survivor?

Cen Yu glanced at the people who jumped out of the box, but said nothing.

He kept his weapon pointed at the group of people, never letting his guard down.

Sleepy Bro pulled out some chewing gum from his pocket. "Want some?" he asked, patting Cen Yu on the shoulder.

"?" Cen Yu really didn't understand where the other person had taken out the chewing gum. Could this simulator really simulate such a specific thing?

"...We...we really are survivors." The first man to jump out said tremblingly, seemingly worried that Cen Yu wouldn't believe him.

Four or five people eventually crawled out of that pile of boxes.

"Explain yourself," Cen Yu said. "The low-level insects weren't far from you, so why didn't they detect you?"

This is why he never let his guard down. Those low-level insects were only a hundred meters away from the boxes where the survivors were hiding... Given the insects' detection capabilities, they shouldn't have been unable to find this group of people.

The man hurriedly pulled a spray bottle from his pocket. "This! This is what we rely on!"

As he spoke, he sprayed the spray on himself and his companions a few times. "This stuff can confuse the insects and prevent them from detecting our presence." Perhaps worried that Cen Yu wouldn't believe him, he quickly added, "It only works on low-level insects underground...that's why we've never dared to go to the surface."

Cen Yu lowered the weapon in her hand slightly, which was considered an acceptance of the man's explanation.

There were five survivors in total, three men and two women, and everyone looked extremely disheveled... Seemingly realizing that rescue had finally arrived, they breathed a sigh of relief and then looked expectantly behind Cen Yu and Sleeping Bro, "Is the main force behind us?"

“No.” Cen Yu smiled. “Just the two of us.”

Sleepy Guy pulled his mask up a little, then popped a piece of chewing gum into his mouth. "Where's your base?" he asked, chewing gum. "Five people, are you here to scout the road ahead?"

Upon hearing Cen Yu say that there were only two of them, the man's expression immediately turned sour.

“…Yes.” He glanced at Cen Yu and the other man, still somewhat puzzled. “Did the Empire really only send two people to search for survivors?”

"Haha." Sleepy Guy laughed again, "Shouldn't you guys be the ones who know the reason best?"

"Two weeks ago, the empire ordered everyone to evacuate."

"If it weren't for the signal you sent out at the last minute, the Empire would probably have thought that everyone had evacuated from Planet Nott."

Cen Yu glanced at Sleeping Bro—this part of the background wasn't mentioned in the dungeon settings—it seemed more like a true story that the other party knew about what happened on Planet Nott.

"The main Zerg force has already arrived on Nott... so they only sent the two of us here."

The man's expression immediately turned dejected.

"...We just haven't finished what we need to do yet."

"What is it?" Cen Yu asked immediately.

The man fell silent again.

Cen Yu glanced at the remaining few people. "How many survivors are left here?"

“There are three other people besides us,” one of the women said hurriedly. “They are injured and cannot go far, so we are the only ones who can scout ahead.”

"Just scouting ahead?" Cen Yu asked again.

Sleepy Guy chewed his gum and said, "It's more like abandoning your injured comrades, isn't it?"

"But I found that the way out was blocked by bugs, and there were bugs on the way back, so I hid in the box." He laughed as he spoke, "It's pretty funny."

The five of them fell silent.

Cen Yu looked back at the road they had come from—

According to the system settings, it is unrealistic for the two of them to deal with the large-scale invasion of the Zerg on Nott Planet. No matter how good they are at fighting, they cannot lead five people away from the Zerg's encirclement.

The remaining space in the mech's cockpit can only accommodate one person at most, and there are five survivors here, so it is obviously impossible to allocate space.

Furthermore, even after they found the five survivors, there was still no indication that the mission was complete, proving that they needed to do more than just that.

"Lead the way." Cen Yu raised his chin and said to the five people, "Let's go to the place where you were hiding before."

...

"The mission is still not complete." Cen Yu was unfamiliar with the design of the simulator since this was his first time entering this networked mode, so he asked the man next to him.

He and the man were about 2 meters away from the five NPCs in front of them, and they weren't worried that the NPCs would hear their conversation.

"Finding them isn't the goal," said Sleepy Guy, chewing gum. "Is this your first time playing online mode?"

Cen Yu didn't think there was anything to hide, so he nodded directly.

"No wonder," the man muttered to himself, "the online mission mode is more open-ended."

“Once we enter this instance, we can either ignore the quests and start fighting immediately, or we can consider completing the quests assigned by the system.” He looked at Cen Yu. “You know that the two of us alone definitely can’t eliminate these Zerg, right?”

Cen Yu nodded.

There are tens of thousands of Zerg outside. Although they haven't entered the underground space yet, the few remaining ones are already giving them a headache.

Cen Yu also noticed it.

The training underground and above ground involves two different combat methods.

They were trained underground to improve their close-combat skills, while above ground they were trained to operate mechs against the Zerg...

After following the five people underground, the Zerg occasionally appeared, but as they went deeper, the number of Zerg decreased. At least for now, they hadn't seen any trace of Zerg for half an hour.

"Are these missions adapted from what happened back then?" Cen Yu asked tentatively.

“Not really,” the man said, “but it’s probably true.”

He looked at the five people groping their way forward ahead. "The Empire has always suspected one thing."

"Were those who left last truly reluctant to leave Nott and their home planet, or did they have other motives?"

"The last group to leave were not natives of Planet Nott."

"They suddenly sent out a distress signal, saying that they missed the Empire's last evacuation notice while conducting experiments underground."

"Afterwards, the Empire sent a special team to take away these survivors."

The man stepped over the debris on the ground and looked at Cen Yu. "Because of the urgency, the Empire required these survivors to come to a specific place before the team would come to meet them." He pointed to himself and Cen Yu as he spoke. "So, during the mission, no one followed them to the secret base."

All we know is that when these survivors left Planet Nott, they all looked like they had just escaped death.

Cen Yu recalled the half-human, half-insect monsters that appeared on Planet Nott, mentioned in the original work...

"After the Zerg retreated, although the Empire sent teams to re-exploit Nott, most of its resources had already been plundered, and Nott had become a completely barren planet."

“We’ve investigated five times, and found nothing unusual,” the man said. “After that, apart from the Zerg and space pirates, no one else has come to Nott.”