Yunjiang Province, Tianshui City, an unknown shelter, Level B18.
[Our city has been destroyed. You have inherited a company’s shelter.]
[The previous successors to the shelter have all died. You are the final successor. Now, the shelter has a major problem.]
This was the first thing Ling Zhao saw when she woke up.
She felt that the shelter wasn’t the only one with a major problem. She had one too.
Transmigration was fashionable, she knew that. But she had never heard of transmigrating into another world while also being a disabled person.
Yes. Ling Zhao had been paralyzed from the waist down and had lost both of her parents in a car accident at the age of seventeen. Ten years had passed since then.
She was lying inside an egg-shaped hibernation pod. Four other empty hibernation pods were arranged around her. In front of her was a notebook left behind by the previous successor. It contained a brief introduction to the shelter and the wasteland. A particular page had been deliberately opened and weighed down, giving her a simple explanation of her current situation.
Ling Zhao picked up the notebook in front of her and began reading from the first chapter. After roughly skimming through it once, she looked at the page held open by the bookmark:
[Ever since the destruction of the world and the company’s establishment of the shelter, the shelter has been the company, and the company has been the shelter. The employees are also the residents of the shelter. The shelter provides employees with protection, while the survivors provide labor for the company.]
[Once, there were 50,000 surviving employees across these two levels, and the products we sold were popular across half of the wasteland.]
[Goods bearing Shelter No. 999 were the most sought-after hard currency in every survivor settlement. We once believed that we could restore order within our lifetimes… Therefore, the first person in charge provided free assistance to several survivor camps.]
When Ling Zhao reached this point, she had a faintly ominous feeling.
[The environment did not recover. More than half of our supplies were consumed, while the number of survivor camps requiring our subsidies continued to increase. Many of them refused or delayed payment to us on the grounds that they lacked resources.]
[Ten years later, the first person in charge shut down the shelter.]
[Fifty years later, the second person in charge reopened the shelter. He believed that with the shelter’s production capacity, it was impossible to support the ever-growing number of employees, even if birth control were implemented.]
[He decided to go to the surface. Thus, he took almost all of the employees with him, dismantled most of the production lines, and left.]
[Thirty-five years later, I became the third person in charge. I exhausted the last of the resources and could only keep the shelter going for another fifteen years.]
[I’m sorry to tell you that the shelter is basically an empty shell now. Its resources have been almost completely exhausted, and its energy is about to run out. Soon, all equipment will shut down and enter a state of permanent dormancy—until that second person in charge, who went on a long journey, has a change of heart and returns with energy to restart the shelter.]
Whether that would take a few days or several hundred years, who knew?
After finishing his record, the previous administrator, realizing that there was nothing he could do to turn things around and unwilling to face the brutal wasteland outside, had chosen to end his life.
The final note in the notebook read:
[To ensure there was enough energy to wake you, I shut down the energy supply to roughly the fourteen levels above us. If you wake up and there is still enough energy, remember to turn them back on… At the very least, turn on the defensive systems.
Sorryyy QWQ]
Ling Zhao: “……”
Ling Zhao didn’t see the previous administrator’s body nearby. Perhaps, not wanting to frighten someone who had just woken up, he had found somewhere else to die.
She first connected to the shelter’s system and checked its current resource reserves.
[Energy: 72 hours remaining.
Water: 2 L.
Food: 3 boxes of energy biscuits.
Seeds: 10 types of ordinary crops remaining. Storage conditions unknown.
Other supplies: Not inventoried for a long time. According to the data, approximately 10% remain.]
Seventy-two hours of energy…
It was practically a stay of execution.
—This meant that without an energy supply for her hibernation pod, even if she climbed back inside, she would eventually starve to death!
Of course, given the current state of this completely empty house, it was hard to say whether she would die more slowly by going back to sleep or by staying alive and waiting to die.
Ling Zhao took a deep breath.
Things had come to this point. She needed to calm down first.
First, see if her legs could move…
Okay. They couldn’t.
Then, was there some kind of mobility device?
Ling Zhao began calling for the shelter’s system.
A moment later, a small wheelchair rolled in through the doorway. Ling Zhao transferred herself into it.
The sign outside indicated that this was the eighteenth underground level. The entire shelter was shaped like an inverted pyramid, with B18 being the smallest level. It contained only one office and two residential suites.
One suite belonged to the administrator, while the other clearly belonged to the administrator’s deputy.
The suites should have been fully furnished with everything necessary. However, it was obvious that the people who had left before had looted them several times. Now, inside one of the rooms…
Ling Zhao found the deceased former administrator.
He hadn’t actually shot himself.
He had taken sleeping pills and died in bed.
