The Oath from Two Hundred Years Ago

The furious voice echoed through the spacious cavern, stirring rippling rings across the seawater lapping at the edge of the plaza. The crew members of the Glory standing on the concrete pavement halted involuntarily, completely at a loss. The atmosphere was stiff. Or rather, awkward. Especially for the "outsiders" from Shelter 404. Sesame Paste looked toward Sisi in bewilderment, while Tail, having nowhere to put her hands, had quietly begun fiddling with Rou Rou's chest fur. Sisi inspected the shelter's blast door, exchanged an inquiring glance with Sesame Paste, and shook her head. "No terminal." "Ah, that..." A pained expression crossed Sesame Paste's face. Yet it made good sense. According to Captain Chen, this had originally been an engineering accessway for Shelter 70, preserved only as a backup entrance after construction was finished. That colossal gear door had probably been installed dead last. Since it was essentially an escape passage—never used in ordinary times and certainly never meant to be opened from the outside—the lack of an access terminal tied into the shelter's security system was entirely reasonable. "...Maybe it's better to let them sort this out themselves," Tail murmured, having braided two small plaits into the fur on Rou Rou's belly. She was an Agility-type. The moment she had stepped ashore, she had spotted that the door offered no place to punch in a passcode. "I think so too." Sisi nodded, casting her gaze not far off and speaking with profound meaning. "If shelter administrator privileges could solve every problem, the problem never would have happened in the first place." She had once had the privilege of wielding shelter authority back in Vault 79. Because of that, unlike most players who had never touched that key, she knew perfectly well that it wasn't an omnipotent wishing machine. Using it in the wrong situation would only blow things up. Perhaps for the very same reason, the Administrator had entrusted this key to her—someone who had already used an "Administrator Privilege Trial Card." Facing the tightly sealed blast door, Dongwen fell silent for a long moment, then let out a soft sigh. "...You're right. We truly don't deserve your help." The moment the words left his mouth, a barrage of raucous shouts erupted from the loudspeaker. "Drop the hypocritical remorse! You think we'd buy that?" "Ungrateful bastards!" "Go back where you crawled out from!" "Fight all you want! Tear down that Coral City while you're at it! We'll come back out once every last one of you is dead!" "Don't you dare come crying to us later! We don't deserve it, thanks a lot!" The crew members lowered their heads and silently eyed the Dolphin. They wanted to turn back, yet they remembered that this submarine, strictly speaking, also belonged to Shelter 70. Listening to the relentless clamor blaring from the radio, Chen Jianhong walked over to one side of the cavern, flicking on a flashlight to search along the wall. Moments later, he seemed to find what he was looking for. He pulled his hand back and bellowed at the noisy loudspeaker. "Enough!" The plaza instantly went dead quiet. The people in the broadcast room were clearly stunned, caught off guard that Captain Chen would turn on them. "...If you want to make fools of yourselves in front of our compatriots from Shelter 404, I won't stop you! But do me a favor: look down at the jacket on your back, then ask it what our fathers said when they entered the shelter back then!" Silence seemed to engulf the plaza. No one answered. Chen Jianhong hadn't planned on waiting for their reply anyway. He cleared his throat and read aloud, word for word, the dust-covered text carved into the stone wall. "...Thank you for your trust and sacrifice. You are the greatest heroes of our civilization! "'I shall bear gratitude in my heart, carrying today's humiliation alongside your memories, and continue forward. "'We will forever remember the suffering you endure at this moment! Here I swear an oath: in the future, your children will live in a beautiful new world! It will be a new era more united than the Era of Prosperity, and it will be greater than any moment in the history of our civilization!' "...I am sorry. We cannot take everyone, but this is the only choice so that all of us may have a bright and wonderful future. "Are any of your ancestors among them? Don't rush, I'm not finished. There's a long, long list..." Speaking loudly, Chen Jianhong walked farther along the wall, brushed the dust away with his hand, and suddenly froze as he stared at the stone. A complex look rose in his eyes. Turning toward the blast door, he read out the sentence he had just seen: "From this day forth, your children are our children..." Total silence fell over the plaza. Every single line was like a razor-sharp blade plunging into the hearts of all the residents inside Shelter 70. Chen Jianhong was certain that far more than a dozen people were gathered in the broadcast room right now. Cooped up in the shelter for four months with no bars, no news, nothing but pitifully scarce entertainment