"Holy crap!"
"This thing is way too handy."
On the edge of the North Fourth Ring Road.
Inside a half-collapsed building.
Squatting by a window, Ye Shi excitedly tapped away at the tablet in his hands.
Not far in front of him, a quadcopter drone fitted with an underslung camera whirred as it hovered outside the window.
This was the latest piece of equipment rolled out by the scientific expedition, following the quadruped robot: the "Y-1 Firefly" quadcopter drone.
The drone utilized Type-A3 aerospace aluminum produced by the Bucky Aluminum Plant, solid-state hydrogen batteries from the Lister Factory, and neural-interface components manufactured by Shelter 117's black box. Its carbon-nanotube circuits and control apparatus were all adapted from the all-purpose wrist computer, the "VM."
Its price wasn't particularly steep—only 1,000 silver coins, roughly equivalent to half a Miner Type I exoskeleton.
Since this equipment was developed independently by Shelter 404 with no reliance on imports, the threshold for purchase was quite low: players only needed to reach the contribution rank of "Citizen."
Thanks to the lightweight materials, the drone weighed only 73% of a real-world drone of the same dimensions, while its durability had increased by 50 to 70%. What was more, the high capacity of the solid-state hydrogen battery allowed it to hover in midair for up to 12 hours.
If an operator was paranoid about battery life, they could also choose to daisy-chain an additional battery pack onto the original.
Positioned as a short-range tactical reconnaissance drone, its integrated neural-interface setup made it ideal for Intelligence-types.
The camera assembly had been fashioned from salvaged pre-war surveillance equipment and boasted exceptional resolution; even from over a hundred meters away, pebbles on the ground remained crystal clear.
In short:
This thing was utterly badass!
"Awesome, right?" standing beside him, Quan Jia said with a smug grin, his eyebrows dancing with excitement.
Ye Shi showered it with praise.
"Freaking amazing, seriously."
It truly was kickass!
Quan Jia said proudly, "That's not all. If you're an Intelligence-type, you can directly pilot the drone via brain-computer interface—it's way more nimble than manual controls or autopilot!"
"Holy crap?! It can do neural interface too?" Ye Shi looked at him in astonished disbelief. "Bro, what do you do in real life?"
Kuang Feng, standing nearby wearing headphones, chimed in, "Auto repair, wasn't it?"
He had heard Mosquito mention in the group chat that Goblin Technology had recently recruited a few guys with auto repair backgrounds to work on engines and the like.
"Auto repair is Life Snatcher's background. I studied electromechanical engineering," Quan Jia replied with a bashful smile.
Ye Shi sighed admiringly. "Honestly, no matter what your major is, being able to put something like this together is already crazy impressive."
Quan Jia chuckled. "It's not as wild as you think, really. Plus, this is literally my line of work in the real world."
Kuang Feng asked, "Did you write the control program?"
Quan Jia shook his head. "No way. I don't know how to code. Besides, the code in this game is a garbled mess of gibberish anyway—I bet the dev team didn't bother putting any real effort into that part."
"Then how did you—"
"The control software and carbon-nanotube circuits were provided by Yin Fang, the head of the expedition team!"
Curious, Ye Shi followed up, "And the battery?"
"The battery is a solid-state hydrogen battery from the Lister Factory! The casing and airframe use Type-A3 aerospace aluminum!"
Having answered all of Ye Shi's burning questions in one breath, Quan Jia couldn't help marveling as he spoke:
"Building aircraft in the game world is so much easier. Ultra-long twenty-four-hour endurance, direct piloting via brain-computer link... In reality, I wouldn't even dare dream of that."
In the real world, rotary-wing drones primarily relied on lithium batteries, with flight times typically hovering around thirty minutes. While extended loiter times of two to five hours were achievable, they required disproportionately bulky and bloated battery packs.
Or like the Perimeter 8, going hybrid electric-gasoline with eight rotors and two fuel tanks, which could push endurance to thirteen hours.
Normally, any mission profile requiring more than two hours of loiter time switched straight to combustion engines and fixed-wing designs, well beyond the realm of small drones.
Pushing a small quadcopter's flight endurance to twenty-four hours was something only a game could pull off.
