Chapter 49

The mechanical voice made the usual announcement: "You have advanced! Please report to the fifth round at 8 am tomorrow."
Immediately, the player logged out. The game pod hissed open.
As always, Su Han immediately went to check the forum, only to find all hell had broken loose.
Pinned Post 1: "8.95 million players entered round four, only 2.51 million survived and advanced! That's a 72% elimination rate!! Who can even play this trash game now??"
Pinned Post 2: "Only 82 players finished all 15 days in round four. These must be hacks or some kind of inside deal, right?! Clearing the deserted island instance? Gimme a break, I'm calling foul!!"
Pinned Post 3: "What unforgettable moments did you have in round four? Share your story! Top 20 most-liked posts get cash prizes."
New threads were popping up every second, rolling the feed like waves.
Su Han clicked straight into Post 3.
5th floor: "Before I entered, I made the world’s most meticulous shopping list, so organized, nothing left out! But once the game started, my mind was totally blank… I just stood there, racking my brains for what I’d written, while things kept selling out in the store. In the end? Might as well not have bothered with the list! I’m furious!"
6th floor: "A big shot asked me, 'Don’t you want to live?' I stayed quiet, but in my head it was: ‘Even a loser has dreams! When a tiger falls, even a dog dares bite, but if the big shot’s wounded, I could totally kill him.’ And then, next second, he and his friend wiped me off the map... Isn’t living great? Isn’t it? I got eliminated and just ugly-cried, buckets of tears."
7th floor: "I’ve realized the real difficulty of the game depends on which players you get matched with. If there’s a big shot on your team, way easier. If you’re saddled with useless teammates, it’s literal hell mode. If everyone’s decent and cooperative, survival’s possible. But if it’s a room full of pvp maniacs, you spend all your time fighting each other, not gathering food. Guess who got matched with the pvp squad? Everyday was chaos."
……
22L: "When I entered the game, I actually brought a boat, planning to make a living fishing out at sea. And wouldn't you know it, I ran into another player with a fishing net. Instantly hit it off and started teaming up. We split the catch evenly every day, five to nine fish each, not a bad setup for self-sufficiency. But then my first partner turned out to be a nonstop chatterbox, and someone else wanted to work with me, so, what was I thinking, I agreed. Next thing I know, I'm out fishing with the new partner. The two of us got greedy, caught way too many fish, and a storm hit. The boat flipped so fast we didn't even have time to swear, and it had drifted so far we couldn't swim back. Both of us drowned... ahhhhh, why did I have to switch partners?!"
23L: "The fourth instance is just brutal, normal people really can't cut it. I scraped together all my skills and managed to hunt some prey. But I could NOT find drinkable water. What was I supposed to do? You drink seawater, you get debuffed in no time, and without any medicine that's a death sentence. In the end, I had to tap out and get knocked out."
24L: "I didn't even survive three days, but honestly, this really does feel like a hardcore survival game. You get a few tools, everything else is all on you. ...Anyway, this reply isn't super relevant to the topic, so just ignore me, y'all."
……
57L: "No salt, no fridge, no portable inventory, I just had to watch my leftover meat slowly rot away day after day. Ugh, my heart aches, like I just lost a billion bucks."
58L: "The big shots clear the game, the noobs barely last ten days, what can I even say? All I can do is bow down."
59L: "So what if you're a big shot? You think top players don't have headaches? Please. The big shot I know spent every day stressing, caught too much, how to store it, how to trade it. If you think it's easy, you're delusional!"
60L: "Pffft, 59L is totally right, can't argue with that. So what if you're a big shot? Big shots can’t just magic food and supplies out of thin air."
……
103L: "Is it just me, or do some of the comments above seem familiar... Almost like we're from the same server? Or is it just that all noobs act the same everywhere and that's why it's such a big coincidence?"
104L: "I used to think getting eliminated just meant you sucked. But when it happened to me, I realized that's not always true. Sometimes it's stuff you KNOW, but when you're in the thick of it, you just blank, like a case of amnesia. And with that split-second brain freeze, your stamina hits zero. It's a nightmare."
105L: "Honestly, if you're well-read and watch a lot of survival shows, the fourth instance isn't even that hard. Hang on, I'll put together some notes and post them here, once you see them, you'll get it."
The thread immediately exploded.
106L: "Not hard?? Excuse me? 105, do you even know what 'not hard' means?"
107L: "105's just here to crack me up."
108L: "I'm betting he's about to flex like crazy. But even if he's some clearance-level big shot, that's no excuse to act like everyone's standards are the same."
109L: "Now I'm curious what tips he's got. Waiting quietly, I dare him to prove us wrong!"
……
But the note-writing hero vanished without a trace, leaving the onlookers feeling totally trolled.
