4 Survivors (I)

The most defining attribute of the Apocalypse Overlord game was the many kinds of buildings one could build. Some of these buildings had no apparent use whatsoever. Even by the time of the apocalypse, Tang Yu had not yet constructed the entirety of the available buildings.

 Tang Yu opened the building menu. The types included core buildings, resource buildings, military buildings, defense buildings, and special buildings. These buildings all required Origin Crystals to construct, along with their corresponding resources, such as wood or stone.

 Now that he thought about it, he had gotten off rather easy with the building of the Overlord Castle. After all, he hadn't needed to produce a large pile of materials. If that had really been necessary, Tang Yu would probably be a cold corpse by now.

 The only building in his domain was the lone Overlord Castle. No other building had been constructed.

 Tang Yu opened up the core building menu. Core buildings were the most important buildings, and there was no way to have more than one of them. The buildings in other categories didn't have a limit, but this wasn't the case for core buildings. No matter how high the level of the domain was or how great its boundaries, there could only ever be one of each core building. 

 There were four kinds of core buildings: the tavern, the market, the workshop, and the research lab.

 At the tavern, one was able to recruit followers. Construction Cost: 200 units of Origin Crystal, 100 units of Wood.

 At the market, one could buy resources, blueprints, and rare tools. Construction Cost: 300 units of Origin Crystal, 100 units of Wood.

 At the workshop, one could produce equipment and tools. Construction Cost: 500 units of Origin Crystal, 100 units of Wood, 100 units of Iron.

 And in the research lab, one could modify and even develop one's own blueprints. Construction Cost: 1000 units of Origin Crystal, 100 units of Wood, 100 units of Stone, 100 units of Iron.

 While the research lab was a core building, as a prerequisite, it required that the domain be at Level 2, which meant that the castle needed to be upgraded a level. Of course, when Tang Yu saw the price, he immediately lost his desire to construct anything.

 Although the other resource costs were rather cheap, he only had 100 units of Origin Crystal on hand, not even enough to build the cheapest building.

 This wasn't very friendly to him. Tang Yu felt a great sense of urgency. The shelter had just suffered from the attack of a demon horde, proving that though this place was located far away from an abyssal fissure, it still couldn't be considered safe. There was no telling when the next demon flood would come. Currently, he didn't even have a defense line. No matter how strong Number One and Number Two were, Tang Yu still felt in danger.

 Developing his domain was an urgent task!

 The sky was gloomy and overcast, as if it had been covered in a layer of silver-white gauze. Suddenly, a marble-white smear of light appeared on the horizon, illuminating half the sky. An orange-red glow spread across the world, and as he looked around, all he could see was devastation and ruin.

 …This was just too terrible!

 As he walked out, Tang Yu didn't dare to call himself an Overlord.

 "Let's set a minor objective first. I should at least develop my domain into a small town first."

 After a night of good sleep, Tang Yu was at peak energy and strength.

 He went off with Number One to clear the area of demonized beasts.

 In the space of a single night, several more demonized beasts had appeared in his domain, all wandering over from the surrounding region. When waking up this morning, Tang Yu had even discovered the body of a demonized beast outside the gate.

 The demonized beasts in the domain were very easy to deal with. Regardless of size or how skilled they were in concealment, they couldn't hide from the system's map. Number One swiftly took care of them.

 Tang Yu had found a scenic tour map. This place had originally been a vacation villa, and even after it had been made into a shelter, it had kept its basic form. Tang Yu turned his gaze toward the central square of the scenic area. There was a hotel here, and before the apocalypse, it had been a rather good hotel. 

 Before the apocalypse, this hotel had a freezer. When the shelter was built, the hotel became the food storage center for it. Even though Tang Yu had never gone into this hotel before, when he had just arrived at the shelter, he had heard many people talk about it. The greatest desire of those people, who also belonged to the lowest class of survivors, was to go in and see if the freezer was as the legends said, piled high with mountains of food.

 Tang Yu didn't believe it, but he was sure that the hotel had food!

 Tang Yu made this hotel one of his search areas so that he could stockpile more food. Even if there were no more survivors in the shelter to fight with him over it, he couldn't just leave it be. What if it were destroyed by demonized beasts?

 Much of the food he had found before this had been spoiled by the demonized beasts, the thought of which made Tang Yu's heart ache.

 …

 At this time, in the hotel's underground freezer…

 Several survivors who had escaped the demon flood were here, their faces stricken with fear.

 The one standing at the front was holding a gun in each hand and firing away, but he had a bitter expression on his face.

 His target was a demonized beast, scarlet red all over, two meters long and standing on six feet. It had a corpse in its mouth that it was slowly gnawing away at.

 When the bullets struck the red demonized beast's fur, they actually bounced off, unable to wound the demonized beast in the slightest. In fact, the scarlet red demonized beast was still eating and completely ignoring this group of survivors.

 This sight pushed Chen Haiping to the edge of despair.

 The survivors behind him were shivering, their faces paling. Just now, one of them had broken under the pressure and made a break for it. This survivor had been bitten in half and was now being slowly gnawed on by that demonized beast, so the others didn't dare to move.

 Chen Haiping was in a somewhat better state. After all, he was an Awakened and had fought demonized beasts before. He was able to keep his cool, but no matter how much he thought, he couldn't see any way out of this situation.

 This scarlet demonized beast was simply too frightening. A pistol's bullets had relatively low killing power, yet he had never seen something like this, where the bullets simply bounced off.

 The demonized beast didn't move, and Chen Haiping did not dare to strike first. Whether it was the burst of speed the demonized beast had displayed when lunging at the survivor or the brute strength it had used to tear open the doors to the freezer, everything Chen Haiping had seen so far made him well aware that this demonized beast was far stronger than he was. Even the strongest Awakened of the shelter probably wasn't a match for this demonized beast.

 He didn't move, other than tossing away his emptied handguns for a military machete, its blade sharp and cold. Even though he knew that he was no match, Chen Haiping didn't want to just wait to die. Even if he died, he wanted to take a piece of his enemy with him!

 The scarlet demonized beast swallowed the meat in its mouth, and its eyes shone with a bloodthirsty light.

 Chen Haiping clenched his teeth and raised the machete.

 Suddenly, boom!

 A fierce vibration came from overhead, causing dust to shower down. Chen Haiping was shocked, but a moment later, he saw the scarlet demonized beast turn around and run out of the freezer in a red streak.

 "It… it left?"

 They didn't understand what was going on, but they all felt as if they had survived a disaster. Some of the survivors' legs wobbled, and they dropped to their knees.