SWDnovel 3: Drawing lots
3: Drawing lots
Just as Su Chen was both surprised and delighted, a rescue kit suddenly appeared on the coffee table in the living room, neatly arranged.
As his gaze swept over, a line of small print appeared on Su Chen's retina the moment it came into contact with his eyes:
【Name: Basic Rescue Kit】
[Description: Upon activation, you will receive a small amount of basic emergency supplies.]
[Acquisition Requirements: Survive until midnight each day]
"Hmm? A basic rescue kit? Does this mean there's also an advanced rescue kit?"
"You don't have to do anything; you just need to survive until midnight to get a basic rescue kit... So if I do something and trigger an 'event bonus,' will I be able to get a higher-level rescue kit, just like I get more personal survival points?"
The semi-transparent panel displaying the five elements information and the notification for this special relief supply appeared almost simultaneously.
Su Chen immediately connected them together and made bold speculations.
"However... I wonder if this exclusive rescue feature is unique to me, or if it's a cheat code just for me?"
Unable to get an answer for the time being, Su Chen stopped thinking about the "unique to me" thing.
He opened the basic rescue kit and took out its contents.
There were three 350-gram cans of luncheon meat, a slab of antibiotics, and a rather heavy Nepalese katana.
Su Chen usually orders takeout, and when he doesn't eat takeout, he usually eats instant noodles. Now that he has received three cans of high-quality luncheon meat, he is grinning from ear to ear.
After putting down the canned meat, Su Chen began toying with the Nepalese kukri.
He can't cook and doesn't even have a kitchen knife at home. Now that he has this curved knife, he can at least protect himself.
Su Chen swung the knife in his hand and slashed at the wooden chair that had been dismantled earlier.
With a snap, the two-centimeter-thick wooden chair seat was cleaved in two by the curved knife, the clean, smooth cut demonstrating just how sharp the knife was.
"Hiss! That's a fast knife!"
"If the basic rescue kit contains such good stuff, imagine what the high-end rescue kits will be like!"
"Shouldn't you get me a fully upgraded, six-headed, six-armored spearman set?"
Su Chen chuckled heartily, and a little while later, he returned to his bedroom with food and a military knife.
He kept the food under the bed, and the military knife was under his head as a pillow.
"I guess I'm ready for battle!" Su Chen thought to himself, then adjusted his mindset and quietly fell asleep.
……
At 10:20 a.m., Su Chen woke up from his sleep.
Last night, he slept fully clothed, remaining vigilant the whole time. As a result, he felt a bit groggy when he woke up and instinctively reached for his phone to order takeout.
But then, the gloomy sky outside the window, the overwhelming gray fog, reminded him that everything yesterday was not a dream.
He and his neighborhood are probably no longer on Earth.
Heaving a breath of warm air onto his hands, Su Chen gently rubbed them together.
The sky was shrouded in gray fog, the temperature was rather low, and his hands were icy cold and a little stiff.
After the event started, Su Chen rummaged through the bed and found instant noodles and canned meat. He took them into the kitchen, turned on the gas, and made himself a bowl of hot noodles.
While eating his noodles, Su Chen looked up at the sky.
If the fog doesn't dissipate, the temperature will likely drop further. After solving the food and safety issues, keeping warm will be the most important thing.
Su Chen thought to himself, finished his hot noodles in a few bites, and then went downstairs to gather information.
……
When Su Chen arrived downstairs, a large crowd had already gathered, and several opinion leaders had even formed, each leading a group of people in a heated discussion.
Su Chen glanced around, his eyes darting around, and then walked towards an area with fewer people.
"Damn it! I feel like we've been dragged into a tower defense game world!"
As soon as Su Chen entered the crowd, he saw someone holding up a tablet and explaining something with great enthusiasm.
"Can you believe it! My tablet can actually use my personal survival points to quickly remodel my home!"
"I just tapped the screen, and half of my living room's wooden floor turned into marble. This is absolutely outrageous..."
Upon hearing this...
