For Leo, this was undoubtedly a blow. If things stayed like this, the two of them could only earn six thousand Duke Casino Tokens a day.
If that was truly the limit of their daily income, it was barely acceptable.
But achieving true "ammo freedom"? That was clearly unrealistic.
Bullets weren't cheap—no, they were downright expensive. As expensive as those guns with colorful stat numbers attached to them.
One bullet cost forty-eight tokens. A single bullet tip alone cost thirty. That wasn't robbery anymore—it was insanity. On top of that, a tactical assault rifle with three stat numbers displayed cost a full ten thousand Duke Casino Tokens!
Honestly, Leo didn't want to buy bullets here at all. He wanted to make them himself. Unfortunately, without the blueprint, they couldn't unlock the furnace—let alone a workbench.
"This is such a pain."
Now that he and Erina were together, Leo felt an even stronger urgency to obtain proper firearms. He needed weapons capable of dealing with large hordes of zombies.
But the problem was that, despite having plenty of raw materials, he had almost nothing that could actually be converted into usable combat power.
"What kind of game is this anyway? Why does it get stuck at such a critical point?!"
Leo couldn't understand it at all. Scavenging was clearly a dead end—aside from food, it yielded nothing useful. The trader had hard purchase limits. And when he wanted to build things himself, he was blocked again.
"Is the world's analysis level not high enough? I'm almost level twenty already!"
Unwilling to accept it, Leo slammed his fist on the trader's counter, then begrudgingly bought four bottles of glue, planning to at least assemble a gun first.
But just as he was leaving the trader's shop, he noticed something he'd seen before: a furnace and a table covered with boxes.
He had checked them earlier. Pressing E did nothing—no interaction prompt, no interface. He'd written them off as background props.
This time, though, he glanced at his level and decided to try again.
He refused to believe that leveling up this much had accomplished nothing.
Taking a deep breath, Leo stood in front of the furnace and pressed E.
An interface instantly appeared before his eyes.
Having played plenty of crafting-survival games, Leo immediately recognized it.
The grayed-out items were furnace components. The flame icon below was fuel. On the left side were text listings labeled brass, lead, and other materials—clearly resource quantities.
A smile spread across his face.
But the moment he looked at the nearby table, his expression exploded into pure joy.
"It works! I knew it! This world's exploration depth is tied to level! Leveling up unlocks more systems!"
Excited, Leo stuffed the brass components he'd collected into the furnace interface, lit it up, and watched as a twenty-second countdown appeared on a brass doorknob.
When the doorknob disappeared, the brass counter jumped up by fifty.
Without hesitation, Leo dumped in a stack of clay. He remembered clearly—both brass casings and lead tips required clay.
One brass and one clay for casings. Two lead and one clay for bullet tips.
He also quickly added the two stacks of lead he'd mined, letting all three materials start smelting.
Watching the progress bar crawl forward, Leo couldn't help but inhale sharply.
It was painfully slow.
But slow was still infinitely better than nothing.
Then he glanced at the Duke Casino Tokens in his inventory and tested something—
They could be smelted into brass.
That meant if they didn't buy anything else, they could produce a thousand bullets in a single day.
Leo exhaled deeply. For the first time in a while, his constantly strained nerves finally relaxed.
"What is it, Leo? Did you discover something again? You look really happy."
Erina walked out of the trader's shop, having picked out ingredients she liked, and looked curiously at Leo and the blazing furnace.
When they'd scavenged this place before, they hadn't found anything useful. These two objects hadn't responded at all, so they'd ignored them.
By now, Leo had already crafted a crude pipe machine gun in his inventory and immediately equipped it.
In the next instant, a weapon appeared in his hands—a battered, ugly machine gun with a bolt replaced by a screwdriver.
From the outside, it was pure junk.
There was no way to connect this monstrosity with wood, glue, and scrap iron—especially without machine tools. It looked like something straight out of an orc workshop.
And yet, this world simply didn't care about logic.
Even more ridiculous—
The moment he equipped it, a crosshair appeared in his vision.
As he moved it, his body instinctively followed. When he imagined right-clicking, the crosshair tightened, the target zoomed in, and suddenly it felt like he needed zero training to become a limited-time, hundred-percent-accuracy sharpshooter.
Overwhelmed, Leo rushed forward and hugged Erina—who was still staring in disbelief at the suddenly materialized junk gun.
He buried his face into her chest, rubbed hard against her ample softness, inhaled her scent, then spun her around in a circle.
"We're safe now!"
Relief filled his smile. For the first time, he truly felt secure.
"W-What are you doing?!"
Feeling his hot breath against her chest, Erina's face turned bright red. She flailed and bonked him on the head, looking extremely shy.
"We don't need to search anymore! There's a workbench and a furnace right here! We can make everything we need! And as long as we keep leveling up, we'll unlock even more of this world's secrets!"
Many systems were still locked, but Leo was convinced—if they kept progressing, they could live happily in this world.
"What?!"
Erina was stunned. She broke free from his arms and rushed to the furnace, checking it carefully. When she confirmed it was real, she cheered and hugged Leo again.
Weapons were humanity's greatest source of security.
Seeing guns—and realizing they could make their own bullets—filled both of them with joy.
"We can make weapons now!"
They circled the furnace like idiots, watching the countdown timers as brass doorknobs and Duke Casino Tokens melted away. They even dumped in all six thousand tokens they'd earned that day, keeping only one thousand from before as emergency funds.
While waiting, they combined the coal and nitrate powder they'd mined, producing gunpowder.
They had plenty of gunpowder and lead.
Only brass was lacking.
In the end, they could only make one thousand brass casings.
Then, once again like fools, they stared at the workbench as those casings and bullet tips turned into bullets.
Watching bullet after bullet roll out, their smiles refused to fade.
After testing the machine gun—confirming that, just like in a game, thought translated directly into movement, aiming, and firing—Erina officially announced the good news.
They smelted more scrap iron, forged short iron pipes to repair the two junk machine guns, and finally returned to the RV.
That night, Leo finally experienced Erina's true cooking.
But neither of them could finish that strange meat.
They crawled into bed instead.
Thankfully, they'd extinguished the fire beforehand, avoiding disaster, and spent a sweet, peaceful night.
But just as Leo stretched lazily, filled with hope for the future and ready to start his day—
He saw darkness.
"It's not morning yet?"
Casually kneading Erina's chest as she slept, he even teasingly pinched the slightly swollen little bud before settling back down.
They'd gone at it hard the night before—many times. His waist ached, his legs felt weak.
But just as he was about to lie back—
He saw something that nearly made him scream.
Zombies.
Endless zombies.
They covered the hills, shuffling forward toward their vehicle. Only then did Leo understand the dark sky.
It wasn't night.
It was sand.
Countless clouds of yellow sand filled the air, blotting out the sun. Beneath that storm, zombies advanced as far as the eye could see—no front, no end.
Covering his mouth, Leo cautiously looked toward the front of the RV.
The same sight.
Zombies. Endless. Marching.
It was absolute despair.
He couldn't see where the horde began.
He couldn't see where it ended.
And he had no idea why it was happening.
There was only one thing he knew for certain.
If they were discovered—
They would die.
But something else was even stranger.
Leo looked up.
The moon hung high in the sky, unnaturally bright.
Even though the sun was completely obscured by sand, the moonlight still shone—
And it was eerie.