Chapter 689.1: Don’t Get Your Blood On Me |
After disembarking from the submarine, Muda took his two subordinates back to the speedboat to return to their ship and set course for Ring Island. They had stayed at French Fry Harbor for too long already. If they didn’t return to hand over their shift soon, it might arouse suspicion.
And before that handover, he still needed to have a word with the brothers taking over the next watch, to make some appropriate adjustments to the patrol area.
Something of this scale couldn’t be arranged in a single day. He needed enough time to work through it with his men.
Recalling the conversation they had just had aboard the submarine, the subordinate standing beside him hesitated again and again before finally speaking up.
“Sir…”
“What is it?”
“Does this count as collaborating with the enemy?”
It wasn’t just his concern.
The sailor in the cockpit also glanced back toward the deck, waiting for their commander’s answer.
“But…” The sailor still looked uncertain. This time, however, when Muda turned to look at him, his gaze was far more resolute.
“The real enemies are those who, for their own ambitions, are dragging us toward an abyss of no return, not the people who are willing to risk their lives to pull us out of it. They’re different from those cultists from the Ocean Edge Province. They genuinely intend to end the wasteland on this planet. Perhaps that’s why Mr. Sun Yuechi wrote that letter for them.”
“We have never betrayed the survivors living in these seas. Not now, and never in the future.”
The two sailors exchanged glances. Their eyes still held confusion and uncertainty about the future, but they felt a little better inside.
Whether that counted as betrayal or not, they had already boarded the pirate ship. All they could do was keep sailing it forward…
Someone shifted the topic first, and another instinctively picked it up, relaxing as they chatted about something else.
“By the way, what were they eating on the beach? Smelled pretty good.”
“I saw barbecue and beer… and that golden thing, wasn’t that what they call fries?”
“Damn… They’re eating better than I do.” The sailor at the helm smacked his lips enviously, his appetite stirred.
After everything that had happened, he had been working an overnight shift. Now he just felt hungry and exhausted.
Leaning against the railing, Muda yawned and said casually, “If you’re that curious, we can drop by their port someday.”
“Boss, do you have any of their silver?”
“Aren’t they planning to trade with the Ring Island settlement? When the time comes, we can just exchange Federation currency with them.”
“Good idea!”
Before they realized it, the Southern Archipelago Federation patrol boat was sailing farther and farther east, toward the rising sun.
None of them noticed that the Federation, held together by conspiracy, had quietly developed a crack…
…
Elsewhere, on the Wasteland Online official website.
Players who had toured the submarine rushed back to the forum with the news, sharing it with those clueless fools who had never seen the world.
Peepo: I’m telling you, that submarine was insane! It was over 200 meters long! It’s basically an underwater aircraft carrier!
Eye Owe Money: Holy shit?! It actually exists?!
Construction Boy: The sun must’ve risen in the west, Tail didn’t exaggerate for once?!
Tail: Giao! Don’t add random settings to me! When have I ever liked bragging?! (ノ｀Д)ノ
Night Ten: I’m shocked, since when did our doggy dev Light get this generous?!
French Fry Harbor didn’t have network access yet, so the photos taken couldn’t be sent back to the shelter in real time, nor synced to the official site. Fortunately, with modern technology, some enthusiastic big-shot took the scattered descriptions from those worldly players, extracted the key points, fed them into an AI art program, and through repeated training actually produced a fairly convincing CG image.
Looking at those AI-generated knockoff CGs, everyone got an early visual treat, though new arguments quickly followed.
Master Zhang: Wait, are you saying this thing can dive?!
Footwash Water: Bullshit!
Hulu Fishmonger: I’m damn curious how the hell they made a pressure hull with that diameter! And what kind of welding tech is that?! If this thing can dive 100 meters in real life, I’ll eat it!
Midnight Umbrella: Bro’s lost it, this is a game!
Starving Force: Come on, you accepted a 500 meter long iron airship. What’s so hard to accept about a 200 meter long submarine?
Bowed Starving: Exactly! If they can weld starships thousands of kilometers long, what’s one 200 meter submarine?
Athlete Foot: Sssss… honestly, it might actually be possible! Isn’t the Heavenly Court near the entrance of Shelter 70? Odds are their welding tech was salvaged from the Heavenly Court Space Station!
Bathroom Goer: Holy crap… when you think about it like that, Shelter 70 really had a god-tier starting point!
Be Quiet: How the hell did they play such a good hand this badly?!
Thinking about how those shelters started with free research points and population, then comparing it to their own experience, getting beaten by marauders and mutants the moment they showed their faces, the alpha test players burst into tears, sighing endlessly.
