Chapter 625 Putting an End to the Grudges From a Hundred Years Ago (1/2)

The majestic giant door was 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 exoskeleton stared at everything in front of him in stunned silence. It took him a long time to hold back a sentence.

"Wori..."

Ice sculptures are spread across thousands of square meters of open space, and people are crouching close to the ground, maintaining the posture they held for the last second of their lives.

Some people put their foreheads on the ground in a prayer gesture, some were leaning on 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, while the floor is the base of the entire sanctuary.

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.

There are at least one or two thousand corpses lying in this warehouse alone, and there are several similar warehouses here.

Maybe those are similar situations...

The soles of boots made a squeaking sound on the ground.

Ten Fist Man unconsciously passed through the crack in the door and walked into the icehouse, which was tens of degrees below zero. He held up a flashlight to check the surroundings.

He was more surprised than shocked, and murmured something quietly to himself.

"...What exactly happened here?"

Following him into the icehouse, the player wearing the exoskeleton squatted on the ground, carefully examined the ice sculpture lying on the ground, and took a photo of the corpse's face.

After a moment, he came to a conclusion.

"Most of the people here probably died of lack of oxygen... They didn't freeze 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.

"...What's the 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 corpses 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 been sent from here. There can't be anyone alive here."

Taking one last look at the rows of bodies frozen into ice, Ten Fist Superman withdrew his flashlight, looked at his teammates behind him and continued.

"Let's get out."

No one wanted to stay here any longer. 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, as he expected, the conditions in these icehouses were basically the same, filled with corpses frozen into ice.

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. To the north is a cold storage for food, and to the south are 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 and batteries, as well as 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 much larger than the previous area, and the structure is much more complex. The tall metal supports are like walls, and you need to use an escalator to climb to the top.

As soon as he walked into 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 earlier were more like morgues, then this place is like a recycling bin full of garbage.

Several "Crab" 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 attached.

Not far away lies a pile of dusty coils and machines that have been pieced together and modified. There are all kinds of equipment here that the players can't even understand their use.

The survivors living on this level put their ingenuity and professional skills to the extreme. They poured the mucus of the Jirashou into a person-high glass jar to purify the electrolyte, and made disposable chemical batteries for these improvised batteries. The device is powered.

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 teammate who was following him hesitated.

"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 corpses in the icehouse next door... Well, maybe they haven't. Anyway, from this point of view, they still have a lot of supplies left. At least they still have a choice. "

This is indeed a novel idea.

People here restored power and even got the cold storage working again, obviously they had taken care of the most critical source of energy.

They froze the corpses, and those corpses are now preserved intact, and the insects outside have not been eaten to extinction. Obviously 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 anatomy 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 real world experience to infer the motives of these survivors and guess what they want to do.

As soon as he walked to an autopsy 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 VM's translation function, and a light blue floating window was projected on the inside of the tactical eyepiece of his exoskeleton helmet.

"...Memorial of, 77,274 residents, including 645 overseers."

He read it quietly.

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, which was added to the game in Beta version 0.4, and he also joined the Storm Troopers at that time.

"I guess so," Ten Fist Superman 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.

"Roughly guessing, there should have been a conflict, or a war, here before. The residents of the shelter had a fight with the supervisors, and then the supervisors drove them to the lowest level and cut off their power supply? But they also cut off the power supply. The two parties had no contact with each other for a while..."

In fact, there is no need to guess at all.

There were signs of firefights all the way down here, especially the corridor on the B51 floor, which was filled with bullet holes.

Both sides competed for the administrator's office, leaving thousands of corpses in just one corridor, identifiable 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, coughed and said, "This place always makes me feel creepy, let's finish the task quickly. Go up."

His nickname is "Unconscious". He was in the game in Beta version 0.1. He didn't know each other before joining the Storm Troopers, but their IDs were so similar that they were mistaken for a couple's names.

I don’t know where Brother Quan Shui got so many top quality items.

