The Reborn Otaku’s Code of Practice for the Apocalypse – CH223

Chapter 223 — After the Heavy Rain

“…Do they really think this place has turned into a permanent pond? Why on earth would they fly all the way over here?” It took Luo Xun a long while before he could finally find his voice to complain.

“Their body sizes aren’t very large, which is probably why they can float in these puddles. If they were the kind of giant waterfowl we encountered before, this ‘pond’ wouldn’t even be able to hold them,” Yan Fei also interjected after staring blankly for a good while.

Gathered here were not only the mutated ducks and geese driven over by those two wolves a few days ago, but also various flying waterfowl that had clearly come to soak in the ponds after the rainstorm.

While everyone was marveling at this phenomenon, a massive splashing sound echoed from the distance. Those two wolves that frequently loitered around the area were currently running one after the other, thrashing about in the water as if having the time of their lives. They playfully bounded toward the waterfowl closest to them, sending the birds into a frantic wing-flapping frenzy as they accelerated across the water’s surface, desperately trying to get their plump bodies airborne.

Luo Xun and the team silently watched the spectacle for a moment before driving on toward the entrance of their base.

Fortunately, there was no standing water near the entrance, though the smooth iron plate looked slightly conspicuous now, having been washed exceptionally clean by the rain. Luckily, this peripheral area was quite remote, and the surrounding structures had mostly been demolished by Luo Xun and the team, leaving behind nothing but ruined walls. Such dilapidated buildings would easily cause passing scavengers in the distance to overlook this place, assuming there was nothing here worth making a dedicated trip for. At the same time, these incomplete structures perfectly and cleverly concealed the tunnel entrance.

Prying open the iron plate, everyone slowly drove into the base tunnel while meticulously scanning the road ahead. They couldn’t help but harbor a trace of anxiety—what if, as they kept driving, they suddenly found the tunnel ahead completely flooded with rainwater?

Fortunately, Luo Xun and the team’s luck held out. The unified structure of the base they had constructed previously was sufficiently solid and airtight, leaving the subterranean tunnel completely bone-dry—aside from the moisture tracked in by their tires.

Parking the vehicles in the garage, the group hurriedly went to inspect every single room thoroughly and meticulously.

First were the various rooms on the second basement level. Everywhere they looked, everything was in perfect condition without a single drop of water out of place. The automated equipment they had programmed before leaving—set to water the crops and turn on the grow lights at fixed intervals daily—was all operating normally.

Next, everything on the first basement level was perfectly unscathed, as were the first floor of the main building, the glass greenhouse, and the second and third floors of the house.

Standing in a room on the third floor, Luo Xun looked out at the glass roofing of the greenhouse, pointing toward a specific direction. “The roof over there still needs some adjustments; water is pooling a bit at those spots.”

When designing the roof, Luo Xun had explicitly cross-referenced the angles and placement between the glass panes and the metal framing multiple times, doing everything possible to ensure they wouldn’t run into complications under unexpected circumstances. However, some fine details still hadn’t been fully accounted for during their testing phase, nor had the structure weathered the baptism and trials of nature yet. Therefore, now that these unexpected glitches had surfaced, they had to learn from the experience and perfect it.

After a brief discussion, the two of them pushed open the window and climbed directly onto the roof via the exterior metal scaffolding. The framing of the roof was exceptionally sturdy; forget about the two of them walking on it, they could jump and run across it without any issue whatsoever.

Walking over to the target area, they inspected the metal frames encasing the glass windows. Once Yan Fei adjusted their angles and placement, the two of them discovered that several drainage spouts along the corners of the roof had been clogged by leaves and twigs blown in from god knows where, so they quickly worked together to clear them out.

Only after sorting all of this out did the two return to the basement to join the rest of the team, who were currently unloading the spoils from this excursion.

“Ahhh! I’ve wanted to play this game since before the apocalypse! Too bad there wasn’t a TV at school, and the PC didn’t have a ported version or an emulator. I can finally play it now!!”

“Sigh, we probably won’t ever see the sequels to some of these games in the future. It’s truly heartbreaking, sob sob.”

“Xinran, come here. This pink handheld console is for you. Once we finish moving these supplies, big brother will load a ton of games onto it for you, okay?”

The moment they reached the second basement floor, Luo Xun and Yan Fei caught the voices of Li Tie and the guys. Who would have thought these five guys would be even more ecstatic upon seeing gaming consoles than if they had run into pretty girls? Looking at it this way, even in the middle of the apocalypse, one still had to account for mental entertainment and relaxation for everyone.

Walking over, the two watched as the guys explicitly refrained from moving the computer hardware off the trucks first, prioritizing hauling down that mountain of gaming consoles instead. Talk about a bunch of true geeks…

“Cough, cough. Everyone focus on moving the supplies down first. Tomorrow is a mandatory day off, and you can play however you like.” Luo Xun said helplessly, guaranteeing their entertainment life, which instantly triggered another synchronized round of cheers from the group.

Inside the basement, the group was bustling about up a storm to move their cargo. Outside the new base, all kinds of wild waterfowl and birds drifted across the floodwaters that had transformed the fields into ponds. Once the two wolves grew weary of chasing these creatures, they leisurely found a relatively dry patch of land to curl up on, squinting their eyes to soak up the sun.

