Chapter 3: Sea Region 76771
A whole plethora of miscellaneous safety measures.
After Alan finished reading, his mind went totally blank.
He took quite a bit of time to fully absorb and grasp all of the prompts.
Alan closed his eyes and sat back into the chair before the central control display and reviewed the info he obtained.
Based on the information obtained so far, this deep-sea survival game had extremely high survival difficulty! This was far from comparable to any apocalyptical or wilderness survival game. Threats like lack of food, lack of oxygen, high sea pressure and sea monsters are a constant danger to a player's life. Collecting resources is fraught with even more risk! The sonar detectors can only scan for anomalies within a certain range of the submarine and players cannot know what these anomalies are. If it's resources, it's fine but if they're monstrous sea creatures, then the players could be in instant death. It was akin to buying and opening one of thoseblind boxes: luck determined whether a player survives or not. In this totally pitch-black deep sea, players are only given the limited sight range of about twenty to thirty meters from the submarine's spotlights and it's impossible for players to discover resources on the seabed with the naked eye. This was where the sonar detectors came into play.However, Alan who was once part of the army knew that instructions will never provide a player with an option for a certain death setup – okay, maybe the 'crazy ones' do; he chuckled – so he was more cautious when playing the game and didn't take it lightly. And just then, the countdown displayed at the very end of the system prompts gave him a peculiar sense of urgency. Even though Alan didn't know what would happen when the so-called ice layers would collapse, he knew for sure that it's definitely going to be a catastrophic event, possibly fatal to himself as the very first survival goal was to reach the first Outpost Gathering Point before the ice layers collapse. The seven-day countdown must surely be some sort of 'novice protection' period. After realizing all this, Alan took a deep breath. It was never his style to just sit around waiting for death. As he had transmigrated into a survival game, he would do his best regardless of how difficult it was! After all, it was a game so it was expected that there were all sorts of miscellaneous settings in place. Alan had to take his time to fully understand these functions and settings before heading out to face the perilous deep-sea survival game since he had just started playing and survival wasn't that pressing right now. Fully understanding the functions and settings of the game would surely provide a lot of convenience in the later stages of the game. And as Alan thought about this, the central control display immediately changed. The system prompts disappeared one by one and were replaced by the submarine data and functions.
[Challenger deep submarine (Exploration-Type reclamation vessel)]
[Specifications: 10*10*8 meters]
[Oxygen Content: Normal]
[ Hull Damage: 0%; Hull Hardness: Low] [Ship-borne Weapons: None]
[ Hull Structure: Crude]
[ Pressure Resistance: Low (can only navigate at water depths not below 2500m from sea level)]
[Overall rating: H]
(System Prompt: Please do not navigate at any water depths below what the submarine can withstand. In a deep-sea survival environment with numerous hazardous deep sea monster and a complex underwater cave system, players should prioritize survival and finding the first Outpost Gathering Point instead of exploration.)
The writing for the submarine data was normal bold font that appeared on the central control display while the system prompt at the bottom was of a dim gold color and had a slightly distorted appearance. In particular, the prompt text appeared out of nowhere before Alan, instead of on the submarine data as part of the data entry. However, Alan who had just started playing this game didn't find anything unusual, simply treating it as part of the game. After reading the information about the Challenger Deep submarine, Alan could only give a slight twinge of his lips. Although Alan didn't know about the rankings of the other players' submarines, it was an obvious fact that the H rating of the Challenger Deep submarine was extremely low based on a typical grading system. He didn't even have any weapons equipped on his ship at the moment and in face of some ferocious deep-sea monster, he wouldn't even be able to resist. "A reclamation vessel really is a reclamation vessel. Trying to pilot such junk for thousand of meters in the deep sea is akin to feeding yourself to the sea monsters!" Grumbling, Alan let out a sigh. But since he was already in the game, Alan decided that he would play as best as he could. Regardless of whether it was an apocalypse or a survival game, Alan was optimistic. After all, it was a game, and everyone who transmgrated probably had the same starting setup; there shouldn't be that much of a difference, otherwise the survival game wouldn't have much meaning. With Alan moving his gaze off the submarine data page, the dim golden system prompt that had been appearing at the bottom disappeared and Alan's gaze fell onto the various other lists on the central control screen. At a glance, Alan saw some familiar names:
[Communication Channel], [Trading Market], [Leaderboard]... While Alan's gaze lingered on the list, a dim golden system prompt that described each function suddenly appeared at the bottom of the respective list as Alan's eyes swept over each of them.
