3:45 a.m.
Family Fortune 24-Hour Diner had stopped smelling like food a long time ago. Burnt fryer oil sat in the air like a film you couldn't wash off. Under it lurked the sour reek of a mop that hadn't seen clean water in weeks.
Overhead, a dying fluorescent tube hissed, light flickering in a ragged rhythm. Every surge sounded like something trying to breathe through a crushed throat.
Lu Jin sat in the least noticeable corner. In front of him lay a napkin he'd palmed from the counter. The paper was cheap, barely absorbent. A coin-sized smear of ketchup stained one corner, raw and too bright.
The ballpoint in his hand carved lines into it, the tip biting deep. Every stroke felt a little like he was stabbing the table itself.
This wasn't doodling.
This was a balance sheet.
Or, more honestly, a feasibility report titled: How to March One Refugee Squad Straight into Hell While Already Bankrupt.
He split the napkin into two columns.
[Assets]:
Li Xing (Core Asset / Song Source)Emotional value: S-tier. Survival ability: C-tier (comes with exoskeleton).Note: As long as she's breathing, she generates Holy Resonance.
S-09 "Big Yellow" (Heavy Fixed Asset / Bomb)Rated: S-class (strategic deterrent, on paper).Actual state: Damaged goods. Main reactor offline. Fire control locked. Shields dead.Current use case: Overpowered sled dog and mobile meat shield.Risk: Through the roof. A bottomless pit that burns biomass like cash. If it doesn't get fed, it eats its own party members.
Little Rock & The Old Man (Bad Assets / Decorative Attachments)Combat rating: E-tier.Note: Beyond burning rations and generating panic, their only value is as Li Xing's "emotional anchors," boosting her protectiveness and thus Holy Resonance output.
He shifted to the next column.
[Liabilities]:
Distance:Straight-line: 142 km.Terrain: radiation ice fields, collapsed elevated highways, legacy minefields.
Fuel Deficit:S-09 energy draw dragging two tons (sled + people): ~0.5% per km.Current remaining energy: enough for 6 km.
Reality Debt:Holy Resonance: -103 pts.Time until life write-off: 70 hours.
The negative numbers glared back at him. His temples pulsed in time with that red deficit.
Pain crawled up his spine again, the phantom kind that felt too real. Long-term wear stacked on genetic failure: it was like insects were eating through his bones, one bite at a time. His hand moved automatically toward his pocket for the painkillers he didn't have.
No money for meds.
No money for anything.
Even this pen was stolen.
Right on cue, the cursed app decided now was the perfect time to "care" about him.
A burst of color exploded across his retinal HUD. Letters rolled in with cheap particle effects like a scummy browser game.
[ Dear host~ We see you're planning a long-distance trip! ][ Worried about that long road ahead? Worried your adorable daughter will freeze to death out there? ][ North Star Expedition · Supreme Worry-Free Pack (S1 Season Limited!) ][ Includes: x10 military-grade high-energy fuel rods, x4 polar-grade cold weather suits, x1 auto-nav unit, x20 self-heating hotpots! ][ Original Price: ¥99,999.00 ][ Limited-Time Jump-Off-A-Building Price: ¥88,888.00 ][ Installments available! First payment only ¥5,000! Are you even human if you don't buy?! ]
Lu stared at the neat little "¥5,000 down" label.
He patted his pocket.
One ten-cent coin. One five-cent coin.
That was it.
"Get lost," he said in his head, voice flat.
"Show me the free terrain overview. Pop one more ad and I'll find a power line in reality, short myself out, and we both go dark. No host, no revenue."
The system must have taken him seriously.
The flashy banner collapsed in on itself. The fake-friendly客服-tone vanished, replaced by bare data streams. A grayscale holo-map of the wasteland unfolded in his vision, lines of elevation and hazard zones etched in hard angles.
At the far north, a red dot pulsed.
Lu set the pen back down and wrote the last line in the only clean strip of napkin left.
[Solution: Plunder.]
Note: If I can't afford the system's list price, then I'll make the bounty hunters out there pay for me.
He underlined it twice.
—
The feed dropped through glitching code and settled into the bleached world of the wasteland.
A-11 Wasteland Zone, Resource Point #7. Underground warehouse.
The mood here was weirdly cozy compared to the diner. No balance sheets, no interest ticking away. Just a clumsy kind of warmth balanced on top of horror.
Li Xing was "moving house."
She scurried back and forth like an overworked hamster, piling everything remotely useful onto the massive slab of tank armor they were using as a sled. Expired cans, rusty screwdrivers, a half bottle of lubricant, even a couple of flattish stones that stacked nicely.
"Not that one!" Little Rock yelped from the side, squatting with his hands on his head. "Sister Li Xing, that's a radiation rock! You'll die!"
"Oh." She sighed and tossed the stone aside, then her attention caught on something else.
