What made Li Ke despair even more was that neither of these two women gave a single damn about building a proper bedroom or beds. One was completely dead inside, while the other had just stepped fresh off a bloody battlefield.
Expecting people like them to worry about comfortable bedding was an absolute luxury. Left with no other choice, Li Ke miserably wrapped his tattered blanket over his head, covering his ears tightly as he desperately tried to force himself to sleep.
Unsurprisingly, sleep eluded him completely.
Beams of silver moonlight poured through the window opening they had purposely left unblocked. It clearly illuminated the pale, porcelain skin of the female ninja, Tsunade. Her complexion was fairer than the moonlight itself. Those voluptuous, striking curves and her smooth skin practically demanded Li Ke's undivided attention, no matter how hard he tried to look away.
However...
"There's no trader around right now to help me relieve this stress," Li Ke muttered, burying his face into his soft blanket, weeping tears of sheer misery. He was genuinely terrified that if he kept staring, his mind would snap, driving him to launch a sudden, depraved assault on Tsunade—only to be instantly obliterated by a single punch from her.
So, naturally, he spent another night plagued by insomnia.
The reason behind his sleeplessness wasn't exactly hard to guess. When Kiri woke up the next morning and saw Li Ke's utterly wretched, embarrassed expression, she burst into a loud, mocking laugh. Feeling thoroughly humiliated, Li Ke fled the campsite in a panic. Without even eating breakfast, he bolted straight to the trader woman's compound just to inspect his newly crafted Steel Frames.
Fortunately, the Steel Frames gave him a massive, pleasant surprise. If he deployed them through the game system normally, they were just standard voxels with 10,000 block health. However, the moment he chose to materialize them into reality, they turned into solid, one-cubic-meter blocks of pure steel.
Furthermore, before materializing a frame, he could actually select different block shapes within the system interface. After experimenting with it, he discovered a custom-shaped, solid steel casting suddenly sitting right in front of him!
This instantly opened up a world of endless construction possibilities in his mind.
"I can use the system's Steel Frames as the foundational core, and then use these custom steel castings to form an actual, physical steel armor wall on the outside."
Li Ke watched with growing excitement as the steel blocks shifted into various shapes according to his mental commands. The only disappointment was the lack of armor plate shapes with pre-drilled screw holes. Otherwise, he would have absolutely bolted two or three extra layers of heavy steel plating over the skeletal system blocks.
After all, objects functioning under the game system rules didn't share the same structural traits as real-world matter. While gamification offered incredible convenience, it also meant that a block's HP was bound to drain much faster under a concentrated assault compared to non-system, real-world materials.
Therefore, the most practical approach was to use the system frames internally as a load-bearing skeleton and layer physical, non-system castings on the exterior.
"Let's see what other shapes I can play with..."
Li Ke quickly scrolled through the alternate block shapes, searching for components that could slot perfectly around the Steel Frames to serve as an outer defensive layer. He managed to find quite a few viable options.
One particular casting caught his eye: its lower half was a solid cylinder, while its upper half transitioned into a flat steel plate. These castings could perfectly sleeve into another modified shape generated by a different steel block. Unfortunately, there was no built-in anchor point to tie down ropes or support cables, meaning it couldn't be his ultimate choice.
As a result, Li Ke had to keep digging through the shape menu until he finally settled on a blueprint.
From the frame shape options, he selected a solid cylindrical modification and placed it into his layout for the ultimate defensive wall. Next, he modified another Steel Frame into a hollow cylinder shape, planning to materialize it and slide it directly over the inner solid pillar.
If his plan worked out perfectly, when the zombies launched their assault, they would be clawing and bashing against a physical, real-world steel column rather than draining the hit points of the underlying system frame.
"This should definitely work..."
Li Ke licked his lips. Isolating the hollow steel cylinder model in his mind, he triggered its real-world materialization.
In an instant, a massive steel column measuring one meter tall and one meter in diameter materialized out of thin air right before his eyes. Although it just looked like a simple cylinder welded from two heavy curved plates, the steel walls were a staggering ten centimeters thick!
That dense, uncompromising thickness brought with it an overwhelming sense of absolute security. Li Ke slapped the heavy steel pillar in front of him, his smile gradually warping into a twisted, ecstatic grin.
"I refuse to believe these damn zombies can dig through this piece of armor with their bare hands..."
The memory of his RV being torn open like a tin can during his first days was still vividly burned into his mind. He truly never wanted to experience that raw terror ever again. However, just as he was basking in his genius, he suddenly ran face-first into an incredibly awkward problem. That was...
"Holy crap, this thing is heavy..."
Li Ke exerted every single ounce of his newly maxed-out physical strength, yet the massive chunk of metal didn't budge a single millimeter.
