A New Stronghold and the Steel Mill Relocation

To avoid trouble, Old Luka conferred with Wrench for a while and ultimately decided to separate the two groups. The thirty able-bodied laborers recruited from the refugee camp were assigned to the cement plant construction site, managed by the player Spare the Life Under the Blade—who had a background in civil engineering—and four foremen selected from the brick factory. All four foremen wore VMs that translated player speech into simple, easy-to-understand phonetic transcriptions. After working at the brick factory for so long, they were well accustomed to collaborating with the "Blue Coats." As long as they had a translation tool, communication was no obstacle. Spare the Life Under the Blade was in charge of directing construction, while the foremen led the work crews. Tasks were divided clearly, and everyone stuck to their duties. The remaining twenty-five prisoners of war were escorted by two guards along the outbound elevated highway, tasked with clearing obstacles along the route between Changjiu Farm and Ling Lake Wetland Park. Loose rubble was shoveled to the side of the road. Abandoned vehicles were dismantled on the spot with tools, loaded onto trailers, and hauled to the south gate of Changjiu Farm. The crew of the Pioneer hadn't taken all their equipment when they left; they had left two hydraulic presses in the warehouse for Shelter 404. These machines could compress roughly chopped scrap metal into compact blocks that were easy to transport, ready to be sent to the steel mill and remelted into usable materials. The distance from Changjiu Farm to the outpost was a full ten kilometers. Thanks to the players' frequent activities, this corridor had become a relatively safe zone. While repairing the road, Chu Guang planned to lay out a heavy-industry base along the route, relocate No. 81 Steel Mill there, and establish supporting industrial facilities nearby. Examples included bullet and firearm production lines. After all, the terrain of Ling Lake Wetland Park was impossible for large trucks to enter, surrounded entirely by trees. The only place where metal resources could be recovered had been an open-air parking lot. The resources in that parking lot had been scarce to begin with. After round after round of scavenging by the players, forget rusty car chassis—even the railings next to the parking spaces had been ripped out. To expand production, the outpost had to be closer to resource points, enjoy convenient transportation, and, ideally, make use of existing structures. Taking all these factors into account, Chu Guang immediately thought of the Bloodhand Clan's old lair—the abandoned tire factory. Not only did it have intact perimeter walls, but it also boasted a fairly spacious warehouse that trucks could drive right into through the front gate. Geographically, the tire factory was separated from the outbound elevated highway by just a short stretch of road, sitting right in the middle between Ling Lake Wetland Park and Changjiu Farm—slightly closer to the wetland park. Back then, lacking enough manpower and situated too far from the respawn point, Chu Guang had simply abandoned the base, ordering the players to set fire to it before leaving. Now that the numbers of both NPCs and players had grown, it could easily be put to use again. The only hassle was that by now, the place was likely crawling with mutant cockroaches and rats, requiring a few players to go in and clean it out. To Chu Guang, however, that was hardly an issue. It was the perfect chore to dump on the newcomers entering the game in Alpha 0.8, allowing them to level up and familiarize themselves with the gameplay and combat techniques against mutants. "I really should have gotten a nutrient paste synthesizer from that merchant in Red River Town back then." He had heard that nutrient paste made from mutant cockroaches and mutant rats was quite popular over in Red River Town. Lamenting the missed opportunity, Chu Guang tapped his index finger twice on the VM screen and dropped a marker on the map. [Quest: Clear Out the Mutants in the Abandoned Tire Factory (Located 4 km north of Ling Lake Wetland Park)] [Requirement: Kill at least 10 mutant rats or mutant cockroaches. This quest is repeatable.] [Reward: 10 silver coins, 20 contribution points] In a moment, he would dispatch a guard to the entrance of the "monster nest" to serve as the quest-giver NPC, handling task distribution and completion verification, effectively supervising the players' work. "I heard mutant rat tails are edible, though I don't know if that's true." The players wouldn't eat them, but the refugees certainly wouldn't mind. Meat was meat. Who cared what creature it came from? *** Four kilometers north of the wetland park, at the junction connecting the outbound elevated highway to the urban district. A young guard carrying an Arbitrator rifle tramped through the snow, heading toward the abandoned tire factory. His