On the second day of playing games, when Shen Cheng logged into the base, she noticed that there were already many survivors there. However, she also noticed that the current happiness level of the base was not as high as before.
This was normal, as problems tended to increase in places with more people. Most of the previous survivors in the base were those who had finally found a glimmer of hope after enduring various difficult situations. However, this new batch of people was different. Although they were also wanderers, they did not have the same sense of belonging to the base as the previous survivors.
With less sense of belonging, there was a corresponding need for better support. This support was not just about providing a safe shelter to avoid their homelessness, but also about providing various aspects of basic living facilities. With a settled mind, the base could only retain more people with abilities and form a virtuous cycle by upgrading its current infrastructure and conditions.
Shen Cheng checked the four dimensions of the residents’ perception of the base:
Clothing: No uniforms. Most residents still wear their own clothes.
Food: Tasty, but with a limited variety of ingredients.
Housing conditions: Dormitory-style living, poor. Lack of privacy and no family concept.
Travel conditions: None.
All four areas needed improvement! There was still a long way to go.
Shen Cheng noticed that the lowest satisfaction level was with the housing conditions. Due to the player-friendly environment of the game and the fact that many of the new ability users she recruited had families, the demand for single rooms in the base had become increasingly urgent.
In the early days, the base only had dormitory-style living, which brought many problems. Shen Cheng could see from the scene in one of the rooms that there were people arguing.
Qi Hang didn’t expect living in a communal bunk would cause so much trouble.
As a chef, he received an extra portion of meat due to the base’s appreciation of his exceptional taste buds. However, Qi Hang himself couldn’t bear to eat too much, so he secretly brought it back home, planning to share it with his wife and father who only had basic rations.
But who knew that the smell of the fish meat would be noticed by a child living next door. The child cried loudly and begged Qi Hang for some. The child’s mother, a woman in her forties, immediately began to pester Qi Hang, threatening to report him for hoarding food, which was a serious offense in the post-apocalyptic world.
Qi Hang was afraid that the base would punish him unfairly, and he cherished his stable life and the base’s appreciation of his abilities. So, he tried to calm the situation by giving the child half of the fish meat. Although it pained him, he thought stability was more important than anything else.
However, Qi Hang’s wife did not share the same opinion. She thought they hadn’t done anything wrong. Although the adults in the base received an extra portion of meat, many people were starving to death on the wasteland. She didn’t tolerate the child’s unreasonable behavior, and she argued with the child’s mother.
As the two women pushed and shoved each other, Qi Hang was about to step in and separate them when he heard a mechanical voice from the central control center of the base: “Qi Hang, please come to the main control center.”
The middle-aged woman chuckled with delight upon hearing the news, pointing and poking at Qi Hang’s wife, who was almost in tears with anger, and sneered, “Looks like the truth is out! Maybe your whole family will be kicked out.”
Qi Hang was annoyed and pulled his wife, who was already crying, and gave a cold glance at the middle-aged woman before heading to the control center.
His father had just come back from a walk and saw the couple with a serious and weeping expression. He only found out about the incident during his absence and sighed, “It’s not always a misfortune, and misfortunes can’t be avoided. I don’t think the base leader is the kind of person who doesn’t distinguish right from wrong. You should go and listen first and see what they say. As long as we’re still together, it’s enough.”
Qi Hang’s heart calmed down.
He took his wife to the control center, but when he stood in front of the console, he found that there were other ability users who had been called here, along with those who had been assigned work and positions in the base, as well as those with their families.
It seemed that they were not the only ones, and judging by the situation, it might even be a good thing.
Soon, they were told that a batch of upgraded family suites had been built in the base, with a double bed, a living room, and a children’s bed if necessary. However, the family suites could only be paid for with base points, and the base had now opened up missions for clearing the wasteland. As long as they went on a mission once a week or had a stable income in the base, they could afford the family suite’s expenses and their daily needs.
Qi Hang’s ability was not combat-related, but he was naturally excited to hear about the family suite. He was initially worried that he wouldn’t have enough points, but after checking, he found that his position’s points were barely enough!
Qi Hang’s wife tugged at his sleeve. As an ordinary person, she seemed a little worried, “Honey, maybe we should forget it. It’s not easy to earn a few points, and judging by the situation, we might need to use more points in the future. Let’s save some points. I can endure it.”
Qi Hang looked at his wife’s haggard and exhausted face, and remembered their argument in the room earlier today. He gritted his teeth and shook his head, then raised his hand and shouted, “I want one!”