Now, even the bed was unusable…
Ling Zhao didn’t care about sleeping in a room where someone had died. After all, where on this planet hadn’t someone died?
But she couldn’t accept sleeping on a bed someone had died in!
Fortunately, there were two suites. Although the other one was completely empty and could basically be described as having nothing but bare walls, Ling Zhao still decided to sleep there.
Strictly speaking, the thing she should do now was make use of her remaining mobility to gather all the weapons and remaining supplies, then take the shelter’s elevator to the surface.
But that was something a person with mobility and combat ability could do!
Even though she didn’t know much about the wasteland, she knew that someone like her would be nothing more than a fat sheep up there.
The kind of fat, tender sheep that had absolutely no ability to resist—and couldn’t even work.
Going up there would simply mean certain death.
Ling Zhao immediately scrapped the idea of going to the surface.
However, it was still necessary to search the entire shelter and see what supplies remained.
She arrived at the elevator and prepared to go upstairs to gather supplies and shut down some unnecessary equipment.
But then, the shelter’s alarm system suddenly began emitting an urgent, piercing beep.
Ling Zhao immediately returned to the surveillance monitors in the control room.
She saw several extremely terrifying things wandering outside her shelter.
After zooming in, she realized that they were a group of monsters—they were wandering near the shelter’s southern gate!
They were tall and massive, with blue-black skin. Their hairless bodies were covered with dried bloodstains. Ling Zhao watched as their jaws split apart toward both sides, revealing enormous, highly developed mouthparts as they let out hoarse, low growls.
They were clearly communicating with one another.
Between the filthy, dark bloodstains, she could see ribs and bone spurs protruding through their skin. Their murky eyes lacked the mindlessness normally found in zombies. Instead, there was a distinct glimmer of intelligence in them.
Combined with their clearly visible muscles, thick arms and thighs, and sharp hooked claws…
Ling Zhao took a deep breath.
She had just checked the shelter’s database against these characteristics and found their information.
Night Demons.
A type of zombie variant that did not appear during the day but became extremely active at night. They were known as the nightmares of the night.
They lived in groups and possessed intelligence. Sometimes, they would drive large hordes of zombies toward a target to serve as cover or cannon fodder.
If Night Demons appeared to be preparing to establish a camp somewhere, it was best to drive them away before they succeeded—or, better yet, stay far away from them.
Ling Zhao fell silent.
They tended to favor dark and gloomy places, such as deserted shopping malls, underground railway tunnels, and… abandoned shelters.
When she saw that the energy supply to the upper levels of the shelter had been shut down, she had already prepared herself for the possibility that something would move into the shelter.
But—why couldn’t it be zombies? Although she couldn’t beat zombies either, why couldn’t her beginner’s starting area at least be filled with zombies?
These were Night Demons!
They were killers that lone wanderers in the wasteland could encounter, against whom there was almost no chance of survival.
And she hadn’t seen just one. There was a whole group of them—a group of Night Demons preparing to turn the shelter into their new home!
It seemed that when the shelter’s energy had been shut down, it had lost the power needed to maintain its camouflage, allowing this group of Night Demons to discover it. Now, they wanted to move into the shelter and become its next owners.
Ling Zhao first restored the energy supply to the entrance above the shelter, using ultraviolet searchlights to temporarily drive the Night Demons away.
She had no idea when these monsters would return. In any case, driving them away for now was the right thing to do.
Maintaining the operation of all eighteen levels was already barely possible with the available energy. After powering the main entrance, she could only temporarily give up on the upper sections and activate Levels B18 through B15, along with the elevator shaft.
B18 was Ling Zhao’s office, residence, and the central control center. It had a basic intelligent control system.
B17 was the energy hub.
B16 was the shelter’s filtration and recycling system.
B15 housed the database and AI, but the second administrator had taken the AI away when he left. At present, only a basic housekeeping module remained.
After restoring the energy, she watched as the Night Demons retreated under the intense light and disappeared into the deep night. Dawn would arrive soon, but they certainly wouldn’t give up so easily.
Ling Zhao’s eyes flickered for a moment. She could see that one of them had stopped the Night Demons that had originally intended to leave, directing them toward another location.
Did that particular one know that the shelter would temporarily shut down its gates when its energy supply was insufficient?
Ling Zhao looked at the only surviving external camera and discovered that the creatures had slipped into the nearby forest. At the same time, the shelter’s energy level was slowly dropping.
Ling Zhao began calling out mentally for the system that every transmigrator was supposed to have.
System? Player system? Shelter system?
Any system would do. She wasn’t picky!
【The Universal Megacorporation Management System has detected a suitable—】
“Bind, bind! Bind me first!”
