Global Fog Survival

Cough, cough, cough, Russell clutched his chest, wiping the blood from his mouth. Guided by his extraordinary intuition, he said, “I’m fine. One hundred parchment scrolls showing a third of the area’s content is really a good deal. Oh, by the way, your map seems to lack personal positioning. It only shows territory coordinates, no real-time personal coordinates, not to mention any danger markers.”

Colin and his team looked at him and silently decided to keep any complaints about the system to themselves. Whether it was a coincidence or not, they didn’t want the system to suddenly “manifest” again.

The main reason they weren’t sure if it was the system “manifesting” was that just spitting blood seemed too “gentle.” At that moment, Colin saw some messages from the survivors guarding their base.

“Boss, what’s going on? We’ve noticed our parchment scrolls are lagging, responding slowly.”

“We compared with some scrolls from neighboring ‘alliances,’ and theirs aren’t lagging at all. It seems only ours are.”

“I don’t know how to describe it. It’s like when someone used to secretly download movies, slowing down the whole network.”

“Boss, do you know what’s going on?”

Colin’s expression turned strange as he began to suspect the reason: his map.

Viewing the map consumed so much “bandwidth”? He turned off the map, and soon received messages from various parts of the team.

“So slow. My last message was sent ten minutes ago and it just got through now.”

“But it seems to be back to normal now. Just now, switching pages took tens of seconds.”

“We’ve identified the source of the problem.”

“Five survivors who recently joined us had scrolls with ‘viruses,’ which infected our group’s scrolls.”

“This is my fault. I underestimated it. I didn’t expect scrolls to carry ‘viruses’ and wasn’t prepared for it.”

Reading these messages, Colin’s expression became even stranger. He knew it was a misunderstanding and quickly replied:

“Release those people; it’s not their fault.”

“Not their fault? What happened?” came the surprised response.

Colin explained about the map function.

Thus, the five bewildered survivors were released from the temporary holding cells. They were full of questions, wondering what had happened.

“Unfortunately, it seems only I can open the map, which is a bit inconvenient.”

Colin shook his head. The system only had a text function and couldn’t send images, so he couldn’t transmit the map back.

After some thought, Colin decided to engrave the map onto something and send it as a physical object.

However, everyone would have to endure some “network lag” for a while.

“Night is approaching fast. I need to finish engraving the map before dark to resolve this issue.”

If he started engraving at night and something happened, even a delay of a few seconds could make things very passive. The closer it got to the countdown, the more mutations in the gray fog appeared, and no one knew what might happen next. Therefore, ensuring smooth communication at night was crucial.

“First, let’s complete the quest at hand.”

Colin handed over the recently completed “Cleanse the Fallen Nobility” quest, acquiring another “Corrupted Eyeball.”

Then he activated the map function and assigned the engraving task to Russell’s female assassin subordinate.

Stealthily exploring and drawing maps was an assassin’s basic skill, and no one else could do it as meticulously as she could.

Afterward, Colin used a hint to check the unknown purpose of the eyeball.

【You notice it’s laughing.】

Useless information.

Colin took out another eyeball, bringing the two soft, nauseating eyeballs together to see if anything would happen.

【You notice it keeps laughing, louder now.】

“More useless hints.”

Without surprise, Colin stored the eyeballs in his bag, thinking they might be useful later. At worst, they could be used as fertilizer.

About half an hour later, the map was engraved and handed to the waiting group outside.

Although they had been drawing maps themselves, this one was far more detailed.

“Be careful when using the map tomorrow. Double-check to avoid dangerous areas,” Colin cautioned.

Maps from the “previous batch” of survivors often had dangerous areas marked as “safe,” leading to their demise. Their current map, while lacking flashy features, still required caution.

At that moment, an invisible pressure enveloped them. Colin knew night had fallen.

The nearby survivors all opened their scrolls, constantly refreshing the world channel to check for unexpected events. Not just his group, but many “idle personnel” in the third-level territory also joined the “monitoring operation.”

However, tonight seemed especially peaceful.

“Almost half an hour now. Why is it so quiet tonight?” Colin felt a vague unease. There were no events in the chat channel; everything was “quiet.”

After answering some questions from “special talents,” he continued to wait for updates from the territory. But there were only occasional check-ins, indicating that nothing had happened tonight.

“Forget it, let’s assign the monitoring duty to someone else. The rest should get some rest.”

Feeling tired after a while, Colin knew their main goal was the light under the mountains, not this place. “We’ll rest for six hours tonight and then continue the journey. Actually, we need to wait until tomorrow. We can’t move the ‘Level 5 Underground Fortress’ without more money.”

With their current physical condition, they needed minimal sleep to stay energetic for a day. But they needed to sell potatoes tomorrow to earn more money to move the Level 5 Underground Fortress.

“Let’s transfer the territory’s control now.”

Colin rubbed his forehead and looked at Russell, who sat nearby. Transferring a level 5 territory required going to the “core fortress” at the bottom.

Thus, he hadn’t transferred the territory earlier.

But now it was time to take this from the “previous generation” and put it in his own pocket.

Only then could he fully grasp all the information about the “Level 5 Underground Fortress” and better utilize everything here.