They Will Become Your Eyes

"Do you think I'm a black box too?!" Yin Fang had actually felt quite pleased after Chu Guang's first sentence, but by the time he heard the rest, he nearly spat in disbelief. *The camera is pretty good.* *Pity it can't make phone calls??* Just listen to that! Was that something a human being would say? Chu Guang, however, clearly showed no remorse. "Can it be done?" Seeing that he was completely serious, Yin Fang fell silent for a moment before giving a reluctant nod. "It can!" "But frankly, for something this low-tech, you ought to find someone else instead of taking up my precious time—" "Down the line, I'll naturally get others to mass-produce replicas. But I still need a prototype to copy from, don't I? I have to trouble you with the design work." Noticing that Dr. Yin Fang didn't seem to think much of the project, Chu Guang pondered for a moment before adopting a gentle, persuasive tone. "Don't underestimate this task. Picture this: every member of your scientific expedition has an earpiece hooked over their ear. They can report new discoveries to you anytime, anywhere, and provide real-time updates from inside pre-war ruins. Meanwhile, you won't even need to step out the door. You can just sit comfortably in an air-conditioned room, tap your finger on a screen, and switch directly to their perspective... They will become your eyes. Doesn't that sound fascinating?" With that, Chu Guang clipped the pen-like camera over his ear and gently adjusted the tip so it pointed forward. "I need a headset with an integrated camera—just like this. When worn, the lens should face straight ahead, with as wide a field of view as possible. That way, it can take photos, record video, and make voice calls... Those three functions are what matter most. If it can pair seamlessly with the VM, even better." He wasn't doing this to stream on the internet. Was he short on pre-registered players right now? Obviously not. Food, clothing, fuel, and resources—all four took priority over incubation pods, and pre-registered players were queued right behind the pods. Chu Guang didn't need six billion people around the globe working for him, nor could he possibly get his hands on that many hibernation pods. All he needed was to maintain a five-to-one or ten-to-one ratio between applicants and players in the game. In fact, the ratio was already pushing thirty to one, and counting the goofy netizens who hadn't even registered yet, the pool was even larger. Chu Guang wasn't worried in the slightest about lacking fresh chives to harvest. What should a game developer care about? Enhancing the players' gaming experience, of course! A headset combining audio and video would not only make it easier for players to communicate across regional and squad channels, but it would also serve as his own eyes, letting him peek at their screens and catch key details that players might easily overlook. Doubling as both an action recorder and a two-way radio—with the potential to add simultaneous interpretation down the road—such a device was of paramount importance! If nothing else, squad-to-squad coordination would finally no longer rely on shouting across the map! Even if the manufacturing cost ran high and prevented universal issue, Chu Guang was determined to equip every squad leader with one whenever battle broke out. *Mm, and the guard team NPCs will need them too!* After listening to Chu Guang's pitch, Yin Fang fell into deep thought. Having the expedition members become his eyes—that phrase genuinely moved him. To be fair, even though the scientific expedition had been established for quite a while, its efficiency had never been particularly impressive. On one hand, heavy snow and other environmental factors kept them from reaching many places. On the other hand, the "players" had no clear concept of what was valuable and what was trivial. More often than not, they overlooked critical details, forcing him to issue new quests and send them back for another run. Going back and forth like that not only wasted time, but it also burned through a substantial budget. Being able to monitor the expedition team's movements in real time and micro-manage their field operations sounded extraordinarily appealing. After all, the players' alternating flashes of brilliance, periods of utter cluelessness, and erratic performance had often left the former Academy mid-level officer tearing his hair out. Stroking his chin, Yin Fang pondered for a while. "I'll see what I can do..." Chu Guang smiled faintly. He knew that eighty percent of the battle was won. "Right, I'll leave it in your capable hands!" ... Day 10 of the Wartime Regulations. Outside the concrete walls of Changjiu Farm, as far as the eye could see across the vast white snowfield, a straight line of dark figures stood in sharp contrast against the pristine snow. They were the new recruits of the guard team. Just yesterday, a fresh batch of Arbiter Type I rifles and pitch-black uniforms had arrived at Changjiu Farm from the new industrial zone and had been distributed to every single recruit. The uniforms had been designed by Tengteng Cottage. Modeled after nineteenth-century military attire, the design blended the clean lines of vault uniforms into a simple, disciplined look. As for production, they were sewn stitch by stitch by refugees from survivor settlements such as Winter Willow