The so-called ammunition

Qin Mao had become the Hope's first mate on the strength of his ship-repair skills and received a cabin of his own.

Wang Tai had also assigned him an underling named Zhu Yu.

Supposedly, this was a veteran "helping" a newcomer so Qin Mao could settle into the team as quickly as possible.

But what he actually did went far beyond helping.

The skinny young man wore an eager smile all day, addressing him as "First Mate Qin" at every turn.

Every day, he fawned over Qin Mao, fetching water, collecting supplies, and grilling fish for him, never leaving his side.

All that was missing was emptying his chamber pot for him.

Could he have been sent to keep an eye on me?

Qin Mao really couldn't stand it and told him to stop following him around like a eunuch.

Zhu Yu nodded repeatedly.

"I just admire extraordinary people like you, First Mate Qin. Call me if you need anything, and feel free to ask me any questions."

Great. That did absolutely nothing.

Since things had reached this point, Qin Mao stopped standing on ceremony.

He shut the door and pulled Zhu Yu down to sit, his expression kindly.

"Any questions at all?"

"Um... of course."

Zhu Yu froze for a moment, not understanding why the first mate, who had just found him annoying, had suddenly become so friendly.

"Ahem, I've been with the fleet for two and a half days now. I kept hearing people mention ammunition before. Could you explain that to me?"

Zhu Yu's hand trembled.

The half-opened coconut in his hand tumbled to the floor, and his expression froze too. He gave an extremely unnatural smile.

"Oh, you're asking about that... actually... I suppose it's the fleet's open secret!"

He drew a breath.

He tried his hardest to stay calm.

"The bullets in Boss Wang's gun aren't ordinary bullets. They're exchanged for human lives. They can hurt the uncanny, and each bullet costs one life."

Zhu Yu revealed the truth with seeming nonchalance.

But his slightly trembling lips showed that he was far from calm inside.

"First Mate Qin, this is the apocalypse. How could we easily run into other living people? So everyone on this ship... is that gun's ammunition reserve."

"Anyone who's been aboard long enough knows perfectly well. Boss Wang hasn't tried to hide it either. Ask anyone and they'll tell you."

Qin Mao nodded inwardly.

It was just as he had guessed.

When he boarded that evening, Zhang Qing had casually called him "ammunition" the moment they met.

Later, when Wang Tai executed the four deserters, the number of skull designs engraved on the gun had increased from three to seven. That had been a very obvious clue too.

Fortunately, he had noticed something was wrong and promptly revealed that he was an "extraordinary person" and a "Shipwright."

Even if that gun needed human lives to feed it, he would definitely come after most of the survivors now.

"One life per bullet. Wouldn't that cause a mutiny?"

"How could it?" Zhu Yu smiled bitterly.

"Leaving aside that incredibly powerful gun Boss Wang carries, even if we drove him away, everyone aboard would be an ordinary person. What would we do if we ran into something powerful and uncanny again?"

"Everyone would die," Qin Mao supplied.

Zhu Yu nodded.

"Besides, without Boss Wang, there would just be a Boss Zhang or a Boss Li... as long as that gun needs bullets, no one can escape."

"At least... Boss Wang handles things fairly!"

"So plenty of people aboard are still utterly loyal to him. Even if a few are unhappy, they only try to run away. It's just that none of them have ever succeeded."

Having asked what he needed to, Qin Mao picked up the fallen coconut with a pang of regret.

He opened it, ate every last bite, then rubbed his belly and caught his breath.

"It really pisses me off, being treated as an ammunition reserve!"

Back in school, Qin Mao had enjoyed reading apocalypse novels too.

He had thoroughly agreed with that classic saying: "My neighbors stockpile food, I stockpile guns. My neighbors are my granary."

He had also imagined whether he should stockpile food or guns if the apocalypse came.

Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined becoming food for someone else's stockpiled gun.

"Fucking bullshit!"

He spat inwardly, then asked one final question.

"What about those seven days? When I first arrived, I heard something about seven days and everyone aboard dying..."

It sounded like some sort of curse.

Zhu Yu's expression suddenly turned ugly.

"I don't know. I don't know. First Mate Qin, I've got something to do. I'll be going..."

As though "seven days" had touched upon some taboo, Zhu Yu looked flustered.

He stood and left without the slightest hesitation.

That afternoon, Qin Mao wandered around the ship again under the pretext of checking it for damage.

He made the rounds, asking the other crew members.

The answers he received matched what Zhu Yu had told him.

The Hope wasn't particularly large, with forty-five crew members including Qin Mao.

The existing cabins were basically full.

But there was no room for such fussiness in the apocalypse. If they squeezed together, they could actually cram in another twenty or so people.

That would put considerable strain on their supplies, though.

Apart from the regular living quarters, the ship also had a few special little rooms.

Qin Mao casually asked what they were for while drawing other potentially valuable information out of different survivors.

"What's this?"

"First Mate Qin, this is a large storeroom. Any materials we don't need for the moment are piled in here."

"...What's this cabin for?"

"Hello, First Mate! This is the galley. There's also a concealed room inside for storing food!"

"...And what's this padlocked one for?"

"Reporting, First Mate, this is the ammunition magazine. You can't enter without Boss Wang's orders!"

"Oh, okay... what about the room behind it?"

"The infirmary, but we've already run out of the common medicines we had stocked, First Mate!"

By the end of his rounds, Qin Mao basically knew the Hope's condition inside out.

The ship was in good condition overall, with nothing else urgently needing repairs.

So he didn't waste Kill Points on repairing it.

He merely went through the motions with the Ram's Horn Hammer, tapping here and looking there.

Meanwhile, the few edible catches the survivors hauled aboard were all placed in a large square iron basin on deck.

They were left for Qin Mao to kill.

The world had no shortage of people who could read the room.

Ever since Qin Mao had shown an interest in killing fish, people had quietly taken note.

"The new first mate enjoys killing. He's cold-blooded and bloodthirsty!"

Soon, everyone kept their catches alive instead of killing them, saving them specifically for Qin Mao.

Once he had hammered the fish to death and received his Kill Points,

the gutting, cutting, and cleaning were left to the others.

Qin Mao was very pleased with this.

As expected of people who had survived this long in the apocalypse, every last one of them knew how to take a hint.

Thrift built wealth; extravagance ruined it.

There weren't many fish, and the system awarded pitifully few Kill Points, but income was still income!

After all, he had no way of killing the uncanny for now.

And the system didn't count killing the polluted fish in the sea.

Kill his fellow humans?

Please. He considered himself an upstanding young man who upheld the five virtues, four beauties, and three loves.

"Maybe... I could figure out how to bait someone into attacking me, then act in self-defense?"

Qin Mao patted his head in frustration.

He swore he really was a good person!

He only wanted to live freely.

But devious ideas just kept bubbling up inside him.

"First Mate Qin! We've got all of today's fish ready for you. It'll be dark soon, and the chances of catching Mutant Fish and shrimp will increase dramatically, so we're stopping here."

"Okay! Coming!"

Qin Mao's eyes blazed as he walked out of his cabin with a sinister chuckle.

He looked at the big basin of fish on deck as though he were looking at a group of breathtakingly beautiful young women.

Everyone around him instinctively took two steps back at once, inwardly unnerved.

"There's that perverted look again!"

"This guy definitely has serious violent tendencies!"

"Sure enough, the more refined they look, the crazier they are deep down!"

Qin Mao happily prepared to collect today's Kill Points.

He still had no idea.

In the mere two and a half days they had known him, the crew had already given him a resounding nickname.

-Blood-Hand Qin Tu.