Survival Bunker System Developer

Power Levelling

Caleb waited. After typing out a list of bugs he found with the system that needed immediate attention, he didn’t have much to do now. With nothing much, Caleb decided to keep a short diary to record down what he learnt about the system and the things that he could help it improve on.

While the bunker was convenient to create, there were many restrictions as a user of the bunker. Firstly, there was a delay between authentication and access. That delay could easily cost a person’s life if they were in a hurry to get away from a ghoul. Caleb wasn’t sure if that notification prompt applied only for him but he wants to have a default setting. Also, the users of every bunker must be recorded before they are allowed access. Caleb didn’t like that idea. What if there were other survivors in the area when a ghoul suddenly attacked? They couldn’t possibly run back to their assigned bunkers on time.

On the other hand, automatically bringing a person back to their allocated bunker’s location sounded too much like a cheating ability. Of course, he would try to respect the system’s rules as much as possible so that the people living in his bunkers would be complacent and feel as if they were entitled to the rights there. The last thing Caleb wanted was for troublemaking humans making life miserable for everyone else when he was working his butt off.

The basic bunker was very flawed and Caleb needed the basic bunker to be more than just a safe space to exist. It was currently too small to accommodate any real facilities but Caleb checked his upgrade panel and was satisfied that the cost of unlocking all those features was valid forever once he unlocked them. It wasn’t easy but it was possible.

The one feature that was missing was the ability to retain objects in the original room that he wanted to convert into a bunker. Caleb included that in his improvement suggestions for the system when he submitted the list of bugs he found. Also, he didn’t like the current resource collection methods. Caleb was alright with having to physically touch objects he wanted to sacrifice for the system for now but having to continuously click on a button that nobody else could see would make him stand out like a sore thumb. Not to mention, it was super inconvenient to only have one hand to work. Caleb knew he could be faster if he had both hands. At the same time, he preferred to be able to have one hand free so that he could also hold a weapon during the apocalypse to protect himself in case of a ghoul attack on his resource raids.

Caleb thought that a voice activation command would be great. He could customise the command to a commonly used word and sacrifice resources to the system discreetly if he had to. The system developer grinned. He had to be a genius for thinking of that.

For now, Caleb was satisfied with the normal basic bunkers but he wondered if the system was able to create special bunkers. For instance, if he wished to convert the power plant into a bunker but retain its facilities and also not apply the common upgrades to it automatically he needed a different category for those kinds of bunkers. Customising every bunker would be impossible. Caleb didn’t have that much time or energy to do it for every bunker. Having a default bunker template for creation would be nice and for special bunkers, Caleb would work on them individually.

Going according to his plans, Caleb needed a few types of special bunkers. One for the hospital, one for the power plant, one for Dr Rockmiller’s lab, one for Target and the last for the water purification plant that he hasn’t decided. Caleb also wondered if he was able to secure ‘safe’ areas similar to the bunkers but didn’t allow any amenities, simply just a ghoul barrier that any non-ghoul can pass through freely. This function would be very useful for recovering the city at a later stage. Of course, knowing the system, there would be a limit to such a convenient function. The resources on Earth weren’t unlimited after all.

After penning all his thoughts down about the system, Caleb sighed. The client had been texting Caleb to find out his progress on their projects even though Caleb was busy with apocalypse preparations. He couldn’t simply tell them there wasn’t a point in doing their assignments since they were most likely going to die or not be able to use the system he designed for them in a month from now. They might throw him to the mental institute if he started talking about ghouls. Yet, being the pushover that he was sometimes, Caleb resigned to doing his actual work even though he was slightly reluctant since the client wouldn’t be able to pay him for it by the time he was done with his job. Even if they somehow found a way to transfer money, it would be meaningless when the city was under lockdown.

The system developer worked mindlessly. He liked the rhythmic tapping of his keyboard as he broke down the software to analyse it for potential vulnerabilities. In his mind, Caleb was still thinking about the seventy-five tons of metal he needed to secure for the first group of bunkers. In addition to that, there was also the second and third group of bunkers that Caleb needed to think about.

He was really thinking like a criminal now. Since buying the metals was out of the question, Caleb had started to strategically plan his crime. The places with the most metals available would be the subways and the docks. Ships can rack in a very good metal count and so do the rails in the subway. They run endlessly and Caleb could only drool about how much that would be worth. Aircrafts were also a good alternative but the one that Caleb was tempted to steal was the Statue of Liberty. Transportations were made of metal and they could still provide some sort of shelter and defence for survivors who didn’t make it to his bunkers. Caleb didn’t want to deprive those unfortunate souls a better chance of surviving. However, that metal statue was merely a meaningless decoration that could easily be put to better use. According to the internet, that statue alone was worth 31 tons of copper and 125 tons of steel. That was approximately the size of three soccer fields.

Caleb grinned. He couldn’t steal that statue now because a missing iconic mark will cause too much of an uproar compared to a missing car. For now, Caleb would be content with stealing vehicles from the streets. He might target a private yacht or ten because those rich people honestly did not need those boats when he needed the metal more.

Caleb knew that there was a cruise ship docking for maintenance work and he couldn’t wait. That ship was going to rake in metals like no tomorrow and he would be able to afford just about all the upgrades available for a Level 1 system. He expected that there would be more upgrades and features that he could unlock once the system levels up but for now, he would stock resources and hoard them for future needs.

Caleb didn’t take too long to find a long list of vulnerabilities he managed to exploit within the two hours he worked. In fact, he was disgusted by how the programmer did their jobs for this client.

