Apocalypse: I Can Upgrade Everything

Chapter 187: Potion Capsule

Too much had happened today.

Chen Ye was bordering on delirium. While a Sequence Beyonder possessed physical resilience far exceeding that of an ordinary human, their energy expenditure was equally massive. Factor in the sheer trauma of having his right eye surgically excised without anesthesia, the exhausting war of attrition against the mist thralls, and the high-tension hours spent navigating the lethal labyrinth of Fog City, and Chen Ye was utterly spent.

Yet, the apocalypse was a guillotine perpetually suspended over his neck, a constant, silent reminder that complacency equaled death.

Sixty thousand Slaughter Points sat idle in his system balance.

Furthermore, his system task queue was currently empty. To let such a massive sum of capital sit stagnant when it could be converted into immediate survival leverage was an absolute waste. For a ruthless pragmatist like Chen Ye—a man who would happily split a single Slaughter Point in half if the system allowed it—sitting on unspent resources was practically a sin.

He forced his exhausted mind to focus. He needed to calculate the absolute highest-yield investment for his sixty thousand points.

Evolving the Doomsday Pickup into a true Monster Pickup was off the table. That required a staggering two hundred thousand Slaughter Points, a sum he wouldn’t see anytime soon.

Then there was the matter of his outstanding system loan. The system had already flashed several repayment warnings across his interface, all of which Chen Ye had expertly ignored. The only saving grace of the system was that it didn’t utilize aggressive debt collection tactics, nor did it automatically garnish his account balance. Chen Ye was genuinely impressed by this feature.

Of course, this leniency essentially enabled him to act as a shameless deadbeat. In the apocalypse, concepts like “credit scores” and “reputation” were useless vanity metrics. Survival was the only currency that mattered.

Currently, his investment strategy was split between two distinct paths.

The first path was to heavily upgrade the Doomsday Pickup.

The truck was no longer just a mode of transportation; it was a mobile fortress. Upgrading it directly correlated to a massive spike in his overall survivability, a fact that had been violently proven back in Rong City.

Currently, the vehicle was a rolling disaster. It looked like it had been dragged straight out of an apocalyptic scrapyard. While Captain Chu Che’s modified SUV was also showing signs of severe wear, it was a pristine luxury vehicle compared to the Doomsday Pickup. There wasn’t a single square inch of intact paint left on Chen Ye’s chassis.

Beyond aesthetics, the fuel tank desperately needed an overhaul. The standard sixty-liter capacity was a massive logistical bottleneck. Furthermore, the supernatural Shadow Drag chain mechanism had been shattered during his encounter with the Death God, severely crippling his tactical towing capabilities.

While fuel capacity wasn’t a critical, immediate threat, he had the capital to solve the problem now.

Then there was the engine. The 2.0T block was simply underpowered for the sheer mass and armor of the vehicle. It was fine for casual cruising, but in the apocalypse, where he might need to suddenly outrun a collapsing building or plow through a horde of Anomalies, he needed raw, overwhelming torque.

It wasn’t strange that Chen Ye obsessed over the vehicle. During the great migrations across the wasteland, a heavy transport was the absolute foundation of survival for Beyonders, convoys, and ordinary civilians alike.

Finally, he needed to address the open truck bed. Sleeping in a tent every night was a miserable, vulnerable existence. Installing a heavy-duty canopy would provide a secure, comfortable sleeping area. More importantly, an enclosed canopy offered privacy, allowing him to conduct his supernatural business away from prying eyes.

It would also solve his critical storage issues. Currently, Chen Ye was forced to cram all of his high-value Supplies into the pickup’s cramped rear seating area, vastly underutilizing the carrying capacity of the truck bed. Leaving Supplies in the open bed was begging for trouble. Any desperate, starving survivor passing by could see exactly what he had. Without a secure canopy, theft was inevitable. Even as a Sequence Beyonder, he couldn’t constantly guard his haul against men driven mad by starvation.

Ever since the sandstorm had ripped off his makeshift tarp, he had been running the bed completely exposed.

The second investment path was to directly enhance his own biological strength.

After breaking through to Sequence 2, his foundational breathing technique felt noticeably sluggish. Even though the dense fog of the city completely blocked the blood moon—rendering his standard cultivation methods useless—he could instinctively feel that the old breathing rhythm had hit a hard ceiling.

