A Survival Guide to the Blind-Box Life Under Seattle's Bridges

North American server, Seattle region. This is an open world with brutally strict underlying code: if your net worth falls below the $140,000 “kill line,” the System automatically strips away your shield and may bring down divine punishment at any moment, forcibly logging you out.

Lu Di (Alex), an international student tormented by car payments and forever teetering on the edge of failing his classes or going bankrupt, is forced to take a part-time job “picking mystery boxes” just to survive: assistant to a forensic investigator.

In this hardcore survival game called the “American Dream,” other people see him dealing with all kinds of accident scenes. He sees himself looting corpses. Every day, Lu Di stuffs NPCs discarded by the System's underlying code into standard body-recovery bags that cost $50 each.

Lu Di travels between luxurious tech-nerd districts and underpass tents reeking of fentanyl. He has no spare compassion to play the saint. After all, while complaining that the zippers on the body-recovery bags keep catching, he also frets over the maintenance costs of his high-performance sports car. He's just a cold-blooded “battle report analyst,” carefully recording how each person meets their end below the “$140,000 kill line.”

Everyone's a wage slave; bankruptcy means starting over. In this insane cyber-reality game, Lu Di has just one goal: hang on in this shiny, trash-filled server, and make sure he doesn't become the next mystery box in someone else's eyes.