This Game Is Too Realistic-Chapter 508.2: The Eighth Person

There was a single shelf without books, a desk, a chair, and a terminal on the desk.

Meng Liang rushed forward, powered it on, and typed furiously on the virtual keyboard, but couldn't access the system.

“Use this.” Su Ming walked over, patted his shoulder, and handed over the hard drive Yunyi had given him.

“Thanks.” Meng Liang accepted it awkwardly and plugged it into the terminal’s side port.

As the intrusion software loaded, and after a few more keystrokes, they finally cracked the password for the administrator’s terminal.

“The reactor room’s fire suppression system is active. The Hive has gone dormant... Looks like that Wislander and the Academy’s Researcher beat us to it.” Meng Liang sighed in relief and slumped into the chair.

In truth, as Yunyi had mentioned, the administrator’s terminal might not bypass core security to shut down the reactor.

Thankfully, they had a backup plan and sent a team to activate the fire system manually. Otherwise, they might’ve faced something even worse than a Rotten Knight.

“In any case, the intelligence here is still valuable.” Su Ming stared at the terminal with interest. “What exactly is in there?”

“I’m looking. Hold on...” Meng Liang’s fingers danced across the keyboard. Soon, he unlocked the encrypted files on the terminal and pulled up the data.

“Project Torch...”

The more he read, the deeper his brows furrowed.

Seeing his expression change, Battlefield Cheerleader asked immediately. “What does it say?”

Meng Liang hesitated, then moved aside slightly. “See for yourself.”

Battlefield Cheerleader stared blankly at the screen.

While his spoken language skills were fine, written language was another matter. He barely knew enough to scrape by. He was basically functionally illiterate.

Especially when it came to technical documents, he couldn’t even understand the summaries.

Luckily, Su Ming began reading aloud, lifting the burden.

“... When all lights are extinguished, and the world falls into endless night, we shall raise the torch, banish the darkness, and reignite the flame of civilization.”

Battlefield Cheerleader couldn’t help but ask, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Staring at the screen, Meng Liang lowered his voice. “It’s literal... The project isn’t meant to solve any current problems. It’s a failsafe to reboot the process when all other plans fail and everything enters a dead loop.”

He paused, then continued, “It’s not a normal shelter, it’s more like shock therapy.”

Battlefield Cheerleader stared in disbelief. “... Is that really necessary?”

Maybe because he had a player’s mindset, he didn’t think the world was that far gone.

Compared to the Prosperity Era, sure, the Wasteland Era was a rotten apple. But it hadn’t rotted to the core, at least not enough to warrant total annihilation.

Plenty of people still lived on the wasteland, rebuilding their own civilization atop the ruins.

Meng Liang took a deep breath, still watching the screen.

“I’m trying to understand it from their perspective... Clearing the ruins of the wasteland is extremely difficult. Marauders, abominations, mutants... those are minor issues. The real threat is Mutant Slime Mold, it’s nearly impossible to eliminate, even with nuclear weapons.”

“According to the original plan stored in this terminal, the initiators of Project Torch aimed to design a two-part system. There was the ‘Torch’, and the ‘Hilt’.”

“‘Torch’ would wipe out over 99% of organic life on the planet’s surface with minimal side effects, leaving behind a clean environment. ‘Hilt’ would preserve beneficial organic specimens in a container to be reintroduced later.”

“The idea was, once the ‘Torch’ ignites, surface life will be erased, the preserved specimens from the ‘Hilt’ will be released, and the world’s ecology would be restored, possibly even better than before the Prosperity Era.”

Staring at the text on screen, Su Ming looked stunned.

He couldn't believe it.

The rumored Shelter 0, the salvation that would end all suffering and bring the Wasteland Era to a close, was actually something this horrifying.

“... So the premise of this plan is to kill everyone on the planet?”

“Yes,” Meng Liang nodded, his expression equally grim. “To be precise, everyone except what’s stored in the ‘Hilt’.”

“Back in the Federation Era, a plan this horrifying actually got funding...” Battlefield Cheerleader gulped.

Even as a game setting, it was insane.

Meng Liang flipped through the pages of the project plan. After a brief silence, he finally spoke up to defend the Federation.

“This evil plan wasn’t an officially funded by the Federation. Like many private shelters and commercial refuge initiatives, its budget mainly came from social capital. In simpler terms, it was primarily sponsored by a small group of elites. Though the plan was under the Federation’s supervision like other commercial shelter programs, it was tagged with the lowest-level activation sequence, and thus considered safe by the authorities.”

