14: Chapter 14 Orc Squad

"Holy crap! Holy crap! It's out! This dog of a developer finally acted like a human being for once!"

Walker hugged his phone and gave it a frantic kiss.

He was a hardcore completionist and a stat-obsessed gamer.

A few days ago, he couldn't even see a health bar in the game; he had to rely on physical pain to judge whether he was near death. That feeling was absolutely maddening.

Now, the personal terminal was finally unlocked!

The group chat exploded at this moment.

Devil Muscle Thor jumped out right on time, being sarcastic as usual:

"Yo, the update log is written quite eloquently. Physical cooking? Holographic terminal? In this day and age, without even a single gameplay demo video, you're just hyping it up with a few lines of text, huh? You shills are working pretty hard; why don't you pull me in to earn some money too?"

Walker was so angry he laughed, his thumbs flying across the keyboard like afterimages.

Miracle Walker: "Brother Suo, I advise you to watch your mouth. When we craft Power Armor in the game, don't you dare kneel in the group chat, calling us 'Daddy' and begging for an invitation code! The hardcore nature of this game is something a 'cloud gamer' like you, who hasn't even seen an account, couldn't imagine in your wildest dreams!"

After roasting the troll in the group, the fire in Walker's heart still hadn't fully dissipated.

"Damn it, this game is clearly amazing to the heavens, so why is it being treated as a scam?"

As a small streamer specializing in hardcore survival games, the more he thought about it, the more frustrated he felt.

Turning around, he skillfully opened the streaming software on his computer and casually clicked on that masterpiece known as the tropical rainforest suffering simulator, Green Hell.

"Morning, brothers."

Walker greeted them lazily into the microphone.

Several hundred regular followers trickled into the stream.

The chat began to drift by sparsely.

The game started.

Walker controlled his character to start a fire by drilling wood in the humid rainforest.

Suddenly, a venomous snake darted out from the nearby bushes and bit the character's calf.

"Hiss—"

A ring of red light representing injury flashed around the edge of the screen, the character's health bar dropped a chunk, and a poison icon appeared in the status bar.

At this moment, he leaned back in his ergonomic chair, holding an iced cola in one hand, looking at the stiffly moving snake on the screen with nothing but disdain in his eyes.

He irritably pushed the mouse forward:

"Brothers, I used to think playing Green Hell was pretty exciting. But now... tch, it's dull. You know what I mean?"

He pointed to the wound on the character's calf on the screen.

"Look at this damage feedback! The screen just flashes red? This snake bites my leg, yet I can't feel a single hair of pain in front of my computer! Does this deserve to be called realistic? Does this deserve to be called hardcore survival? It's practically a baby bus game for kindergarteners!"

The stream went silent for a second.

Then, the chat was instantly flooded with dense question marks.

"???"

"Did the streamer forget to take his meds this morning? What kind of madness is this?"

"Green Hell isn't realistic? Who was it that got sucked dry by leeches in the game the other day and was so scared they smashed their mouse?"

"He's getting cocky, he's getting cocky. A noob who hasn't even cleared normal difficulty is starting to complain that the game isn't hard enough?"

Watching the screen full of mockery, Walker didn't get angry; instead, he straightened his posture.

"You guys really haven't seen what true hardcore is!"

Walker spoke into the microphone in a fanatical tone,

"You don't know, but I recently got a closed beta qualification for a game called warhammer 40,000 Online! It's a 100% holographic game! Do you understand what holographic means? It means your consciousness goes directly inside!"

"The physics engine! The 100% realistic pain and smell feedback! Yesterday, we testers were in the sewers and encountered an alien mutant ant the size of a water buffalo! The vibration of the insect's mandibles clamping onto the shield! The pungent smell of the acid spray from its mouth! I swear, I can still smell that stench in my nose even now! The cardboard snakes in this crappy rainforest aren't even fit to tie its shoelaces!"

The stream erupted into ten times the crazy mockery from before.

"warhammer 40,000? And Online? You're killing me. Did GW send you a cease and desist letter before you started bragging here?"

"You're telling me in 2026 there's a 100% holographic VR MMO? Why don't you say you were out drinking with aliens last night?"

"The name sounds like one of those skin-swapping scam browser games that starts with a dog and offers 999 damage per hit. The streamer is shilling for money, isn't he?"

"Accepting such shady commercial deals, unsubscribing, unsubscribing. He has no shame for a bit of money."

Facing this overwhelming wave of skepticism, Walker gritted his teeth in anger.

