Chapter 624 Putting an end to the grudges from a hundred years ago
The majestic giant door is like a folding book in the judge's hand, opening a small crack.
The ice shards blown out by the breeze glowed with a colder light than the sword.
Standing in front of the towering giant door, the man wearing a heavy-duty exoskeleton stared dumbly at everything in front of him, and it took him a long time to hold back a sentence.
"Wori..."
Ice carcasses were spread across thousands of square meters of open space, and people huddled close to the ground, maintaining their posture for the last second of their lives.
Some people put their foreheads on the ground and prayed, some were clinging to each other, there were mothers and fathers holding their children, and there were also a family of three holding hands...
This is the 100th and final underground floor of Vault 100. Its ceiling is the floor of the central patio, and the floor is the bottom of the entire shelter.
Perhaps because it is a warehouse area, this is the highest single floor in the entire shelter.
Ten Fist Man thought he would be able to find some treasures on this floor, and no matter how hard he tried, he would be able to find some valuable garbage, but he didn't expect that he would plunge into a pile of dead people as soon as he opened the door.
In this warehouse alone, there are at least one or two thousand corpses lying there, and there are several similar warehouses here.
Those may be in similar situations.
The soles of the boots made a squeaking sound on the ground.
Ten Fist Man unconsciously passed through the crack in the door and walked into the icehouse where temperatures were tens of degrees below zero. He held up a flashlight and checked the surroundings.
He was more surprised than shocked, and muttered something to himself.
What is going on here?"
Following him into the icehouse, the player wearing the exoskeleton squatted on the ground, carefully examined the ice corpse lying on the ground, and took a photo of the corpse's face.
After a while, he came to a conclusion.
"Most people here probably died of lack of oxygen... They were not frozen to death, it was more like they were frozen after death.
There are also some people who can see obvious gunshot wounds on their bodies, and even broken arms, hands and feet. They were obviously dragged here after death.
.....Is there any difference?”
The player clapped his hands and stood up, sighing.
"That's not true."
One thing to say.
This was also the first time he saw so many dead people outside the battlefield.
The strong visual impact is completely different from the feeling when seeing a corpse on the battlefield. After all, when you are on the battlefield, you don't have time to think about how a person died.
The signal shouldn't have come from here, there can't be anyone alive here."
Taking one last look at the rows of corpses frozen into ice, Ten Fist Superman withdrew his flashlight, looked at his teammates behind him and continued.
"Let's go out."
No one wanted to stay here any longer, so the player nodded and exited the icehouse with him. He also pressed the button to close the door for the old popsicles.
The two continued to visit several warehouses.
Ten Fist Man soon discovered that, just as he expected, this
The conditions in these icehouses are basically the same, filled with corpses frozen into ice cubes.
There are no traces of the exchange of fire at all on the B100 floor. It is an unsolved mystery as to who stuffed these people into the icehouse and suffocated them to death.
Just when the two of them finished exploring the last ice house, the player who went to explore the other side came back from the front and greeted the two of them from a distance.
"This floor is probably a warehouse area. The north is a cold storage for food, and the south seems to be engineering machines and daily necessities. However, the resources there have been cleaned up. Only one of the warehouses is different, which has been transformed into
In the workshop, we also found generators, batteries, and some incomprehensible gadgets.
After hearing this, Ten Fist Man immediately became interested.
"Let's go and take a look."
Following the player, the group quickly came from the warehouse area in the north to the south.
The area here is larger than before
The area is much larger, and the structure is much more complicated. The tall metal supports are like walls, and you need to use escalators to climb to the top.
As soon as he walked to this area, Ten Fist Man smelled a faint smell of engine oil, and immediately noticed that this warehouse was different. If the warehouses they searched before were more like morgues, then this one was more like a morgue.
Like a recycling bin full of garbage.
Several "turtle-type" engineering armors were like crabs whose shells had been ripped open, with almost all internal parts removed. They were parked next to the scaffolding made of steel pipes with their pliers and heads hanging down.
Not far away lies a pile of dusty coils and machines that have been pieced together and modified. All kinds of equipment that players still have no idea of their use are here.
