Chapter 2: Evolution
If today was different from usual, the only difference was this suddenly appearing handheld game console.
“Could it be because of you?”
The girl looked at the black and white handheld console in her hand, thought for a moment, and decided to do an experiment.
The experiment was simple: she would not ingest any food or medicine tonight.
Normally, this would be a very dangerous thing, after all, her body was truly so weak that it would collapse if she stopped taking medicine and didn’t take in nutrients even slightly.
But, things had come to this point. If the current stability was just an illusion, and the game console couldn’t bring her life, then it would just be a few more days of lingering on.
Thinking this way, Xu Zhi no longer took her medicine at fixed times as usual, but instead took out the textbooks her younger brother had left behind and began to read.
It wasn’t that she was particularly eager to learn, but she didn’t know what else to do if she didn’t read.
Two hours passed quickly, and the scheduled alarm rang. Xu Zhi then looked up from the book in a bit of a daze.
“…..It’s already time?”
Her expression was still a bit incredulous. She had never been so focused before. In the past, even when she read, she would always be interrupted by the discomfort coming from her body, and she couldn’t concentrate for a long time at all.
Moreover, even now, she still hadn’t felt any hunger.
“It really changed.”
Xu Zhi muttered to herself, and the light in her eyes, which had been somewhat lifeless, slowly returned.
In any case, since a glimmer of life had suddenly appeared, she naturally had to seize it. She didn’t want to care what this game console was, or whether it would bring any danger to her future. She only knew that without this game console, she might not even have a future.
Xu Zhi wasn’t afraid of death, but she didn’t want to die.
Suppressing her excitement, she picked up the game console again. The two-hour cooldown was over, and what she had to do now was to continue playing the game.
Entering the game, the cooldown had indeed ended, and the forward option reappeared on the screen.
Xu Zhi controlled the little snake to wander around nearby for a while. This time, her luck was not bad. In less than half an hour, she had gathered ten evolution points.
[Current Evolution Points: 10/10]
[Upgrade conditions have been met. Do you want to upgrade?]
[Note: Upgrading from Lv1 to Lv2 requires 10 seconds. During these 10 seconds, this Familiars will lose consciousness.]
[Please choose: 1. Upgrade in place, 2. Find a hidden location to upgrade]
“10 seconds…”
Xu Zhi hesitated for a moment, but still chose to find a hidden location first.
The brief tranquility of the game and the short number of 10 seconds did not numb her or make her careless. She hadn’t forgotten the prompt when entering the game.
The little snake quickly found a tree hole and burrowed into it. Then, the evolution began, and a ten-second progress bar appeared in the center of the screen.
Ten seconds passed in the blink of an eye.
[Evolution complete]
[Snake: Lv2 Spirit: 3 Body: 10 Attribute: None
Trait: Toxin Lv1]
On the screen, the evolved little snake shed a layer of skin and slowly crawled out of the tree hole. Xu Zhi could see that its size had noticeably increased. Its body was much longer than before, and more importantly, in its open mouth, two fangs flickered with a faint green light, as if showing Xu Zhi its new weapon.
Moreover, whether it was just her imagination or not, Xu Zhi felt that even her own body had become subtly lighter.
Because of her heart disease, she often felt very tired, her body heavy, her breathing difficult, her heartbeat abnormal, and a persistent dizziness. Now, after the little snake completed its evolution, although the other symptoms hadn’t lessened, she felt that her body didn’t seem so heavy anymore.
Xu Zhi’s eyes flickered slightly. With the previous experiment, she didn’t think this was a coincidence.
Maybe… this game could really change her body.
Thus, Xu Zhi’s desire to level up became urgent. However, when her gaze moved to the lower left corner and she saw the number of points required for the next upgrade, she felt slightly troubled.
[Current Evolution Points: 0/50]
The requirement had increased fivefold.
It had taken her nearly three hours to get ten evolution points. How long would she have to play the game to gather fifty? The game seemed to know her troubles, and a line of text gradually appeared.
[As your level increases, your Familiar becomes stronger than before, but that’s only in comparison to itself. In this world, it is still a tiny, insignificant creature.]
[Nameless fear urges it on. Even though it has not yet developed intelligence, it vaguely senses that it must speed up the pace of evolution.]
[Please choose: 1. Continue hunting here, 2. Seek out stronger prey, but this also means greater risks.]
Xu Zhi hadn’t played many games, so she didn’t quite understand the concept of a “beginner’s village,” but she vaguely felt that the risk-free hunting before had indeed been too comfortable, not at all like the dangerous world described in the text.
Staying here might allow her to safely gather fifty evolution points, but looking at the text on the screen, she felt a strange sense of urgency. Perhaps she had to take some risks.
“Choose 2.”
Pressing the select button, the little snake on the screen began to crawl as if it had received some kind of instruction, and Xu Zhi also noticed that not only its size, but also the range it could see had become wider.
If the range was only about 7 meters before, now it was probably 20 meters.
This time, the little snake traveled for a long time before finding a target. [Your Familiar has made a discovery]
[It’s an injured eagle. One of its wings is broken, and its eyes seem to be injured as well.]
