The legs of the insects were so tough that they could reflect light, comparable to alloy.

Lucas took out the steel hand saw he bought from the supermarket and started tinkering.

If he could make a saw out of insect legs to cut through the insect shells, things would be much easier. After all, insect legs were harder than their shells.

In the eleven years of the apocalypse, Lucas was a jack of all trades.

Bricklaying, farming, tool grinding, house repairs, machinery repairs... he could do almost everything.

A bite of chocolate, a sip of energy drink, his hands never stopped.

Amidst the sparks, Lucas finally sawed off one of the forelegs of an insect.

He held it in his hand and swung it around randomly. Lucas felt that this thing was even more powerful than swinging a fire axe. The red bricks that fell in the yard shattered with a poke, and a slight force was enough to pierce through the insect shells.

Feeling satisfied, Lucas planned to gradually remove the forelegs of the other five insects and use them as weapons.

It took nearly two hours in total for Lucas to create seven not-so-deep saw teeth on the forelegs of the insects.

The first step was done, and there were still over three hours of defense time left for the mushrooms. He couldn't stop.

He opened the system panel and compared it with the bus blueprint. Lucas began cutting through the insect shells.

It had to be said that Lucas made the right choice with this method. The shells became much weaker under the saw made from the insect legs.

First, he made holes, then he sawed them open. It took a little over an hour to repair the bus shell.

After finishing each piece, he clicked "Confirm" on the blueprint, and the shell fragments disappeared. When they reappeared, they were already on the exterior of the bus.

The entire bus was repaired, except for a few insect legs. About one-fifth of the shells remained.

"Do you want these leftovers?"

Lucas walked around the repaired bus shell, drinking water, and casually asked the system.

[The host can exchange the remaining red insect body tissues for a red blank blueprint.]

After the system finished speaking, the panel popped up, showing the introduction of the red blank blueprint.

[Red Blank Blueprint]

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Can be used to design items on the blueprint, with no limitations on the type.

The grade of the items designed falls within the red grade range.

The designed items can be materialized. (Materials need to be provided by the user).

Materialized items cannot be upgraded.

After reading the description, Lucas was a little confused.

In his understanding, this red blank blueprint should be something like a semi-finished capsule.

The advantage of a capsule was that it provided the finished product and could enhance some physical attributes.

The red blueprint couldn't enhance physical attributes, and the things it produced required the user to gather the materials and then have them synthesized.

The biggest advantage was that it allowed independent design of items.

According to Lucas's understanding, as long as he could draw that thing himself and find the required materials, the blueprint could materialize it.

Theoretically, even if Lucas drew an aircraft carrier, as long as he gathered the materials, the thing could be materialized for him.

It sounded invincible, but in the post-apocalyptic environment, the difficulty of finding materials was not ordinary.

Considering this, while it couldn't be called useless, the difficulty of manufacturing things using this blueprint was indeed not small.

After thinking it over, Lucas decided to exchange for it first.

The exchange was complete, and the system wasn't too harsh. It even left the piece of insect leg that was made into a saw for Lucas.

Before the exchange, Lucas thought the system would take all the remaining parts of the insects, but he didn't expect to leave some, including the insects' internal organs.

Those organs were piled up there, emitting a nauseating smell that even the system found repulsive.

After resting for a while, Lucas went straight to the underground warehouse.

Apart from some lingering smoke, the underground warehouse is basically fine.

Lucas began to clean up the items he had acquired through a large purchase.

After going through everything, there were hardly any materials that seemed usable.

The main reason, of course, was that Lucas couldn't bear to part with these things that were meant for survival in the coming months.

Food, daily necessities, energy...

These things are all essential.

Coming out of the warehouse, Lucas felt a bit discouraged.

Without any usable materials, he didn't know what to make.

The quality of the red-level items, like the handgun he had, was slightly better than the things originally in this world, but not significantly.

"System, if I were to make a wooden door, and it's of red-level quality, would it be stronger than a normal wooden door?"

Lucas turned around and glanced at the missing door in front of the underground warehouse, suddenly asking.

【Three to five times stronger.】

The system immediately provided an answer.

Lucas pursed his lips and remained silent.

He felt that a wooden door with three to five times the enhanced hardness would probably be comparable to a regular iron door, maybe even a bit weaker.

Rejecting the idea of making a large door for the underground warehouse, Lucas searched around the single-story house in the yard but couldn't find anything valuable. Afterward, he slowly paced back and forth in the yard.

Suddenly, he heard a sound outside the main gate.

Stopping in his tracks and looking around, he noticed the infected dog he encountered in the woods outside the iron gate of the yard.

Lucas directly raised his hand and turned on the powerful flashlight, revealing the broken and dismembered corpses outside the iron gate that had been ravaged by insects.

Under the intense light, the dog raised its head and glanced at Lucas with its white eyes, showing no reaction, and continued to gnaw at the corpses.

"Hmm?"

Lucas suddenly realized that this infected dog hadn't been expelled by the spores of the purification mushrooms!?

Lucas was a bit confused.

The appearance of this dog twice was abnormal, but he couldn't figure out the reason.

Curiosity about this dog had already taken hold of Lucas.

However, he didn't expect that his casual act of turning on the flashlight had already brought trouble upon himself.

Within less than half a minute of turning on the powerful flashlight, Lucas saw the dog suddenly raise its head, turn its body around, and assume a posture of attacking its prey. It bared its teeth and made a strange sound while looking in the direction of the road.

As Lucas was startled and turned his gaze toward the road, he heard the sound of a motorcycle coming from not far away.

A few seconds later, he faintly saw some light appearing less than a kilometer away.

Lucas hadn't expected someone to come to this remote place at this time.

Without a doubt, these were humans escaping from the city center.

Quickly turning off the powerful flashlight, Lucas ran back to the bus and locked the door.

Although the bus had no power at the moment, all other functions were still operational, and its body was as sturdy as alloy.

As long as Lucas didn't actively show himself, no one would notice that there was someone on the bus.

Most importantly, Lucas could live on the bus without much concern.

After getting on the bus, Lucas lit a cigarette and his gaze focused on the entrance gate of the yard.

After a few minutes, the sound of the motorcycle became increasingly closer.

Another minute passed, and he heard gunshots, several shots in fact.

The guns used by those riding the motorcycles sounded like handguns.

Lucas knew they were shooting at the dog that had just made it onto the road.

After a dozen or so gunshots, he heard someone shouting loudly.

"Everyone, search that yard!"