The survivors living on this level used their ingenuity and professional skills to the extreme. They poured the mucus from the worms into glass jars as high as one person to purify the electrolytes and made disposable chemicals.
Batteries powered these improvised devices.
Not only that, they later dismantled some machines picked up from other floors, transformed the entire warehouse into a small workstation that did not need to rely on the power of the shelter, and modified a series of sophisticated devices, including integrated circuits, on the simple workbench.
Gizmos.
These strange devices looked really powerful, but what puzzled Ten Fist Man was that he had no idea what on earth these people were doing.
"What are they doing?" the teammates following him asked hesitantly.
"Perhaps... like in "Lack of Oxygen", you plan to engage in material recycling in this shelter?"
"How is this possible..."
"It's not completely impossible. At least they haven't touched the bodies in the icehouse next door... Well, maybe they haven't. Anyway, judging from this point of view, their remaining supplies are still very rich, at least there are
There is room for choice.”
This is indeed a novel idea.
People here restored power and even got the cold storage working again, obviously they have solved the most critical energy problem.
They froze the corpses, and those corpses are now preserved intact, and the insects outside have not been eaten to extinction. Apparently they completed their goal before the nutrients were exhausted, but what is puzzling is that those people finally
Where have they all gone?
You can't just go back to the icehouse and lie down after working around for a while, right?
Looking at the dissection table filled with chitin carapace, Ten Fist Man scratched the back of his head through his helmet and felt a big headache.
He knew nothing about archeology, but at this moment he felt like he was at an archaeological site.
But what is intriguing is that because the technology in the era of the Prosperous Era is far beyond that of the real world, he cannot use it at all.
Use real-world experience to infer the motivations of these survivors and guess what they want to do.
As soon as he walked to an anatomy table, Ten Fist Superman reached out and picked up the bowl-shaped insect shell on the table, and found a line of small words engraved on it.
The text was extracted using the translation function of VM, and a blue floating window was projected on the inside of the tactical eyepiece of his exoskeleton helmet.
.In memory of, 77,274 residents including 645 overseers." He read out in a low voice.
An agility player walked next to him and looked at the insect shell in his hand curiously.
"What are these? Last words?"
His nickname is Buried in Peace, it was added to the game in Beta version 0.4, and he also joined the Stormtroopers at that time.
"I guess so," Ten Fist Man put the insect shell back on the table, took a look at the previously recovered administrator's log, and then looked around at the graffiti-like murals on the surrounding walls.
"Basically, a conflict, or a war, broke out here before. The residents of the shelter fought with the supervisors, and then the supervisors drove them to the lowest level and cut off their power supply? But they also cut off their power.
The two parties had no contact with each other for a while..."
In fact, there is no need to guess at all.
All the way down here
There are traces of crossfire all over the place, especially the corridor on the B51 floor, which is densely covered with bullet holes.
Both sides competed for the administrator's office, leaving thousands of corpses in just one corridor, which could all be identified by the temperature-controlled jackets worn by the residents of the shelter.
Of course, the horrors there pale in comparison to those in the warehouse next door.
"Regardless of what they did, have you found the abnormal life signal?" A power player came over and coughed.
Said, "This place always makes me feel creepy. Let's finish the task quickly and go up."
His nickname is "Unconscious". He is a beta 0.1 version of the game. He did not know each other before joining the Storm Troopers, but their IDs are so similar that they were mistaken for a couple's names.
I don’t know where Mr. Quan Shui got so many top quality ones.
"I haven't found it yet." Ten Fist Man shook his head, walked to the wall with murals and took a few photos.
On the side, Rutu cooed for Andi.
"Aren't there more precise coordinates? It's on this level... This hint is too abstract.
The other player shook his head.
"The monitoring and sensors of B100 have been removed. To be precise, this is true from the B51 floor down. The life signal was captured by the sensor on the B51 floor. There is no way to determine its exact location. We can only faintly
Feel its presence."
Carefully observing the details of the mural, Ten Fist Man found another line of writing on the wall. The writing seemed to be that of the same person who carved the words on the insect shell.
