A Century of Solitude

["Lieutenant Colonel, our operations in downtown Qingquan City have ground to a stalemate. The soldiers are fighting bravely, and our enemy has suffered heavy losses, but regrettably, we have still been unable to get close to the broodmother."] ["Although the Prowler tanks boast excellent mobility and reliable armor, they require a major overhaul every time they return from a sortie, and replacement parts are nowhere to be found here."] ["Worse still, our equipment offers no advantage against swarms of slime mold fruiting bodies. They fall in swathes only to charge forward in droves... like a veritable tide. Long before we can wipe them out, I fear our collapsing logistics will drag us down first."] ["Most alarming of all are the 'evolved organisms'... a name coined by the technicians who accompanied us into the city center. We have discovered that certain slime mold fruiting bodies have undergone secondary mutations on top of their original mutations. They have even begun to mimic us, evolving structures resembling power armor and exoskeletons, and have even corroded our drones and tanks."] ["This is no delirium of mine. I know it sounds preposterous, but if we continue to treat them as beasts fighting with fangs and claws or as biological weapons deployed by the enemy, I fear we will pay a catastrophic price... In fact, our casualties are already heavy enough."] ["Far more than advanced weaponry, what we need is equipment that is easy to maintain and available in sufficient quantities, rather than squandering precious matériel and manpower to plug a frontline that can never be filled."] ["To end on some good news: the outer walls of the Boulder Building are finished. The brothers in the Production Department have proved as dependable as ever; this monumental project will shelter at least a hundred thousand people through the bitterest of winters. The refugees from the south will no longer need to continue trekking north, and can be settled on-site in the western suburbs of Qingquan City. At the very least, our phase one objectives have been achieved. After a brief rest and refit, we will immediately launch phase two."] ["I hear the Technology Department is looking for a way to eradicate the slime mold at the genetic level."] ["I have an idea on my end: why not use the genes in the gene bank to 'produce' a cohort of super-soldiers who fear no death?"] ["Even if they prove useless on the battlefield, they could at least help haul supplies. Those androids and robots are far too troublesome to maintain; at this rate, we'd probably have to allocate another whole maintenance company."] [—Dispatch from the Front Lines (III), March 21, 2150.] On board the Heart of Steel. Resting in the captain's quarters, Chu Guang was browsing the official forum of *Wasteland OL* via his holographic computer. This information had been recovered by the Death Corps players and synced to the shelter's servers using the diplomatic mission's radio transceiver. Looking at the materials the players had photographed and uploaded to the forum, he stroked his chin thoughtfully and leaned back in his chair. "2150... that should be Year 21 of the Wasteland Era." He had a sharp memory for numbers and recalled clearly that Year 1 of the Wasteland Era was 2129. "Still, launching an assault on downtown Qingquan City in March... what were they thinking?" Spring was when the Tide broke out. Around that time, the reproductive rate of mutant slime mold peaked, and the concentration of airborne spores reached its maximum. Of course, that was looking at it from hindsight. Perhaps the survivors back then had not yet recognized the concept of the Tide. Just as the dispatch indicated, the Post-War Reconstruction Committee had underestimated the threat of the mutant slime mold. Furthermore... Shouldn't that have been during the nuclear winter? Yet none of that was the crux of the matter. What caught Chu Guang's attention even more was the final line of the dispatch. "...'A cohort of soldiers who fear no death'—does that refer to the Wilants?" Reading that, Chu Guang couldn't help but wonder. Those big-nosed fellows didn't seem quite so fearless of death as imagined... Perhaps it was because every single player was an Awakened, or perhaps his own stat sheet was absurdly overpowered, but in any case, he had never felt those big-nosed fellows were particularly formidable combatants. Perhaps they were somewhat stronger than ordinary humans. "Xiao Qi." A spirited voice soon sounded by his ear, today unusually set to that of a mature woman. "Right here, Master!" Pondering for a moment, Chu Guang said, "...Search all the information gathered by the Death Corps players. Not just about the Wilants—I want full intelligence on the Legion, Enterprise, and the Academy." "You got it!" Hearing that energetic response, Chu Guang waited briefly. In less than a minute, Xiao Qi quickly finished scanning every single image—whether uploaded by the players or stored in their personal albums. All the information was categorized and compiled into a text document, complete with a table of contents for his convenience. Though most of what the players had gathered consisted of scattered clues, they surprisingly pieced together quite a bit of startling lore. Just as he had suspected, the Wilants were indeed an ethnic group created through genetic modification. Although the project had initially faced opposition from the Committee's Technology Department, the relentless, catastrophic casualties on the front