This Game Is Too Real
Chapter 622: Unfortunately, the People Who Didn’t Get to See the New World

Chapter 622: Chapter 622: Unfortunately, the People Who Didn’t Get to See the New World

Every design aspect of Shelter No. 117 was dedicated to the reconstruction of the surface, complete with an exaggerated atrium structure and a dome that simulated day and night, while the majority of residents lived in a cylindrical apartment block.

Now, this place had become the nesting ground for Ghost-faced Insects.

Fortunately, these creatures hadn’t formed a beehive-like society, not governed by a unified hive mind.

Otherwise, the alliance’s players might have been "crunched" by tens of thousands of Ghost-faced Insects the moment they entered the shelter.

They didn’t immediately begin the search of Shelter No. 117.

I Max Black first reorganized the hundred reinforcements brought up from the surface by Springs, had "Kakarot" place light machine guns with sixty men around the edge of the atrium, while he himself wore the K-10 "Iron Wall" exoskeleton and led twenty Strength Type and Body Constitution System brothers into the fully enclosed elevator shaft.

Bell, riding the quadruped robot, stayed close by his side, watching as everyone threw ropes down the elevator shaft, the machine’s leg stepping in first.

I Max Black was startled by its sudden movement but quickly realized that it hadn’t fallen in. Instead, it was firmly perched on the wall.

The soles of those four legs seemed to be coated with some special adhesive material, allowing it to ascend and descend almost vertically in the elevator shaft.

"Your mount’s got something special."

Surprised, I Max Black extended his right hand toward it, wanting to see if it could also support him.

But Bell managed to evade the incoming hand with ease, as if it had eyes on its back, with just a light sway of its body.

"Don’t bother trying. I can’t carry you. You’d better watch your step, the deeper it goes, the more of those little darlings there are."

I Max Black instinctively shone his flashlight downward, thankful that the vertical walls of the shaft did not bear the sight of any Ghost-faced Insects.

Relieved, he glared angrily at the guy riding on the back of the spider robot, while cautiously descending into the depths of the elevator shaft, gripping the rope tightly.

Finally, he reached level B40.

I Max Black knocked twice on the door with force, and the sealed alloy doors quickly made a creaking noise as they slowly opened to either side, controlled remotely by some Manager.

The moment the doors opened, a flurry of wing-fluttering noises came rushing toward them.

"Ch-ch-ch—"

"Damn!"

I Max Black, startled, swung backward while simultaneously grabbing the assault rifle hanging in front of his chest and spraying out bursts of gunfire.

Dozens of Ghost-faced Insects were killed instantly, but inevitably a few slipped through and charged into the elevator shaft.

To avoid ricochets injuring their own people, the players who had descended with I Max Black immediately drew their daggers and clubs to engage in close-hand combat with the nearby Ghost-faced Insects.

To be fair, the aggressiveness of these insects was exceptionally strong, and their abdominal stingers were as efficient as a nail gun.

However, facing the "Turtle-Shell Level" defense of the K-10 "Iron Wall" exoskeleton, the chitinous stingers were still somewhat lacking.

"Actually, these things aren’t as tough to deal with as imagined, just damn disgusting."

After prying off an insect trembling its stingers on his helmet, just like Teddy, one of the Strength Type guys disdainfully knocked it against the wall, smashing it into a puddle of dark green viscous fluid.

Another player, wiping the mucus from his dagger, joked with a smile.

"Truly, our captain’s sanity points are almost depleted."

"Hahaha."

"Shut up and do your work."

I Max Black rolled his eyes and swung his right fist forward, leading the nine men behind him to swing into the corridor behind the elevator doors.

The corridor was littered with insect skins shed from molting, as well as dark and grim metabolic waste.

In addition, there were scattered documents, desks, chairs, and cabinets used as cover thrown in the middle of the corridor, along with torn and fragmented clothing.

I Max Black gestured to advance, then pressed something on his helmet.

"Leave the storage on level B40 to us... Brother Chao, you take the others and continue downward to level B51 to retrieve the documents."

Tenken Chao’s voice came through the communication channel.

"Received!"

The twenty-man team split into two groups; ten followed Tenken Chao further down the elevator shaft for exploration, while I Max Black led the remaining ten forward.

Their objective was the Black Box located in the storage area at level B40.

Bell, perched atop the quadruped robot, pondered for a moment before also crawling into the corridor of level B40, pattering along the ceiling above everyone’s heads.

I Max Black paid it no mind, occasionally firing shots at the Ghost-faced Insects that flapped their wings and seemed ready to pounce, while also carefully checking every corner of the corridor.

Several lights were broken here.

The entire corridor flickered erratically, resembling the set of a horror film.

What was troublesome was that the main corridor was practically blocked by barricades and the remnants of arthropods, so they had to detour through an area that seemed like a residential zone.

