You Might as Well Just Let Me Die

[Name: Lu Xiu]

[Attributes: Click to view details]

[Current Survival Points: 23]

[Game Identity: Player]

[Current Location: Game Main World]

[Maximum Remaining Playtime: 23 days]

[Detected that the player's playtime is less than 30 days. To avoid death, please try not to sleep and acquire Survival Points as soon as possible.]

[Watch ads to avoid death. Watch for one hour to gain 1 Survival Point, up to three times a day [Click link].]

[Jianqu Construction Group is recruiting dungeon testers. Pay just 30 Survival Points for a chance to earn double the Survival Points [Click link].]

[Survival Point loans. Stop dealing with high-interest lenders. Borrow now, use now, enjoy now [Click link].]

[System Announcement—Welcome to becoming a Dungeon Architect!]

[...]

...

Lu Xiu sat on a bench by the river, staring at the panel floating before her. She had been looking at it for a full three minutes.

The evening river shimmered with flecks of golden light. The lights on the bridge had already come on, one by one, and the glass facades of the distant high-rises reflected the sunset, its pink and purple hues mingling with orange-red. It was so beautiful it looked like a heavily retouched promotional image.

That is, if you ignored the expression on her face.

It really was a beautiful scene.

A young woman sat quietly by the river, her smooth black hair falling to her shoulders in a casual yet perfect arrangement. Her skin was naturally pale and luminous, its soft, fair surface glowing beautifully in the light. Her features were gentle and lovely. A few unruly wisps of hair danced beside her pretty face in the river breeze, adding a touch of disheveled, breathtaking beauty.

Sunset, a young woman, the riverside.

Those were all lovely things.

But Lu Xiu's expression rather diminished the beauty of the scene. Put simply, she looked like a girl who'd been kidnapped and taken to some remote mountain village, utterly despairing—only to discover that the person who'd bought her was another woman...

Are you kidding me?

"Wait... is this right?!"

Lu Xiu stared at the system panel floating in front of her, then at the cluster of ads that had appeared beneath it, and murmured to herself.

Perhaps this sight was already commonplace to the natives of this world.

But Lu Xiu wasn't from this world.

This was only her second day after transmigrating.

As for how she'd ended up here, the short version was... one day after work, she'd run into a hundred-ton truck. She'd fought with all her might, but couldn't beat it. And so, the world gained another person struggling to stay alive—and a speed bump that had been crushed to bits...

When Lu Xiu woke up again, she found herself in unfamiliar surroundings.

And the body wasn't even her original one...

Still, that wasn't the worst of it. While looking through the young woman's memories, she'd discovered something even worse: there was something wrong with this world.

The good news was that this world had many similarities to the one where she'd spent more than twenty years in her previous life. Even the course of history was much the same.

As long as she was a little careful, she could fit right in and live here.

The bad news was...

This world seemed to have been ripped straight from some novels...

With the young woman's memories, Lu Xiu clearly remembered what had happened.

One day, four years ago.

It had started as an ordinary workday, but at 10:17 that morning, every electronic screen across the globe had gone black at once.

Then the screens all flashed the same message—phones, televisions, mall advertising displays, even hospital security monitors.

[Activate Survival Protocol]

Then—

It appeared.

No two people saw it the same way.

Some said it was a light.

Some said it was a gigantic eye.

Some said it was a city hanging upside down in the sky.

But there was no doubt about one thing: it wasn't human.

Afterward, everyone called it the Deity.

At the time,

its voice had echoed directly in every person's mind.

There had been no language barrier.

No translation delay.

Everyone understood.

"Your world is about to become a battlefield."

"Outsiders are approaching."

"You cannot resist them."

"So—you must become players."

"Grow. Grow quickly. The enemy is coming."

After delivering that inexplicable message, it promptly vanished, but the entire world began to change dramatically.

Everything began to become data. The world began to undergo Gamification.

Reality became what was supposedly the main game world, and hideous monsters began appearing everywhere. At first, modern weapons had barely managed to keep the situation under control.

But as Gamification accelerated, many advanced modern weapons became unusable... or, more accurately, they could only be used under certain conditions.

Those conditions came in all shapes and forms. A particular attribute might need to reach a certain level; a certain buff might be required; or a specific item might be needed.

The main way to meet these conditions was to play games—or, more accurately... to enter "dungeons."

Dungeons were worlds that had appeared alongside the Gamification of reality.

Unlike reality, the main game world, these worlds were bizarre and varied. Anyone could enter, as long as they paid Survival Points.

And clearing a dungeon came with certain benefits.

For example, the dungeon with the highest clear rate was called [Lone Walker]. It was a modern-day dungeon. The entry fee was 150 Survival Points, and players had to play the role of a lone soldier, evade enemy patrols, cross the front lines alone, infiltrate enemy territory, and make it to the Spy House.

Along the way, players could choose different routes. They could shoot, bribe enemy soldiers, crawl forward through sheer force of will, or even defect and report the Spy House, then lead a team to capture its members as a turncoat. That counted as completing the mission, too...

Players could do anything they could think of.

The game system would then assess their performance and award a rating and rewards based on the route they chose and how they performed along the way.

The reason this dungeon had the highest clear rate was the military... Rumor had it that the dungeon was on the verge of becoming a proving ground for the military to assess its soldiers.

They had also reaped plenty of rewards.

There was no need to mention those who got low ratings but still received attribute points or item rewards.

Rumor had it that most people could obtain a passive skill called [Infiltration] in this dungeon. It greatly reduced the chance of being spotted by monsters. Those with exceptional abilities could even acquire the passive skills [Lone Courage] or [Firearm Understanding]. The former granted players a boost to their attributes when they were alone, while the latter was even more impressive: it let players modify firearms to make them easier to use.