Camp, the Battery Factory, and Highway Town. The fabric was woven from devil silk and dyed black with shellac, featuring two stitched layers packed with shredded banknote paper in between. These "greatcoats" provided exceptional insulation without being overly heavy, and they looked very sharp. Their only drawback was that they could not be washed with water. No matter how waterproof banknote paper might be, it was still shredded fiber after all. Soaking it in water, even if it didn't turn to pulp immediately, would easily crush the insulating air pockets and drastically reduce its warmth. Even so, these coats were vastly superior to layering hyena pelts. The natural color variations of pelts meant that no matter how good they looked, they made terrible uniforms. At best, they could serve as shawls or fur collars. A squad clad in mismatched fur coats, even shoulder-carrying identical rifles, couldn't help but look a bit like a ragtag militia. Now, things were entirely different. Clad in uniform black coats and armed with heavy-barreled Arbiter rifles, a hundred guards formed a neat rank before the wall. Under the brilliant white daylight, the rifles stood tall like a forest, radiating a palpable, chilling martial aura that hit like a cold blast of wind! Walking along the front of the formation, former Legion chiliarch Vannus exhaled a plume of white vapor and barked at the recruits: "All ranks, attention!" A single, synchronized snap answered him. "At ease!" Pulling his gaze back from the recruits, Vannus stepped up beside Wrench and asked the guard captain, "How do they look to you?" Wrench, clad in a Type 5 exoskeleton, let his eyes linger on the disciplined row of recruits for a moment. Instead of offering an immediate verdict, he said, "Once the Administrator has inspected them, I'll give you an answer." "And what's your personal impression?" Vannus pressed. Wrench replied without hesitation, "Whatever the Administrator feels is what I feel." Exasperated by the dull response, Vannus dropped the line of questioning. He turned his gaze back toward the neat rank of recruits, suddenly feeling a faint twinge of nostalgia. Narrowing his eyes, he remarked, "Citizens of the Legion enter school at age six to receive basic education, including literacy and arithmetic. At twelve, they decide whether to become technical officers pursuing engineering sciences or to enroll in a military academy for martial training." "Those who enter the military academy graduate at sixteen. The top performers are promoted to decurions and sent to the front lines as adjutants in various chiliarchies, while the rest are enlisted as junior soldiers in the youth corps. They deploy to the most perilous fronts to fight alongside veteran units, and only by earning merits there can they rise to decurion." Wrench glanced at him. "What are you trying to say?" Vannus continued, "If the Bone Chewer tribe didn't just absorb the expeditionary force's equipment, but also retained some of their junior officers, your situation is going to be extremely dangerous." Wrench gave a faint smile. "You're actually worrying about us now?" "I have my own safety to consider, after all." Pausing briefly, Vannus added, "Besides, you are adversaries worthy of respect. Your story deserves to become an epic, not to end abruptly at the hands of a band of barbarians." It was a difficult question to answer honestly, and Vannus wasn't entirely certain of his own feelings, so he offered that ambiguous reply. He held no doubt that only the Legion could bring true order to the chaotic wasteland. On the other hand, he had to admit that these blue-jackets were distinctly different from any he had seen before. They were not only braver, but also more accountable. Under their governance, even the lowest bricklayers and scavengers lived with dignity. Most astonishing of all, he could actually see genuine loyalty on the faces of uneducated commoners! To his mind, that was almost unthinkable. Wrench shot Vannus a surprised look, but said nothing further. He was not an arrogant man. Yet he possessed absolute faith that victory would stand with the Administrator. After all, they had defeated powerful foes like the Legion, and had repelled marauders migrating down from the north more than once. The Bone Chewer tribe? If they dared come, let them try! *Let's see how many teeth you have left to lose!* ... Greenhouse ruins. Beside rows of brightly lit hydroponic cultivation tanks, the narrow walkway was choked with the corpses of devil moths and strewn with shed cilia. Leaning against the blast door of Floor B8, Fang Chang, drenched in sweat, raised an aching arm to wipe his brow, panting softly. "I feel like... it's coming." Holding an LD-47c rifle beside him, Ye Shi grinned slyly. "What's coming? That time of the month?" He had noticed earlier that brother Fang Chang seemed a bit off, so he had stayed glued to his side. Lacking the energy to entertain him, Fang Chang rolled his eyes and politely spat out a single word: "Piss off." Clad in a modified Miner Type I exoskeleton, Lao Bai walked over to Fang Chang, studied him for a moment, and suddenly asked, "Are you feeling feverish all over right now? And your heart is pounding like crazy?" Fang Chang nodded. "Yeah." Surprise and delight instantly broke across Lao Bai's face as he clapped a hand on Fang Chang's shoulder. "Brother, congratulations!" Seeing