Hearing the rookie's lament, Kuang Feng and Ye Shi exchanged a glance.
Good grief.
No wonder this gear sat in the NPC shop without Goblin Technology's branding.
Turned out Goblin Technology had literally just designed the exterior shell?
Kuang Feng: "...So what exactly was your role?"
Quan Jia grinned, looking quite smug.
"I copied our company's drone design into the game and tweaked it a bit!"
Ye Shi was dumbfounded.
"Uh... doesn't that count as copyright infringement?"
Quan Jia chuckled. "It's fine! All quadcopters look like this anyway. As long as there's no logo, it's totally fine. When the open beta drops, it might even serve as free advertising for our company."
Since the man himself wasn't worried about losing his job, Ye Shi and Kuang Feng had no idea what to say.
Ye Shi handed the drone controls and tablet back to Kuang Feng, who had already slipped the neural-interface headset onto his head.
The greatest value of this gear lay in reconnaissance.
For instance, a Perception-type would report an approximate bearing, and an Intelligence-type would pilot the drone to pinpoint the precise coordinates.
After testing it a few times, the two worked together in seamless harmony, extending their active scouting radius to at least double what it had been before.
Seeing that the drone he designed performed so well, Quan Jia beamed with satisfaction, already scheming up an upgraded variant in his head.
"How about mounting a bomb release underneath? Remote-controlled payload drop!"
Ye Shi's eyes lit up.
"Hell yeah! That sounds delightfully criminal!"
Kuang Feng, wearing his headset, nodded as well.
"Indeed, you could even do dive bombing... But won't adding a bomb release compromise the drone's maneuverability?"
Quan Jia waved a dismissive hand with a laugh. "It's only an extra kilo or two of payload—what could possibly go wrong? Don't worry, leave this to me!"
Ye Shi happily gave him a thumbs-up.
"Solid, bro!"
"Heh heh, solid as a rock!"
As the three of them were enthusiastically discussing ways to make the drone even more criminal, Lao Bai walked over from the stairwell carrying an ammo crate.
Setting the crate on the floor, he looked at Ye Shi and Kuang Feng.
"Mission's in. Gear up, we move in three minutes."
Hearing that there was a mission, Ye Shi jumped up excitedly.
"A gig?"
Lao Bai smiled and said, "The caravan we sent to Boulder City is back. Aside from six players, the group includes five office employees and one guard. Our mission is to escort the VIPs through the mutant activity zone between the West Fourth and North Fifth Ring Roads, where heavy mutant activity has been reported."
"Escorting the returning caravan?"
Ye Shi, who had just been bubbling with excitement, suddenly shuddered and asked awkwardly, "Uh, can I apply for temporary leave from the squad?"
Fang Chang looked at him teasingly. "Scared?"
Flushing red, Ye Shi sputtered, "What does this have to do with being scared?"
"Relax. From what I've seen, Teng Teng isn't that petty. I saw her like Fang Chang's strategy guide yesterday," Lao Bai clapped Ye Shi on the shoulder and gave him a knowing wink. "Isn't this just giving you a chance to prove yourself?"
"Piss off, piss off, piss off."
Jieyan looked back and forth with a baffled expression, having no idea what was going on.
Quan Jia turned to Kuang Feng. "Since you guys have a mission, I'll head back."
Recalling the drone, Kuang Feng took off his headset. "Need an escort?"
"No need, it's just a short walk. Besides, you guys already cleared all the monsters along the way, so I can walk back myself!" Quan Jia said with a smile. "Take care on the road, though."
Kuang Feng nodded. "Yeah, you too."
...
Three days had passed since the outbreak of the Tide.
Over these three days, clashes of all sizes had raged uninterrupted. Players and mutants contested the ruins between 65th and 68th Streets, fighting tooth and nail over every street and building.
Perhaps because the Decayed Knight's death made the Queen lurking in the ruins wary of overcommitting, the Tide's offensive over the past three days—though coming in endless wave after wave—had noticeably dropped off in both intensity and numbers compared to the first day.
The frontal battlefield had fallen into a stalemate.
Chu Guang could sense that the Tide was attempting to grind down his active manpower and ammunition through a battle of attrition.
Meanwhile, swarms of Crawlers were scrambling across the rubble, infiltrating toward the flanks of his positions.
