Chapter Ninety-Seven: Kara Virus

When Qin Fei’s consciousness returned once more, he found himself in a dark, voidlike expanse.

There was no ground, no sky, and no other object anywhere in sight.

Only a scattering of pale white specks drifted around him.

He focused his mind and studied them closely.

They seemed to be formed from the numbers zero and one.

Where was this place?

Qin Fei’s expression sharpened with caution. After surveying his surroundings for a long while, he carefully extended his right arm and gently touched one of the white points of light.

The instant he made contact, new information flowed from the diamond-shaped crystal at his wrist.

New game world notification: Honored Ascendant, you have selected the Subnautica world. Transit countdown underway....

Your bodily wounds are being repaired....

Your pets, Paraceratherium and Pteranodon, have been uploaded into the Ark database!

New mission: Slay the deep-sea behemoth, Leviathan, Father of the Shark Swarm!

Mission reward: Unknown

Father of the Shark Swarm, Leviathan?

Qin Fei blinked.

He had not only played Subnautica, he had also finished it.

The game’s story was set mainly in a future interstellar age. While piloting the mining ship Aurora, the protagonist was struck by the gun of a planetary cannon on Planet 4546B. As a result, he was forced to crash-land in the planet’s ocean.

Although Qin Fei had not spent long clearing the game, he had studied nearly all of the Leviathan-class creatures within it.

He distinctly remembered never having encountered this so-called Father of the Shark Swarm Leviathan.

What on earth was that thing?

Just as Qin Fei was mulling over the mission, his body began to break apart, transforming into a stream of data that flew into the surrounding points of light.

Transmission complete. You have entered the world of Subnautica!

...

After a brief daze, Qin Fei slowly roused himself.

He did not see Xie Nainai or Caesar anywhere.

It seemed that this time, he had entered a single-player world.

At the moment, Qin Fei was floating in seawater.

The moment he awoke, he immediately donned his Tek chestpiece and took off into the sky, circling twice.

He was searching for the Aurora, the ship that had fallen into the water in the game’s storyline.

If he could locate the entire spacecraft, he would certainly gain endless resources from it, along with advanced scientific technology.

But the sea around him was boundless and empty. Nothing could be seen.

Qin Fei was somewhat puzzled.

Had he crossed over to a time before the game’s protagonist met disaster, when the Aurora had not yet crashed on this planet?

Not necessarily.

There was another possibility.

He may have arrived at the wrong location. He was probably in a distant stretch of ocean far from the Aurora.

After all, this planet was vast beyond measure. The section of sea where the story took place was no more than a tiny speck upon its surface.

For the moment, Qin Fei did not dwell on exactly what was going on.

He began observing the environment of this stretch of water.

The sea all around him was exceptionally clear, and with a glance he could make out the fish swimming below.

Qin Fei dove beneath the surface and swam a full circle around the area.

He discovered that the waters here were relatively shallow. Even at their deepest point, they were only just shy of twenty meters.

Clearly, this was shallow coastal ocean.

After swimming around for a while, a blue light flashed across the diamond crystal on Qin Fei’s wrist.

Honored Ascendant, since you have survived for more than one hour on Planet 4546B, you have been infected with the Kharaa virus!

Main quest 2: Completely cure the Kharaa virus within sixty days!

Disintegration countdown: 60 days

Infected, then....

Seeing the message, Qin Fei’s expression did not change. He was not even the least bit surprised.

In the world of Subnautica, contracting the virus was inevitable.

The Kharaa virus was the backbone of Subnautica’s main storyline.

In the game, not long after the protagonist was forced to land on this planet, he contracted this highly contagious and extremely difficult-to-cure virus.

In order to eliminate the Kharaa virus from his body entirely, the protagonist risked his life and plunged thousands of meters into the abyssal depths.

In the end, by using the hatching enzyme secreted by the planet’s extraordinary life-form, the Sea Emperor, he completely cured the virus within him and ultimately returned safely to Earth.

The Kharaa virus was vicious in both contagion and lethality.

It did not need a human host in order to survive on its own.

Moreover, it could spread through air, seawater, and even vacuum.

By the time the protagonist was infected, more than hundreds of billions of lives throughout this plane’s universe had already perished at its hands.

And the hatching enzyme secreted by the planet’s extraordinary life-form, the Sea Emperor, was the only cure.

Therefore, if Qin Fei wanted to rid his body of the Kharaa virus completely, he would have to do as the game’s protagonist did: descend thousands of meters into the deep sea and find the creature known as the Sea Emperor in order to obtain the enzyme it secreted.

Of course, before searching for the Sea Emperor, the first thing Qin Fei needed to do was establish a shelter on this planet and survive.

He was not a fish, after all. There was no way he could rest in the water.

At first, Qin Fei planned to build a wooden raft and anchor it on the sea’s surface for use as a place to sleep.

But he quickly abandoned the idea.

Inside Qin Fei’s backpack, apart from a large amount of ore and various weapons, there were only a few pieces of wood suitable for construction.

And there were no trees to be found in the sea, so the materials required to build a raft could not be gathered at all.

Qin Fei opted for a more troublesome method. He decided to build a stone platform in this diving area where he could rest.

He spent the entire day gathering a large quantity of stone from the seabed.

Then, relying on his Stone Construction Mastery skill, Qin Fei built a simple stone platform on the shallow sea surface ten meters below.

A single stone pillar supported it from beneath.

On land, one pillar would not be enough to bear the weight of an entire platform.

But this was underwater. With the help of buoyancy, the whole platform could remain stable above the surface with only one stone pillar.

Unlike the waters in the Ark world, the seawater here could not be drunk directly.

Qin Fei caught several fish from this stretch of ocean: pink in color, with two huge bubbles between their gills.

These were bladderfish from the game.

Bladderfish could be used not only as food; the bubbles in their gills also contained a great deal of fresh water.

What was more, the fish were not small.

The fresh water and calories from roughly two or three bladderfish were enough to sustain Qin Fei for an entire day.

By the time the stone platform was completed, night had fallen.

Already exhausted to the bone, Qin Fei laid down his sleeping bag on the stone platform and soon fell asleep.

The night passed without incident.

Disintegration countdown: 59 days

When Qin Fei awoke again, the sun was already high overhead.

After getting up, he began inventorying the diving gear in his backpack.

Among his belongings remained a pair of diving fins he had obtained earlier in the Ark world, along with half a bowl of unfinished Lazarus Chowder.

In addition, his Tek helmet had the function of underwater breathing.

His Tek chestpiece, meanwhile, served a purpose similar to an underwater propulsion device.

Of course, using these items consumed Tek Element.

After the battle with the Overseer, Qin Fei still had roughly five hundred units of Tek Element left in his pack.

Beyond that, in his low-temperature chamber, there was also a dormant Tost Giant Squid.