lines and the backlog of unaddressed tasks forced the Committee's Defense Department to pressure the Technology Department. In 2150—Year 21 of the Wasteland Era—spurred by the catastrophic casualties of the "Qingquan City Operation," the super-soldier project known as the "Wilant Project" was finally approved despite mounting pressure from all sides. And the Committee's Defense Department—the predecessor of the Legion—was inextricably linked to the turmoil of a century and a half ago. Chu Guang could not help feeling a spark of curiosity. Following the clues Xiao Qi had organized, he read on. All twenty-three pairs of chromosomes in the Wilants were engineered through genetic modification, with base material extracted from an incomplete gene bank designated "Wilant." The initial batch of one thousand gene-primarchs indeed possessed extraordinary combat prowess. While retaining their humanity, they possessed near-feral combat instincts, capable of defeating more than five trained veterans in hand-to-hand combat even without systematic training. Yet therein lay the rub. Even on the battlefields after the Prosperity Era, opportunities for bare-handed combat were few and far between. Their formidable physiques made them best suited for hazardous missions with the highest casualty rates, and while their superior reflexes and athletic ability let them kill enemies more efficiently, there were simply too few of them. In the end, these super-soldiers failed to play a decisive role on the battlefield, which led to their further political marginalization. Following several campaigns against the mutant slime mold, the Wilants were formed into a dedicated rapid reaction brigade under the command of a young officer named Julius, supporting regular forces with cheap equipment that placed relatively low demands on logistics. Julius's life was legendary in its own right. Born around the same year the Wilant Project was initiated, and with a father who was a senior officer in the Human Federation's 111th Orbital Airborne Division, he had received a militarized education for as long as he could remember. As an "Old Human," he grew up alongside those "New Humans," and fifteen years later stepped onto the battlefield against the mutant slime mold as their commander. Chu Guang used the search function to look up the name "Julius" and found that across the less than 500,000 words of records, this seemingly ordinary name unexpectedly appeared over a hundred times in the later passages. "...Come to think of it, the Legion's Marshal seems to share that name." Chu Guang vaguely remembered hearing Vannus mention their Marshal's name. Yet on the West Coast, rarely did anyone utter his actual name; he was usually referred to simply by his title: the Marshal. "If the Legion's Marshal and the Julius in the records are the same person, then that guy has lived for at least a hundred and fifty years!" Chu Guang clicked his tongue in mild surprise, unable to imagine what that must feel like. In a game like *Stellaris*, an officer living for a hundred and fifty years would have hit max level even if you just parked him in a "patrol fleet" suppressing pirates to pass the time. With a swipe of his index finger across the holographic screen, he turned to the next page. Skipping over the lengthy descriptions, time swiftly jumped to Year 41 of the Wasteland Era. The Committee's purge of the slime mold progressed with grueling difficulty, and the endless winter exacerbated the scarcity of resources and sluggish productivity. Some climatologists even declared in despair that the planet might not be turning into a "wasteland planet," but rather evolving into a "polar planet" with an even more fragile biosphere, where a third of the landmass would eventually be buried beneath ice sheets 240 meters thick. That war had likely set the world back 18,000 years. Even so, purging the slime mold from the planet remained top priority. Every research indication showed that this "simple" organism possessed a cold tolerance far exceeding any native carbon-based life-form on the planet. If this menace could not be dealt with before conditions deteriorated further, future complications would exceed all expectations. Up to that point, the survivors had not yet discovered the "self-limiting" nature of the slime mold; they simply feared the monsters that even nuclear bombs could not wipe out. Had the survivors back then known that all they needed to do was abandon the Human Federation-era metropolitan centers, withdraw to lower-density suburbs, and wait for the slime mold to enter a period of decline after expanding to a certain threshold, they likely would have spared themselves so much grief. Of course, this too was hindsight; much of the research on slime mold had been discovered precisely through waging war against it. In any case, to curtail manpower losses, the Committee's Defense Department made an even further demand on the foundation of the Wilant Project: they needed clone soldiers who could be both rapidly mass-produced and effective on the battlefield. They did not need to be especially powerful, nor did they even require the intellect of a normal human, but they had to complete the cycle from assembly line to battlefield in the shortest possible time. Compared to Year 21 of the Wasteland Era, the Defense Department of Year 41 had clearly drifted toward extremism. The Post-War Reconstruction Committee convened a conference to debate the relevant legislation, bringing the three major departments—Production, Defense, and