Inventory Slots

Chapter 17: Inventory Slots

In the evening, Huangfu Miaomiao finally woke up.

She sat up groggily, looking at the sunset glow outside the window, dazed and unable to tell whether it was sunrise or sunset.

"You sure can sleep." Feng Ling sat beside her, chin resting on her hand, watching her. "You slept a full twelve hours."

Huangfu Miaomiao was stunned for a moment.

How long had it been since she'd had a proper sleep after logging in?

She couldn't remember...

It felt like every single day, she spent in fear—afraid of being caught by the Supervision Bureau, afraid of having her cards taken away, afraid of failing her missions, afraid of so many things...

Later, she thought she could find help on the forums, only to fall into another disaster.

If she hadn't been pushed to the brink, who would willingly take the risk of cooperating with a Boss?

Huangfu Miaomiao's mind gradually cleared, her focus sharpening as she noticed the new clothes, new shoes, and a cartoon-style watch beside her.

"Is this for me?" She picked it up curiously.

Feng Ling squinted with a smile. "Yeah, I bought you a smartwatch. The SIM card's already inserted. I set it to silent mode so it won't suddenly ring and mess things up when we enter the tunnel."

Huangfu Miaomiao: "..."

It seemed the tunnel trip was non-negotiable for the Boss.

"I bought some other stuff too. I'll carry half, you carry the other half." Feng Ling dragged over two heavy outdoor backpacks, picked up the smaller one, and placed it in front of Huangfu Miaomiao without room for refusal.

Huangfu Miaomiao opened the backpack—

Inside were food and water, rope, a shovel, a flashlight, and a particularly heavy long-handled hammer hanging on the outside.

Huangfu Miaomiao wasn't a real human little girl after all; despite her small frame, her physical abilities were slightly above average.

She silently picked up the iron hammer, weighed it in her hand, and looked at Feng Ling with mixed feelings.

"Want to give it a try?" Feng Ling gripped the other weapon—an Alloy Steel Battle Axe she'd bought for 1800—and her gaze was unusually soft. "The hammer and the axe were bought from the same store, same-day delivery in the city. No idea about the quality."

Huangfu Miaomiao: "..."

Clearly, Feng Ling giving her a weapon wasn't out of trust—it was purely for the thrill.

And she wasn't about to give Feng Ling that thrill.

Huangfu Miaomiao pressed her lips together, lowered her head, zipped up the backpack, and stored it away. Then she stored the hammer too.

Feng Ling froze.

Right before her eyes, the backpack and hammer that had just been in front of Huangfu Miaomiao suddenly vanished.

"How did you do that?" Feng Ling couldn't help reaching out to feel the spot where the backpack and hammer had been. It was completely empty. "What kind of ability is this?"

"It's not an ability." Huangfu Miaomiao explained. "It's the player's Inventory Function. Every player starts with two inventory slots."

"Starting state?" Feng Ling grew very interested. "So, the inventory slots can be increased?"

"Mm." Huangfu Miaomiao counted on her fingers. "After I logged in, I started with two inventory slots. I got one slot as a mission reward, and later spent 10 Points to buy another. Now I have four slots total. Each slot can hold items up to 10kg."

Feng Ling laughed. "This ability is more practical than cards. Why not buy more slots?"

Huangfu Miaomiao bit her lip and muttered, "Too expensive... The first purchase only cost 10 Points, but the second goes up to 50, the third to 200, the fourth to 1000... By the fifth, it costs 5000 Points."

What a shame...

Feng Ling thought to herself. If this were a card ability, she'd definitely be tempted to kill a few more Xenomorphs to snatch slots.

Huangfu Miaomiao looked at her somewhat ingratiatingly. "Do you need me to store your backpack for you?"

"No need," Feng Ling said, shouldering her pack and gripping her axe. "Storing everything too cleanly would just make people suspicious. You take the hammer out too, or else people will wonder where you pulled something that big from."

That made sense.

Huangfu Miaomiao nodded, and a hammer instantly appeared in her hand.

Feng Ling checked the time and asked her, "Hungry?"

"Hungry." Huangfu Miaomiao nodded obediently again.

Feng Ling lifted her axe. "Go change clothes. I'll take you out to eat. Once we're full, we're heading to Jiangkou City."

Huangfu Miaomiao's heart warmed at that.

As long as she didn't think about that last part—"heading to Jiangkou City"—having new clothes to wear and a full meal was already wonderful!

The two went to the highest-rated buffet restaurant in the city.

In the past, it was always packed, requiring a number ticket and a long wait during meal times. Now, business had declined sharply.

Feng Ling walked into the restaurant, looked down at Huangfu Miaomiao, and asked, "Any Xenomorphs here?"

Huangfu Miaomiao carefully scanned the room and shook her head. "No."

"None, huh..." Feng Ling reached out and patted Huangfu Miaomiao's head. "Let's eat."

After filling her stomach, Feng Ling drove toward Jiangkou City.

Traffic flowed endlessly along the road. She asked Huangfu Miaomiao again, "Any Xenomorphs?"

Huangfu Miaomiao stared for a moment. "...No."

Feng Ling slumped over the steering wheel with a sigh. "So many cars, and not a single Xenomorph."

Huangfu—humanoid detector—Miaomiao silently opened the Blue Light Virtual Screen, glanced at the occasionally changing number in the upper left corner, hesitated, and finally spoke. "Current Online Players: 97,681. If these people were evenly distributed across the world, each city would have no more than ten players. It's normal not to run into any."

Feng Ling perked up, staring into her eyes. "You can see the number of Online Players?"

"Mm." Huangfu Miaomiao glanced again. "Now it's 97,679. Two died..."

There was an almost imperceptible catch in her tone.

A sorrow of shared fate, the cold pity of lips and teeth depending on each other—Huangfu Miaomiao dared not show even a trace.

Though two of her compatriots had died, this log-in count also meant Feng Ling had lost over ninety thousand of hers.

She and she were two naturally hostile factions. Even if they coexisted peacefully now, sooner or later...

Sooner or later, she would kill me—Huangfu Miaomiao thought.

"That doesn't make sense," Feng Ling said as she drove. "Qingjiang City has Xenomorph attacks every few days. I feel like there are quite a lot of them."

"I don't know..." Huangfu Miaomiao thought seriously. "Maybe... maybe it's related to the system's Deployment Mechanism. Your world has games too, so you should understand. Players are usually deployed in villages, not in wild Monster Camps. So, looking at the whole map, it makes sense that some places have few people and others have many."

"Monster Camp... Heh, interesting." Feng Ling's lips curled. "You're the players, and we're the monsters. Very interesting."

She freed one hand, pulled a tablet from the side of the seat, and tossed it onto Huangfu Miaomiao's lap. "Write this down. This information is also very interesting. Write it all down."

Huangfu Miaomiao: "Okay..."

The night deepened.

The cars on the road visibly thinned.

When Feng Ling drove into Jiangkou City's Train Station, there wasn't a single person in sight. The towering streetlights illuminated the empty road, silent and desolate.

"Look ahead." Feng Ling turned on the high beams, shining them on a minivan in front.

She smirked. "Someone's in the car. Out this late, very suspicious~"

Huangfu Miaomiao saw the vehicle clearly from dozens of meters away, her eyes widening in shock. "It's..."