[Communication Channel]
(Hint Prompt: Players can communicate in the Communication Channel. Currently, only the regional channel is available, World Channel will only be open once 80% of the player have successfully traversed the Shallow Zone.)
[ Trading Market]
(Hint Prompt: Players can buy and sell resources and items using the Trading Market. No commission fees will be charged if players are efficient in using it to survive the reclamation period.)
... Whenever Alan shifted his attention towards a certain list, a dim golden system prompt of that particular list appeared at the bottom, seemingly explaining each function to Alan. Alan still didn't find anything out of the ordinary about the function of the system prompts. After all, who wouldn't be so bizarre in this world? If a person could transmgrate into an alternate universe, why wouldn't a person be given golden system prompts? After glancing over the various lists briefly, Alan found that they were more or less the same as those on standard games, only that the Communication Channel seemed to be blinking. The other lists were totally blank indicating that there wasn't any action from any players yet. "It hasn't been long since they woken up and people are already actively talking in the Communication Channel?" After some contemplation, Alan's gaze fixed onto the Communication Channel and driven by curiosity, he tapped the screen lightly with his finger. A chilly sensation went down his spine and the list expanded, a bold green sentence appearing before him,
[Shallow Zone: Shipping Lane 76771 Communication Channel]
Alan was stunned. He immediately understood this was a regional channel for the Shipping Lane he was in.
At the top left hand corner of the screen was a meter showing 100000/100000 which clearly indicates the number of players online in the zone.
And in the top right hand corner of the Communication Channel there was another display showing the number of attempts allowed per day which was now at 5/5. Alan knew immediately that chatting in the regional channel was limited, possibly to prevent malicious spam. And just at this moment, as the Communication Channel expanded, voice and text messages came flooding in and Alan's screen scrolled at breakneck speeds like a waterfall. Number of unread messages displayed at the top left hand corner immediately went to 9999+. [Bigus: Can someone please tell me wtf is going on?! Why am I inexplicably in a submarine?!]
[ Han-chan: Wuwuwu… it's so cold and scary here. I want to go home, I want mom… ]
[ET: 2000m deep in the sea! We must have been kidnapped by aliens! Does anyone know what's going on?! ]
[Drizzle: Haha… Mass transmigration! Finally, a chance to participate in a transmigration event! Ocean Planet Abyss, here I come! ]
[Big Cain: I am totally a landlubber. I can't even swim. I can't even pilot a submarine! How are players supposed to play this game?!]
[ Jack: It's The Grand Line of the Ocean Planet! The man who will become the Pirate King is here! ]
[Captain: My submarine is H rated?! What ratings do you guys have? ]
[Great Eagle: On behalf of the commander of the eagle Navy, I formally invite all loyal rising sun compatriots to join ourfleet and restore rising sun to its former glory on Ocean Planet Abyss! Current location: 9278630.56, -2102.3, 8795433. Nearest compatriots please reach us as soon as possible! ]
The chat messages on the Shipping Lane Communication Channel were extremely messy and filled with various lively conversations.
This small Communication Channel contained players from all walks of life, there seemed to be official eagle military personnel as well. Showing the myriad aspects of humanity's nature. Alan just skimmed the chat logs and found that they weren't particularly useful.
Everyone was still in a state of panic and hadn't ventured out of their respective submarines yet. One thing for sure was that all the players had started with the same setup: trapped inside a submarine, just as Alan thought; the submarines also have a H rating that Alan's submarine has too. The only noteworthy piece of information was the coordinates stated by "great eagle" and though Alan found it somewhat useful, he thought it would be too risky for any players to seek out and team up at this moment, given their current panic.
Alan quickly prepared to close the Communication Channel. Instead of wasting his precious recovery time idling in a chat room, Alan decided that it was more important to familiarize himself with the submarine. He had roughly gone through all the functions on the central control panel, but he had not familiarize himself with the rest of the facilities on the ship. Just as Alan prepared to close the chat window, a few messages appeared below the rest of the messages and caught Alan's attention: [Albatross: How the heck can one play the game without instructions and descriptions?]
[ Calm: That's right, how do you use the Trading System?]
[ Bujidao: How? I still don't know what to do at all].
Seeing the messages, Alan suddenly had a sinking feeling. The golden system prompts he was looking at actually described all of these functions, so why were these people wasting valuable chatting attempts with the most basic of questions? "What is happening? Is it possible that everyone else can't see the golden system prompts?"