Chapter 74 Training Center
, the best-preserved ancient architectural district in .
The lingering charm of a three-dynasty ancient capital settles here. Before the disaster, this was a nationally renowned 5A-level scenic area, with annual tourist visits exceeding ten million.
Now, viewed from afar through the 's lens, those antique pavilions still stand, their outlines even appearing intact.
But upon closer approach, one realizes that everything has changed.
Shop doors along the street hang askew, red-lacquered lanterns smashed to pieces on the ground.
Beneath the dim light of the sky, the row upon row of buildings cast a grotesque silhouette, making the entire ancient city look like a ghost town dragged into the netherworld.
On the outer walls, deep green ivy grows wildly, nearly swallowing the ancient city whole.
And in the streets, dense crowds of zombies surge slowly like rotting tidewater, among them swarms of first-stage mutants of every shape and form. They roar and wander between the antique archways and corridor pillars.
They wear all manner of clothes—scenic area staff uniforms, tourists' casual wear, monks' robes—testifying to the chaos that had once erupted here.
Several enormous second-stage mutants are scattered across the city. To the east, atop a memorial archway, a pitch-black humanoid monster with reverse-jointed limbs crouches on the archway's peak.
In its two eye sockets, eerie dark green flames seem to dance. Its head slowly rotates a full 360 degrees every few seconds, as if surveying its domain.
And in the ruins of a three-story teahouse to the north, a "mantis"-shaped monster with scythe-like forelimbs waits in silence. Occasionally, an unwitting wanders too close, only to be dismembered in a flash and dragged into the building.
But what makes 's scalp crawl most is the sky.
Three bone-white figures are circling above the ancient city.
Like vultures circling above a pile of corpses, they glide across the city sky in highly regular trajectories, as if searching for something.
Pilgrims. Three of them.
The moment saw them, he shrank his neck in fright and scrambled back into the underground passage.
His face went pale, lips pressed tight, his body trembling uncontrollably.
Three Pilgrims at first glance—who could handle that?!
had seen what these things could do. He knew that, apart from Boss 's drones, no one in the could deal with these monsters whose stats seemed made up out of thin air.
Fortunately, they hadn't noticed this side. secretly counted himself lucky—he wasn't sure whether the "perfume" would work on these creatures.
After all, according to the data released at the power station, they deliberately hunted other zombies and even mutants.
"Mr. ," he said in a low voice, "there are at least three Pilgrims flying up there. What should we do?"
[Pause the operation here for now. Let me first scout the situation with the .] 's voice came through the in time.
"Understood!"
retreated deep into the tunnel, had his team extinguish all unnecessary light sources, and resealed the exit with camouflage netting.
Only a remained outside, advancing in silence. It switched to tracked mode, lowered its chassis to the minimum, and slowly drove into the ancient city along the base of the walls.
's full attention was fixed on the 's field of vision.
As long as no great commotion was made, most zombies didn't show much aggression toward a cold hunk of metal.
But the moment it entered the city, was once again shocked by the density.
The ancient street paved with blue stone slabs was jammed with zombies. They wandered aimlessly, their roars rising one after another, turning this ancient city—a place that should have been steeped in history—into a veritable "corpse city."
In such an environment, could there really still be survivors?
The thought inevitably surfaced in 's consciousness.
At this density, plus those outrageously overpowered "bird-men" in the sky, anyone who survived would have to be Superman, right?
With that thought, his attention shifted to the sky, and he looked at the three "Pilgrims" through the 's optical lens.
The instant he looked, he immediately spotted something wrong.
The three Pilgrims' flight paths did not seem random. They followed fixed trajectories, as if on patrol?
Moreover, at fixed intervals, their paths would periodically converge on a single point—the at the very center of the ancient city.
That was a ten-story brick-and-wood pagoda, said to have been first built in an age long past, and it was the landmark of the entire .
That pagoda has something strange about it? 's curiosity was piqued.
Curiosity drove him to continue pressing forward. The threaded through one -packed alley after another, avoided the second-stage mutants holding their territories, and slowly closed in on its target along streets where roars rose and fell without end.
***
Deep within the massive subterranean river cavern beneath .
Dark green water flowed quietly, and the faint fluorescence of cold-glow moss lent this underground world a touch of eerie beauty.
But one only had to look closely at the riverbank to see how false that beauty was.
Countless insects crammed the river shoal.
They varied in size and shape.
