This Game Is Too Real
Chapter 623: The Past of Shelter 100

Chapter 623: Chapter 623: The Past of Shelter 100

Shelter No. 100, Floor B40.

I Max Black led his team, finally getting through the mountain-like obstacles and metabolites, arriving at the dust-free storage where the Black Boxes were kept.

Seeing the mission coordinates on the map just within reach, all the players momentarily breathed a sigh of relief.

The straight line distance of less than 200 meters was even more arduous than a kilometer of cross-country, especially since insects suddenly emerging from the shadows were intermittently challenging their SAN values.

"I’m going to open the door."

Leaning on one side of the warehouse door, I Max Black gave a signal to a teammate on the other side, then punched the mechanical button to manually open the door.

Accompanied by a hissing leak of air, a dry airflow blew from the door, driving the dust clinging on the door cracks outward.

Several gun barrels quickly pushed through the door, flashlight beams swept through every corner of the dark room, confirming there was no threat, a look of surprise couldn’t help but appear on I Max Black’s face.

He initially thought there would be stringent security, even preparing for a hard fight, but the actual situation was completely opposite to what he had imagined.

Bell, who followed behind everyone, said without any hesitation.

"Positive pressure sealing is the basic configuration of a clean workshop, I thought you guys would have understood the moment you saw the wind blowing out that no dirt could mix into here."

After saying that, it crawled into the room on its own, operating a spider robot that extended a leg to press a switch on the inner side of the wall.

White light illuminated the entire dark room.

I Max Black awkwardly turned off his tactical flashlight, lowering the muzzle of his gun.

Strange...

Where did this sense of unease that started a while ago come from?

However, this weird feeling in his heart did not last long, it was almost instantly replaced by a surprise that followed.

In the spacious warehouse, near the side of the elevator, numerous Black Boxes of various sizes squarely stood.

Seeing those Black Boxes, the group of players following I Max Black’s eyes instantly lit up with green light, all letting out excited exclamations.

"Holy crap! One, two, three... twenty-nine?!"

"Awesome!"

Although the current version of Black Boxes does not support personal ownership by players, every time a new Black Box is recovered, all players on the server benefit.

Everything novel produced by the Black Boxes could be bought with Silver coins, and the items already available for purchase could also become cheaper or have lower purchasing thresholds because of the newly unlocked Black Boxes.

Even setting aside these impacts on the Alliance’s overall strength, players personally would also gain rich rewards of Silver coins and Contribution Points for recovering Black Boxes.

The only uncertainty now was how many of these Black Boxes were still functional.

The peak population of Shelter No. 100 had reached just over eighty thousand, the consumption of resources no less than that of a typical habitation.

A dust-free working environment and professionally trained operators could extend the life of the Black Boxes, but no Black Box could last forever.

I Max Black only prayed that these treasures of the pre-war civilization hadn’t been utterly squandered by the residents of Shelter No. 100.

Otherwise, they’d have nothing left to squander!

Leaving five teammates to guard the door, I Max Black took the remaining four into the warehouse, confirming the functions of the Black Boxes through a translator on the VM.

Actually, no translator was needed.

The design concept of the Black Boxes itself assumed that the user was completely illiterate, even a completely illiterate gorilla could operate them as intended based on the explanatory illustrations printed on the Black Boxes.

After a thorough check, out of the twenty-nine Black Boxes, twenty-two were still functioning normally.

However, what was surprising was that the broken ones were inexpensive and replaceable minor parts like the glowing panels of the dome and the filters of the ventilation system, while the really valuable "big items" had almost all been preserved.

Among these, the most delightful surprise for the players was undoubtedly the Black Boxes producing Type Five "Light Cavalry" and Type Six "Heavy Cavalry" exoskeletons!

These two sets of police equipment were not only stylish in appearance but also had excellent overall performance. Although not suited for intense battlefields, that wasn’t a big issue!

Just weld a steel plate to the chest, and it was OK!