Stepping over a toppled cabinet, I Max Black suddenly noticed a teddy bear lying beside the wall. The bear was torn in half.

Its stuffing had vanished, and judging from the bullet holes on the ground, its owner was probably turned into a sieve and soon after became nourishment for the insects.

The players following behind clicked their tongues.

"The combat was quite intense here."

Other players also muttered softly.

"Was it a fight for the Black Box?"

"Doesn’t seem like it..."

I Max Black also felt it was unlikely.

If it were for the Black Box, there was no need for the firefight to extend to this spot, two hundred meters from the warehouse entrance, nor was it necessary to sweep every room.

It didn’t seem like a fight for something at all.

Rather, it seemed like a "clean-up" operation.

Observing the doors ajar, I Max Black suddenly thought of something and said to the guide hanging above,

"Speaking of which, why design Shelter No.117 with a hollow center like a well? Isn’t a solid structure more space-efficient?"

The bell above their heads spoke slowly,

"Shelter No.117 is a shelter, not an apartment. From the day it was designed, its fate was sealed to end up in the rubbish heap. Like a chick breaking through its shell to see the real sun, if it doesn’t, it will never see it."

I Max Black, "How is that related?"

The bell let out a sharp, creaky laughter.

"Of course, it’s related. The immense atrium structure was prepared for the day it would collapse. When the Reconstruction Plan reaches the mid-phase, the ’tree’ will blow up the dome, allowing the structures above to fall into the atrium funneled by the box frame, creating an opening upwards."

"Then, the shelter will become a natural casting well, devouring all the rubbish above our heads."

Hearing this astonishing plan, I Max Black was stunned.

"Casting well?"

The bell’s voice had a hint of pride.

"Exactly, a well that casts everything, a vertical production base. In the planned project, raw materials would flow down into the well like a waterfall, transforming into what we need upon impact, then sent to the surface by elevators. And in the final phase of the plan, we would use it to construct a starship, nearly matching the diameter of the atrium, to follow in Pioneer’s steps and colonize more distant worlds."

I Max Black could only look up in disbelief.

"You had even planned for things like this."

The bell said mockingly,

"Of course, after all, the ’tree’ is omnipotent. It can schedule plans up to a thousand years ahead. It’s just that most people can’t keep up with its pace."

I Max Black, "..."

A player commented in disbelief,

"And here I thought this place only housed nuclear engineers."

The bell laughed heartily.

"Nuclear engineers? Ah... well, certainly there are. But do you really need thirty thousand people to maintain a fusion reactor? There are experts from all fields here, and their descendants."

I Max Black couldn’t help but ask, "Where are they?"

For some reason, the bell suddenly fell silent, though it quickly resumed its chatter, skillfully diverting the topic to other matters.

I Max Black always felt there was something off with it, but since the control of the shelter had already transferred, he wasn’t particularly worried about this individual.

Just then, a broken voice came through the communication channel.

"The VM in the Manager’s Office has been recovered... Damn, there must be hundreds of bugs here. How much longer for you guys?"

I Max Black glanced at the map on the VM. The entrance to the warehouse was not far ahead.

And according to the surveillance footage provided by the Manager, there seemed to be about thirty to forty Ghost-faced Insects waiting for them.

"We’ll be there soon."

Super Puncher: "Need help?"

I Max Black glanced around.

"No need, those little bugs can’t hurt us. The only trouble is that the terrain here is too damned complicated; the obstacles are more of a hassle than the bugs."

Super Puncher: "Alright, then be careful yourselves... We’ve already copied the data from the VM into the shelter’s server, and since we have some time, we’re planning to check out that ’branch’ on level B100."

The control of the shelter had been secured by the Manager before they set foot inside, which was why they were able to maintain communication with the outside world from within the shelter.

As long as the data from the VM was uploaded to the shelter’s server, everything, including the Administrator’s Log, could be synced to the outside.

What puzzled I Max Black was, since Shelter No. 117’s Manager was clearly not a human, why would there be something like a vital signs monitor.

Moreover, what was most suspicious was that even though the Manager itself resided as an AI within the shelter’s server, its log wasn’t on the shelter’s server but saved on an offline portable storage device.

It was too strange.

However, no matter what, obtaining the Black Box was the most urgent matter.

"...Got it, level B100 is all yours then; be careful as well." After a casual remark, I Max Black ended the communication and turned to look at his teammates behind him.

"Super Bro has got things handled, we need to pick up the pace too!"

The team responded with a burst of enthusiastic agreement.

"Roger that!"

...

Over a hundred players from the Storm Corps were still busy grumbling and digging graves in the ruins of Shelter No. 117 located in the Underground District 4 of the New Area.

Meanwhile, far away in Camp 101, Chu Guang, who was peering at the screen, had already obtained the Manager’s Log that his players had retrieved from the Manager’s Office through Xiao Qi.