"I haven't found it yet." Ten Fist Man shook his head, walked to the wall with murals on it, and took a few photos.

Nitu Wei'an on the side muttered.

"Aren't there more precise coordinates? 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 sensors on the B51 floor. There is no way to determine its specific location. We can only Faintly aware of its presence.”

Observing the details of the mural carefully, 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. Like trees, they come from us from beginning to end, and the arrogance of others is also the sin of our arrogance."

“Order should have been the bulwark that protected us, but we have forged its masonry into fratricidal swords.”

"We have forgotten where we are going, where we came from, and why we built this fortress in the first place and ultimately became its puppets."

"I will eventually die."

"And I will spend the rest of my life finishing our tombstone."

"——The 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 century-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, a shout suddenly came from the teammates who were searching not far away.

"There's a hibernation capsule here!"

Hearing the sound, Ten Fist Man rushed over immediately.

At the end of the rows of shelves wrapped with various pipelines, stood 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 vague life signal was emitted from this dormant cabin!

Joy instantly appeared on everyone's faces.

There's someone alive in here!

"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 obtained the control permission of the dormant cabin program.

Obviously, that guy Yin Fang is a professional when it comes to prying open the refrigerator.

Ten Fist Man pressed the button to open the door without hesitation, 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 towards 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 Man 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 is inferred that this person should have taken the initiative to lie down in the dormant cabin with these insect 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 gave 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 even okay?

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 blurred by mosaics.

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-blurred features.

"I am 'Tree', the manager here."

Upon hearing this unexpected name, Ten Fist Superman was stunned, and then said subconsciously.

"...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?"

The tree answered his question in a calm tone.

"That was a preview of the end of my mission."

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 has remained below 3,000 for 24 consecutive hours. The shelter shelter protocol will enter the final stage, and the dome self-destruction program will be initiated to guide the surface ruins and earthwork The structure falls into 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 the guy on the screen in confusion.

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 the dome's self-destruction program were to be executed, who knows what the final result would be, maybe the entire shelter would be buried directly.

to be honest.

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 more terrible is that the countdown is not 24 hours at all, but 10 minutes! They didn't even have time to evacuate with the black box!

The progress bar has gone through more than half a long time ago!

At the critical moment, he calmed down and said to the old man on the screen.

"Can you stop? The current situation does not meet the conditions for starting the dome self-destruction program!"

The tree replied in a calm voice.

"The request violated the rules. The administrator's permission was not detected. The shelter agreement cannot be modified."

When he heard the first half of the sentence, Ten Punch Man's mood sank to the bottom, but when he heard the last sentence, he rekindled hope.

The reason for the request violation was to modify the agreement, not the request itself.

In other words -

As long as he did not modify the agreement itself and only reinterpreted the original terms, he still had a chance to convince this stubborn AI!

The thoughts in his head turned quickly.

Suddenly, he noticed the body holding the eggs in the hibernation capsule, and the thoughts in his mind opened up instantly.

The answer was left a long time ago...

Looking at the tree on the screen, he took a deep breath and said seriously.

"I have doubts about the rules for judging the disappearance of residents' life signals."

As expected, the tree responded to him.

"What doubts." Ten Punch Man looked at the virtual image on the screen and said word by word.

"Am I a resident of Shelter No. 100?"

The tree answered coldly.

"No registered biometric information was detected, so it was judged as no."

Ten-Punch Man: "So only if there are 3,000 residents of Shelter No. 100, can the dome self-destruction program not be executed."

The tree: "You understand correctly, this is one of the basic conditions. In addition, the average number of people must be maintained at more than 5,000 for 180 consecutive days."

Ten-Punch Man: "Then I want to ask, what about the children of the residents of Shelter No. 100? Can they also be counted as residents of Shelter No. 100?"