Due to many advantages, these two sets of equipment had always been limited in quantity, only released in small batches with each version update.

Currently, only the Enlightenment Society faction across the entire Wasteland had these two kinds of pre-war equipment massively equipped.

I Max Black still remembered the battle in the Great Desert previously when the Alliance seized two hundred sets of "Type Five" from the Enlightenment Society, making the Manager extremely thrilled.

If he could transport these two Black Boxes back, wouldn’t he boost the faction boss’s favorability to heaven?!

See who dares to say I’m unlucky after this!

But the most delightful surprise was not just the Black Boxes producing "Type Five" and "Type Six" exoskeletons but those two big guys closest to the elevator.

One could produce a 50-ton high-thrust plasma engine, the other was able to produce an aviation-grade metallic hydrogen battery with a hydrogen storage capacity of up to 10 tons!

Finally understanding the function of these two Black Boxes, I Max Black couldn’t help but murmur joyfully to himself.

"Goodness! This time I’ve got to let Mosquito Brother’s eyes pop!"

Previously, the Alliance had recovered the "big plane" technology from the wreckage of the industrial Tiger Whale transport aircraft, but they hadn’t completely mastered it even now.

Even after absorbing engineers from Huge Rock Military Industry into the Alliance, the technological gap was daunting.

With Huge Rock Military Industry’s production capabilities, the maximum thrust provided by a single plasma engine was around five tons, equivalent to the propellers of pre-Prosperity Epoch helicopters.

As for a large aircraft like the Tiger Whale transport, which had a take-off weight of over a hundred tons, they’d need to connect twenty plasma engines produced by Huge Rock Military Industry!

Now, with these two Black Boxes, together with the electronic control system recovered from the Tiger Whale transport, the Alliance could finally assemble their own large plasma aircraft!

It’s no exaggeration to say, after Shelter No.79, this was the Alliance’s most bountiful grave-digging operation from the relics of the pre-war era!!

"The two Black Boxes were hardly ever used, after all, such high-powered engines and batteries are unnecessary in a shelter, and there’s not so much surplus material either. My master was once optimistic that the people who would uncover this coffin in the future might treat it as an antique to be collected, but it seems... you are indeed not joking, you don’t even have a hundred colonial planets, let alone having left the atmosphere."

Seeing I Max Black’s inexperienced expression, Bell walked up beside him and leisurely sassed him.

But I Max Black didn’t feel offended; instead, he chuckled sarcastically in return.

"So, what about you? You haven’t even left your doorstep."

Bell let out a giggling laugh.

"That’s not easy to say."

Seeing its mysteriously smiling face, I Max Black couldn’t help but feel a bit wary.

"What do you mean?"

Unconcerned about his wary expression, Bell spoke leisurely, as if telling a story.

"Didn’t you say that you saw Crunchy outside? The Ghost-faced Insects, as you call them. This indicates that they eventually succeeded. Hahaha, truly a persistent bunch, no wonder my master admired them so much."

Bell’s mood seemed quite pleased.

If an AI like this possesses something akin to emotions, that is.

I Max Black was stunned.

"Succeeded... what do you mean?"

"Just what it sounds like," Bell said with an easy chuckle, "Although they didn’t open the shelter’s main door, they still managed to leave this prison. It’s a pity, if only my master were still alive, he would surely laugh along with me."

They didn’t open the shelter’s main door.

But left the shelter?

I Max Black looked at Bell disbelievingly as it laughed with a metallic frictional sound.

Was there some other exit in this shelter?

"Is that even possible?"

"Why would you ask such a question?" Bell chuckled, "They have lived over fifty years in the shelter! Most were born here! They know every light bulb and even every screw here; anyone who could read could recite the rules of the shelter by heart... For them, finding a loophole here is easier than breathing."

I Max Black was speechless.

He had thought that the shelter’s defenses were absolute, but upon reflection, defenses and breaches are relative concepts.