Staring blankly at the massive steel cylinder sitting by his feet, Li Ke was completely dumbfounded. He quietly began to run the rough math to estimate its weight.
Since its diameter and height were both one meter, and the wall thickness was exactly ten centimeters, the geometry was simple enough to calculate quickly. In a matter of seconds, he successfully deduced the staggering weight of the object.
"Son of a bitch, it's two and a half tons. If I remember correctly, even the strongest human strongmen back on Earth could only lift around two to three hundred kilograms..."
Staring at the massive block sitting by his feet, Li Ke felt completely lost.
This was an incredibly awkward situation to be in. He had discovered the perfect material to protect himself and had come up with a flawless blueprint to execute it. Yet, because of that exact breakthrough, the plan had come to an absolute grinding halt.
While he was standing there worrying, Tsunade and Kiri walked over, both carrying picks over their shoulders. Spotting the look of sheer helplessness plastered across Li Ke's face, Tsunade walked up to him with an inquisitive look.
"What's wrong?"
She curiously inspected the steel column Li Ke was attempting to assemble near the wall. After all, the building materials they had discussed earlier weren't massive blocks like this; they were just small, hollow steel frames.
"Uh, Tsunade, you couldn't have timed this any better. I need a bit of help here. We have to find a way to lift this hollow casing and slide it perfectly over that system pillar so I can test out whether my theory actually holds water..."
Before Li Ke could even finish his sentence, Tsunade rolled her eyes. She reached down, grabbed a firm hold of the massive steel pillar—which Li Ke could barely even budge—and effortlessly hoisted it into the air. With a smooth, casual motion, she slid it right over the system cylinder.
The entire sequence went down like clockwork. It looked as though she wasn't lifting a multi-ton chunk of heavy metal, but rather a hollow piece of lightweight plastic.
Watching her lack of any visible exertion, Li Ke couldn't help but swallow hard. His eyes involuntarily drifted down to Tsunade's pale, delicate-looking hands and her slender, muscle-free arms that seemed incredibly soft to the touch.
"..."
Thank God I have some restraint!
Li Ke felt immensely grateful for his own sanity. He was also profoundly thankful for the trader woman's existence, which allowed him to vent his overly explosive physical energy. Otherwise, if his rampant desires had driven him to try using her hemophobia to overpower Tsunade, things would have ended horribly. She wouldn't even need to try hard; a single casual punch from her would have blasted a gaping hole right through his torso.
"Is that good enough? But if you do it this way, will the underlying system block inside still take damage?"
Tsunade rapped her knuckles against the steel plating she had just put in place, immediately grasping the core concept of Li Ke's design.
"That's exactly what I need to verify. We need to run an impact test to see how it handles damage."
Li Ke nodded. If sliding an external casing over the system frame still allowed an attack's kinetic force to bypass the shell and drain the inner frame's durability, then their fundamental problem would remain completely unsolved.
"In that case, let me handle it."
Before Li Ke could even process her words, Tsunade raised her fist and slammed it directly into the heavy metal block.
In a fraction of a second, a violent shockwave accompanied by a deafening, metallic screech erupted from the point of impact. The unanchored hollow steel sleeve instantly shifted positions under the raw force of the blow.
When Tsunade pulled her hand back, Li Ke could clearly see a deep, perfectly formed fist print embedded into the heavy iron plating—a material that should have been physically impossible for human flesh and bone to deform.
"I didn't use much of my strength, but that strike should easily pack way more force than any zombie can muster. If it can hold together through that, you shouldn't have much to worry about."
As Tsunade spoke, she casually slid the hollow casing back off the system cylinder.
A split second later, she raised an eyebrow at the interface menu. The frame block's durability rating was still sitting at a pristine, absolute maximum value.
"It looks like the fundamental rules governing this world are pretty amusing."
Li Ke let out a massive sigh of relief. If the system worked this way, then his path forward was completely clear. As long as he constructed a double-layered armored curtain wall following this exact logic, they would be completely safe.
With that in mind, Li Ke was about to hand over all the steel blocks to Tsunade so she could handle the construction of this iron fortress. However, a split second later, he watched as Tsunade slid the hollow steel casing back over the system pillar and raised her fist once again.
Li Ke froze for a second. Sensing what was coming, he and Kiri immediately clamped their hands over their ears and scrambled away from the direct line of fire. The very next instant, Tsunade threw another punch, but this time, her posture was visibly much more serious.
The deafening, ear-piercing metal screech erupted once more. But in the next fraction of a second, Li Ke saw it with absolute, horrifying clarity: the heavy steel column he had placed all his high hopes on didn't just go flying—it blasted straight into the massive pit below, its original shape completely warped beyond recognition. Right at the point of impact, Tsunade's fist had blown a gaping hole clean through it.
