Chapter 624: The Story of Vault 100

Chapter 624: The Past of Vault 100

Vault 100, Level B40.

The squad led by I’m the Darkest finally pushed through the mountains of obstacles and metabolic waste, reaching the dust-free warehouse where the black boxes were stored.

As they gazed at the mission coordinates so close on the map, all the players breathed a momentary sigh of relief.

That straight-line distance of less than two hundred meters felt longer than a kilometer of cross-country trekking, especially when the bugs suddenly darting out from the shadows kept testing their SAN values.

“I’m opening the door.”

Leaning against one side of the warehouse door, I’m the Darkest gestured to his teammate on the other side, then punched the mechanical button for the manual sliding door.

With a hiss of escaping air, a dry draft blew out from the door, carrying dust from the crack outward.

Several gun barrels quickly thrust into the doorway, flashlight beams sweeping across every corner of the pitch-black room. Confirming no threats, a flicker of surprise crossed I’m the Darkest’s face.

He had expected tight security here, even braced for a tough fight, but the reality was the complete opposite.

Bell, trailing behind the group, couldn’t resist a teasing remark.

“Positive pressure sealing is basic for a cleanroom. I thought when you saw the air blowing out, you’d realize no dirty things could sneak in here.”

With that, it crawled into the room on its own, manipulating the spider robot to extend a leg and press a switch on the inner wall.

White light illuminated the entire dark room.

I’m the Darkest awkwardly turned off his tactical flashlight and lowered his gun barrel.

Strange…

Where had that inexplicable unease, lingering since a while ago, come from?

But the odd feeling didn’t last long, almost instantly replaced by a cascade of surprises.

There, in the spacious warehouse near the freight elevator, stood black boxes of various sizes, square and imposing.

Seeing those black boxes, the players behind I’m the Darkest had their eyes gleaming green, bursting into exclamations of delight.

“Holy crap! One, two, three… twenty-nine!?”

“Awesome!”

Although the current version didn’t allow players to privately own black boxes, every new black box recovered benefited all players on the server.

All the novel gadgets produced by black boxes could be bought with silver coins, and items already available would become cheaper or have lower purchase thresholds due to newly unlocked black boxes.

Even setting aside the impact on the alliance’s overall strength, individual players would earn hefty silver coins and contribution points for recovering black boxes.

The only uncertainty now was how many of these black boxes were still functional.

Vault 100’s peak population had exceeded eighty thousand, and its material consumption rivaled that of an average settlement.

A dust-free work environment and trained operators could extend a black box’s lifespan, but no black box lasted forever.

I’m the Darkest just prayed these pre-war treasures hadn’t been completely wasted by Vault 100’s residents.

Otherwise, there’d be nothing left for them to waste!

Leaving five teammates to guard the entrance, I’m the Darkest led the remaining four into the warehouse, using the VM’s translator to identify the black boxes’ functions.

Actually, the translator wasn’t necessary.

The design philosophy of black boxes assumed users might be completely illiterate; even a gorilla that couldn’t read could make them work by following the pictograms printed on them.

After a thorough inspection, of the twenty-nine black boxes, twenty-two were still functioning properly.

But pleasantly surprising, the broken ones were all cheap, replaceable small items like dome light panels and ventilation system filters, while the truly valuable “big pieces” were almost all intact.

What thrilled the players most were undoubtedly the black boxes producing the Type 5 “Light Cavalry” and Type 6 “Heavy Cavalry” exoskeletons!

These two police-grade suits were not only stylish but also excelled in overall performance. Though unsuitable for high-intensity battlefields, that was no big deal!

Just weld a steel plate on the chest, and it’s good to go!

Due to their many advantages, these suits had always been limited in quantity, released only in small batches with each version update.

Currently, only the Enlightened faction on the entire wasteland had mass-equipped these two pre-war models.

I’m the Darkest still remembered the battle in the Great Desert, when the alliance captured two hundred Type 5 suits from the Enlightened in one go, making the Administrator overjoyed.

If they hauled these two black boxes back, wouldn’t they max out the faction boss’s favor?

Let’s see who dares to call him unlucky from now on!

But the most astonishing finds weren’t the black boxes for Type 5 and Type 6 exoskeletons, but the two big ones placed nearest the freight elevator.

One could produce a 50-ton-thrust plasma engine, the other an aviation-grade metal hydrogen battery with a hydrogen storage capacity of up to 10 tons!

