On the official forum.
Life Snatcher: "The Decayed Knight appeared!"
Soul Hunter: "Proof that Old Battlefield was only dealing scratch damage!"
Makabaka: "Mosquito only tickled him too!"
Cut the Crap: "Fortunately, the Administrator two-shot the boss!"
Jieyan: "Brother Manager is a god!!!"
Holy Crap A Mosquito: "Fuck! Can you blame me for doing zero damage? Who knew he was that fast? Parrying a rocket with a blade makes no damn sense! (freaking out)"
He was still brooding over the fact that both of his recoilless rifle rounds had been cleaved midair.
Battlefield Atmosphere Group: "Holy shit, shouldn't a Decayed Knight theoretically be level sixty? If the Administrator two-shot a level-sixty boss, what level is he?!"
Commander Spring: "Could easily be eighty!"
Edge Paddler: "Have some confidence. He's a faction leader on par with Arthas. Is level one hundred an exaggeration? Not at all!"
Elaina: "I'd say he's more like the Human Emperor Xi Aotian—he never lifts a finger unless it's to flex, and when he does, he flexes to the absolute max. (funny)"
Yaya: "Waaah, I missed seeing our handsome Administrator flex. (T_T)"
Fang Chang: "Wake up, he's a 2D character."
Yaya: "So what! Still better than you guys drooling over Xiao Yu, right?"
Fang Chang: "! That was Ye Shi, not me."
Ye Shi: "Piss off! Did I?"
Teng Teng: "None of you seem right in the head. (side-eye)"
Tail: "Awoo! Anyone who dares bully Xiao Yu gets their legs broken!"
Meat Mountain Steamed Bun: "!!! Who's trying to bully Xiao Yu?! (angry)"
Ye Shi: "Fuck! That bastard Fang Chang! Smearing my name again! QAQ"
Canyon Escape Mole: "(smirking side-eye)"
Players who logged off brought battle reports back to the forum, while those who had no intention of logging off found a safe corner to idle, projecting their minds back into 'reality' to join the lively forum chatter.
Major in-game events always popped up notifications on the website anyway, so there was no fear of missing out.
Compared to previous battles, the commitment of heavy firepower in this engagement had reached an all-time high for Shelter 404!
Over a dozen Maxim heavy machine guns had roared relentlessly, 88mm mortars had pounded the ruins in waves, and the quadruple antiaircraft autocannon had swept the ground with barrage after barrage of high-explosive rounds. The mutants that had surged over the rubble like a tsunami were cut down in swathes, collapsing like a frosted rice field.
It was a vivid demonstration of just how helpless numbers were against concentrated firepower.
When the guns and cannons finally ceased fire, even the concrete rubble on the ground was scalding hot!
Waves of saturated bombardment, followed immediately by the charge whistle—the immersive shock gave everyone an immense adrenaline rush!
Players who had taken part unanimously agreed: it had been an absolute blast!
Wasn't this infinitely more authentic than the watered-down shells and peashooters in Mud Truck 2042?
Reading the battle reports on the forum, the players who had missed out could only lament their bad luck.
In particular, the 125 brothers who had perished the previous day were so consumed with envy that their very cells felt torn apart.
Missing out on such an exhilarating spectacle was too great a loss!
Silver Daddy: "Damn it! Why is the respawn cooldown three days?!"
Silver Hand: "Why can't we create alt accounts?!"
Tyrannosaurus Warrior: "Fuck! You want alt accounts? Have some humanity!"
Lightning King Professor Yang: "Exactly! We haven't even received our closed-beta invites yet!"
Just as everyone was drowning in regret, a ninety-second video was suddenly posted to the official website.
With crisp, punchy cuts and a thumping soundtrack, it played out like an epic cinematic trailer!
One had to admit that Xiao Qi's video-editing skills were growing sharper by the day. For an intangible pie like Wasteland OL to smell increasingly delicious the more it was baked, at least a tenth of the credit belonged to the little AI.
Though a handful of stubborn naysayers like Lord Proud clung to the notion that 'if I haven't seen it, it doesn't exist' and 'my logical deductions equal universal truth,' that did not prevent the vast majority of the audience from spamming praise and 666 in the comments.
