This Game Is Too Real
Chapter 333: The Fuel Rods Hidden in the Basement

Chapter 333: Chapter 333: The Fuel Rods Hidden in the Basement

The gunfire and explosions in the underground garage had finally ceased.

A man, draped in beast skin and wearing a string of teeth around his neck, was dragged out of the garage entrance by two junior players, one on each side.

Even though he was covered in blood and his hands were bound, he was still chattering away nonstop.

However, it was unfortunate that his efforts were in vain, as the surrounding players couldn’t understand a word he was saying.

As a war criminal, he would be sent to the City of Dawn to face trial under the laws of the New Alliance.

After that, the gallows of justice awaited him.

Apart from Fox Tooth, a total of 282 stubborn Looter’s were killed.

It wasn’t that no one wanted to surrender; there simply was no opportunity to do so.

The cruel street fighting was like a rolling meat grinder, especially in pitch-dark environments like the underground garage. Capturing prisoners was out of the question, let alone avoiding friendly fire; no one was holding back.

Both the Death Legion and the vanguard Ape Tooth Tribe had suffered significant casualties.

Looking at his subordinates coming out of the underground garage dirty and disheveled, Monkey Fang’s face was full of pain.

That brutal bout of street fighting had reduced his tribe by twenty percent, leaving behind 200 bodies...

But seeing Fox Tooth’s miserable fate, the pang in his heart instantly disappeared.

It was a necessary sacrifice.

It was all worth it...

Unlike the conflicted Monkey Fang and the Cannon Fodder’s who barely survived.

The players who came out of the underground garage, though they too had suffered casualties, sported a completely different demeanor.

"Sprayers are the best!"

"Indeed! Too strong in street fighting!"

"The LD-47 is a bit weak in close combat, it over-penetrates unequipped Looters."

"It’s actually not bad, right? A sweep usually does the job, if not with one shot, then two."

"Let’s get Mosquito to make us a sprayer, damn, the captured guns are too hard to reload ammo for!"

"+10086."

The surviving players excitedly exchanged their battlefield experiences and quickly reached a consensus on one thing.

The New Alliance needed to add a shotgun to the standard equipment for trench clearing and underground bunkers!

And chlorine gas bombs.

Although inhumane, it didn’t matter in the Game; whatever worked best was the way to go.

After all, without it, their gas masks were just an ornament, utterly useless.

While the players were boasting, a Picheng paratrooper from the Jungle Corps approached and asked a buddy,

"Where’s Big Eyes? Why didn’t he come out with you guys?"

At the mention of Big Eyes, everyone stopped in their tracks.

"Big Eyes?"

"Hahaha!"

"You mean that Simpleton who roasted himself? Hahahaha, stop, let me laugh for a while."

Watching a construction worker and a bricklayer laughing to the point of crouching on the ground, the Picheng paratrooper was momentarily stunned, then his expression changed.

"Fuck!"

"My flamethrower!"

The players who had initially restrained their laughter, burst out laughing upon hearing this...

While the Picheng brother mourned his flamethrower, soldiers from the Second Corps were busily moving war trophies and slaves from the Fourth New Area to the southern part of the city.

When Yin Fang saw the photos sent by Chu Guang, he dropped a "Don’t touch anything," and then hurried over from Shelter No. 404 in Qingquan City.

With no direct transport, he first took a train, then hitched a ride on a truck transporting building materials in Qingstone County, finally arriving in West State just before dark.

At the edge of the Four New Area, at the entrance to the only villa area not submerged by the lake.

Without waiting for the raft to dock steadily, Yin Fang jumped off.

The air was filled with a foul stench, flies buzzed beside the road, and the whole area resembled rotting flesh soaked in a sewage ditch.

Seeing the bloody graffiti and totems made of human bones around him, Yin Fang shivered subconsciously and couldn’t help but complain.

"...Can people really live in a place like this?"

"You’ve seen Looter’s before," Chu Guang, standing beside him, had already turned on the air circulation system in his power armor, utterly ignoring the pungent smell around.

"I have indeed seen them, but now I have a new understanding..." Enviously glancing at Chu Guang’s power armor, Yin Fang coughed lightly and continued, "Where’s that thing?"

"Follow me."

Leaving these words behind, Chu Guang led the way, taking Yin Fang back to Golden Tooth’s villa, and went straight to the basement warehouse.

The war trophies inside the villa had been moved out, but this basement warehouse remained untouched.

Scattered parts filled the warehouse, and half-dismantled bionic robots and some quirky gadgets were visible.

However, the most eye-catching thing was undoubtedly the device in the center of the warehouse, resembling a gas cylinder.