Unlike the Administrator’s Logs obtained from other shelters, the log from Shelter No. 117 was less like the personal and colorful "last words" and more like the instruction manual that came with the packaging of a television, which virtually no one would bother to read in detail.

The opening of the log concisely and clearly outlined the functions of Shelter No. 117, including the management privileges held by "The Tree," the resources enjoyed by Shelter No. 117 and the obligations it had to fulfill, as well as the rules the residents had to follow.

Chu Guang quickly skimmed through the tedious content and extracted some key points, getting a basic understanding of Shelter No. 117’s "game rules."

Simply put, if this shelter were compared to a prison, then "The Tree" would be the warden of the prison, and the "Watchers" its alarm system.

The former was in charge of administration, the latter of execution.

The number of the latter was mainly determined by the number of residents in the shelter; aside from the initial 300 Watchers, for every additional hundred residents, one more Watcher position was automatically created.

The goal of Shelter No. 117 was clear, to execute the Wasteland reconstruction plan after being sealed for sixty-three years.

Although taking in survivors at the moment of the nuclear strike was indeed part of the plan, the shelter had no obligation to save anyone.

And that’s why Shelter No. 117, from the start, was almost the opposite of the "overloaded" Shelter No. 117.

"The Tree" implemented the predetermined "protection program" without hesitation, and after completing the reception plan for 30,300 residents, had the "Watchers" exile all residents who did not have a registration number to the outside.

The inventory system showed a record of tranquilizer gun withdrawals from the stockpile on the day the shelter was sealed, indicating the exile process was anything but peaceful.

But it wasn’t a peaceful time anyway, so discussing this had no meaning in itself.

Thirty thousand residents spent three anxious days in the shelter, and on the fourth day were informed that the world had already been destroyed in nuclear war, including the United Human, and all old orders no longer existed, and it would be at least sixty-three years before the outside world would again be habitable.

At this point, Chu Guang felt a hint of doubt.

Because this was at odds with what he had learned from the memories of Eure as well as from other shelter Administrator’s Logs.

The War had not lasted three days, but a full three years.

Until the end of the three-year war and the establishment of the Post-War Reconstruction Committee, the world had not truly become the Wasteland, and various organizations and institutions of the United Human were still operating to their fullest extent.

However, Chu Guang’s confusion was soon answered.

It was also part of "The Tree’s" decision-making.

A Watcher with a bio-information registration number of "Klerg" left three lines of annotation next to this piece of information.

[This was the wisest decision. The Great Tree convinced the restless residents with only three sentences. Under its will, we showed the residents evidence of the apocalypse, the scenes of Clear Spring City struck by nuclear attacks as hellish as Hell. After seeing the truth, they soon gave up all unrealistic fantasies, accepted the hard-to-swallow cookies, canned food, and freeze-dried vegetables, and the fact that they would no longer have android servants waiting on them.]

[The only thing that puzzles me is, what is so hard to swallow about the cookies and freeze-dried vegetables, and what exactly did they eat before? Unfortunately, "The Tree" erased all image data from the old era, and I have only heard bits and pieces about the Prosperity Epoch from my grandfather. Both he and I firmly believe that era is gone forever.]

[To continue down this thorny path, we can only wholeheartedly maintain our belief.]

"Klerg."

Chu Guang whispered the name to himself, and suddenly thinking of something, said, "Xiao Qi, help me pull up this person’s information."

"Sure thing!"

Perched on his shoulder, Xiao Qi eagerly responded and swiftly brought up the man’s file, projecting it on one side of the holographic screen.

Chu Guang looked straight at the employment date in the file.

According to the record, he was conferred the position of "Manager" in the 53rd year of the Wasteland Era, at that time just 24 years old.

It’s interesting to note, the timing coincided with the second year after the lake waters of Western Province flooded into the tunnels. The climate on the Wasteland had begun to show signs of revival, and there were only seven years left until the lifting of the shelter’s lockdown.

The days were slowly getting better.

The appointment of a new Manager suggested that the population of Shelter No.117 was growing, and that the environment here likely wasn’t too terrible.

Out of curiosity about the past of this shelter, Chu Guang shifted his focus from the report on the "Tree" to this Manager named "Klerg". He asked Xiao Qi to help arrange this additional information in chronological order and cross-reference it with the Administrator’s Log.

He soon discovered that, compared to the straightforward records left by the "Tree", this Manager Klerg provided a completely different perspective.

"... The consumption of resources for thirty thousand people is astronomical, especially since the residents from the Prosperity Epoch have demands for material goods beyond our current imagination. The Great Tree can monitor their physical and mental health, but can’t afford to assign a health assistant to each one of them. We can only start by lowering their expectations for the future, then let them gradually adapt to their new lives."

