Global Fog Survival

A knocking on the door woke Colin, who quickly washed up and walked through the hall. As he moved, he activated his status hint.

【Though being disturbed made you uncomfortable, having slept for nearly eight hours, you’re not overly bothered.】

“Bothered my foot, I feel like ripping off their heads right now,” Colin grumbled, feeling slightly better after the complaint. He noted he had almost an hour before dawn. Why were these people so fussy…

As Colin’s mind raced, he grasped the doorknob, took a deep breath, and opened the door to see what was happening outside.

“What’s the matter?”

Standing outside were Li Hang, Li Chou, Number One, Number Two, and several other survivors—six people in total. Aside from his subordinates, Li Hang and Li Chou looked pale, as if frightened by something. However, upon seeing Colin, they visibly relaxed, making Colin realize the situation wasn’t too dire.

Almost simultaneously, the door across the hall creaked open. Sanna, looking slightly disheveled, appeared. Her blue eyes swept the area with a hint of vigilance before she relaxed, seeing no immediate threat. After all, it wasn’t dawn yet. Sudden footsteps and knocking could signal an unexpected event.

“Come in, we have plenty of room in here.”

Colin stepped aside, allowing them in. The group entered without a word.

Colin’s room was a suite on the third floor, over 100 square meters, taking up a third of the floor’s area. It was quite spacious, almost uncomfortably so. Besides Colin and Sanna having separate rooms, Number One and Two, along with their teams, stayed in smaller quarters. The second floor housed other top-performing Lantern Bearers and their squads to ensure no threats reached the core. The first floor was allocated to survivors, while other servants slept in the war chariots or the barracks within the third-level territory.

To be honest, if it weren’t for knowing Sanna was right across and many others were downstairs, Colin would have felt quite uneasy living alone here.

“Sanna, you might want to tidy up a bit. Your hair’s a bit messy,” Colin remarked, noticing a tuft of her light golden hair sticking up.

“Okay, Lord Colin. Sorry for my appearance…” She quickly shut the door.

Shortly, everyone sat in a circle in the hall.

“Here’s the thing. About an hour ago, we felt something outside the window staring at us through the curtains…” Li Chou said with lingering fear.

“You stared at the fog?” Colin asked curiously. He remembered a guy who stared at the gray fog and got stared back at by it. Rumor had it that he still hadn’t been left alone, always “surviving” with a group of “people” around him.

“No, we wouldn’t dare…” Li Chou shook his head. He knew about those peculiar cases. “Can you investigate what’s going on, big shot?”

“No.”

Colin flatly refused. Investigate the gray fog? That’s asking for death. For Colin, anything related to the gray fog, the system, or the dark space, he avoided unless absolutely necessary.

Seeing their hopeful expressions, Colin reconsidered and continued, “The gray fog is dangerous. Investigating it is suicide. I suspect that corpse’s fate was related to the gray fog…”

Hearing this, Li Chou and the others shivered, recalling the female corpse. Li Hang, although busy with the mine yesterday and unaware of the situation, had heard the proctologist survivor recount it as a ghost story, making him uneasy as well.

“Anyway, don’t worry about those things. If it can’t get in, ignore it. The more attention you give it, the more trouble it causes.”

Colin spoke with the tone of someone who had been through it all. He knew the more you understood these things, the more likely they’d “select” you. He had speculated that at this stage, both sides were in a “you don’t see me, I don’t see you” state. Breaking out of this state would mean death for them.

This made Colin realize that as the countdown approached, abnormalities were gradually happening. Preparations were necessary.

“If we don’t have enough resources to upgrade the territory today, cover the windows with some stone blocks. Oh, and Li Chou, you’ll come with me to explore underground, so no worries there…”

A level-four territory covered over ten thousand square meters, with various functional buildings like a manor. However, it required vast resources: besides massive amounts of basic materials, it needed 2000 steel plates, 2000 thorns, and 1500 fog points. Even Colin couldn’t afford that easily. Even if he could, he’d prioritize the war chariots, as they could extend their combat capability beyond the territory.

Currently, with nine war chariot spaces, multiple level-two temporary bases, and a three-thousand-square-meter level-three territory, over a thousand people could be accommodated.

“Alright…” Li Chou nodded, having no objections.

After discussion, Colin decided that Number One’s team would handle the mission, comprising eighteen fully upgraded level-three members. Number One’s familiarity with the wooden wheel made him crucial for the tunnel exploration. They’d bring three lanterns for emergencies.

Besides Colin, Sanna, and the scroll “reserve lord” Li Chou, twenty-one people in total would go. Other survivors would follow separate plans.

From dawn, four chariots would station near the saltpeter mine for extraction. The mine would also have survivors to handle communications, transportation, and mineral transfer. Two chariots and several lords would work on developing the underground river in the collapsed forest cave. Another two chariots would guard the church, ensuring no backdoor threats for Colin. The remaining four vehicles would stay mobile in the fog, training “new recruits” and enhancing their combat skills while hunting mutants to supplement resources and exploring the surrounding map for emergency support. Lords Rogue and Li Hang would manage this, while Huang Weiyang would focus on researching and developing mass-produced firearms within the territory.

Without blueprints, the crafting table couldn’t directly create firearms. Even Colin didn’t know how to obtain the needed blueprints, so they had to figure it out themselves.