The torrential beam of raw energy instantly vaporized the mutated birds tailing them, blasting them into nothingness. The sudden breathing room allowed Rias to slow her pace slightly, letting her recover a fraction of her mana.
Unfortunately, her relief was short-lived; even more infected birds were already forming a new swarm, closing in fast.
Meanwhile, back at the camp...
Li Ke was busy checking the loot bags on the ground.
Yes, the very same loot drops left behind by the zombies they had slaughtered earlier.
Because of the massive pile of corpses, he hadn't bothered coming down to harvest them in the morning. Once he finished his daily tasks, he had spent the rest of his time occupied with Tsunade.
It wasn't until nightfall, right as he was getting ready to call it a day, that he finally remembered the loot bags.
However, the moment he tore them open, Li Ke froze in shock.
"Bandages! A medkit?! And a hundred rounds of ammunition?!"
Piled before him were stacks of high-tier medical supplies and actual bullets!
To get such a massive haul right out of the gate...
Did my terrible luck finally run out?
Yet, just as he was reeling from his sudden stroke of fortune, Kiri, who had wandered over out of curiosity, let out a sharp cry of disbelief.
"A cement mixer?! Why on earth would a zombie be carrying a whole cement mixer on them?! Doesn't that mean I repaired our old one for nothing?! And why is there a bicycle in here?! Over six hundred pieces of forged steel, too—can these zombies even carry that much weight?!"
As she grumbled, she casually pulled a functional cement mixer and a bicycle out of the seemingly small loot sack. Swearing under her breath, she tossed the empty bag aside and immediately ripped into another one.
"Ooh? Now this one makes a lot more sense. A tier-five M60? Oh, this is the good stuff! Li Ke, look at this beauty!"
She gleefully waved the heavy machine gun at Li Ke. Li Ke looked down at his own opened bags containing a medkit, some bandages, and a now pathetic-looking pile of a hundred bullets, completely lost for words.
Under normal circumstances, his luck would be considered decent. But Kiri was just a filthy luck-sack!
"It's fine. Luck-sacks always live short lives. Luck-sacks always live short lives..."
Li Ke could only repeat this mantra to cope with the cosmic injustice. But just as he was about to successfully comfort himself, Kiri's voice rang out again.
"Hey! Li Ke! Come over here and take a look at this. What is this supposed to be?"
Assuming Kiri was just trying to flex on him again, Li Ke braced himself and put on a fake smile. But when Kiri placed a physical book in front of him, he genuinely blinked in confusion.
The book clearly did not match the aesthetic or style of this post-apocalyptic world.
Its title read: Mind's Eye.
"Mind's Eye?"
Li Ke muttered, staring blankly at the cover. His immediate survival instinct, however, was to look up at Kiri and ask, "Are you lacking a mind or an eye? Is that why the system handed you this?"
Kiri didn't answer. She simply offered a sweet smile as she casually racked the bolt of her newly acquired tier-five M60.
"Don't assume I can't understand what you're saying just because it's in your so-called Chinese language. I get your drift completely. If you ever dare make a joke like that again, I'll execute you in the name of justice, you pervert."
As she spoke, Kiri formed a finger gun and playfully flicked Li Ke's forehead.
"Tch."
Li Ke clicked his tongue and turned his attention to the book's description. The moment he read it, he froze in absolute shock.
[Mind's Eye]
Perceive all things through the spiritual mind. When under attack, increases your evasion rate, making it harder for enemies to hit you. Allows for greater focus and concentration on your current task.
An introductory skill book for the Power of the Wave.
Upgrading this skill increases evasion rate, as well as the precision and scope of your spiritual perception.
[Press E to Use]
If it weren't for that line introducing the Power of the Wave, Li Ke would have assumed without a doubt that this was just a standard skill book native to this 7 Days to Die world.
But with the mention of the Wave, a realization hit him like a lightning bolt.
This item was a product of Kiri's home world!
In other words, Kiri had killed a generic 7 Days to Die zombie and somehow forced a loot drop from the continent of Arad!
"What in the world is going on here...?" Li Ke stared blankly at the book, completely lost in thought.
"Hmm? Have you never seen this type of book before either?" Kiri asked, noticing the deeply conflicted look on his face.
"To be completely honest? Yeah, never."
Li Ke pulled the book from his system inventory and offered it to Kiri. However, she simply waved another book she was holding in her other hand and flashed a mischievous grin.
"The zombies dropped four books in total anyway. You can just have that one!"
Li Ke blinked, then shook his head helplessly. "Suit yourself."
Staring at the Mind's Eye book in his hand, Li Ke began weighing whether or not he should actually use it. Before he could make a decision, Kiri suddenly clutched her head with a groan and collapsed right toward him.
Acting entirely on instinct, Li Ke reached out to catch her. However, his hand slipped straight through the plunging neckline of her top, sliding all the way inside her clothes.