"Badass! Is this next-gen gaming?"
"Can models really be this detailed???"
"Strip away the filter, and it looks like a blockbuster movie!"
"Have some confidence—it probably is a movie with a game filter slapped on it."
"Sigh, real or fake aside, putting this much care into a promotional PV makes it worth watching even if it's completely fake!"
"Mobile game companies rejoice—fresh ad footage just dropped! (funny)"
***
While the official website bustled with excitement, on the frontline along 68th Street, players and NPCs were clearing the battlefield amidst mountains of rotting corpses.
In truth, there was little worth salvaging.
Aside from dead bodies, there was only more dead bodies. Black blood soaked into the soil, and decaying flesh emitted a stench pungent enough to penetrate gas masks.
Unlike Deathclaws and Yao Guais—creatures with usable body parts and meat that could even be roasted—slime mold mutants were something even Old Elaina couldn't stomach.
Watching rats and roaches scurry across the street corners, two rookies in gas masks marveled at how immersively Wasteland OL crafted its atmosphere as they ventured deeper into the battlefield.
"Hey, do slime mold fruiting bodies rot too?"
"Duh. Don't mushrooms go bad at your house?"
"Heh, I've honestly never seen that."
Trading a few whispers, the two arrived beside the power armor choked with slime mold.
The creep draped over the steel plating had died, black blood oozing from the gaps in the armor. Its entire head had been obliterated, and a hole half the size of a fist was punched through its chest.
The two rookies clicked their tongues in awe at the puncture.
Armor that even a 37mm Heavy Lance couldn't pierce had been punched clean through by a single shot from a Gauss rifle.
The firepower was absurd!
Wasting no time, the two tied the behemoth with ropes, loaded it onto a wooden haul sled, and huffed and puffed as they dragged it back toward their line.
[Quest: Retrieve the Decayed Knight's Corpse (Completed)]
[Reward: 15 Silver Coins, 10 Contribution Points]
Reward secured!
One step closer to earning a VM!
Looking down at the fifteen silver coins resting in their palms, radiant smiles spread across the rookies' faces.
At this rate, it wouldn't be long before they reached Tier 1!
***
The corpse of the Decayed Knight was hauled to the Huayuan Street Subway Station and temporarily stored outside the buffer room of Shelter 117.
After wrestling with a cutting torch for ages, Yin Fang finally managed to strip the power armor off the beast.
Heya harvested tissue slices from various parts of the massive frame and rushed them back to the Medical Lab for analysis.
Yin Fang handed the salvaged armor plating fragments over to Ba Qi for examination.
As for himself, he delved into the black box extracted from the power armor's interior, attempting to recover any usable data.
The mutants mounted two more assaults that day, one in the afternoon and another at night, but neither matched the morning's push in scale or quality.
Vannus believed the gnawers were likely trying to drain their ammunition.
Perhaps drawing on past clashes with Boulder City, the slime mold seemed aware that its human foes faced supply limits.
Yet Shelter 404 was no longer what it once was. Tempered by multiple baptisms of fire, the arms manufacturing capacity of the new industrial zone was running at full throttle.
Building a tractor might take time, but when it came to churning out guns and shells, Chu Guang's little players were absolute pros!
Beyond the clash on the main front, skirmishes along the flanks never ceased.
Numerous Crawlers slipped past obstacles and barricades, scaling their way toward the flank in an attempt to replicate their earlier tactical victory on 65th Street.
Unfortunately for them, their opponents this time were not a mixed suicide squad of rookies and veterans, but seasoned hunter squads spearheaded by the Ox and Horse Squad.
In skirmisher-on-skirmisher combat, the players maintained the upper hand.
Though stripped of heavy fire support, their individual combat prowess was on full display.
A level-six Strength-type or a level-seven Agility- or Constitution-type could go toe-to-toe with a Crawler on roughly even footing.
And for a level-ten Awakened—so long as they were not Intelligence- or Perception-types—handling a Crawler one-on-one was practically effortless.
They didn't even need to fire a shot!
With minor victories on both the front line and the flanks, the first day of combat ended in a stalemate.
Yet despite securing this phase of victory, neither the players nor the guards let down their guard.