Finally understanding these two black boxes’ functions, I’m the Darkest couldn’t hide his joy, muttering to himself.

“Holy moly! This time, Brother Mosquito’s little butt is gonna get an eyeful!”

The alliance had previously recovered “big aircraft” technology from the wreckage of a corporate Orca transport, but hadn’t fully mastered it yet.

Even after absorbing engineers from Boulder City Military Industries, the technological gap remained daunting.

Under Boulder City’s production conditions, a single plasma engine could only provide about five tons of maximum thrust—on par with helicopter rotors from before the Age of Prosperity.

Forget about big aircraft like the Orca transport, with a takeoff weight over a hundred tons; you’d need twenty of Boulder City’s plasma engines in series!

Now, with these two black boxes and the electronic control system recovered from the Orca, the alliance could at least cobble together its own large plasma aircraft!

Without exaggeration, this was the most lucrative excavation of pre-war relics since Vault 79!

“These two black boxes have barely been used—after all, there was no need for such high-power engines and batteries in a vault, nor enough surplus materials. My owner optimistically thought that future generations opening this coffin would treat them as antiques, but it seems… you weren’t joking. Not only do you not have a hundred colony planets, you haven’t even left the atmosphere.”

Seeing I’m the Darkest’s awestruck expression, Bell, who had ambled over beside him, drawled a teasing remark.

But I’m the Darkest didn’t feel offended at all; instead, he chuckled and shot back.

“And you? You haven’t even left your own doorstep.”

Bell let out a tinkling laugh.

“That’s not so certain.”

Seeing its eerie smile, I’m the Darkest felt a flicker of alertness.

“What do you mean?”

Unconcerned by his wary expression, Bell spoke in a storytelling tone, leisurely.

“Didn’t you mention earlier that you saw Gabeng outside? The ghost-faced bugs you call them. That means they finally succeeded. Haha, such persistent people. No wonder my owner admired them so much.”

Bell seemed in high spirits.

If that AI could be said to have emotions.

I’m the Darkest was taken aback.

“Succeeded… what do you mean?”

“Exactly what it sounds like,” Bell said lightly, laughing. “They never opened the vault door, but they still managed to leave this prison. What a pity my owner is dead, or he’d be laughing along with me.”

Never opened the vault door.

Yet they left the vault?

I, Zuihei, stared in utter incomprehension at the bell whose laughter scraped like grinding metal.

Could this shelter have another exit?

“Is something like that even possible?”

“How can you ask such a question?” The bell chuckled. “They lived in this shelter for over fifty years! Most were born here! They know every lightbulb, every screw—anyone literate can recite the shelter’s rules backward… For them, finding a flaw in this place is easier than breathing.”

I, Zuihei, was struck dumb.

He had thought the shelter’s defenses absolute, but on reflection, defense and destruction are relative concepts.

How could anything in this world truly be unbreakable?

Even walls that could withstand a nuclear strike would be pierced if you chiseled at them for ten thousand years. And here, people wielded a sharper weapon than any chisel—knowledge.

Suddenly, he seemed to grasp something. His Adam’s apple moved involuntarily, and the hand gripping his rifle trembled slightly.

“You mean… those bugs…”

“If the cell window isn’t big enough, cut off your arm. If that’s still not enough, just send your head out… The ventilation system? What a ‘brilliant’ idea.”

The bell clicked its tongue twice, speaking to itself. Yet the metallic voice, light and cheerful a moment ago, now carried a faint trace of loneliness.

Or perhaps regret.

Listening to its monologue, I, Zuihei, understood everything.

Why, when he had asked earlier where all those people had gone, this thing had dodged the question…

To escape this cage.

After arming “Gaba,” they turned themselves into “Gaba” and, through relentless effort, drilled a crack in the shelter’s ventilation system just wide enough for them to slip through—and finally broke out.

They had left this shelter many years ago.

The ghost-faced bugs active outside were the most direct evidence.

Though it was hard to say whether they could still be called “them,” or how much of those residents’ souls the bugs carried.

At least none of the bugs I, Zuihei, had encountered outside looked like nuclear engineers or biologists.

He recalled the honeycomb tower of shed carapaces in the courtyard and forced out a sentence.

“So… the conflict back then—did most of the shelter’s residents win?”

“Win?” The bell tilted its round body in confusion, glancing at him. “Do you think anyone won?”

I, Zuihei, took a deep breath and rephrased.