Following the rusty lines, he read out in a low voice.
...Tree people do not come from indescribable trees, they come from us from beginning to end like trees, and the arrogance of others is also the sin of our arrogance.
"Order should have been a bulwark to protect us, but we have forged its bricks into fratricidal swords."
“We have forgotten where we are going, where we came from, why we built this fortress in the first place, and why we eventually became its puppets.
"We will eventually die."
"And I will spend the rest of my life finishing our tombstone."
"—Gravekeeper of Vault 100."
There was no name left at the signature, only a series of numbers.
Ten Fist Superman had an idea and thought that this might be the number of cycles for recording time, so he converted the units of this line of numbers and concluded that the time when the last words were written was the 60th year of the Wasteland Era.
"So... all those survivors died in the end?"
Looking at the centuries-old murals on the wall, he frowned slightly, and then glanced at the mountains of machines next to him.
Are these things just funerary objects in the tomb? He instinctively felt that it was not that simple.
At this moment, shouts suddenly came from teammates who were searching not far away.
"There's a hibernation capsule here!"
Hearing that sound, Ten Fist Man rushed over immediately.
At the end of the rows of shelves wrapped with various pipelines, standing a machine covering an area of about ten square meters.
In the center of the machine is a sleeping cabin, and on the right is a broken glass tank.
Judging from the fragments scattered on the ground, the glass jar should have been broken from the inside, and something came out of it.
Judging from the feedback results of VM's life signal radar, the life signal of Namo Lake was emitted from this dormant cabin!
Everyone's faces instantly showed joy. There is a living person inside! "I'll open it!"
Ten Fist Man stepped forward, pulled out the data cable from the VM, connected it to the interface of the hibernation cabin, and pressed the power-on button at the same time.
The hacking applet prepared by the scientific expedition team for them immediately came into play, and they quickly gained control over the dormant cabin program.
Obviously, that guy Yin Fang is a professional when it comes to prying open refrigerators.
Ten Fist Man pressed without hesitation
He pressed the button to open the door, but when a putrid smell wafted out along with the sound of leaking air, he immediately realized something was wrong.
A dozen ghost-faced insects got out of the gap in the cabin door, making a squeaking sound and rushing toward the people standing in front of the dormant cabin.
"Wori!"
Ru Di Wei An was so frightened that he pulled the trigger reflexively. Three sudden gunshots instantly tore apart the bugs crawling to his feet and broke the silence in the warehouse.
"Cease fire! Don't break things here!"
He slapped the bug in front of him to the ground, and Ten Fist Superman raised his foot and trampled it into a puddle of mud.
After finally dealing with the escaping insects, he then looked towards the open sleeping cabin and saw a mutilated skeleton lying inside.
The man put his hands on his chest, holding a half-broken glass bottle. Tiny insect shells and broken eggs could be seen inside.
Based on various details, it can be inferred that this person should have taken the initiative to lie down in the dormant chamber with these eggs. However, he did not start the freezing process, only the negative pressure process.
After completing a certain ritual, he ended his life in a certain way and handed his body to the bugs.
The Ten Fist Man stared blankly at this guy's remains and the insect eggs that filled the skeleton, and couldn't say a word for a long time.
They had previously detected a suspected humanoid life signal and thought there were survivors, but they didn't expect it to be a bunch of bugs! Is this special?
Just as he was dazed for a moment, a piercing siren suddenly sounded.
Not knowing what happened, everyone quickly looked around, only to see that the warning light above their heads suddenly flashed red along with the alarm bell, making people feel uneasy for a while.
What happened?" Ru Di Wei'an looked around alertly.
At this moment, the screen of the VM worn on Ten Fist Superman's left arm and connected to the sleep cabin suddenly turned white.
Then, as if it was haunted, the UI interface of the scientific expedition team applet was replaced by an old man whose facial features were mosaic-like.
Noticing the changes in the VM on his arm, Ten Fist Man immediately looked at the old man on the screen and asked alertly.
"who are you?"