The Tide rolling up from the south was endless, showing no sign of stopping.
Everyone could sense that a greater storm was brewing!
***
One day later.
Shelter 117.
Chu Guang gathered his experts for a brief meeting, requesting their latest research findings on the Decayed Knight.
Heya spoke first.
She had systematically analyzed the Decayed Knight's tissue samples and achieved preliminary results.
"I'll keep it simple,"
she began. "First, through analyzing the cellular structure of the fruiting body, I discovered neuron cells fundamentally distinct from the mold itself. Matching the DNA indicates they belonged to an adult human male, and those cells may have survived for over a century... This condition is very similar to the symbiosis we witnessed before, but the slime mold in Qingquan City erodes the nervous system far more completely, stripping the host of all conscious autonomy.
"Think of it as swapping out the hard drive and RAM while leaving only the CPU and half the graphics card."
Knowing Chu Guang had little patience for dense theory, Heya opted for an analogy she considered intuitive.
As she spoke, however, she was looking not at Chu Guang, but at Ba Qi, who stood shivering to the side.
Pausing, Heya shifted her gaze from the tin can to Chu Guang, who was lost in thought, and continued.
"Furthermore, its sac-like organs are far more exaggerated than those of other fruiting bodies. Its spore output can reach hundreds, even thousands of times that of a Crawler. It has even evolved specialized conduits to pump spores onto the creep covering its surface, dispersing them through cilia at the creep's edges.
"...All signs suggest your hypothesis is largely correct. These evolved variants, distinctly abnormal compared to their kin, serve a command function. They coordinate disparate conscious entities like nodes in a logistics network. A rigid hierarchy has even formed among them, with major nodes directing minor nodes, and so on."
Chu Guang stroked his chin, pondering. "So if we eliminate these node creatures, the Tide will stop?"
Heya nodded.
"Presumably... At the very least, it will cause them to revert to normal behavior."
Whether they fled back into the city center or dispersed on the spot, they would pose far less of a threat than when gathered as a coordinated force.
It was like a hundred gnawers scattered across a several-thousand-square-meter underground garage; even a rookie could clear them out given enough time.
But if those same hundred gnawers formed an organized unit and charged together, even an Awakened would face a grueling challenge without heavy fire support.
Ba Qi raised his right hand with a tremble. "...I have a question. If my brain were completely taken over, would I turn into something like that?"
"We cannot rule out that possibility," Heya said.
The tin can shuddered. Ba Qi quivered, unsure whether he was feeling relief at having fled in time back then, or an instinctive terror born of the keen, intrigued look in Heya's eyes.
A sudden idea struck Chu Guang, and he spoke up.
"What if we had Ba Qi infiltrate the mutant nest and shove a 100mm artillery shell right next to the Empress...?"
Ba Qi stared at Chu Guang in sheer horror. "Are you trying to get me killed?"
Heya shook her head.
"Doing that would achieve nothing except sending him to his death. As I mentioned before, they identify their kind through proteins translated from RNA. Only members of the same collective share unified consciousness coordination; slime mold from different regions carries different recognition markers. Imagine throwing an ant into another colony's nest."
Two ants from different colonies might not fight if they crossed paths on a trail, but if one followed the other straight into its nest, walking out alive would require tens of thousands of ants to be struck blind simultaneously.
The same held true for hive-mind slime mold mutants.
Ba Qi would not be attacked by random fruiting bodies wandering the streets, but that hardly meant he could freely stroll into core areas like incubation chambers or the broodmother's sanctum.
Encountering an evolved individual with conscious awareness would almost certainly result in his immediate execution.
Capable of flanking maneuvers and feigned attacks to drain ammunition, these slime molds clearly possessed adaptive problem-solving skills.
Trying to play petty tricks was pointless.
What a pity, Chu Guang thought.
He had even entertained the notion that even if they couldn't plant a bomb by hand, pinpointing the Empress's coordinates would be enough. At worst, he could borrow another few tens of thousands of chips to buy an airstrike and burn the place clean with incendiaries.
Putting his regrets aside, Chu Guang turned his gaze toward Yin Fang.
