Ruined Earth, Sector 4 of the Fallen Metropolis.
The city was as dead as ever.
Mutated vines, thick as pythons and red as arterial blood, strangled the crumbling overpasses. The streets below were a graveyard of rusted cars, their metal skeletons serving as nesting grounds for things that skittered in the dark.
Occasionally, a low, guttural groan echoed through the canyons of steel the sound of the Infected shuffling aimlessly, their skin grey and rotting, hungry for the warmth of the living.
It was a world where hope had expired ten years ago, leaving only the desperate struggle to survive another hour.
Yet, in a debris-cluttered intersection of this hellscape, sitting incongruously between a collapsed pharmacy and a burnt-out bus, stood a small, pristine building.
It was impossibly clean. Its walls were made of crystal-clear glass held together by polished white metal frames. Soft, warm light spilled out from inside, casting a golden glow onto the dirty, cracked pavement. It looked like a high-end boutique plucked from a fashionable district and dropped into a war zone.
Above the sliding glass doors, a sleek neon sign hummed with a soft pink hue, defying the city's lack of electricity.
"Dimensional Boutique."
Unlike the fortified bunkers of the survivor camps or the jagged dens of the raiders, this store had no barricades. No barbed wire. No machine gun turrets. It was defenseless, exposed, and utterly bizarre.
Most survivors who spotted it from a distance assumed it was a hallucination induced by hunger or toxic gas. Those who got close enough to see it was real assumed it was a trap set by a high-level psychic mutant.
Consequently, the area around the shop was devoid of life.
Inside the climate-controlled, lavender-scented interior, a young woman sighed dramatically, inspecting her fingernails under the warm LED lights.
She walked over to the door, her fuzzy pink slippers making no sound on the spotless tiled floor. She reached out and flipped a small, cutesy sign hanging on the glass.
It went from "Beauty Sleep" to "Open for Business."
This was Lin Yao. Until three days ago, she was a twenty-four-year-old marketing assistant who spent her salary on skincare and her weekends reading webnovels in bed. Then, she choked on a particularly dry piece of sponge cake while binge-reading a villainess story.
When she opened her eyes, she wasn't in a hospital. She was here. In the middle of a zombie apocalypse, bound to a System that had the personality of a strict boarding school matron.
[Host, please stop checking your reflection in the glass. It will not spawn a customer.]
"I'm not checking my reflection," Lin Yao retorted, smoothing down her silk pajamas. "I'm checking for impending doom. There's a difference."
[Reminder: You have 12 hours remaining to complete the Newbie Mission. Failure will result in the scheduled penalty.]
Lin Yao shuddered. She marched back to the white marble counter and glared at the floating holographic screen.
Main Task: Sell 1 Pack of 'Heavenly Soft' Sanitary Pads. (0/1)
Reward: Unlock 'Daily Essentials' Section (Includes Shampoo & Chocolate).
Penalty: Permanent revocation of the "Absolute Hygiene" barrier. (Translation: No more hot showers, no flushable toilet, and the store will smell like the outside world.)
Deadline: 12 hours left.
"You are evil," Lin Yao hissed at the screen. "You know that? Evil. If you threatened to kill me, I'd be fine. But taking away my hot water and flushable toilet in a zombie apocalypse? That's a war crime."
[The System encourages hygiene. The System also encourages capitalism. Work harder.]
"Work harder? I'm sitting in a glass box in the middle of Zombieland!" Lin Yao threw her hands up. "And you want me to sell pads? What if a guy walks in? What if a zombie walks in? Do zombies menstruate? I don't think so!"
[A good merchant can sell ice to an Eskimo. Surely you can sell basic hygiene to a survivor.]
Lin Yao groaned and slumped onto her ergonomic office chair behind the counter.
The penalty was genuinely terrifying.
When she first arrived, the System gave her a choice regarding which world to set up shop in.
Option A: The Imperial Harem World.
(Pros: Handsome princes. Cons: Poison in your tea, kneeling every five minutes, no WiFi.)
Option B: The Post-Apocalyptic World.
(Pros: No social obligations, you are the boss. Cons: Zombies.)
Lin Yao had chosen Option B without hesitation. She hated office politics and complicated social hierarchies. She thought, 'Great, I'll just sit in a bunker and sell guns.'
But she had underestimated two things.
First, the "Dimensional Boutique" didn't start with guns. It started with "Female Care Products."
Second, the currency exchange rate was insane.
She looked at the lone product sitting on the central display pedestal. The pedestal was lit from below, making the item look like a holy artifact.
It was a simple, pink package of sanitary pads. But in this store, they were infused with minor healing properties and maximized comfort.
Price: 1 Low-Level Mutant Crystal.
In this world, a Mutant Crystal was found inside the skulls of evolved zombies. Regular shamblers didn't have them. To get one, a survivor had to kill something fast, strong, and hungry.
A crystal could buy a week's worth of moldy bread in the survivor camps. It could buy a rusted pistol.
And she was asking them to trade that life-saving currency for... pads.
"It's been three days," Lin Yao muttered, resting her chin on the cool marble counter. "Three days, and the only thing that has approached the door was a mutated rat the size of a corgi. And it didn't have a wallet."
She looked outside. The sun was beginning to set, painting the ruined city in shades of bruised purple and blood orange. Night was when the Screamers came out.
"Maybe I should just go outside and wave a sign," she mused.
[Host, if you step outside the safety zone of the store, you will be eaten in approximately 14 seconds.]
"I was joking. God, you have no sense of humor."
Lin Yao spun around in her chair. She missed her phone. But most of all, she was terrified of losing the magic shower in the back room. That shower had infinite hot water and pressure that felt like a massage.
