P-205 Shelter

Nature could be affected by technology to a limited extent, but generally speaking, it would not be swayed by human will. Civilization, however, would. Under the influence of both, civilization could undergo earth-shaking changes.

Traditional ethics and morals rapidly crumbled and changed amid the upheaval brought by technology. The duet of human subjective consciousness and technological leaps would lead civilization down an unknown, lost path.

Li Aoz walked across the frost-coated sea of sand. To his left lay the buried glory of old. A former leader's statue raised its left hand, literally half-buried in the earth. Its marble face was riddled with bullet holes and corrosion.

The sight to his right was comparatively less terrible. Raging sandstorms mixed with ice particles, and once they covered someone, they rapidly drained heat and strength. Without keeping a low center of gravity and crawling forward bent over, even a two-hundred-pound man would be pressed to the ground by the howling ice-sand storm.

It was difficult to imagine, but Li Aoz was less than thirty kilometers from a human settlement. Yet within that thirty-kilometer radius, the land could only be described as utterly barren.

Black-red clouds of smoke drifted slowly overhead. Li Aoz raised a hand, wiped the snowy grime from the back of it, and checked his electronic watch.

9:11 a.m.

"Whew..."

He exhaled a cloud of white mist through his face covering, his gray eyes narrowing to slits.

It was hard to describe the Outland's environment in words. It certainly could not be called bright, but calling it dark would have been an exaggeration too.

The black-red twilight resembled congealed blood on a battlefield. Gloomy clouds weighed heavily overhead, leaving one suffocated by misery. No one could have uttered the word "relaxed" at a time like this.

Dim. Primordial chaos—those were the most immediate descriptions that came to Li Aoz's mind.

He did not turn on any lighting equipment. In the Outland, exposing a light source was equivalent to courting death. This seemingly silent, lifeless forbidden zone actually hid countless hunters.

Li Aoz was confident he could take down one or two low-level Law Enforcement Division Four Agents with his bare hands, but that was only because they were ordinary people. There would not be many extraordinary beings along the borders of a county town.

But those who survived in the Outland were all vicious men who lived with blood on their blades.

Even the truck driver who had just brought him out of Frostplate, a man who ran long-haul deliveries year-round—if one looked closely, one would find scars all over his thick double-layered bulletproof glass and non-removable doors. Drivers across the Four Nations only dared to use Fog Lamps when heavy fog rolled in. Aside from that, they did not dare emit even the slightest glimmer of light.

"That guy dropped me off too far east. The shelter entrance is in the west."

Li Aoz felt somewhat frustrated, but he did not blame the man. Under normal circumstances, drivers from the Four Nations did not dare stop their vehicles. Misidentifying the location was understandable.

He wore a thick overcoat. Even though Frostplate was a northern nation and its everyday clothes were already very heavy, they still seemed thin compared to the Outland's cold. Sweat had frozen together with his clothing, turning stiff like lumps of ice, making every movement sluggish.

Li Aoz had not brought specialized exploration and detection equipment, but based on his experience, it was only around minus forty degrees Celsius now. That was not particularly cold. Deep in the Outland, in places such as Purgatory Valley, temperatures could reach minus two hundred and seventy degrees. Even the best protective suit would not last thirty seconds there.

He felt around and found that the surroundings somewhat resembled his memories. He switched to a half-kneeling, half-crawling posture and slowly moved forward. Li Aoz kept probing through the snow and sand. The shelter was buried underground, with only a thick metal shell exposed outside. Once he found the metal casing, he could feel his way to the entrance.

Hiss.

Low temperatures made metal brittle. Even with protective gloves, his fingertips were pierced by some embrittled steel. Faced with wounds that would soon freeze shut, Li Aoz instead felt a burst of delight.

Found it.

He hurriedly stepped forward with care and began digging with his bare hands. His gloves wore through, and the wounds on his fingertips were quickly clogged with frost and sand, but Li Aoz did not care.

As long as he could get inside, becoming a Mutant and obtaining that extremely rare specialty at this point in time would be inevitable!

Seconds ticked by. Finally, just as the back of his hand was torn open by a long, narrow wound and a negative status appeared on his panel—wound infection, Constitution decreased by one point every four hours—his fingers touched a solid obstruction.

Ding—

An incomparably clear, low chime rang out. Li Aoz's heart leaped with joy, and he quickly swept away the nearby sand and dirt, revealing a heavy alloy hatch beneath. His fingers brushed over its etched markings, and he made out the rust-covered characters:

"Nethertrace" Humanitarian Relief Passage—P-205 Shelter. "Found it."

Li Aoz exerted both hands until the veins bulged, only then managing to turn the hatch's wheel with great effort.