Technology—into the fray. In historical records, this conference was known as the "Tripartite Conference." It was also the second major rift the Post-War Reconstruction Committee had faced since its inception. The contradictions accumulated over the decades had already crested before the meeting even began, and the open debate served more as an outlet for venting grievances. The Defense Department, sustaining non-stop casualties, demanded that the Production and Technology Departments provide clone soldiers capable of performing effectively on the battlefield to spare the lives of Federation soldiers. From the Defense Department's viewpoint, this was an entirely reasonable demand. After all, their soldiers were not merely maintaining security and order in the settlements; they were also protecting the Technology Department's prospectors as they ventured into ruins to recover pre-war technologies. Forty-one years had passed since the war ended, yet their war had never ceased. Calculating twenty years to a generation, their sacrifices had spanned two generations and impacted at least four. The Technology Department, just as it had twenty years prior, voiced vehement opposition, claiming this would not only pose technical risks such as "DNA contamination," but could also trigger a societal collapse on a civilizational scale. Such concerns were not groundless. The Wilants, bred through genetic engineering and devoid of fundamental political rights, had effectively become "slave soldiers." History had regressed past the Prosperity Era all the way back to the slave societies of antiquity. This line of thinking had been flawed from the very beginning when far better options existed. Such as robots and AI. Yet this proposal drew objections from the Production Department. Without the backing of a complete industrial chain, the cost of manufacturing an adequately reliable robot was not merely a matter of several or several dozen times higher—it increased exponentially. Neither the exorbitant manufacturing costs nor the maintenance expenses were something the current Post-War Reconstruction Committee could shoulder. Unless they completely cut off funding to every survivor settlement, leaving communities like Boulder City to fend for themselves. Even then, the savings would fall vastly short of meeting the Defense Department's manpower requirements. What was more, slashing the budget for survivor settlements meant the Post-War Reconstruction Committee would forfeit an enormous pool of manpower—tantamount to drinking poison to quench a thirst. To placate both Technology and Defense, the Production Department offered several compromise proposals. For instance, granting the Wilants limited political rights, lifting restrictions on reproduction, and welcoming select Wilants into the broader Federation family provided they earned distinguished battlefield honors. As for the higher-output clones, there was no need to restrict their lives to being cannon fodder; they could be permitted to work freely in factories or fields, engaging in resource production. Such high-quality labor was needed not just by Defense, but by Production as well. In the end, the conference produced no consensus. Instead, it sowed the seeds for the eventual disintegration of the Post-War Reconstruction Committee. The year following the Tripartite Conference—2171, or Year 42 of the Wasteland Era—the Academy exploration team's recovery of the Wilant Laboratory on the West Coast became the spark that detonated the powder keg. Preserved within were the complete Wilant gene bank, alongside an unfinished Singularity technology from before the fall of the Prosperity Era: adjustable lifecycle technology. Under the leadership of General Julius, the rapid reaction brigade composed of Wilants occupied the laboratory and detained all prospectors from the Technology Department's exploration team. Faced with vehement protests and negotiations from the Technology Department, the Defense Department merely claimed it was Julius's rogue action, dragging their feet on arresting this "rogue senior officer" and even "accidentally" delivering fusion cells to the occupied facility. Evidently, they intended to complete the research—or rather, harness some of its sub-technologies to create a clone legion capable of growing at eight times normal speed. Objectively speaking, the Defense Department had shown remarkable restraint; after all, they could have simply seized it by force, yet they still bothered to concoct a clumsy excuse to keep up appearances. The Committee's control over its constituent departments had deteriorated to rock bottom, while the rift between Defense and Technology reached an absolute zenith. In 2172, Year 43 of the Wasteland Era, after several "accidents," the Technology Department completely lost all trust in Defense. Under the leadership of Dr. Conclusion, then head of the Technology Department and director of the Academy, the department evacuated a massive contingent of core technical personnel to the northern marshes under the pretext of exploring large-scale ruins. Operating under the framework of the pre-war academic institution known as the "Academy," they began organizing their own armed exploration force. Defense was indifferent. Their focus had already shifted west of the Great Desert, and Triumph City on the West Coast, along with most military facilities, had effectively fallen under the control of that "rogue senior officer." The Committee's Production Department, while keeping a