My Notoriety Spreads Throughout the World

Xu Xiaoyou opens her eyes to the stink of rot and incense.

The sky is the color of old bruises, the streets are crawling with zombies that mutter in broken human voices, and translucent ghosts cling to the eaves like torn paper charms. This isn’t the game interface she knows. This is the world she’s been thrown into—same system, same rules, only now the blood on her hands is warm.

For months she scrapes by, grinding monsters in alleys that reek of corpse smoke, hoarding every last point. No splurges. No mistakes. All so she can finally unlock her abilities and summon the one trump card she’s been dreaming about: a legendary character who could make survival feel less like a joke.

The system chimes. The first character arrives.

It’s not her.

Anya, the girl she’s been aiming for, isn’t standing in front of her with a sword and a smirk. Anya is a line of cold text: currently imprisoned in the slave shop of a man called Anger. Redeemable for 50 credit points—or, the system helpfully adds, in exchange for a single Kegon worth five hundred billion.

Xu Xiaoyou stares at the glowing panel, zombies snarling at the edge of her vision, and blurts the only honest response left to her.

“This is a scam.”

But scams or not, the dead are closing in, Anger is getting richer by the day, and every step Xiaoyou takes toward Anya’s cage carves her name a little deeper into this haunted world’s rumor mill—until her notoriety itself becomes a weapon, and also the noose waiting for her neck.