Chapter 2: Shelter—The Hope For An Upgrade!

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation  Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

“Would you like to bind?”

When the unfamiliar mechanical voice rang out for the second time, Su Mo came back to his senses and responded quickly.

​​ 

“Yes.”

“Binding in progress… 0.1%, 0.2%…”

Several streaks of illusory green glow spread out from under Su Mo’s feet and extended outward into the distance.

When it reached the maximum limit, the streaks of light returned and the progress status increased by 0.1%.

As the binding process went on, Su Mo opened the wooden door and peered in.

Beyond the wooden door was a flight of clay stairs.

He descended the stairs and, after mentally counting to fifteen, everything suddenly turned clear and bright before him.

Assisted by the faint daylight seeping in from the cave entrance, Su Mo could roughly make out the internal structure.

The floor and ceiling that were fitted with wooden boards formed a solid foundation to ensure the huge underground pit would not collapse.

“I made the right call!”

Su Mo was delighted.

Choosing the above-ground option certainly had its advantages in terms of convenience in the early stages of development.

However, he kept one thing in mind—with the tools available from the creation page, it was not difficult to build a house above ground.

On the other hand, building a shelter underground would not only require advanced tools, but also a considerable amount of construction knowledge to ensure the stability of the underground structure.

Without that, if he dug an underground shelter thoughtlessly and it collapsed suddenly one night, he would kick the bucket without even knowing what happened.

Seeing that the Doomsday Survival System’s binding progress bar was still rising slowly, Su Mo sat on the stairs to conserve some energy while he pulled up the chat panel.

Perhaps others had this so-called Doomsday Survival System too?

After briefly browsing the World Channel, he pulled up the Regional Channel for a look.

No one mentioned anything about this.

“By the looks of it, I’m the only one with two systems?”

Su Mo made this conclusion.

At this moment in the World and Regional Channels, the majority of the people leaving comments had chosen to build their shelter above ground, whereas the minority chose underground.

However, those who chose underground merely spent a short sentence or two complaining about the terrible state of being underground before moving on to the topic of exchanging supplies.

Without a reference, and not knowing what those supplies even were, Su Mo had no choice but to keep waiting for now.

Fortunately, the progress bar was rising steadily. After slightly over ten minutes, the green glow finally stopped probing, and when it returned to Su Mo’s side for the final time, the crisp and clear voice of the system rang out.

[The Doomsday Survival System has been bound successfully.]

[Initial binding reward: 100 survival points.]

[Scanning the host’s survival environment—survival point evaluation in progress, you have gained 5 survival points today.]

[Final calculation. You have gained a total of 105 survival points today!]

[Remaining survival points: 105 points!]

As the prompt sounded, a large chunk of fragmented memories and information was transmitted over to him.

Apparently, the Doomsday Survival System was something that he could already bind with when he was on earth previously. Unfortunately, due to his limited individual strength, Su Mo had no choice but to enter the official shelters to take refuge.

Therefore, he never had the chance to dig a personal shelter, and thus missed out on the system binding.

In this world, however, if the Survival Game Panel could be considered a game panel that everyone owned and used, then the Doomsday Survival System was a modifier that only Su Mo had access to.

As displayed in the Doomsday Survival System, each day of survival would earn him a certain amount of survival points.

Survival points were similar to game points and could not be exchanged for goods directly.

Its function was similar to the item-upgrade function often seen in games, albeit with more comprehensive upgrade categories.

As he learned more and more about it, Su Mo forced himself to hold back his excitement and fixed his eyes on the humble underground survival base.

[Personal Shelter]

Owner: Su Mo

Space: 100㎡ (4.2m high)

Level of Integrity: 100%

Facilities: N/A

Introduction: An extremely basic shelter without any survival facilities. Serves as a small grave in the post-apocalyptic world at best.

At the sight of the introduction on the panel, Su Mo’s heart skipped a beat. He turned to look at the only item in the shelter—the wooden door.

[Shelter Main Door]

Effect: Slight anti-theft, slight radiation-proof.

First upgrade option: Increase the thickness of the wooden door, increase the solid properties of the wood to be slightly fireproof and waterproof (10)

Second upgrade option: Change door material, upgrade wooden door to stone door, increase durability and other attributes substantially (60)

Comment: You’re not thinking of surviving the post-apocalyptic world with a wooden door, are you?