Chu Guang certainly wouldn't stand by and let them circle around his rear. He decisively dispatched hunter squads to purge the Crawlers attempting to slip through the defensive perimeter.
Throughout this engagement, the Hunters Guild had put on an exceptionally fruitful performance. In a mere three days, they had slain over two hundred Crawlers and nearly twenty Tyrants!
The Ox and Horse Squad alone had taken down 27 Crawlers and 4 Tyrants.
As for individual combat power, the standout player was undoubtedly Scavenger. In this uneven, rugged urban combat environment, firearms were not necessarily better than claws.
Especially when dealing with Crawlers bounding up and down walls.
According to the VM's recorded data, operating completely solo, Scavenger had single-handedly eliminated 9 Crawlers, taking home the overall MVP!
Besides him, the other players who had rushed back from the Yuanxi Town area to reinforce the base had also achieved impressive results in hunting operations.
According to Xiao Qi's tallies, over these three days, players above LV10 gained an average of 0.7 levels, while mid-tier players between LV5 and LV10 gained an average of 1.5 levels.
Even Chu Guang, sitting back at headquarters, had tagged along for a free level up.
[
ID: Chu Guang
Genetic Sequence: Administrator (Stage 2)
Level: LV.18 → LV.19
— Basic Attributes —
Strength: 17 → 18
Agility: 13
Constitution: 16
Perception: 14
Intelligence: 15
]
"What happens when the genetic sequence development progress reaches twenty percent?"
Putting down the tablet, Chu Guang looked up at Heya, who sat across from him beside the scanning bed.
However, Heya's answer disappointed him.
"I don't know."
Chu Guang frowned. "Is there no way to predict it?"
Heya made a helpless gesture. "Selective gene expression touches upon the most mysterious realms of life sciences. Even during the Era of Prosperity, this was cutting-edge frontier research."
"So we can only cross that bridge when we come to it?"
Heya nodded. "For now, that's all we can do."
Though her tone sounded regretful, Chu Guang couldn't help sensing a faint glint of excitement in her eyes. It was as if she had grown so accustomed to bizarre phenomena that nothing surprised her anymore—or worse, she wanted to slam the accelerator all the way down just to see what would happen at the end.
Was she treating him like a guinea pig?
Still, the strength coursing through his body wasn't bad at all.
Rolling his shoulders, Chu Guang put on his shoes, stood up from the scanning bed, and handed the tablet back to Heya.
"If you discover anything new, let me know right away."
Back then, he had worried that the players would outlevel him. Now, Chu Guang actually wished he could level up a bit slower.
At least if one or two top-tier players scouted ahead, he could cross the river by feeling the stones.
Instead, he had become the stone in the river, blazing down an uncharted path at breakneck speed.
And worse, he couldn't slow down his leveling even if he wanted to.
Chu Guang had recently realized that the experience points he shared from players were completely unaffected by distance. As long as the players' overall strength grew, he grew alongside them.
Even if he stayed cooped up inside the shelter, the result was the same.
Heya had no idea what Chu Guang was thinking, nor did she care in the slightest.
Taking the tablet from his hands, she gave a faint smile.
"No problem!"
"Leave it to me!"
Though he couldn't put his mind at ease at all, Chu Guang had no choice but to trust her professional expertise.
...
The morning sun rose.
Treading across the morning dew, the caravan returning from Boulder City finally arrived at the outpost.
The players remained relatively calm, and Xu Shun looked reasonably composed, but the new recruits returning with them were far from serene, their faces painted with the relief of having survived a disaster.
They had really come close to the brink.
Just a fraction closer, and they wouldn't have made it back...
The world outside the colossal walls was terrifying.
Gazing at the paradise before them, they couldn't fathom for the life of them how these country bumpkins managed to survive out here in the suburbs.
It was completely absurd!
Seeing Yaya appear at the south gate, many players beamed with delight.
"Boss Ya is back!"
"Awesome! Mushroom soup is back on the menu!"
"Waaaah, ramen has gone up to six silver coins!"
"Barbecue too! It went from two silver coins for three skewers to three silver coins for two skewers!"
"Can't afford it, can't afford it anymore."