“Then… what about the supervisors here? Where did they go?”

The bell laughed lightly.

“Ah, them. Except for my master, all the supervisors who survived that disaster returned to the embrace of the Tree. I haven’t seen them since. Maybe they’re still reminiscing on some circuit board, or maybe they’ve left like those bugs. Who knows? I’m just a museum guide.”

I, Zuihei, stared at it blankly.

“The embrace of the Tree?”

The bell said in a mocking tone,

“Exactly. They believed they came from the Great Tree and should be buried beneath its roots… That might be hard for you to understand. In short, they uploaded their minds to the shelter’s server, abandoned their bodies, and merged forever with this shelter.”

“But my master didn’t think they succeeded. He thought they just left behind a memory and then committed mass suicide out of guilt. He chose to end his life in a human way.”

At this point, the bell opened its floodgates and recounted everything that had happened over a hundred years ago.

Due to resource scarcity and uneven distribution, the conflict between the “Tree People” and the “Worker Ants” had long been brewing. Even as living standards for both sides continued to decline, the Tree People—being part of the Tree’s sensor module—saw a slightly slower drop.

The trigger was the climate recovery event of Wasteland Era 50.

In the fifth year after the War Construction Committee dissolved, signs of climate recovery began to appear on the wasteland. The residents of Shelter 100, filled with passion for rebuilding and hope for a better life, revived the ideas of the Prosperity Era. They prepared to return to the surface and formed autonomous committees of workers and engineers, determined to leave everything about Shelter 100 behind and bury it.

But the sixty-three-year deadline hadn’t arrived yet. The Worker Ants’ actions panicked the Tree People.

They had spent their lives meticulously pruning the branches of the Great Tree, fulfilling their duty as guardians of order, plugging the “ant holes” the Worker Ants drilled into the trunk.

Even if the Tree’s collapse was predetermined—after fulfilling its sheltering duty, it would become a casting well to fuel the rebirth of human civilization—the Tree People didn’t want their mission to collapse with it.

They tried to consult the Worker Ants, hoping to keep the Tree for the sake of its years of labor.

It wasn’t hard. Any man-made rule has loopholes; patience would find them.

The dome’s self-destruct sequence required a condition: the shelter’s detectable population must average below five thousand for 180 consecutive days, or below three thousand within 24 hours.

Only then would the Great Tree deem the residents no longer dependent on its guidance, capable of surviving beyond its sensors, and it would use its remaining resources to send the children on their final journey.

But conversely, they could exploit this.

If the Worker Ants stayed with them, ensuring at least five thousand people remained in Shelter 100, the shelter would believe its children still needed it—and it wouldn’t leave them.

But this command-like request was flatly rejected by the jubilant Worker Ants.

Almost all autonomous committees refused to discuss the matter with the Tree People.

It was only natural.

The Worker Ants had endured the Tree’s cold, merciless orders for too long. Even if they knew deep down it was necessary for survival, they had no reason to keep it once it was no longer needed.

Let it die with the shelter.

Becoming a casting well was part of its fate.

A shelter should not be the end of human civilization. Every shelter’s final destiny is to be dismantled and used as raw material for rebuilding.

As for the Tree People—if they were so reluctant to let go, they could go down with it.

Perhaps the Worker Ants’ harsh stance made the Tree People fear a reckoning. The Tree People interfered with the Worker Ants’ self-organized groups, cutting off water, power, and supplies, and doing everything within the rules to sabotage their activities.

Though the conflict escalated, it remained restrained—until now.

What truly lit the fuse was something that happened outside the shelter.

In Wasteland Era 52, climate recovery had been ongoing for two years. The ice over West Lake loosened before Shelter 100’s doors did.

Melted snow and spreading water flooded the abandoned streets of West City, even seeping into the underground tunnels.

The triumphant Worker Ants grew uneasy. Climate recovery was good news, but if the ice caps and snow kept melting, their shelter might be underwater before Wasteland Era 60.

Some argued for opening the doors immediately, at least to send people out to reinforce areas prone to backflow.

But it wasn’t enough for the residents to want it. The Tree People had to convey this demand to the shelter’s administrator—the AI called Tree.

Of course, the Tree People wouldn’t do that. The water flooding the tunnels didn’t panic them; instead, it delighted their troubled minds.

Though a few supervisors thought they should cooperate with the residents to patch this obvious breach, most made the decision that suited their own interests—downplaying the crisis that could drown the shelter as a trivial drizzle.