How could there be something truly unbreakable in this world?

Even walls that could withstand nuclear strikes, given a million years with a chisel, would eventually be breached. And the people here had far sharper tools than chisels—their knowledge.

Suddenly, he seemed to realize something; his Adam’s apple involuntarily moved, and his hand holding the rifle trembled slightly.

"You mean, those insects could..."

"If the prison window isn’t big enough, then saw off an arm; if that’s still not enough, just send out the head... The ventilation system, huh? Quite a ’clever’ idea."

Bell tut-tutted twice, talking to itself, yet that relaxed and joyful metallic sound from a second ago, now carried a touch of faint solitude.

Or perhaps remorse.

Listening to its monologue, I Max Black understood everything.

Why, when he had earlier asked it where all those people had gone, this creature evasively shifted the topic...

In order to escape from this cage.

After arming the "Crunchies," they transformed themselves into "Crunchies" and through relentless effort, created just the right "crack" in the shelter’s ventilation system that was enough for them to escape and successfully broke out.

They had left this shelter many years ago.

The active Ghost-faced Insects outside the shelter were the most direct evidence.

Although whether they could still be called them, and how much of those residents’ souls they carried, was hard to say.

At least the insects that I Max Black encountered outside didn’t look like nuclear engineers or biologists.

Thinking of the hive tower in the courtyard, made of shed exoskeletons, I Max Black struggled to express himself.

"So... in that past conflict, did the majority of the shelter’s residents win?"

"Win?" Confused by that statement, Bell glanced at him roundly, "Do you think anyone won?"

I Max Black took a deep breath and framed the question differently.

"Then... what about the supervisors here? Where did they go?"

Bell smiled lightly and said nonchalantly,

"Ah, them. Besides my master, the supervisors who survived that disaster returned to the embrace of the Great Tree. I haven’t seen them since; maybe they are still reminiscing on some circuit board, or maybe like those insects, they have already left this place, who knows? I’m just a museum guide after all."

I Max Black stared at it blankly.

"The embrace of the Tree?"

Playing up the irony, Bell responded,

"Exactly, they believed they originated from the Great Tree and should be buried at its roots... This might be hard for you to understand. In short, they uploaded their thoughts to the shelter’s server and abandoned their physical bodies, merging forever with this shelter."

"But my master didn’t think they succeeded, he felt they were more like having left behind a memory before committing collective suicide out of guilt, while he chose to end his life in the human way."

At this point, Bell opened up and recounted everything that had happened over the past hundred years.

Due to the scarcity of resources and unequal distribution, the conflict between the "Tree People" and the "Worker Ants" had been accumulating for a long time. Even though the living standards for both sides were continuously declining, the Tree People, as part of the "Tree" sensor module array, would experience a slightly slower decline.

The crisis was triggered by the climate revival event in the 50th year of the Wasteland Era.

Five years after the dissolution of the War Construction Committee, signs of climate recovery began to appear on the Wasteland, and the residents of Shelter No. 100, fueled by their passion for rebuilding Wasteland and their longing for a better life, revived the thought currents of the Prosperity Epoch. They prepared to return to the surface and formed autonomous committees of workers and engineers, planning to say goodbye to the past and bury everything of Shelter No. 100 once they reemerged.

However, the sixty-three-year term had not yet come to an end, and the actions of the Worker Ants threw the Tree People into panic.

Their entire lives had been devoted to meticulously pruning the branches of the Great Tree and fulfilling their duty as guardians of order, blocking the "ant holes" the Worker Ants bored into the trunk.

Even though it was predestined from the beginning that this Great Tree would collapse after fulfilling its protective role, ending the mission of the shelter and becoming a casting well to continue contributing to the rebirth of human civilization, the Tree People did not wish for their mission to collapse alongside the tree.

They had tried to seek the opinions of the Worker Ants, hoping that in recognition of the tree’s years of hard labor, they would agree to preserve it.

