Survival Bunker System Developer

Bunker Research

Helen still hasn’t contacted him and Caleb was starting to wonder how she was going to react to his amazing bunker building skills. So far, the reward that the system gave him last night worked very well. Caleb was able to receive the reward from the inbox and customise it with functions that he unlocked.

The self-stocking function was brilliant even though Caleb had to go out and make his run around a few places in town and maybe further out to keep it going. The system’s technology impressed Caleb once more with how efficient it was. Not even Alexa or Siri could compare to it.

With plenty of metal from stealing so many cars in Brownsville, Caleb was able to afford the luxuries of converting his entire studio apartment into a special bunker. Initially, he wanted to save the special bunker reward for Helen’s lab but after reading the description, he decided against it. The special reward only allowed for Caleb to create a bunker that freezes time and continuously restocks the items within it. However, it also only allowed Caleb as the only resident of the special bunker. Caleb did submit a request to the system to allow Jeremy to live in his special bunker and allow visitors to visit him. The request was accepted for Jeremy and the visitation hours were limited to a maximum of seventy-two hours at a time with a twenty-four-hour cooldown period. The name of that special bunker in the reward was slightly odd but that would explain why the system was so generous.

Apart from the other special bunker requests that Caleb submitted, this special bunker was decided by the system. To protect the one chosen by God, the system was practically forcing Caleb to use this special bunker so that he doesn’t spend too much time outside with the ghouls and also gave Caleb space and resources that he needed to work on improving the system and levelling it.

The water and electricity supply for Caleb’s special Research Workshop Bunker was independent and didn’t run on the city’s grid. No other information was given but Caleb had a feeling the process of keeping his water and electricity running was the same kind of concept with how the system stocks the food continuously. The one thing that bothered Caleb was how the system said that everything in the bunker was frozen in time. The time flow in the Research Workshop Bunker did not follow the outside flow even though Caleb was still able to receive information about the world outside of the bunker in real-time.

The highlight of this special bunker that sealed the deal for Caleb was the ability to create automated helpers to assist him with various tasks. Naturally, he can only apply for the mass manufacturing feature when the system levelled up but for now, he was very happy to start working on his plan to automate various jobs.

Caleb applied the special bunker reward to his apartment that afternoon after ensuring that everything was working the way it should. The changes were not very noticeable at first because everything looked the same. Nothing was out of place and Jeremy didn’t react to the bunker. The taps still ran as per usual and the electricity was stable. Even the internet function was working and Caleb wondered what was different.

He looked out of his window and noticed that he could still see the same view from his apartment and raised a brow. The one sure-fire way to determine if his apartment was now a bunker was to empty the shelves. Caleb remembered that he stocked frozen pizzas and beer in the fridge. If the apartment truly was self- stocking, Caleb should be able to see the pizza replace itself after he consumes it. Without hesitation, the system developer stuck his frozen meal into the oven.

While waiting for lunch to be ready, Caleb looked through the inventory list that appeared with the Research Workshop Bunker. Caleb was able to customise categories for items he wanted immediately restocked once consumed or used and items that the system should give him a notification prompt if he wanted to restock them. There was also a new list that was currently empty but Caleb liked its function. For items that were not currently in his apartment that he wanted to bring in and add to the list in his inventory, they would appear in the pending list. Caleb quickly added cat food, toilet paper, pizza, beer, cigarettes and cola into the list of items that he wanted the system to automatically replenish when the inventory becomes zero. For everything else, Caleb just threw it to the list of items that the system should inform him about when the inventory is depleted.

Now that he settled the settings, Caleb opened his fridge to check if the pizza was replaced. Fascinated that it was replaced, Caleb decided to install a small camera in his fridge just to watch the live-action and magic of restocking. It was too magical and Caleb needed to know what kind of technology permitted such an illogical luxury.

With time frozen on the inside of this special bunker, Caleb wondered if that meant he was immortal for as long as he remained in the bunker. The good thing about the time freezing aspect was how Caleb no longer had to worry too much about the day his beloved cat had to die. In his previous life, Caleb killed Jeremy. He did it because he didn’t want his cat to be eaten alive in his last days. Jeremy was old but loyal. If he saw Caleb getting eaten by ghouls, the fierce cat would fight till his very last breath for his owner and Caleb didn’t want his cat to suffer. Now that he had a second chance, Caleb wasn’t afraid of anything else. He just wanted to spend as much time as he could with Jeremy living the usual boring lie that he had before after the apocalypse was over.

“Hey buddy, you’ve got a system as your sugar mommy now. How do you feel about it? Premium tuna every freaking day and you won’t even grow any older than you are now,” Caleb grinned and opened a can of premium tuna for his friend just as the oven dinged.

Jeremy didn’t understand what Caleb said but he was more than happy to have premium tuna when he could. Caleb watched Jeremy eat with satisfaction. In order to continue receiving this kind of luxury, Caleb knew that the system expected him to work hard.

The system didn’t give him the special bunker for free. For everything too good to be true, there usually was a catch. Caleb checked out the inbox when he received a new message from the system. This time, it was a task list similar to the quest.

[Congratulations on your first special bunker! You’re now familiarised with the system, it is time to put it to practical use. Complete the three tasks below to level up the system and unlock the function to create an automated assistant.

Task 1: Use the Building Tool to create more Upgrade Features. Remember to gather the required resources to unlock and build them in your future bunkers. You can check the Resource Panel for the types of materials required and your current inventory.

Task 2: The Bunker Access Feature has been unlocked as a passive bunker characteristic under the Upgrade Panel. Further upgrades to the feature are required to increase your maximum bunker capacity. Please kill 100 ghouls to increase your current basic bunker’s capacity to 2. You can check your progress using the new Task Tab.