As long as they convinced the Tree that its designers had already accounted for the possibility of West Lake water entering the tunnels, and that no superfluous additions were needed to the already perfect rules, the Tree would continue its original plan.

They could even use this to make the Tree misjudge the speed of climate recovery, leading it to make erroneous decisions based on false feedback—extending the lockdown.

Thus, sixty-three years became seventy.

Just seven years, but for the first-generation residents already in their nineties, it meant their funerals would be held inside the shelter, and they might never see the day the giant gear-shaped door opened.

For the younger residents, those seven years could drain their youth within the shelter, turning years of plans and preparations for rebuilding the wasteland into dust.

A shelter for eighty thousand people was still too small, and Shelter 100’s space was too cramped. Any tiny emotion could become the gunpowder stuffed into the powder keg.

The first riot erupted swiftly, ending with the deaths of 879 ordinary residents and 37 overseers.

The blood brought a momentary calm to all.

All bodies were cast into the nutrient recycling device, becoming fertilizer and nutrients for the ecological cycle.

Though natural deaths of shelter residents had occurred before, with their remains reclaimed by the shelter’s ecological system, this was unquestionably the largest such event.

It forced the majority, who had once been unwilling to know, to confront the origin of their food.

Later, rumors spread that the overseers’ bodies were not sent to the nutrient recycling device but were secretly cremated by their families.

No matter how much the Tree People denied it, it no longer held any meaning.

Under the development that all could foresee, the conflict between the Tree People and the Worker Ants intensified further.

In the 56th year of the Wasteland Era, the lake had nearly submerged the shelter’s entrance. Just as the Tree People plotted to sink the shelter forever into the water, the second organized uprising erupted.

Engineers from the biological research station spent three years modifying the genes of the Gaba Bugs. Staff at the breeding facility, through deliberate violations of protocol, released them, drawing the Tree People’s attention. As the Tree People scrambled to exterminate those insects, nearly every workshop in the shelter launched an uprising simultaneously.

Because this battle involved heavy machinery and even biological weapons, its aftermath exceeded all expectations.

A total of over seventy-seven thousand people went missing or died in the chaos, including 645 overseers.

Only 111 overseers survived in the end—among them, the owner of the bell, an overseer named Craig.

The conflict between the two sides was not limited to gunfights and brawls with engineering equipment; it also involved a series of rule-based weapons.

For instance, during the battle, the Tree People attempted to use the power of the trees to deploy sleeping gas into the densely populated Worker Ant residential areas to suppress the revolt.

However, their plan was discovered in advance by the Worker Ants responsible for inspecting the exhaust pipes. Using a few milligrams of ozone, they tricked the residential area’s air detection devices, passively activating the shelter’s ventilation system and venting the gas out into the wasteland.

Seeing that all hope was about to be lost, the Worker Ants also tried to leverage the power of the rules. They moved some residents into the cold storage where food was kept, attempting to deceive the shelter’s life detection system. Without leaving their quarters, they aimed to trigger the dome’s self-destruct condition—“fewer than three thousand residents within the shelter in 24 hours”—and blow the shelter’s roof off.

Yet their plan was soon detected by the Tree People.

Watching the life signals detectable in the shelter plummet at an inconceivable speed, the Tree People frantically pulled the plug—exploiting a flaw they had discovered long ago but never repaired, deliberately overloading the shelter’s fusion reactor and forcing it to shut down.

The designers of Vault 100 likely never imagined that, over fifty years later, people would play such a dangerous game.

Still, thanks to this trump card, Vault 100 did not become a reservoir in the 56th year of the Wasteland Era.

However, precisely because they cut the power, over fifty thousand residents who had not died in the fighting ultimately perished in the cold storage.

Fewer than three thousand residents survived the entire shelter. The Tree People could not restart the reactor, as that would cause the entire shelter to collapse within 24 hours.

Nor could the survivors rapidly reproduce to five thousand within 180 days. Even if they abandoned ethics and norms for survival, newborns would still take ten months to arrive.

Not to mention that the chemical batteries could only sustain the ventilation system, while the Gaba Bugs spreading throughout the shelter were encroaching on their meager survival resources.

As the bell had said, no one won this war; it had not even truly ended.

After suffering grievous casualties, the Tree People abandoned any hope of reconciliation with the Worker Ants, and the Worker Ants did not expect the Tree People to sacrifice themselves for their sake.