It wasn’t too difficult, every man-made rule had loopholes; one merely needed to be patient enough to find them.

The initiation of the shelter’s self-destruction program required one condition to be fulfilled—that is, the average daily population detected in the shelter had to remain below five thousand for 180 consecutive days, or below three thousand within 24 hours.

Only in such cases would the Great Tree determine that the residents of Shelter No. 100 no longer needed its guidance, that they had the capability to survive outside its sensors, and it would then use its remaining resources to aid the children one last time.

However, they could also use this to their advantage.

As long as the Worker Ants stayed with them, ensuring at least five thousand people lived in Shelter No. 100, the shelter would believe its children still needed it, and thus it would not leave them.

However, this request, laden with a tone of command, was ruthlessly rejected by the euphoric Worker Ants.

Almost all the autonomous committees refused to communicate with the Tree People about this matter.

It was to be expected.

The Worker Ants had endured the tree’s cold, merciless commands for too long; even though they understood deep down that it was necessary for survival, they had no reason to retain it once it became unnecessary.

Let it meet its end along with this shelter.

Becoming a casting well was also part of its destiny.

The shelter should not become the final Chapter of human civilization; every shelter’s eventual fate is to be dismantled, serving as raw material for reconstruction.

As for the Tree People, if they couldn’t bear to part with it, then they might as well go down with it.

Perhaps the uncompromising stance of the Worker Ants made the Tree People sense a threat of reckoning; the Tree People interfered with the organizations spontaneously established by the Worker Ants, including but not limited to cutting off water and electricity and severing supplies, and within the limits allowed by the rules, they did everything possible to cause trouble for these organizations.

Although the conflict between the two sides intensified, it had still been relatively restrained up to this point.

But what truly ignited the fuse was an incident that occurred outside the shelter.

In the 52nd year of the Wasteland Era, the climate recovery continued for two years, and the ice of West State Lake began to thaw even before the gates of Shelter No. 100.

Melting snow and spreading lake water surged into the abandoned downtown area of West State City and even into the underground transit tunnels.

The triumphant Worker Ants showed a hint of panic; while the climate recovery was a joyful event, if the ice caps and snow on the surface continued to melt, perhaps they wouldn’t have to wait until the 60th year of the Wasteland Era for their shelter to be submerged.

Some believed the doors should be opened immediately, allowing at least some people to go out and reinforce the areas prone to backflow.

However, it was futile for only the shelter’s residents to wish for this action; it had to be communicated to the shelter’s manager—namely, the AI known as Tree.

Tree People, of course, could not act in such a way. The influx of lake water into the tunnel not only failed to elicit panic amongst them but even brought unexpected joy to their previously worried faces.

Even though some supervisors believed they should cooperate with the residents to fill the glaring gap everyone could see, most made a self-serving decision—they downplayed the crisis that could flood the refuge into an insignificant drizzle.

As long as they could convince "Tree" that its designers had anticipated the possibility of West State Lake water pouring into the tunnel and that there was no need to amend the already flawless rules, it would continue to execute the existing plans according to the set protocols.

They could even exploit this belief by letting Tree erroneously judge that the climate recovery was progressing faster than expected, thus making wrong decisions based on incorrect feedback and extending the closure period.

As a result, sixty-three years turned into seventy.

Seven years might not seem like much, but for the first generation of residents who were already ninety years old, it meant that their funerals would take place inside the refuge, perhaps never witnessing the day when the gear-like giant door would open.

For the younger residents of the refuge, these seven years could mean the end of their youth spent within the confines, making all their life plans and preparations for rebuilding the Wasteland futile.

A refuge of eighty thousand was ultimately too small, and Shelter No.100 was overcrowded. Any slight emotion could become the dynamite that ignites a keg of gunpowder.

The first riot occurred swiftly and eventually ended with the deaths of 879 ordinary residents and 37 supervisors.

Blood temporarily cooled everyone down.