Without a word, he Alt-Tabbed out of the game and pasted the registration link for the extremely rudimentary [Fire Seed Shelter / Warhammer Human Revival] official website onto the pinned screen of the stream.

"Shilling for money? Click it and see for yourselves!"

Walker yelled, pointing at the screen,

"This crappy website doesn't even have a recharge portal; how the hell am I shilling for money! If you're a brother, go click the reservation; you'll know once you play it!"

The followers clicked the link, half-doubting.

In less than ten seconds, the mockery in the stream escalated into personal attacks.

"Pfft, hahaha! I'm going to throw up from laughing! This UI design, it doesn't even have a background image? Just one line of text and a reservation button?"

"Was this webpage code typed out by my grandma in the last century using Notepad? Can't scam websites these days even afford a template?"

"Where are the mods?! Hurry up and ban this stupid domain! This URL looks like a botnet site spreading malware; anyone who clicks it will turn their computer into a crypto miner!"

Watching the screen full of "scammer" and "virus" comments, Walker was so anxious he scratched his ears and cheeks.

That frustrated feeling of telling the truth but being treated like an idiot by the whole world made him want to crawl through the internet cables and slap every one of these cloud gamers across the face.

But he really couldn't produce a single in-game screenshot or video to refute them.

There was no export interface in the holographic helmet at all!

Just as Walker was completely breaking down and ready to give up and end the stream,

A striking, long red comment with a high-level fan badge suddenly floated across the stream.

[Night Rain Sounds Annoying]: "Wait, everyone, don't be so quick to flame. The website the streamer posted... it's a bit weird."

"I usually work in network security offense and defense at a factory. My hands were itchy just now, and thinking it was a shady site, I ran a script to check its background. Guess what happened? I ran five top-tier domain tracking tools, and I couldn't find the server IP for this website at all!"

Someone in the chat immediately chimed in sarcastically:

"Give it a rest, it must be that your skills are lacking, and they just slapped on a cheap CDN to fool you."

[Night Rain Sounds Annoying] seemed to be provoked:

"Bullshit! I'm a senior security architect at a major domestic company! This isn't a shielding issue! The underlying data packets of this URL are extremely bizarre; they didn't pass through any known civilian backbone network switches. As soon as the tracking probe was sent out, it just vanished into thin air like a clay ox into the sea!"

Before everyone could digest this statement,

Another viewer with an IP showing overseas followed up with a bolded, colored comment.

[New York Farm Tools]: "Holy crap, Brother Night Rain, I thought it was a network issue on my end! I'm in the US, and I just tried to ping this host location. My routing commands were hijacked into an underlying black hole that couldn't be parsed at all!"

"This isn't a normal level of anti-tracking!"

The viewer named New York Farm Tools seemed to feel that text wasn't enough to express his shock and dumped a photo directly into the stream's forum.

The photo was of a heavily mosaicked work ID, but on the exposed edges, one could vaguely and clearly see the eagle emblem of a certain country's Department of Defense and the English text for "Advanced Cybersecurity Outsourcing License"!

[New York Farm Tools] left a message below: "This kind of technology that performs physical-level silent data consumption... I've only seen it in a few top-secret internal network tests at the Pentagon. This website is definitely an information fortress!"

That did it.

The stream, which had just been noisy and crazily mocking the streamer for shilling for money, fell into a ten-second silence.

Everyone was stunned.

Ten seconds later, the chat completely boiled over! The sentiment did a 180-degree turn in an instant!

"Holy crap, holy crap, holy crap!! Did a real god just get flushed out?!"

"Double verification from a domestic major company architect + a US military outsourcing big shot?! A server that even the US's advanced cybersecurity can't track?!"

"What kind of military background does this game company have?! Could it really be a civilian beta test version of a national-level brain-computer interface project?"

"Hiss... this is making my scalp tingle; thinking about it is terrifying, brothers! I don't care, I'm clicking the reservation first for self-protection!"

"Just finished clicking the reservation! Regardless of whether it's a scam or not, the gold content of this domain is already worth the price of admission!"

Watching the reservation numbers in the backend jump from single digits to a few hundred in an instant, Walker let out a long breath of relief. He slumped back in his chair as if exhausted, feeling a secret thrill that almost gave him internal injuries.

"I told you it was a masterpiece, but you guys just wouldn't believe me!"

But he was also very clear.

Relying solely on the endorsement of a few knowledgeable big shots, the followers were actually just interested in that mysterious technical background.

Without seeing an actual gameplay demo video, everything was just empty talk.