low profile, was hardly a bystander either. Even before the spark that followed the Tripartite Conference, they had secretly been funneling resources toward the East Coast to prioritize development of settlements there. It was against this backdrop that Ideal City was born. More than that, they allied with the Overseer of Vault 6 and the captain of a colony ship to push forward the "Enterprise" initiative, establishing a regional "Supreme Council" and putting forward the overarching doctrine of "salvation through industry." Perhaps in the eyes of the Production Department minister of the time, the colonists who had grounded their colony ship on the surface to save their home planet, and the residents of Vault 6 who had courageously opened their doors to rescue more survivors, were far more trustworthy than the "colleagues" arguing themselves red in the face at the negotiating table. Though idealists rarely produce immediately visible results, every step forward for civilization depends upon their exploration. They resolved to replace the Committee and become the pioneers of a new era. In 2173, Year 44 of the Wasteland Era, the second catalyst occurred. Sensing that the collapse of the Post-War Reconstruction Committee was inevitable, the Production Department used a fully fledged Ideal City to unilaterally proclaim the "Yunjian Province Revival Act." The act stipulated that across Yunjian Province's four strategic defense sectors—Shanhai, Archipelagos, Inland Lakes, and Estuary—its three metropolitan areas—Beiyun, Shangyun, and Xiayun—and its two industrial zones—Zone 1 and Zone 2—all pre-war civilization ruins belonged collectively to all survivor settlements in Yunjian Province. This sounded like a moderate, reasonable proposal. In reality, it masked ulterior motives. On the very night the act was promulgated, more than a dozen armed units set out from Ideal City in the name of Enterprise, swiftly seizing all of the Technology Department's research institutes on the East Coast, along with active pre-war excavation sites. Fierce firefights erupted between the two sides in several research facilities. The Academy's armed units had only recently been formed and lacked extensive combat strength, but because they fielded large numbers of high-tech assets and AI-controlled war machines, they still inflicted serious trouble on Enterprise forces. While Enterprise ultimately prevailed, the clashes resulted in the destruction of numerous research facilities. For example, the facility researching the Singularity technology designated the "Gestalt Organism" was reduced to ashes during that conflict. This not only caused the total loss of the original data on "Gestalt Organisms," but also allowed a number of genetically unstable test subjects to escape into the wasteland. Some roamed along the coastline, while others migrated toward the Great Desert. And those test subjects scattered across the wasteland were what later became known as mutants. Although the conflict had been carried out in the name of Enterprise and Ideal City without overt participation from the Production Department, the Technology Department researchers were no fools. Using this incident as the catalyst, Dr. Conclusion promptly announced the dissolution of the Technology Department. Not only did he take control of all survivor settlements in the Wandering Marsh under the Academy's banner, but he also permanently severed all technical support to regions outside the marsh—and even wiped the databases in the Great Rift Valley. Specifically, the records containing coordinates of pre-war ruins. With that, the Legion, Enterprise, and the Academy stepped onto the stage of history. Having completed their "asset transfers," the Defense, Production, and Technology Departments shed their historical baggage one after another and happily announced their dissolution. Deprived of its three vital organs, the Post-War Reconstruction Committee, which had operated for forty-four years, existed in name only, powerless to support survivor settlements across the land. By 2174, Year 45 of the Wasteland Era. Facing an empty conference table, the Post-War Reconstruction Committee finally reached its end—formally declaring itself dissolved. From then on, the settlements were no longer bound by the provisional constitution drafted by the Committee, nor were they subject to its governance. In exchange, settlements had to forge their own paths, solving their own survival amidst endless winter and mutant incursions. In the closing statement, the Committee's Chief expressed the hope that the leadership of every settlement would not forget their mission, doing everything in their power to aid their fellow human beings. At the time, no one knew. Just five years after the Post-War Reconstruction Committee declared its dissolution, the atmospheric environment began showing signs of recovery. To the astonishment of all, the long nuclear winter drew to a close, and dwindling species once again multiplied across the land. From then on, the Legion, the Academy, and Enterprise entered their respective periods of growth, and the Wasteland Era transitioned from the "Committee Era" into the half-century-long "Shelter Era." As the climate met the pre-programmed criteria for ending hibernation, shelters opened their blast doors one after another, and the "popsicles" stepping out of them began walking onto the stage of this ruined wasteland. Though the grand plan had deviated from its intended course from the outset—most shelters found no trace