The tree: "Of course, as long as you can prove the biological inheritance relationship between different life forms, you can obtain the status of a resident of the shelter--"

Looking at the countdown with only a few minutes left, Ten-Punch Man interrupted it and spoke quickly.

"Then I beg you to open your eyes and take a look at how many people are in this shelter!"

The tree: "Zero."

Ignoring its cold and ruthless answer, Ten-Punch Man did not give up, but continued to argue as if a dead horse was alive.

"Open your eyes wider! They haven't disappeared, they are still here, but they changed their life forms during your sleep! The bugs in your eyes are the continuation of their lives, and the evidence is in this hibernation capsule in front of me! What was the biometric information of the last resident of the B100 floor before he lay down, and what was the biometric information after the door was opened? Isn't this enough to prove their identity?"

Ten Punch Man knew that he was making a sophistry.

However, this set of arguments was not made up by him, but a witness had thought of it for him more than a hundred years ago.

The guy who claimed to be the gravekeeper.

The rituals he completed were not meaningless, and the legacy he left behind was not for him to be buried with him.

That guy had long anticipated that someone would uncover this tomb one day in the future, and that those people would definitely restart the dormant reactor.

In order to undo the mistake made because of their common stupidity and to stop the execution of the dome self-destruction program, he designed his final death and used the loophole in the shelter's biometric program to turn himself into a bug.

This was the last time he used the bug in the shelter's rules.

But this time it was not to fight the "tree people", but to save the homeland that he hated so much and wanted to escape at all costs.

The tree thought for a while.

Under the gaze of all the players, he nodded slowly.

"Supplementary regulations updated."

"The judgment result was revised, and the current number of residents is 6.79 million..."

The shrill alarm stopped at the last minute of the countdown, and Ten Punch Man and his teammates beside him breathed a sigh of relief.

After recovering, he couldn't help but be shocked.

I didn't expect that there were so many ghost-faced bugs in this shelter... more than 6 million.

But anyway, this level is finally over. As for how to deal with this mess in the future, it will be left to the administrator to consider.

There should be a way to get the administrator's permission back from the tree.

At this time, the old man on the screen whose facial features were blurred by mosaics suddenly smiled softly.

Although he couldn't see the arc of his mouth, Ten Punch Man was sure that he was not wrong.

"Leave it to you."

After throwing out a meaningful monologue, before everyone came back to their senses, the white snowflakes flickering on the screen disappeared.

As if they had never appeared...

Ren Tu Wei An was stunned.

"What did he say?"

Ten Punch Man was also stunned.

"It seems to say...leave it to us?"

Unconscious and confused.

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know..." Ten Punch Man took a deep breath and looked at his teammates, "Anyway, I'll go offline first and report the situation here to the outside world. Don't touch the things here for the time being, there may be other strange things hidden inside."

The mission has been completed.

He didn't want to cause trouble.

The other teammates looked at each other and nodded in agreement.

"Yeah."

Ten Fist Man 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 message box. When he clicked on it, he saw the small window of my darkest and crazy Aite.

I was the darkest: "Damn it, what are you doing down there?"

Ten Fist Man: "Well, don't worry, it was already done."

I am the darkest: "???"

Ten Fist Superman: "Also, we have completed the final branch... It's a pity that no survivors were found. There were a bunch of bugs stuffed in the dormant cabin, and the person ended his life."

I was the darkest: "Took their own lives? Wait, didn't they turn into bugs? (Shocked)"

Ten Fist Man: "Became a bug? Is that so? But I feel like it's more like an ordinary 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 like you said. "

I was silent for a long time before replying to him.

"...This is too ridiculous."

Ten Fist Man sighed and typed back.

"Yes, I think so, 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 the full picture of the crisis that occurred in this shelter more than a hundred years ago.

Perhaps the past of this shelter will appear on the "Wasteland OL" forum in the future, just like the shelters unearthed by other players.

but.

Maybe you don’t have to rely on the dog to plan and do this on his own...

-

(I've been late lately, so I'll be early today.)