name was Lü Bei, the youngest member of the outpost guard corps. Though he had been on the job for less than a month, his loyalty had already earned the Administrator's recognition. Just moments ago, the Administrator had personally assigned him a mission: proceed to the front line to supervise the shelter residents in clearing out the mutants inside the abandoned tire factory. Lü Bei still remembered this place. After all, just over a month ago, he had been a captive of the marauders here. It was a memory too painful to revisit. Even though the marauders had long been wiped out, his body couldn't help trembling instinctively upon returning. "Come on... Lü Bei, pull yourself together." Slapping his cheeks hard, the fourteen-year-old boy took a deep breath of the freezing air, using his loyalty to overcome his fear. "This is a mission the Administrator entrusted to you personally!" Summoning his courage once more, Lü Bei unslung the heavy rifle from his back and took up a position by the gate of the abandoned tire factory. He didn't have to wait long. Soon, several shelter residents carrying various melee weapons and dressed in hunting gear approached. Even in this dreadful weather, their faces brimmed with bright, confident, optimistic smiles. However, none of them wore VMs on their arms. In the Administrator's words, they were "newcomers" who had to accumulate merits before earning their proof of identity. Thinking of this, Lü Bei felt a swell of pride, for on his own arm strapped precisely such a "proof of identity." The players walked up to him and asked: "Hello there! Is this where we pick up the quest?" "Hey brother, we want to do the quest to clear out the mutants in the abandoned tire factory. Do we need to fill out any paperwork?" "Damn it, where's the quest window?" "Are you an idiot? What quest window? User info is integrated into the VM. You have to pay to upgrade to citizen rank later to get one!" "Shit, this game is way too realistic! You actually have to pay for a UI!" Lü Bei couldn't understand a word of their gibberish. Not that it mattered. The Administrator had instructed him to simply follow the prompts on the VM, carry out his duties step by step, recite his assigned lines, and supervise their work. "You have finally arrived." Saluting them, Lü Bei snapped to attention and spoke in a clear, resonant voice. "The abandoned tire factory has been overrun by a horde of mutants. We need to drive them out." "Your objective is to kill at least ten mutant rats or mutant cockroaches. Once completed, I will report your achievements to the captain." Though Lü Bei didn't entirely understand the significance of his words, the players charged excitedly into the abandoned tire factory the moment they heard them, clashing furiously with the mutants roaming the buildings. Their sheer valor, charging forward without a care for personal safety, was impossible not to admire. Though they wore no VMs, their courage was second to none. Watching their retreating figures, Lü Bei felt ashamed alongside his admiration. Just minutes ago, bad memories had nearly frightened him away from approaching this place. "It seems I still haven't trained enough..." His gaze hardened, and Lü Bei tightened his grip on his rifle. To bring no shame upon the VM on his left arm, and to prove himself worthy of this mark of identity, he had to become even more loyal! *** While the novice players swung their axes and clubs, howling as they cleared out the mutant rats and cockroaches in the abandoned tire factory, Commander Spring, outfitted in his new gear, was leading two familiar players on a raid of an abandoned school in the urban area north of Changjiu Farm. The school wasn't particularly large—before the war, it had likely been a community college. Last time, he and a fellow Perception-type player had discovered an abandoned military camp here, along with traces of survivors having lived on the grounds. His gut told him they would find good loot here. A succession of gunshots shattered the surrounding silence. Breaching the abandoned classroom building, his two teammates used their automatic weapons to continuously reap the gnawers wandering the first-floor hall. Dropping three charging gnawers with a single burst, Battlefield Hype Group shouted excitedly to the teammate beside him: "Hahaha, bro, not to brag, but this 'Sickle' is freaking awesome!" Truly worthy of being a CF cross-brand weapon! That rapid rat-tat-tat sounded so much more satisfying than the coughing sputter of a pipe rifle! "+1!" With his flushed face lit by muzzle flash, I'm the Darkest yelled enthusiastically, "I'm freaking blasting!" Compared to the Sickle assault rifle, the 5mm revolver rifle he had used before was practically a squirt gun! At that moment, Commander Spring stood clad in his exoskeleton, a crowbar clutched in hand. Seeing his teammates wasting ammo on mere gnawers, he couldn't help swearing: "Damn it, conserve your ammo! That's one silver