Some were like centipedes magnified ten times over, some like six-legged beetles, and some defied classification into any known species.
They had only one thing in common—every one of them was desperately gulping down that dark green river water.
This place was like a natural gu-breeding ground.
The river water seemed to contain some substance that catalyzed mutation. Most insects that drank it dropped dead on the spot, but those that survived would rapidly swell and grow stronger.
The strengthened insects would then attack their own kind, fighting for more drinking space.
Every moment brought fresh struggles here—mutual slaughter, mutual devouring, a primal evolutionary contest staged in its rawest form.
But today, that game seemed about to end.
A giant centipede-like insect about three meters long was stuffing the remains of a mutated spider of equal size—the last of its rivals—into its mouthparts.
Its entire body was dark gray, its carapace covered with blade-like serrated ridges.
After devouring its opponent, it plunged into the river and began drinking like mad.
Then, a crack split open its carapace along the center of its back, and a soft, newborn body emerged from within.
Molting.
The surrounding swarm caught the scent—fragility mixed with newborn life—and frenziedly swarmed forward.
"ROAR—!"
But a shriek exploded from that crack, sending an invisible shockwave in all directions.
In an instant, every insect was cowed where it stood, none daring to move a muscle until the molt was complete.
The new body swelled and hardened within seconds.
Its upper torso rose, taking on a rough, vaguely humanoid contour.
Six thick arms extended from both sides of its torso, while its lower body was a hundred-legged frame.
.
An that seemed even more powerful had thus been born by the .
This stretch of water had finally welcomed its new king—only this king's luck didn't seem to be very good.
Just as it finished evolving and was about to savor the fruits of its victory, the entire suddenly churned violently, and then the whole cavern began to shake.
A colossal, dark-red "carpet" swept in from upstream, skimming across the water's surface at terrifying speed.
Wherever it passed, the insects still drinking on the surface were instantly covered, dissolved, and absorbed.
Strangely, apart from the newborn " ," which let out a terrified shriek and madly tried to retreat, the other insects acted as if they couldn't even see the horrifying "flesh carpet," still surging crazily toward the water.
But just as the turned to flee, a burly, muscular man was "thrown" out of that red flesh carpet.
His torso was bare, muscles knotted all over his body, a wild tangle of stubble beard on his face. He adjusted his posture in midair and landed precisely on the 's enormous frame.
The swung its arms in fury, trying to swat away this uninvited guest.
But the instant their bodies made contact, countless black spikes burst out across the man's skin—sharp, dense, easily punching through the 's carapace and driving deep into its flesh.
At the same time, his facial muscles contorted in agony. He pulled a syringe pre-loaded with green liquid from his waist and viciously stabbed it into his own neck.
The moment the green liquid was injected, his expression grew even more twisted with pain.
Then, his hands plunged into his own chest cavity, and he forcibly wrenched out a pulsing, blood-red mass of tissue still connected to the inside of his body.
He stuffed it into the wound the spikes had torn open on the 's back.
Immediately after, the inconceivable happened. His entire body of flesh and blood seemed to lose the support of its bones, dissolving into a stream of blood that, together with that mass of tissue, burrowed into the 's body.
Only a complete human skin remained, drifting lightly down onto the carapace.
"ROAR—!!!"
The " " let out an earth-shaking roar, its massive body twisting madly, but to no avail.
In just a few breaths, a dark-red membrane of flesh spread from the wound, rapidly covering its entire body.
The roar stopped abruptly. On the head that had originally borne no facial features, a human-like face quickly split open and emerged, and a flash of human calm flickered through its newborn eyes.
The now-silent lowered its head, glancing at its own body, as if adapting to something.
Then it suddenly swung its forelimbs and furiously burrowed into the cavern wall.
Rock shattered, debris flew.
Within seconds, it had vanished into the tunnel it had excavated.
The red "flesh carpet" silently retreated back upstream as well, and the riverbank returned to calm, as if nothing had ever happened.
But beneath the insect swarm, the camera of a running in low-power mode had silently recorded all of it.
***
, , .
"Whoa, there's actually a place like this?"
followed behind , staring at the sci-fi training grounds before him, and let out another heartfelt exclamation.
Touring this , felt himself growing more and more numb the more he saw. The various sci-fi-like technologies here were almost more than he could take in.
And besides the surface, there was actually an here too.
