Chapter 6120 - 5133: A Journey of Surprises (8)

Others also noticed the change in dialog mode. You can only choose one from the existing four options. What’s even scarier is that among these four options, there’s likely only one that advances the plot, and sometimes it may take selecting four or five options before finding one that does.

Remember, there are four people here, and all four can converse with each other, each dialog having four options. Even if employing exhaustion method, you would need to try countless times to possibly explore the correct path.

Of course, they thought about not engaging in conversation here, but directly pushing the door open, yet the terrifying thing is the door simply wouldn’t budge. Pushing the door prompts the system to say "Why don’t you chat with your companions", so they could only continue conversing.

Originally, reading texts was Shiller’s forte. Although Greed and Agent don’t read as much as Arrogant, it’s not difficult to analyze some clues from the texts. But the alarming part is that all the English texts look like they were written by elementary school students, and by non-native English ones at that. They’re so simple you can see through them at a glance, not requiring any analysis, being outright nonsense.

The group sifted through the options for quite a while, yet none mentioned any important clues. Eventually, Little Superman proposed it might be related to favorability. Since this value was set, it can’t possibly be useless; it must be necessary to use those elementary-style concerns to boost each other’s favorability, in order to possibly trigger key dialogues.

Without a doubt, this approach worked. The four people earnestly exchanged favor, and after grinding for a long time, finally reached maximum favorability. Dialogues finally transitioned from elementary-style greetings to having some actual content.

From the dialogue, it could be inferred that the zombie virus outbreak occurred over a month ago, and it indiscriminately infected everyone without reason or warning. Whether you’re an elite or a poor citizen, a political figure or a white-collar student, there’s a one-third chance of turning into a zombie.

Upon turning into a zombie, they become highly aggressive and then attack others. This instantly triggered chaos in human society, resulting in almost endless zombies everywhere, with few survivors left.

Survivors have formed shelters, although most dwell underground, barely surviving. These four are a small survivor organization, heading to the abandoned factory in search of resources, otherwise hiding in their shelter, listening to radio broadcasts from other shelter organizations.

They’re located in America, Kentucky, the exact location unspecified, but likely in the suburbs due to fewer zombies. Yet because the location is too remote, resources are scarce, forcing them to venture far each time; this time they almost faced disaster in the factory.

After painstakingly completing the dialogues and understanding the background story, the radio issued an alert: a wave of zombies is heading towards the suburbs, seemingly driven by a large survivor organization in the city. They intended to warn those along the path, but this evidently enraged the survivor organizations in the suburbs, leading to a chorus of curses on the radio.

Meanwhile, their team is considering whether to move house. Due to severe lack of supplies and dangerous resource hunting, they wish to move closer to the city’s resource points, but this inevitably leads to confrontation with large survivor organizations, and this timing makes material competition unavoidable. Yet, the four, inadequate in literature or military, find it hard to contend with those large organizations, thus splitting into two factions due to differing opinions.

Afterward, follows a lengthy dialog, where among the four: Greed and Little Superman form one group, Agent and Deathstroke the other. The four first split into two groups to argue, then battle individually, focusing on whether to relocate.

After arguing for at least two hours, still no progress was made. It was filled with numerous machine-translation-style dialogs, prompting no one to dare choose accusations. Previously, Greed and Agent mutually accused each other of significantly lowering favorability, painfully spending over half an hour raising favorability back up.

Finally, finally, they decided to relocate, relieving all players as there’s at least some action to undertake. If they decided not to move, the following gameplay might consist solely of intra-dialogs in this small room, whereas relocating at least allows them to venture out.

Before moving, two issues arise: the impending zombie horde and how to interact with the local large survivor organization. The four are divided into two groups; one prepares provisions to resist the horde, the other communicates with the local survivor organization via radio.

The ones preparing supplies are naturally Agent and Deathstroke’s group. Deathstroke excitedly rubbed his hands, after all this time in the game, finally obtaining a gun, at least his patience through those boring dialogues paid off.

The two entered the warehouse together, containing four or five racks, mostly stocked with daily necessities, random items piled messily against the wall, and little else.

Deathstroke circled the warehouse several times, triggered several dialogs, but none mentioned a weapons-cache or hidden storage. In other words, this was all their supplies.

Deathstroke persistently rummaged beneath that pile of junk, only to discover it wasn’t merely a pile in the corner, but their armory. The most lethal weapons were two baseball bats, without even a bladed fire axe. He was utterly disheartened.

This is in America, Kentucky is still a Central State, where guns outnumber stray dogs on the streets, and yet these four couldn’t gather even one firearm. How these four law-abiding citizens survive in an apocalypse, who knows?

While they were helplessly griping, Greed and Little Superman weren’t faring much better. Originally, Greed eagerly rubbed his hands, envisioning successfully persuading the survivor organization through rhetorical skill, crafting a good outcome. Yet, upon connecting the radio, they faced a golden-haired real estate enthusiast, an avid soda fan; the accent was exaggerated, vocabulary was poor, the language of the red-neck fellows was unintelligible.

