Chapter 2: Labyrinth Survival 2
Chu Yun’s brows twitched slightly as a thought crossed her mind.
She swung the spiked mace in her hand and drove it straight into the wall. Dirt and clods crumbled and showered down with her movements. This particular section of the wall was hollow, making it noticeably less solid than the rest. After just two thrusts, a hidden compartment buried within the cavity was revealed.
There really was good stuff here. Chu Yun continued to pry the opening of the hidden compartment wider.
Just as the outline of the compartment fully emerged, the system prompt chimed in her ear:
[Congratulations! You have triggered a Mystery Bundle: 1x Rare Storage Ring Item Card + 1x Labyrinth Map!]
[Storage Ring Description: Don’t look down on me just because I look like a regular ring. I can act as a refrigerator, a mobile warehouse, and your indispensable survival assistant! This is a rare item with a one-in-a-hundred-thousand drop rate.]
Time was frozen inside the ring, meaning ingredients would never spoil. Whatever state something was in when placed inside was exactly how it would look when taken out. It was truly an invaluable treasure.
Chu Yun slid the silver ring onto her index finger, and it automatically adjusted to fit perfectly. Channeling her intent, she scanned the storage ring. Without needing any extra maneuvers, she could sense the space inside. The dimensions were roughly $4\text{m} \times 2\text{m} \times 2\text{m}$—just enough to fit two large two-meter-wide beds, making it significantly smaller than her cramped rental room. She tested it with her spiked mace, finding that putting things in and taking them out was incredibly smooth.
It didn’t require blood-binding or any sort of ownership locking, which also meant that whoever snatched the ring would become its owner.
“…”
With a drop rate of one-in-a-hundred-thousand, a rare item like this would undoubtedly draw hordes of players to fight over it once its existence was known. This game was deliberately turning up the challenge difficulty!
The ring was very similar to a portable spatial dimension. Thinking back to her past life in the apocalypse, many people had awakened superpowers. Even physically weak women could thrive in the post-apocalyptic world relying on their abilities, and spatial dimensions were among them.
She remembered seeing a crowd protecting a young woman in her early twenties as they went into the wilderness to gather supplies. Chu Yun and her teammates, serving as city guards, were assigned to protect that gathering squad. They had just finished fighting off zombies and were covered in a foul-smelling, bloody stench.
Meanwhile, that young woman was flanked by protectors, dressed in luxury clothing with exquisite makeup. It was obvious she had been shielded exceptionally well and hadn’t suffered a day in the apocalypse. When she walked past Chu Yun and the others, she even pinched her nose in sheer disgust.
Chu Yun had watched with her own eyes as that young woman stored away an entire basketball-court-sized load of supplies. She had envied her for a long time back then, praying that she would also awaken a superpower. But in the end, she never did, and she had to rely entirely on her own body to brawl with zombies.
But now, she was someone with a spatial dimension too! Though her storage ring’s space was small, it was more than enough. She couldn’t mask her delight.
Next was the map!
The map depicted a corner of the labyrinth. Even just this one corner was incredibly complex, with winding, labyrinthine paths. It took Chu Yun some effort to locate the nearest exit.
Chu Yun tucked the card into her inner pocket and set off again with a newly charted route and a lighter step. Now that she had a clear direction and had obtained a rare item, her irritable mood had drastically improved.
She observed the walls as she walked, but she never found another hidden compartment. Chu Yun couldn’t help but sigh softly. A one-in-a-hundred-thousand probability really wasn’t that easy to come across twice.
On her way out, she successfully defeated another game mob.
[Acquired Gold Coins: 30. Acquired Supplies: 1x Compass, 1x 500ml Mineral Water, 1x Chicken Burger.]
This was a survival game, so a compass would likely be essential later on. Chu Yun carefully placed it into her storage ring.
She had been in the game for about eight to nine hours now, constantly racing against time and fighting two rounds of mobs. Her energy depletion was massive, so she polished off half a burger and half a bottle of water.
She placed the remaining half of the burger into her storage ring. Food could float inside the space according to her will. No matter when she pulled it out, it would remain exactly as it was, even retaining its piping-hot steam. It was better than a refrigerator.
Refueled, Chu Yun continued her journey.
Her final steps grew faster and faster, and her heart began to race against her chest. She could finally escape this godforsaken place. She wanted to know as soon as possible what she would face after getting out. Whether it was good or bad, she needed to stay a step ahead of everyone else.
An hour later, Chu Yun was leaning over with her hands on her knees, panting heavily on a flight of stairs. Her last strictly rationed bottle of water was entirely drained, and she tucked the empty bottle into her storage ring.
She had climbed a full 1,000 steps of stairs before finally walking out of that labyrinth!
Outside, it looked to be around 6:00 PM, right at sunset. Her eyes had long adjusted to the pitch-black environment, so the sudden confrontation with bright light forced her to squint.
She blinked several times. Once she fully adjusted, she took a deep breath, steeled herself, and stepped onto the final stair.
The moment she stepped out, the labyrinth exit vanished behind her.
Simultaneously, the system voice rang out:
[Life is like a labyrinth; only courageous runners can find the way out.]
[Congratulations on clearing the Labyrinth Survival instance. Your Ranking: 5th in this server, Top 1,000 across all servers. Rewards: 100 Gold Coins, 1x Luxury Suite (Pending Claim).]