facilities and barely palatable ration stockpiles—like him, they had long grown accustomed to life outside. There was no way in hell they could keep staying in there! All thousand-plus people in the entire shelter were probably crowded in front of holographic monitors, waiting to mock those "poor wretches." After an extended silence, a rather diffident cough came through the radio. "...Regardless, this is our shelter. We have the right to decide how to use it." "*Our* shelter!" Chen Jianhong stared at the rectangular gear, repeated the phrase, and then pronounced each word with deliberate force. "Put your hand over your heart and tell me at the top of your lungs: whose shelter is this! Who built it!" Silence rippled across the plaza. Only that resounding roar echoed off the stone. Looking at the muted loudspeaker, Chen Jianhong spoke slowly. "...You all know. You just don't want to think about it. Fine, I'm a member of Shelter 70 too—I'll say it for you." He pointed toward the shelter's blast door, like a tour guide gesturing for the people standing behind him. "That massive alloy door was indisputably forged in a factory of the Era of Prosperity. I don't know which specific plant completed this shield, but I know for a fact someone cast it, someone polished it, someone fitted it onto the tracks, and someone designed its locks and codes... That was a colossal, rigorous industrial chain. Countless components just like it built our Era of Prosperity. Strictly speaking, it is the shared fruit of every single participant along that entire supply chain! "And not just this door! "The excavator operators who hollowed out this cavern, the architects who laid out every sector of the shelter, the engineers who installed your reactors and light bulbs, even the miners piloting extraction vessels in deep space... And of course, the teachers who educated them, the doctors who treated them, the parents who raised them, and countless citizens of the Human Alliance who contributed their sweat, creativity, and taxes! "Tell me, where are they now?!" Looking at the motionless door and the silent radio, Chen Jianhong took a deep breath, purging both the stale air in his chest and the words he had suppressed for far too long. "If you won't say it, let me! They're all dead, of course. Most of them died... It's as plain as day. The shelters were engineered for the Wasteland Era, but our planet never was! It was like a vast, beautiful mansion. When intact, it could hold as many people as you liked with room to spare. But once the mansion collapsed, ninety-nine percent were doomed to die! "A lucky few survived, yet their nightmare had only begun. An endless winter, mutants born of infection and radiation, and the despair of paradise torn apart. A handful lived on as human beings, while far more were twisted by their environment into beasts... Surviving numbers might have been one percent, or even less, but who knows? Nobody could possibly conduct a census under those conditions! "They endured in hell all the way until Year 50 of the Wasteland Era—fifty whole years! They endured until they lay in graves alongside their children, until their grandchildren barely came of age! Only then did the nightmare show the faintest glimmer of an end, yet soon enough, fresh troubles came crashing down." Tapping his index finger against the inscribed wall, Chen Jianhong's tone took on a touch of sarcasm. "That is what happened outside. And when did we open our doors? Year 100 of the Wasteland Era! The fiftieth anniversary of the completion of Ring Island! Our ancestors promised to let the children of those left behind live in paradise, yet in the end, we were the ones who moved into their paradise first! "Did you think you were enlightened pioneers from an alien world, or colonizers? "Listening to your fathers recount stories of the Era of Prosperity, dreaming sweet dreams every night, shouting slogans about rebuilding the Era of Prosperity—you know best what was really in your heads! Rebuilding the Era of Prosperity? Haha, don't try to fool me! I'm one of you, damn it! "'Those natives will surely revere us like gods, right? Their jaws will drop when they see the all-powerful black boxes, won't they? When they see the shelter doors open, they'll surely drop to their knees in gratitude, won't they? Just like those wretches' great-great-great-great-grandparents knelt before the shelter gates begging our ancestors to crack the door an inch, now they'll kneel before our gates and thank us for finally opening them!' Am I right?" As he reached this point, his voice dropped to a whisper, soft as a needle dropping to the floor, weaving the very dream he had once harbored. "...Yes, we possessed the knowledge of the Era of Prosperity, the machinery of the Era of Prosperity, and black boxes designed so simply that an illiterate baboon could operate them. So much so that while those baboons were eating dirt, we could drop a sugar cube into our black tea. In their eyes, weren't we gods? Or should I use 'it' instead of 'them' to make it sound more like what we truly thought? "A dozen small islands had no future and could