Finally, at 300L, he reappeared: "To make the game easier, the system secretly hid a bunch of resources in the woods, the only question is whether players notice. Actually, some of these plants could never grow together in the real world, but anyway, here's everything I found. Please, no interruptions."
"Drinkable Water, "
1. Cactus: Chop it open, peel away the waxy skin, eat the juicy part inside like fruit, and it'll hydrate you.
2. Sugar Maple: Carve a hole in a maple tree and this white sap will leak out, it tastes like sugar water and it's completely safe to drink.
3. Coconuts: Crack one open, and you've got coconut water ready to drink.
As long as you can find and recognize any of those, you'll never need to worry about water again."
"Food, "
1. Breadfruit Tree: It's an evergreen tree with brown or black fruit packed with starch. Roast it, and it gets all soft and delicious, basically, edible bread. Perfect staple food.
2. Linden Tree: The leaves are an excellent wild green, edible in all four seasons.
3. Kudzu Vine: Most people assume it's only useful for making rope, but it actually has these giant starchy roots. If you can dig them up, you've got food for days.
Find any one of those, and you'll never starve."
The spectators were floored.
310L: "I'd love to call BS, but the dude posted pics, and I've actually seen those plants on the island. Ten different expressions of confusion."
311L: "There was food everywhere, and I still starved. Cue big dramatic sobs, I swear I'm just a total idiot."
312L: "Crying my way out of this thread. Gonna go pop some smart pills and try to save a few IQ points."
313L: "Now that I think about it, maybe the game really wasn't that hard. I was just blind to what was right in front of me..."
314L: "There was food and water all over the forest, so why the hell did I keep running around like a dog? I have to reevaluate my life."
315L: "Thanks for the crash course! At least now I know I died for a reason. Seriously, can't blame anyone but myself, just plain stupidity."
316L: "Am I the only one wondering if 300L is actually some endgame boss?"
317L: "Curiosity +1."
318L: "Are these plants really in the game? I'm terrified of getting lost so never dared go explore for real. Looking back, I kind of want to slap myself."
It wasn't until 400L that the info-dumping guy responded again, "I'm not some big shot, just super into wild plants, so the minute I got in, I combed the whole forest. I'm a programmer, zero survival skills, bitten by a venomous snake and died on Day 4."
401L: "......"
After finishing the thread, Su Han sat in thoughtful silence. She couldn't identify breadfruit trees or lindens, and though she knew what cacti, coconuts, and kudzu looked like, she hadn't found them anywhere in the woods.
Then again, she'd avoided going deep into the forest to keep from getting lost, so it wasn't all that surprising she missed them.
Afterward, Su Han went through her compiled notes several more times, silently memorizing the difficult concepts until she was sure she had them down cold. Who knew if she’d run into the same resource spot again in the future? There’s no such thing as knowing too much.
Leaving the pinned post behind, Su Han started scrolling through every player thread from the top. Complaints, rants, wild speculation, she glanced at it all. After all, sometimes a real genius lurks in the comments, and you never know which random post might hide a crucial piece of information.
But, as expected, most were just useless spam, like: “Strongly protesting the freezing of personal inventory! I hustled hard to get mine, why can’t I use it?”
Someone replied with a smirk, “The devs hustled just as hard to freeze it, though.”
“Every player gets to pick five items at the start. That’s about as fair as it gets.”
“If you’re so capable, just buy the whole game. Then you can do whatever you want. Can’t afford it? Then play by the rules or don’t play at all.”
Great for witty banter, but otherwise? Totally pointless.
Still, it wasn’t a complete waste, Su Han did get something out of it. Somebody had made a long, detailed list of common apocalypse scenarios: zombie sieges, prison (maze) escapes, faction wars, nuclear fallout, mutant animals and plants, and so on.
Su Han glanced over it, her expression unreadable. On the surface, the list was thorough, almost textbook. But if experience had taught her anything, it was that the devs were allergic to “textbook”, every new instance background was wilder than the last.
Still, just in case, she bookmarked the page. Sometimes a shot in the dark actually hits.
There was also a resource thread listing disaster, apocalypse, and survival movies, suggesting that binging a few might actually help in-game.
Skimming it, Su Han had to admit the OP was a real pro, what a massive range! She herself had made a point of tracking down every apocalypse film she could find, watching each at least three times, but somehow she'd still missed a few! With the list in hand, she immediately switched tabs and started streaming.
Her dedication to “research” (aka movie marathoning) burned strong until ten at night, when she finally, reluctantly, turned off the lights and called it a night.
The next morning, she woke up right on time and climbed straight into her VR capsule.
At exactly 8:00 a.m., contestants logged in for the fifth round of the tournament.