A ragged flag lay crumpled in a corner. Once it had been bright red; now it was a dull, greasy brown, stained with oil and dust.
Li Xing picked it up and tore it into a long strip.
She walked to the center of the warehouse.
S-09—Big Yellow—lay there, sprawled on the floor. Even in a resting posture, its massive steel head still towered over her. Heat gusted from its vent grilles, turning the snow around it into puddles of black slush.
The mech was in low-power standby. Its single eye glowed a faint, sleepy yellow.
"Big Yellow, head up," Li Xing said, standing on tiptoe with the strip of red cloth in her hands.
S-09 didn't move.
Deep inside its logic core, a calculation spun: whether lifting its head was worth the 0.001% of energy it would burn.
"Be good." She put on her best stern face. "Listener said we're going north. You're the big dog of the house. Act like it."
Maybe it was the "Listener" part. Maybe some buried slave protocol twitched.
Hydraulic pistons grumbled. The giant head that could crush a tank turret in one bite rose. Only a little. Enough.
Li Xing stretched her arms as far as they would go, looping the filthy red strip around Big Yellow's thick mechanical neck. That area was a maze of cable conduits and armor plates; any leak there could flash-cook her in seconds.
She still tied a bow.
Clumsy, crooked. Then, with a marker, she drew a star on one end: five points, all uneven.
"There."
She stepped back, pleased.
On the neck of that war machine—pure violence sculpted in steel—sat a flimsy red bow.
"From now on, this is your collar," she told it, clapping the dust from her hands. Her eyes shone. "With a collar, you're a dog with a home. No running off. No biting people."
In the corner, the old man hunched deeper into his ragged anti-rad cloak. His eyes, clouded and bloodshot, locked on that strip of cloth with something close to horror.
To him it looked like a single hair tied around a tiger's neck.
"Insane…" he whispered, teeth chattering. "That's a reaper… a slaughter machine… it'll eat us… it'll eat us all…"
—
Back in the diner, Lu Jin watched the same scene unfold.
He felt no warmth from it.
If anything, something cold slipped down his spine and smothered the bone-deep ache.
Because he had [All Things Have a Voice · Translator] turned on.
In his view, S-09 wasn't a loyal hound tolerating a silly bow.
Inside the glass dome on its head, the gray mass of brain tissue writhed, pulsing like worms in rotten meat.
On the side of the HUD, S-09's live thought feed scrolled faster and faster:
[Target: S-09 (Big Yellow)][Status: Extremely hungry / Logic suppression active][Thought Bubble: …smells good…][Thought Bubble: …neck artery… rhythm 72 bpm…][Thought Bubble: …open skull… only 0.3 seconds… high protein… soft… sweet…][Thought Bubble: …want to eat… want to eat… want to eat…]
The mech's eye might have looked dopey-yellow on the raw footage, but in Lu's overlay it had a red targeting frame locked tight around Li Xing's neck.
The frame tightened every time she stepped closer.
When she tied the collar, she was basically placing her own carotid under its teeth.
[Warning: S-09 Biomass Craving has exceeded 18%! ][System Tip: Dear host~ This big guy currently sees your precious daughter as a walking "all-you-can-eat" buffet! ][Suggested Solution: Immediately purchase "High-Energy Brain Tissue Sample (Frozen)" for feeding! Price: ¥3,888.00! ][Note: If you don't feed it soon, it'll just… help itself~ ]
Lu watched the percentage tick upward.
18%.
Once it crossed 30%, the machine would tear free of its basement restraints and go fully feral.
And that idiot girl was still fussing over its ridiculous bow.
"Fuck," he hissed under his breath.
The cup in his hand buckled. What little water was left splashed over his fingers and soaked the napkin.
This wasn't a road trip.
This was a forced march where every few hours he'd have to shovel money into the fire just to stop the fire from eating his people instead.
If he couldn't scrape together cash in the real world, Li Xing wasn't going to make it to North Star. Big Yellow would crack her skull open on the way.
Lu dragged in air slowly, forcing his gaze off that diseased thought stream.
He folded the napkin along the creases he'd already made. Numbers, arrows, and one brutal little word—Plunder—disappeared into a neat square. He slid it into the inner pocket of his jacket with the care of someone stowing a declaration of war.
"Since the system doesn't plan to let me live…"
He got to his feet and nudged his glasses up the bridge of his nose. Behind the smeared lenses, his red-shot eyes had gone very, very calm.
"…I'll go talk to the people who want me dead," he said softly. "And charge them toll."
The glass door groaned as he pushed it open.
Four a.m. wind knifed into the diner, carrying rain that stung when it hit bare skin.
Lu tugged his thin coat tighter and stepped into the dark.
In his pocket, two metal discs knocked together with a small, bright clink.
Everything he owned in the world.
And the buy-in for the hunt he was about to start.