The Most Worthless Thing in the Apocalypse, Surprisingly, Was the Jet Car

Route 44 continued for about six kilometers before the road came to an abrupt end.

A crater roughly fifty meters across lay ahead, with underground water pipes and cables visible at the bottom.

Its edges were jagged, rebar protruding from the fractured concrete, rusted red.

An Android's energy blast had caused it.

Chen Mo circled the crater, climbed over a pile of rubble on the eastern side, and returned to the road.

South.

He checked the Scouter every ten minutes.

The green radar swept in circle after circle. Within a radius of fifty kilometers, it was completely clear—there were no Android signals.

The point of light marked 139, two hundred kilometers to the south, was still there. Stable. Motionless.

Master Roshi was probably fishing.

At the ninth kilometer, Chen Mo spotted a shopping mall.

More precisely, half a shopping mall.

The left half had already collapsed. Its marble exterior had shattered into white fragments across the ground, leaving the steel framework exposed.

But the right half was still standing. The automatic doors at the entrance hung crookedly to one side, their glass panels gone save for the frames.

Chen Mo stood at the entrance and looked inside for a while.

The mall was very dark.

The power had been out for a long time. Daylight filtered in through the collapsed half, spreading a dim, grayish layer of light across the floor.

Counters had toppled everywhere, and cosmetic bottles and jars lay shattered all over the ground.

There was no one there.

This place had already been looted.

There were footprints on the floor. Many of them, messy and overlapping, going back and forth several times.

The shelves in the food section had been stripped completely bare. Not even packaging bags remained.

The medicine cabinets had been smashed open as well, with nothing left inside.

Chen Mo did not head for the food section.

He went to the second floor.

The second floor housed electronics and household goods.

Whoever had searched the place had not come upstairs.

Probably because a section of floor had collapsed at the bend in the staircase on the second floor, making it look as though the path had been cut off.

In reality, it only took one step to cross, but no one carrying a flashlight through the darkness would risk it.

Chen Mo stepped across.

The shelves on the second floor were much neater than those downstairs.

Though some items had been knocked over by the tremors, they mostly remained arranged as they had been before the apocalypse.

What he was looking for was behind the counter in the household goods section.

Hoi-Poi Capsules.

West City was home to Capsule Corporation's headquarters. Hoi-Poi Capsules were nothing rare here.

Supermarkets sold them. Department stores sold them. Even convenience stores sold them.

Bulma's family's products were everywhere, in every corner of the city.

But while food and medicine had been looted clean, no one had taken the capsules.

Why? Because they were useless.

Chen Mo stood before the counter, looking at the neatly stacked boxes of capsules on the shelves.

The priorities in the apocalypse were clear: food, water, medicine. Those three were hard currency.

No matter how good anything else was, it could not buy a single bite to eat.

Try trading a capsule sports car for a bottle of mineral water, and they would still complain that it took up too much space.

But Chen Mo was not taking them to trade.

He reached out and picked up a box of empty capsules. A pack of twelve, each one a standard Hoi-Poi storage capsule capable of storing one large item.

There were also preloaded capsules beside them.

Chen Mo looked through the shelves.

The preloaded capsules were organized by category: furniture, vehicles, outdoor supplies.

He first took a house capsule. The label read, "Portable Single-Person Residence · Basic Model."

Once deployed, it became a small house of roughly thirty square meters, complete with a bathroom and a simple kitchen.

Then he headed to the vehicle section.

The jet car capsules were in the third row.

More than twenty vehicle capsules were displayed on the shelves.

There was every model available, from single-seat jet bikes to four-seat jet cars.

Chen Mo took a capsule for a four-seat jet car, then grabbed a jet bike capsule as a backup.

He made another round.

In a corner, he found a box of unopened chemical glow sticks, a first-aid kit, and two portable sleeping bags, all in capsule form.

After thinking it over, he took a pair of binoculars as well.

The looting was complete.

Strategic supplies procurement complete.

Chen Mo went downstairs and left the mall.

In the open space outside the mall entrance, he pressed the switch on the jet car capsule and tossed it out.

With a bang, white smoke billowed out.

A blue-and-white four-seat jet car appeared in the open space.

It had a streamlined body, two circular anti-gravity thrusters beneath it, and a pair of jet exhausts at the rear.