This Chief of the Shelter 404 Scientific Expedition Team and Dean of the Shelter 404 Academy Branch had remained silent with furrowed brows since the start of the meeting, deep in contemplation.
Intuition told Chu Guang that he must have discovered something.
"What about your side? Any findings?"
Yin Fang nodded slowly.
"I retrieved the operational recorder from that T-10 power armor."
"The operational recorder?" Surprise flashed across Ba Qi's face, and he turned to ask, "That thing still works?"
"Of course. The T-10 power armor was the standard land-combat suit of the Human Alliance Army; its black box is housed near the waist."
With that, Yin Fang gently placed an orange box, roughly the size of a thumb and shaped like a nail clipper, onto the table.
"Although the data was severely corrupted... I managed to reconstruct a few fragments."
Chu Guang asked, "What did you find?"
"The armor's serial number is T-10: A71C98U," Yin Fang said. "When I was investigating ruins in Sunset Province, I happened upon this series in an abandoned research institute. Barring any surprises, it originally belonged to the 71st Armored Brigade of the Human Alliance, and passed to the Post-War Reconstruction Committee in the Wasteland Era."
The Post-War Reconstruction Committee.
Chu Guang had first heard that name in the holographic recording left by Dr. Yuan Li. All indications suggested that this organization had wielded immense influence in the early Wasteland Era—two centuries ago.
According to clues provided by players, Boulder City appeared to be one of the survivor settlements established by the Post-War Reconstruction Committee.
Even that towering Great Wall had been constructed by them.
Chu Guang's brows knit together.
The disparate clues seemed to connect, yet a few vital puzzle pieces were still missing.
He wanted to know what role Shelter 404 had played in all of this.
Pausing for a moment, Yin Fang continued.
"Two centuries ago, the unit to which this power armor belonged launched a military operation into the city center, presumably aiming to eradicate the broodmother nestled inside the nuclear crater. The black box contains no record of the operation's outcome, but it almost certainly failed. The surviving logs recorded the reason this armor was disabled."
"What caused it?" Chu Guang asked.
"An EMP."
Chu Guang froze.
Yet Heya was even more shocked.
"An EMP?! Are you saying the slime mold can deploy electromagnetic pulses?"
Yin Fang shrugged.
"Who knows what happened two hundred years ago? Perhaps the mutant slime mold developed a way to trigger an EMP, or perhaps it was friendly fire... Whatever the case, according to the black box, an intense electromagnetic pulse destroyed over thirty percent of the suit's electronics two hours, thirty-one minutes, and seventeen seconds into the battle, forcing an emergency shutdown of the arc engine.
"With its mobility crippled, the power armor was swiftly encircled. Once its ammunition was exhausted, it was completely swallowed by the slime mold. The gas exchange system was breached first, followed by life support, and then the power system... The entire process dragged on for twenty years, and was still continuing when the black box ceased functioning."
Ba Qi held his breath.
Only after a long silence did he manage to speak, his voice strained.
"That's horrifying."
Watching helplessly as fungal creep gradually covered the visor, spores continuously pumped into the body via the life-support system, the immune system collapsing until the host was reduced to a broodmother's puppet.
The remaining neural cells kept alive through artificial means, only achieving release when the flesh was utterly destroyed.
It was crueler than death by a thousand cuts.
Yin Fang nodded in silence.
"What troubles me is that these slime molds... seem to understand us very well."
Chu Guang turned to Yin Fang. "Does the Academy have any records on the origin of the slime mold?"
Yin Fang shook his head.
"I don't know. Even if they do, that's not information a Grade-D Prospector could ever access."
Mutant slime mold, radiation, mutants, mutates, and marauders everywhere...
Just what had the madmen of two centuries ago done to blow the homeworld into such a state?
No wonder the Enterprise on the East Coast pinned its hopes on the legend of Shelter 0, while the Academy gave up entirely and hid away in the Wandering Marsh.
Chu Guang even felt that the first-generation Administrator of Shelter 404 keeping him in the dark might have been a form of 'protection.'
After all, the more one learned about this world, the more despair it brought.
The only people in this world capable of facing such hardships with optimism were probably those cheerful little players.
Chu Guang took a deep breath.
"Anything else to report?"
