Free Web NovelChapter 100: Chapter 100: A Chat with the Developers
All the players were elites, with some being top experts in the field of artificial intelligence. They’d had this suspicion from the moment the nukes dropped. freewёbnoνel.com
After their recent collective death, someone had even written a data model to run a simulation.
"According to the model’s simulation, if a nuclear reactor is the primary power source—combined with automated repair bots, automated mining machines, and ample spare parts to create a fully automated nuclear strike system—it could theoretically operate continuously for around ten thousand years..."
"As for humanity... Heh. A pitiful, fragile species like ours probably wouldn’t last a year. We’d be wiped out by the relentless nuclear strikes, especially since the nuclear winter would only grow worse..."
A wave of pessimism washed over the crowd at these words.
If the nuclear strikes really did resume on a daily basis, they wouldn’t even be able to leave the ruins before being vaporized.
Even the ability to constantly respawn would be meaningless, as they’d be unable to accomplish anything of substance.
The players fell silent for a moment. But they weren’t completely crushed. Instead, they quickly rallied their spirits and began searching the ruins for clues.
They had finally figured out a potential reason for the continuous nuclear strikes, marking a small first step toward completing the three game objectives.
But as for finding the ultimate cause of the war, stopping the nuclear strikes, and reviving human civilization—who knew how long that would take.
In-game time continued to accelerate, and the players soon discovered the nuclear strikes weren’t a daily occurrence.
The strikes stopped on the second day, and the third day remained quiet as well.
They used this quiet time to scavenge items from the ruins, quickly crafting various tools. They even found a number of weapons and began to arm themselves.
To end a war, one must often first be prepared to wage it. Perhaps this was the great absurdity of humankind.
The players felt this truth deeply.
When the second in-game year arrived, the nuclear strikes returned. Only then did everyone finally understand: the strikes were happening once a year! freewёbnoνel.com
By observing the trajectories of the warheads on that day, the military and aerospace experts among them finally concluded that only three nations capable of launching nuclear missiles remained active globally.
In other words, their mission was to shut down the three AI-controlled nuclear strike systems that were still operational.
Even though many of them worked in this very field, they couldn’t help but curse out loud.
For the remnants of humanity after a nuclear war, accomplishing such a feat was practically impossible.
In other words, given the intensity and frequency of the strikes, the remnants of humanity would likely be completely extinct within a few hundred years—or, optimistically, a thousand.
Even if they didn’t go extinct, surviving for generations in such a radioactive environment would turn them into... who knows what kind of monsters.
A group of anthropologists, biologists, and geneticists even began inputting massive amounts of data into the dialogue box, running calculations on the spot.
But before they could finish their calculations, the in-game time suddenly accelerated by a factor of ten thousand, and everything began to change at a dizzying pace!
The entire game shifted into a mode resembling ’Red Alert’.
They could now build structures rapidly, even gather the surviving NPCs to re-establish their own communities and societies.
Alternatively, they could enter hidden, deep-seated Shelters, search for resources, and rally the survivors within to join them in ending the apocalypse.
They could even prioritize preserving technological knowledge within Shelters or other underground facilities, hoping to cultivate a unique, powerful civilization before gathering their strength to end the world’s suffering.
The ten thousand players once again split into dozens of smaller squads.
The difference this time was that they weren’t divided evenly into squads of one hundred. Instead, they formed factions based on their own ideologies.
Those who wanted to prioritize rebuilding civilization formed one faction. Those who wanted to seek out and disable the nuclear systems formed another. Then there were those who wanted to fight fire with fire, intending to find remaining warheads and use them to destroy the automated launch systems. And so on, and so on.
All in all, they split into dozens of organizations, large and small.
Time flew. A few more days passed in the real world, but in the game, centuries had already gone by.
The players were horrified to discover that the remnants of human civilization had decayed even further. Without exception, the players who tried to rebuild cities were met with an annual baptism of nuclear fire.
Meanwhile, the players who tried to hole up and survive on the limited resources within the Shelters faced the classic closed-system dilemma: a growing population with finite resources.
The players who set out to find the hidden nuclear strike systems across the world mostly died along the way—from radiation, NPC attacks, or a lack of clean food and water.
A small contingent of players even established fascist, totalitarian regimes within Shelters and other sealed underground spaces. They reveled in it, completely engrossed, as if they had discovered their true calling.
Naturally, this small minority was ostracized by the other players, becoming total pariahs.
This was all largely due to the game’s hyper-realistic graphics and NPC reactions. Or perhaps the true reason was simply human nature.
Finally, after their methods and strategies failed one after another, they began to re-evaluate the game world as it now stood.
Centuries had passed. Apart from the very few people just barely surviving inside the Shelters, the remaining humans on the outside had completely forgotten humanity’s technological civilization.
They had even begun to deify and worship the technological artifacts of the past.
Nearly everyone had suffered some form of mutation or another.
What little technical knowledge remained was used to enforce tyranny across the wasteland. Bandits and murderers were everywhere. Humanity seemed to have devolved into beasts.
Living like cockroaches.
The players finally ended their separate explorations and experiments, gathering once more in the ruins of the starting city.
They had to work together.
Perhaps this had been the right choice from the very beginning.
They had seen nukes fall from the sky hundreds of times in the game. By calculating the trajectories from these hundreds of strikes, they had finally deduced the approximate locations of the three AI strike systems.
At the same time, through their interactions with the game’s NPCs, they had also collected a multitude of legends and rumors.
After a painstaking analysis, the information specialists, led by Nick, had also uncovered numerous clues.
Furthermore, they confirmed the location of the city ruins: they were on the North American Continent.
The Rocky Mountains, the Five Great Lakes, the Central Plains, and even Highway 51—all confirmed it.
It was time.
They would unite as one, forming the strongest army they could muster, and march to find the source of the AI strike system located on the North American Continent.
Then, they would find the answer, kill it, and end this damn game.
And maybe even have a little chat with the developers...
