The steamed bun robot leaped out, its entire bun skin glowing bright red. It seemed thoroughly enraged, constantly and frantically bouncing around on the interface so fast that only faint residual images were visible.
Distracted by its interference, Ma Xiaoli couldn’t properly look at her phone, so she was forced to lift the masking function. Sure enough, the system sarcastically hissed “Hah!” at her like a big cat whose tail had been stepped on.
Ma Xiaoli raised her eyebrows: [Speak properly, or I’ll mask you again!]
Unsure if her threat took effect, the steamed bun robot gave a Q-soft bounce and cleared its throat: [Host, do you see that orange dot? That is your current location.]
Looking closely, it really was; the map even displayed a simple line drawing of the villa.
System: [Since the system is currently only Level 1, the map displayed for the host can temporarily only cover a 1-kilometer radius from your location. As a side note, after the next system upgrade, the coverage range can be expanded to 5 kilometers from your location.]
Ma Xiaoli drew in a sharp breath: [A real-time map? Doesn’t that mean I can even see the locations of zombies?]
The system scoffed: [The host thinks too highly of herself. Your current level is far too weak to detect zombies! Level 2—once the system reaches Level 2, perhaps it’s possible.]
Hearing this, Ma Xiaoli rounded it up: upgrading meant being able to see zombie locations and avoid danger in advance!
As for the EXP… was it that she didn’t want to upgrade? She just didn’t have enough!
Just as she was fretting over her pitiful 601 EXP points, the phone suddenly emitted two “beep-beep” sounds.
The map suddenly refreshed with 2 red, 3 yellow, and 5 green “Errands” markers. Ma Xiaoli hurriedly asked: [What are these markers?]
The steamed bun robot: [They are all time-limited errands tasks. Red offers the highest rewards, starting at 300 EXP; yellow starts at 100 EXP; green is the most useless, ranging from 10 to 50…]
Before the system could finish speaking, Ma Xiaoli grabbed her jacket from the back of the chair and dashed outside.
System: [Host, where are you going?]
Ma Xiaoli: [Nonsense! The thing a hardcore grind player hates to miss most is time-limited tasks!]
The system let out a sarcastic chuckle: [Allow me to remind you that the electric scooter is still upgrading, so the host cannot use it temporarily.]
The corner of Ma Xiaoli’s mouth twitched. Turning around, she sprinted upstairs and barged straight into her father’s study, throwing herself into a tight bear hug: “Dad! Lend me your car!”
When had her father ever been so urgently needed by his daughter!
After stumbling a bit, completely ignoring his poor employee who was still accompanying him in overtime, he made a decision instantly: “Lend what! Wherever you’re going, I’ll drive you myself!”
Ma Xiaoli’s mouth twitched: “I’m going to do errands orders. It’s not appropriate for you to be my driver…”
Before she could finish her sentence, she was already wrapped in her father’s arm, half-guided and half-pushed downstairs.
Ma Xiaoli saw her dad sitting in the driver’s seat like a stubborn mule, even naturally patting the passenger seat. Since time-limited tasks waited for no one, she could only bite the bullet and let her dad—who had gone crazy for who-knows-what reason—accompany her to farm the tasks.
Fortunately, these orders were all concentrated within a one-kilometer radius, and most of the delivered supplies were picked up from supermarkets. Coupled with her father’s car—a new SUV model known for its spacious capacity—it actually saved Ma Xiaoli a lot of trouble.
However, when her father saw her loading boxes upon boxes of supplies into the car, his expression changed instantly, and he ran over with bloodshot eyes to snatch them up.
Without knowing what was wrong with him, when they reached the first customer’s pickup point and met the customer, her father kept staring at the person. One of the customers was a young female office worker who actually recognized her father, trembling her lips as she blurted out: “M-Mr. Ma!”
Her father: “You are… Xiao Lin from the Publicity Department?”
Xiao Lin scratched her head, her scalp feeling numb: “Mr. Ma, you know me…”
“Next time you want to buy something, go yourself! Take a few extra steps and treat it as exercise; it’s much more useful than eating salads and complaining about gaining weight!”
Xiao Lin was scolded by her father to the point of almost bursting into tears.
Ma Xiaoli was so embarrassed she could practically curl her toes to dig out a three-bedroom apartment on the spot. Tugged on her father’s arm to pull him back: “What nonsense are you talking about, Old Ma! If no one orders errand services, I’ll be living on thin air!”
Old Ma’s face froze instantly, and he looked at Xiao Lin.
Xiao Lin instinctively opened her mouth: “Mr. Ma, I will buy things myself from now on…”
Old Ma: “Young girls need to have the awareness to stimulate the economy; ordering more errands is a good thing.”
Xiao Lin: ???
Ma Xiaoli hurriedly said with a cheerful smile: “Remember to give a five-star review!”
Xiao Lin instantly pulled out her phone, operating it as fast as lightning.
Just as she honestly showed her phone screen to Ma Xiaoli, saying “Review submitted,” a customer rating actually appeared on Ma Xiaoli’s original errand app too!
Ma Xiaoli was puzzled for a moment as a thought quietly surfaced: couldn’t it be that the system hijacked orders from the errand app and converted them into random tasks?
Come to think of it, ever since she was bound to the system, the errand app had been as quiet as a chicken, never assigning her tasks again!
Knowing the system loved to be sarcastic, Ma Xiaoli didn’t bother asking it, intending to find an opportunity later to conduct another experiment to prove her theory.
After the episode with Xiao Lin, subsequent orders didn’t run into any more of Old Ma’s acquaintances, and Old Ma didn’t jump out to cause trouble anymore either.
However, his behavior of quietly staring at Ma Xiaoli with bloodshot eyes all night still made her scalp feel a bit numb.
Yet, considering he worked tirelessly and drove her around to complete orders the entire time, this minor discomfort was something she could tolerate.
As Ma Xiaoli completed the time-limited tasks, new tasks kept refreshing on the map. However, most of the refreshed ones later on were green tasks; appearing 1 red task out of 3 refreshes was already considered lucky, and even yellow tasks gradually decreased.
But because the task areas were relatively concentrated, Ma Xiaoli didn’t turn up her nose at tiny gains and cleared them all.
Busy until close to midnight, even the green tasks finally stopped refreshing on the map.
Her results tonight were extremely gratifying: she completed 36 green tasks, 9 yellow tasks, and 6 red tasks in one go, directly harvesting 6708 EXP points. Adding the 601 EXP points left over from the previous upgrade, she now had a total of 7309 EXP points.
Arriving back home, Ma Xiaoli got out of the car and rushed to check on her grandmother.
Her grandmother was still fast asleep, and her fever had dropped back down to 37°C, though she didn’t know if it would fluctuate again tomorrow.
[Ding-dong! The electric scooter upgrade has been completed. Please rebind the electric scooter to complete the permanent binding.]
Ma Xiaoli was taken aback: [What does permanent binding mean?]
The system introduced perfunctorily: [It means no matter where you throw it in the future, you can instantly teleport it to your side using the “One-Click Recall” function on the errand app.]
Holy crap!
This function was way too overpowered!
Ma Xiaoli dashed outside in a rush, but unexpectedly, as she passed by the master bedroom, she actually heard a weird sound coming from inside.