"I do," Ba Qi raised his hand, looking nervous as all eyes turned to him. "Regarding the materials of that power armor... I studied its structure in detail."
Chu Guang immediately asked, "Can we replicate it?"
Ba Qi blinked, offering a bitter smile.
"A porous aluminum-magnesium-manganese alloy makes up the structural frame, filled alternately with boron carbide and silicon carbide—and that's only the first layer."
Seeing Chu Guang's expectant expression, Yin Fang sighed, glancing at the tin can in the corner.
"He won't understand if you put it like that. Cut the technical jargon and give it to him straight."
Chu Guang shot Yin Fang an irritated glare.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
Who said I wouldn't understand!
Xiao Qi, who had been quietly eavesdropping from the corner of the room, chimed in out of nowhere.
"Exactly! Are you looking down on our wise and mighty Administrator? Master, would you like me to dispose of him?"
Chu Guang coughed dryly.
"That won't be necessary."
And where on earth had that 'wise and mighty Administrator' come from? He certainly didn't remember teaching Xiao Qi to address him like that.
Yin Fang rolled his eyes at the camera mounted on the ceiling.
He had previously wanted to dismantle that 'wastebasket' for study, but Chu Guang had refused and strictly forbidden it, so he had dropped the thought.
Curiosity was one thing, but he wasn't an idiot.
Evidently, however, that petty AI had held a grudge ever since.
Ba Qi quickly smoothed things over. "The T-10 power armor is pre-war gear; its armor hull was likely fabricated using atomic-scale 3D printing. The technological gap is far too wide. Forget about us—even the Enterprise couldn't manufacture this."
A composite plate just forty millimeters thick had an effective protection equivalent to four hundred millimeters of rolled homogeneous armor along the vertical axis; with a slight angle, wouldn't it exceed a thousand?
That level of protection was practically on par with a modern main battle tank!
From what he recalled, the Legion's Panzerfaust rockets were capable of damaging the Enterprise's power armor, making it obvious that even the Enterprise lacked the capability to replicate such plating.
Seeing the disappointment on Chu Guang's face, Ba Qi quickly added, "However, it wasn't a total loss.
"Earlier, we parsed a material called 'Type-A3 alloy' from the Mid-Continent Aerospace database, but due to missing data and the lack of a physical sample, we were never able to determine its exact composition."
Yin Fang looked at him in surprise. "Could it be...?"
"Yes," Ba Qi nodded, excitement creeping into his voice. "The missing component should be an aluminum-magnesium-manganese alloy."
Chu Guang immediately asked, "Are its properties that impressive?"
Yin Fang interjected, "Calling it impressive is an understatement; it's extraordinary. On top of that, it has broad applications and relatively low production costs, usable in everything from exoskeleton frames to structural connectors for heavy machinery.
"To put it more plainly: if we replace the frame of the KV-1 exoskeleton with Type-A3 aerospace aluminum alloy, while keeping the weight identical and only slightly raising production costs, its defense rating, maximum load capacity, and durability will double.
"It's at least a Grade-C technology!"
Not just exoskeletons—ground vehicles, aerial drones, and more could all benefit from this breakthrough.
Back at the Academy, this discovery alone would have been enough to promote him from a Grade-D Prospector to a Grade-C Researcher.
Its sole flaw was a risk of catching fire in oxidizing environments.
Yet as long as it wasn't applied across excessive continuous surface areas or was blended with other materials, that wouldn't pose much of a problem!
Chu Guang's eyes lit up instantly.
"Can you manufacture it?"
That was the only thing he cared about!
Ba Qi nodded, his tone noticeably lighter than before.
"Compared to the T-10's composite armor, mass-producing Type-A3 aerospace aluminum alloy won't be nearly as difficult. I should be able to handle it."
Hearing that, Chu Guang broke into a broad grin.
Who would have thought that a hunk of scrap iron would yield such a treasure?
A pleasant surprise indeed!
After concluding the meeting, Chu Guang uploaded a portion of Heya's research findings to the official website as an official strategy guide for the players.
At that very moment, along the West Third Ring Road of Qingquan City.
Amidst the pitch-black, silent ruins, a raging inferno soared into the sky...
Chapter 270