If Li Ke hadn't instinctively grabbed hold of Kiri's perfectly handful-sized breast to steady her, she would have undoubtedly slammed face-first onto the hard ground.
Yet, Kiri was in no state to care about being groped. She gripped her head tightly, crying out in sheer agony.
"Damn it... It hurts, hurts, hurts...!"
While Li Ke stood there frozen, utterly at a loss for what to do, Kiri suddenly snapped upright and violently slapped his hand away.
"Hey, I'm talking to you! That hurts like hell!"
Kiri didn't hold back her strength at all. Li Ke felt a sting on his arm as if he had just been whipped. He quickly yanked his hand back, but the sudden movement caused Kiri to suck in another sharp breath of cold air.
"Ow, ow, ow! Couldn't you be a little more careful?!"
"Huh?"
Li Ke stared at her in utter bewilderment. Kiri brought her other hand up to her own chest, aggressively rubbing the sore skin while voicing her frustration.
"Don't you realize how rough your hands are?! You gripped me way too hard!" Kiri snapped, completely unable to hold back her complaint.
"I used that book, and all it did was make me dizzy. But you? You pinched me so hard I actually shrieked! Don't assume every woman is like Tsunade! And another thing—don't you dare touch me until the two of you are completely finished with whatever it is you do!"
She shot Li Ke a deeply annoyed look. While she didn't mind sleeping with Li Ke after he was done with Tsunade, she still drew the line at being part of some messy overlap.
Besides, Li Ke's hands were incredibly rough. She honestly had no idea how Tsunade managed to tolerate them!
"Ah, well... there's not much I can do about that. I have to do heavy labor every single day now..."
Embarrassed, Li Ke pulled his hands back. Continuous, backbreaking labor had left his palms thick with calluses. It was even worse right after a shift, so it was only natural that his touch would be abrasive enough to cause pain.
A quick wash would usually soften them up a bit.
"Yeah, yeah, I get it. It's just that I've never been squeezed like that before," Kiri said, letting the matter drop. She tapped her temple again, her lovely brows furrowing slightly before she added, "Anyway, I highly recommend you wait until bedtime before using that thing. The side effects are absolutely brutal... My head is still spinning right now."
She groaned slightly, shaking off the lingering dizziness, and began walking toward the next loot bag.
However, she still took a moment to explain her findings to Li Ke.
"That said, the knowledge inside is the real deal. It's fully functional. The moment I used it, I felt a bizarre power flow into my body. It felt like I had just survived a brutal, lifelong training arc... Though honestly, it's not of much use to me... What's really ridiculous is that when I tried to upgrade it using my own skill points, the system gave me an error. It said 'Unable to upgrade. Upgrade conditions unknown. Please explore on your own.' Look, you jinxed loser, stop looting the rest of these bags. Step aside and let me handle it."
Waving her hand to dismiss him, Kiri eagerly dug into the next bag. It was clear she was desperately hoping to pull another rare drop like that.
Li Ke glanced at Kiri, then looked down at the physical book in his hands. He took a deep breath. Completely ignoring Kiri's warning, he braced himself and pressed E to use the item.
Unlike Kiri, Li Ke knew exactly where this power came from. It was a precursor to a powerful, supernatural class from her world. Unable to contain the sheer excitement surging through his chest, he lay flat on the ground and pulled the trigger.
The moment he clicked use, an overwhelming wave of vertigo slammed into his brain. An avalanche of foreign memories violently flooded his mind.
Suddenly, he felt as though he were trapped in a perpetual nightmare, relentlessly hunted by unseen enemies hidden in pitch-black darkness. Creatures of the dark hacked and slashed at him from every angle. The only way to survive was to instinctively react the exact millisecond a sense of impending doom washed over him.
He dodged over and over again. He evaded death countless times. He lost track of how long he had been trapped in this mental void, or how many hundreds of times he had brutally failed. Ultimately...
He locked that feeling into his muscle memory. The precise sensation of perceiving the physical world strictly through his spiritual mind.
Then, his eyes snapped open.
His brain was still throbbing with heavy vertigo. Groggily lifting his head, he noticed a swarm of black dots gathering in the distant sky. Beside him, Kiri was only just beginning to unzip the next loot bag.
It was immediately obvious that while his mental perception made it feel like an eternity had passed, only a split second had ticked by in the real world.
Li Ke struggled to his feet, swaying slightly as his vision swam. Unlike Kiri, who seemed to shake off the mental strain almost instantly, his head was pounding severely. He could tell this disorientation wasn't going to clear up for at least half a day.
The stark contrast forced him to confront a harsh reality once again.
Even with the massive advantage of a system interface and skill points, the gap between an ordinary man like him and a true, born-and-bred superhuman...
Was still an absolute ocean.