Task 3: Kindly work hard and level your system to Level 2 by completing the first two tasks.

The first two tasks didn’t have rewards for Caleb and they did not have a deadline. Caleb was slightly relieved that he wasn’t forced to complete it recklessly. However, the third task interested him the most. Under the task completion reward, he could see the new feature called “Automation” that was currently locked at Level 1. This was the reward he would get upon successful completion of the task. However, there was a bonus reward that Caleb was looking forward to getting if he could complete the first two tasks within a week. Caleb wanted the reward called Area Reservation.

Area Reservation was something akin to marking out an area for easy access to convert it into a bunker once Caleb had his resources. Area Reservation did not take any resources. However, it did require Caleb to visit the site in person and mark out the area for the system to register. The system developer was thrilled at that function. For now, he had a total of four important places in mind to visit after he got the Area Reservation ability. For now, he would focus on the first two tasks at hand.

The Build Tool had a small checklist of items that the system wanted Caleb to find and sacrifice for it to analyse. These items were useful for the future bunker plans that Caleb proposed earlier. Things like the gardening hose, sprinklers, solar cells and UV Light steriliser were on that list. Caleb had a feeling he knew where this was going. Thankfully, he was an sss Prime member and all those things could easily be delivered in less than a week without much fuss. All he had to do was spend some money and offer it to the system. Was this the reason why so many gamers paid money to level up? Caleb finally understood the appeal of paying to win.

The online shopping took less than three hours and when Caleb it was starting to become evening by the time he was done with it. This would be the best time to start his hunting for a hundred ghouls as well as collect more resources. As of now, Caleb had many different resource types in his Resource Panel. His car theft did contribute a little to rubber and other miscellaneous resources like fabric and leather although the amount was negligible.

If the resources that the system wanted him to unlock in the build tool needed to be mass-manufactured, Caleb made a logical guess of the kings of resources he should be collecting. While metal was important, it wasn’t the most crucial thing to get right now. He had plenty of places that he could get his metals from at a later stage. Tonight, he only needed to go to the repair docks and sacrifice the cruise ship that was scheduled for maintenance. That ship alone would be able to tie Caleb through the toughest times of the apocalypse. He still had a month or so to prepare and if it should get worse, the Statue of Liberty was always a good piece of recyclable metal.

Caleb thought about it. He wasn’t able to confirm if there were ghouls among humans yet but he was sure that most of the rat population were ghouls by now and some of the birds as well. Hence, the easiest way to kill a hundred ghouls would be to target birds and rats. Ghouls would be attracted to anything that is living. Caleb devised a strategy. Killing the ghouls in person was foolish and suicidal. He knew his physical abilities better than anyone else and as a homebody who didn’t even go to the gym, he wasn’t the fittest person. Instead, Caleb prided his brains over his muscles so he would kill them indirectly for a test. If the system accepted indirect causes of deaths, Caleb was in for a huge haul by the end of the week.

Caleb drove over to the pet store and bought some hamsters. They were cute but more importantly, they were easy to attract the attention of ghouls. The man also requested for many strong cages from the pet store owner, one cage for each of the ten hamsters he bought.

Once he had his purchase, Caleb left the store to head home. He still had to design his weapon of choice to verify if the animal ghoul kills counted as progress in the system. If it did, Caleb was going to buy hundreds of rat traps and place them all over the sewers and water pipeline tunnels. At the same time, Caleb was curious if the system would accept offered ghoul bodies and count them towards some kind of resources. Even if it didn’t register dead ghoul bodies as resources, Caleb would still gladly do the same if the system was able to accept it. Any dead ghoul bodies lying around could be dangerous. The more ghoul bodies lying around, the higher the risk of ghouls evolving into the intelligent ghoul. Caleb wanted to delay that as much as possible.

The drive back home wasn’t a happy one. The ten metal cages rattled noisily in his backseat and Caleb wondered what sort of weapons he could fashion out of the things he had in his apartment. Killing ghouls was not the same as killing rats. The one sure-fire way to kill ghouls according to the memories of his previous life was to smash their heads in or blow their brains up. Blunt objects worked well and simple traps like tripwires or face tapes were brilliant at causing ghouls to stumble in the middle of their chase to give Caleb the chance to bash their heads in using a blunt object or a pole with a sharpened end.

After he reached home, Caleb quickly set the ten hamsters down and saw that they were quickly added to his system’s list of new items. He left it at that and chose to scout for his trusty screwdrivers. In his previous life, the screwdriver he had was welded onto a metal pole that he sawed off from his bookshelf. His homemade weapon was light but durable. It gave him the perfect reach he needed to combat ghouls from a distance and was also brilliant for scuffles.

Caleb worked quickly and sawed the pole off from his bookshelf. The system immediately prompted if Caleb wanted to spend some resources to fix the damaged bookshelf and Caleb agreed. He also removed a screwdriver from his toolbox and got the system to replace it. Then he repeated the process a few times to get nine more of the same screwdriver. After that, he filed the screwdriver tips until they were lethally sharp. Then, he removed the plastic handle with a saw and welded the two pieces of metal to each other, repeating the process nine times so that the sharp tips made a circle around the metal pole.

Once he was done, Caleb took a look at his masterpiece and named it the Ghoul Stabber. The system copied that as a new item and added it to Caleb’s inventory. Not wanting to go through the trouble of making it all over again, Caleb saved the item and tasked the system to prompt him if the item went missing. He definitely wanted to replace it and if possible, distribute it when the apocalypse started.

Now that he had his weapon, it was time to test it.