Back then, even picking up a fire poker felt like acquiring a legendary artifact. Unlike now, when someone could straight-up buy a Gauss sniper rifle with money.
To be honest, it wasn’t just those alpha test players feeling sentimental. Even Chu Guang, lurking on the forum from inside the shelter, felt a wave of emotion.
Strictly speaking, those alpha test players all showed up later. He was the one who had crawled out of Shelter 404 first. Back then, forget fire pokers, his starting loadout was a damn dog, and it had two heads and chased him, trying to bite his ass.
Thankfully, the survivors of Baker Street treated him fairly well, and Xiao Yu’s family especially took good care of him. Otherwise, who knew whether any of what followed would’ve happened at all.
Turning their overpowered starting point into this… that really took talent.
Chu Guang muttered to himself as he looked at the map of the South Sea.
Though he wasn’t there in person, based on the casual chatter on the forum and the compiled summary Little Seven had prepared for him, he had a rough grasp of how things had unfolded.
Although Sun Yuechi refused to admit it, Shelter 70 had already become the de facto inner-city aristocracy of the South Sea.
Their strengths lay in the fact that, unlike the inner city nobles of Boulder Town, they weren’t decadent or extravagant. Most of them were highly educated senior engineers and specialists, possessing knowledge, experience, ideals, and foresight far beyond ordinary wastelanders.
As for their shortcomings, they might be even more detached from the masses than the inner city nobles, after all, the former frequently moved among the latter.
Even now, figures like Huang Guangwei and Captain Chen still believed that things had turned out this way because of the stupidity of the survivors, rather than a lack of genuine communication.
Had they been willing, over the past century, to set aside their arrogance and share even a little power with the ordinary survivors who had already grown up, a Federation that completely excluded the shelter might never have emerged.
Coral City, nurtured by the people of Shelter 70, was the first to be torn apart in this conflict.
Its plight wasn’t just due to its dependence on the power station, but also because it was caught between two fractured groups.
Staring at the vast blue ocean, Chu Guang felt a growing sense of pity.
Perched on the pen holder at the corner of the desk, Little Seven swung its legs casually, resting its chin on its hands as it watched Chu Guang’s side profile. Suddenly, it mumbled curiously, “Master.”
Pulling his gaze away from the forum, Chu Guang looked at it. “What is it?”
Little Seven blinked once and asked, “Since the South Sea is so important, why don’t you just take them over directly, instead of letting the players handle it themselves?”
Chu Guang smiled faintly. “They’re on the ground there. Their understanding of the situation is far better than mine. Letting them handle it is the best choice. Besides, I want them to change this wasteland of their own accord, to maximize player creativity and enthusiasm. If they can resolve the crisis there with their strength and unite the survivors, that’ll be more effective than releasing any number of expansion packs.”
“All we need to do is provide enough support at critical moments.”
Of course, he hadn’t handed everything over to the players. As the New Alliance’s administrator, he had his own work to do. Not just the ongoing Mutant Slime Mold Research Committee, but also a series of recent collaborations with the Camel Kingdom.
Construction had begun on a railway from Falling Leaf City to Petra Fortress. Once completed, the Camel Kingdom would be integrated into the New Alliance’s trade network.
Negotiations for the Silvermoon Bay embassy were complete, and embassy staff along with a batch of player-exclusive clone cabins were already en route to Oasis No.4.
As save points extended outward along the New Alliance’s railways, more and more players would appear along the route from Dawn City to French Fry Harbor.
The vast majority of these players’ in-game actions would have a positive impact on the development of French Fry Harbor. All of that was the behind-the-scenes work he did, work ordinary players never got to see…
…
While players were noisily debating the Dolphin nuclear submarine and a suspected upcoming new version, the distant Silvermoon Bay was bustling as well.
The morning bells had just rung, and seagulls were already circling the smokestacks and masts of steam-powered ships.
Boiler workers carrying shovels yawned as they climbed onto the deck. Dockworkers with towels slung over their shoulders unloaded crate after crate from barges of all shapes and styles, handing them off to ground crews who hauled them to the harbor warehouses or the trade market a kilometer away.
The goods here were endless in variety: precious timber and richly patterned silks, spices emitting strange aromas, crates and bundles of gold and silver treasures, and even secret relics left over from the Prosperity Era.
The ships moored in the harbor were just as diverse, fishing boats one could walk around in a dozen steps, and massive oil tankers that took a full minute to run from bow to stern.
As the largest cargo hub in the entire Sunset Province, and even across the mid-eastern region of the Central Continent, the port saw not only ships from the eastern and western coasts on a regular basis, but occasionally vessels from another continent as well.
For that very reason, the bustle usually began the moment the sun rose and lasted all the way until it set.