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 player playtime is less than 30 days. To avoid death, please try not to sleep and obtain survival points as soon as possible.]

[Watch ads to avoid death. Watch for one hour to gain 1 survival point, up to three times per day [Click link].]

[Jianqu Construction Group is recruiting dungeon testers. Pay only 30 survival points for a chance to earn double survival points [Click link].]

[Survival point loans. Stop touching high-interest loans. Borrow first, use first, enjoy first [Click link].]

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

[...]

Lu Xiu sat on a bench by the river, staring at the panel before her for a full three minutes.

The evening river water shimmered with crushed gold. The lights on the bridge had already flickered to life, one by one. In the distance, the glass curtain walls of high-rises reflected the sunset, a blend of pink-purple and orange-red that looked as beautiful as a retouched promotional image.

That was, if one ignored the expression on her face at this moment.

In truth, it was a lovely scene.

A young girl sat quietly by the river, her smooth black hair falling to her shoulders in a casual yet perfect way. Her naturally cool, fair skin glowed beautifully under the light. Her features were soft and moving, with a few mischievous, disobedient strands of hair dancing in the river breeze beside her pretty face, adding a touch of messy, breathtaking beauty.

Sunset, a girl, the riverside.

These were all beautiful words.

However, this beauty was diluted quite a bit by Lu Xiu's current expression. To put it simply, she looked like a girl who had been trafficked into the deep mountains, utterly hopeless, only to realize that the person who bought her was also a woman...

Are you kidding me?

"No... is this for real?!"

Lu Xiu looked at the system panel floating before her, watching the ads piling up behind it, and muttered.

Perhaps this scene was already commonplace for the natives.

But Lu Xiu was not from this world at all.

This was only the second day since she had transmigrated.

As for why she appeared in this world, to put it simply... one day after work, she encountered a hundred-ton king, tried her best but couldn't win, and then there was one more person in the world struggling to survive, along with a crushed speed bump...

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

And the body wasn't her original one, either...

However, that wasn't the worst part, because as she flipped through the girl's memories, she discovered something even worse—there was something wrong with this world.

The good news was that this world had many similarities to the one she had lived in for over twenty years in her past life, even the historical trajectory was roughly the same.

As long as she was a little careful, she could live here seamlessly.

And the bad news was.

This world seemed to have been ripped out of some novel...

Having inherited the girl's memories, she remembered clearly.

Four years ago, one day.

It was supposed to be an ordinary workday, but at 10:17 AM, every electronic screen on the globe went black simultaneously.

Then, mobile phones, televisions, commercial billboards, and even hospital surveillance terminals—every electronic screen flashed the same sentence—

[Initiating Survival Protocol]

Then—

The Deity appeared.

The Deity looked different to everyone.

Some said it was light.

Some said it was a giant eye.

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

But there was no doubt, It was not human.

Later, everyone called It—The Deity.

At that time.

Its voice echoed directly in everyone's mind.

There were no language barriers.

There was no translation delay.

Everyone understood.

"Your world is about to become a battlefield."

"The outer realms are approaching."

"You cannot resist."

"Therefore—you need to become players."

"Grow, hurry up and grow, the enemy is coming."

After leaving behind such an inexplicable statement, It vanished, but the entire world began to undergo a drastic change.

Everything began to be digitized, to be gamified.

Reality became the so-called main stage of the game. Hideous monsters began to appear everywhere. In the early stages, they could barely hold the situation with Modern Weapons.

But as the gamification process accelerated, many cutting-edge Modern Weapons began to become unusable... or more accurately, they required conditions to be used.

The so-called conditions were varied; they might be reaching a certain attribute point, obtaining certain buffs, or requiring certain items.

The main channel to achieve these conditions was to play games, or more accurately... to head to "dungeons."

The so-called dungeons were worlds that appeared alongside the digitization of reality.

These worlds were distinct from the reality that served as the main stage; they were bizarre and varied. Everyone could enter as long as they paid the survival points.

And as long as they cleared them, they could obtain certain benefits.

For example, the dungeon with the highest clearance rate was called [Lone Walker]. This was a dungeon with a modern background. The ticket price was 150 survival points. After entering, players had to play the role of a lonely soldier, avoiding enemy reconnaissance, crossing the front lines alone, infiltrating behind enemy lines, and reaching the Spy House.

During this time, players could choose different routes. They could fire guns, bribe enemy soldiers, crawl forward relying on willpower, or even defect to the enemy and report the Spy House, acting as a turncoat to lead the team to capture people—this also counted as completing the mission...

As long as it was an operation the player could think of, it could be done.

The game system would give ratings and rewards based on the different routes chosen by the player and their performance during the process.

The reason this dungeon had the highest clearance rate was because of the existence of the military... It was rumored that this dungeon was on the verge of becoming a testing ground for the military to verify the quality of their soldiers.

At the same time, they also gained a lot.

Not to mention those with low ratings who obtained attribute points or item rewards.

It was rumored that most people could obtain the passive skill called [Infiltration] in this dungeon, which could significantly reduce the probability of being discovered by monsters. Those with strong abilities could even obtain the passive skills [Lone Courage] or [Firearm Understanding]. The former allowed players to gain a certain attribute increase when alone, while the latter was even more powerful, allowing players to modify firearms to make them easier to use.

Given the increasingly harsh conditions for using Modern Weapons, its value was evident.