Su Chen's eyes flickered.
"Oh...so I'm not the only one with a settlement system; everyone has one!"
"Personal survival points are used to modify private buildings? I'll have to try that!"
Thinking of this, Su Chen took out his phone, turned on the screen, and scrolled through it.
Soon, he found a software he had never downloaded before on his phone: "Building Manual".
Upon opening the software, Su Chen discovered that the screen displayed the house he had rented.
At this moment, the entire 90-square-meter house is being displayed in three dimensions in front of Su Chen.
If Su Chen wanted to, and had enough personal survival points, he could install an independent heating system and integrated cabinets in his house in an instant...
They even replaced the original reinforced concrete load-bearing walls with 30-centimeter-thick steel plates.
Holy crap! That's amazing!
"Could I have actually been transported to a tower defense world?!"
Su Chen sighed inwardly, marveling at the wonders of creation.
But in the next moment, a loud voice pulled him out of his shock.
"Looking for young, pretty girls! No girls over 20! If you're willing to live with me, I'll give you three packs of instant noodles every day!"
The instant noodle guy, banging on a gong and drum, walked up to Su Chen and, after standing still, began to promote his cohabitation plan to the girls in the crowd.
"I have both Uni-President and Master Kong instant noodles. I can provide any flavor! Plus, I'll add a box of biscuits—one box a day!"
"Is anyone willing to live with me?"
Su Chen avoided Instant Noodle Bro as if he were a plague carrier.
He was afraid that others would confuse him with a womanizer like the "Instant Noodle Bro".
Su Chen pondered this to himself, but then a flash of inspiration struck him.
"Wait a minute! Instant Noodle Bro was still promoting his cohabitation plan today, still using instant noodles and cookies to attract bed partners, this..."
"Does this mean the food shortage problem is still unresolved? Hmm... If this continues, wouldn't it mean I'm the only one with that exclusive relief supply?!"
Su Chen immediately perked up.
He felt that his deduction was 90% likely to be correct.
However, Su Chen did not plan to ask someone directly.
He planned to continue to probe for information indirectly, gathering as much information about others as possible while keeping his own information hidden.
With that thought in mind, Su Chen left the area and joined the new crowd.
At the same time, this is also the largest group of people here.
"I just calculated the resource consumption of our community."
"Our community has over 2,400 people. If we divide our daily resource consumption by yesterday's earnings from the public survival points, and assuming no one dies, the public survival points will run out in five days at most, and we will have no resources left!"
"And this is all without building any public buildings!"
"If we were to use this laptop in the property management office to quickly construct public buildings using public survival points, such as raising the walls or building heating equipment... our limited public resource points wouldn't even last a day!"
"..."
Upon entering the group, Su Chen encountered a bald, programmer-looking man who was loudly proclaiming his views on public survival points.
His words immediately caught Su Chen's attention.
"Wow! Public survival points are so cheap?"
"It'll run out in five days?"
Just now, I learned that personal survival points can build enhanced private residences.
Su Chen had already considered whether the public survival point could be used to transform the entire community.
At that time, he was also thinking of using the public living quarters to raise the walls and build a heating system.
But after hearing what the bald programmer said, Su Chen realized that the public living quarters in their community were simply not enough.
Just paying the electricity, water, and gas bills would be enough to clear out all the public living quarters within five days.
Without any new public survival points being acquired.
The idea of using the computers in the property management office to construct public buildings is pure fantasy!
"this!"
"We need to find a way to open-source this!" Su Chen thought to himself, "Could obtaining extra public survival points be related to that so-called 'event bonus'?"
Thinking of this, Su Chen immediately walked towards the notice board.
Yesterday, he obtained a lot of information from the bulletin board.
If you want to find a way to obtain a large number of extra public survival points, you will most likely still have to rely on that bulletin board.
Soon, Su Chen arrived at the notice board. As he expected, the board had indeed been updated again.