While speaking, his right hand was already holding the data cable, ready to physically disconnect the network at any time.
The old man floating in the white snowflakes looked at him quietly, and intermittent voices floated out from behind the mosaic-moulded features.
"I am "Tree", the manager here."
Upon hearing this unexpected name, Ten Fist Man was stunned, and then subconsciously said.
"...Tree?! Aren't you dead?" the old man continued calmly.
"AI has no concept of life and death. The meaning of my existence is for the residents living here. I will continue to fulfill my mission until they no longer need me.
Ten Fist Man wanted to continue asking, but there were more important things at the moment.
"What's the situation with the noise outside? Did we commit some taboo?"
Shu answered his question in a calm tone.
"That was a warning that my mission was about to reach its end.
Before the man in front of the screen could ask in detail, it continued.
"The reactor is operating normally, the life monitoring sensor has been restarted, the detection program continues to be executed, and the number of active life signals of residents remains below 3,000 for 24 consecutive hours. The shelter shelter protocol will enter the final stage, start the dome self-destruction program, and guide the surface ruins and earth structures to fall
Enter the patio.
The players who understood the last sentence were instantly shocked.
"What the hell?!"
"Self-destruct?!"
As if sensing everyone's mood swings, Shu continued calmly.
"Don't panic, what you are about to see is the ultimate fate of this shelter, which was designed from the moment it was built."
Ten Fist Man looked at this guy on the screen with a confused expression.
It's okay not to panic...
How could you not panic!
It’s Year 213 of the Wasteland Era!
It deviated from the planned time by more than 100 years!
If we really execute the dome self-destruction program, who knows what the final result will be, maybe the entire shelter will be buried directly. To put it bluntly.
This is a program designed two hundred years ago. How can we expect it to still be reliable two hundred years later?
What's even worse is that the countdown is not 24 hours at all, but 10 minutes! They don't even have time to evacuate with the black box!
The progress bar had already gone through more than half a long time ago! At the critical moment, he calmed down and looked at the old man on the screen and said.
"Can you stop? The current situation no longer meets the conditions for activating the dome's self-destruction program!
The tree replied in a calm voice.
"Request violation, administrator permissions not detected, asylum agreement cannot be modified."
When he heard the first half of the sentence, Ten Fist Man's mood sank to the bottom, but when he heard the last sentence, his hope was rekindled.
The reason for the request violation is the modification of the protocol, not the request itself.
In other words-
As long as he doesn't modify the agreement itself and just reinterprets the original terms, he still has a chance to convince this stubborn AI!
Thoughts were running rapidly in my head.
Suddenly, he noticed the body holding insect eggs in the dormant cabin, and the thoughts in his mind suddenly opened up.
The answer was left long ago.
Looking at the tree on the screen, he took a deep breath and said seriously.
"I have questions about the rules for determining the disappearance of residents' life signals."
As expected, the tree responded to him. "What questions?"
Ten Fist Man looked at the virtual image on the screen and said word by word, "Am I a resident of Vault 100?"
Shu replied coldly.
"The biometric information registered in Eucalyptus was not detected, and the judgment is No."
Ten Fist Man: "So only if 3,000 residents of Vault 100 remain, we can ensure that the dome's self-destruction program will not be executed.
Shu: "Understood correctly, this is one of the basic conditions. In addition, the average number of people must remain above 5,000 for 180 consecutive days.
Ten Fist Man: "Then I would like to ask, what about the children of residents of Vault 100? Can they also be counted as residents of Vault 100?"
Shu: "Of course, as long as you can prove the biological inheritance relationship between different life forms, you can obtain the status of a shelter resident-"
Looking at the countdown with only a few minutes left, Ten Punch Man interrupted it and spoke quickly.
"Then I implore you to open your eyes again and see how many people are in this shelter!"
Tree: "Zero."
Ignoring its cold and ruthless reply, Ten Fist Superman did not give up, but continued to quibble.
"Open your eyes wider! They have not disappeared, they are still here, but they have changed their life forms while you are sleeping! Those bugs in your eyes are the continuation of their lives, and the evidence
In this dormant cabin right in front of me! What was the biometric information of the last resident on the B100 floor before he lay down in it, and what was the biometric information after opening the door? Isn't this enough to prove their identity?"