Incidentally, many people had tried the turncoat route, but it was rumored that only one person had succeeded, because it required excellent eloquence to persuade the enemy; otherwise, the probability of being discovered by the enemy and executed on the spot was extremely high.

Currently, because of the military's presence, ordinary people didn't have many opportunities to try it.

Most dungeons were produced by the system.

A small portion came from the public.

Yes.

After everything was digitized and gamified, besides becoming players, ordinary people could also become Dungeon Architects.

These dungeons, distinct from those generated by the system, were called civilian dungeons... After a player-constructed dungeon was submitted, the system would automatically grade it, and then the architect would decide whether to open it and how many survival points to charge as a ticket.

After players cleared these civilian dungeons, the system would also provide rewards based on factors such as the dungeon's completion rate, the quality of the dungeon itself, and the player's performance.

Even truly good civilian dungeons had a chance to be included in the system.

Theoretically... talented players could become Dungeon Architects, then plan dungeons based on the situation at the front lines, providing powerful items or passive skills to the soldiers standing at the front to protect the ordinary public, while simultaneously screening for more powerful players, and then creating more dungeons based on their feedback.

This was a perfect cycle.

But the theory was perfect, while reality was not.

Remember?

This world had many similarities to the one Lu Xiu had lived in for over twenty years in her past life, even the historical trajectory was roughly the same.

But "roughly"... meant there were differences.

In this world, the Cold War lasted much longer than in her past life, and it was a three-way Cold War.

During that time, almost everything was preparing for war. Even after the Cold War ended, this situation continued out of inertia for a long time.

And after the Cold War ended, entertainment had just begun to emerge.

The world began to be gamified again.

The most fatal thing was that the decline of the video game industry, similar to the Atari shock in Lu Xiu's past life, happened here too.

Moreover, the timing was exactly before the world's gamification. At that time, the market was full of shoddy, homogenized games, which had completely destroyed the game industry.

Congenitally deficient.

Added to that were the treacherous civilian construction groups causing trouble.

In such a situation, what kind of quality could you possibly expect from a private dungeon?

...Ninety percent of private dungeons are trash, just garbage designed to scam survival points.

Take the ad on Lu Xiu's interface, for example. That Jianqu Construction Group recruiting dungeon testers is one hundred percent a trap. It's definitely the kind of trash dungeon where even if you clear it, the rewards are as meager as a mosquito's leg and the rating is only F-tier.

Heck, there might even be traps in the clearance conditions.

Yet, they have the capability to place ads on a player's interface, which clearly means they have already scammed quite a few people.

Because placing an ad up there costs at least ten thousand survival points.

Ten thousand survival points.

Survival points...

Thinking of this, Lu Xiu snapped back to reality. She looked at the pathetic 23 survival points on her interface, pressed her soft, red lips together, and felt her entire mood plummet.

So-called survival points are the derivative of everything being gamified.

Simply put, this stuff is like a prepaid card...

After everyone becomes a player, they receive survival points proportionally. Survival points can be traded, used to purchase anything a player can imagine in the system store, and are required as entry tickets to enter dungeons.

Most importantly.

To stay alive, a player also needs survival points.

One survival point is deducted automatically every 24 hours. If the balance hits zero, the account is deleted on the spot.

And right now, Lu Xiu only had 23 survival points left, which meant... she only had 23 days left to live.

As for why she had so few... it was mainly because the original owner was very timid. She had never dared to enter a system dungeon before, and a while back, she had been scammed out of a large sum of survival points by a private dungeon.

This made her even more afraid.

Her parents divorced when she was seven, and after they remarried, neither wanted her. She relied on her grandmother, and her personality was shy. After her grandmother passed away, she was all alone. She didn't dare go to system dungeons, had no friends, and only dared to stay home. Then, the one time she finally trusted someone.

She got scammed...

And then, then Lu Xiu arrived.

The moment she opened her eyes, she was faced with this inexplicable world, only 23 days of life remaining, and a body completely different from her previous life.

Yes.

By comparison.

The body was actually the smallest problem.

Although, when she first arrived, she had gone to the bathroom three times in disbelief to confirm it...

"You might as well have just let me die."

Lu Xiu pressed her lustrous red lips together and lowered her head in frustration.

Then she saw those full curves that remained plump no matter how she tried to bind them, rising and falling with her breath... she wanted to die even more.

How about I just give up?

Lu Xiu withdrew her gaze, thinking in a self-abandoning manner, just treat these remaining 23 days as hospice care...

However.

The moment this thought popped up, she remembered the pain of that instant when she was dying in her previous life.

"..."

Lu Xiu was silent for a moment, looked down at her chest again, and suddenly felt that this wasn't entirely unacceptable...

Mainly because she didn't want to experience death again.

In the face of death.

It seemed all problems were no longer problems.

So the only question now is—how to survive?

Lu Xiu took a deep breath, dispelled the terrifying memory of dying, knitted her delicate brows, and began to analyze.

Watch ads?

You can watch for at most three hours a day, and there seems to be a limit on the number of ads you can watch. It's nothing more than just lingering on the brink of death.

Participate in a system dungeon?

She had no confidence, currently had no extra survival points to pay for an entry ticket, and the risks were too high.

Borrowing?

Not to mention whether she could even borrow any, even if she could, Lu Xiu wouldn't dare. The interest was too high, and they would forcibly deduct it from her dungeon earnings.

If you lack the ability and live beyond your means, you die even faster.

Then there was only one path left.

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