Walk to the front door of Vault 100.

I found the terminal for communication on the wall next to the door, pulled out a data cable from the VM on my left arm, and took out the interface under the terminal.

Looking at the flashing green light of the signal light, the faces of the players were filled with expressions of joy and surprise.

unimaginable.

After so many years of soaking in sewage and garbage, this electronic device, which was produced two centuries ago, can still be activated!

I have to say that there is still something about the black technology of this people's association.

Just when I opened the "mini program" of the scientific expedition team at the blackest point and imported the electronic key into the terminal and waited for the reading note, Chu Guang, who was in camp 101, was also paying attention to the situation in shelter 100.

Sitting on Chu Guang's shoulder, Xiao Qi suddenly opened his eyes and looked at him.

"The terminal has signs of use." Chu Guang looked at it and asked.

"Didn't the door never open?"

A stream of data flashed in his pale blue eyes, and Xiao Qi touched his chin and muttered.

"Hmm...... The gate's power system was indeed closed for two centuries, but access has been recorded in 2190."

Year 2190.

That is, 61 years of the Wasteland Era?

Chu Guang nodded thoughtfully.

Actually, it's not hard to understand

According to Dr. Method, Camp 101 had previously attempted to explore Vault 100, only to abandon it because conditions did not allow it.

Vault 101 was activated after the dissolution of the Post-War Reconstruction Committee, and is supposed to be in 2174 - the 45th year of the Wasteland Era.

During the period from 45 to 61 of the Wasteland Era, it is very likely that Camp 101 has appeared, after all, according to Dr. Method, although Vault 101 is isolated from the world, it has not completely cut off contact with the outside world, and has been enlightening some wandering wasteland people, and conducting indirect scientific investigations into the outside world through them.

At that time, the wasteland was not flooded with extremely mutant creatures, and it was entirely possible that the residents of Camp 101 would have reached the entrance to Vault 100 with scuba equipment.

In the immediate moment of the one-AI exchange, my blackest VM has already obtained the permission to activate the shelter gate.

And at this moment, a silver metal ball appeared on the display screen of the terminal.

"Welcome! Friends of the future! You've finally found us, and we thought you had forgotten about us, but by the way, how many years is it? How many colonized planets do we have? I've said a long time ago that only one Aurora star is bound to be a problem! If we had a hundred Aurora Stars, none of those bad things would have happened."

I couldn't understand what he was saying, so I could only start with what I could understand.

"In the year 2342 of the Human Calendar, the year 213 of the Wasteland Era, unfortunately we are still on our home planet...... Anyway, don't you even have a timer?"

The metal orb seemed to be stunned, and the frequency of the shaking seemed a little anxious.

"Wait, still on the home planet? You mean none? How is this possible! What about Zhiyuan? The Zhiyuan that went to Zhiyuan Star should finally arrive at its destination!"

Reach Star?

I thought about it for a long time before I remembered that it seemed to be the place where the colony ship of the enterprise had originally intended to go, and said with a subtle expression.

"No...... If you're talking about the Zhiyuan, they didn't leave the solar system at all, but took the initiative to run aground in the province of Clouds, and rebuilt a city there according to colonial standards, and I heard that they took in a lot of survivors."

The silver metal ball seemed to be stunned for a while, and it took a long time to squeeze out a sentence.

"What a waste......

I don't understand what it means, but he cares more about what this guy is than that.

"I call me the blackest, what about you? How to call it

Whew?"

"Bell...... They all call me that, because I always tinkle when I walk and talk, like rusty bells. My designer designed me before 55,845 cycles, and he thought that when the doors opened again, there would be a new world outside, and someone would take me to work in a museum or something, but now it seems that his wish must have been frustrated."

As if losing its original vitality, the silver metal ball drooped on the soft antenna, muttering to itself.

The clueless words seem to answer the visitor's inquiry, and it also seems to feel sorry for one's own fate.

I counted it with my fingers, if the work cycle refers to the number of days, wouldn't the more than 55,000 work cycles correspond to ...... - more than 150 years?!