Ten Fist Man knew very well that he was being sophistical.
However, this defense was not made up by him, but a witness had thought it up for him more than a hundred years ago.
The guy who calls himself the gravekeeper.
The rituals he completed were not meaningless, and the legacies he left behind were not meant to be buried with him.
That guy had long expected that someone would open this tomb one day in the future, and also expected that those people would restart the silent reactor.
In order to undo that because of their common stupidity
A stupid mistake. In order to stop the dome's self-destruction program from executing, he made a mistake for himself.
Designed the final death, taking advantage of a loophole in the shelter's biometric program to turn himself into a bug.
This is the last time he takes advantage of a bug in the shelter rules.
Only this time it was not to fight the "Treants", but to save the home he once hated so much that he wanted to escape at all costs.
The tree thought for a while.
Under the gaze of all the players, he nodded slowly. "Updated supplementary regulations."
"The judgment result has been revised. The current number of residents is 6.79 million.
The piercing siren stopped at the last minute of the countdown, and Ten Punch Man and his teammates beside him breathed a sigh of relief.
After he regained his composure, he couldn't help but be speechless.
I didn't expect that there were so many Dire-Faced Insects in this refuge...more than six million.
But in any case, the current hurdle has finally passed. As for how to deal with this mess in the future, it is left to the managers to consider.
There should be a way to get the administrator rights back from that tree.
At this time, the old man on the screen, whose facial features were blurred by the mosaic, suddenly smiled softly.
Although he couldn't see the curvature of the corners of his mouth, Ten Fist Man was sure that he saw it right.
"Leave it to you.
After dropping a meaningful monologue, the white snowflakes flashing on the screen disappeared before everyone could recover.
It was as if he had never appeared before... He was stunned for a moment when he was laid to rest.
"What did he say?" Ten Fist Man was also stunned.
"It seems that... it was left to us?" the unconscious man said in confusion.
"What's the meaning?"
"I don't know..." Ten Fist Man took a deep breath and looked at his teammates, "Anyway, I will log off first and report the situation here to the outside. Don't touch the things here for the time being.
Maybe there are some other weird things hidden there.”
The task was completed. He didn't want to add any more complications.
The other teammates looked at each other and nodded in agreement.
"Um."
Ten Fist Superman sat on the ground and closed his eyes. At the same time, the official website of another world.
Almost as soon as he logged into the forum, he saw a string of red dots floating on the private mail box. When he clicked on it, he saw the small window of my darkest and crazy Aite.
I was the worst: "Damn it, what are you doing down there?"
Ten Punch Man: "Don't worry about that, it was already taken care of just now."
I am the blackest: "???"
Ten Fist Superman: "In addition, we have also completed the final branch... It's a pity that no survivor was found. A bunch of bugs were stuffed in the dormant cabin, and the person ended his life."
I'm the worst: "Took their own lives? Wait, didn't they turn into bugs? (Shocked)"
Ten Punch Man: "Became a bug? Is that so? But I
It feels more like a regular neural connection device."
I was the darkest: "Ah this."
Ten Fist Superman: "According to the last words left by the last survivor on the B100 floor, he dragged the bodies of his compatriots into the icehouse, and finally lay down in the dormant cabin himself. However, he did not start the freezing process, but chose to end it.
His own life... maybe at the end of his life, he controlled a robot or a bug to go out and take a look at the outside world, and turned into a bug just like you said."
I was silent for a long time before I replied to him.
"...This is too ridiculous."
Ten Fist Man sighed and typed back.
"Yes, I think so too, but this is their final outcome... Our mission has been completed, and it's time to withdraw."
What he understands is only the perspective of the "worker ants", and he does not understand what happened in this shelter more than a hundred years ago.
the full picture of the crisis.
Perhaps the past of this shelter will appear on the "Wasteland OL" forum in the future, just like the shelters discovered by other players.
but.
Probably don’t expect the dog to plan to do this on his own...