“This... This is considered safe?!”

“Relatively. After all, the system would only activate once all shelters and protection plans had failed. In other words, by that time, there probably wouldn’t be many living people left on the planet, only some weird creatures or mutants.”

After a pause, Meng Liang continued, “Projects like this are hard to garner public support for, so the planners concealed the full scope of the operation. Most researchers only knew about parts of the plan. For instance... If you were a researcher on the ‘Torch’ team, you might think you were developing a secret weapon for the Federation. If you happened to be on the ‘Hilt’ team, you’d probably assume you were working on some kind of reinforced refugee plan.”

“But in the end, the plan failed. Partly because time ran out, and partly because a researcher uncovered the conspiracy that had been hidden by the higher-ups... Once they realized they were being used to build a weapon that could very well kill them, almost everyone stood up and opposed the project.”

“Even though the initiators of the plan repeatedly insisted that it would only activate if all shelter plans failed, people no longer trusted those elite liars.”

“The Torch Project was ultimately scrapped after using less than 20% of its budget... While countless protection projects collapsed in the final years of the Prosperity Era, very few were brought down by collective resistance from the lower ranks.”

At that point, Meng Liang couldn’t help but feel a surge of emotion.

The whole plan had been an accident of history.

Its existence was a fluke, and its downfall just as unexpected.

As for whether the Federation ever seriously considered building the superweapon capable of destroying 99% of all organic life on the planetary surface mentioned in that unfinished blueprint, no one knew.

Everyone who had taken part in the project, those who opposed it, and those who supported it, had long since turned to dust.

“What about the unfinished materials? Where are they now?”

As Su Ming asked the question, he shot an almost imperceptible glance at the fellow next to him. His hand instinctively drifted toward the pistol at his waist.

Before arriving, he hadn’t expected Shelter 0 to house a secret of that level.

But things had gone too far. The box that held the keys to the destruction of the world had already been opened. Whether or not the Torch Project had been completed, its related data must not fall into the hands of the Wislanders.

Coincidentally, the man he was wary of had reached the same conclusion.

If it were just a few black boxes or a couple of exoframes, the Army could take a share without much protest, the administrator wasn’t a petty man.

But this thing... It posed a threat not only to the Alliance, but to everyone on the planet.

If it really fell into the hands of the Wislanders, who could say those big-nosed bastards wouldn’t do something even more evil? No one could guarantee what might happen in the end.

Staring hard at the screen, a look of gravity appeared on Meng Liang’s face.

“The data stored on the shelter’s server was deleted.”

“Deleted?!” Su Ming stared at him, his expression slipping. “They deleted just the experimental data and left the project plan?!”

“The project plan was made public after the project collapsed. It’s not considered classified. Also, the plan was saved in read-only mode in the main server’s program. Unless someone had full administrator privileges... you couldn’t delete it with just this terminal.”

Just then, Meng Liang’s fingers, which had been tapping away at the virtual keyboard, suddenly stopped.

Seeing the change in his expression, Su Ming quickly asked, “What is it?”

Meng Liang hesitated. After weighing the fact that he was alone here and that the Enterprise and New Alliance were currently allies, he decided to be honest. “The method used to delete the data wasn’t very advanced. With a bit of time, it can be recovered... In fact, up until two months ago, someone had been trying to restore the deleted data. In the archives of Zone X-13, some terminal logs show frequent database access. As of two months ago, the recovery process was completed.”

“But the person who restored the data didn’t upload it back into the database... They probably saved it on an external drive or something similar.”

“Zone X-13... That’s where the crew of the Pioneer was stationed.” Battlefield Cheerleader said in a low voice, glancing at Su Ming’s right hand as he subtly moved his own closer to his weapon.

A strange tension filled the room.

As Su Ming wrestled with what to do, Battlefield Cheerleader was similarly conflicted, should he reveal that he was actually an undercover agent?!

Would it really be a good thing for the Enterprise to learn that he was a mole for the New Alliance?

Snatching the data and getting Night Ten to bring it back to the New Alliance might be a valid option too... After all, what happened there might never reach the outside world.

Compared to those ancient survivor factions, the New Alliance was still too weak... But if they could harness the weapon described in the Torch Project, maybe they could finally stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Fallen Empires.

Of course, they might also completely enrage them.

Battlefield Cheerleader realized with a bitter smile that once again, someone had stuffed the world’s fate into his hands.

What am I supposed to do?!