The Panic Button
What kind of place had this been, back when people actually lived here?
Soldiers or mercenaries would have watched every approach, and the days would have been loud with heavy machinery and bodies in constant motion. Noise and light that never quit, night or day, plus that particular musk and breath a crowd of humans gives off. Things that had never belonged in this wilderness came crashing in all at once — and wasn't that, in the end, what birthed the Dark Zone?
There's also a lot that sits wrong if you just treat it as the game randomly lifting the memory of some era and some location and rebuilding it as a theme.
I turned that over as I closed in on the outpost at the base's edge — a structure that, unlike anything I'd seen in the game, hadn't rusted yet and hadn't been claimed by a viciously polluted environment. Even now it drove me crazy, wondering what the developers, the scenario writers, the voice actors had been handed by the planners, and what they'd meant to bury inside the game. Of course, that curiosity had always felt like it would go unanswered forever. Not anymore. Now all of this was real.
Clank. Clank.
I gave the outpost's iron door a light tug. It didn't move. Locked from the inside, most likely.
"Tsk."
No other option. I pushed the Modular Exo-Suit to full output, put real power into my arm, and ripped the handle in one pull. The inner lock and the hinges half-shattered together. I dragged the loosened, groaning door the rest of the way, and it sagged open with a dying squeal.
"Ta-da."
"...I suppose we won't need to bother looking for keys from now on."
"No. We find the keys properly. A key to a place that drops expensive items is a guaranteed lottery ticket all by itself."
I hadn't sold a single keycard or key I'd farmed so far. I'd built a separate pocket in the pack and carried them at all times, just in case a map of a particular theme decided to show up.
"That was louder than I expected, though. Shouldn't we move quickly?"
"Nah. Anywhere else, maybe. But right now, this place is fine."
As I'd already said — this spot wasn't a clearable target yet. I swallowed the rest of that explanation and walked in first.
The interior of the outer outpost, linked straight to the gate, had nothing much to offer. It was a hollow space, as if the hour simply hadn't come: buildings and junk existing here ahead of any living thing.
Meaning no threats, and items everywhere. A honey pot.
EFD was never a pure random-loot game where gear just dropped in the middle of the road. A little randomness existed, sure, but at its core it ran closer to dynamic loot — major farming spots fixed across the map, places that always paid out. Rummage a cabinet, a crate, a set of clothes at the right location, and you were walking away with at least a scrap or two of junk.
"Oh. Bullets."
I went through what looked like a guard's uniform and pulled a bundle from the front pocket. A thirty-round pack of Western 5.56mm rifle ammo.
In this 2040s world, small-caliber railguns, laser weapons, and combat implants ran the munitions industry as personal firearms, so powder guns had been dumped on the civilian market a long time ago. That was also why convicts inside the prison could get powder weapons without much trouble, but nothing above a certain grade of hardware. This was a world where security robots rolled with autocannons as standard issue. Of course it worked that way.
Come to think of it, back when I played EFD, some guy bragged about digging through clothes and pulling a colored keycard. I really wanted to find that bastard's address and pay him a visit.
Just my luck, as always.
Farming done, I left the outpost and headed into the base proper. There was more to strip inside. Buildings large and small stood everywhere — most of them cargo warehouses, offices, or worker barracks. Lucy and I tore through them like we were possessed, scraping up anything that would convert to cash or might matter for quests down the line. First come, first served: the oldest law in the wild. We packed the bags with high-value loot and items that smelled like quest material, and when that still wasn't enough I stuffed a few more pieces into the body of my "friend" — the one with a biological sample canister jammed over his head.
Some people call late-night chicken and beer a dopamine party. This. This was the real dopamine party. There was money lying on the ground. You picked it up and put it in a backpack. The money just copied itself.
Ah — farming was farming, but I couldn't forget why we'd come. Today I was going to be a kind-hearted slaughterer. I had my story and I had my reasons, but I had absolutely not lost my good nature.
"Knew it'd be here."
Once the looting was more or less finished and we stepped into the heart of the colossal base, the Communication Tower rose into view in a single glance, punching straight up into the sky. Around it, pipelines thick and long enough to look wrong had broken through the ground and climbed into the open.
The core of the Grand Griefing Plan wasn't the Communication Tower. It was those pipelines. I already knew what that tower at the center of the base was, and what those suspicious lines feeding into it really were. Back then I'd been the one who kept eating this gimmick. Now I was going to turn it around and use it to secure a little peace of mind.
Doctors were always saying stress was the root of every illness, weren't they?
Source of stress: the wicked, vile packs of convicts lining up to hunt me. Solution: destroy the convicts. Conclusion: Han Seungho's happy-happy farming life begins.
And all of it took one little click.
Click!
Click was extremely satisfying. Satisfying enough that the farming would never have to stop.
Come to think of it, the clan boys had been pretty blunt with the big talk when they threatened us. Said they'd lock down the Dark Zone so we'd never farm properly again.
They didn't know the first rule. Talk too strong and you just look weak.
I will stand above the Dark Zone.
Only me.
Then I felt someone tug my sleeve.
"Leader. Leader."
"What is it, O one who has yet to break five-foot-three?"
"...We've more or less finished farming. Shouldn't we get started soon?"
