Chapter 113: The Rampage of the "Virus"

"Cough, cough," Russell held his chest, wiping the fresh blood from the corner of his mouth. Guided by an extraordinary instinct and the call of his heart, he said, "I'm fine. Getting one-third of the area details from a hundred parchment maps is really a bargain. Oh, by the way, your map seems to be missing personal positioning—only territory coordinates, no real-time individual locations. And as for those so-called danger markers, they’re practically nonexistent..."

Colin and the others exchanged glances, silently deciding that any grumbling about the system would remain unspoken from now on. Whether it was mere coincidence or not, they did not want the system to suddenly “manifest” again. The main reason they weren’t sure if it was the system’s doing was because just coughing up a bit of blood was surprisingly “gentle”...

At that moment, Colin noticed some messages arriving from the survivors stationed at the base.
"Boss, what’s going on? We’ve noticed a delay in our parchment maps; the response is sluggish..."
"We compared with some neighboring ‘alliances’—their maps aren’t lagging at all. It seems only ours are choppy..."
"I don’t know how to put it exactly, but it’s like when someone secretly downloads videos on the network, causing everyone’s connection to slow down..."
"Boss, do you know what’s happening?"

Colin’s expression turned strange as he began to suspect something. He realized it was likely because of the map he had activated.
Is viewing a map really this bandwidth-heavy?
Quickly, he closed the map, and sure enough, he soon received messages from various teams:
"...So slow. I sent a message ten minutes ago, and it only just arrived..."
"But it seems to have recovered now. It was so stuck earlier—just switching chat channels or pages took tens of seconds..."
"By the way, we’ve pinpointed the cause."
"Five survivors came over to surrender recently, and their parchment maps carried a ‘virus.’ This virus infected the maps of our people..."
"This one’s on me. I was careless. I didn’t expect parchment maps could carry viruses. I didn’t prepare for it..."

Seeing these words, Colin’s expression grew even more peculiar. He knew it had nothing to do with those people and quickly replied, "Release them. They’re not involved..."
"What happened?" came the surprised response.
Colin explained about enabling the map function.
Soon, the five bewildered survivors who had been detained were released from their temporary cells, equally confused.
Their minds were full of questions.
What on earth had happened?

"...Though unfortunately, it seems only I can open the map, which is a bit troublesome..."

---

Colin shook his head. The system currently only supported text; it had no image transmission function. He couldn’t send the map back directly.

After some thought, he decided to etch the map onto something and then send it as an item.
Everyone would just have to endure some ‘network lag’ for a while.

"Nightfall is coming soon; I have to finish etching the map before it’s dark and fix this problem..."
If he waited until night to start, any mishap—even a delay of just a few seconds—could be disastrous.

As the countdown approached, the mutations in the gray mist grew more frequent and unpredictable. No one knew what might happen next.
Thus, communication during the night had to be guaranteed.

"Before that, let’s finish the current task..."
Colin handed off the task of clearing the ‘Fallen Nobles’ and obtained another ‘Contaminated Eyeball.’

Then, he activated the map function and assigned the task of replicating the map to Russell’s subordinate—the ‘female assassin.’
Stealthily exploring and mapping was a basic skill for an assassin; no one else could draw the map with as much detail.

Next, Colin triggered a prompt on the strange eyeball, though he wasn’t sure what use it had.
[...You notice it is laughing...]
Garbage message.

Colin casually took out another eyeball and held the two squishy, disgusting eyeballs together to see if anything would change.
[...You notice it keeps laughing, never stopping, and the laughter grows louder...]
"All these are useless prompts," Colin muttered.

He expected no surprises and stored the eyeballs in his bag, hoping for a chance to use them someday.
After all, these were system task rewards; if nothing else, he could bury them in soil as fertilizer.

About half an hour later, the map was etched and handed over to the waiting people outside.
Though they had been drawing maps for days, theirs would never be as detailed.

"Be careful when using the map tomorrow. Double-check everything to avoid dangerous areas..."
Colin warned.

The previous group’s maps had issues—often marking highly dangerous zones as ‘safe,’ leading to their entire teams being wiped out.
Though their new maps lacked fancy functions and contained only the map itself, caution was still necessary.

Just as the information was sent out, an invisible pressure suddenly descended...

---

Colin knew night had fallen.

The survivors around him all opened their parchment maps, constantly refreshing the world channel’s messages, watching for any unexpected events.
Not just here, but also the large number of ‘idle personnel’ in the third-level territory joined the ‘surveillance operation.’

Yet, tonight seemed unusually calm.

"Almost half an hour now... such a quiet night?"
Colin felt an unspoken unease. There seemed to be nothing happening at all; the entire chat channel was eerily ‘quiet.’

After answering some questions from ‘special talents’ during breaks, he continued to wait for updates from the territory.

But aside from occasional check-ins reporting all was well, no further replies came, suggesting tonight...
Was truly without incident?

"Forget it, let whoever was supposed to watch the surveillance skip it. We’ll just have one person monitor private messages. The rest can rest for now..."

After a long moment of silence, Colin felt the weariness creeping in. Their main focus was the light beneath the mountains, not this place.

"Tonight, we’ll rest for six hours, then start the journey. No, we have to wait until tomorrow—no money yet to move this ‘Level Five Underground Fortress’..."

With their current physical condition, basic sleep would ensure full energy for the day.

But only after selling potatoes tomorrow could they earn enough money to relocate the fortress.

"Time to transfer the territory rights..."
Colin rubbed his forehead and looked toward Russell sitting nearby. Transferring a Level Five territory had to be done at the ‘Core Fortress’ on the lowest level.

That was why he had delayed the handover until now.

But it was time to take this from the ‘previous generation’ and put it into his own pocket.

Only then could he grasp all the information about the ‘Level Five Underground Fortress’ and make full use of it.

...

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