Its value was clear, given how increasingly strict the conditions for using modern weapons had become.

Incidentally, quite a few people had tried the turncoat route, but rumor had it that only one person had succeeded. It took exceptional eloquence to persuade the enemy; otherwise, the odds of getting caught and executed on the spot were extremely high.

With the military involved, ordinary people didn't have many chances to try it anymore.

Most dungeons were generated by the system.

A few came from the public.

That's right.

After everything became data and underwent Gamification, ordinary people could become Dungeon Architects as well as players.

These dungeons, distinct from the ones generated by the system, were called player-created dungeons... Once a player submitted a dungeon they'd built, the system automatically rated it. Then the architect could decide whether to open it and how many Survival Points to charge for admission.

After a player cleared one of these player-created dungeons, the system also awarded rewards based on factors such as how completely the dungeon was cleared, its overall quality, and the player's performance.

There was even a chance that a truly good player-created dungeon would be added to the system.

In theory... talented players could become Dungeon Architects, then design dungeons based on conditions at the front lines. They could provide powerful items or passive skills to soldiers protecting ordinary people, while also identifying more powerful players. Then, based on those players' feedback, they could create even more dungeons.

It was a perfect cycle.

But while the theory was perfect, reality was not.

Remember?

This world had many similarities to the one where Lu Xiu had spent more than twenty years in her previous life. Even the course of history was much the same.

But "much the same" meant there were differences.

The Cold War in this world had lasted far longer than in her previous life, and it had involved three countries. During that time, almost everything had been geared toward preparing for war. Even after the Cold War ended, things had continued that way for a long time, as if out of sheer inertia.

And just as entertainment was beginning to emerge after the Cold War ended,

the world began to undergo Gamification.

The worst part was that this world had its own equivalent of the video game industry crash in her previous life, like the Atari crash.

And the timing was perfect: it had happened just before the world underwent Gamification. The market had been flooded with shoddy, derivative games, completely destroying the game industry.

A poor start.

Then the unscrupulous player-created dungeon groups made things worse.

Under these circumstances, how could anyone expect player-created dungeons to be any good?

...Ninety percent of player-created dungeons were trash—junk designed to scam people out of their Survival Points.

Take the ad on Lu Xiu's panel, for example. That Jianqu Construction Group was recruiting dungeon testers. It was definitely a scam. The dungeon was probably the kind of garbage that offered no more than a pittance even if you cleared it, and had an F rating to boot.

For all she knew, even the conditions for clearing it were a trap.

But they had the means to place ads on players' panels. Clearly, they'd already scammed plenty of people.

After all, placing an ad there cost at least ten thousand Survival Points.

Ten thousand Survival Points.

Survival Points...

At the thought, Lu Xiu suddenly snapped back to reality. She looked at the pitiful 23 Survival Points on her panel and pressed her soft, red lips together. She felt awful.

Survival Points were a byproduct of the world's Gamification.

Put simply, they were like game tokens...

Once people became players, they all received Survival Points according to a set ratio. Survival Points could be traded and used to buy anything players could imagine in the System Shop. They were also required as entry fees for dungeons.

Most importantly,

players needed Survival Points to stay alive.

One point was automatically deducted every 24 hours. When the balance hit zero, you were deleted on the spot.

And at that moment, Lu Xiu had only 23 Survival Points left. In other words... she had only 23 days to live.

As for why she had so few... the main reason was that the original owner had been timid. She hadn't dared to enter system dungeons, and some time ago, a player-created dungeon had scammed her out of a huge chunk of her Survival Points.

That had made her even more frightened.

Her parents had divorced when she was seven. After starting new families, neither of them wanted her. She and her grandmother had depended on each other. She was shy by nature, and once her grandmother passed away, she was all alone. She didn't dare enter system dungeons, had no friends, and only dared to stay home. Then, when she finally trusted someone for once...

they'd scammed her...

And then, then Lu Xiu had arrived.

She'd opened her eyes to this inexplicable world, with only 23 days left to live and a body completely different from the one she'd had in her previous life.

That's right.

By comparison,

her body was the least of her problems.

When she'd first arrived, she'd gone to the bathroom and checked three times in disbelief...

"You might as well just let me die."

Lu Xiu pressed her soft, glossy lips together and lowered her head in dejection.

Then she saw her ample curves, which bulged no matter how she tried to hold them in and rose and fell with every breath... She wanted to die even more.

Should she just give up?

Lu Xiu looked away and thought, a little self-destructively, that she might as well treat these last 23 days as hospice care...

But—

As soon as the thought crossed her mind, she remembered the agony of that moment when she'd been on the verge of dying in her previous life.

"..."

Lu Xiu fell silent for a moment, then looked down at her chest again. Suddenly, she felt that maybe she could accept this after all...

Mainly because she didn't want to go through dying again.

In the face of death,

it seemed as if no problem mattered anymore.

So the only question now was—how could she stay alive?

Lu Xiu took a deep breath, driving away the terrifying memory of nearly dying. Her delicate brows furrowed as she began to think it through.

Watch ads?

She could watch for at most three hours a day, and there seemed to be a limit on how many ads she could watch. It would do no more than keep her alive a little longer.

Enter a system dungeon?

She wasn't confident, didn't have any Survival Points to spare on an entry fee, and the risk was too high.

Take out a loan?

Setting aside whether she could even get one, Lu Xiu wouldn't dare borrow if she could. The interest was too high, and the lender would forcibly seize her dungeon earnings.

Without the ability to pay it back, living beyond her means would only make her die sooner.

That left just one path.

Lu Xiu looked at the last ad on her panel—[System Announcement—Welcome to becoming a Dungeon Architect!]