Lucy's voice snapped me back. She was a full head shorter than I was, and somehow her head still seemed to run faster than mine. Was this youth?
"Follow me. From here on, I'll show you how to screw someone over with maximum efficiency."
I hated intentional trolling with my whole soul. That was exactly why I had studied trolling myself, and then gone further and learned how to give trolls a proper education. In other words, I had mastered it. Gazing into the abyss only for the abyss to gaze back — that was the shape of it. So what. What mattered was that people who hated me for no reason now had a reason I could hand them myself.
"Most people figure the most efficient way to ruin someone is either to crush them with force, or the opposite — dig up a weakness and drive a spike into it. Right?"
"Usually, yes. That's also how convicts handle each other in prison."
"That doesn't educate anybody. It just leaves a bruise, physical or otherwise. You think guys who've already rolled all the way down to the floor of a prison are going to care about that?"
"Of course not. Give it a little time and they'll come again. Survival of the fittest also means even the strong can end up standing where the weak used to stand."
"Exactly. A moment of violence, a moment of fear — that only gets you oppression, not control. It feeds their resentment, and sooner or later it's why you catch a knife in the back."
But if it wasn't mere fear — if it became perfect control — then the story changed.
"Treat people who act like shit the same way they act, and you only get half a result. To really ruin them, you make them feel helpless."
The best answer to a griefer pulling aggro was total indifference. The best answer to someone trying to throw a game was to carry it with overwhelming skill and force the win anyway. Of course, covering trolling with raw performance and pretending it never happened was exhausting, thankless work. So I intended to shut the whole thing down at the source.
Not You're gonna throw? Fine. I'll just carry.
But You're gonna throw? Then throw it. If you can.
Lucy and I didn't go in through the Communication Tower's sealed entrance. I lashed a dagger to the end of a rope I'd brought, hooked it on the tower's steel frame, climbed it myself, and pulled down the folding ladder that ran to the top. In the game, either the entrance or that ladder was always open, so you'd never had to do this. Reality had other ideas.
From the crown of the Communication Tower we looked out for a moment over a forest so green it turned the stomach, rolling away in every direction. Out there were countless Native Species, spore traps, and the convicts who had chased us into the same theme to get in our way.
"First method for thoroughly ruining someone in the Dark Zone: close every exit."
Clank.
I opened the fuse box at the top of the tower and pulled every last fuse. The energy feeding communications cut out, and the exits that had been held open by a remote signal slammed shut. Originally this was just a side effect of gathering the tower's power in one place for a high-difficulty quest — a sequence that only worked because EFD let a single squad into any given theme. Either way, every electronic hatch on every exit in this theme was now closed. The design was simple: no "safe" signal from the Communication Tower, and the wilderness sealed itself off from the outside.
The railroad was still there, though, so there was still an exit left, right? Correct.
"And we monopolize the only one that remains."
Clank. Clank. Clank!
A freight train came hammering along the tracks through the wilderness forest and shuddered to a halt at the center of the colossal base. Boarding it right now wouldn't get anyone out. This was a gimmick. It only ran if you fired the pieces in the right order.
"Last step. We make the train register an emergency and kick the escape sequence on its own."
"How?"
"Like this."
Click.
I tore the entire fuse box free and pressed the red button hidden inside. Progress far enough into this high-difficulty quest and you learned it naturally — the "start" button for the whole strategy. Players like me had another name for it.
The Panic Button.
WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!
A siren detonated through the external speakers mounted all over the massive base. At the same time, the power pooled inside the Communication Tower began dumping down a specific line. Energy that had been wasted on remote signals was suddenly pointed at something else, and after that the change came frighteningly fast.
Think about it. How did human beings think they were going to tame a wilderness this lethal? How had they planned to carve it open?
"The answer is annihilation."
Confirmed: Class-1 toxic agent has been dispersed into the atmosphere.
Right on cue, Crazy Clock — silent for a good while — flared red and spat a warning. Lucy wouldn't see it or hear it. I felt every bit of it. I knew exactly how dangerous this was.
Identified as anti-■■■ gas developed by a partner company of ■■■ Corporation.
This was a ■■■ Corporation product too? Was there anywhere those people didn't have their hands?
More importantly — if it had spread properly, the reaction should be starting any second.
Current oxygen filter remaining: 70% → 67% → 64% → 61%
Confirmed on this end. It's spreading faster than I expected.
Colorless. Odorless. Tasteless.
A high-difficulty quest built to wipe the Native Species out of this entire wilderness: dump poison gas across the map, then force the prisoners to keep swapping spare filter canisters in that hell, killing whatever came at them, and holding until the timer ran out so they could escape on the train. Unlike the coastal city theme last time, nobody was running from this one. They would meet unending pain inside a helplessness and despair that did not let go.
The reason for going this far was simple. There was a model student at my side, working hard to learn how to survive the Dark Zone. And beyond that… they had pressed my panic button first.
They had talked big about locking down the Dark Zone so I couldn't farm, about making sure I felt helpless. I was only shutting their interference down at the root, and making sure they felt — thoroughly, in their bones — the helplessness they had been stupid enough to name in front of me.
"Alright. Everyone got that?"