Its outer shell was orange, and its material was indiscernible; Chu Guang had studied it for a long time and still couldn’t understand its purpose.

However, upon seeing it, Yin Fang’s face instantly lit up with joy.

"The storage tank for fuel rods! Exactly! Thank God, I’m glad you didn’t mess with this thing!"

Fuel rod storage tank?!

Hearing these words, Chu Guang froze for a moment, then nervously said.

"Will it explode?"

"Explode? What are you thinking? It’s not easy to trigger a fusion reaction, not to mention this is fuel from a third-generation reactor. It’s safe from any angle... and, of course, extremely valuable."

Yin Fang stepped forward, crouched in front of the device that looked like a gas cylinder, found the interface, and connected a VM-modified touchpad.

After some operations, the screen lit up.

"103.9 kilograms... unbelievable!" Yin Fang’s voice trembled with excitement as he looked at the characters and numbers on the touchpad.

"103 kilograms of what?" Chu Guang reflexively asked.

"Helium-3! 103 kilograms of Helium-3!" Yin Fang excitedly stood up and looked back at Chu Guang, "We’re rich!"

Hearing what Yin Fang said, Chu Guang instinctively held his breath.

Although he had no concept of over a hundred kilograms of Helium-3, he understood the implication of getting rich from Yin Fang’s words.

He swallowed and continued,

"100 kilograms of Helium-3... what does that mean?"

"What does it mean?" Yin Fang took a deep breath, trying to calm himself, and said, "Well, let me put it this way, a slightly better reactor can generate about 1 billion degrees of electricity from one kilogram of Helium-3! What do you think that means?"

"A billion?!"

One ton of coal can generate about 3000 degrees of electricity.

So a billion degrees of electricity... 330 thousand tons of coal?

kilograms of Helium-3 equals about 33 million tons of coal?

Of course, this analogy isn’t accurate, but it serves as an easy reference.

Looking at the gas cylinder in front of him... no, it should be said, the fuel rod, Chu Guang felt dizzy.

Happiness came too suddenly.

He didn’t know what expression to make.

Yin Fang also felt the same, caressing the gas cylinder, his face betraying a hint of obsession.

"Such rich, pure Helium-3, I’ve been a prospector for so many years, and this is the first time I’ve seen such. Getting some Helium-3 is really hard, and the lunar flights have been stopped for over 200 years... Where did this great stuff come from?"

As he spoke, Yin Fang looked expectantly at Chu Guang, clearly hoping to get an answer from him.

Unfortunately, Chu Guang didn’t know how to answer.

"...Asking me is useless, I also want to know where this came from," Chu Guang said with a strange expression on his face.

Based on intelligence gathered from captives, the Ya Clan mainly trades with the Bugra Free State.

There, backed by the Grand Canyon and located at the transportation hub of the northern plains of River Valley Province, theoretically anyone could conduct trade, and it was difficult to pinpoint who the specific seller was.

But, coming back to it, what was a Looter doing buying this stuff...

At that moment, Chu Guang noticed a pamphlet scattered nearby, so he reached out and picked it up.

The cover of the pamphlet read— "Galaxy Hunting."

What is this?

After reading the title, Chu Guang paused, then flipped through it, his brows slightly furrowed.

"..."

Comics?

And it was a mecha-themed one at that.

Glancing at the bionic parts scattered on the ground, and the iron frame leaning against the wall, Chu Guang suddenly realized something, his expression subtly changing.

Holy moly.

Are they planning to build a Gundam?!

On closer inspection, that iron frame wasn’t some kind of container, but clearly a mechanical leg and arm laid horizontally.

Only, because of its overly abstract craftsmanship, he hadn’t recognized it at first.

Thinking this, an image came to mind for Chu Guang.

A scruffy man, holding a pre-war era comic book, standing in front of a poorly evolved baboon, peddling his scavenged junk—

"Brother, I see that you have an extraordinary skeletal structure. Here’s a secret martial arts manual. Since we are fated to meet, I’ll sell it to you for 1 million Dinar."

All one could say was that one dared to sell, and the other dared to believe.

"What’s up?" Seeing Chu Guang staring intently at the corner, Yin Fang curiously asked.

Chu Guang shook his head.

"Nothing..."

Since some people worship the Black Box as a deity, misinterpreting a pre-war comic book as a "Black Tech Guidebook" wasn’t too strange.

Looking again at the orange gas cylinder, Yin Fang enviously said,

"100 kilograms of Helium-3... If at the Academy, they would even trade Class A technology data for it."