In other words, this guy has been around since about sixty years of the Wasteland Era and lived until February of the year 213 of the Wasteland Era!

Looking at the door with my fingers counting, I was the blackest, and the bell smacked its mouth like a bucket.

"I'm the blackest, am I...... I have to say, you do have enough darkness

Target.

Glancing at the sewage and mud on my body, I patted my dirty breastplate and rolled my eyes.

"Can you open the door anyway? We've given you the password." Bell: "Of course, you can come in at any time, just press the door button on your terminal

Finish...... Or do you think that all the doors should be opened for you?"

Listening to this guy's nonsense, I rolled my eyes and poked my index finger at the screen of the VM.

With a shaking and creaking friction sound, the massive metal gear slowly rolled to one side, making way for a hole two cars wide.

A staircase leads to a large buffer zone, and directly opposite the entrance to the cave are two closed airlocks with transparent windows.

Orange-yellow lights and warning lights were lit one after another, and the shadows cast by the metal parts flickered and shook on the ground, accompanied by a tinkling sound.

The entire Vault was like an aging gasoline engine, ignited by a new spark plug that had been settling for an unknown number of years, and reluctantly opened its cloudy eyes.

My darkest VM screen shows that the Vault's fusion reactor has been re-ignited, and all facilities have been switched from backup power to regular power.

Chu Guang, who was peeping at the screen in Camp 101, couldn't help but be slightly moved. The fusion reactor at Vault 100 has fuel left! Just when I was at the darkest of moments stunned by the change in front of me, several ghost-faced insects suddenly burst out, and he was so frightened that he raised the muzzle of the gun in his hand almost reflexively.

"Hey! Wait, these little ones are harmless—"

Seeing him raise the muzzle of his gun, the bell was startled and tried to stop it, but I had already pulled the trigger.

In the sudden sound of gunfire, several ghost-faced insects instantly landed on the rusty corridor, bursting with juice and turning their bellies.

Looking at the dead little ones, the bells on the screen let out a lamented complaint.

"You executioner! You killed them all!"

Not daring to be careless, I carefully examined the passage behind the door, then gestured to my teammates behind me, and the five of them moved forward, clearing the buffer zone of xenomorphs that might be harboring, while I stayed at the door for the time being.

Looking at the bell that was still feeling sorry for those little lives, he pressed down the muzzle of the gun in his hand and resisted the urge to roll his eyes and said.

"They're not interested in you because you're a robot, and we didn't run into it a lot on the way in...... As soon as they saw us, they pounced on us.

The bell was stunned for a moment.

"Wait, you just said ...... You've come across this thing out there, too?"

Me blackest: "yes, what's wrong?"

"Incredible...... "Bell whispered, surprise in his tone, "It's not possible, the door is closed

It never turned on since, not once, and they couldn't have gone out

Right...... Could it have been leaked somewhere? It's weird."

Looking at the chattering robot, Ten Punch Man and Kevin with the broken leg behind my blackest man glanced at each other and whispered a few words.

"Why do I feel a sense of déjà vu?"

11

Looking at the bell of surprise, I frowned slightly.

"You know them?"

The bell cleared his throat and said in a eloquent tone. "Of course, they are called quacks, which can provide rich chitin, natural polymers, and high-quality industrial raw materials. In addition to this, the protein and nutrients it provides are also rare goodies, and it only takes a little household waste to feed them. It's no exaggeration to say that this is one of the museum's—oh no, the Vault's greatest achievements.

My darkest brow twitched, and I couldn't feel how great such an aggressive gadget was.

"We call it a ghost-faced worm."

Hearing the funny name, the bell let out a gut-wrenching laugh that echoed eeriely through the dark subway tunnel.

"Ghost-faced worms? The name also sounds good...... Just call it your name, this place is yours anyway."

"Can you show us around here?"

I tried to make a request, but the silver metal ball on the screen didn't hesitate, and simply nodded its round head.

"No problem, it's my job too, come with me." As he spoke, the bell turned away.

Just as I was hesitating about how to keep up with him, the iron door to the buffer zone in front of me slammed open.

