Chapter 154
Chapter 154
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 10
Chapter Title: Lead and Silver Coins (8)
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****
From Sector 47, heading southeast takes you to Sector 45, and northwest leads to Sector 46. Above that are Sectors 44, 42, and 41, while below lie Sectors 43 and 40. Don’t ask why it’s all jumbled up like this. Gedroits Company sliced up the territories however they pleased, just like divvying up African land.
Vroom-vroom-vroom-vroom!
“Three o’clock! Three o’clock! Look at three o’clock, damn it! Mugglers rolling in!”
Sector 41, the target destination, was reachable by heading straight north from the center of Sector 46 before veering that way, but at the northern edge of Sector 46 loomed a notoriously infamous Type-3 variant called [Working Kane (working kane: the working Kane)], planted there like a damn tree. No getting past it directly.
“Rip open the goods and toss ’em! Ezel! Grab the bombs!”
“Queeeek!”
“Queek! Kweeeek!”
Boom!
“Where are they!”
Bang! Bang! Crunch-crunch-crunch!
“Green weapons crate, you idiot!”
“There’s two trucks full of green weapons crates here, moron!”
“H-Help me, Hepburn! My side’s about to break too!”
“Fuck you bastards at three o’clooooock!!!!!”
KABOOM!
“Kweeeeeek!!!!”
That Type-3 variant, resembling a massive tree trunk with limbs attached, had spent 24 hours nonstop gathering building debris to erect a wall of wailing that put the Great Wall to shame. Approach it, and it responded with extreme aggression, so the standard route was to skirt around the wall it built via the western highway of Sector 46. As a vital trade route linking the main survival zones of the 40s and 30s sectors, it was jokingly dubbed the ‘Silk Road.’ Midsize and large caravans, along with Dome’s trade and transport teams, frequented it, so compared to surrounding areas, it was impeccably paved, free of variants or mutants—and instead crawling with scavenging raiders who preyed on caravans.
“Hey! Don’t worry about the aftermath—just use it! Exosuit, launch!”
“Uwaaaah! Damn it all! Surveillance Division Exosuit No. 7! Launching!”
Whirr! Clank-grind!
Ziiiiing—crackle!
“Plasma lance chaaaaaaaarge!!!!”
“Queeeeeek!”
“Kweeeek! Kwaaaagh!”
“Queeeeeek!”
“Path’s clear! Everyone pile into the driver’s seats and floor it!”
“The round ones cut the trailer couplings!”
“Just go! You wanna die hauling all this and cause inflation in the afterlife with your pocket change!”
No need to fret about scavengers. The small fry would spot the Dome emblem plastered truck-sized on our armed trucks and scatter on their own. The bigger ones... well, the client we were heading to in Sector 41 was the boss of the massive scavenger group that ruled this area. At minimum, we’d be escorted in comfort all the way to 41, treated like VIPs...
“Graaaagh!”
“Urgh! Graaaagh!”
“Professor! Horde on our tail!”
What the hell was this situation?
Vroom-vroom-vroom-vroom!
“Correction! A Horde ‘and more’ on our tail!”
Sector 44. The pristine midsection of the Silk Road, famous for having zero worries aside from other people.
There, a desperate chase unfolded: three vehicles fleeing for their lives, pursued by a cloud of swarming monsters.
The pintle-mounted machine guns we’d brought to sell—expecting good sales in an area rife with variants—had long since been bolted to the roof and fired until the barrels melted.
“Ezel! Operating limit!”
“Seven minutes! Hurry and load up—”
“I’ll be back in seven!”
Vroooom—
“You bastards!!!!”
The settlement shield generator we’d brought to sell? Plugged in and running at full blast. The reserved high-explosive bombs? Ammo? Burning through them nonstop. Why? Business be damned—if we died, it was all useless!
Screeeeech!
“Inside the ravine, the rocks should hide the engine heat!”
“Cool it as much as you can while Ezel holds!”
“Profeeeessor—! I’ll curse you foreveeeeer—!”
“...I’ll drag that thing back, so when we arrive, get everyone straight into the ‘Bubble’!”
KABOOM!
Another explosion rocked the air, and the Professor—having kidnapped Ezel, who’d sooner die than abandon her suit—hurdled toward the parked vehicles.
“Flashbangs, three! Smoke grenade, one—drop it!”
“Bubble up! Three, two, one!”
“Don’t even breathe!”
Zzzzing—
With the familiar hum of the shield activating, a transparent barrier rose around the vehicles, instantly erasing the group’s presence from the wasteland.