“Swish,” all eyes turned to him.
Standing on the platform, Li Weilan smiled.
His gaze fell on Qi Hang and his wife beside him, and his smile carried some blessings. He checked Qi Hang’s points and confirmed that the score of this ability user was enough. “Congratulations. This is the key to Room 01. Note that points will be deducted directly from your account at the beginning of each week. If you don’t have enough points, please remember to clear out your personal belongings early.”
“Thank you,” Qi Hang said, and took the card with the number “01” from the stage carefully.
One family became the first to taste the crab. Other ability users who were already married or wished to be in a quiet place also became active.
They each exchanged their points for keys with Li Weilan, and soon, the initial ten family suites were all allocated.
Shen Cheng looked at her phone screen and saw a surge in residents’ satisfaction and loyalty to the base. She breathed a sigh of relief. These ten family suites cost around 600G, which was accumulated from the grains sold in Li Weilan’s space for about ten days. In this way, she had no more gold coins without completing new missions or spending money.
Making money was really not easy.
As she was dozing off, a new task suddenly popped up in the game:
[The residents’ loyalty has reached the requirements. Please help the protagonist complete the first collective sweep: the abandoned high-rise apartment building. After the first sweep is completed, the base will activate the option to automatically complete the sweep mission three times a day, only going to unlocked scene maps, and will bring back supplies and item fragments for the base. The first daily sweep will earn 50G.]
Sweeping is 50G, and grain cultivation requires 30 fields, each of which produces 2G per day. It can ensure a stable income of 110G per day, which can be considered a stable source of gold coins. The sooner you start, the better.
Shen Cheng opened the map and found a nearby sweeping point. The name on it was “Abandoned City High-rise Apartment”.
Shen Cheng looked at the appearance of the building on the map and noticed that it had started to peel and fade in just one year. The outer walls were covered with ivy. She silently suspected that this place could be a meat grinder.
Translated on ho lo lo novels dot com.
If it was once inhabited by people, there might still be a large number of zombies wandering in the rooms or corridors.
The corridors in the apartment building were narrow, and once they were blocked in the front and back, it would be very dangerous.
If the other zombies on the street were also attracted over, then…
She couldn’t help but tremble slightly, worried about the safety of her cub.
But on the phone screen, her cub had already set off with a team of people.
The base is currently out of oil. According to Fu Yanzhou, one of the projects researched by the research institute before he left was to use the electricity of lightning-type ability users to charge electric vehicles. However, the stability of the battery is still a problem that has not been completely solved.
Because of this problem and the unresolved issue with the vehicles, Li Weilan and his team temporarily cannot leave the Noah base too far. But there are ruins of H City about an hour’s walk away from them. This was once a large city with a population of several million, but now it is just a pile of rubble.
When the apocalypse first came, the people in H City quickly evacuated to the central city of S City, which was not too far away from them, and most of them entered the base near S City. But those who did not evacuate, especially in the university town of H City, were said to still be guerrilla fighting with the large number of zombies in the city, surviving in a way like groundhogs.
But there are still many resources that can be collected in the city.
This is Li Weilan’s first time taking the newly recruited ability users out to scavenge, but they don’t plan to go deep into S city. Instead, they plan to gather resources in a standalone high-rise building outside the city.
This high-rise building is actually quite unique.
When it was built, it was originally planned to be one of the landscape towers for the new city. However, when the residents moved in and the surrounding facilities were not yet built, the end of the world came unexpectedly.
Because its garage was on the lowest floor, but the entire first floor collapsed due to the fighting, the garage was sealed off by the falling stones, and the first floor was also sealed off.
Among the ability users recruited by the Noah Base this time, there was one who had lived in this tower before. He said that there might still be some survivors hiding in their own rooms in the tower, but they would eventually run out of supplies. He had heard that someone had recently jumped off the tower.
To scavenge this tower, they first need to find a way up.
Since the first floor has collapsed, an earth-type ability user needs to clear a layer of debris before they can go inside. However, if they don’t have a stable team, it’s easy to attract the attention of nearby zombies while the earth-type ability user clears the debris, resulting in an attack by zombies or mutated beasts.
Perhaps because they are worried that there is nothing good left in the tower, and the cost and reward are not proportional, this tower is currently still in a sealed state, waiting for the arrival of the ability users from the Noah Base.
Li Weilan chose it because he felt that the difficulty and situation were just right for their first scavenging trip to hone their team cooperation and make some preparations for future zombie attacks.