Having weathered the baptism of the apocalypse, the vast majority of these flying birds had mutated, their physical sizes and cognitive capacities undergoing certain shifts. Previously, among the mutated animals that accidentally blundered into the mutated plant fields, flying avian species occupied the absolute majority, while alternative land predators were relatively sparse. But as they experienced more and witnessed the inherent hazards over time, these mutated birds gradually learned to recognize these terrifying, predatory plants.

Luo Xun and his team were profoundly lucky to have painted the metal sheets with camouflage patterns when constructing the surface base. Although their original intent was merely to prevent passing survivors from detecting the structure and to evade satellite surveillance, they hadn’t anticipated that because the protective color looked virtually identical to the surrounding mutated vegetation from a distance, it caused these passing birds to instinctively detour around it as well.

Otherwise, by the time they returned from this trip, there was a high probability their roof would have turned into a massive bird’s nest.

On another front, along the primary thoroughfares leading toward the Southwest Base, the road surfaces in several sectors had collapsed due to the heavy rain over the past couple of days. The water logging within the city center had been severe, only fundamentally receding today. Consequently, numerous survivor squads attempting to enter the city center for missions had been forced to detour, and it wasn’t until several military earth-type superpower users were deployed on a targeted mission to repair the asphalt that the roads finally restored their past functionality.

Inside the Southwest Base, the administration had already dispatched a military expedition toward a certain pre-apocalyptic mining region at the start of this month, collaborating with several other exceptionally powerful survivor bases across the country. Aside from deploying some of their primary combat-focused superpower users, the absolute most critical members included in the Southwest Base’s column were the lone two remaining metal-type users left within the entire base population.

Only after the various survivor bases began communicating and exchanging data did the leaders of the Southwest Base realize to their astonishment that although the population of superpower users occupied an immensely vast percentage of the surviving populace after the apocalypse, the absolute majority consisted of relatively standard elemental classes, such as water, fire, earth, and wind. Alternative specialized superpower users were remarkably rare!

Regarding metal-type users, the entire Southwest Base currently hosted only these two individuals, while among the other major bases that had established communications, the total count of metal-users combined actually amounted to a mere two as well!

Perhaps when the apocalypse first struck, the primary instinct of the vast majority of survivors and capable superpower users was to flee toward City A, which resulted in the current concentration of talent. Nevertheless, it had to be said that in terms of specialized superpower classes and sheer baseline population, City A’s Southwest Base still remained the undisputed titan among the country’s surviving bases, which also reflected the base’s combat capabilities and latent strength from a sidelong angle.

Armed with this realization, the various high-ranking officials of the City A Base further solidified their internal resolve to tighten their absolute control over the superpower users and the entire base population!

Right while the Otaku Team had rumbled back to their own base—exploiting the clear weather outside that was drying the roads to safely hide indoors and lose themselves in all kinds of video games—the City A Base officially launched their new base regulations.

Although the current leadership of the City A Base had only recently assumed power, their numbers were far fewer than the previous administration, meaning the absolute control over the base was concentrated tightly in the hands of these few individuals. Consequently, once these high-ranking officials reached a consensus, the momentum with which they enforced the new decrees was completely swift and decisive. In a brief span of barely a single week since the day the heavy rainstorm commenced, the inner city of the City A Base was thoroughly reorganized according to the administrative blueprint. The military, the independent superpower squads, and the civilians who chose to remain within the inner city were all placed under unified governance and systematic allocation protocols according to the regulations.

Furthermore, the inner city opened up recruitment for ordinary residents from the outer city. However, this recruitment drive explicitly refrained from accepting just anyone who turned up; a candidate had to possess verified strength or a specialized trade. Those who had entirely run out of their personal rations and merely wanted to slip inside to smooth over a meal didn’t even possess the baseline eligibility to draw near the inner base gates.

What left the civilian population across the entire City A Base harboring deep anxiety was that the earth-type ramparts of the inner base were raised and thickened once more. Although the outer metal walls hadn’t been scaled up proportionally because the metal-type superpower users were currently away from the base, the sturdiness of the earth-type walls fabricated by those level-five earth users was already comparable to solid marble, making them completely impossible for ordinary survivors to breach.

The security of the inner base was visibly far more formidable and dependable, while the zombies outside grew increasingly powerful and freakish by the day. Heaven only knew if things kept going this way, a day would come when the outermost perimeter walls would be violently breached.

Moreover, although the inner base now maintained strict governance, the outer base hadn’t been abandoned by the administration; it was still managed by these same officials, only with slightly more lenient protocols. But if things progressed along this trajectory, heaven only knew when the outer base would also be forced into mandatory, militarized management.

Submitting early meant facing restrictions—meaning one’s leisure hours and personal supplies would be systematically allocated by bureaucrats—but at the very least, it was objectively safer… Furthermore, if one delayed their submission, when the mandatory consolidation inevitably hit in the future, their family would not only be forced to obey commands regardless, but they might also lose the initiative or even face marginalization…

For a time, the civilian population in the outer city entered a state of restless uncertainty. A portion of the survivors, prioritizing their long-term safety and placing their faith in absolute strength, felt their hearts waiver as they prepared to register to return to the inner city. The vast majority of the population, however, adopted a wait-and-see attitude, operating under the principle that the authorities couldn’t punish the masses as they silently observed the future directives of the base leadership.

Thank you for reading 🙂 I hope you all liked my translations. If you enjoyed my work, please consider buying me a Ko-Fi 😉