A silver metal ball sits silently on top of a flattened quadruped robot about the size of a washbasin.

"What are you waiting for at the door? Come on in."

I exchanged glances with the people next to me, and followed the robot that called itself the bell through the two airlocks in the buffer zone and into the interior of the vault.

The situation here is not as bad as expected, even after many years of underwater soaking, no sewage seeps in from the outside, and even the bells, who have lived here for a century and a half, can't figure out how those bugs got outside.

But even if it's not as bad as it could be, it's anything but rosy.

Mass "quacks" took over the shelter, and they built nests here, filling all the crevices that might hide dirt like cockroaches, and the black excrement was all over the ground, and not only that, but also the greasy carapace and fist-sized eggs they shed.

Looking at a few ghost-faced insects that made a "swish" sound, my blackest group of ten players expertly raised their muzzles and fired.

After a dense burst of gunfire, dozens of insects were killed in an instant, and along with the eggs in the room, they turned into a dark green slurry.

Operating the four mechanical feet to deftly avoid the wreckage that strewn all over the ground, the bell sitting above the head of the quadruped robot no longer calls the visitors executioners, but only whispers a reminder.

"These are good things, and those shedding carapaces are rich in chitin, which can be used to make a lot of polymer materials with good properties...... Most electronic devices and machines use them."

I'm the darkest and I don't have time to deal with this guy at the moment.

Looking at the corpses and metabolites of the ghost-faced insects all over the ground, he changed the empty magazines while his scalp tingled to report to the rear what he had found in the shelter.

「．．．．．． This is the blackest I'm in, I'm already in Vault 100, and it's full of metabolites and eggs of ghost-faced insects, and there are tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands! I suggest cutting off the air circulation in the shelter and coming back in a few days."

He now figured out where the mutant water striders came from.

I was attracted by this group of little guys for a long time!

There was a rustling sound in the communication channel, and then it sounded

It's the voice of the spring brother.

"I've reported the situation in the vault to the administrators...... he

The response was that Vault 100's ventilation system was malfunctioning. According to the results of the self-inspection program, something must have blocked the filter element of the air intake, maybe it was an egg, maybe it was a molting shell, and it was from where the ghost-faced worms that were active in the shelter should have flowed out to the outside world."

I asked with a tingling scalp.

"So...... Isn't there an efficient way to get rid of the bugs here?"

How long will it take to kill them one by one with a rifle? Let's have a bottle of insecticide!

Commander of the Spring: "There is no shortcut at the moment, unless you can go to the B2 floor and fix the ventilation system, but this is too difficult for you and for me, we must at least clear the aliens on the B1 and B2 floors, and then we can arrange for the air-conditioning master of Camp 101 to come in...... But that's all for later, and we'll eventually reclaim the entire Vault, but that's not what we're going to do today."

Clearing his throat, he continued.

"To put it bluntly, our mission is to recover the black boxes stored in the warehouse on the B40 floor, there are about twenty of them, and you won't know until you go. Then there is the journal of the manager's office on the B51 floor, which stores the information that the manager needs. In addition, the B100 layer detected signals that suspected human life...... But the signal is very strange, and it does not exactly match the signal of a normal person. The first two are main quests, and the last one is a side quest, and that's all."

That's fine.

And there are 100 floors in this shelter! I couldn't help but roll my eyes.

"Can you come in and help?!" The Commander of the Springs smiled sheepishly.

"I'm sorry Brother Ha, I'm a little tricky with bugs like you...... And I admit that I'm a dog officer, and I'm still better at moving my mouth than I can do it. But don't worry! I have added a hundred brothers to you

Brother, you now have a company of troops, and when you go back, this first-class merit will also be yours!

I'm the blackest: "%¥#@!"

Because there were too many slots, he didn't know where to start complaining for a while, so he simply hung up the communication with a few foul mouths.

Ignoring my blackest self-talk, and not understanding what he was saying, the bell walked ahead on his own, and at the same time said leisurely in the tone of a tour guide.

