Chapter 86: A New Disaster? It Does Not Seem Like One

By eleven that night, they still had not encountered a trace of the dark green poison mist.

Instead, they had run into plenty of toxic creatures.

Yet through it all, Lin Mu never lifted a finger; the team members handled everything themselves.

They had guns now, and bullets too.

If they still could not manage that, it would be hard to make any sense of it.

Lin Mu reclined on the sofa, a chilled bottle of soda in hand, idly checking the regional channel.

Sixty-Second Zone — seventy-five thousand people.

The numbers were still falling, but not by much.

At this rate, even by midnight, it probably would not dip below seventy thousand.

"I’ve run a thousand kilometers straight ahead. I don’t believe that poison mist can still catch up to me."

"Brothers, enough chatting. Who’s got spare fuel to sell me some? Name your price."

"One detox potion for one liter of fuel."

"You damn profiteer."

"..."

Lin Mu stroked his chin. This business opportunity had arrived a little late.

Still... he had already put up a batch of fuel for sale, though it was moving slowly.

One hundred liters of fuel: trade for ten pieces of any scrap and any single blueprint.

It sold slowly for good reason, but he had no intention of changing it.

After all, he did not need many resources right now.

In leisurely fashion, Lin Mu waited until midnight.

This time, not a single person dared to sleep.

Even if they were exhausted, they would wait.

None of them wanted to die in ignorance.

The moment midnight arrived, that voice sounded again.

"Congratulations to all of you for surviving until now. As expected of the lucky ones I chose."

Lin Mu rolled his eyes. Who in their right mind would want to come to a place like this?

If he had a choice, he would rather die than take part in this kind of game.

"I didn’t expect not a single one of you to sleep this time. That takes some of the fun away from me. But it doesn’t matter; next week, you’ll have a very good time.

"Three disasters have passed, and you are now qualified players.

"For the next fourteen days, there will be no safe period. The entire fourteen days will be your disaster days.

"Do not be upset. Since disaster has come, naturally there must be benefits for you.

"The first benefit is a loan. You may advance your core to Level 6 ahead of time and unlock a new mode. As for the interest, it will be five hundred points worth of supplies per day on the second day, one thousand on the third, fifteen hundred on the fourth, and so on.

"If you cannot cover the interest, you understand what that means.

"Whenever you make up the missing core, the interest will stop.

"Of course, you may also choose not to take the loan and remain just a moving vehicle.

"And last of all, this disaster is—team warfare!

"It could also be called a team game.

"You’ll like it. From this moment on, all channels are closed. They will reopen at nine o’clock tomorrow morning."

After that voice vanished, his radio erupted into noise.

"Captain, what are we supposed to choose? The loan upgrade option popped up."

"Yeah, do we need this Level 6 thing?"

"..."

Of course they wanted it.

But they could not repay the points, and they could not repay the core.

Whether it was materials or the core itself, everything was in Lin Mu’s hands.

They only had fuel and a small amount of supplies for vehicle repairs.

As for the core, it was the same.

"You don’t need to choose. A convoy is definitely different from an individual."

Since Lin Mu had said as much, what else could they do?

Though uneasy, they could only place their trust in him. Otherwise, what choice did they have?

At the same time, the green mist outside their vehicles dispersed, and the road began to change continuously.

No one noticed these changes.

Early the next morning, Lin Mu saw the convoy members gathered together.

Rubbing his eyes, he climbed down from the vehicle with Zero One.

"What happened?"

He stretched lazily, still not fully awake.

"Brother Mu, look quickly at the ground beneath us, and at the roads around us," the chubby youngster said anxiously.

Lin Mu lowered his head.

Hm?

How had it turned into this concrete surface?

And wasn’t this area a little too large?

As far as the eye could see, it was all concrete.

"Zero One, measure the size here."

"Fifty by fifty."

A square? What did that mean?

And the highway in the distance had clearly widened quite a bit. Ten vehicles could now drive side by side without the slightest trouble.

"Captain, we just went to take a look. There’s a layer of protective barrier all around us. We can’t get out; we can only stay here," Zhang Qian said.

By then, Lin Mu had also fully awakened. He opened the regional channel, but it was not time yet; nothing was displayed.

So this was the change?

Highway survival, and yet the road could not be left. How was one supposed to survive that?

"Everyone back to the vehicles and eat. We’ll talk again at nine."

Lin Mu returned to his vehicle first and activated shelter mode.

From what he had learned before and from the voice last night, he could be certain that shelter mode was the most important thing this time.

Otherwise, there would have been no need to borrow cores to upgrade.

His vehicle began to transform, becoming a three-story building.

A heavy machine gun stood on the roof, and two more were mounted on either side.

Four towed artillery pieces stood in four directions, each no more than twenty meters from Lin Mu’s position.

At that moment, a new message popped up on the panel.

Detected that the player is the convoy captain. Would you like to connect the vehicles together to form a larger shelter?

Lin Mu’s eyes lit up.

Just as he had suspected.

A squad really did have different abilities.

A transparent map appeared before him, with four empty squares around his vehicle. The convoy vehicles could park there to link together.

"Shu Yi, Chubby, park on either side of me."

"Yes."

The two drove their vehicles to his left and right as instructed.

Then, from the first floor, two connector-like devices extended outward, joining the vehicles together.

The two vehicles began to change shape.

However, their floor space was far smaller than Lin Mu’s first floor.

Each was only about twenty square meters. The contents inside vanished one by one, leaving only a workbench and a simple bed.

Shu Yi stared at the changes before her, at a loss.

Where was her steering wheel? Her dashboard? Why had the windshield become a window?

Thinking of Lin Mu’s house, she wondered if hers had become a shelter too.

The remaining seventeen vehicles also transformed into houses and stood there.

It was a pity, though. These houses could only be placed like this, radiating outward in a cross formation centered on Lin Mu’s vehicle.

That was rather different from the three-story building he had imagined.

Still, seeing the vehicles turn into houses, everyone was quite happy.

At the very least, they now had beds and could finally rest properly.

Besides that, Lin Mu discovered another advantage.

Through the convoy interface, he could view the floor plan of his shelter.

From that floor plan, he could place weapons atop these houses.

In other words, he could mount heavy machine guns on the roofs of all nineteen vehicles.

He could control them himself, or assign others to operate them.

Was there even any need to think about it? Of course he would let them control them themselves.

Tell me, whose firepower could possibly be stronger than his?