Chu Guang: "Impossible trade, compared to the Class A technology we can’t use for now, I need energy more."

Yin Fang nodded, "Exactly, I wouldn’t advise you to sell it either. Given your current manufacturing standards, producing Class D technology is already a miracle, better be practical."

Higher technical content means higher costs, more complex processes, and a more extensive industrial chain.

For the New Alliance at this moment, the first priority is to develop productive forces, and only then consider high-end technology.

Technologies like solid Hydrogen, which are Class D, just might be more practical than Class A technologies like Metallic Hydrogen.

But what Chu Guang really wanted to complain about was, who says it’s a miracle that the New Alliance can produce Class D technology?

According to the Academy’s classification standards for pre-war technology, A3 aerospace aluminum should be considered Class C technology.

In other words, the industrial capability of the New Alliance has already reached the production of Class C technology!

Although only one type.

"This storage tank must have been removed from the fuel rod... Although I don’t know which fool did it, luckily all the parts are here and it shouldn’t be a problem to assemble,"

Yin Fang continued, looking at the scattered materials around him.

"Now what’s left to do is to find a way to find that reactor, and Shelter No. 404... I must say, I won’t be fixing that thing, I’m just a prospector, not a nuclear engineer."

Chu Guang said with a smile.

"Don’t worry about it, I’ve already arranged for someone to look for it."

"Really? That’s great."

Yin Fang sighed in relief.

His biggest headache on ordinary days was that this manager, whenever faced with a technical issue, regardless of whether it was his field of expertise or not, would always dump the problem on him to figure out.

What could he do?

Even within the same language, reading and writing are two entirely different concepts, let alone something complex and systematic like a controlled fusion reactor.

"...Putting the fuel rod back together will probably take some time, could you find some people to help me move these parts out of here?" Yin Fang pinched his nose and wrinkled his brow as he looked around, "The odor here is too strong, I don’t want to work in this haunted place."

It wasn’t just the smell.

This environment is like a haunted house, where setting up a stall at the door could directly collect admission tickets for business; no normal person would want to stay here longer.

"No problem."

Chu Guang nodded, flicking his index finger lightly and casually opening the map. He randomly selected a batch of lucky players from the nearby small players and issued a task to help move the items.

Ten people were needed in total, and the task completion would grant 10 silver, 10 contributions, and 50 points.

The task popup had just appeared and was snapped up in an instant.

Chu Guang suspected that these guys didn’t even read the content of the task and just accepted it without a word.

He opened the task details to check.

Well, 9 out of 10 were from the agile system.

That was too quick!

"...People will come to help you shortly, I have some things to do, so I won’t stay any longer."

As soon as he finished speaking, a pale blue popup suddenly appeared in front of Chu Guang.

[Task: Recover the VM of the manager of Shelter No. 404 (Device serial number, DNA verification record must match the information registered in the database)]

[Reward: 3500 DNA sequences.]

"activation codes"!

When Chu Guang saw the last line of the task reward, he clenched his fists excitedly.

The 3000 activation codes given when opening Floor B4 were almost running out.

With these additional 3500 DNA sequences, the player cap in "Wasteland OL" would increase from 3500 to 7000!

That’s a doubling!

Thinking of this, Chu Guang couldn’t help saying,

"Digging up graves is indeed the correct way to gain strength!"

However, this excitement did not last long, just half a minute later, Chu Guang had calmed down.

Based on the current intelligence, Shelter No. 404 was clearly not an abandoned, ownerless relic but an operational refuge.

That is to say, their manager was still alive.

Then the problem arose.

How to politely borrow his "vital signs monitor" from a still-living manager.

This device, in a sense, is like a person’s black box.

It not only holds DNA information but also likely contains work logs and the user’s personal privacy, akin to the 21st-century smartphone.

Chu Guang put himself in the other’s shoes and thought, if someone wanted to borrow his phone, he would be 100% reluctant. Even if the data inside were deleted, there would always be ways to restore it.

This task might not be so simple...

...

In a pitch-black tunnel, a group of people holding flashlights searched as they advanced.

Two hours ago, the Bugra small squad received the follow-up task for the[Fusion Reactor], following the NPC Wang Zhong to find the entrance to Shelter No. 404.

Also accompanying them was Lu Bei from the Guards Corps, representing the New Alliance in negotiations with Shelter No. 404.

Five players spread out around, protecting the two NPCs at the center of the team.

But this task was unexpectedly simple, hardly encountering any serious threats along the way.

The most dangerous variant they encountered was just a multilegged beast that had somehow run in.

For the most part, they encountered mutant rats and cockroaches...

Especially the former.