After observing for a while, Su Mo did his best to sort out the procedures of using the Doomsday Survival System.

Apart from purely relying on survival points to upgrade the system, users could provide materials, which could greatly reduce the number of survival points required for an upgrade.

For example, to upgrade a wooden door to a stone door, if he could provide 10 units of stones and 2 units of wood, then the survival points needed for the upgrade would be reduced to only 5 points.

Survival points could be used to substitute just about any material, but the conversion was certainly not as efficient as having the bonafide matter.

Therefore, as long as he could provide an adequate amount of a similar material, with the survival points just assisting with transforming and assimilating, the overall consumption would be greatly reduced.

Now that he had a rough understanding of the mechanisms, the immediate sense of panic and pressure for survival that had been weighing on Su Mo’s mind finally reduced significantly.

“I want to make a sturdy shelter before Mom, Dad, and Sis are sent in.

“But before that, I need to first solve the issue with supplies.”

Su Mo clenched his fists imperceptibly and followed the stairs out of the shelter.

Drinking water and food were the primary issues that he should be concerned about.

Fortunately, with the help of the Survival System, Su Mo already had a rough development plan in his mind.

He first walked up to a small tree and used his body weight to snap a branch. After storing it into his inventory, there was a prompt.

[Wood +1]

Next, Su Mo searched for solid stones on the ground and deposited rocks of various sizes into the inventory. Before long, he received another notification.

[Stones +1]

“This really is just like a game. Not that I mind, though. At least my physical strength isn’t worse off than anyone else during the initial stages.”

He stopped dwelling on the fact that reality was so close to being fully gamified.

Next, he wanted to test out the creation function!

“Open up the creation panel.”

The interface transformed.

[Stone axe (normal): wood 1/1, stone 1/1]

The materials he had on hand fit the criteria.

Stone axe was selected.

Confirmation to build!

[Record]: wood -1, stone -1

[Record]: Stone axe (normal) has been successfully created.

A stone axe the length of his forearm appeared in Su Mo’s hand.

The axe itself was made of rough wood, possessing sufficient friction to ensure a sturdy grip.

The axehead was wedge-shaped and well-polished—smooth and sharp.

[Stone axe (normal)]: A brand new and unworn axe head. Current length of 60cm. With this item, wood collection will be much easier.

“Not bad.”

Su Mo gestured several times.

The sharpness of the stone axe was certainly not comparable to an iron axe, but having it would make it much easier to cut trees.

The path to riches started with cutting trees.

Fighting his growing thirst under the intensely hot sun, Su Mo chopped down 15 units of wood and 4 units of plant fiber before returning to the underground shelter along his initial path.

The cool underground eased the heat slightly, but the protests from his parched throat still made Su Mo anxious.

A person could survive up to 7 days without food but only 3 days without water.

Especially after the strenuous labor, he might very well die of thirst in the wilderness after two days without drinking water.

“I need to learn how to build tools that can retrieve water!”

“Let’s first try to use materials to build a simple water extraction device, then see if the system can be upgraded.”

After resting for a while to recover his strength, Su Mo went to a spot of the shelter that was illuminated by daylight and began using the stone axe in his hands to demolish the floor.

Without striking the surrounding floorboards, he carefully removed a piece and drew out some wood.

He used four units of wood to create a wooden bucket.

Immediately after that, he used another unit of wood to create a wooden stick, two units of wood to create a wooden shovel, and finally two units of plant fiber to create a hemp rope.

A set of tools were created.

Su Mo picked up the wooden shovel and began digging at the new hole on the ground.

It was easier than he thought.

With the help of tools, he could pull up a considerable amount of soil every time he dug into the ground with the wooden shovel.

Only when he finished digging a pit large enough to fit the bucket did Su Mo stop working and began assembling the tools he created earlier.

He lowered the wooden bucket into the pit, the wooden stick hanging between the two adjacent floorboards and the hemp rope tying the wooden bucket and the stick together.

Then, he focused and the Survival System prompt appeared.

[Well water extractor???]

Current efficiency: 0ml/day

First upgrade option: Upgrade the bucket material, enhance the bucket volume, and increase the sealing function so that drinking water stays fresh for a much longer period. Upgrade consumption: 20 survival points.

Second upgrade option: Dig a deeper pit to increase the efficiency of water extraction. Upgrade consumption: 130 survival points.

Comment: A pit and a bucket. Do you really think you can harvest well water with that brain of yours?