"If I lose the plumbing," Lin Yao whispered, staring at the ceiling, "I will simply pass away. I will lay down and expire."
Time ticked by agonizingly slowly.
One hour passed. Then two.
The sky turned pitch black. The golden light of the store became a beacon in the darkness.
Lin Yao was about to doze off when she heard it.
The sound of a boot crushing broken glass.
Her eyes snapped open. She sat up straight, quickly fixing her hair and adjusting her silk pajamas to look somewhat professional.
Outside the glass door, a figure emerged from the shadows.
It was a woman. She was covered in grime, her combat leathers stained with dried black ichor. She held a serrated machete in one hand, her knuckles white. Her hair was matted, and her eyes darted around wildly, like a cornered animal.
The woman froze when she saw the shop. She blinked, rubbing her eyes with the back of a dirty hand, clearly thinking she had finally snapped.
"Hello?" the survivor whispered, her voice rasping from dehydration. She touched the glass. "Is this... real?"
Inside, Lin Yao's heart pounded. A customer! A live, female customer!
She needed to be professional. She needed to be welcoming.
Lin Yao pressed the button under the counter that unlocked the automatic door.
The glass door slid open silently.
The woman outside gasped. She smelled not rotting flesh, not gunpowder, but... flowers? And cleanliness?
"Welcome to the Dimensional Boutique," Lin Yao said, forcing a calm smile, though inside she was screaming PLEASE COME IN, I NEED TO KEEP MY TOILET. "Please, come in. We are open."
The survivor hesitated, gripping her machete tighter. "Is this... a trap? Are you a Siren?"
"I'm a shopkeeper," Lin Yao said. "And you look like you've had a rough month. Please, step inside. The safety barrier prohibits violence."
Driven by a mix of confusion and the allure of the clean light, the survivor stepped over the threshold.
As soon as she did, the grime on her boots vanished before it could touch the white floor.
The survivor looked around, wide-eyed. "It's... clean. It's so clean."
"The cleanest place on Earth," Lin Yao agreed confidently. "Now, how can I help you today?"
The survivor looked at Lin Yao's silk pajamas, then at her glowing skin. She swallowed hard. "Do you... do you sell water? Food? Weapons?"
Lin Yao's smile stiffened slightly. "Ah. Well. Currently, our stock is... specialized."
She gestured grandly to the single pedestal in the center of the empty room.
The survivor followed her hand. She squinted at the lone item bathed in holy light.
"Is that..." The survivor's voice trembled.
"Heavenly Soft Sanitary Pads," Lin Yao announced with the gravity of someone selling a nuclear warhead. "Ultra-absorbent. Breathable. And infused with a mild analgesic charm to reduce cramping by 40%."
The survivor stared. Her mouth fell open.
In the apocalypse, hygiene products were the first things to disappear. While men fought over ammo and fuel, women in the camps suffered in silence, using rags, leaves, or worse. The discomfort, the infection risk, the sheer indignity it was a constant, grinding misery.
The survivor dropped her machete. It clattered on the floor.
"I haven't seen one of those in three years," the woman whispered, tears actually welling up in her eyes. "My god."
"One pack," Lin Yao said, leaning forward. "For the low, low price of one Mutant Crystal."
The survivor froze. The emotional longing on her face was instantly replaced by the harsh calculation of a wasteland veteran.
"A Crystal?" The woman looked at Lin Yao like she was insane. "Do you know how many people die trying to get one of those? I could buy a crate of ammo for a Crystal. I could buy a week of safety in the Warlord's fortress!"
"But would the Warlord give you this?" Lin Yao countered, picking up the package. She gently squeezed it. It made a soft, crinkling sound that sounded like civilization. "Can ammo make you feel clean? Can a fortress stop the chafing? This isn't just a product, sister. It's dignity. It's a reminder that you are human, not just a survivor."
Lin Yao was sweating. She was channeling every ounce of marketing nonsense she had learned in her previous life.
The survivor bit her cracked lip. She looked at the pads, then at her dirty pouch where she kept her loot.
She had exactly one Crystal. She had ripped it out of a Crawler's spine two hours ago. She was saving it to buy antibiotics for her infected arm.
But...
The smell of lavender. The promise of comfort. The memory of what it felt like to be clean.
"Does it..." The survivor hesitated. "Does it really stop the pain?"
"40% reduction," Lin Yao promised, crossing her fingers behind her back. "Guaranteed by the... manufacturer."
The system clock ticked down. 11 hours, 55 minutes remaining.
The survivor's hand shook as she reached into her pouch. She pulled out a small, jagged crystal that glowed with a faint, sickly green light.
She looked at the crystal, then at the pink package.
"If this is a scam," the survivor said, her voice low and dangerous, "I will burn this glass house to the ground."
"If it's a scam," Lin Yao said with a beaming smile, "I'll let you."
The survivor slammed the crystal onto the counter.
"Deal."
[System Notification: Sale Complete!]
[Balance: 1 Mutant Crystal.]
[Mission Accomplished.]
[Reward Unlocked: Daily Essentials Section.]
[Penalty Avoided.]
Lin Yao felt her knees go weak with relief. She pushed the package across the counter.
"Thank you for your patronage," Lin Yao said, her voice trembling slightly. "Would you like a bag?"
The survivor grabbed the package as if it were pure gold. She ripped it open immediately, burying her nose in the clean cotton scent.
"It smells like... before," the survivor whispered. She looked up at Lin Yao, her eyes blazing with a new intensity. "Do you have more? Or... soap? Do you have soap?"
Lin Yao grinned. She glanced at the System screen, where the Daily Essentials tab had just lit up.
"As a matter of fact," Lin Yao said, leaning back in her chair, "I think we just got a shipment in."