Chapter 105 - 104: Everyone for Themselves

Chapter 105: Chapter 104: Everyone for Themselves

However, when he opened the public chat room this time, he saw that although quite a few people were still chatting, the rate at which messages appeared was clearly much slower than before.

Ye Yun was not surprised by this change.

Before the second crisis, there weren’t many conflicts of interest. Everyone was more or less in a cooperative state, and many managers were happy to share information with one another.

However, that all changed completely two days ago.

Of the more than 70 million people who had managed to survive in the relatively brutal environment of the wastelands, few were fools.

The vast majority of them understood what the appearance of the "Second Shelter" feature meant.

Even if some managers were unwilling to attack others, that didn’t mean other managers would show them any mercy.

This led to a terrifying outcome.

A seed of suspicion had silently sprouted in everyone’s hearts and was now growing rapidly.

After all, no one knew whether the person on the other end of the screen was a manager who genuinely wanted to communicate or an enemy planning to attack them.

The atmosphere in the public chat room had grown noticeably tense.

The managers no longer shared information as freely as before, instead becoming more cautious and guarded.

After all, no one knew which piece of information might reveal their location or attract the covetous eyes of other managers.

Looking at the now much quieter public chat room, Ye Yun let out a soft sigh.

The world was changing far too quickly, but he wasn’t particularly surprised.

He had known from the start that a competitive relationship between the different shelters was inevitable.

He just hadn’t expected the competition to arise so soon.

Ye Yun shook his head as he looked at the chat room, now filled with wariness. ’It’s too difficult to get any useful information from these kinds of conversations.’

If the information everyone provided in the chats before was ninety percent truth and ten percent lies...

...then the information appearing in the public chat room now was likely ninety percent lies and only ten percent truth.

He was no psychologist, nor was he a linguistics expert.

He had no ability to pick out useful clues from all these lies. Wasting his mental energy here was less productive than just exploring on his own.

As for the three private chat rooms he had previously established, the situation wasn’t much better.

Ye Yun sighed. ’Well, so much for that.’ Most of his previous efforts had been for nothing.

He had originally planned to form a more reliable alliance.

But it seemed the time was not yet right.

In this "dark forest" scenario, everyone would be hostile to one another.

Unless the resentment between everyone could be dispelled, this antagonism would only continue and rapidly worsen.

After all, Ye Yun knew full well that he wasn’t the only one capable of conquering another person’s shelter.

Though a mere twenty days had passed, the one hundred million managers had already been sorted into different tiers.

The weakest among them couldn’t even survive the crises.

The average ones could get through the crises, but they would still suffer some losses in the process.

Beyond them, there were bound to be some exceptional individuals.

They were either extremely lucky or extremely capable. Possessing just one of these traits was enough to stand out from the pack.

And anyone who possessed both could crush all their peers.

Right now, people were already in a state of panic just from worrying that other managers might attack their shelters.

Once an increasing number of shelter managers started successfully conquering other people’s shelters, the general atmosphere would shift from panic to open hostility.

Furthermore, perhaps because of the escalating tensions, Ye Yun was surprised to find something unexpected.

He had assumed that after everyone received a blue blueprint as a reward, the price of blue equipment in the Exchange would drop, but that hadn’t happened.

On the contrary, the price of blue equipment had actually risen slightly.

Previously, you could buy one piece of blue equipment for about 10 blue components. But in less than two days, the price had already risen to 11 blue components.

What was even more absurd was that while the price was increasing, the number of blue items available on the Exchange had actually decreased.

Ye Yun only had to think about it for a moment to understand what was going through everyone’s minds.

’They’re afraid of good items falling into the hands of their enemies.’

Ye Yun glanced at the [Penetrating Laser Pistol (Blue)] in his warehouse, and he felt a stir of temptation.

At the current market price, even with its inherent flaws, the laser pistol he had could sell for at least 11 blue components.

He counted the number of laser pistols in his warehouse. There were 40 in total. Selling all of them would net him 440 blue components.

Ye Yun decided to keep five of them and listed the remaining 35 on the Exchange.

Thirty-five was an insignificant number compared to 70 million.

’If my luck is really that bad, I’ll just have to accept it.’

Ye Yun had no idea that his decision to sell so many blue weapons in bulk would immediately attract a great deal of attention.

His move even managed to liven up the public chat room, which had been rather dull for the past two days.

"My god, 35 blue weapons?! Which big shot is responsible for this?"

"The blueprint I got was also for a blue weapon, but it costs 3.5 blue components to craft just one.

I had to craft it three times in a row before I finally succeeded. The cost of the components alone was 11.5 blue components, and he’s selling his for 11? Is he crazy?!"

"Don’t you know, person above, that different blueprints have different crafting costs? Yours might cost 3.5 blue components, but maybe his only costs 2.5."

"The stats on this gun look decent, but the fact that you can’t fire it continuously is a huge drawback!"

"Has it occurred to any of you that maybe these weren’t crafted at all? What if someone found an arms cache in the wastelands? And it just so happened to be full of these things, so they’re just selling them off!"

"Yeah, that’s right. Didn’t someone find a metal warehouse before and sell a ton of blue metal components?"

"So jealous! That’s some insane luck!"

········

After closing the Exchange, Ye Yun turned his attention to his sub-base.

After a day, the buildings at the sub-base that required upgrading were essentially finished.

Ye Yun took the bionic human remains he had previously bought on the Exchange and transferred them to the sub-base using the warehouse’s Matter Quantum Transporter.

After a few experiments, Ye Yun discovered that the Matter Quantum Transporter in the warehouse was indeed very useful.

However, it also had a drawback: it couldn’t transport living people. It couldn’t even transport active bionic humans.

Bionic human remains, however, were an exception. Ye Yun hadn’t yet figured out the specific principle behind this.

However, this discovery clearly dispelled his idea of having the exploration team use the Matter Quantum Transporter for rapid travel.