Beneath the silent night sky stood a weed-choked yard and a dust-covered house.

A man lay on the bed.

The man was asleep, but it was clearly an uncomfortable sleep. His brows were tightly furrowed, and his body trembled unconsciously. The source of it all was a bandaged wound on his shoulder.

Dizziness. Nausea.

Fang Chang’s eyes snapped open.

It felt as if his head were being roasted over a fire, everything inside reduced to mush. His thoughts were jumbled, his senses blurred. It was as though his whole body had been smashed to pieces and stuffed back into his mother’s womb, wrapped in amniotic fluid, with everything around him a hazy blur.

“What’s happening to me…”

Fang Chang felt his forehead with the back of his hand. In the moonlight, his gaze drifted to the wound on his left shoulder, and he already knew the answer.

“No! It can’t be! It can’t…”

He desperately tried to avoid that possibility.

“It’s just a scrape. There’s no way! I’ve got it—I have a cold! I must have caught a cold!”

He touched the thin shirt on his body, rolled over, and wrapped himself up in the blanket.

But the tighter he wrapped himself, the worse the fever felt.

The fever brought on other symptoms, too. He felt hungry and thirsty, and for no reason at all, a craving for meat rose within him. His mind automatically replayed the meat dishes he’d eaten before, but the images grew stranger and stranger, shifting from grilled meat toward raw meat.

He began grinding his teeth erratically, imagining fresh meat appearing before him, foul-smelling blood flowing down his throat and into his stomach. But it was all in his imagination, and the unsatisfied craving gradually took over his mind.

He wanted fresh, bloody meat!

Even as the craving for bloody meat battered him again and again, Fang Chang remained clear-headed. It was strange, but it was also the source of his hope.

“I’m just sick. I haven’t been infected with the zombie virus. I won’t die. I won’t…”

Fang Chang’s thoughts stirred, and a pale blue panel appeared in his consciousness.

Name: Fang Chang

ID: 0972

Level: LV0

Physical Strength: 94

Nerve Response: 99

Mental Strength: 101

Reward Points: 0

Enhancements: None

Inventory (10 Slots): Empty

This was why Fang Chang was in his current predicament. A game called God’s Game had pulled him from reality into this apocalypse-ridden world full of zombies. To complete a mission called Survive for Three Days, he’d gone looking for shelter and encountered a lone zombie. He’d managed to kill it by sheer luck, but the zombie’s fingernail had also left a cut on his left shoulder.

Now, the zombie virus had taken hold.

Fang Chang refused to believe it, and the character panel that came with the system didn’t provide much information either. Just as he was fooling himself into feeling relieved, a sudden headache struck. He cried out in pain, clutching his head as he rolled off the bed.

The craving grew clearer and clearer, nearly smothering the light of reason in his mind.

His craving for flesh and blood was overwhelming, but there was nothing like that nearby.

“Water?”

Fang Chang suddenly thought of a substitute.

“I need water!”

He staggered out of the room, but before he could reach the water, his legs gave out and he collapsed to the floor.

All strength had left his body. He couldn’t even get back up…

His face pale, he brought up the mission panel.

[Main Quest: Survive for Three Days

[Mission Type: Survival

[Countdown: 02:11:19:56.]

So only twelve hours had passed.

There were still two days to go. Could he last that long?

Fang Chang felt despair.

My life’s only just begun. Is it already about to end?

His eyelids grew heavy, and his body felt as if it were filled with molten lead. Even lifting an arm was beyond him. Every movement slowed to a crawl. Fang Chang gradually lost control of his body, and only that craving remained.

Just as his eyelids were about to close completely, the window glass shattered, and a figure darted through it.

Fang Chang forced himself to look. The newcomer stood with the moon behind her, nearly two meters tall, casting a broad shadow. Her face was impossible to make out, but the outline of her body gleamed with an unusual metallic sheen.

Light blossomed from above the newcomer’s head, and Fang Chang finally saw her clearly. She was a woman who was hard to define: a small head, delicate features, long hair tied in a ponytail—and everything below the head was another matter entirely.

Silver-white metal covered her body, with many protrusions along her limbs. She might not have been tall to begin with; the metal shell had simply made her much larger. That was the clear shape of her overall form. What made her gender hard to define was her chest: flat and bare, with no visible breasts.

At a moment like this, that detail didn’t matter. Judging by her appearance, Fang Chang believed she wasn’t an ordinary person. And if she wasn’t ordinary, she must have extraordinary abilities. Maybe there was still hope for him, despite the infection.

So he struggled to suppress his craving for bloody meat, which had risen at the sight of the newcomer, and shouted with all his strength.

“Help me…”

The woman looked down at Fang Chang, light rippling in her eyes. After observing him for a long while, a surprised, feverish smile appeared on her delicate face—but vanished in an instant. Fang Chang’s mind was hazy, and he couldn’t see clearly, so he wasn’t sure.

She spoke in a synthesized female voice, stiff and mechanical, devoid of emotion. Fang Chang even wondered if she was human.

“I can save you, but in exchange, you have to agree to do one thing for me.”

One thing? In my condition, what could I possibly do?

Fang Chang was a little curious, but not afraid.

He wasn’t afraid of any schemes. He was about to die anyway.

“What… do you want me to do?”

“Help me complete a mission, Newbie Player.”