Apocalypse Survival: Starting with a Shelter

[Current Territory: Livable Personal Shelter (55%), Daily Fixed Survival Points +3.]

[Remaining Survival Points: 45.]

A new day began. Looking at the progress bar for his shelter's upgrade already reaching halfway, Su Wu felt pretty good.

At this pace, it wouldn't be long before the shelter reached the next level. By then, even if new system features weren't unlocked, the daily fixed survival points would certainly increase. Life would visibly improve.

After washing up and grabbing a piece of golden, fluffy toasted bread, Su Wu followed his usual routine and went to the control center's console to perform a daily inspection of the shelter and its surroundings.

Over the course of the previous night, nothing notable had changed inside the shelter.

The engineering team was still tirelessly expanding the underground fourth floor, continually enlarging the shelter's space.

Unexpectedly, however, there was some movement outside the shelter.

Aside from the large transport truck that was routinely coming and going, a flock of unidentified birds passed through the sky, and one or two small animals briefly appeared on the distant rocky terrain.

"Even in this extreme heat, animals on the surface haven't gone completely extinct. Truly resilient," Su Wu marveled.

This was perhaps the so-called tenacity of life. It wasn't just humans—other creatures were also struggling to survive in the hostile environment.

After reviewing the logs and confirming that the area around the shelter remained temporarily safe, Su Wu began going through the shelter's materials consumption list.

He noticed that the most commonly used resource for expanding the shelter—stones and construction debris, like concrete blocks—was running low.

"It seems I'll need to form a dedicated excavation team," Su Wu mused.

While stones were everywhere around the farmhouse courtyard, most of them were irregularly shaped, quite large, and often buried in soil. Excavating them wouldn't be a simple or easy task.

As for construction debris, that was even more challenging. Based on the information Su Wu had, he'd have to travel at least two kilometers to an abandoned village and personally dismantle houses to gather enough.

Operating so far from the shelter would introduce significantly higher risks compared to construction within the courtyard itself—at least two levels of magnitude higher. This wasn't something the precious engineering team could afford to multitask on.

Skillfully opening his design software, Su Wu began brainstorming how to create a specialized team for excavating and transporting building materials.

First, as usual, the team couldn't be too large.

Even the shelter's engineering team only consisted of a few miniature vehicles and construction tools. An auxiliary team tasked with providing raw materials wouldn't need to be much bigger.

In fact, there was no need to create separate individual units for tasks like operating excavators, dismantling houses, or breaking down oversized rocks with jackhammers.

Instead, these tools could all be integrated into a single transport vehicle, saving on production costs.

The only trade-off would be a slight reduction in efficiency.

But when machines can operate 24/7, the benefits of their sustained operation would far outweigh any initial efficiency losses. Even at a slower pace, the accumulated output over time would be impressive.

Sketching on his design board, Su Wu soon simplified what would have been a complete excavation and transport team down to a single specialized transport vehicle.

This specialized transport vehicle resembled a small truck.

It lacked a driver's cabin, instead featuring a tank-like tracked chassis and an open cargo bed. At its rear, it had a metal compartment about one-fifth the size of the cargo bed, housing tools like electric hammers and mechanical arms. These could automatically extend and operate at the destination.

Given the need for long-distance operations, Su Wu decided to scale up its carrying capacity for better efficiency without a significant increase in costs.

The transport vehicle was designed to be significantly larger than the micro-transport vehicles he had used previously, with a total length nearing five meters, comparable to an average family car. Its load capacity matched that of a large truck, capable of hauling up to 20 tons.

"One vehicle alone will function as an entire excavation and transport team. That truly deserves the title of 'specialized,'" Su Wu remarked with satisfaction as he admired his design.

The best part was that while Su Wu finalized the blueprint, the AI simultaneously provided a detailed production plan and a materials list.

Thanks to the engineering robots and raw materials traded from the official shelter, 97% of the parts required for the specialized transport vehicle could be manufactured internally, with an estimated completion time of under ten hours.

This high level of self-sufficiency meant Su Wu might only need to spend 5–6 survival points to produce a finished specialized transport vehicle, a noticeable cost reduction compared to when he first created micro-transport vehicles and excavators.

Without hesitation, Su Wu added the blueprint to the manufacturing center's queue.

With that task wrapped up, Su Wu didn't leave the control center.

Instead, he switched the wide console screen to another interface and pressed the activation button.

After 8–9 seconds, the screen displayed a view of a concrete floor against a backdrop of gray skies.

This was the perspective of a drone.

During the period when Su Wu was busy transporting goods from the official shelter, he hadn't been idle. With his abundance of supplies, he made several modifications to the shelter, one of which was particularly significant: the construction of a vertical shaft connecting the shelter's interior to the rooftop of the second-floor farmhouse.

This shaft, about one meter in diameter, featured a lift platform and multiple automatically sealing blast doors. It ensured the shelter's safety while enabling the rapid deployment of all types of drones, including the K2 agricultural drones.

In emergencies, the shaft could even function as a rocket launch tube, allowing the shelter to fire rockets directly.

[Drone reconnaissance unit is ready.]

[Surrounding environment monitoring normal.]

[Current real-time temperature: 67.5°C.]

[Takeoff initiated.]

In this dim and silent world, three palm-sized drones emitted faint lights as they rose steadily from the rooftop of the farmhouse. After circling briefly in the air, they began heading toward a distant mountain range.

The range, ravaged by unprecedented wildfi

res, had long intrigued Su Wu. Now that he had some downtime, he was eager to explore it.