Kingdom of Corrosion
Chapter 494 - 251: Faint Light of Night

Chapter 494: Chapter 251: Faint Light of Night

Clearing out the zombies near the office building was a task completed by five in the evening. Before this, taking more than 20 minutes meant someone was slacking off. Facing the sun, Maya stretched out her finger and looked for a while, saying, "Sunset is in an hour and a half."

Lin Wu found this curious, and leaned in asking, "Why?"

Maya instructed, "Stretch out your hand, put your finger between the sun and the horizon. One finger represents half an hour."

After trying, Lin Wu asked, "How big is the margin of error?"

Maya replied, "Around 15%."

While they were talking, the system broadcast released a message: Special reminder, please pay attention to the luminance value per square meter at the base command center, Kandera. For specific details, please refer to the game manual.

The full score for luminance value is 100. With the sun present, it can reach the highest value. Bases with electricity generally have a night-time score of 60-80. Most luminance values don’t have an impact. The only significant impact is from luminance values at 10 or below, which the system refers to as ’Twilight Night.’

A luminance value below 10 is equivalent to being outdoors without lighting, no moon, and just the stars in the sky. During this phase, Night Demons appear, specifically attacking players in the dark. What about using a flashlight? Night Demons will avoid flashlight beams. If you can go out with a lamp of some sort, Night Demons won’t attack you.

This setting targets two main subjects, one is players who go out at night, the other is bases without fires. Without electricity, you must light a fire. Of course, Lin Wu wanted to complain, but Little White Rabbit explained that night dangers made sense.

The animal Lin Wu least wanted to face was definitely the Black Bear. The zombie Lin Wu least wanted to confront was undoubtedly the Night Demon. These creatures are swift and fierce in attack, can merge with the darkness, and their intelligence is ranked first among zombies.

In the past encounters with Night Demons in Sewer No. 99, they hid in dark places to ambush passing players. Theoretically, it’s not wrong for Dawn to release Night Demons during ’Twilight Night.’ However, releasing such powerful zombies clearly intended to give hardcore players a challenge.

Lin Wu remembered what Maya had said, "Things are going to get worse." Lin Wu had only understood this on one level, but now it seemed that because too many people were doing well, Dawn had released Hardcore Mode to test and assess hardcore players again.

To use an inappropriate analogy, Lin Wu originally thought that as long as everyone scores 90 points, they would all get into high school. Now Lin Wu realizes that it’s not important how many points he scores, what’s important is how much others score and what his ranking is. Even if a hundred Einsteins participated in the exam, a certain percentage of them must be eliminated.

Of course, Lin Wu believed that Dawn would give players a chance of survival, providing a certain margin for error, but if the number of eliminated players didn’t reach Dawn’s psychological expectations, they might increase the difficulty again.

Maya unexpectedly opposed Lin Wu’s idea. She thought he was overthinking it and believed that Dawn had already set the difficulty level and wouldn’t change it. The evidence was that she noticed the updated luminance values—Dawn had, according to the number of base members, placed an appropriate number of light meters at the command center. Therefore, the release of Night Demons was not a spur-of-the-moment decision by Dawn, but something that had been planned all along.

The system broadcast further corroborated Maya’s view, stating that since today was the first Twilight Night, it was the reason for the special reminder to all players. The visibility in the wilderness is around 5 points, players please be vigilant.

Back at the base, Dashuang went to the command center to check and explained that the command center could see the luminance value of the entire base, including safe zones. Currently, all areas of the base are at least above 60. The highest luminance value is 95. When the sun enters the clouds, the maximum luminance value drops to 70.

Peanut said on the channel, "Don’t worry, we have streetlights all around this area."

Lin Wu disagreed, "There are a lot of blind spots." Lin Wu had multiple encounters with Night Demons, and although his battle record was overwhelmingly positive, the process was not honorable. It was either killing Night Demons by using sunlight reflection during the daytime or being alerted by Wai.

Maya agreed, "During Twilight Night, it’s forbidden to go out unless necessary. Have you found the clue?"

Cotton replied, "Here, with me."

This office building had long adopted digital management, but since there was no power supply, computers couldn’t be turned on. Furthermore, the computers were labeled as damaged, so probably even with electricity, they wouldn’t work. To locate Warehouse 307, they could only search for paper documents.

Everyone headed to the office Cotton was tasked with searching, where several folders lay open on a desk. Cotton passed the drawings obtained to Maya. Maya unfolded the map and found that the warehouse area had been remodeled multiple times. Some of the warehouse numbers could be traced, while others were just numbers.

On the east side of the warehouse area, there was a small dock that simply extended about ten meters into the sea. This simple platform could allow several small boats to dock. The purpose of the dock was naturally to transport goods through sea or by using small boats on the Left County River.

The warehouse area had a row of warehouses built along the eastern coast, separate from other warehouses. Warehouse No. 307 was located closest to the small dock, being the most convenient for water transportation. Presumably, due to this feature, it was requisitioned by the Anti-virus Command.

The difficulty was, Lin Wu and the others entered from the north and were at least three hundred meters away from Warehouse 307, having to cross through half the warehouse area. The density of zombies on this route was high; relying on two assassins and the Repeating Crossbow for advancement, it was uncertain how many hours it would take. Moreover, if a horde was triggered, they could be surrounded with no escape and no way out.