Chapter 1

The sticky sensation of a zombie's teeth tearing into my neck still seemed to crawl across my skin. The suffocating choke of a ruptured throat forced me to gasp sharply, and I jolted out of my chair like I'd been electrocuted.

No blood-spattered safe house. No stench of rotting flesh crashing over me.

The computer screen before me glowed pale blue. The mechanical alarm clock on the desk clearly showed the time: ten minutes before the apocalypse.

I gasped for air, staring at my own intact hands. In my past life, Emily and Mark had pried my fingers apart with their bare hands and shoved me like a human shield into the horde of monsters outside the door. The sound of my bones being crushed was the last thing I heard before I died.

But before that abyss of despair, a memory slashed through my chaotic mind like lightning. While scavenging for supplies, I'd once come across a programmer so starved he was nothing but skin and bones.

"I survived on food drops from clearing an arcade game," the programmer had said, swallowing bloody saliva, trembling all over. "The drops were just ordinary candy, but at least... I didn't starve."

That sentence became my most obsessive fixation before I died.

Since fate had let me stand again in this cramped studio apartment, the mad idea in my head spread like wildfire—try it. Stake my life on a game!

I lunged at the computer desk, the mouse sliding under my trembling palm. The cursor flew past those flashy shooter games and landed precisely on the icon that had accompanied me for seven full years—a farming management game, Greenfield Manor.

Pure gamble. All or nothing.

"Bam! Bam! Bam!"

A violent pounding at the door yanked me back. From the hallway came Emily's voice—sweet, but dripping with false concern: "Jack, you're in there, right? Open up. Mark said there's a huge storm coming—we're here to take shelter."

Then Mark's impatient bark: "Hurry up! Stop dawdling!"

The instant I heard their voices, the blood in my chest seemed to boil. The hatred of betrayal surged like lava. I rushed to the door and, with two sharp clicks, threw the deadbolt and locked it tight.

"Shelter from the rain? Take your hypocrisy and get as far away as you can!" I roared through the door, a rage I'd never known blazing in my eyes.

"Jack, have you lost your mind—"

Before the insults outside could fully form, the piercing wail of global air-raid sirens tore across the sky without warning.

The pounding stopped. Ignoring the dead silence outside, I spun and dove back to the computer.

My phone screen suddenly blazed red, a cold, emotionless global mandatory broadcast filling the display, accompanied by a mechanical voice echoing through the entire building:

"Apocalypse countdown: three minutes. When the timer reaches zero, the last electronic application each of you used will mutate into your exclusive survival ability. Good luck."

My heart slammed against my ribs. The programmer hadn't lied! The rules were real!

Two minutes and fifty seconds.

I stared at Greenfield Manor's loading screen. The progress bar was stuck at ninety-nine percent, like a dying snake.

One minute and thirty seconds.

Cold sweat dripped onto the keyboard. This was an old single-player game. If the system deemed it invalid, if it crashed before the timer hit zero...

Thirty seconds.

From outside came Mark's furious kicks at the door. Clearly they'd gotten the broadcast too and were desperate to seize my place.

Ten seconds.

Five. Four. Three. Two. One!

The moment the timer hit zero, the world seemed to freeze in eerie stillness. Then, the Greenfield Manor icon on my screen exploded with blinding golden light! That glow spread from the monitor to my fingertips, and a wave of warmth surged through my entire body.

A vast 3D map unfurled clearly in my mind—my farm. Maxed out. Overflowing with supplies. Golden and radiant.

This audacious gamble—I'd won.

Before the golden light had fully faded from my eyes, my phone buzzed like it was about to explode. Messages in the community group chat scrolled at hundreds per second.

"Help! I was reading a joke book—my ability makes people laugh? What good is that?!"

"Damn it, I bound a flashlight app. Now my fingers glow. That's it?"

"Haha, I got lucky! I bound the hardware store's shopping app—a giant sledgehammer just appeared in my hand!"

Panic, ecstasy, and despair wove into a grotesque mosaic of the apocalypse on the screen. Countless people, only realizing the brutal rule after awakening, had panicked and bound useless apps—doomed to become the first wave of monster chow.

Just then, a glaring incoming call flashed at the top of the screen: Emily.

I let out a cold laugh and answered.

Mark's unrestrained mockery burst through the speaker first, glass shattering in the background: "Jack, you idiot! I heard it through the door—that farming game music from your computer! The apocalypse is here, and you're gonna whack zombies with a hoe?"

Emily's saccharine voice chimed in after: "Jack, it's fate. Mark bound a really powerful combat game, you know. Open the door and beg us now, and maybe we'll throw you some scraps."

Listening to the same pair who'd devoured me alive in my past life gloat over the phone, a smirk curled at the corner of my mouth.

"Farming game? You misheard." I dropped my voice, lacing it with just the right amount of embarrassment. "I was checking the weather forecast."

There was a beat of silence on the other end, then even louder, more brazen laughter.

"Weather forecast? Haha! Then forecast this—how you're gonna die today!"

I didn't waste another syllable on them. My finger swiped across the screen, hung up, and dragged both numbers straight to the blacklist.

The screen went dark. The apartment fell into dead silence.

I walked to the window and cracked the blinds. Streetlights flickered wildly outside; the first shrill scream echoed in the distance.

My act of weakness just now was only a temporary ploy. I knew better than anyone that Mark, that greedy hyena, had seen me haul two huge boxes of instant food and bottled water into this apartment just days ago.

In this apocalypse, where food would soon be more precious than gold, a "weather-forecast-bound" weakling with a room full of supplies was the most irresistible prey to them.

They would inevitably come—with their newly acquired weapons—to kick down my door.

Only this time, the roles of hunter and prey were about to switch. I closed my eyes and sank my consciousness into the vast Greenfield Manor in my mind, locking onto a special item glowing blue in the corner of the warehouse.