Li Ke's neck twisted with a stiff, robotic jerk as he turned his gaze back toward Tsunade, who was casually rolling out her shoulder.
Holy crap, lady, is your casual punch worth ten thousand durability points?!
"Yeah, I put a little bit of back into that one. It takes a full breakthrough punch to completely deal with it," Tsunade remarked indifferently as she loosened her shoulder. The simple movement caused her lovely, massive breasts to bounce wildly up and down.
Despite it being a completely mundane motion, given the sheer destruction she had just caused, she radiated an incredibly overwhelming, dominant aura right now.
"My god... are you actually human? Are you absolutely sure your body hasn't undergone cybernetic modification or something...?"
Kiri stared at Tsunade, her jaw practically on the floor. In her experience, the strongest people she had ever crossed paths with were heavy brutes who swung massive concrete sewer pipes around to crush skulls. Anything stronger than that required intense physical modification or heavy-duty mechanized exoskeletons.
Yet, even among military-grade mechanical skeletons, she had never heard of a model capable of punching clean through solid, ten-centimeter-thick steel plating with raw physical impact—though, to be fair, she couldn't rule out that she simply hadn't seen much of the world.
After all, she was just a wandering Gunner from the cutthroat Lawless District.
"This is the power of Chakra. Though, to be fair, there aren't many ninjas who can execute it to this exact degree," Tsunade replied with a shrug.
She turned around, preparing to head back to her mining grind, but Li Ke resolutely planted himself right in front of her again. With an expression of ultimate, deep-seated sincerity, he pulled every single Steel Frame out of his inventory and extended his hands, offering them directly to her.
"Please, I beg of you, take on a side hustle as our head construction worker!"
Without a single shadow of a doubt, the perfect person to serve as their fortress builder was Lady Tsunade!
"Hey, hey... stop dumping these bizarre, random chores on me all the time... Ugh, whatever. Looking at the situation, it's not like anyone else here can actually manage it anyway. Besides, my only real utility around here seems to be my physical strength."
Tsunade's eyelid twitched as she snatched the heavy supply bag from Li Ke, transferring all the Steel Frames into her own inventory. However, just to cover her bases, she made sure to give him a blunt heads-up first.
"I'm just going to build it based on what makes sense to me. Don't go expecting some beautiful piece of high architecture."
"Of course, that's completely fine!" Li Ke blurted out, having absolutely zero complaints.
"Then leave it to me. Kiri, you come and help out too. Oh, right, since you're begging me for a favor, you better scrounge up some booze, playing cards, mahjong tiles, or dice for me later. Doing nothing but manual labor every single day is getting pretty damn boring."
Tsunade seized the opportunity to throw in a few minor demands. Li Ke didn't have the slightest intention of objecting to these tiny requests and agreed instantly.
"Of course, no problem!"
"Can you change your vocabulary for once?"
"Absolutely, no problem!"
"..."
Staring at the inexplicably hyper-excited Li Ke, Tsunade couldn't help but press a hand against her forehead. She strongly felt that this kid was letting his excitement spiral completely out of control.
And in reality, he absolutely was.
Li Ke was currently riding an immense high. The moment he realized Tsunade could single-handedly erect a mathematically perfect, ultimate stronghold to tank the zombie onslaught, "excited" didn't even begin to cover it—he was completely ecstatic.
This breakthrough meant he could finally sleep soundly at night without having his mind plagued by the terrifying threat of the oncoming Blood Moon horde night!
Even though he had taken on Tsunade's side quest to find entertainment supplies, Li Ke still stuck around to watch her test her placements with a few basic wooden frames first before upgrading the blueprint to the high-tier Steel Frames. Watching her efficient workflow, he couldn't help but marvel internally at just how incredibly reliable Tsunade truly was when she got down to business.
Kiri shared the exact same sentiment. Under the coordinated efforts of these two powerhouse women, a highly dependable, heavily armored defensive bastion was rapidly materializing out of the wasteland dirt.
Li Ke only stuck around to watch about half of the initial construction before heading out to clear his quests. It took him less than an hour to burn through all four of them.
As usual, the actual loot from scavenging was pretty miserable. His absolute best find was a measly twenty rounds of ammunition, leaving Li Ke completely speechless and at a loss for words.
The quest completion rewards from the trader, however, were actually quite decent. He scored twenty Molotov Cocktails, a revolver—which happened to be a perfect weapon for Kiri to use—and a handful of medical supplies, all of which were highly valuable assets.
This time around, Li Ke dumped all four of his newly acquired skill points directly into his Strength attribute, causing his Strength level to instantly skyrocket to Level 5!