"Alright brothers, I'm not in the mood to play this brain-dead single-player game today, ending the stream! I'm going to go get you guys some game footage right now; I have to slap you cloud gamers' faces until they swell up!"

Walker decisively ended the stream at light speed.

He took out his phone, opened the private chat interface with [Immortal Lin] on QQ, and tapped furiously on the screen, typing out his request like a machine gun:

"Immortal! Brother Lin! Developer Daddy! I beg you! Please hurry and enable a photo and video recording function in the game! I was promoting our game in the stream today and almost got reported as a malware-spreading scammer!"

"If it weren't for a few cybersecurity big shots seeing how awesome our server is, my livestream channel would've been gone! I desperately need real-time, in-game footage to prove my innocence! If you enable this feature, I guarantee I'll bring you tons of new players!"

Meanwhile, inside the underground master control room of the Fire Seed Shelter.

Lin Li was sitting in front of the No. 1 computer desk with his legs crossed, completely lacking any decorum. He was mindlessly chewing on half a piece of hind leg meat that had been processed by the purification box.

"This mutant beast meat is a bit tough, but at least it's not poisonous. Every bite is just pure, unadulterated protein flavor."

He muttered to himself while glancing at the flashing Penguin icon in the bottom right corner of the computer screen.

He clicked it open to see long strings of tearful complaints and exclamation marks sent by Walker.

"Pfft." Lin Li nearly choked on his roasted meat. "This kid is certainly dedicated. The crazy desire to prove oneself that players get after being misunderstood is the most powerful kind of viral marketing."

The lack of a recording feature was indeed a shortcoming.

Lin Li casually tapped an [OK] emoji on his keyboard and sent it over.

Then, he wiped the grease from the corner of his mouth and turned to look at that piece of junk hovering in mid-air.

"73." Lin Li pointed at the request on the screen. "You saw the request from this player named Walker, right? Can you add video recording and extraction functions to the [PV Equipment] they're about to be equipped with?"

STC-73's red optical lens flickered, and its mechanical voice carried a hint of helplessness and disdain typical of a high-level artificial intelligence.

"This is a disguised insult to the industrial technology of the Golden Age, Creator." 73 said slowly, "Those CC-model industrial employee badges already possess ultra-high-resolution optical perception, microscopic scanning, and holographic recording modules. The function you're requesting is like asking a supercomputer capable of calculating cosmic singularities to figure out what one plus one equals."

"I only need to open a tiny fraction of the permissions in the underlying protocol for you, and they will be able to capture everything in front of the players' retinas in real-time and package it into a rough digital video format that Earth's networks can parse."

Lin Li slapped his thigh: "Great! That's enough! It doesn't need to be too refined; 1080P is enough to slap those netizens in the face. Update it immediately!"

"Command confirmed, rewriting interaction protocols..."

However, just as 73's data streams began to churn and the aroma of roasted meat still filled the master control room, "Beep—! Beep—! Beep—!"

On the wall of the master control room, the dust-covered red alarm light, which usually sat like a dead object, suddenly began to spin and flash frantically!

A burst of extremely urgent, piercing, and low-pitched buzzing instantly tore through the silence of the underground!

STC-73's previously calmly flickering red optical lens instantly switched to a blinding crimson, symbolizing the highest alert status.

"Severe warning, Creator." 73's voice instantly lost all anthropomorphic emotion, becoming as cold and murderous as the ice of deep winter.

"Ten kilometers due north of the Shelter—at the physical edge of the fixed monitoring camera array—extremely dangerous biological activity signals have been detected!"

"Holy shit!" Lin Li was so startled that the half-piece of roasted meat in his hand dropped straight to the floor.

The relaxed feeling from just moments ago while watching the silly netizens' barrage comments vanished instantly, and cold sweat broke out on his back.

Ten kilometers! In the perilous wasteland, ten kilometers for those predators with abnormal physical fitness was practically a leisurely stroll, right on their doorstep!

If they wanted to, they could rush to the top of the Shelter in half an hour!

Lin Li sprang up from his chair, shoved the desk aside, and lunged in front of the master control computer in Room No. 1.

"Cut the crap! Pull up the surveillance footage of that area immediately! Max out both the optical and infrared zoom!"

The screen flickered. Because a sandstorm was raging outside, the image was initially filled with static.

But under the powerful underlying computing power of STC-73, the silhouettes of those uninvited guests appeared clearly in the center of the screen like ghosts.

It was a small, alien squad wandering aimlessly through the ruins of the wilderness.

Walking at the very front of the group was a terrifying behemoth.

