Chapter 4: Reboot  

The place was a nightmarish scene, filled with the twisted, rotting corpses of those who had met their end there.

The bodies were piled on top of each other, twisted and contorted in grotesque positions, their skin stretched tight over their bones.

The air was thick with the stench of decay, and flies and other insects buzzed around the bodies, feasting on the putrid flesh.

The place had clearly been abandoned for a long time, and the bodies had been left to rot where they fell. The bones were bleached and dry, and the bodies were nothing more than desiccated husks.

The scene was one of utter devastation, and it was clear that something terrible had occurred there. The place was a graveyard of the dead, a testament to the horrors that had been unleashed upon it.

And from the numerous piles of corpses, one particular body was glowing a bit on its right temple.

[Integrated Chip had fully assimilated with the Host]

[Rebooting the Host's body function…]

Ding!

[Failure to reboot the Host's body because of the toxin]

[Finding an alternative solution: extracting the toxin manually]

Beep!

Beep!

Beep!

[Toxin successfully extracted. Rebooting the Host's body function again]

As numerous sounds echoed throughout the area, the body slowly started to wiggle a bit. The seemingly decayed body started to regain its flesh but had its right arm gone.

His eyes slowly started to open up and the supposedly deceased body was none other than Shi Tian.

"Ugh, what is this pain?" Shi Tian muffled his mouth as he struggled to get up.

He tried to use his right hand to exert some strength, but a horrified expression appeared on his face when he realized his right arm was gone.

"Where is my right arm?" He was shocked for a moment and his heart began throbbing.

However, his emotion subsequently calmed down magically after a few seconds of panic. And before Shi Tian could understand what was going on, he saw a transparent screen that shone through the lights from his right temple.

It was a hologram interface that showed his current status.

—

Name: Shi Tian

Race: Human

Main Class: N/A (Not Available)

Sub Class: N/A

Level: 1

Health: 20 (Injured)

Stamina: 25

Attributes: Strength: 1, Dexterity: 2, Endurance: 2, Agility: 2, Intelligence: 3, Charm: 2, Luck: 1

Free Attribute Point: 0

Abilities:

-[Passive] Serene Calmness: Able to remain calm and collected

Power Level: 1-2 Atk

Grade: F (Beyond Trash)

Class Talents: None

Reputation: 0

Equipment: None

[Currently, a complete trash can with his right arm amputated. Even a 5 year old kid from the street can thrash you numerous times!]

—

Shi Tian twitched his mouth at the evaluation of his status. Though he still didn't know how he could see such a hologram.

One thing was for sure and it was the fact that his right arm was gone. Hence, the grade of him being an F could not be any more blunt and straightforward.

Without an arm, his dominant one as well, it was true that even a kid can thrash him. His body was filled with dirt and there was a rotten stench to it as well. In addition, there was that laboratory kind of smell that caused him to remember what happened.

It was the part where he was being injected with something in a laboratory and fainted.

Using his left hand instead to lift himself up, Shi Tian thought he would puke at the sight of numerous decayed corpses. However, he was surprisingly calm, almost as if this was normal scenery.

Even when he saw some flies eating the rotten flesh out of a corpse did not make him puke.

'Is this the ability, Serene Calmness effect?' Shi Tian thought to himself.

At first, he thought he was just imagining things with the hologram and things, but given how calm he was despite the situation. He was starting to believe the status screen to be true.

Walking around barefoot, Shi Tian struggled as his body was malnourished.

Sometime later, Shi Tian finally saw the exit of this graveyard-like place.

But what he saw after exiting the graveyard left him speechless.

It was a vast wasteland in front of him and there were no buildings around.

He glanced in the air and noticed a lot of pollution gas surrounding the environment, but magically, it didn't affect his body at all.

The pollution gas doesn't seem to cause his breathing to become difficult, almost as if he was immune to the pollution.

'I need to heal my injuries and find Xiao Lan as soon as possible.' Shi Tian exclaimed inwardly.

He didn't know how much time had passed since the separation from Sheng Lan, but he was determined to get revenge.

First, it was the laboratory people that treated him as a lab rat, and the second would be the mercenary group that captured them.

He swore to make them pay dearly for their sins no matter the cost and sacrifices.

However, the current task was to find a solution for his amputated right arm and figure out where he was at the moment.

Normally, it would have been impossible to recover from an amputated right arm, but medical technologies had advanced since the year 2100.

Thus, Shi Tian wasn't overly worried about his missing right arm compared to other people in the past.

"Just what had happened to the world during my time in the laboratory." Shi Tian muttered.

From the beautiful world that he remembered in his memories, everything else seemed to have changed. It was practically unrecognizable given that he was still walking through wastelands.

And occasionally, he would see cars that had turned extremely rusty, exactly like those apocalypse scenes that he had watched in the past.

After walking for a few hours to no avail, Shi Tian finally found a rundown store as he hastened his movement.

The store was deserted and didn't seem to show any sign of life.

As Shi Tian entered the store, the shelves were almost all empty with some of the items spoiled.

However, his body froze when he saw a dirtied newspaper on the floor.

"I-Is this a joke?" Shi Tian's mouth trembled nervously when he read the year of the newspaper, 2189.