The moment his Strength hit Level 5, Li Ke felt that performing his daily routines required only a mere fifth of the effort to achieve the exact same results as before! And when he exerted his absolute, hundred percent maximum effort, he could unleash five times his original physical output!
Level 5 Strength!
Five times the power!
Five times the raw might!
Five times the ultimate domination!
In a single, brief moment, Li Ke had transformed from a total weakling into a man possessing five times the explosive strength!
One had to understand that this wasn't a basic, linear stat increase where each level added a small, flat number. The system had literally amplified his own baseline physical power by a staggering five hundred percent!
In an instant, Li Ke's self-confidence exploded through the roof. He walked over to the Workbench that was constantly pumping out building blocks, pulled a Steel Frame into his personal inventory, and materialized another one of those massive hollow steel pillars that he had been completely unable to lift just moments prior. Sporting a thoroughly warped, smug grin, he spawned the solid metal onto the dirt, letting the heavy cylinder crash to the ground.
Then, with an expression oozing absolute confidence, he rolled up his sleeves, gripped both ends of the massive iron casting, and—
He lifted it.
But he didn't fully lift it.
"..."
Staring down at the heavy steel cylinder—which had barely left the ground before forcing him to frantically drop it to avoid throwing out his back, nowhere near the effortless display Tsunade had shown—Li Ke fell into a stunned, awkward silence.
Tsunade, who happened to be walking past to grab another batch of Steel Frames, couldn't help but crack a smile at the ridiculous sight.
"I assume you used those skill points of yours to get a massive boost to your physical power, right?" Tsunade remarked, delivering a beautifully precise verbal jab. "But if your original baseline strength was completely pathetic to begin with, it doesn't really matter how massive of a multiplier you slap on top of it, does it?"
Her savage reality check left Li Ke completely speechless. He silently let go of the hollow steel column and dejectedly slunk away like a soulless prisoner walking to the gallows, prompting a loud round of mocking laughter from both Kiri and Tsunade behind his back.
She was completely right. Those professional real-world strongmen had to endure relentless physical conditioning, strict nutritional diets, and brutal training regimes just to hoist two or three hundred kilograms into the air. He, Li Ke, was a literal desk-jockey who sat in an office chair all day. By what right did he think a simple multiplier would suddenly let him stand on equal footing with them?
However, as the trio continued their construction work later into the afternoon, they ran face-first into a catastrophic structural accident.
It happened right when Tsunade had stacked the steel framing up to a height of fifteen meters and was preparing to build a horizontal bend. The very instant she snapped a new system Steel Frame into place, the entire structural grid she had painstakingly erected suddenly suffered a total, cataclysmic collapse!
Caught completely off guard, Tsunade, along with the massive system cylinders they had carefully aligned across the invincible curtain wall, plummeted straight down toward the depths below!
Li Ke instinctively tried to lung forward to save her, but there was absolutely no need for him to play the hero. With lightning-fast reflexes, Tsunade whipped out a kunai attached to a ninja wire, anchoring it firmly into a solid pillar of un-mined dirt. Using the momentum, she threw a devastating punch to shatter any falling steel blocks blocking her path and swung himself gracefully onto a wooden staircase on the opposite side, completely escaping the danger zone.
Unfortunately, a massive pile of the materialized, physical steel columns rolled straight down into the hollowed-out mine pit. Even the columns Tsunade had spawned nearby for easy access were dragged down by the sudden avalanche of metal, plunging into the dark abyss.
As for the system-based Steel Frames, the moment the structural collapse triggered, they instantly dematerialized in mid-air, snapping back into basic I-beam crafting components.
Staring down at the absolute structural wreckage plastering the floor below, the facial expressions of all three individuals turned incredibly grim. The drop from their current platform to the bottom of the mine pit was roughly thirty meters deep.
"Damn it... I didn't think the system had a mechanic like this," Li Ke cursed under his breath, glaring down at the ruined steel. He had explicitly warned Tsunade beforehand that the system blocks possessed strict structural integrity limits, but he had never imagined that a simple, single-block horizontal shift would trigger an immediate structural collapse, rendering all their hard work completely useless.
"Don't sweat it. After we grab some food, I'll just head down there and haul the physical pieces back up. A minor setback like this will take me an hour at most to clean up. It's just a shame about those automated system frames..." Tsunade shrugged as she calmly walked back up the stairs. She still felt a small, lingering phantom throb in her chest; if she hadn't kept that reel of ninja wire and her kunai on her person just to be safe, she really would have taken a nasty spill.
Though...
Even if she did plummet thirty meters down, a fall like that wouldn't actually be enough to kill her anyway.
Li Ke: "..."
Yeah... I really don't get you ninjas at all.