of the dissolved Post-War Reconstruction Committee, nor could they manage the surface as tidily as the world inside their vaults—these people, ill-fitted to the era, still injected a shot in the arm into the dying world during that brief window. Drawing upon the knowledge of the Prosperity Era and enigmatic artifacts like black boxes, they helped a portion of the wastelanders survive the initial dark ages following the Committee's demise. What astonished Chu Guang was that these classified secrets were simply sitting on a bookshelf in the Great Rift Valley's lounge, available for anyone to leaf through. What surprised him even more was that the Alliance's old neighbor to the north had once been the headquarters of the Post-War Reconstruction Committee. "No... I can't say it's completely unexpected." Chu Guang carefully recalled the holographic recording left behind by Dr. Principle, which he and Yin Fang had viewed earlier, connecting it with the clues collected by the Death Corps. "...In Year 2 of the Wasteland Era, Dr. Principle, awakened two years behind schedule, traveled to the Great Rift Valley under the escort of Battalion Commander Zhao Weisheng of the 111th Orbital Airborne Division, along with over a thousand unplanned survivors, to rendezvous with comrades from the Post-War Reconstruction Committee." "According to the recording, the Great Rift Valley was already under the control of the 111th Orbital Airborne Division at that time... In other words, the predecessor to the Legion's predecessor was actually the 111th Orbital Airborne Division deployed in River Valley Province?" And they had even saved one of the Academy's three founders?! Looking at the materials recovered by the players and the century of history they detailed, Chu Guang could not help but feel a swirl of mixed emotions. While Shelter 404 remained sealed, so much had unfolded out there... And in this moment, he finally understood Dr. Method's state of mind—why that fellow had retreated into Shelter 101 to shut himself off from the world. If he had been backstabbed twice in a row by his own teammates, his mentality would hardly be much better, especially when the second stab had come out of nowhere. Yet standing in the shoes of the disbanded Defense and Production Departments, they naturally had their own justifications: 'We shed blood and sweat clearing ruins for you, but you won't even unlock cloning tech for us? Fine, we'll unlock it ourselves!' 'You're bound to break off on your own sooner or later anyway. If it's practically guaranteed to happen, why shouldn't I be the one to strike first?' Looking at the final page displayed by the holographic projector, Chu Guang couldn't help thinking of his Alliance. Both he and the Alliance were still young, but he would grow old one day. A person's capabilities had their limits; he could not keep up with the shifting tides of the times forever. The players' world was advancing too. With the technological backing of the shelter, their pace of progress would be even faster than normal, perhaps even ushering in the Prosperity Era ahead of schedule. When that day came, *Wasteland OL* would face brand-new challenges. "...No matter what, the Alliance will not follow in the footsteps of the Committee." Murmuring softly to himself, Chu Guang flicked his index finger through the air, dismissing the holographic window floating before him. A strong sense of déjà vu washed over him. It felt as if he had said something similar once before. Right at that moment, a pale-blue pop-up flashed into existence before his eyes without warning. [Urgent Mission Triggered!] [Description: The morphogenetic field device has detected an anomalous individual, triggering a 'Flag 6' determination. Player ID: 'Luo Yu' has had login permissions temporarily suspended.] [Requirements: This mission is flagged as Highest Priority. Coordinates have been updated to the shelter server map file. Administrator, please retrieve the anomalous individual as soon as possible, administer anesthesia, and place the subject onto the Floor B1 conveyor belt.] [Mission Reward: Unlock Floor B6] It had been a long time since a mission pop-up had appeared; flashing up out of nowhere, Chu Guang almost failed to recognize it. And when he saw the reward, he was utterly dumbfounded. Floor B6? Wait... Hadn't Floor B5 not even been unlocked yet? How had it skipped right past it? Yet what drew his attention even more was the description of the urgent mission. "...Anomalous individual?!" What on earth was that? Chu Guang froze for several seconds. Snapping out of it, he immediately reopened his holographic computer and instructed his adorable little assistant: "Xiao Qi, sync the latest coordinates received by the shelter server to my holographic computer immediately." Xiao Qi: "On it!" The coordinates soon materialized on the map. Directly in southern Sunset Province, at the location of Lost Valley. Seeing the coordinates, Chu Guang was even more bewildered. He remembered vividly that just a few hours ago, a nuclear bomb had detonated right there. Even if some player had been courting death and insisted on getting close to see what taking a nuclear blast felt like, there was no way someone could survive a direct nuclear strike, could they? Was it even possible to hack in this game? And while Chu Guang was racking his brain over what had happened, a pitiful wail had already erupted across the official forum. "Fuck me!" "I was in the middle of counting down—why did the respawn timer stop ticking?!!!"