never rebuild utopia, so we drove the survivors fleeing from the mainland back onto the shores to pioneer mainland settlements. Later, when we realized something was terribly wrong out there, we called the deaths a minor bump on the correct path. We blamed those natives for being cowards, said their ancestors deserved to be shut out of the shelters, and grumbled that they forced us to swallow exorbitant costs to build them homes beneath the sea! "Now that they're no longer obedient, no longer brimming with gratitude, we throw a tantrum! Like crying toddlers, we shout, 'Get lost, we're not playing with you anymore! We'll come back out after you've all died off and build an Era of Prosperity that belongs only to us!' "No wonder the shelters came with maximum protection limits... In my eyes, their madness is understandable, but you lot cowering in this hole are the ones who have truly gone insane!" By the end, he seemed like an entirely different person, roaring almost hysterically. For a long while, the plaza held only the sound of his ragged breathing and the fading echo of his roar. The loud broadcast from before could not produce a single word. No amount of hardship could alter the truth: the shelter did not belong to any single person or group; it belonged to human civilization. After an extended silence, Chen Jianhong spoke again, slowly. "I thought about this for a long time back in Dawn City, and just now on the submarine as well. "I wondered: if my ancestors truly returned, would they feel more ashamed of our childishness or yours?" Just then, a sluggish voice crackled over the radio. As if trying to soothe him, the voice was kept very soft. "I understand how you feel, but... the things you're talking about are too far removed. Two centuries ago, we and those people outside might have been compatriots. But you must also understand that after two hundred years, they and we might not be the same kind of people anymore." Finding no comfort in those words, Chen Jianhong burst into outright laughter. "So an oath from two hundred years ago doesn't count? Which means the oath carved into this stone wall was a lie from the very beginning, is that it?" A furious roar of shame burst through the radio. "Chen Jianhong! Whose side are you on?!" "I'm on humanity's damn side! Whose side are you on? The subhumans?!" Returning the shout without an ounce of fear, Chen Jianhong pointed behind him. "Just look at the people you look down on most—that Federation you treat like a joke! Built on lies, it couldn't even hold together for four months! Nobody even needed to give it a push before it shattered to pieces on its own! And you? Can an Era of Prosperity rebuilt on a mouthful of lies last four months? Never mind going back—do you lunatics have even a sliver of hope of returning? "While you were busy playing the fool, what were other shelters doing?" Without giving the radio a chance to speak, Chen Jianhong swung his arm toward the long-haired girl, repeating her words in a deafening roar. "...'From the moment we stepped out of the shelter, we were fully prepared for our mission; for us, death is merely a return!' That's what she told me! That's what they proved with their actions! How do you think we got here? Did you think we waited for the mutants to drown themselves in the water, then paddled our way over in secret?!" Finding the conversation suddenly dragged onto herself, Sisi was caught between amusement and bewilderment. She certainly hadn't expected the man to take her casual remark so seriously. Still— Even if she had blurted it out offhand, she hadn't lied. They were indeed prepared for their mission. Especially when they ticked the box on the reservation form that read, *Do you swear an oath beneath the flag of the Human Alliance...* They had already acknowledged their identity, duties, and obligations, as well as the penalties for breaching the terms. For players, death truly was merely a return—though they could return many times over. As a reward for their bravery, their Administrator even paid them "wages" through that unique channel called the Silver Coin Exchange. Yet regardless of the underlying context, one fact remained indisputable. The residents of Shelter 404 charged fearlessly ahead of everyone else, forever standing on the front lines whether fighting or exploring. Even if most weren't driven by noble motives, and even if their ranks were mixed with plenty of trolls and performance artists, by any moral standard, their deeds unquestionably earned the label of noble. At least in the grand scheme of things. And it was precisely for that reason that the wastelander survivors inspired by them were willing to follow them with all their hearts. Though the spotlight had shifted to her, Sisi figured it was best to play a quiet background prop and let the NPC finish running through the cutscene. Fortunately, the captain had no intention of tossing the mic to her; his speech didn't pause for a fraction of a second. He likely knew full well: This was an internal matter of Shelter 70, something no outsider ought to interfere with in the first place... "...They