Ramen and barbecue had both raised their prices?
Hearing this, Yaya's eyes sparkled.
Fantastic!
Didn't that mean she could hike the price of her mushroom soup too?
Listening to everyone's banter, Tail, whose head was wrapped in bandages, suddenly rubbed her tummy.
"Mmm, I'm hungry again all of a sudden."
With her right hand wrapped in bandages, Sisi glanced helplessly at Tail. "Tail in the game and Tail in real life are two completely different people."
Tail smirked proudly, utterly unbothered. "What does it matter? Food eaten in the game doesn't go into my stomach in real life! Plus, I heard eating more speeds up wound recovery."
Sisi said, "I've only heard that high blood sugar hinders wound healing."
Sesame Paste looked anxiously at the two who were still bantering. "You two should really hurry to the clinic."
Teng Teng nodded and chimed in with concern, "You lost so much blood last night... You really shouldn't push yourselves."
"It's fine, just minor scratches," Sisi flashed them a cool, dependable look and flashed a thumbs-up. "We'll be good as new tomorrow!"
Happening to walk out from the south gate, Midnight Chicken Slayer glanced around at the group and asked in surprise, "Where's the bear?"
"You mean Rou Rou?"
Fang Chang looked away, saying meaningfully, "As for him... this time, he finally acted brave for once."
The group had run into a bit of trouble on their way back: mutant numbers near the Fifth Ring Road had exceeded expectations. And it wasn't just Crawlers, but also Tyrants and Butchers.
Dealing with the Tyrants had left Tail and Sisi with minor injuries, but nothing serious—a day of rest in an incubation pod would fix them right up.
However, this operation had also exposed a serious vulnerability:
The shelter's man-portable anti-armor capability was still lacking.
Currently, the portable rocket launchers used by players were primarily based on the "Panzerfaust" captured from the Legion and subsequently replicated.
While these launchers packed decent punch against light targets and could pose a threat to light power armor, they still struggled against high-armor, high-health targets like Tyrants, typically requiring two or three hits to bring one down.
To say nothing of monsters like the Decayed Knight.
This served as a wake-up call for the production-class players: "The shelter needs a man-portable rocket launcher with higher armor penetration."
For example, an RPG.
Mosquito, having already produced recoilless rifles and shaped-charge rounds, claimed it was no big deal. He had already acquired "crucial" blueprints and formulas, and Goblin Technology would soon roll out an individual anti-armor weapon far more dependable than the 37mm Heavy Lance!
Viewing No. 81 Steel Mill as his bitter rival, Mosquito had already planted a flag on the forums, swearing to make Toilet Cable and Brother Athlete's Foot witness Goblin Technology's true strength.
Beyond that, Teng Teng and her group's ordeal last night served as another warning for the players.
Over time, mutants in the Tide would detach from the main horde and gradually disperse into areas beyond the battlefield, a phenomenon Heya termed the "dispersion effect."
Thanks to Rou Rou's sacrifice, Shelter 404's Mutant Studies research progressed by +1.
After getting a brief rundown of last night's events from Xu Shun, Chu Guang instructed him to take the new employees to Changjiu Farm and hand them over to Luka for settlement, before heading out to the front line himself.
Starting last night, the fierce fighting between the front line and the Tide had reached a fever pitch. Just as the 125 players who died on the first night respawned, another 66 players were sent packing back to the forums.
Some had respawned only a few hours earlier—it was downright brutal!
Artillery roared throughout the night, and gunfire never ceased from dusk till dawn.
Chu Guang knew very well that the real key to winning this war lay not at the front line, but in logistics.
To sustain ammunition supplies, he had even shut down the fertilizer production line.
The sudden onset of the Tide had thoroughly disrupted his plans.
Chu Guang had originally intended to transition part of the industrial zone's manufacturing capacity toward civilian goods before the end of spring. But who could have foreseen that before spring plowing was even half-finished, the Tide would erupt out of nowhere?
If his enemy had been marauders, it wouldn't have been so bad.
Fighting marauders not only brought in fresh prisoners of war, but also netted captured loot.
Social labor and social wealth grew in tandem—a win-win in every sense.
Yet his opponent was the Tide.
