48 Hours a Day

It was already 12:20 p.m. when the players regrouped.

Almost 11 hours had passed since the explosion, and Zhang Heng had already questioned everyone involved in the accident at the nuclear power plant. He finally understood why Pripyat had waited for more than 30 hours to organize an evacuation, but the main mission that the players were most concerned about still seemed a little silent.

It wasn’t just Coconut. The other players couldn’t help but mutter to themselves.

“We’ve already seen Dyatlov, Akimov, Toptunov, Bryuhanov, and Fomin, but none of them triggered the main mission completion prompt. Could it be that the explosion really had nothing to do with them?” Mouse asked as he raised his finger.

“There’s definitely something wrong with Fomin and Bryuhanov,” Zhang Heng said. “They started the safety experiment without obtaining the approval, something Bryuhanov had said himself.. It’s hard to tell about the others, but the two leaders definitely won’t be escaping.”

He had just finished changing his clothes and threw the work clothes he had worn to the nuclear power plant into the dustbin at the side.

The doctor also added, “The main mission this time is to find the key people, but actually, it didn’t say how many there were. Previously, we misunderstood and felt that we should find the person with the greatest responsibility. But could it be possible that we actually need to find all the parties involved in this accident in order to complete the mission?”

“If that’s the case, then we’re in big trouble.” Master Kui frowned. “We don’t even have an exact number of people, so how do we know if someone is missing? We don’t even know how many we’ve found or how many we’re missing.”

“Who else is on the list?” the maintenance man asked.

“Uh, the designer of the nuclear power plant, or more accurately, the designer of the graphite-moderated boiling water reactor. But the problem is we don’t know who he is, and he doesn’t look like he in Pripyat either,” Mouse said.

He seemed a little flustered now. Previously, everyone expressed their opinions and worked together to perfect the list of suspects. However, in reality, they focussed most of their attention on the first few names on the list. Never had they thought that things would develop to this stage.

As the first names were eliminated one by one, the remaining names were all unlikely, and finding them would be very troublesome.

Under normal circumstances, it would have been fine. At most, everyone would do a little investigation. However, what the players in this dungeon lacked the most was time.

Although the players were still in an okay condition, Coconut notwithstanding, according to the doctor, this was probably a temporary illusion. They were beside the reactor when it exploded, so they must have absorbed a lot of radiation. The radiation had destroyed their DNA, causing the cells to be unable to continue to replicate usually. Once these cells complete their life cycle, what awaited them next would be death.

And in the doctor’s words, that was probably the most painful and cruel death of all known methods.

“What should we do? Are we going to Moscow next?” the young man asked. “But when we arrive in Moscow, where should we start looking?”

“I asked Bryuhanov. The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant was designed by the Institute of Hydroelectric Engineering. The first group of experts after the explosion included people from the Institute of Hydroelectric Engineering. The deputy director of Nuclear Power Plant Safety, V. S. Kowitz, was the one who came,” Zhang Heng said. “He should know who designed the RBMK.”

“That’s great,” Mouse sighed.

All the players heaved a sigh of relief. It was not that they did not want to go to Moscow. In fact, considering Pripyat’s current radiation situation, no one wanted to stay here any longer. However, based on past gaming experience, main storyline quests rarely required crossing cities to complete. Moreover, it was easy to leave Pripyat. When that time arrived, it would not be so easy to return.

In another 20 hours, after Moscow realized what had happened in Chernobyl, the military completely overtook the place. Everyone living there would be forcibly evacuated, and it was bound to become an empty city.

In fact, everyone had already seen the empty buses entering Pripyat one after another in the morning. The roads near the nuclear power plant were also guarded by the militia. In addition, militia groups from other places were gathering at the Yanov station.

It might sound hard to believe.

Apparently, after the accident at Chernobyl, the first people to realize the danger were not experts led by Bryuhanov and Fomin, but Pripyat militia, who first took over the site from the fire brigade. They then began to block the road to the nuclear power plant, especially the favorite fishing sites.

They even set up a temporary emergency command center, quickly mobilized under the leadership of the Deputy Minister of the Interior, Hennadii Vasilievich Berdov, which was why when the evacuation decision was made, it was carried out so quickly.

Berdov arrived at the scene of the explosion around 5 a.m. By 7, 1,000 people from the Ministry of Interior had already arrived at the location of the accident. Berdov then contacted the transport department in Kiev, asking them to provide 1,100 vehicles for possible evacuation later.

Unfortunately, although the deputy minister smelled danger, he still did not know how dangerous the invisible opponent he was facing was. Thus, the 1,000 internal affairs militia present, like the firemen, did not take any protective measures. They were exposed to a great deal of radiation for a long time. Still, because they guarded the dangerous area, the danger was significantly reduced, or rather, greatly reducing the risk of others entering the nuclear power plant. Of course, this also caused some trouble for the players in their search for Fomin and Bryuhanov.

Ultimately, after receiving the news that the reactor was safe and sound from Fomin and Bryuhanov, Pripyat’s DW Office did not issue an evacuation order. They even refuted the rumors that first secretary A. S. Kamanyuk was still waiting for the decision from the higher-ups.

However, the condition in the hospital couldn’t be hidden. In the morning, people were still relatively optimistic and went to work and school as usual, but as noon arrived, more and more people felt unwell. As they coughed away, rumors and gossip of all manner began to spread.

When Zhang Heng and the other two came out of the nuclear power plant, they could see that the pedestrians on the road back to Pripyat had obviously become serious and worried. Some had even left Pripyat without waiting for official notice, by themselves or by train.