The whole nation is trying to survive on the cable car; I'm choosing one of three options at ea

Lin Yuwei let out a long breath, put down her gun, and wiped the sweat from her forehead. Then she glanced at Su Mu, her eyes filled with something indescribable... not admiration, not envy, but more like a sense of helplessness that said, "I can't live like this anymore."

Su Mu didn't look at her. He had already turned around and walked towards the next monster.

For the next three hours, Su Mu barely stopped.

He didn't deliberately seek out level 10 monsters... There weren't many level 10 monsters in the Dark Zone to begin with, and they were too scattered, so specifically looking for them would be a waste of time. He only killed level 5 to 8 monsters, which were everywhere in the Dark Zone, quick to kill, and accumulated over time.

The spear seemed to come alive in his hands; each thrust struck a vital point with pinpoint accuracy, and each retraction left a trail of blood mist. He took down level 5 Dark Zone zombies with a single shot, level 6 Dark Zone ogres with two shots, and level 7 mutated beasts with a single combo.

A blur of afterimages exploded behind him, a dense barrage of gunfire filling his field of vision like a peacock spreading its tail. The ricocheting shots bounced wildly through the monster horde; with a single thrust, five or six monsters around him fell to the ground simultaneously, struck by the bullet.

Kill notifications kept flooding the system panel. The Dark Zone experience pool numbers jumped from several hundred to one thousand, from one thousand to two thousand, and from two thousand to three thousand. The experience bonus increased from twenty percent to thirty percent, from thirty percent to forty percent, and finally stabilized at sixty percent.

Lin Yuwei followed behind him, keeping a distance of about fifty meters.

Her fighting style was completely different. She didn't have Su Mu's overwhelming output ability, nor Bai Liuxi's ghostly speed. She used a gun... that M9, equipped with those bullets coated with a dark green layer. It could headshot a level 5 Dark Zone zombie with one shot, take two to three shots to a level 6 zombie, barely break the armor of a level 7 zombie, and not even scratch a level 8 zombie.

But her efficiency was anything but low. Her marksmanship was excellent, not the kind of "weak point locking" accuracy Su Mu possessed, but rather a true, honed, and practiced precision. Every shot hit the monster's vitals, with no wasted shots. Moreover, her judgment of the battlefield situation was sharp... she knew when to attack, when to run, and when to hide behind Su Mu and gain experience.

Su Mu noticed that she wasn't just "leeching" experience. She was killing as many monsters as possible, checking the experience points on the system panel after each kill, her brow furrowing and relaxing intermittently, as if she were calculating something. She had her own rhythm and her own goals.

Su Mu ignored her. She did her thing, he did his; there was no coordination between them, but there was no conflict either.

In three hours, the sky changed from pitch black to deep blue, and then from deep blue to grayish-white.

When Su Mu finally sheathed his gun, the Dark Zone experience pool number stopped at 5,321. Experience bonus: 60%.

Lin Yuwei also put away her gun and squatted by the roadside, panting heavily. Her coat was stained with dark green monster blood, her hair was soaked with sweat and stuck to her forehead, and there was a faint bloodstain on her cheek, as if scratched by something. She looked up at Su Mu, opened her mouth as if to say something, but her throat was too dry to make a sound. She rummaged through her backpack and pulled out a bottle of mineral water, gulped down several mouthfuls, and then let out a long breath.

"I've reached level four!" she said, her voice brimming with barely suppressed excitement. "Level four, more than half the experience points. Three hours, from level two to level four, can you believe it?"

Su Mu glanced at her but didn't reply.

Lin Yuwei was excited for a while, then, as if remembering something, she looked down at her gun, then at the monster corpses on the ground, and frowned slightly. The special bullets she used were something she had obtained at a great cost... a kind of poisonous enchantment material, consumable only, which, when applied to the bullet tip, greatly increased penetration and damage. These things were extremely rare, and their price was exorbitant.

She mentally calculated the score, then glanced at Su Mu's retreating figure, a hint of confusion in her eyes.

She used special ammunition of this level, and it took her three hours to reach level four.

Su Mu used a melee weapon... a long spear, without any enchantments or special materials, making him many times more efficient than her. Moreover, he deliberately left the level 5 and 6 monsters to her, only killing level 7 and above himself. At first, she thought Su Mu was taking care of her, and she was even touched.

She noticed that when Su Mu killed those level 5 and 6 monsters, he didn't even glance at them, leaving as soon as the kill notification appeared, without even checking the experience points.

Level 5 monsters offer too little experience for Su Mu. Killing them is pointless and a waste of time.

Lin Yuwei gritted her teeth and suppressed the emotion in her heart.

"Sharp tongue but soft heart" is utter nonsense.

The sky was fully bright now. Not the kind of bright, sunny kind, but a hazy, veiled kind of brightness. The sky over dark areas is always like this, even during the day, it carries a somber, gloomy atmosphere.

Su Mu stood on the rooftop of a building and glanced at the distant horizon. A faint orange-red hue hung in the eastern sky, the direction of the sunrise, but it was obscured by a thin layer of grayish-white mist, and only a vague outline could be seen.

The boundary of the dark zone was several kilometers away, and he could see that the sky there was a distinctly different color... brighter and bluer.

The special effects in this area only last until dawn.

Su Mu glanced at the Dark Zone Experience Pool on the system panel. Five thousand three hundred and twenty-one points, a 60% bonus, for a total of over eight thousand five hundred experience points that could be extracted. He took a deep breath and chose to extract.

Golden light surged from his body, not in a single burst, but continuously, wave after wave, like a tide. A warm sensation rose from his abdomen and quickly spread to his limbs and bones, every muscle and every bone being washed, strengthened, and reshaped by this power.

[Level Up! Current Level: Lv7 (0/6400)]

Dark Zone Experience Pool Remaining: 5136 points

The golden light hadn't stopped. The experience bar continued to rise, jumping from zero to five hundred, from five hundred to one thousand, from one thousand to one thousand five hundred, and finally stopping at five thousand one hundred and thirty-six.

Current experience: Lv7 (5136/6400)