Chapter 11 Olive Manor (Part 2)

Lin Wu, wielding a steak knife, knelt on one knee and waited a moment for a girl to stand up from the ditch. That's right, a girl, a very pretty black-haired beauty. She was dressed in a green suit, completely soaked, holding a dagger with both hands, pointing it at Lin Wu and saying, "Don't come any closer, go away," while making a couple of unconvincing gestures.

It's not that Lin Wu stayed on high ground just to look at the girl because she wore a low-cut top; he suspected this girl might not be a player. Lin Wu wasn't entirely sure; since the game began, he had roamed half of North Town without seeing a single NPC.

"Are you all right?" Lin Wu asked.

"Are you human? A live person?" the girl asked excitedly.

Lin Wu nodded, "Yes, I am." That's right, she was an NPC.

"Thank goodness." The weak girl, finally seeing a living person, fainted with excitement right then and there.

What's going on here?

Lin Wu pulled out the game manual and searched, but couldn't find any methods for dealing with fainting. After waiting on the spot for five minutes, the girl kept lying motionless in the ditch—heartbeat and pulse present, but she just wouldn't wake up. Lin Wu looked around, rummaged through his backpack, and took out a piece of rag he had just removed from a zombie, wetting it with water and covering the girl's mouth and nose with it.

A few seconds after being deprived of air, the girl sat up with a splash, removed the rag, and didn't seem to notice anything wrong, maintaining her joyful demeanor seeing Lin Wu, "Thank goodness, thank goodness, I've finally seen someone."

The girl reached out her hand, and Lin Wu, cautiously, pulled her out of the ditch. She sat down right there and began to explain. It turned out she was the only daughter of the owner of Olive Manor; her name was Amanda. A month after the zombie virus outbreak, her father placed her in an underground passage of the manor. Her father planned to reach the quarantine zone in North City with others first, then try to find his friend, the deputy mayor of North City, to fly his helicopter to Olive Manor to pick up his daughter.

After living in the passage for several days and running out of clean water, Amanda had no choice but to come out to find a water source, only to encounter zombies. Faced with the zombie threat, she could only lock the passage entrance. She walked all the way to the end of the passage, dismantled the iron fence, and found a ditch in front of it.

Every day, the girl dismantled and reinstalled the iron fence to fetch water, waiting in the passage for her father. However, things did not go as hoped. Last night, the passage collapsed, and she had struggled to crawl out. Now she had neither food nor water on her.

I don't have any either! Could I possibly bring the NPC back to the base for rations? According to Lin Wu's understanding, the appearance of NPCs was due to the needs of the storyline or a mission. Logically, under normal circumstances, no player would come this way in three to five days; his own appearance was entirely by chance, so the mission was by chance, too.

This indicated that the mission should have a very nice reward, which also meant that the mission was difficult.

Amanda told Lin Wu that only the middle and tail parts of the passage had collapsed, and that the front half contained ample supplies of food. The passage entrance could be opened from the outside at the back of the manor. Therefore, Amanda asked Lin Wu to escort her back to Olive Manor.

Lin Wu received the mission prompt: Escort Amanda back to Olive Manor, help Amanda guide a water source to the passage. The mission reward was a question mark.

Lin Wu accepted the mission with a gesture of his hand—it was just a 300-meter gentle slope, right? But after walking about ten meters, Lin Wu lost his nerve because not only were there zombies in the weeds but also landmines and beast traps.

Pushing aside the reeds, a sign stood out boldly stating that there were landmines and beast traps, warning those who were not invited to keep out. It seemed that out of love for his daughter, her father had buried the entire gentle slope of Olive Manor with landmines overnight, and had also set up beast traps.

Lin Wu turned to look at Amanda, "Amanda, I'm not familiar with the manor, could you lead the way? I will protect you."

Amanda immediately declined, "I'm not familiar with the path either. Warrior, I will surely reward you once we return to the manor."

Since we can't come to an agreement, let's call it quits. You go back to your ditch, and I'll go to my church.

Lin Wu canceled the quest. The girl kneeled on the ground in sorrow and wept, "What should I do?"

Indeed, how could such a frail woman with only a dagger in her hand possibly survive? Hmm? Hmm!

"Amanda?"

"Hmm? Brave warrior, have you changed your mind?" Amanda asked in surprise.

Lin Wu ignored the quest prompt and sat down next to Amanda, asking, "Do you know of a saying?"

"A saying? Which one?" NPCs created by the AI Dawn could talk about anything except for restricted topics.

"An innocent man bears no blame, but a man with a dagger is guilty."

As soon as he finished speaking, Lin Wu lunged forward, his left hand on Amanda's back while his right hand stabbed a knife through Amanda's chest.

Lin Wu, who often played games, never had compassion for NPCs. NPCs were tools of the game; this was the basic logic of gaming. To Lin Wu, Amanda appeared no different from the zombies themselves; both were NPCs. The difference was that zombies didn't carry daggers, while Amanda had one in her hands.

Amanda looked at Lin Wu in disbelief, "You... you..."

Lin Wu pulled out the steak knife, stabbed her once more, and after waiting for Amanda to die completely, he took the dagger from her hand.

Refined steel dagger, forged hundreds of times, perfected over a thousand years, only after countless attempts could refined steel be created.

Weapons didn't have attack power values, only durability numbers and additional attributes. The refined steel dagger had the added attribute of sharpness. According to the game manual, sharpness meant it faced no resistance, as penetrating a zombie's skull or piercing a sheet of paper required the same amount of force.

After hanging the dagger on his backpack, Lin Wu searched Amanda's body without any wicked intentions; to him, Amanda was just an existence of 1s and 0s.

One key to Olive Manor's secret passage, a pair of earrings, two handkerchiefs, and then nothing else. No other items could be taken, and even with wicked thoughts, nothing else was possible. After completing the search, Lin Wu turned and walked away. One minute after her death, Amanda's body disappeared in a burst of white light. Perhaps in her last moments, Amanda could have grasped a truth: in the apocalypse, humans are always more terrifying than zombies.

...

The church atop the mountain, with cliffs on three sides and only one path, was an easily defensible and difficult to attack base. To the left of the church at the mountain's peak, there were four seven-story residential apartments and a small associated commercial street, while on the right, there were two large factories that undoubtedly stored countless building materials. The backyard of the church was large, suitable for planting vegetables and raising poultry; if it could be developed, the church would be an excellent base indeed.

However, Lin Wu intuitively felt that taking over the church wouldn't be easy. He sat quietly at a high point for ten minutes, observing from a distance. He noticed something red flickering inside the church. Lin Wu cautiously avoided zombies and, when necessary, resorted to stealthy takedowns, steadily moving towards the factories, eventually climbing a hundred-meter-tall communication tower.

Although the angle was good, the distance was too great, and Lin Wu could only see that there were red, possibly blood-colored creatures inside the church. He couldn't come to a conclusion about what they were.