coin a bullet!" He had originally intended to buy an LD-47 to mess around with, but every copper he had was handed over to Mosquito. Fortunately, Mosquito had finally proven reliable for once. He hadn't lied; he had genuinely built a suit of armor identical to the Administrator's. The slung armor plates covered virtually all vital areas without hindering mobility, turning the original mining exoskeleton into heavy infantry armor. If only he had a warhammer to go with it, it would be perfection! The only pity was that his pockets were cleaner than his face. He didn't have a single copper left and had mooched off a buddy for yesterday's meal. If they came away empty-handed today, he'd be dining on the northwest wind. Battlefield Hype Group said, "Don't sweat it. Money is earned to be spent!" I'm the Darkest grinned. "Right on! If you don't blow your cash freely in a game, how are you any different from a salted fish?" Battlefield Hype Group said, "Bro, looks like I'm running low on ammo. Can you spare me a few rounds?" I'm the Darkest said, "Crap, bro, you should've said so earlier. I'm almost out too." Battlefield Hype Group: "Shit! Why didn't you save any?" I'm the Darkest: "You have the nerve to lecture me?!" Commander Spring: "..." Talk aside, as they pushed deeper into the building, the two chatterboxes finally quieted down. Emptying a magazine cost thirty silver coins; on second thought, it did sting. Battlefield Hype Group fixed a bayonet beneath his barrel, while I'm the Darkest drew the hatchet hanging from his belt. Play was play, but caution was required when things got serious. In tight quarters like this, resolving fights with melee weapons was best whenever possible. Passing through the hall, they entered a corridor. All three immediately sensed that the atmosphere here was off. I'm the Darkest: "This must be the laboratory building." Battlefield Hype Group: "Reason?" I'm the Darkest: "Dunno. Maybe it's because the air reeks of hardcore grinding." Commander Spring: "..." "Seriously, no jokes," I'm the Darkest said, furrowing his brows, his eyes darting around alertly. "I feel something closing in on us." With Perception-type sequence Level 4 and ten points in the Perception stat, he was weaker than the top veterans, but it was plenty to detect ordinary danger. Daring not let his guard down, Commander Spring shifted the crowbar from his right hand to his left, then reached to his waist with his right hand to draw his Decurion pistol. Yet almost at that exact second, a piercing screech echoed from the partially collapsed ceiling ahead. Their hearts leaped into their throats, and they snapped their muzzles upward just in time to see a Crawler poking its head from behind the rubble, hissing as it sprinted straight toward the three of them. "Holy shit! A Crawler—!" Standing in front, Commander Spring bore the brunt of the assault, struck dead-on by the hurtling beast. It happened so fast that none of them had time to react. Thanks to the breastplate slung over his exoskeleton, Commander Spring suffered a wave of churning blood but no serious harm. His pistol flew from his grip, and he tumbled backward five or six meters alongside the Crawler, slamming hard against the wall. Seeing the Crawler lunge to bite down, he instinctively raised his crowbar, jamming it across the gaping, bloody maw and bracing with all his might using both hands. "Roar—!" Filthy fangs hovered inches away! Commander Spring could even smell the foul stench wafting from its throat. "Fuck!" The steel bar was slowly bending. Dodging the dripping saliva, Commander Spring cursed under his breath, continuously cranking up the exoskeleton's power output. Thrusting his clenched right fist forward, he finally aligned it with the beast's head. "For daddy—" "Go die!" The moment the words left his mouth, a loud bang erupted. A fist-thick brass casing ejected from the outside of his forearm, and a steel spike as thick as a thumb shot out from the front of his arm, slamming through the Crawler's skull. Black blood sprayed everywhere. Its head blown open, the Crawler thrashed for a few moments before collapsing heavily beside Commander Spring. The two teammates rushing over to assist, along with Commander Spring pinned beneath the beast, were all stunned by the sheer firepower. "Holy crap, what gear is that?" Wiping the blood off his face, Commander Spring spat on the floor. "No idea... Mosquito said this thing is called a nail gun, and added that if I wanted, I could call it Steel Nail 1.0." Its firing mechanism seemed to rely on the compression ignition of nitrocellulose to drive the steel spike inside the left arm's nail gun. According to Mosquito himself, it could punch through a twenty-millimeter steel plate at point-blank range. Just like the plate slung over his chest. "That's way too awesome..." I'm the Darkest said enviously, picking up the hot casing from the floor. "By the way, why didn't he use electric drive? Don't you have a