Chapter 112: New Feature

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“Are we really going to hand over everything?” one of the survivors asked in a low voice.

They could still choose to cooperate with Colin through an alliance. After all, they had pooled their money to build an armored vehicle together, so they ought to have at least a little confidence by now...

Handing over the three-piece set, the armored vehicle, and all their other supplies would leave them far too much at the mercy of others.

“You decide for yourselves. As for me, I intend to submit completely and hand over everything I own. As for the money I spent on the armored vehicle, consider it the fare I paid to get here...” one of the five women said dejectedly.

She had had enough of this life lived in constant fear. All she wanted was a safe environment where she could simply go on living...

She never wanted to witness another scene like that again: several survivors tearing into one another over the tiniest scrap of resources, like stray dogs by the roadside fighting over a brittle, sun-dried bone...

That day, she had felt like a domesticated pet dog seeing the world’s most primitive savagery and brutality from an entirely new perspective for the first time...

Besides, this world held the gray fog, the aberrations, and countless other dangers capable of driving people to despair...

The woman did not believe that merely forming an “alliance” would make their lives much better.

When one side became overwhelmingly powerful, an alliance was nothing more than a joke, liable to be torn apart at any moment...

In that case, it was better to join willingly and become one of “their own” as soon as possible, thereby gaining a higher position and greater standing...

Sometimes, one’s choice mattered more than one’s effort.

Thus, when the armored vehicle’s main door opened, the woman chose without hesitation to submit completely—to pledge herself to Colin, the survivor whose rise had already become unstoppable.

However, just as she handed the parchment in her possession over to him, a line of system text suddenly appeared in Colin’s mind within the underground area.

[The number of parchments actually controlled by the survivor “Colin” has reached one hundred. A new function is about to be unlocked.]

[The “Map” function has been unlocked separately.]

[Notice: If the number of parchments you actually control falls below one hundred, this function will be unavailable.]

“Map?”

Colin froze for a moment. Then, delight flashed in his eyes as he hurriedly opened the new function.

The next second, within the center of the yellowed, otherwise empty parchment, blurred images began spreading outward bit by bit.

It was like ink dripping onto paper.

But...

“That’s incredibly slow...” Colin could not help complaining.

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A full minute had passed, yet the map had loaded only an area the size of a palm—less than a tenth of the parchment’s entire surface.

And after gathering a hundred parchments, there was no achievement or reward?

Even a few black loaves of bread would have been acceptable.

The system was becoming more and more unreasonable...

“Boss, is this a new function?” Li Chou and the others crowded around as well.

Only Colin had heard the notification just now. The others knew nothing about it.

Colin nodded. “The total number of parchments I control has reached one hundred, and the ‘Map’ function has appeared.”

“This is... a large-scale map?”

Russell glanced at it. “As I recall, its activation method was to control ten survivors, after which one-tenth of the map would be displayed. I might as well take a look and see where this ‘treasure map’ has transported us...”

Ever since arriving here, Russell had known that at the end of the mountains lay the greatest treasure indicated by the “treasure map”...

But he no longer had the ability to obtain it.

Even so, he remained quite curious about the terrain in the surrounding area.

Ten parchments...

Colin and the others had grown somewhat accustomed to such things. They wanted to complain about something, but could not think of what to say.

“Come to think of it, why is your map so slow...?”

Three minutes had now passed.

Yet the map had only just reached the halfway point. It was obvious that many features were still in the process of emerging.

There were few annotations, merely rough sketches of various regions...

After waiting several more minutes, the map finally revealed its complete appearance. Among the several marked points on it, Colin saw a hundred markers that seemed to represent territories...

The distances between the points varied, with no discernible pattern.

Near the largest marker were numerous smaller points...

[You realize that this marker represents the location of your territory, along with the armored vehicles near it...]

[You speculate that the map displays only one-third of the region. Obtaining a certain number of additional parchments will reveal more.]

One hundred parchments revealed one-third. Would three hundred reveal the entire region?

Colin made a quick calculation. From the notification, he learned that three hundred parchments were required to obtain a complete map of the entire region.

Then he noticed that the five most distant points on the map were separated from the other markers by a vast expanse of indistinct space.

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They looked almost like an “exclave.”

“How can anyone be living so far away...?” Colin murmured in surprise.

Not only that, but along half the boundary of this displayed third of the region, the scenery looked somewhat like the dividing line between land and sea.

The reason was that, through the notification, he had also located Silvermoon Bay. Judging solely from the map, it did not seem far from his territory.

[You faintly realize that you are not far from the sea. Perhaps everyone within the region is not far from the sea either.]

“So everyone is close to the sea? That’s an interesting way to put it...”

Colin stroked his chin, dimly grasping what the notification implied...

To a certain extent, this suggested that all the survivors in the region—including himself—could reach the sea from their surroundings...

That made it nearly certain that this region was an island, surrounded by water on all sides.

“No wonder no one from the other regions has come over. So we’re on an island. Oh, wait— even if the regions are connected, it seems there’s still no way to cross between them...”

Colin remembered someone saying in the chat channel that there should be a noticeably denser “wall of gray fog” between regions...

Everyone suspected that another region lay beyond the wall, but no matter how far they walked, they could not pass through the “wall of gray fog.”

Once inside it, advancing in any direction felt as though they were merely walking in place.

Yet the moment they took a step backward, they would emerge from it directly...

Of course, since no one had crossed over, this could not be confirmed. It was merely the prevailing theory.

At that moment, Russell, standing nearby, saw that the map had stopped revealing anything and asked in surprise, “Why has it stopped appearing? It looks as though the entire region hasn’t been displayed yet...”

Colin shook the map in his hand. “This is everything.”

He realized what Russell’s words had truly implied.

Back in their time, perhaps an alliance or submission involving a hundred people had been enough to reveal all the map’s contents for an entire region.

But neither the “alliance” nor the “submission” function existed for Colin’s group.

“What? A hundred parchments means a hundred survivors, right? And it still doesn’t display the entire region? Your system is really pathetic... Whoa—”

Russell was just about to voice his astonishment and complain when a sudden pain seized his heart. He bent over and spat a mouthful of blood onto the table...

His entire body seemed to wither at once...

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