united the survivors and led them forward, while what were we doing? More and more leaks sprang in our ship until it was past fixing, and our Administrator didn't know what to do either, running off to find a Reconstruction Committee that vanished a century and a half ago! Of course, we're even stupider than him. Stripped of the shelter's weapons, we couldn't last a few months! We'd rather scurry back here and slam the door shut than face our own compatriots!" As he spoke, a tinge of contempt crept into his eyes. "Utter cowards. Didn't you blame Sun Yuechi for not opening the armory for you? Well, we brought the key! Take it, go pull out those weapons! "Use the guns and cannons built by the ancestors of the survivors outside to wipe out every last one of their children! If your stockpiles are even enough! Consider it sending them to paradise! "Even if they all die, it doesn't matter! Go raid Bolo Province for genuine slaves and have them build whatever colonial era you want! You won't even need to build them houses. Throw them a scrap of food and they'll lick your boots with their foul tongues. If you frown, they'll slaughter anyone you dislike for you—even their own kin! Even their neighbors!" He paused. The contempt in his gaze gradually hardened into resolve as he stared unblinkingly at the motionless blast door. "...As for me, I'm standing with the people I believe truly deserve respect. I will stand united with the survivors outside. I believe my father would be deeply gratified and proud of my choice today—unlike your fathers, who took a lifetime of shame and regret, carving a joke into this stone wall to serve as their epitaph!" Having finally spoken his mind, a wave of clarity washed over him. He exhaled a long breath and turned toward the Dolphin. Though regrettable, he had to admit that the kind of union he yearned for did not exist here. Perhaps the Enlightenment Society was better suited for them. In truth, the Alliance was not a flawless union either. They had people they couldn't unite, and people they couldn't unite for the time being. He still remembered the Administrator telling him that a person with ideals who never watched their step was like coal burning at peak heat: a gust of wind would reduce them to ash. He would never ask his supporters to become that kind of person, and he certainly never demanded that they parrot slogans about rebuilding the Era of Prosperity. To Chen Jianhong, that sounded more like modest humility, because what they did was already worthy of their oath. They walked ahead of the wastelanders at every turn! Whereas these people... Even including himself a few months ago, they were nothing more than cold, hard stones. Perhaps when they first emerged, their virtuous forebears had burned for their ideals too, just like the present residents of Shelter 404. Yet that was truly too far removed. Even more distant than the oath from two hundred years ago... Just as he abandoned all hope of persuading these stubborn blockheads, the giant gear embedded in the wall suddenly gave a faint *clack*. Like an unlubricated mechanical clock abruptly wound tight after years of neglect. *Rumble—* Amid a clatter of metallic bumps and a deafening roar, the massive gear rolled aside, slowly revealing the passage behind it. Chen Jianhong froze in his tracks, looking back, an involuntary look of astonishment washing over his face. Roughly several hundred people stood at the mouth of the corridor. He couldn't see their expressions, but he could feel every pair of eyes fixed on him. His Adam's apple bobbed slightly. Chen Jianhong suddenly felt a deep stirring surge from the depths of his soul, rushing from the back of his neck straight into his eyes. The stiff muscles of his face twitched slightly. To keep his composure from crumbling, he parted his lips and offered a grin toward the crowd. "Are you here to take the key?" "Don't be like that, Brother Chen..." Lin Nuo sighed as he stood at the entrance, his gaze drifting toward the inscribed stone wall to the side. "It took everything we had to make up our minds. Is that really all you want to say to us? Settling scores so bluntly hurts feelings. Of course, I'm not saying you're wrong—there's no right or wrong in this to begin with. Just... save us a little face." The man standing beside him wore the same expression; he seemed to be the one who had snatched the microphone earlier. Clearing his throat once more, the man spoke up. "Let's think about how to solve the trouble right in front of us..." Cleaning up the mess might prove more troublesome than anticipated. Yet at the very least, they now had like-minded allies. Pausing, the man glanced at Chen Jianhong, then at the residents of Shelter 404 standing nearby, and finally at the crew members of the Glory who were hesitating over whether to return to the submarine. "In any case..." "Come inside and talk." ... In the waters near Coral City, severed limbs and shattered debris drifted across the craggy seafloor. Two massive mechanical crabs crouched against the reef. One had lost three legs, while the other had only three remaining. Static