(This is a survival, base-building, monster-slaying, leveling-up story.
For readers who haven’t played the game, I’ll explain what the various stats do as clearly as possible.)
…
Kingsland, Georgia.
When Luke Li opened his eyes, the back of his head felt like someone had hit him with a baseball bat.
Clutching his head, he sat up in bed.
The first thing he saw was a yellowed wall, and the air was filled with the smell of cheap cleaning products.
He was in a motel.
“…This isn’t right.
Where the hell have I ended up?
Is this even Earth?”
He clearly remembered being in a hotel in New York last night, working overtime until two in the morning before passing out the moment his head hit the pillow.
But when he woke up, he was in a motel room he had never seen before.
Did I time-travel?
Then this better be the galgame world I’ve been dreaming about!
And please don’t let me become the victim!
Luke Li rolled out of bed and stepped barefoot onto the carpet.
Sunlight slipped through the gaps in the curtains.
Outside was a two-lane road.
Across the street stood a gas station and a waffle restaurant.
A few pickup trucks were parked along the roadside.
A white man was loading a toolbox into one of them, and beyond that stretched a wide expanse of pine forest.
It looked very much like the American South.
But it definitely wasn’t a big city like New York.
It felt more like a rural town.
He turned to the phone on the nightstand.
His iPhone 18 Pro had turned into an old Samsung flip phone.
The date on the screen read:
July 13, 2010.
“2010…”
Luke Li’s mind went blank.
Just then, an ice-blue, translucent panel appeared out of thin air before his eyes.
At the top of the panel was a line of bold text:
[Project Zomboid: All-Profession System.
Activated]
Below it was a smaller line of text.
[Welcome to the apocalypse, Host.]
[You have 72 hours to prepare.]
[Apocalypse Countdown begins.
71:58:33]
Luke Li stared at the panel without moving for a full ten seconds.
His brain was racing,
Georgia.
Apocalypse.
72 hours.
Those fragments of information slowly clicked into place.
A few lingering place names stirred Luke Li’s memory.
The Walking Dead.
He had been transported into the world of the TV series.
The timeline matched the beginning of the show’s first season: the summer of 2010, Atlanta, Georgia, and the surrounding areas, where a global disaster caused by an unknown virus erupted without warning.
The dead rose and hunted the living.
In less than a year, human civilization collapsed into a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
He loved The Walking Dead.
He had watched it again and again.
The place names and timeline matched.
There was no mistake.
This was the Walking Dead universe.
As for the “Project Zomboid” system, it came from his favorite single-player game in his previous life: Project Zomboid, a zombie survival simulator famous for its brutal hardcore difficulty.
Back then, after finishing the show and still wanting more, he had seen the game on Douyin and bought it at full price right away.
He never imagined it would become his lifeline.
He looked at the system panel in front of him, then at the quiet little town outside the window.
The motel walls were thin.
The sound of a television drifted in from the next room, where a news channel was airing the weather forecast.
The anchor’s voice was bright and cheerful, but to Luke Li, it sounded like a brief illusion before the storm.
Luke Li took a deep breath.
He knew the crisis would soon sweep across the entire world.
In the world of The Walking Dead, the pressure of surviving the apocalypse could break anyone with a weak mind.
At the same time, he noticed a tiny gray icon appearing in the upper right corner of his vision.
[Tension].
Gray, faintly flickering.
Beside it was a golden marker that glowed steadily with a soft light:
[Transmigrator].
Golden, permanent.
One seemed to show his emotional state, while the other was an identity marker.
Luke Li closed his eyes and clenched his fists, feeling his fingernails dig painfully into his palms.
It was real.
All of it was real.
When he opened his eyes again, his gaze had changed.
Survival or destruction had never been a question.
In 72 hours, walkers would appear on the streets, and the whole of Atlanta would fall within days.
The military would lose control and be forced into a full retreat.
Hundreds of millions of people would die.
And he was standing at the starting line of the apocalypse, with something close to foresight.
But he could not save the world.
He could only save himself.
Since he had been reborn, he would live properly.
The numbers on the system’s Apocalypse Countdown ticked down in silence, urging Luke Li to hurry and prepare for the apocalypse.
“71:55:07”
“71:55:06”
“71:55:05”
Luke Li picked up the pickup truck keys from the nightstand and strode toward the door.
He pulled it open, and the July heat of Georgia rushed into his face.
The sunlight was so bright it stung his eyes.
Across the street, a waitress at the restaurant was wiping the windows.
She gave him a friendly wave.
Luke Li did not respond.
He looked in the direction of Atlanta.
In three days, the sky over there would hang above a living hell.
A true hell on earth.
He turned and walked toward the silver-gray Ford F-150 in the parking lot.
He slid the key into the ignition, and the engine roared to life.
“Seventy-two hours.
At most, that’s only three days,” he muttered, shifting into drive.
“Not nearly enough time, but it’s still much better than having the apocalypse drop on my head with no warning.”
The pickup pulled out of the parking lot, kicking up a cloud of red dust.
…
In the rearview mirror, Kingsland grew smaller and smaller.
Luke Li held the truck steady at sixty miles per hour, his eyes sweeping over the road signs on both sides.
The nearest Walmart was about twelve miles away.
A gun shop in Brunswick was more than twenty miles away.
There should be a few hardware stores along the way.
What did he need to survive the apocalypse?
Food, water, medicine, weapons, tools, and fuel.
Not a single one could be missing.
On the system panel, a new mission prompt unfolded.
[Emergency Mission: Apocalypse Preparation]
[Host must collect as many survival supplies as possible within 72 hours]
[Rewards will be distributed based on collection tier]
[C-Rank (Basic): 2 Attribute Points]
[B-Rank (Excellent): 4 Attribute Points + 1 Beginner Skill Book]
[A-Rank (Outstanding): 6 Attribute Points + Beginner Gift Pack + 1 Random Blueprint Box]
[S (Legendary): 10 Attribute Points + all-purpose beginner gift pack + 3 random blueprint boxes + ???]
Luke Li’s gaze lingered on that final tier for a moment.
A “???” reward, plus some kind of mystery box?
He pressed down on the gas pedal.
The pickup’s engine gave a low growl as the speed climbed to seventy miles per hour.