All the bodies were thrown into the nutrient recycling device, turning into fertilizer and nutrients for the ecological cycle.

Although there had been natural deaths among residents of the refuge in the past, and their bodies were recycled by the ecological system, this was undoubtedly the most all at once.

As a result, most people, who initially were reluctant to know, were forced to acknowledge where their food came from.

Then came the rumor that the supervisors’ bodies were not sent to the nutrient recycling device but secretively cremated by their families.

No matter how much the Tree People denied it, it had already lost its significance in the face of mounting evidence.

As everyone expected, the friction between Tree People and the Worker Ants escalated further.

In the 56th year of the Wasteland Era, when the lake water had nearly drowned the refuge’s main gate, the Tree People were plotting to sink the refuge permanently in water, a second organized uprising erupted.

Biological research station engineers spent three years altering Crunchy’s genes. The breeders, through deliberate violations, released them, drawing the Tree People’s attention. While the Tree People scrambled to eradicate these insects, all the refuge’s workshops almost simultaneously initiated an uprising.

Owing to the massive deployment of mechanical equipment and even biological weapons, the impacts of this disturbance exceeded everyone’s expectations.

A total of seventy-seven thousand and several hundred people went missing or died in the riots, which included 645 supervisors.

Only 111 supervisors survived, including that supervisor named Klerg, the master of Bell.

The battle between the two parties was not limited to gunfights and wrestling over engineering equipment; it also included a series of rule-based weapons.

For instance, during the battle, the Tree People attempted to quell the upheaval by dropping hypnosis gas into areas densely populated by Worker Ants using the power of trees.

However, their plan was foiled by Worker Ants responsible for maintaining the exhaust pipes, who deceived the residential area’s air detection equipment with a few milligrams of ozone and passively activated the refuge’s ventilation system to expel the gas to the Wasteland.

Seeing their hopes about to be dashed, the Worker Ants also attempted to exploit the power of rules. They moved some residents to the food storage cold rooms, trying to deceive the refuge’s life detection device and fulfill the self-destruct condition of the "dome being removed if the refuge’s population fell below three thousand in 24 hours" without leaving the building.

However, their plan was quickly noticed by the Tree People.

Watching as the life signals detectable in the shelter dropped at an incredible speed, the Tree People crazily unplugged the power — utilizing a loophole they had discovered long ago without fixing it, they caused the shelter’s fusion reactor to actively overload and shut down.

The designers of Shelter No. 100 probably never imagined that people more than fifty years later would take such drastic measures.

Thanks to this ace in the hole, however, Shelter No. 100 didn’t become a water reservoir in the year 56 of the Wasteland Era.

However, it was precisely because they cut off the power that more than fifty thousand residents, who hadn’t died in the fighting, ultimately perished in the cold storage.

The remaining residents of the entire shelter barely numbered three thousand. The Tree People couldn’t possibly activate the reactor, for that would cause the entire shelter to collapse within 24 hours.

And the people who survived couldn’t rapidly reproduce to five thousand within 180 days, even if they abandoned ethical norms for survival — newborns would still take ten months to be born.

Not to mention that the chemical batteries merely sufficed to maintain the operation of the ventilation system, while the Crunchy spreading throughout the entire shelter was encroaching on their scant survival resources.

Just as Bell had said, no one won this war—it hadn’t even really ended.

After suffering heavy casualties, the Tree People had given up on reconciling with the Worker Ants, and the Worker Ants harbored no hope that the Tree People would sacrifice themselves for their sake.

Both parties moved within their respective controlled areas, silently observing a ceasefire, licking their wounds, and waiting for the other side to draw their last breath.

It wasn’t until the year 61 of the Wasteland Era that the last life signal matching human characteristics disappeared from the shelter, turning it completely into Crunchy’s world.

And that last disappearing life signal was Klerg.

Who was also Bell’s master.

