novelraw Chapter 1: Wasteland: Bastion of Civilization
Chapter 1: Wasteland: Bastion of Civilization
Armor Stacking: Contains a one-time wasteland grotesque scene; those who mind, beware—let’s spare each other!
This is a fictional world; all settings are at the author's discretion!
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['Wasteland: Bastion of Civilization' loading complete! Game qualification activated]
[Congratulations, you have obtained the 'Survivor Player' identity]
[Survivor at the brink: initial region draw complete! Draw result——Riot District]
[The following are friendly reminders; please commit them to memory:]
This is a wasteland world. Survival is your only objective. Do everything you can to build and hide your shelter—this is your sole reliance for staying alive. You only have one life. If you die in the game, your existence will be completely erased. Refer to reminder one for ways to break the dead end. Special disaster events will trigger irregularly; they might be natural catastrophes or extreme incidents. Pay attention. They may be your greatest threat to surviving the wasteland. Refer to reminder one for ways to break the dead end.Yu Yuan stared at the virtual screen before him, brow furrowing. After a few seconds of silence, he muttered under his breath:
"Damn Nikita, there's even a virus link in a game?"A few minutes earlier he had been playing a hardcore scavenger battle game, trading wits and daring with San Gou and Old Deng. Then he turned and found a bloodstained letter in the foot-washing room. As a veteran player, he knew every in-game item like the back of his hand.
Yet this letter meant nothing to him. Curious, he clicked it open. Inside was a baffling invitation to a wasteland game, with only two choices: [Yes] and [No].
Yu Yuan didn't overthink it and confirmed.
When he opened his eyes again, he was already standing in this unfamiliar place, and the text he had just read was displayed in front of him.
Complaints aside!
Looking around at the strange environment, Yu Yuan knew there was no point in overthinking.
As an apocalypse survival enthusiast, he realized he’d been chosen by some force and transported into the wasteland world.
Right now the most important thing was to determine his status.
The place he stood in appeared to have once been a dental clinic, but it had clearly been ransacked—chaotic footprints and shattered glass littered the floor.
Only a dentist's headlamp, stained and filthy, lay on the floor, discarded in a corner.
This had to be the region he drew—[Riot District].
He listened for a few seconds and heard no unusual sounds; it seemed temporarily safe.
His gaze returned to the virtual screen; it resembled a game interface.
The panel listed five options: [Combat], [Survival], [Social], [Leaderboard], [Special].
At that moment, both [Survival] and [Social] showed red notification dots.
He tapped to check. The [Survival] tab flashed a message:
[Please confirm shelter location as soon as possible to enable shelter management functions]
The [Social] tab opened a chat channel where people were spam-posting—mostly pleas for help and trade offers.
He also noticed you couldn't post freely in the chat: each message under 50 characters cost 10 survival points.
Yu Yuan currently had zero survival points.
"Is this to raise the communication cost between players?" he pondered.
After browsing the other screens, his eyes landed on the Leaderboard—Shelter Leaderboard!
One by one, shelter names displayed in ranked order.
Names ran the gamut, but the ranking criterion was only one:
—Civilization Score, a comprehensive metric combining shelter facilities, supply reserves, regional influence, potential risks, development potential, achievement completion...and more. Very thorough.
Because Yu Yuan hadn't built a shelter yet, his name didn't appear. From the displayed rank of 9,999 he guessed he must be number 10,000.
Seeing the different options on the virtual screen and the highly personalized shelter names on the leaderboard, his eyes narrowed. As a seasoned survival fanatic, a rare unease flickered through him.
He also noticed the chat channel seemed to be mentioning newcomers.
[Hive Shelter: The new players just drawn should have entered the game! Why haven't they built shelters yet—don’t know what region they spawned in? Newbies have been dying off quickly lately.]
[Babel Tower Shelter: Hope they don't draw city districts or polar death maps. One thing: none of you are allowed to compete with me for newcomers this time—I’m chasing an S rating and civilization shards.]
[Stag Shelter: Don't bring it up. A few days ago the district thugs nearly wiped me out. Modified armored cars—ridiculous!]
[Hive Shelter: Same here—ran into thug knights, nearly died of fright. Whoever grabs a newbie can invade them. Too bad newbie protection lasts a month.]
[Star Duke Shelter: Whether a newbie survives today is doubtful. You’re overthinking; in the wasteland there is no safe place...]
Thugs... death maps... civilization shards... newbie protection... fighting over newcomers...
A bad premonition flitted through Yu Yuan’s mind: "No way."
Rat-a-tat...
Bang bang...
What you fear arrives.
Gunfire erupted outside the dental clinic; from the sound the nearby district was in a firefight. The rumble of car engines drew closer.
No time to think. Yu Yuan pressed himself against the wall, concealed his figure, and peeked carefully through a window.
Not long after he hid, several modified off-road war vehicles roared past on the street, shooting at each other.
Boom...
A grenade detonated in the street!
Shrapnel and debris sprayed against the clinic's walls and glass with crackling noise.
A small stone scraped a light cut across Yu Yuan’s face as he peered out; he quickly pulled his head back.
When the engine noises faded, Yu Yuan knew he couldn't wait any longer—he had to find a shelter immediately.
To balance defense and concealment, the ideal spots were underground structures.
Subway stations, underground parking lots, civil defense bunkers would be best choices, but he quickly ruled them out.
What he could think of, others would think of too—and those places likely already served as thug strongholds.
Given the current situation, concealment now outweighed defense.
Half an hour later.
When Yu Yuan climbed down a ladder at a sewer entrance and stood in a three-meter-wide drainage tunnel, he knew he'd found the right place.
A sewage channel ran in the middle, with walkways on both sides.
Perhaps because the city had been abandoned, the sewer air, while slightly acrid, was more circulated and cleaner than he'd feared.
Wearing the dentist’s headlamp, Yu Yuan navigated the network of underground sewers, searching for the best spot to build a shelter.
He discovered something unexpected: between the sewer and the surface, there was another hidden layer of underground space connected to the sewer by ladders.
Climbing up, it looked like an old civil defense bunker, long since abandoned—cobwebs everywhere, ancient brick vaulted ceilings, complex branching, sturdy construction. It was at least decades old.
Civil defense shelter level (masonry structure)
Perhaps when the city was built they had considered wartime refuge needs and designed a dry-wet separated layered refuge; over time it had been forgotten.
Now it was the perfect location for Yu Yuan’s shelter: it combined the concealment and convenience of the sewer while avoiding the risk of sewage flooding.
After careful selection, he found an open area hidden behind a half-man-high archway that looked like an old refuge point.
"This will do."
He opened the virtual screen and selected the build shelter option.
[Set this location as your shelter?]
[Friendly reminder: choosing a shelter location is crucial—please decide carefully!]
Yu Yuan didn't hesitate and confirmed.
[Shelter under construction...1%...25%....68%...99%...]
The arch and the space behind it were covered in green data; the green glow intensified, and a wall of green data formed before him.
When the glow faded, a wooden door was embedded in the wall.
[Congratulations! Shelter construction complete]
—— Facility management log activated!
—— Resource management log activated!
—— Shelter event memorandum activated!
[Please name your shelter as soon as possible to enable the shelter leaderboard]
For this, he simply used the game nickname he had always used—Yu Yuan.