The monster was definitely over two meters tall! Its entire body bulged with exaggerated, dark green muscles like rocks, and every muscle seemed to contain a terrifying, monstrous strength capable of smashing a car with a single punch.

Its lower jaw protruded severely, and two thick, yellowish tusks poked out directly over its heavy lips, with drool dripping from the tusks onto the parched ground.

The monster had several rusty metal plates haphazardly tied to its body with thick wire as armor.

Its right hand, which was thicker than a human thigh, was dragging a heavy cleaver that was wider than a door panel, its edges covered in dried blood and jagged teeth.

And behind it followed seven or eight small Gretchin.

These little monsters held tattered clubs in their hands, cowering as they followed behind to scavenge for trash.

On the perimeter, there were also two Squigs tethered by thick iron chains, sniffing around like rabid dogs.

"Orc Boyz..." Lin Li stared fixedly at the green-skinned monster on the screen, which radiated pure aesthetics of violence. He swallowed hard, feeling as if his throat had been stuffed with sand.

No matter how much he liked to roast players or act cold and aloof in front of them, his brain was absolutely clear.

This was a real Orc Boyz! The most unreasonable and craziest fighting race in the Warhammer universe!

Compared to the Squigs that had been chopped to death by players with greatswords earlier, this adult Orc Boyz was a true killing machine.

"With just those two broken heavy crossbows and that dull, notched greatsword in the players' hands..." Lin Li frantically calculated in his mind, "If they run into this guy, they'll absolutely be cleaved in two, shield and all, by that one strike. It's a completely different magnitude of creature!"

Lin Li took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down.

"73, analyze their route and armament. Quick!"

"Performing biological trace and equipment scan..." 73's data stream rapidly scrolled across the edge of the screen.

"Creator, based on the spore pheromone frequencies emitted by these Squigs and Gretchin, I can confirm that they belong to the same Ork tribe as the Squigs you encountered on the first day."

"Currently, they are just wandering aimlessly through the ruins, their behavioral logic consistent with the Ork instinct to scavenge and hunt for prey. They have not yet discovered the hidden entrance to the Fire Seed Shelter. Furthermore, no thermal weapons or gunpowder reactions have been detected on them."

Hearing the last sentence, the heart that had been suspended in mid-air finally settled down a little.

"Phew... Thank heavens, this squad should still be in a relatively primitive cold-weapon tribe stage." Lin Li wiped the cold sweat from his forehead.

He knew all too well about the unreasonable Waaagh! "I think so" field of the Orks.

The technological development of these Orks didn't follow science at all. As long as enough Orks gathered, their "I think so" field would stack, and their tech tree would climb crazily without any logic.

Yesterday, these guys might have been hitting people with wooden sticks; tomorrow, after a bit of "I think so," they might just hammer together a big shoota capable of rapid-firing bolter rounds out of scrap metal.

This Orc Boyz hadn't come out brandishing a gun, which meant the scale of their tribe might still be within a controllable range; the "I think so" field wasn't strong enough yet to let them craft guns and cannons.

"Peripheral probes, enter silent surveillance mode. Hold position for now; we cannot alert them." Lin Li issued the order decisively.

The master control room fell into a brief silence. Although the Orks hadn't discovered this place yet, how could one allow others to snore beside one's own bed?

This Ork squad could wander back to the top of the Shelter at any time. A terminal illness known as "insufficient firepower phobia" began to spread wildly in Lin Li's genes.

Although he had his halberd, the players were still wielding cold weapons.

"Cold weapons just don't cut it in the wasteland." Lin Li gritted his teeth, his fingers tapping the desk unconsciously. "We need real firearms and ammunition. If this The Fourth Calamity doesn't have thermal weapons, they won't even be enough to fill the gaps between the Orks' teeth. The Matter Constructor should be able to make firearm parts, but we don't have gunpowder materials."

He turned around, his gaze landing on the silver-white carbon material purification box in the corner, and the pile of high-purity protein cubes brought back from the ruins next to it.

In this wasteland where resources were extremely scarce and the ground was covered in nuclear radiation and Warp pollution, clean and safe food was a hard currency even tougher than gold!

A bold plan quickly took shape in Lin Li's mind.

"73, plan two travel routes for me." Lin Li walked to the holographic terrain projection and pointed at two distinct coordinate points on it.

"First, I need to take some of the protein cubes to the nearest large-scale human trading settlement. These outlaws who struggle to survive in the wasteland must have old, discarded firearms and bullets. I must trade food for some firepower to upgrade the players' gear."

"Second, after visiting the trading settlement, stop by the small camp that saved me before. Bring them some food to repay the favor."