Kingdom of Corrosion

Having nothing better to do, Maya went to work. And Lin Wu, the wealthy man that he was, naturally disdained manual labor. He found a high point near the library to enter Stealth mode and used a telescope to search for any potential Hunters.

By five in the afternoon, with an hour and a half left before sunset, Maya had already completed a job. She returned and gave a glance at the flagpole, then continued out to work again. Maya really hoped that Shana would lead the team to the supply point in Zone 4—not because she wanted to prove who between herself and Lin Wu was right, but because it would reinforce the collective’s recognition of trust, which was extremely beneficial to their collective living and working.

Lin Wu, on the other hand, didn’t see it as an issue of principle, since he was not the promise maker.

At seven in the evening, Lin Wu left his lookout and returned to the library. The screen in the library displayed that there were 75,000 players remaining; another 4,000 had died in the span of a few hours. Lin Wu and Maya were somewhat perplexed—it seemed a tall order for 30 Fortress Hunters to kill 4,000 people in such a short amount of time.

Then why had 21,000 died in the first few hours? Firstly, it was unknown how many people had not participated in this instance event, such as Stone and Su Shi, who had not shown up, given the severe death penalty. Secondly, it wasn’t certain how many people were in Future City; on average, each major city was allocated 100,000 people, but that was just an average. Lastly, when leaving the starting point, everyone was together, making it easy to be harmed by large-scale destructive traps.

But these 4,000 had indeed died between three and seven o’clock in the afternoon. Lin Wu remembered the images of Mutant Spiders shown by the NPC officer before departure, and also considered the 20% of zombies. Lin Wu guessed that the deaths of the 4,000 were related to the mutant animals and zombies.

Speaking of mutant animals, Maya brought up cockroaches. Cockroaches are champions at resisting radiation in the animal kingdom. Since spiders had mutations, Maya believed mutated cockroaches could appear. Thinking of cockroaches led to thoughts of sewers, and Maya recalled a piece of information from their first expedition: some NPC survivors were hiding in an underground shelter somewhere in the city.

Maya said, "The digging site might be very dangerous."

Lin Wu said, "They don’t dig near the green device by the supply point, and insist on going across zones to dig. Do they still believe that Waste City truly exists?"