Even more unbelievable, inside the there were an education center and advanced to the point of absurdity. This only further solidified his conviction that this place was run by the government.
Because who else but the government—an administration still striving to keep civilization alive—would spend such enormous resources to build a high-tech educational institution like this?
The before occupied an entire floor of the , its area nearly comparable to a medium-sized indoor stadium.
The interior was divided into three clearly demarcated zones, corresponding to three career tracks.
On the left was the combat training zone.
An indoor shooting range, a fighting arena, an obstacle course for simulated urban combat—it had everything.
The most extravagant was a holographic projection simulation system, one capable of projecting lifelike enemy images within an enclosed space for trainees to conduct live response training.
At that moment, over a dozen people were running squad-coordination simulation drills inside, while a young man stood off to the side loudly correcting their formations.
In the middle was the production training zone.
It was divided into operation study rooms for various fields, where one could learn everything from the most basic machine operation all the way up to the most macroscopic engineering design and project management.
A large screen on the wall was looping instructional videos of basic, standardized industrial operating procedures.
About thirty-some people were buried in their studies—some practicing operations on simulator consoles, some working through problems against blueprints.
On the right was the research training zone.
It had the fewest people, but the densest equipment.
Microscope workstations, data analysis terminals, chemistry experiment simulation pods— recognized the brands of several pieces of equipment. They were all top-of-the-line from pre-disaster university laboratories.
"This..." turned to . "This is amazing! Can we come train here too later?"
smiled. "Of course. is very happy to have us get certified. Of course, to avoid wasting resources, you'll need to spend to buy your study time."
"But as long as you complete missions seriously, aren't hard to earn."
Hearing this, 's eyes lit up, and his anticipation for this grew even stronger.
"Want to give it a go?" pointed at the shooting range with a smile. Seeing that 's gaze had stayed fixed there, he extended the invitation. "Just looking is no fun. How about we go shoot a few rounds? My treat."
A flicker of competitive fire instantly kindled in 's eyes. He nodded readily. "Well then, thank you!"
This was a reward the system gave when the reached one thousand people, and it came with a attached.
[Within the , establish at least three mature vocational training systems (e.g., combat, production, research), and have one hundred survivors pass the assessment and obtain . (7/100)]
Ever since this was unlocked, had opened it up for everyone to use.
But to avoid people squatting in the stall without doing their business, he chose a system where training consumed .
However, successfully obtaining a vocational certification would reward a large number of .
So as long as one could complete certification while spending relatively few , one could net a profit—a simple way to incentivize everyone to get certified.
In addition, obtaining production and research certificates qualified one to transfer to the second sequence.
For many who didn't want to keep working in the first sequence, this counted as a way out, so the people willing to come study here were all quite motivated.
The only pity was, these certificates weren't as easy to get as they'd imagined.
had already verified that to obtain a primary production certificate, one had to reach—in at least one specialized direction—the knowledge level of a genuine engineering PhD with no padding whatsoever. The other two directions followed the same rule.
The difficulty was far beyond what had anticipated, and consequently, even the difficulty of this had gone through the roof.
Originally, had thought he'd pass the exam with ease. In the combat direction, his physical fitness test did pass.
But his military literacy fell one point short, and it wasn't until after roughly a week of intensive "crash course" training here that he obtained his primary certificate.
Becoming the third member of the base to get certified, after and .
That's right— had earned her primary production certificate a full day earlier than . The girl's learning ability had startled even .
"When it comes to engineering knowledge and production management, didn't you already teach me all of this before? The extra parts weren't that hard to learn either." So she had said.
To that, all could do was say—heh.
***
area.
An hour later, the finally arrived near the .
This had once been an ancient temple with flourishing incense, but now its main gate was long since battered, vermilion paint peeling, covered in savage claw marks and long-dried dark brown bloodstains.
Just as was about to guide the inside, its camera captured an anomalous signal.
A red dot of light was wavering on the ground in front of it.
A laser pointer.
The 's spherical camera rotated a full 360 degrees and precisely locked onto the source—fifty meters to the left, behind a broken hole in a carved wooden window of a two-story mall in imitation-antique style.
A person?
's control stick twitched slightly.
After a moment's thought, temporarily shelved his investigation of the ancient pagoda, turned the around, and slowly drove toward that mall.
If it really was a person, honestly, he was quite curious how these people had managed to survive until now.
It couldn't actually be a Super Saiyan, could it?