．．．．．． The Great Vault 100 once sheltered 30,300 residents, and their numbers peaked at 81,711."

Ten Punch Man couldn't help but say.

"Eighty thousand? Here?"

Although Izumi mentioned in the communication channel that the vault was a hundred floors, he still couldn't imagine that the vault hidden in the tunnel could cram into the population of nearly a city of Dawn.

If it really has that population capacity, it must at least be an underground city like Vault 79, right?

But it clearly doesn't feel like that kind of place.

Not the slightest surprise at his reaction, the bell just giggled a few times and stopped in front of a movable door on the side of the hall.

... Horizons limit your imagination, let alone 80,000 people, and theoretically this vault can contain 200,000 people.

Just as his words fell, the movable door slowly opened upwards, and the world behind the door suddenly opened up.

It's completely different from occlusion outside the shelter.

I saw a wide circular corridor, enclosing an unusually vast space in this underground world, connecting hundreds of densely packed rooms together.

The structure of the entire shelter is like a vertical downward patio.

Directly above is a hemispherical dome that glows beige.

The light was like the sun carved into the cave, falling into the bottomless patio.

The carapace shed by the ghost-faced insects gathered into a honeycomb-shaped tower on the inner wall of the patio, and shone in a colorful light under the light.

It's like a physical rainbow!

And that's not all.

In the circular hallway, the remains of discarded exoskeletons and mechanical bodies were discarded as garbage.

Among them, there is the most classic police equipment of the era of the "five-type" exoskeleton, and there is also the figure of the "six-type" heavy cavalry.

In addition, there are machines that are more engineering tools than weapons - such as several engineering robots that resemble crabs and participate in the battle with their chelicerae wielding pincers.

Their bodies and surroundings are covered with bullet holes, and traces of explosives can be seen everywhere on the walls and on the ground.

The xenomorphs that are active in the Vault eat all the organic matter beneath the metal bones, and use pieces of molten carapace and slime to assimilate the exoskeletons and machines into part of the walls of the hive, which together form the "tomb" known as Vault 100.

Looking at the eye-popping scene, the eyes of the players were straight, especially the blackest me who was closest to the door, and almost subconsciously held out a sentence of "" from his mouth.

This light and shadow effect! This scene is modeled!

Every frame feels like money is burning! It's a bunker!

As if pleased with the shock on the visitors' faces, the bell let out a few sharp chuckles after a moment's appreciation.

The quadruped robot rode through the movable door that led to the circular hallway, and it stopped at the edge of the steep downward patio.

"Welcome to Vault 100, you were the first guests to set foot here since the gates closed two centuries ago.

Glancing at the pieces of wreckage, I asked subconsciously. "What the hell is going on here?"

The bell said slowly.

"There's a lot of things going on, and it's a long story to start from the beginning, my master has put the past here on his VM, and that thing should be in the manager's office, just check it out there.

I asked.

"Is your master the manager here?"

"Administrator? How is it possible, are the other Vaults managed by people?" Bell laughed out loud, "He's just an overseer here, anyway...... But my master is still very good, and he survived until the end! Of course, it's hard to say whether this can be considered lucky."

Ten Punches Man looked at him stunned.

"Overseer?"

The bell said succinctly.

"The manager of Vault 100 is not a human, but an AI with powerful computing power. Its name is 'Tree', and it has the highest level of authority in the Vault, and its responsibility is to make the most ideal decisions based on the parameters fed back by the various sensor modules in the Vault. If a light bulb breaks, it will know before the person under the bulb and will report it to the specific warehouse and workshop as soon as possible."

"The overseer, on the other hand, is the resident who ensures that the orders of the tree can be carried out. They are both residents of the Vault and "part of the tree's sensor module, overseeing the most unreliable module in the entire Vault—the Vault Dwellers."

At this point, it paused and teased in a playful tone.

"But the Overseer is just what my master and his colleagues call themselves, just as you gave Quack the name Ghost-Faced Worm, and the mischievous Vault dwellers don't like the official name, and secretly refer to them as 'Tree People'."