battery on you?" Commander Spring: "Mosquito said this packs more punch." True enough. An explosive propellant packed far more punch than an electric motor. The only drawback was that firing a second shot required reloading the propellant, making sustained output like a jackhammer impossible. Then again, there hardly seemed to be a need. Half the Crawler's head had been blasted away... Battlefield Hype Group reached down and pulled Commander Spring up from the ground. "Bro, you okay?" "I'm fine. Just got winded from the impact." Shaking his head, Commander Spring picked up the Decurion pistol he had dropped and led his two teammates onward. That Crawler seemed to have been the final boss. Everything they encountered after that were mindless gnawers, easily dispatched with a couple of melee strikes without breaking a sweat. Beside a laboratory, the group spotted an entrance to a basement. The basement door stood wide open, its pitch-black corridor sending a chill down their spines. Commander Spring swallowed hard, asking nervously: "Want to head down and check it out?" It was obviously a rhetorical question. They had already come this far; they couldn't turn back empty-handed. If down below lay the entrance to some labyrinth or a hidden testing facility, it would be an incredible haul. Now the question was... Who would go down first? I'm the Darkest: "I've got a bad feeling about what's down there... Spring, over to you." Commander Spring: "Bullshit! You just said you've got a bad feeling, and you're making me go down?!" I'm the Darkest: "Who else? You're the tankiest. If you don't take the point, do you expect me to tank up front?" Commander Spring argued anxiously, "Is this a fucking tankiness issue?!" Seeing that neither teammate was dependable, Battlefield Hype Group sighed and bravely stepped forward. "I'll go." Commander Spring looked at him with heartfelt emotion, resting a hand on his shoulder. "Good brother, hang in there! We're counting on you!" I'm the Darkest also placed a hand on his shoulder, cheering him on: "Go for it, bro! We'll wait for your news on the official forum!" Battlefield Hype Group: "???" Fortunately, I'm the Darkest's intuition failed to materialize this time. The passage leading to the basement held neither deadly radiation nor traps, nor were there dangerous monsters lying in ambush. By the same token, however, the end of the corridor was neither a pre-war civilization ruin, nor the entrance to an underground labyrinth, nor a mysterious research facility. Even so, their trip had not been in vain. There in the spacious basement stood ten cryogenic hibernation pods arranged in neat rows. Their doors stood open, and judging by the layer of dust covering them, they had been opened long ago. The batteries had already been removed—perhaps scavengers had picked through the place, or perhaps the people who woke from the pods had taken the batteries with them. Fortunately, although the batteries were gone, the electrical drive equipment behind the hibernation pods was intact, without so much as a scratch! According to the purchase prices posted at the outpost warehouse, the salvageable parts inside an intact discarded hibernation pod could fetch at least fifty silver coins, and up to a hundred at most! And here stood a full ten pods! The three held their breath in unison. Commander Spring, whose pockets were emptier than a beggar's bowl, clenched his fists in sheer excitement. Incredible! They had struck it rich in one shot! Battlefield Hype Group: "Now there's only one problem left. How do we haul all this stuff back?" Commander Spring said excitedly, "That's simple. We can rent a truck and have it drive to the edge of the city. I asked about the rates—it's only about ten silver coins per kilometer." It was roughly twenty kilometers from here back to Ling Lake Wetland Park. A little casual scavenging along the way would easily cover the transport fee. "Speaking of which... why does this emblem look kind of familiar?" Standing beside an office desk, I'm the Darkest held a metal box he had fished out from a drawer. The box was completely black and made of an unknown material. It was impossible to tell what it was used for, and there were no visible latches or buttons to open it. Only on the back was an indented circular logo. "Let me see." Walking over, Commander Spring took the black box from him and stared at the logo for a while. Around the outer edge of a large circle orbited a small dot, resembling the Earth and the Moon, or perhaps a hydrogen atom. So familiar... He felt certain he had seen it somewhere before. Commander Spring knitted his brows. Just then, Battlefield Hype Group, who was watching from the side, chimed in: "I've seen this! It was in the lore update posted on the official website yesterday!" Commander Spring snapped to attention, blurting out: "The Academy?!" Realization struck all three at once, leaving them dumbfounded. Holy shit?! Are we triggering a story quest?!