The windshield was a single curved sheet of transparent material, while the driver's seat came standard with a dashboard and a steering lever.

This was the most common means of transportation in this world.

It was a hundred times more advanced than the secondhand electric scooter Chen Mo had ridden in his previous life.

He opened the door and climbed in. The seats were synthetic leather, and they felt decent enough.

The dashboard lit up, showing a full charge.

Items in capsule form consumed no energy, so the charge from the factory had not dropped at all.

He gave the control lever an experimental push.

With a hum, the jet car rose half a meter off the ground and hovered in the air.

Chen Mo swayed it around twice.

He had never driven a jet car before, but its controls were far simpler than a car's.

The control lever handled direction and altitude, the accelerator was the pedal on the right, and the brake was on the left.

There was no clutch and no shifting.

Chen Mo, who had failed the second stage of his driving test three times in his previous life, felt that he could handle this.

He pushed the control lever forward.

The jet car glided smoothly ahead.

It was not very fast, roughly the speed of a bicycle.

He pushed it all the way down.

The vehicle shuddered, blue flames burst from the exhausts, and its speed shot straight up to two hundred kilometers per hour.

Inertia pinned Chen Mo against the seatback, while his canvas bag slid from the passenger seat into the back.

The ground raced away beneath him.

Broken highways, overturned vehicles, and collapsed buildings all blurred into indistinct blocks of color.

Wind rushed in from both sides of the windshield.

After a few minutes of getting used to it, Chen Mo stabilized the speed at around one hundred and fifty.

Going too fast made it impossible to see the road conditions. If he hit something, with a body boasting a combat power of 5, he would be dead on the spot.

He kept his altitude at around ten meters. Going too high would expose his position, while flying too low made it easy to hit obstacles on the road.

He took out the detector and glanced at it.

Within a fifty-kilometer radius, it was clear.

The 139 light points to the south were getting closer.

At this speed, he would not need three days. One day would be enough.

Chen Mo placed the detector in a recess beside the dashboard, where it fit perfectly.

He flew the jet car south along the ruins of Route 44.

The sun sank in the west.

The sky changed from blue to orange-red, then to deep violet.

The sea reflected the last traces of sunlight, its surface sparkling with ripples.

Chen Mo found an open area by the shore and brought the jet car down.

He pressed the capsule's retrieval button, and with a bang, the jet car shrank back into the capsule.

He slipped the capsule back into his pocket.

Then he took out the house capsule, pressed the switch, and tossed it out.

Bang. The white smoke cleared.

A small house appeared in an open space by the sea.

It had off-white walls, a blue roof, one window, and one door.

Crude, but it was a house.

Chen Mo pushed the door open and went inside.

The layout was very compact.

There was a single bed, a small wardrobe, a bathroom with a sink and shower, and an open kitchenette.

There was a microwave and an electric kettle on the counter.

All the appliances worked.

Chen Mo boiled a kettle of water first.

Then he went into the bathroom.

Even the water heater worked.

It had been four days since he came to this world. This was the first hot shower he had taken.

The hot water stung when it hit his wounds at first, then brought an indescribable comfort.

Chen Mo stood beneath the shower for five minutes.

After washing up, he changed into a spare set of clothes.

He sat on the edge of the bed, took a compressed biscuit from his canvas bag, broke it apart, and ate it with hot water.

After two bites, he remembered Yajirobe saying it was too dry.

It really was too dry.

After finishing the biscuit, he took out the Scouter.

The green radar swept around once.

The southern light marked 139 was much closer now. It was probably still seventy kilometers away. If he took the jet car over first thing tomorrow morning, it would only take half an hour.

Then he glanced at the system panel.

He had never examined it closely. He had no time while driving on the road, but now he could finally look at it in peace.

[Infinite Kaio-ken System]

[Host: Chen Mo]

[Current Battle Power: 5]

[Unlocked Abilities: Double Kaio-ken, Triple Kaio-ken]

[Current Emotion Points: 0/300]

[Emotion Collection Target: Android 18]

[Next Stage Unlock Requirement: Emotion Points 300 → Unlock Quadruple Kaio-ken]

[Note: Target's Current Location—Northern Mountain Region, Inside Dr. Gero's Underground Laboratory.]