"... My master entrusted me with bringing this absurd memory to you, who have stepped into the interstellar era, hoping you can make use of it. Do not foolishly think that delegating problems you can’t solve yourselves to AI will solve everything; unfortunately, you haven’t entered the interstellar era, so it seems useless after all."

"So... some of the residents here turned themselves into insects, others turned themselves into data?" Standing next to I Max Black, Tomb Guard Ghost, not yet out of the story, couldn’t help but comment, "This isn’t a prison, it’s outright a psychiatric ward!"

I Max Black wore an utterly convinced expression.

He thought so too.

Everyone here was insane.

In the shelter, the supervisors derogatorily called the residents "Worker Ants," and they, in turn, referred to them as "Tree People."

To ensure the perpetual operation of the shelter, the Tree People did everything possible to buy time against the floodwater at the door. Meanwhile, to glimpse the outside world, the Worker Ants turned themselves into real insects, tearing the barely enduring future into pieces.

They chose every insanely possible option, with the result that not a single complete person walked out of this shelter.

Just then, a piercing alarm suddenly sounded outside the warehouse, abruptly pulling I Max Black back to reality.

"What happened?!"

Looking at the surprised crowd, Bell spoke with an indifferent expression.

"This alarm sounds familiar; it seems to have happened before... Ah, I remember now. I should have told you before. To foil the ’Worker Ants’ plan,’ the ’Tree People’ had to shut down the fusion reactor, and you just turned it back on, didn’t you? Perhaps both the life-monitoring program and the dome’s self-destruct program have restarted, but it’s not a big deal."

Hearing this, I Max Black’s face instantly turned pale.

Not a big deal, huh...

Now wasn’t like a hundred years ago!

The self-destruct program that had perfectly allowed the upper structure to fall into the pit a hundred years ago—who knew what it would cause now, more than a hundred years later!

Not to mention, the tower the Ghost-faced Insect had built in the pit might just let the collapsing earth bury them!

"But why wasn’t there a problem when the fusion reactor started?" Tomb Guard Ghost immediately realized something was off, staring anxiously at Bell for an answer.

Bell just chuckled, still with that indifferent expression.

"What’s so strange about that? After the Tree’s mission ended, you obtained control of the shelter. It’s not difficult to use manager authority to terminate the dome’s self-destruct program. It’s as simple as pushing open the shelter’s door."

I Max Black was momentarily dumbfounded.

"Wait, if we’ve already transferred control of the shelter to us, why would the self-destruct program still trigger?"

Bell looked at him mockingly.

"Perhaps your superiors want to silence you? Haha, of course, that’s unlikely; I’m more inclined to think that you triggered some unrepaired BUG on this heap of BUGs built up over the years, resulting in some settings rolling back to before the rule modification. This was a common tactic used by the Tree People and the Worker Ants in their battles, as they often needed to blind the Tree’s eyes."

I Max Black first ruled out his own involvement, after all, he had only touched the Black Box a few times.

Then he immediately thought of the Ten Fist Superman who had speedrun the Floor B51 manager’s office, and without pause, had run to do a side mission in B100.

Not daring to hesitate for a moment, he promptly pressed on his helmet, shouting into the communication channel.

"Super Bro! What’s your situation? Super Bro?!"

A burst of static filled the communication channel.

There was no response at all!

His face slightly changing, I Max Black immediately gave Tomb Guard Ghost a significant look.

"I’m going down!"

"OK."

Immediately understanding his intention, Tomb Guard Ghost made a gesture of comprehension.

Without wasting time, I Max Black turned off the safety on his rifle, laid it aside, flopped to the ground, and logged off.

Watching this guy who had been screaming into the communicator one second and lying flat on the ground the next, Bell walked around him in surprise twice.

"Impressive, how can you manage to sleep?"

I Max Black, already logged off, of course, didn’t react or engage with what it said.

Watching this AI’s overreaction, Tomb Guard Ghost chuckled.

"That’s nothing, just basic operation."