Chapter 24: Chapter 24: Introduction
Seeing the two of them kneel, Ye Yun quickly waved his hands.
"Get up. Both of you, get up. We don’t do that sort of thing in my shelter."
Bena hesitated, but still stood up subconsciously.
Looking at their travel-worn appearance, Ye Yun felt a pang of pity. ’They’re my people now, after all. Members of my shelter. It’s too pitiful to see them in such a miserable state.’
Ye Yun said,
"No. 1, go to the warehouse and get them some water and food!"
No. 1, who had been on standby in the distance, quickly responded,
"Yes, Lord Administrator."
A moment later, they stared at the four small cubes placed before them.
Bena and Lina looked at each other, confused. Seeing that neither of them made a move, Ye Yun assumed they were just shy and waved his hand.
"Don’t be shy. From the looks of it, you probably haven’t had anything to eat or drink in a long time. Go on, eat."
Hearing Ye Yun’s words, the two of them lowered their heads even further. Finally, Bena spoke up, somewhat embarrassed.
"Honorable Administrator, we’ve never seen these things before. We don’t know how to eat them..."
Ye Yun slapped his forehead.
’Ah, so it wasn’t shyness, they just didn’t know how. My mistake.’
Ye Yun walked over to them, picked up a [Small Food Cube], and explained,
"Each cube has a symbol on it. The blue droplet is water, and the green knife and fork is food gel. Press the symbol, and the corresponding item will come out of this black opening on the bottom. Go on, give it a try."
Bena had long heard that life inside a shelter was a completely different world from the outside, but he never imagined that even food and water would be so unique.
He carefully picked up the small blue cube in front of him. He found it hard to imagine that this thing contained water.
However, he didn’t think the honorable Administrator of the shelter would need to deceive him over something like this.
Mimicking Ye Yun, he cautiously moved his finger toward the droplet symbol, his dry, cracked, and pale lips already positioned at the black opening below.
With a slight press of his finger, a few drops of clean water fell onto Bena’s lips and the tip of his tongue.
Bena’s eyes flew wide open. He felt the moisture and coolness on his tongue, and a tingling, electric sensation instantly coursed through his entire body.
’So this is what water is supposed to taste like?’ The feeling nearly brought him to tears.
In the outside world, clean water was almost nonexistent. For homeless refugees like them, the most they could ever drink was contaminated water.
This so-called contaminated water was water polluted by radioactive materials.
Even lightly contaminated water had a nauseating taste. In his entire life, this was the first time he had ever drunk water that was clear and sweet.
The sweet, pure taste of the water filled him with an unprecedented sense of satisfaction. He drank greedily until he felt his throat and stomach were thoroughly quenched.
Seeing his sister still hadn’t moved, Bena felt a pang of regret. ’How could I have been so selfish and just drunk it all myself?’
He quickly urged her,
"Drink! This water is so good."
Hearing her brother’s words, Lina eagerly picked up the other water cube and experienced the same long-lost freshness and hydration.
Her eyes glistened with tears. This was an experience she had never had in the wasteland.
After the two had drunk their fill, Ye Yun instructed them on how to use the food gel cubes.
Following Ye Yun’s instructions, Bena and Lina pressed the green knife-and-fork symbol, and a gel-like food flowed out.
They cautiously took a bite and discovered that although the food looked unremarkable, its flavor was exceptionally delicious. And as the gel-like substance entered their bodies, the feeling of hunger vanished rapidly.
Feeling the fullness in his stomach, tears streamed down Bena’s face uncontrollably once again.
In the wasteland, food wasn’t exactly scarce.
After all, following the radiological contamination, many plants and animals had undergone certain mutations.
These mutated flora and fauna could be used as food, provided you could defeat them. The problem was that even though they were edible, they were often irradiated. Long-term consumption could cause severe harm to the human body.
Moreover, these mutated creatures were often incredibly ferocious, making hunting them an extremely dangerous task in itself.
They had to choose creatures with low radiation levels that they could actually defeat, leaving them in a constant state of semi-starvation.
The food gel’s form might have been strange, but its taste and the feeling of fullness were real.
Bena and Lina had never imagined that food and pure water could appear before them so easily.
Meanwhile, Ye Yun, who was checking the member panel, nodded in satisfaction.
’Not bad. Just one full meal, and their loyalty has already gone from 80 to 85.’
Seeing that the two had eaten and drunk their fill, Ye Yun cleared his throat lightly.
Hearing the sound, Bena subconsciously started to kneel, but he immediately remembered what Ye Yun had said earlier and stopped himself short.
Ye Yun nodded with satisfaction. ’Very good. This Bena fellow actually listened to me.’
"Now that you’ve had your fill, let me introduce myself."
"I am Ye Yun, the Administrator of this shelter and its sole leader."
With that, he pointed to No. 1 and No. 2 standing behind him.
"This is No. 1, and this is No. 2. They are androids. They spend most of their time exploring outside the shelter, but they also perform some tasks inside from time to time."
"They possess simple intelligence, so you can treat them as you would normal people."
"It was just the three of us in the shelter. Of course, now there are two more of you."
At this, Lina, who had been silent the whole time, spoke up curiously.
"Lord Administrator, Lord No. 1 and Lord No. 2 are...?"
Although the two of them were inexperienced, they weren’t stupid. From their observations and what Ye Yun had just said, it was obvious that No. 1 and No. 2 were not human.
Ye Yun didn’t hide it.
"Do you know what robots are?"
Bena was astonished.
"Lord No. 1 and Lord No. 2 are robots? But... they’re so detailed!"
Bena had seen a robot once before, from a distance. It was a medical robot.
It was in a hospital that specialized in selling organs, and that robot had been modified into an evil machine specifically for transplanting human organs.
He thought all robots were monsters with countless tentacles.
Yet, the No. 1 and No. 2 before him looked almost identical to ordinary people.
Ye Yun nodded and said to No. 1 with a smile,
"Open the external skin on your abdomen."
No. 1 replied,
"Yes."
As soon as the word was spoken,
under everyone’s gaze, No. 1 placed a hand on her abdomen and pressed lightly.
The external skin on her abdomen slowly slid open, revealing the intricate mechanical structures and circuit boards within.
Seeing this, Bena and Lina’s eyes went wide. They had never imagined that a robot could be so lifelike that its appearance was virtually indistinguishable from a real person.