[But even so, it is still a natural enemy of snakes.]
[Injured eagles are rare. This seems to be an opportunity, but this opportunity comes with great risks. If successful, you will also gain a large number of evolution points.]
[Please choose: 1. Hunt, 2. Leave]
This was the first time a risky hunt had appeared, which made Xu Zhi hesitate, unsure of what to decide, until another line of text appeared on the screen.
[You should probably make a decision quickly. An injured eagle will attract more than one hunter, and its wounds are slowly healing.]
“Healing?”
Xu Zhi was a little surprised. Was it because she hadn’t studied biology that she didn’t know? Could such a serious injury heal?
However, seeing the game’s prompt, Xu Zhi gritted her teeth and no longer hesitated. She chose to hunt instead of leave.
This seemed inconsistent with her previous cautiousness, but it wasn’t really. Most of the time, her outward appearance was silent, small, and cautious, but living under pressure for many years with this frail body without becoming a lamb, and still possessing a strong sense of self, even having more stubborn ideas than ordinary people, was enough to show that Xu Zhi was not a timid person.
She would pick up a suspicious game console on the ground, so naturally she could also make risky choices. Her hesitation was only because she had only imagined such things before and had never really had the opportunity to make such choices herself.
She adapted for half a minute.
The girl stared intently at the little snake on the screen. After she gave the command, the little snake began to execute it without hesitation. It slowly and quietly focused the gaze of a hunter on the eagle that was once its natural enemy, then found a suitable opportunity and darted out of the grass like lightning towards the eagle.
Possessing venom, the little snake didn’t need to grapple with the eagle. It only needed to find an opportunity to release its toxins and protect itself from the eagle’s sharp claws and beak until the eagle was paralyzed or killed by the venom.
But even this task was a bit too difficult for a small snake.
Xu Zhi watched as the black snake on the screen was continuously torn apart by the eagle’s sharp claws, its body pecked with several penetrating holes by the sharp beak, and even its movements became sluggish. It was chased and ripped apart by the injured eagle several times, but until the eagle’s movements gradually stiffened and it finally collapsed on the ground, the little snake did not die under the fierce attacks.
Seeing the eagle completely dead, the severely injured little snake greedily slithered towards the eagle’s corpse. Its open mouth actually swallowed the eagle’s body, which was much larger than itself, bit by bit. As a result, its body visibly bulged.
Seeing this scene, Xu Zhi finally breathed a sigh of relief, only then realizing that she had been so nervous at the end that she had held her breath.
Before she could be surprised by the little snake’s “devouring” ability, which was even more bizarre than what she had seen in biology books, subtitles reappeared on the game screen.
[Thanks to the strengthened physique after leveling up, your Familiar barely achieved victory, but it also suffered serious injuries. Before it heals, it probably won’t be able to hunt again.]
[But the good news is that evolution can make wounds heal quickly.]
[Current Evolution Points: 100/50]
[Upgrade conditions have been met. Do you want to upgrade?]
[Note: Upgrading from Lv2 to Lv3 requires 30 seconds. During these 30 seconds, this Familiar will lose consciousness.]
[Please choose: 1. Upgrade in place, 2. Find a hidden location to upgrade]
Xu Zhi chose 2 without hesitation.
The little snake was already seriously injured. If it encountered creatures attracted by the eagle or the commotion of their fight while evolving, it would be easily killed.
This time, finding a hidden location took a little longer, but fortunately, the time required for evolution was short. Soon, Xu Zhi reaped the rewards of her bold choice.
[Evolution complete]
[Snake: Lv3 Spirit: 5 Body: 20 Attribute: None
Trait: Toxin Lv2, Sharpness Lv1]
In the picture, the black snake’s size increased again, its teeth also seemed sharper, and its viewing distance increased to about 50 meters. But Xu Zhi was more concerned about the changes in her own body.
This time, she felt even more clearly that her body was indeed getting better as the little snake leveled up.
Her breathing became smoother, and the “hand” that had always seemed to be slightly squeezing her lungs, making it difficult for her to breathe, disappeared.
She had never felt that breathing could be such an easy thing.
A look of joy uncontrollably appeared on the girl’s face. If this continued, she would definitely become a healthy person.
No.
Xu Zhi’s expression changed slightly, and her gaze also sharpened. Not just that, she wanted more than just a healthy body.
Perhaps it was the game that fueled her ambition, or perhaps it was the sense of crisis that this dead city brought her. What she wanted was not an ordinary person’s body, but a powerful body that surpassed human limits, one that would allow her to live freely here.
Xu Zhi gently exhaled. To achieve her goal, she had to be more clear-headed when making choices.
Just as Xu Zhi was about to continue playing the game, a hollow knocking sound suddenly sent goosebumps all over her body.
— Knock, knock, knock. It was just an ordinary knocking sound, but it was a sound that shouldn’t exist!
The girl’s hand holding the game console stiffened, then she slowly turned her head to look at the door, her brain racing, thinking about who would knock on her door at this time? The answer she came up with was: no one.
No one would do that, because all the neighbors had left, and she didn’t know any friends who would come back to find her at all.
So, who was knocking?