This sort of thing triggered their anti-immigration base code, whatever option you choose, they only have one reply—get lost!

The key is that there’s no freedom in this conversation. You can only choose from the options he provides, and the options he gives are all extremely foolish ones like "please calm down," "we just want to talk," or "we’re not enemies." Greed thought while choosing, it would be strange if such options could actually persuade anyone.

The more you act calmly with all that literary pretense, the more they think you’re not one of them, more inclined to bully the weak, wishing to throw you into the Atlantic. Greed actually knows how to deal with these people, but without the freedom of dialogue, knowing methods is useless. As expected, the negotiation failed, the other side said if they dared to step into East City, they’d have their heads blown off.

Greed sighed, now it’s time to show what they are really made of. Fortunately, Deathstroke is a tactical master, even if a street battle breaks out, they won’t lose their nerve. Although resources and equipment may not be as good as the other side’s, as long as they can maneuver, there’s still a chance to teach the other side a serious lesson.

He had just thought this when he saw Deathstroke come out with a grave expression, and expression that cannot be described merely as grave, but rather a heart filled with despair. Greed was a bit confused, but because free dialogue wasn’t allowed, he didn’t know why. Deathstroke could only point to the storage room with his eyes.

Greed went to the warehouse himself and found that they didn’t even have a single firearm, not one. Even those most common small pistols easily found in American stores were absent, you’d think they’d gone to East University. But in reality, it was worse than East University because there weren’t even bulletproof vests.

Greed didn’t know what to say, the fact that they’ve survived this far with just the four of them is a miracle. No wonder they were picking weapons off the ground when surrounded by zombies in the warehouse, they went there empty-handed, running with knives.

Things were going poorly on both fronts, but they had to forge ahead. Soon they gathered what they could carry, pushed open the cellar door, and prepared to head into the city.

As soon as they pushed open the door, their visions went black. When they woke up, they found themselves in a supermarket, surrounded again by a mass of zombies, holding only cold weapons in their hands.

"What’s going on?" Greed looked around and couldn’t help but say, "How can there not even be a scene of us traveling? Don’t tell me they didn’t make the streets!"

"So, is it starting again?" the agent said unsurprised, "In a while, a zombie will rush in, and then we’ll be on the run, mashing a bunch of keys, and when we escape the supermarket, with a turn of the scene, we arrive at the new base..."

Just as the agent predicted, what happened next was exactly a repeat of the process inside the warehouse. Even the ending cutscene was the same, not in that the sequence of events was the same, but the cutscene was literally the same as before, right down to the building backdrop, with the four of them walking out the door, and the tide of zombies slowly coming over.

The four habitually experienced their vision going black again, when they woke up, they were in a new room with new dialogue appearing. Luckily, this time they didn’t have to build up rapport from scratch. After some greetings and concern, they learned from the dialogue that while they had successfully reached the new base, they had burned through all their supplies, and now had to go out and seek more resources.

Greed sighed inwardly, thinking: at least there is a phase for going out and exploring, which is better than staying here continuing dialogue sequences. Thus, they distributed each person’s destination for the resource search through dialogue and were soon ready to head out.

Greed walked over to push the door, and as soon as the door was pushed open, his vision went black again. Greed had gotten used to it by now, expecting they’d be appearing in another supermarket scene, pressing buttons to gather resources back.

But evidently, the game wasn’t that monotonous. At this stage, a bit of new gameplay finally appeared. At this point in Greed’s vision, there was a flat map, and the character he controlled was also a small flat figure. There were several points on the map, and Greed first tried controlling the figure towards one point, and then several points, but the screen blinked a few times, and the figure returned to the starting point.

Greed was briefly startled, then realized that this wasn’t really about controlling a figure to find resources, but a puzzle mini-game called "One Line Drawing." In this game, you must control the character to walk across all the points once without repetition to succeed.

The first level was very simple, and in this resource hunt, they passed through ten levels in total, none of which were very difficult. Greed basically solved each almost instantly. However, the resources that could be brought back in one go were very limited. After playing through so many rounds of One Line Drawing, they returned with half a box of mineral water and two bags of biscuits.

These supplies were definitely not enough. After moving to the new base, they could see the consumption bars for food and water, with the resources brought back each run covering at most the consumption for two people. Even with all four going out to search, the surplus they could store was limited, thus they had to go all out on resource hunts.

Greed couldn’t remember how many times he had gone out by now. He initially thought that breaking through levels would increase puzzle difficulty, but unexpectedly, after a hundred rounds of One Line Drawing, then came connecting lines, followed by match-3, Sudoku, and pipe connecting puzzles. Each was at the level of basic difficulty, but combined, there were hundreds of levels.

But as they say, an old player is an experienced player—even in a crisis, they excel. In this manner, the four of them managed to painstakingly fill up the warehouse.