"My grandfather, under the instructions of the Great Tree, used those exiles to warn the fortunate survivors that stayed behind. Shelter 100 has no obligation to shelter anyone; it belongs to everyone who suffers but not to any one person. If you do not want to struggle miserably like those poor wretches curled up in the garbage at the subway station, then you must obey the ’Tree’s’ command unconditionally, and obey our commands unconditionally."

"In the initial fifty, our achievements were remarkable. Both the correctness of the Great Tree and our devotion were tested by time. Our creation, ’Crunchy’, could nearly completely recycle all metabolic waste. Our ’Wolf Spider’ robots and ’Buprestis’ Engineering Armor were capable of climbing up and down nearly vertical shafts, taking over the high-difficulty construction work that the shelter’s equipment couldn’t handle — something not even anticipated by the Great Tree."

"It turns out that our creativity was enough to make the AI of the Prosperity Epoch drop its jaw—if it had one."

"Please don’t laugh out loud. I am seriously talking about this. You who were born with hundreds of colonies cannot comprehend the embarrassment of lacking resources. It’s like tens of thousands of people crammed into an isolated space station where we have to meet everyone’s basic needs with limited resources and space, at least preventing most people’s standard of living from declining too rapidly. And even in such dire circumstances, we still created a series of unimaginable technological achievements."

"Even today, I still remember the joy of becoming a Manager, as if a child had grown up overnight and become the omnipotent hero from the stories he grew up reading. Before long, I would, like my forefathers, lead those intelligent and capable residents to create more incredible wonders."

"However, there always seems to be a disparity between reality and ideals. Those clever residents believe they are wiser than the ’Tree.’ They don’t respect us as Managers at all, even cursing us as AI’s servants, calling us ’Tree Men’, saying we are nothing like humans except in appearance."

"Actually, if I think about it, perhaps from that time on, I should have noticed where the real problem lay. We had long drawn a clear line between us and those ’Worker Ants’; we were never the same kind of people."

"This shelter is like a prison; their sentence is sixty-three years, while ours is forever. The identity of a Manager is bestowed on us by the shelter. We do the dirtiest work but also enjoy some special privileges. But once this shelter fulfills its mission and collapses as designed in the end, everything will vanish into thin air."

"When those Worker Ants will not punish an AI, we will all be held accountable by them, after all, the records of our exiling those survivors could never be erased—not even by the Manager."

"So you can imagine how anxious we have become as the sixty-three-year term draws near. And how thrilled we were when the waters of Western Province Lake flooded into the subway station, reaching the doorstep. We had perfected this shelter to last forever, and it will continue to improve. All we need to do is, like those cunning Worker Ants, exploit bugs that the ’Tree’ did not anticipate, delaying its decision to open the shelter’s doors."

"In fact, we succeeded, extending the sixty-three-year term to seventy years. We’ll prolong this time as much as possible until we find a way out, ideally making it last forever. But at the time, none of us expected that the obedient Worker Ants would react so violently, even going so far as to plant poison needles under the cute ’Crunchy’ or turning the ’Buprestis’ pincers into shields and blades."

"A ridiculous farce errupted that took everyone by surprise, but on reflection, we might be the most ridiculous of all. We were entirely preoccupied with the crises the shelter faced every day, completely forgetting what the shelter’s original purpose was."

[As you stand in the museum, you see that we are eternally left in this cage.]

[We can never go out again.]

—Klerg, the pitiful man who never got to see the new world, the last prison guard of Shelter 100, the final survivor of the Tree People.

Reading Klerg’s notes to the end, Chu Guang fell silent for a moment.

He didn’t think the fellow deserved any pity, but such an ending was indeed absurd for this Shelter.

Just then, Xiao Qi, who was perched on Chu Guang’s shoulder, suddenly let out a light exclamation.

"...Strange."

Lifting his head from the holographic screen, Chu Guang looked at it.

"What’s wrong now?"

The Shelter had its share of occasional malfunctions, and this was not the first time Xiao Qi had reported an error.

However, this time, a strange expression appeared on its face.

"The fault display shows a communication module overload; our transmitted data has triggered some threshold, and Shelter 100’s connection with the outside world has been protectively cut off... But this is strange. We’re not using a large amount of data. Unless someone deliberately set that threshold very low."

The Shelter itself was a massive Faraday cage that could block even high-energy particles, let alone electromagnetic waves with minute radiation.

The players’ communication devices couldn’t directly connect to external radios; they had to exchange information with the outside world through a special channel.

The doors being opened or closed made no difference.

In other words, once this channel was blocked, the entire Shelter would become an informational black hole for a certain period.

Put simply, their signal appeared to have been artificially cut off.

Looking at Xiao Qi’s subtle expression, Chu Guang’s expression became subtle as well.

Well, well...

Here we go again!

——

(Thanks to the chief ally "Chicken Nest Sugar DE" for the reward!!!)

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