Lao Bai's expression, Fang Chang's heart skipped a beat, guessing what it meant. "Could it be... an awakening?!" Lao Bai grinned and nodded. "Bingo!" With that confirmation, wild ecstasy surged onto Fang Chang's face as well. He stared down at his hands, his voice trembling with excitement. "...Is this what awakening feels like?" It had been so damn hard! Perhaps to emphasize that "sequence level" wasn't the entirety of the game, completing quests in this game granted zero experience. Aside from money, they awarded at most contribution points, regional reputation, and skill proficiency. To level up one's sequence, a player had to fight monsters of comparable strength, or repeatedly train skills tied to their primary attribute. For Strength-types, the simplest path was chopping down trees, or charging headlong into combat with a rifle. Intelligence-types could make clothes or craft items... in short, any work requiring focused thought would trickle experience into the bar. Perception-types had it easiest—they could just tag along with the team and coast. Constitution-types had different builds, but overall leveling wasn't too difficult either. Some, like Old Monk, practiced "internal cultivation" by scavenging random things to eat; others practiced "external cultivation" by rushing to the frontline to soak damage—as long as you courted death a little, you were good. Agility-types, however, had it rough. The main problem was that reaction speed was hard to train in quantifiable ways. After experimenting up to this point, Fang Chang had only managed to roughly figure out one method: throwing darts or archery. Using firearms worked too, but mindless spray-and-pray didn't count—it had to be deliberate, aimed, effective hits. Yet the game never provided any explicit criteria for how it was judged; everything felt steeped in randomness and luck. Seeing Fang Chang lost in thought, Lao Bai recalled his own experience and continued, "I was about the same as you. Right around the time I was getting ready to log off, my in-game body felt sick, but the VM didn't show any debuffs. I thought about lying down in the incubation pod for a bit, logging off to grab a bite, and coming back to check. But once I took off the helmet and put it back on, I couldn't log in anymore. I had to wait five hours before I could get back." Fang Chang's interest was piqued. "And then you woke up awakened?" Lao Bai smiled and nodded. "Pretty much. Anyway, my stat panel now displays the Phase Two indicator. I reckon Agility-types should be similar to Strength-types—five points to the primary attribute, and one point to each secondary attribute." Even though they already knew this, hearing it again still made Ye Shi and Kuang Feng wear identical looks of envy. "Damn! That's way too generous!" "Seriously, it's kind of absurd... Speaking of which, what does having twice the agility of a normal person feel like? How fast is that?" Fang Chang cleared his throat softly and said, "It's actually not that fast. Agility mainly enhances reaction speed and visual processing; moving faster physically still mostly relies on Strength." Ye Shi: "Please stop right there! Cease your humblebragging at once!" Kuang Feng: "+1." Lao Bai chuckled and patted Fang Chang's shoulder. "The perks of awakening aren't just raw stats. When you log off in a bit, you can look forward to what talent you'll unlock when you come back tomorrow." Fang Chang gave a sheepish grin. "Hope it's something badass." Ye Shi asked curiously, "Like what?" "Like Brother Fugui's Thermal Vision. That thing is an absolute godsend for night battles... Ah, too bad that guy doesn't know how to use it at all." Whenever this came up, Fang Chang couldn't help lamenting the waste. There were quite a few lucky bastards in this game. Setting aside those mutant sequences born as absolute powerhouses, a small fraction of players started the game with an innate talent, paying only the minor penalty of minus one to their primary attribute. Like Elven King Fugui's Thermal Vision, Makka Pakka's Plant Whisperer, Yaya's Toxin Intuition, Cut the Crap's Insect Pheromone Detection... Any one of those seemed like an overpowered skill to him! Alas. When it came to luck, this game was ridiculously realistic. Lao Bai offered a comforting word. "Don't overthink it. The developer's already treated us pretty well." Fang Chang nodded. "True that." Credit where credit was due. Ah Guang had always been good to them. He hadn't even clawed back the extra contribution points distributed in error during the early days, and he occasionally chatted in the group about patch issues. Such an approachable, amiable game developer was genuinely rare. Miles ahead of certain other games! "Let's wrap up our raid for today... Only Floor B9 and Floor B10 are left," Lao Bai said, checking his VM and looking toward the blast door ahead. "If nothing unexpected happens, the reactor is right beneath our feet." "To be safe, let's head back and save our progress first." "Alright!" Ye Shi holstered his rifle and turned to Fang Chang, who was propping himself against the wall, grinning mischievously. "Come on, let's carry Fang Chang back." Lao Bai chuckled heartily. "Great idea! Brother, what carrying position would you prefer?" Rolling his eyes in exasperation, Fang Chang pushed off the wall and trudged forward. "Get lost, I can walk on my own!" "Hahaha!"