Rounds tore through the air by the magazine, leaving behind nothing but mounds of rotting corpses: no captives, no loot, an entirely loss-making venture.
It truly gave Chu Guang a massive headache.
If the fiscal deficit wasn't resolved, even if he won the war, he'd be left bankrupt...
...
The war dragged on.
By the sixth day of the Tide, the battlefield reeked unbearable stench, with mutant flies, rats, and cockroaches becoming a new nuisance.
The players possessed sturdy constitutions, so aside from Intelligence- and Perception-types, the foul conditions had little effect on them. The NPCs, however, suffered terribly.
Several guards with weaker immune systems had even contracted the plague.
Yin Fang was forced to temporarily set aside his work with the scientific expedition and establish a mobile medical station at Brown Farm near the front lines to treat patients evacuated from the combat zone.
Chu Guang traded all his saved reward points for intermediate blind boxes. Fortunately, he drew some antibiotics and antivirals, successfully bringing the epidemic under control.
Still, this merely treated the symptoms rather than the root cause.
To prevent the rotting corpses from breeding an even larger plague, Chu Guang had no choice but to detail fifty Constitution- and Strength-type newbies. Equipped with protective suits and gas masks, they used tricycles to haul bodies from the North Fourth Ring Road past the Fifth Ring Road, loading them onto trucks to transport them farther away.
At the frontline command post.
Chu Guang summoned Brown, the owner of Brown Farm.
Although Old Brown had no desire to leave his farm nor any wish to see Chu Guang's face, he knew full well he had no right to refuse.
Without wasting time on pleasantries, Chu Guang looked at Old Brown and cut straight to the chase.
"I hear Boulder City has a way to process gnawers into nutrient paste."
"You've traded with Boulder City for so long—have you never thought of putting gnawer corpses to use?"
Hearing Chu Guang's words, a bitter smile crept across Brown's trembling face.
Put them to use?
As if it were that simple!
Bowing his head, Brown replied meekly, "My lord, processing gnawer corpses takes far more than just acquiring a machine. It consumes vast amounts of electricity."
"Besides... we never encountered a Tide of this scale before."
Even if gnawers were the lowest tier of mutants, when they gathered in numbers they were still perilous. Few survivors would go out of their way to provoke them without good reason.
Most only fired at them when pushed to the brink.
To treat gnawers as industrial raw materials, setting aside technical hurdles, one first needed dirt-cheap ammunition and electricity.
The former required ample labor and a stable supply chain; the latter required a relatively mature industrial foundation.
If Brown Farm could have solved those two problems, it would have industrialized long ago—why would it have had to endure its current indignities?
Otherwise, spending N chips to produce something worth a single chip was far worse than simply buying it from Boulder City.
No one was going to subsidize cheap nutrient paste out of pocket.
Brown Farm had neither a large enough market nor the capacity to export its products to distant regions.
Put bluntly, it was merely a modest survivor settlement of barely a hundred people.
Even now, with two to three thousand people gathered in the northern suburbs, backed by vast foundational technologies and "unlimited quantitative easing," they had only managed to forcefully ignite the spark of industrialization.
Chu Guang stroked his chin and fell into thought.
"That is indeed a problem."
Perhaps he should talk to Lister.
However, that fellow was currently pouring all his energy into reverse-engineering the KV-1 exoskeleton and expanding sales channels.
To invest in building factories and support Chu Guang's war effort, Lister was already in debt up to his ears with the Boulder City Bank.
Chu Guang felt a bit embarrassed to squeeze him any further.
You couldn't harvest the same patch of chives repeatedly, nor shear wool from only one sheep.
Mutual benefit was all well and good, but if you wanted to keep winning, you had to let the sheep fatten up first.
Just as Chu Guang was lost in thought and Old Brown was trembling in apprehension, Wrench, the captain of the guard team, stepped in from outside.
"My lord!"
Chu Guang looked at him. "What is it?"
Snapping to attention with a salute, Wrench reported dutifully, "A group of merchants from Boulder City is outside. They claim to be your guests and wish to see you."
Remembering Shuyu's earlier phone call, Chu Guang's eyes lit up instantly, and he blurted out:
"Invite them in right away!"
Wrench: "Yes, sir!"
Chapter 272