From the details, it seemed this man had entered willingly with insect eggs. The only thing was, he never activated the cryo function, only the vacuum.

After completing some kind of ritual, he ended his life in his own way and left his remains to the insects.

Ten Punch Man stared blankly at the corpse and the egg-filled skeleton frame, unable to speak for a long time.

The humanoid life signal they’d detected earlier, what they thought was a surviving human, turned out to be a pile of bugs!

The hell kind of twist was this?

While he stood frozen, an ear-piercing alarm suddenly blared.

No one knew what had happened. Everyone snapped their heads around, only to see the warning lights above them flashing red in sync with the siren, a dizzying pulse of unease filling their hearts.

“... What’s happening?” Rest in Peace glanced around warily.

Then the VM strapped to Ten Punch Man’s left arm, still connected to the cryo-pod, flashed to static white.

As if haunted, the research team’s program interface was suddenly replaced by an old man’s face, blurred by pixelated mosaic.

Noticing the change, Ten Punch Man fixed his gaze on the old man in the screen, asking sharply, “Who are you?”

Even as he spoke, his right hand tightened on the data cable, ready to yank it out.

The old man floated against the snow-white static, staring silently at him. A broken, stuttering voice seeped out from behind the mosaic.

“I am Tree, the administrator here.”

Hearing that name, Ten Punch Man froze, then blurted instinctively, “... Tree?! Aren’t you dead?”

The old man’s calm voice continued, “AI has no concept of life or death. My existence is for the residents here. Until they no longer need me, I will fulfill my mission.”

Ten Punch Man wanted to press further, but other things were more urgent. “What’s with the sound outside? Did we... trigger some forbidden ancient restriction or something?”

Tree answered flatly, without emotion. “That is the herald of my mission’s end.”

Before he could ask, it went on. “The reactor is stable. Life monitoring sensors have rebooted. The program continues. If resident life signals remain below 3,000 for 24 consecutive hours, the shelter protocol enters its final phase and will initiate self-destruction. We will destroy the top of the shelter, pulling the earth into the shelter.”

The players all recoiled in shock.

“What the fuck?!”

“Self-destruct?!”

Sensing their agitation, Tree continued slowly. “Do not panic. You are about to witness this shelter’s final destiny. It was designed from the day of its creation.”

Ten Punch Man stared in shock. Don’t panic? Easy for you to say!

It was the 213th year of the Wasteland Era! The program was over a century overdue.

If the shelter self-destructed, who knew what would happen? The collapse might bury the shelter entirely.

This was a program written 200 years ago. How could anyone expect it to still work?

Worse, there wasn’t even 24 hours.

The countdown showed 10 minutes! They didn’t even have time to evacuate with the black boxes.

The progress bar was already half gone!

At the brink of crisis, he found himself unnervingly calm. He looked squarely at the old man on-screen. “Can you stop it? The conditions for dome self-destruct no longer apply!”

Tree’s voice was as flat as ever.

“Request invalid. No administrator credentials detected. Shelter protocol cannot be modified.”

At the first part, his heart sank. But the last words rekindled hope.

The problem wasn’t the request itself, it was that it required protocol modification.

In other words, if he didn’t modify the protocol but reinterpreted its rules, he still had a chance to persuade this stubborn AI!

His mind raced. Suddenly, his eyes caught the corpse in the pod clutching insect eggs. His thoughts clicked into place.

The answer had been left long ago...

He drew a deep breath and addressed Tree with grave seriousness. “I question the definition of resident life signal.”

Tree replied, “What is the question?”

Ten Punch Man spoke each word with care. “Am I a resident of Shelter 100?”

Tree’s cold response came. “Biometric data not registered. No you are not.”

Ten Punch Man nodded. “So only if more than 3,000 Shelter 100 residents remain will the self-destruct not trigger.”

“Correct. That is one condition. The other is maintaining 5,000 lives on a daily average for 180 days.”

Ten Punch Man continued, “Then what about residents’ children? Do they count as residents of Shelter 100?”

“Yes. If biological inheritance between lifeforms can be proven, resident status is conferred, ”

With only minutes left, Ten Punch Man cut it off impatiently, “Then I beg you, open your eyes and see how many people truly remain in this shelter!”

“Zero.”

Ignoring its cold verdict, Ten Punch Man pressed on, gambling everything. “Open your eyes wider! They haven’t vanished. They’re still here. During your sleep, they changed their lifeform. The bugs you see are the continuation of their life. Proof lies in this pod! The last resident of B100. Compare their biometrics before entering and after opening. Isn’t that evidence enough?”

He knew he was stretching the truth, but it wasn’t an empty bluff. A witness had paved the way long ago, the so-called Gravekeeper.

His ritual wasn’t meaningless, nor was his legacy just goods he wanted to bury along with him.

He foresaw someone reopening his tomb. He foresaw them rebooting the reactor.

To undo their collective folly, to stop the self-destruct, he designed his death, using the biometric loophole to become an insect.

It was his final exploit of the shelter’s rules.

It wasn’t to fight Treemen this time, but to save the home he once hated.

Tree fell silent as it started to process. At last, under the players’ tense gaze, it nodded.

“Supplementary clause updated.”

“Result revised. Current resident count: 6,790,000.”

The alarms ceased with one minute to spare. Ten Punch Man and the others exhaled in relief.

The number stunned him.

Millions of bug residents...

Whatever it was, the crisis was averted. What to do with this mess could be left to the administrator. Surely he would find a way to wrest authority from Tree.

Then, unexpectedly, the pixel-blurred old man shifted slightly. Though his features were hidden, Ten Punch Man was sure it was smiling at him.

“Now it’s up to you.”

With that cryptic farewell, the static vanished, as if he’d never been there.

Rest in Peace blinked. “What did it say again?”

Ten Punch Man hesitated. “Sounded like... it was leaving it up to us’?”

Unconscious Man was bewildered. “What does that mean?”

“Don’t know...” Ten Punch Man inhaled deeply, then told his team, “Anyway, I’ll log out to report. Don’t touch anything yet, there might be more freakish surprises.”

The mission was complete. He didn’t want to cause more trouble.

The others exchanged glances and nodded. “Yeah.”

Ten Punch Man sat down, closed his eyes, and logged off.

Meanwhile, on the official forum.

He had barely logged in when a string of red dots lit up his inbox, DMs spammed by Darkest.

Darkest: WTF are you doing down there?

Ten Punch Man: Don’t worry, we sorted it out.

Darkest: ???

Ten Punch Man: Also, we finished the last side quest... but there were no survivors. The pod was full of bugs. The guy ended his life alone.

Darkest: Ended his life? Wait, weren’t they turning into bugs? 0.o

Ten Punch Man: Turning into bugs? Maybe. But it felt more like a neural link device.

Darkest: Uh...

Ten Punch Man: According to the last survivor’s testament, he dragged his kin into the warehouses before freezing it, then lay in a pod himself. He didn’t freeze himself. He ended his life. Maybe in his final moments, he controlled robots or bugs to glimpse the outside world, like you said. They became bugs.’

Darkest stayed silent for a long time before replying.

Darkest: ... That’s too absurd.

Ten Punch Man sighed.

Ten Punch Man: Yeah. I think so too. But that was their ending. Our mission’s done. Time to withdraw.

He only saw from the worker ant side, not the full crisis of a century past.

Maybe, one day, Shelter 100’s story would surface on Wasteland Online’s forum, like the other shelters players had unearthed.

However... The point of view probably wouldn’t be from the developers.