Her virtual personal interface updated accordingly:
Name: Chu Yun
Gold Coins: 190 (100 from rewards, 90 dropped from killing mobs)
Items: Storage Ring
At the same time, she noticed a new section had been added to the interface: World Forum (Unlock Progress: 5/2000).
The World Forum had two major functions: Friends and the Forum Circle. The Forum Circle tab was currently greyed out and unusable, with a prompt indicating that the unlock condition required the neighborhood population to reach 2,000 people. Since only a mere five people had cleared the instance so far, there was still a long and arduous way to go.
Clicking open the Friends tab, her contacts list was entirely blank. Clicking “Add” revealed that it could only be done via a scan function. With no one else around, she couldn’t test it out.
Then came another system notification:
[Welcome to Transit Rest Station – Community 135. Due to your excellent performance in this game instance, you have received a Luxury Suite reward. You may choose any suite to check into. The next game time is tomorrow morning at 8:00 AM sharp. Please be prepared.]
Luxury Suite: 50 (45 remaining)
Comfortable Single Room: 950 (950 remaining)
Comfortable Double Room: 500 (1,000 beds remaining)
Not many people had finished the labyrinth at this time. Someone like Chu Yun belonged to the top tier, so she didn’t see many people in this system-designated community yet.
This was a circular island with a massive open lawn in the middle. The lawn was circular with a radius of about 10 meters, dotted only with a few barren coconut trees and a handful of streetlights. In the dead center of the clearing stood a small glass house supported by four pillars with no walls. A sign hung from the glass roof, which read: Community 135 Convenience Store.
Community 135! It even had a convenience store! They really set it up properly, looking every bit like a place meant for long-term residency.
She was currently standing on this lawn. Clusters of small white houses formed concentric rings, radiating outward from the central clearing. The innermost ring consisted of 50 houses, and the number increased with each subsequent tier for a total of 5 rings. Every house was uniformly planned, spaced evenly apart from its neighbors. Beyond the outermost houses lay a small patch of woods about 15 meters deep.
Peering past the woods, she could faintly make out the sea, and from afar, she could even hear the sound of waves crashing onto the beach.
This community could accommodate 2,000 people. Since her neighborhood was numbered 135, did that mean there were 135 similar communities ahead of hers? The number of neighborhoods after hers remained unknown for now. Just these 135 communities alone meant 270,000 people had been dragged into this, and a conservative estimate suggested the actual number was even higher.
Before she could finish observing, two young men materialized beside her. One was around 35 years old with a square jaw, looking mature and steady. The other was slightly younger, wearing cute Peppa Pig pajamas and sporting soft, curly hair. Like Chu Yun when she first arrived, they were checking their game rewards and surveying their surroundings.
Chu Yun hadn’t planned on paying attention to them and was about to turn and leave when the soft-curled youth called out to her with a beaming smile. “Hi there! I’m Xu Dongdong, and this is Yu Wenhao. What’s your name?”
“Chu Yun,” she replied politely. One didn’t slap a smiling face.
“We’re planning to take a look around this rest area to see if we can find anything. Want to come along?”
Chu Yun happened to have the same intention, so she nodded.
“This is seriously so bizarre. I was having a nice, comfortable sleep in my two-meter-wide bed when I suddenly got dragged in.”
“I have no idea what kind of trick this game is playing, or how many people they’ve pulled in. I wonder what happened to our old world. I still have a massive inheritance waiting for me to take over back home. What a waste!”
“Do you think we can ever get out?”
……
Xu Dongdong babbled the entire way.
Aside from Yu Wenhao offering an occasional “mm” in response, Chu Yun remained silent. She couldn’t answer questions she wasn’t certain about herself.
“You know what? It’s all thanks to my bro Hao here. If he hadn’t shown up in time to save me, I would’ve been strangled to death by that hanging ghost.”
“Thanks again, Bro Hao!”
Yu Wenhao seemed a bit embarrassed by the public praise, stating awkwardly, “It was nothing. Didn’t take much effort.”
Chu Yun had also been quietly observing Yu Wenhao. He was tight-lipped and didn’t draw much attention, but he possessed heavily muscled arms and strong, steady legs. He looked like a trained martial artist.
Xu Dongdong continued, “Do you know how lucky we were? I accidentally tripped and fell, and I was even complaining about it at the time. Who knew I’d step right onto a hidden game teleportation array? It warped us both straight out.”
“The game even told me this was a once-in-a-century stroke of good luck,” Xu Dongdong said, bursting with pride.
“How did you get out?” He turned his head to look at Chu Yun.
“Climbed 1,000 stairs.”
Xu Dongdong let out an awkward yet polite chuckle. “Ah… haha…”
Chu Yun: “…”
They first went to claim their single rooms rewarded by the game. Chu Yun disliked noise, so she chose a row on the outermost ring. Xu Dongdong and Yu Wenhao chose the two rooms adjacent to hers, flanking her like a pair of door gods. Chu Yun said nothing and walked toward the room she had selected.
[Personal information scanning…]
[Scan successful. Configuring room specifications…]
[Configuration complete. Your room number is Room 501, Community 135.]
Chu Yun looked up as a tiny camera lens on the door blinked.
[Iris recognition successful. Welcome back safely, Master!]
The door automatically swung open, and Chu Yun stepped inside.