Hatred had just hit rank 2000. That Artifact alone guaranteed his lethal output for the foreseeable future. Combined with his Body Transformation into Blue Smoke and Three Days One Breath abilities, his evasive and defensive capabilities were already top-tier.

As for breaking through to Sequence 3, that was a massive bottleneck that couldn’t be rushed.

However, Chen Ye had a creeping suspicion.

He suspected that hitting Sequence 3 might trigger an evolutionary divergence—a branch path for the Smoke Apostle Sequence!

It was pure instinct, utterly devoid of empirical evidence, but the chaotic nature of Sequence Beyonders mirrored the unpredictable mutation of the Anomalies themselves. When he had pressed Chu Che on the matter, the captain had casually confirmed that it wasn’t uncommon for high-tier Sequences to splinter into specialized branches, citing how the Titan Sequence eventually diverged into monstrous forms like the Two-Headed Giant and the Prying Skull.

Sixty thousand Slaughter Points.

Chen Ye sat in the dark, the faint, glowing ember of a Huazi Cigarette illuminating the sharp angles of his face. His singular, blood-red pupil cast a faint, eerie glow into the shadows.

This decision required absolute, cold-blooded calculation. A single misallocation of capital now could result in him bleeding out in some nameless ditch a month down the line, torn apart by unspeakable horrors because he lacked the specific tool needed to survive.

He smoked two entire cigarettes back-to-back, letting the nicotine focus his mind.

Finally, he ground out the second butt. He had made his choice.

He pulled up the system interface.

A minute later, a prompt flashed before his eyes.

[Are you sure?]

Chen Ye didn’t hesitate for a fraction of a second. He mentally slammed the confirm button.

Fifty thousand Slaughter Points vanished from his account instantly.

A moment ago, he had been a warlord swimming in capital. Now, he was practically bankrupt. Staring at the meager ten thousand points remaining in his balance, Chen Ye felt a physical ache in his chest.

Fifty thousand points. It was an astronomical, gut-wrenching expenditure.

He looked down at his wrist. Resting in his palm was a single, small capsule. It emitted a deep, haunting blue glow—the exact same supernatural luminescence as a Sequence Serum. Within the transparent casing, microscopic blue powder swirled and danced like living stardust.

Despite the ethereal glow, Chen Ye couldn’t shake the feeling that a pill the size of his fingernail couldn’t possibly be worth a king’s ransom in Slaughter Points.

This was the legendary Potion Capsule.

An item exponentially rarer and more potent than a standard Sequence Serum.

He had chosen the path of biological ascension. He would use the remaining ten thousand points to patch up the Doomsday Pickup later. If he was frugal, it would be enough to keep the truck running.

Compared to vehicular upgrades, the items linked directly to Sequence evolution were priced at an extortionate premium. A standard Sequence Serum only cost three thousand points.

The Potion Capsule had cost him fifty thousand.

It was pure, unadulterated extortion. But Chu Che had once mentioned that a Potion Capsule could violently strip away the biological limiters of a human body, maximizing a Beyonder’s latent Potential. Chen Ye was banking everything on that rumor being true.

According to his limited knowledge, the only evolutionary catalyst superior to a Potion Capsule was a Magic Fruit—the exact item the pink-haired girl had consumed. However, Magic Fruits were so exceedingly rare that they didn’t even exist in the system’s exchange shop. Thus, the Potion Capsule was the absolute pinnacle of pharmaceutical enhancement currently available to him.

His racing heart temporarily held back the crushing wave of exhaustion.

On a whim, he queried the system to see if the Potion Capsule itself could be upgraded. The system confirmed it was possible—for an absolutely astronomical, world-ending sum of Slaughter Points. It was the exact same roadblock he had hit when trying to upgrade a Sequence Serum.

He took one look at the massive string of zeroes attached to the upgrade cost and instantly killed the idea.

He checked his electronic watch. It was already 1:00 AM. Chu Che would likely kick the convoy awake by 5:00 AM. Time was up.

Chen Ye tossed the glowing blue Potion Capsule into his mouth and swallowed it dry.

He sat perfectly still, waiting for the reaction. He expected a surge of searing heat, a violent rush of supernatural energy tearing through his veins, or at least a warm tingle in his gut.

Nothing happened.

Stubbornly, he sat there for another ten minutes, hyper-focusing on his internal biology. Still nothing.

The adrenaline finally crashed, and the crushing weight of his exhaustion pulled him under. Chen Ye slumped over and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.