[Congratulations! You have completed all Novice missions. You are now a qualified Train Captain.]

[Train Captain Panel officially unlocked. The following effect has been granted—]

[Infinite Upgrades.]

[All vehicle accessories on your train now have no level cap and can be upgraded without limit.]

"That's it?"

Chen Mang stared at the translucent panel in front of him, puzzled. It didn't sound impressive. Just a single effect: vehicle accessories have no level cap.

That doesn't feel very useful.

When in doubt, ask Lao Zhu. As a former deputy captain, he knew more about these things than Chen Mang did, which was the main reason he'd given him the position in the first place.

By now, Chen Mang had a basic grasp of this new world. It was semi-gamified, with many things—the train and its accessories—having their data panels. The reason gasoline had been phased out wasn't that it no longer worked, but that it couldn't be used by the "Train" system. Anything incompatible with the system had gradually faded into irrelevance.

His own "Train Captain Panel," however, was unique to him. It was like a small plugin for the world's game-like system—to put it simply, it was like he'd plugged in a cheat-coded USB drive.

After completing the three novice missions, his cheat ability had been fully activated. The only problem was, he couldn't quite judge how powerful it was. Was it a minor boost, or was it game-breaking? After all, not all USB drives are created equal.

"Lao Zhu," Chen Mang said, turning his head. "Do all vehicle accessories have a level cap?"

"Yes, they do." Lao Zhu nodded eagerly, sensing a chance to prove his worth. His face grew serious as he explained, "Vehicle accessories are divided into grades, like White, Green, and Blue. The higher the grade, the rarer the accessory and the higher its level cap."

"For instance, most White-grade accessories can only go up to Level 2 at most."

"I know of one White-grade accessory called 'Carriage Blades.' It lets you install sharp steel blades on both sides of a carriage. If you run into a zombie horde, the whole train turns into a weapon, slicing any zombies in its path in half at the waist."

"It's not a default accessory you can build anytime," he added. "The blueprint for it drops randomly from killing monsters in the wild."

"My last captain got that blueprint after fighting a horde. The accessory's max level was 2. Even after upgrading it—which made the blades bigger and sharper—it was just okay. It's only a White accessory, something you use to get by when you're weak. A truly powerful train relies on high-grade accessories."

Chen Mang's jaw slowly dropped. He stared in a daze at the birthmark on the back of his hand, finally understanding the true meaning of "Infinite Upgrades."

It meant that even a common "White accessory" could be upgraded without a ceiling.

A Level 2 "Carriage Blades" might be a temporary tool for the weak, just as Lao Zhu said.

But what about a Level 10 "Carriage Blades"?

What about Level 20, Level 50, or even Level 100?

Wherever his train passed, not even a blade of grass would be left standing.

This changes everything!

Even among cheat-coded USB drives, his was top-tier.

Chen Mang took a deep breath. He had no idea why the birthmark he'd had since birth would manifest such an insane power after he crossed over into this world, but who cared! Maybe he'd been a saint in nine previous lives, and this was his karmic reward.

Right now, he only has one accessory at Level 2: the "Geocentric Furnace." A Level 1 Furnace could only devour Level 1 trains. He had just spent his last 100 units of iron ore to upgrade it to Level 2 so he could scrap the abandoned carriages.

That left him with only 600 units of iron ore.

A pity these slaves need to sleep, he thought. If they could work 24/7, I'd be swimming in ore.

The plan was clear: upgrade the train to Level 2, head to the nearby city ruins to capture more slaves, and use them to mine more ore to build a stronger train. It would be a cycle of growth, repeated over and over until his train could roar across the wasteland without fear.

Half an hour later, Chen Mang's train returned to the entrance of the iron mine. Just like before, under the furious shouts of the patrolmen, the slaves filed out of the carriage, grabbed their pickaxes, and descended into the mine to begin their work.

The scene was eerily familiar.

The only difference was that this morning, he had been standing among the slaves. Now, he was watching from the cockpit.

Perhaps the apocalypse had its silver linings. With enough luck, one could go from slave to train captain in a matter of hours. In times of peace, that kind of leap would require much more than just luck.

Inside the cockpit, Chen Mang looked at the crew manifest on the screen.

Currently, the train had ten patrolmen and eighty-one slaves. Each name was written in white. When someone died, their name would turn black—a function that allowed the captain to keep track of his passengers' status.

That must be how the enforcers knew to come running the moment I killed that other slave last night.

Chen Mang's eyes narrowed as he gazed into the distance. If this function existed, then the previous captain must have known that his slaves weren't all dead. He would know they had escaped and joined another train.

Is it possible that the runaway engine will come back for us?

Still, it was just a lone engine. Even if it did return, he wasn't too afraid. With ten men armed with assault rifles and a heavy machine gun, he wasn't completely defenseless.

Elsewhere in the wasteland, inside a battered train engine fleeing across the plains, a portly man stared at his crew manifest, frozen in shock.

He had been mourning the loss of his slaves. It had taken him a great deal of effort to capture those three hundred people.

Now, they were all dead.

Starting over from scratch would be incredibly difficult.

But the "Crew" section of his panel was showing that nearly a hundred of his slaves hadn't died. Instead, they had joined an "Unnamed" Level 1 train. And one of them, a slave named Chen Mang, had even become its captain!

How is that possible?

He had personally abandoned that carriage in the middle of a zombie horde. There was no way they could have survived!

Unless...

Rage filled the man's eyes. That slave, Chen Mang, must have stumbled upon some great fortune. It wasn't unheard of; the wasteland was full of opportunities for the lucky.

What infuriated him was that he had sacrificed his train to escape, only for one of his slaves to get lucky and become a captain?

He couldn't let that stand!

A newly built train would have virtually no offensive capabilities. It was a lamb waiting for slaughter. Since he had already shaken off the horde, his most important task now was to find those slaves, kill that new captain, and take back what was his!

He didn't know their exact location, but any new captain would quickly realize the importance of iron ore. If he wasn't mistaken, that Chen Mang fellow was probably right back at the mine. All he had to do was return to the mine, and he could reclaim his property.

"I have to thank you," the portly man chuckled, his eyes glinting with sinister, excited light. "If it weren't for you, my hundred slaves would probably be dead. As long as I can get them back, starting over will be much, much simpler."