The entire West State City had almost become a rat’s paradise.

These little creatures were very weak in combat; a grenade could kill a group of them.

If they encountered any alone, they didn’t even need to shoot; close combat alone was enough to deal with them easily.

Kicking a mutant rat’s body aside, Night Ten said with a resigned expression,

"We should have brought Difficult for the strong with us."

Quit smoking scratched his head and said,

"Even if we brought him, it’d be useless. By the time he’s tamed the entire tunnel of rats, we would have had enough time to clear the entire map twice."

Difficult for the strong had shared a strategy on the official website before, to tame a mutant rat, one first needed to beat it barehanded until it showed its belly in defeat.

Similarly, theoretically, players of the Claw of Death could also tame a Claw of Death.

The premise was to subdue the opponent.

They didn’t understand the conversation of the others, so Wang Zhong, who was leading the way, thought they were getting impatient and hurriedly said,

"We’re almost there, just up ahead!"

Walking beside him, Lu Bei reassured him,

"No rush, take your time to remember the way, try not to get lost."

"Rest assured, sir, I have walked this route many times; I could find it even with my eyes closed!" Wang Zhong declared with confidence.

The group continued onward and finally reached their destination.

Wang Zhong stopped in front of an iron door and knocked on it.

There was no response from behind the door.

Wang Zhong looked a bit anxious and knocked again.

Watching the NPC’s movements, Night Ten whispered in a lowered voice,

"Should we just blow the door open?"

Hearing this, Fang Chang coughed lightly and said,

"This damn task has a ’unique’ tag, with failing it dropping our faction’s favor. I’d advise against causing trouble."

Quit smoking scratched his head,

"I kind of think Night Ten has a point. Haven’t all the residents of the refuge just hidden inside? This isn’t even the entrance to the refuge, how could there still be—"

Before he could finish, the iron door suddenly creaked and opened a crack.

A face peeked through the gap.

Seeing Wang Zhong at the door, the man was startled and said unexpectedly,

"Wang Zhong? You’re still alive?!"

Wang Zhong smiled excitedly,

"What are you talking about? ’Still alive?’ Are you chatting with a dead man?"

"Sorry... I misspoke," the man lowered his head and after a moment of silence, he asked, "Why are you here?"

Wang Zhong cheerfully replied,

"I came to bring you good news; the Barbarians have been handled!"

"They’ve been... handled?"

The man’s face showed surprise, as if he was struggling to believe it.

At that moment, he noticed the group of strangers beside Wang Zhong and his expression immediately became cautious.

"Who are these people...?"

"Lu Bei, commander of the New Alliance Guards," Lu Bei stepped forward and saluted as he introduced himself.

Following suit, Wang Zhong added,

"They are the ones who helped us drive out the Looters and even cured my wife’s illness. They’re now helping us rebuild our home. Also, the leader of the New Alliance is the manager of Shelter No. 404, so don’t worry, they are good people!"

Wang Zhong was sincere with his words.

Before the people of the New Alliance came, they had been barely surviving meal-to-meal.

Ever since the New Alliance arrived, not a single person in their community had died from starvation.

However...

That was just his feeling.

Watching the soldier beside Wang Zhong, the man standing behind the door was full of skepticism, not seeming to believe what he said and he didn’t continue talking.

The atmosphere became somewhat awkward.

At that moment, Fang Chang suddenly stepped forward with a friendly smile, attempting to greet him in awkward United Human language,

"...We are residents of Shelter No. 404, from the same era as you, and are pleased to meet our kin again..."

Fang Chang had crafted his words carefully in his mind, but still stumbled through them.

Old White, standing nearby, couldn’t help but cover his face, and Wild Wind, who hadn’t spoken up till now, sighed.

They were already skeptical of whether he was from the refuge, yet he had to flaunt his half-baked United Human language.

If you can’t speak properly, better keep your mouth shut!

Night Ten muttered under his breath,

"...We should have worn our new outfits."

Wild Wind nodded,

"We indeed took it for granted."

Perhaps due to inadequate charm attributes, they unexpectedly failed to trigger the story.

However, at that moment, a miracle happened.

The man stared at Fang Chang for a while longer, and for some unknown reason, he believed the fanciful tale.

"...You do look like them, even though you’re not wearing blue jackets."

"Them?" Fang Chang was slightly stunned.

"Of course, the residents of the refuge," the man opened the door wider, "Let me introduce myself. I’m Terri, a resident of Camp 101, an employee hired by Shelter 101..."

"And a protected person."

——

(Thanks to the alliance leader "Lin Mei Mei Ya" for the reward!!)

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