Caleb fired out an email to his client by midnight and decided to check on Helen’s research. PXE22 was an interesting project even though the scientist’s reports were far too complex for him to understand. He wondered if the system would be able to create a vaccine or cure against PXE22 if he sent Helen’s research notes in. Deciding that it was worth a shot, Caleb made a copy into a different flash drive and offered it to the system for analysis.

Caleb wasn’t expecting to receive a reply so soon for both his suggestions made today. He took a look at the inbox which was a new feature in the system after Caleb was given the freedom to customise his user interface.

[Helen’s notes have been rejected by the system. System is unable to develop vaccines or cures against PXE22. It can only replicate and mass-produce what it knows.]

[List of bugs and suggestions now fixed. Please refer to your inbox for notes of changes.]

[Suggestion to include Special Bunkers and the ability to customise them is approved. Kindly check your Upgrade Panel for more details.]

[New feature has been added. Please visit the Research Panel to work on different projects, submit feedback and suggestions.]

[You have been given a compensation reward by the system. Go to your inbox to receive it.]

Caleb blinked as the notifications flooded his view of vision. He meant to submit the research notes as a joke but in return, he learnt a lot more about the system. Despite the advanced technology, the system was unable to make its own decisions or come up with solutions of its own. If anything, Caleb thought it was like an AI assistant that was still very green and didn’t know what to do.

Now that he was able to understand the system’s abilities more, Caleb understood why the first quest assigned by the system was to ask him for a bunker system plan. The Survival Bunker System was capable of growing if it was taught. Caleb’s job was not only to feed it resources and build bunkers. He had the duty to teach it what he needed it to be to aid him with his quest. In short, this system was a robotic butler made to take care of his needs so that he can save humanity.

Curious about his theory, Caleb sent in another strange request. He wanted special bunkers to self-stock using the resources that Caleb gathers for it. If replication and mass production was the system’s strength, he wanted to take full advantage of it.

The system gave Caleb a response less than a minute after it received Caleb’s request through the Research Panel. Under the Control Panel, Caleb saw that a new passive ability for customised bunkers was added.

The system developer smirked. It was going to be a very useful feature for places like Target. Imagine if the shelves were always full and while not having a variety would suck for a while, everything was there. Target was a wonderful place that sold just about anything and everything a city person needed. If Caleb could get it to never run out of supplies, it would be a big burden off his shoulders for now.

He checked his inbox that was flooded with notifications about the bugs that were fixed and the system upgrades. Bunkers will now be accessible even without a door as long as the bunker occupant enters the space that the bunker was built. This coincides with the default feature of entering a bunker space for everyone registered with a bunker. Caleb can disable the feature manually if he wishes to for anyone, including himself. The programmer nodded in satisfaction as he checked out the features.

Next, he read up on special bunker creation in the upgrade notes. The system was doing him a real favour by only requesting resources in return for the ability to own an entire power plant. Special Bunkers were ghoul-free zones that restricted access to everyone else apart from authorised personnel. The system was also wary about authorised personnel sabotaging the special bunkers so all authorised personnel to special bunkers must sign a contract that the system will uphold. Any betrayal will result in getting permanently blacklisted from any bunkers. The new feature of kicking out registered bunker occupants and blacklisting individuals was introduced as well and Caleb decided not to touch it for now. He would think of appointing bunker managers to manage that for him at a later stage but for now, he was more interested in the system’s new ability to research items.

The Research Panel was very simple to use. Caleb was in love with how magical it was. Anything that Caleb wanted the system to replicate that wasn’t already available in the Upgrade Panel could be added by sacrificing a prototype to the Research Panel. The system will reverse engineer the object and add it to the Upgrade Panel that Caleb can purchase it from. Due to the complexity of the Research and Manufacturing function, more resources were introduced in the Resource Panel. While metal remained the most important, Caleb had to start looking into food, paper, wood, rubber and other miscellaneous materials like glass and plastic.

In addition to that, Caleb was given the ability to save bunker designs. Apart from the Basic Bunker, Caleb had slots to save his bunker design and include any upgrades he wanted to include so that he could save time and build them right the very first time. The system developer put that down as something to do tomorrow. He would have to prepare a list of upgrades he wanted to unlock and create a list of materials he needed to prepare.

Some of the more interesting upgrades that Caleb saw included a microwave oven, air conditioning, a first-aid kit and an electric stove. The sink was also a rather interesting option and most of these things in the upgrade panel were household appliances. Caleb looked at the cost of unlocking the upgrade and knew that he could easily afford most of them with his resource gathering spree. However, he didn’t want to unlock everything just yet. He didn’t have enough resources now and there were still many things to test.

For now, Caleb was satisfied with unlocking only the sink and electric stove to test if there were any other requirements to use them such as electricity and water supply. His suspicions were confirmed when he included them in the first bunker layout draft that he discarded.

[Error. Sink does not have a water supply.]

[Error. Electric stove does not have an electricity supply.]

With a knowing sigh, Caleb relented. That will have to wait for now. He was making really good progress for one day and Caleb took his time to explore the new additions and functions in the system. The only mail left in the system’s inbox was the compensation reward. Caleb was slightly hesitant to open it because the first reward that he received was bugged. What if he was given a reward that was more bugged than the last? Caleb couldn’t help but feel that the system was a shrewd businessman who only gave freebies when it needed to collect user feedback for free instead of hiring a product tester.

“Whatever,” Caleb rolled his eyes and exited the system.

It had been a long day and he was tired. There were so many new changes implemented so Caleb took some time to jot all of it down in his new diary before bed. Tomorrow, he would start exploring the other features and look at his reward. Most importantly, Caleb couldn’t wait to revise the resource collection method. If he could customise it into a verbal command, he would be able to head out to the city and gather various resources for research and unlocking the upgrades.