What is an extreme, hellish difficulty and an insurmountable wall for others is lowered to a mere railing I can easily hop over, all thanks to my Cheat Mode.
Of course, this only applies within my Safe Base, but for the Main Quest that is the Zombie Rush, I didn't think I'd even need to worry about unexpected variables.
Humming to myself, with a fully stocked fridge and an expanded range of activity, the five-day death sentence now felt like a comfortable grace period, now that my preparations were complete.
"Should I go do some farming?"
Items I wanted to stuff into my freezer began popping into my head one by one.
---
Ironically, even though several days had passed since the Zombie Apocalypse began, there were still buildings that remained relatively intact.
Well, maybe the buildings themselves weren't perfectly fine, but the contents inside were.
One of those places was an ice cream parlor.
Not the kind of convenience store that sold popsicles, but places like Baskin Robbins or Natuur that scooped ice cream for you.
Of course, even ice cream was precious food, so shops in quiet, safe areas had been completely cleaned out. Surprisingly, though, shops located along the main roads still had their stock intact, even if their entrances were smashed.
The reason was obvious.
Since there were so many zombies around the Homeplus, there had been a massive commotion there initially. The more humans turned into zombies, the harder it became to approach. With corpses and obstacles littering the streets, no one was willing to risk their lives to go all the way in there just for food.
In time, these places would also become targets and get looted, but for now, as long as I avoided the zombies and slipped through the back door, I could safely farm all the ice cream I wanted.
The fact that it was just ice cream probably played the biggest part in why it was left untouched.
Thanks to that, I was able to bring back massive tubs of ice cream in various flavors, enough to pack my freezer.
"I need to get a bigger fridge too."
The tiny fridge in my studio apartment, which only had a single small freezer compartment, couldn't hold all of this.
But it wasn't like I could just haul a massive refrigerator into my cramped studio apartment either.
I found a reasonable compromise.
"There are plenty of supermarkets around anyway."
The convenience stores had already been completely looted, leaving nothing behind, but their display cases and freezers were left abandoned, either slightly damaged or perfectly intact.
Among them, I salvaged a relatively small ice cream freezer.
Even though it was still quite large and not ideal for a studio apartment, it managed to fit if I squeezed it right into the corner next to my mattress.
If there was one downside, it was that these commercial freezers were incredibly noisy.
Well, the same went for the tiny fridge in my studio apartment anyway.
But ever since my place upgraded to a Safe Base, that problem had vanished completely.
Thanks to the glorious technology of silent, self-sustaining power generation, I could store my food in absolute silence.
I stuffed the freezer with the ice cream I had brought back and moved the meat I got from hunting zombies over here as well.
Even so, the freezer had a massive capacity, leaving plenty of empty space.
I filled the ice trays in my original fridge's freezer to freeze some ice, then headed out again.
Even though it was a small commercial freezer, I felt a sudden greed to fill it to the brim.
I searched for convenience stores along the main road.
As expected, the convenience stores in awkward, easily accessible locations were already completely cleaned out.
Zombies didn't just stand in one spot all day either.
They also moved and wandered around in search of prey.
No matter how crowded a street was with zombies, as long as you set up the situation correctly, you could easily farm even in high-risk areas.
So, I ventured quite deep.
A convenience store located about 300 meters from the Homeplus.
Because it was on the opposite side and in an area with high foot traffic, there were more zombies loitering around than I expected.
Roughly thirty of them were visible just at a glance.
If they heard a sound, they might pour out from the buildings across the street, and if things got even noisier, they could swarm out from the Homeplus as well.
If that happened, I'd have to deal with at least three hundred of them.
Even if I had a Level 4 Strength stat buff right now, that number would be impossible.
Instead, I jogged lightly and slipped behind the convenience store building.
A few zombies noticed me and followed, but hunting a small number of Level 1 Zombies inside a building was child's play.
The only thing I had to watch out for was a potential encounter with a Level 2 Zombie.
Fortunately, I could see the zombies' information. When looking in Simple View, their levels were clearly displayed as numbers above their heads, allowing me to enter the convenience store with ease.
Though it had been looted quite a bit, the convenience store still had enough food left to be considered a treasure trove.
I loaded up my Folding Cart with frozen foods and ice cream.
There was no need to take everything.
For someone else, this would be a place they'd risk their life to farm later on. If they came all this way only to find absolutely nothing, there would be no greater disappointment.
My goal for today's farming was simply to fill my freezer, not to pack my entire home with food.
Rattle, rattle.
Having achieved my goal, I ran without looking back.
I could hear zombies chasing after me, but none of them were Level 2.
"Wow. Is it really okay for me to play the game like this?"
I was absolutely certain that even when playing the actual Zombie Apocalypse game, I had never experienced a farming run so filled with pure excitement rather than tension.
A double-compartment freezer packed with various types of ice cream and massive tubs of different flavors.
Dumplings, noodles, pizza, meat.
One side was completely filled with all kinds of frozen foods from the convenience store.
Who on earth would look at this and think it was the freezer of a survivor in a Zombie Apocalypse?
To set the mood even further, I had brought back an ice cream scoop and various branded ice cream cups. Scooping it out made it look absolutely perfect.
"Three flavors, please. Mom is an Alien, Shooting Star... Fuck, my arm hurts."
I opened the door, stepped outside, and looked up at the stars shining in the clear night sky. Taking a bite of the freshly scooped ice cream, a curse slipped out of my mouth naturally.
"Fuck... now this is sex."