Lin Qi paid no attention to the sounds inside the cargo bed. Every movement of the mech was aimed at making the rescue operation more efficient.
As the number of survivors in the cargo bed grew, more zombies caught the scent of living creatures and kept converging on the mech.
Ordinary zombies posed no threat to the mech, but their sheer numbers severely slowed it down.
He set the cargo bed down somewhere high.
The Chainsaw Sword roared to life.
Like mowing down grass, it cut through them with ease.
Ordinary zombies fell in droves before the mech's attacks, a weapon of war.
Lin Qi steered the mech around the zombies' heads to avoid damaging the Crimson Crystals.
But he didn't send out the Collecting Robots to gather them yet. The top priority was bringing the survivors together.
Once they were all gathered in sufficient numbers, collecting the Crimson Crystals wouldn't take long.
In Lin Qi's initial plans, all of Modu University would serve as his temporary base in the Doomsday World.
"Holy crap, the Mechanical Engineering Department is awesome!"
"Boss, you're the real deal! Is this the big shot from the Iron Man Society? You're incredible."
The survivors in the cargo bed peered through the opening and watched Lin Qi's movements, murmuring in amazement.
After mowing down one wave of zombies, Lin Qi continued onward.
He filled the cargo bed.
The bed of a small-to-medium-sized truck ended up crammed with more than fifty survivors.
If Lin Qi hadn't been worried about its weight limit, he could've piled them in even higher and squeezed in a few more.
Carrying the cargo bed, the mech returned to the Club Activity Building. Lin Qi lined it up with a second-floor window to use as an entrance, completing the first batch of rescues.
Lin Qi kept going, following the markers left by survivors in various parts of Modu University and the visual perception granted by Psychic Vision to rescue them in batch after batch.
He rescued people from sunrise to sunset.
The first truck bed had long since buckled under the strain and been discarded. Lin Qi had replaced it twice before completing the entire rescue operation.
The vast majority of survivors had gathered in the Club Activity Building.
Most of those still missing were lucky individuals hiding alone. They hadn't responded to the first broadcast's call and were tucked away in concealed corners.
They were hidden so well that even Lin Qi hadn't managed to find them.
A new broadcast went out.
"This is the Club Activity Building at Modu University. The first round of rescue operations is complete. Remaining survivors, please wait patiently. A second round of rescues will take place tomorrow."
"After tomorrow's rescue operation, high-power communication devices will be dropped off at the following locations. Anyone we missed should make their way there to call for help."
"We will now announce the initial drop-off points: Building 13, Dormitory Area A, first floor; the Second Dining Hall, first floor..."
As the broadcast played, Lin Qi and Xia Chu left the mech and entered the Club Activity Building.
Before entering, Lin Qi took three differently shaped crystals from the mech's storage unit.
One was pinkish red, one blackish red, and one orange-red. They came from three different kinds of zombies.
Based on their Mental Power signatures, they were three different types of First Rank Extraordinary Items.
"Three different crystals, all from survivors mutated under the Crimson Moon."
"Three types of zombies: one incredibly fast, one incredibly strong, and one with off-the-charts Mental Power."
"These zombies' powers all came from the Crimson Moon's gaze. I can't understand why the Transcendent Power it manifested differs so drastically."
"Perhaps the Transcendent Power contained within the Crimson Moon itself has all kinds of traits..."
Thinking it over, he made his way to the sixth floor.
On Lin Qi's orders, all the survivors had gathered on the sixth floor and above.
The sound of the Exoskeleton's footsteps stood out sharply in the building.
The survivors resting on the hallway floor immediately turned to look.
"Holy crap! An Exoskeleton!"
"The Mechanical Engineering genius is awesome!"
Praise rang out from every direction, but Lin Qi paid little attention to it.
Xia Chu, walking behind him, was the one whose beautiful eyes sparkled as she listened.
Lin Qi stopped and looked at all the survivors.
There were 314 survivors in total, more than three-quarters of them male.
Most were around twenty years old, students at Modu University.
Only a handful were over thirty, members of Magic University's faculty and staff.
Modu University had yielded so few survivors. It was easy to imagine how terrifyingly low the odds of survival had been after the Crimson Moon's gaze fell upon them.
"Everyone, please be quiet."
Lin Qi spoke, and the entire floor fell silent at once.
No one tried to speak out of turn. Even the young scholars and professors among the survivors looked his way.
"Everyone, do you want to survive?" Lin Qi asked.
But before anyone could answer, he continued, "Before you answer, listen to what I've seen over the past two days."
"I'm sure many of you saw me leave Modu University in the mech before beginning the rescue operation."
"At first, I thought the same way most of you did. I went looking for the Rescue Team mentioned in the broadcast. I didn't want to be a hero. I just wanted to protect myself in the apocalypse."
"Whether I was making this Exoskeleton or hastily building this mech, from beginning to end, my goal was to protect myself and stay alive."
"But what I saw after leaving the Magic University campus changed my mind."
"I saw the battlefield where the Rescue Team had fought the zombies, but I didn't see the Rescue Team."
"I was puzzled. Where had the Rescue Team gone? I'm sure many of you have the same question. Our radios haven't picked up an official broadcast in a long time."
"I did some searching, and I think I found them. I found the Rescue Team!"
Lin Qi's voice grew more intense. He had reached the crux of the matter.
"I discovered something strange in a high-rise office building on Shuiqing Road. Something terrifying seemed to be on the top floor. It never showed itself, but it released a special pheromone into the air."
"The pheromone lured every living creature into the building. I almost went up myself, but fortunately the mech was too big to get inside."
At the tense moment, Lin Qi eased the mood a little, then quickly picked up the thread again. "But the Rescue Team must have gone up. It was only a hundred meters from the battlefield."
"The Rescue Team vanished there. I think everyone here is smart enough to guess what happened."
The survivors on the entire floor fell silent.
The Rescue Team... was gone?
At least the Rescue Team assigned to this area had been wiped out.
If even a fully armed Rescue Team was gone, what were unarmed civilians like them supposed to do?
"How do we survive?" Lin Qi asked. This was the crucial question—and the key to uniting the survivors and motivating them to work for him.
Someone in the crowd had the right idea. "Arm ourselves! We need to arm ourselves!"
"Boss, teach us how to build mechs and Exoskeletons! I have a master's degree in automotive engineering. I have the basics down!"
Before you continue