[Community Announcement: From the community gate, after entering the gray fog world, walk straight for 150 meters, turn left after encountering a crooked tree, and continue along the village path... If all goes well, you will enter a mysterious village 700 meters away. There, perhaps something you need exists.]
"What do we need? Is he referring to individual survival points, or to public survival points?"
"There should be more than that!"
"Besides the survival point, we also lack food and weapons! Could it be that those things are available in that village?"
"Who exactly updated this thing?"
Su Chen stroked the dark red metallic lettering that protruded from the surface of the notice board.
"Could it be the property management?"
"Wait a minute, they weren't teleported here either!"
"Even if they came, humans couldn't possibly change the text on this sign silently under everyone's watchful eyes!"
Su Chen thought back to yesterday, when the fat, dark-skinned man and his broad-shouldered older brother died, the numbers on this sign had actually changed.
"Forget it! I don't want to think about it anymore!"
"Let's go hear what other people think about what's on the bulletin board; what if they have a perspective I haven't considered?"
With this in mind, Su Chen rejoined the crowd, returning to the largest and most heated group.
"Brothers! Fellow countrymen!"
In the center of the crowd, a bald programmer held up the property management office's laptop and shouted loudly.
"Sitting idly by and waiting to die is not the way to go. If we want to survive, we can't trust Old Wang's words or expect any savior. We must take the initiative, complete the missions, and find ways to acquire more public survival points!"
"We need to cut costs! But we also need to increase revenue!"
"My opinion is that we should immediately send out a suicide squad to complete the tasks on the bulletin board as quickly as possible and earn survival points for Happy Community."
"The sign clearly states that the village contains what we need! What more could we possibly need than food, water, weapons, and a common survival point?"
"Therefore! We must go to war!"
"We must assemble a suicide squad, find that village, and bring back all the supplies we need!"
His voice was loud and clear, and he kept waving his arms as he spoke, looking very passionate.
However, his words did not receive the same passionate response.
People were immediately alarmed when they heard that a suicide squad was to be formed to venture into the fog and begin their exploration.
One by one, they all lowered their heads and pretended to be quails.
"Let the men go!"
After a moment of silence, a shrill female voice appeared.
"Damn it! Men are supposed to be yours?" one man stood up. "Modern society advocates gender equality; men have no obligation to sacrifice for you!"
From the crowd, a pregnant woman stepped forward. "Population is the foundation for our community's access to public amenities!"
"And we! We can have children? Do you understand?"
"Our ability to have children and increase the population is the greatest contribution we can make to the community. What do you offer to be equal to us?!"
After he said that, all the men fell silent.
Even the instant noodle guy, who was well-versed in apocalyptic novels and equated women with instant noodles, shut his mouth and put down the instant noodle bag in his hand.
After a moment of silence, someone suggested, "How about we draw lots? Men over 18 years old can draw lots, and whoever draws a lot will go on a mission to explore."
Another silence fell, and after a long while, a hesitant voice finally came from the corner: "I'd rather stay at home. No water, no electricity, no gas, it's fine. I don't want to be eaten by those harpy monsters outside. After all, it's better to live a miserable life than to die."
"You'd better stay put!" a sinister voice rang out. "Who knows if some ghost or spirit will appear and wipe us all out, along with the entire neighborhood, if we don't draw lots and complete the task!"
"Don't disbelieve me, everyone!"
"There were no mysterious villages within 700 meters of our neighborhood before! This means we must not be in our original world!"
"That being who brought us here to play a tower defense game might also wipe us out because we're slacking off!"
Alright, a fan of infinite flow novels... Su Chen thought to himself, completely agreeing with that person's deduction.
Not only Su Chen, but all the young people in the crowd quickly accepted this statement and began to tacitly promote the lottery.
As time went on, and as people negotiated.
The matter was finally settled, and the lottery began. All adult males over the age of 18 had to draw lots to decide their fate.
Su Chen was the first to draw a lot.
His skill was divine; he hit the target with a single stroke.
Looking at the circle drawn on the note in his hand, Su Chen felt like crying.
I don't want to be the main character anymore!