hissed across the communications channel. After a long silence, an intermittent voice drifted into Crawling Model Worker's ears. "...Model Worker." The voice sounded exhausted, yet carried a lingering trace of exhilaration. Like the aftermath of an intense, thrilling workout. No— This was far more exhilarating than that. Without a doubt, the force they had just wiped out was the aquatic mutants' elite trump card. Easily seven or eight hundred level 20 to 30 elite mobs. Though the cost had been devastating, wasn't this exact rush the reason they rolled with Brother Ji? Blood for the Blood God, skulls for the Skull Throne... and of course, long live the true Emperor! If only the three-day respawn cooldown would pass a little faster... And of course, if they could save their game before dying, that would be even better. Finally reconnecting, Crawling Model Worker shook his groggy head as he looked at the spiderweb of cracks covering the observation window, and replied. "Ah... I just reconnected. Dropped out for a second." The other end of the line was quiet for a beat, followed by a mocking snort. "Damn... beat to hell after just one hour?" "Shut up." Crawling Model Worker rolled his eyes and began checking his remaining three mechanical legs. Of the nineteen King Crabs, only two were left, both heavily crippled. Looking at the few remaining icons in the team roster, Crawling Model Worker held his breath for a long moment before cursing under his breath. "This armor is absolute garbage!" "*Cough*... Hahahaha!" "What the hell are you laughing at?!" "Blaming your gear when your skill's trash... *cough*, but to be fair, these things really don't handle as well underwater as on land. The mobility is genuinely miserable." Unlike the curved, fluid maneuvers of the aquatic mutants, the King Crabs moved mostly in straight lines. As a result, water surged erratically around them, which not only telegraphed their attack directions to the enemy but also wasted immense mechanical energy fighting drag. In contrast, those elite mutants were far nimbler underwater, darting around the reefs like fish. Especially when armed with underwater rifles, portable torpedo launchers, thermite charges, and other weapons capable of breaching the King Crab's armor, combat became extraordinarily tricky. Recalling the fierce battle, Crawling Model Worker sighed. "...Turns out beaches really are the home turf for crabs. These things would probably be great for amphibious landings." Over the comms: "+1. Slap on a nitrogen shield or a deflector shield and it'd be even better... Sigh, gotta grind more tasks for the Scientific Expedition when we get back." A defeat in one or two fights was nothing; three days later, they would return even stronger. Facing the silent abyss and the corpses floating around them, the player sitting in the cockpit suddenly thought of something and asked over the channel: "Say, what do we do now?" Model Worker paused, equally stumped. "No idea..." Only the two of them were left in the entire squad. While the remaining wreckage had salvage value, the two of them alone couldn't possibly haul it back. The King Crab amphibious armor was purely personal equipment; it possessed no long-distance transit capability. Hobbling back to Port French Fries on those few broken legs would take until the game's open beta. Just as Model Worker debated whether to log off on the spot or wait for the Dolphin to fish them out, the sonar sensors on the King Crab's hull picked up an abnormal disturbance descending from above. The noise was very faint. Had it not been close enough, their sonar system might not have registered it at all. Crawling Model Worker snapped his head up to see a submarine gliding slowly in from the north. The sound of a gulp came through the comms. "That's..." Crawling Model Worker said with difficulty, "Eighty percent chance it's a Federation sub... Stay down, don't move, and shut down all equipment!" While aboard the Dolphin earlier, they had caught the broadcast from North Island. Unsurprisingly, the Northern Federation under Zhalas had aligned with the Torch. In other words, this submarine was very likely sent to reinforce the mutants blockading this area. At that thought, Model Worker's heart sank. In just a few short hours, those bastards had already dragged themselves out of their initial chaos. Had they hesitated even an hour longer back at Port French Fries, the force intercepting the Dolphin wouldn't have been a swarm of mutants, but a genuine nuclear fusion-powered attack submarine! The two King Crabs lay motionless amid the wreckage, going completely silent. The submarine had clearly spotted them; a bright beam of light shone squarely over their heads. Model Worker felt his heart hammering against his ribs and held his breath. Fortunately, the behemoth hovering not far overhead didn't seem to think they were still alive. After sweeping the area once, it abandoned the search. The enemy's sonar was undoubtedly still active. Model Worker didn't dare restart the engine, nor did he dare communicate with his teammate. What he needed most right now was to serve as a quiet observer ward planted here for as long as possible, using the official forum to relay the situation to Tail and the others who might already be inside Shelter 70. The submarine appeared wary of something; shortly after flicking on its searchlight, it hastily switched it off, swung around, and began cruising westward. Just as Crawling Model Worker wondered what the vessel was up to, his sonar sensors caught another faint acoustic trace. The ripple vanished almost instantly, so fast it felt like an illusion! Vaguely, as he peered upward, Model Worker seemed to glimpse a dark silhouette streaking silently overhead. Then, that silhouette slammed square into the side of the submarine and erupted in a blinding flash of fire! *BOOM—!