Ling Zhao heard something seemingly glitch for a moment. Then, it obediently changed its wording:
【Loading successful. Your initial building has been selected. You have obtained [Chairman’s Office] ×1. Please find a suitable location for your office within three minutes and activate your system.】
Ling Zhao patiently waited for a while.
After a moment, she asked, “Is it just you?”
The system actually choked this time.
【?】
She narrowed her eyes and smiled.
“Oh… I thought multi-system setups were more popular nowadays.”
【Unfortunately, yes. There is only me.】
Ling Zhao could hear a hint of gritted teeth in its voice.
【I think you’re overthinking this.】
“Then it looks like you have terrible people skills. No one even came with you when you went on a field mission.”
Seeing that the system no longer responded, Ling Zhao moved her wheelchair and headed straight for the only office on B18—the control center of the entire shelter.
【Chairman, please move to the office and sign the management contract.】
Ling Zhao moved into the office and discovered that, at some point, a stack of paper contracts had appeared on the desk.
The contracts were densely filled with details about her business projects and management categories. The section detailing her responsibilities was completely blank, with the words [Pending Match] written across it.
The very first line was printed in conspicuously large characters:
【Please choose your business projects carefully. Once selected, they cannot be changed.】
A gray-blue holographic screen appeared in front of Ling Zhao. Countless business categories rapidly filled the display, ranging from aerospace, weapons technology, energy, and mining to agriculture and tourism. There was even a small prompt underneath:
【The more projects you select, the higher the difficulty of the main storyline.】
Ling Zhao didn’t see an option for Select All.
But she had plenty of patience.
She checked off the projects one by one, repeatedly making sure she hadn’t missed a single one. Finally, she clicked Confirm.
She was already in this situation.
Could things really get any worse?
Before becoming partially paralyzed at seventeen, Ling Zhao had grown up surrounded by her family’s love and affection. She believed that she deserved everything she wanted.
After becoming paralyzed at seventeen, she made herself a bucket list for the day she could walk again. It was filled with all the things she wanted to do once she could walk.
She had never believed that she had lost the world.
—She believed the world was waiting for her.
Over the past ten years, her greed had only grown.
Even after changing worlds, it had increased rather than diminished.
【You have selected the following business projects: ALL. Your greed is truly astonishing. In consideration of your greed, we are balancing your selection and matching your management objectives. Difficulty: Ultimate Difficulty.】
【Objective successfully matched: Please bring this impending apocalypse to an end, usher in an entirely new world, and then transform your company into a universal megacorporation spanning the cosmos!】
The previously blank sections filled with new text.
【You cannot gain experience through any activities you perform yourself, including mining, gathering, manufacturing, research, combat… In contrast, you can gain double experience through trading activities and employee activities.】
【This is your final chance to regret your decision. Once you sign the company’s name and your own signature, you can only continue down this path. There will be no turning back.】
Ling Zhao didn’t hesitate in the slightest.
After becoming paralyzed, she hadn’t wallowed in self-pity. Instead, she had actively pursued treatment using the foundation her parents had left for her. During those ten years of treatment, she had read countless books and written down countless wishes.
She still wanted to see this world, even if it meant seeing a different world.
—If this world was dark, dangerous, hopeless, and decaying, then not only would a disabled person be unable to fulfill this wish; even a perfectly healthy person would struggle to do so…
—Since I cannot go to this world, then let this world come to me.
Ling Zhao wrote two words in the company name field:
Noah.
Noah Corporation. The Noah of Noah’s Ark.
As long as it’s a ship, its voyage will eventually reach its destination.
【Your three-day newbie benefits have been issued. The Universal Megacorporation Management System is currently renovating your shelter. The system for Shelter B15 has now been taken over and is being optimized…】
【Universal Protective Shield: 3 days.
Water Card Allowance: 30 points.
Electricity Card Allowance: 30 points.
(Water and electricity subsidy allowances will not be replenished once depleted.)
Other: 300 Management Points, Employee Recruitment Tickets ×10, Business Project Selection Opportunity ×1, 5 KG Small Teleportation Device ×1.】
【Please recruit at least one employee, determine your first business project, and reach a balance between income and expenditure as soon as possible.】
【Once the newbie protection period ends, you will be charged the full operating costs. If your balance is insufficient, facilities will be deactivated until all outstanding late fees have been paid within the deadline. In the worst-case scenario, if your expenses exceed your income for more than three months, your assets will be forcibly seized and auctioned.】
【Newbie Period Special Missions:
Author’s Note:
The novel begins!
I originally planned to stockpile chapters, but unfortunately, I failed. I’m still racing against death every single day to get chapters out.
The female protagonist will stand up later. It’s just paralysis, after all. A small matter.
You can post your spoiler guesses in the comments, but please don’t post them in the paragraph comments. Thank you very much.