Both sides operated within their controlled zones, observing a truce in utter silence, licking their wounds, waiting for the other to draw their last breath.

Until the 61st year of the Wasteland Era, the last life signal bearing human characteristics vanished from the shelter. The shelter became entirely the world of the “Gaba Bugs.”

And that last fading life signal belonged to Craig.

The owner of the bell.

“…My master entrusted me to bring this absurd memory to you, who have stepped into the interstellar era. He hoped you might find it useful—never, ever foolishly believe that handing over problems you cannot solve to an AI will make everything all right. But unfortunately, you have not yet entered the interstellar era, so it seems you have no use for it.”

“So… some of the residents here turned themselves into bugs, and some turned themselves into data?” Standing beside Wo Zui Hei, still not emerged from the story, Fen Tou Zhui Gui couldn’t help but remark, “What kind of prison is this? It’s a damn madhouse!”

Wo Zui Hei wore an expression of deep agreement.

He thought so too.

Everyone here was insane.

The overseers scornfully called the residents “Worker Ants,” while the Worker Ants, in turn, called them “Tree People.”

To keep the shelter running forever, the Tree People strained every nerve to buy time against the lake water lapping at the door. To see the world outside the shelter, the Worker Ants did not hesitate to transform themselves into actual insects, shredding a future that could have been endured a little longer.

They chose every most insane option available, so that in the end, not a single intact human walked out of this shelter.

Just then, a piercing alarm suddenly rang out from outside the warehouse, jolting Wo Zui Hei back to reality.

“What’s happening?!”

Looking at the startled group, Ling Dang spoke with an air of indifference.

“That alarm sounds familiar. It happened before… Ah, I remember. Earlier I told you that to foil the ‘Worker Ants’’ plan, the ‘Tree People’ deliberately shut down the fusion reactor. You’ve turned it back on, haven’t you? Probably the life monitoring program and the dome self-destruct program have restarted. Nothing major.”

Hearing this, Wo Zui Hei’s face instantly turned pale.

Nothing major, she says…

This is not a hundred years ago!

A hundred years ago, the self-destruct program could drop the upper structure into the shaft. Who knows what effect it might have today, over a century later?

Not to mention the tower the Ghostface Bugs built in the shaft—it could cause the dumped earth to bury them alive!

“But why didn’t the problem appear when the reactor started up?” Fen Tou Zhui Gui immediately sensed something wrong, staring at Ling Dang and pressing urgently.

Ling Dang just chuckled, still wearing that unconcerned expression.

“What’s so strange about that? After the Tree’s mission ended, you gained control of this shelter. Using administrator privileges to terminate the dome self-destruct program is no big deal—it’s as simple as pushing open the shelter’s door.”

Wo Zui Hei was stunned.

“Wait. Since control of the shelter has been transferred to us, why would the self-destruct program still be triggered?”

Ling Dang looked at him mockingly.

“Maybe your superiors want to silence you? Haha, of course, that possibility is too slim. I’m more inclined to think you triggered some unfixed bug in this pile of code built on bugs, causing some settings to roll back to before the rules were modified. That was a common trick in the battles between Tree People and Worker Ants—when settling personal scores, they often needed to blind the Tree.”

Wo Zui Hei first ruled out his own fault—after all, he had only fiddled with the black box a little.

Then it immediately occurred to him: Shi Quan Chao Ren, who had speedrun the B51 manager’s office and then rushed off to do side quests at B100.

Without a moment’s hesitation, he reached up and pressed his helmet, shouting into the communication channel.

“Brother Chao! What’s your situation? Brother Chao?!”

A burst of crackling static came through the channel.

No response at all!

His expression shifted slightly. Wo Zui Hei immediately shot a glance at Fen Tou Zhui Gui beside him.

“I’m going down there!”

“OK.”

Understanding his intention at once, Fen Tou Zhui Gui made a gesture of acknowledgment.

Without wasting time, Wo Zui Hei switched off the safety on his rifle, leaned it aside, lay down on the ground, closed his eyes, and logged off directly.

Watching this guy who had been shouting into the communicator a second ago and now instantly fell asleep on the floor, Ling Dang circled around him in surprise.

“Impressive! You can actually fall asleep?”

Already offline, Wo Zui Hei naturally had no reaction and ignored her words.

Watching this overreacting AI, Fen Tou Zhui Gui, standing guard, let out a soft chuckle.

"What is this? Merely routine maneuvers."