* The roar of the explosion rolled in with a violent torrent of displaced water, blasting both him and his lone surviving teammate off the seabed reefs from hundreds of meters away. A fireball of eerie hues burned fiercely in the deep sea. The water surrounding the submarine boiled furiously, churning up dense clouds of bubbles. The submarine, having taken a direct hit to its flank, appeared to have a massive breach torn open. The inward-caving armor groaned under intolerable strain as the vessel lost power, listing on its side and plummeting toward the depths. Refusing to yield, it launched two torpedoes in rapid succession into the pitch-black waters. Yet judging by the plumes of fiery detonations, the two torpedoes clearly hit nothing, detonating uselessly against a sheer cliff face. Having finally stabilized his tumbling chassis, Crawling Model Worker stared at the submarine crashing heavily onto the sea floor, his eyes nearly popping out of his skull. "Holy shit?!" What the hell? The boss got one-shot the second it spawned?! Though even if the NPC hadn't stolen the kill, he hadn't figured out how the hell they were supposed to farm a boss like that anyway... ... "Beautiful!" At the very same moment, inside the command center of the Anle Island naval base, the tense, suffocating atmosphere was shattered by a resounding cheer. Even Commander Li Minghui, whose brow had remained furrowed all along, involuntarily relaxed his knitted eyebrows. The Northern Federation fleet wasn't the only force that had shaken off confusion and entered combat readiness; Anle Island's fleet had done the same. If anything, compared to an aggressive pretender like Zhalas, they were the professional military men truly adept at fighting wars. Factoring in the Church of the Torch's interest in Coral City, they had immediately deduced that Torch vessels or mutants might exploit the Federation's internal chaos to slip through. Thus, they had decisively dispatched the two nuclear attack submarines docked at Anle Island—the Shark Teeth and the Polar. They hadn't expected to miss the mutants, only to hook an even bigger fish! Before long, a transmission signal arrived from the waters near Coral City. "This is Shark Teeth... Cold Night has been sunk. We will maintain silence." Suppressing the excitement in his chest, Li Minghui clenched his fist on the command table and replied with a grave expression: "...Command copies! Watch for their destroyers, and remember your primary objective! That battleship!" The Northern Federation possessed only one nuclear submarine: the Cold Night! Now, all three remaining submarines were in his hands! Counting one cruiser and two destroyers, their military strength remained at a disadvantage against North Island, but they had at least clawed back a portion of the edge. Meanwhile, across the water on North Island of the Northern Federation, Zhalas listened to his subordinate's report in the Presidential Palace before cursing loudly and slamming his pen onto the nautical chart. "Worthless pieces of trash!" The Cold Night sunk! The sole nuclear submarine in his possession had been thrown away in its very first engagement! Though the overall advantage remained firmly in his grasp, this was unmistakably a terrible omen. Glancing at the subordinate standing frozen beside him, Zhalas barked at the top of his lungs: "Tell the shipyard to start construction immediately! Damn the costs—throw every scrap of material we have into it!" The North Island shipyard held several unfinished projects, including a destroyer whose main structural frame was already complete. If rushed, they could have it steaming out of harbor within two months. As for raw materials... Mining the seabed deposits might be difficult under present circumstances, but Haiya Province could cover part of the deficit for them. Zhalas retrieved the ballpoint pen from the table, planted both hands on the chart, and furrowed his brows in deep thought. Perhaps... He could leverage North Island's industrial strength to equip their allies—such as providing those "fishermen" with decent gear. That seemed far more practical than rushing out a few destroyers. Seeing the president in such a towering rage and the half-dried blood still smeared on the desk, the aide dared not utter a single word of protest. Trembling, he snapped his back straight and delivered a military salute. "Yes, sir!"