After the End War, this entrance had been abandoned. It had gone too long without activation or maintenance, and the erosion of ice and sand had nearly rusted the bolts solid. The handwheel, dampened by snow, was also impossible to grip firmly, greatly affecting his ability to exert force.

"Urgh—"

Li Aoz's face stiffened. The joints of his fingers had gone white from excessive strain. He sat down to rest for a moment. After recognizing the fact that he was no longer a player, he removed the scarf from his head and wrapped it around both the wheel and his palm to increase the contact area and get a firmer grip.

Hiss...

After a long while, dust billowed from the hatch. The wheel slowly turned beneath Li Aoz's continued exertion. Enduring the negative effect of being frozen stiff, he forcibly cranked it three full turns. With a bang, the hinges finally gave way, revealing part of a ladder's handrail inside.

"Ha... huff, huff, huff!"

Li Aoz breathed warm air onto his hands, stomped his feet repeatedly, then turned around trembling and slowly stepped down the ladder.

Creak, creak—

Each step made the poorly maintained ladder produce a teeth-grinding sound. He pulled the hatch shut above his head and lowered the scarf from his mouth and nose, only for a thick smell of rust to rush into his face. He immediately felt dizzy and nauseated, then frowned and continued climbing down.

The shelter passage was extremely dark, and parts of it had broken away. He carefully tested each step downward. It took him five minutes to reach the ground safely.

Thud.

The suitcase was thrown down first. Li Aoz raised his wrist and checked the time on his electronic watch.

10:12 a.m.

"I thought an entire day had passed."

Li Aoz shook his head. Painful hours always felt unbearably long. He did not rush to begin exploring the shelter. Instead, he first recalled the mission process and background.

"P-205 Shelter is a very long quest chain, but it is also the only path within the Frostplate faction for advancing into the Overlord Class. It can basically be considered a Main Quest. Therefore, both its difficulty and rewards are on par with a Main Quest."

Li Aoz was not sure whether players would still appear after he had transmigrated into the game... but preparing to welcome their arrival would at least not put him at a disadvantage. Besides, if the players really came, that would be very interesting. Perhaps he could use his identity as an NPC to make them handle some troublesome problems for him.

He would make preparations in advance. Even if the players never arrived, at worst he would just be grinding a few extra quests. As long as it was not some opportunistic trick, nothing he did would be wasted.

"Still, I don't intend to make Frostplate the base for my future development. The best place for the Overlord Class to truly spread its wings is Red Arrow, with Sky Ring as the second choice. For the sake of getting more players to be—cough—drawn onto the Starcaller path in the future, I can't let anyone else take the P-205 Shelter quest."

The P-205 Shelter quest chain offered generous rewards, more than enough for an Overlord Class player to declare themselves "graduated"—but if Frostplate's Overlord Class players could truly become self-sufficient, Li Aoz, who intended to develop in Red Arrow or Sky Ring, would lose an excellent promotional opportunity.

For Li Aoz, who possessed knowledge from more than a dozen versions ahead, guiding players was something that required careful planning. It was not easy.

"I'm confident I can make the Overlord Class shine brilliantly in the early stages and draw a large number of players into it. Red Arrow and Sky Ring don't have Main Quests for the Overlord Class, but their experience and leveling environments are already well-developed. Most importantly, I know better than anyone what resources Overlord Class players need most in the early game. That way, after the players kill monsters, they can come spend money with me."

With services tailored specifically for Overlord Class players, he could greatly reduce their miserable grinding experience. If the results were good enough, he could even encourage other players to change classes and cultivate the Overlord Class.

Li Aoz had absolute confidence when it came to attracting players.

In his previous life, he had been the only person on the entire internet to go the farthest, start the earliest, gain the greatest popularity, and wield the greatest influence on the Starcaller path.

If he had been a few years younger, he might have entered the professional circuit, played esports, and made Starcallers shine on the world stage.

In other words, it would not have been an exaggeration for him to call himself the founding master of Starcaller players.

Therefore, Li Aoz not only intended to complete the P-205 Shelter quest chain, but to end it completely so that no one else could ever accept it.

Hogging all the rewards for himself would easily earn criticism, but based on Li Aoz's understanding of players, they were the most practical people around.

They would curse when it was time to curse and play when it was time to play. After cursing, they would still remember to buy. After buying, they would keep cursing.

They had principles.

Once his market expanded, every Overlord Class player would be itching to sell him their virtual kidneys in exchange for items.

For that purpose, Li Aoz decided not to bandage his wounds.

Not only that, he took a camping knife from his bag, weighed it in his hand, then stabbed it into his thigh with a backhanded grip without hesitation!