“Kweek? Queek-queek! Kweeeeek!”
“Graaaaaah! Kraaagh! Kraaaagh!”
“Queeeeeek! Queek! Kwaaagh!”
The monsters, thrown into chaos by the flashes and thick smoke, stood dumbfounded for a moment before turning on each other, ripping and tearing in a bloody frenzy.
The group stayed frozen in place, not even daring to breathe, until the variant pack finished slaughtering the Mugglers and finally lumbered away.
“...Whatever the case, the friends who left for Sector 38 ahead of us aren’t just listed as missing anymore.”
At Ian’s hollow voice, the other three nodded in unison.
****
In the end, Ezel used exosuit repairs as an excuse to flop down, so the group decided to hole up in this small ravine for the night. Honestly, they could probably push further... but repeating that daytime madness twice had drained them mentally.
Crackle, crackle—
Against the backdrop of Ezel’s welder, the other three gathered to assess the situation.
“How’s the ‘Bubble’ holding up?”
“Dome gear’s tough as hell—even after the beating we gave it, it’s fine. Vehicle and personal units, both good. Wanna test?”
Pressing the power on the small rod-like device Ian tossed me summoned a faint transparent film around my body. For a test, I inhaled deeply over the rising smoke from the campfire—no smell, no air at all.
“Phew! Seems to work perfectly.”
Bubble. Official name: Bubble Shield Device. Dome-provided gear for anti-radiation zones, originally a failed prototype from when shield tech was in heavy development.
It worked by scanning the user’s outline beforehand to input a 3D contour, then coating it with an ultra-thin shield. It perfectly isolated the user’s body from the outside, and with a 0.001-second delay syncing to movements, it felt like wearing the shield seamlessly.
Why a failure? Too thin for any real defense—practically zero armor—and if it shattered on impact, regeneration matching the body pattern was glacially slow. Shield tech interfered when mixing types, so using it meant forgoing defense entirely.
It also sealed off air completely, requiring an external tube for breathing.
Soon after, permeable short-wavelength shields with massive defense obsoleted it—the blue shields we use now. But Dome later rediscovered the Bubble’s low power draw and stellar isolation, repurposing it for contaminated zones. Personal use alone, or link a refraction cloak for vehicle-scale.
The Bubble blocked radiation, while the Skin Mask—filtering polluted air via a hood-like tube extending backward—allowed breathing inside.
Both were essentials for external ops in non-survival zones. Check ’em constantly if you wanna live.
“Supplies used so far?”
“Let’s see... Two crates of grenades, six boxes of 500 7.62mm rounds, two pintle MGs for sale mounted on the roof—barrels melted. To secure ’em, we cannibalized the base mounts from a small shelter kit we were selling too—rendered it useless. Thanks to that, we lived, Professor. Quick hands. Pretty handy with those too?”
“Mugglers’ tentacles right in my face—superhuman strength kicked in. Anything else? Feels like we burned more.”
“Chaos had us chucking whole crates of explosives, ripping open ammo boxes willy-nilly—yeah, extras got torched. Still, sellables so far, we can cover it... but that dropped trailer’s a big loss.”
“The one hooked to the armed truck you and Bex were driving...”
“Fresh food. Plus drinking water.”
Aaaah. Lightning-struck variants. Mutants.
Food’s one thing, but water? Gone? The water I’d insisted on overstocking, abusing my leader authority—blue tank stuffed full! Now empty!
Ian shook his head at the Professor, who slumped like a man leaving his lover on the battlefield.
“Well, we siphoned some into a small barrel at lunch—ration it, and three days’ worth. Think we can hit that snakehead scavengers’ base—our destination—in three days?”
“Three days on minimal water... Possible under normal circs.”
Thwack.
He marked our position, target, and the scavenger ‘Hydra’ base on the spread map.
“We’re at the edge of Sector 44, so 70km—two days tops, not three. But...”
The Professor glanced outside at Bex butchering the mountain of Mugglers with her knife.
“With unknown packs like that out there, we can’t predict travel time precisely.”
Squelch!
Bex slit open a basketball-sized Mugler belly, wiping her bloody brow with a blood-soaked hand.
Behind her on the tarp lay heaps of extracted Mugler meat and respiratory organs.
Clang-clang!
“Whew! Maintenance done! What’d I miss?”
“Upcoming schedule. How many more hordes or Mugler packs like today.”
Ezel plopped by the fire, wiping sweat from her brow, tossing her welder aside carelessly, and shoving her head over my map.
“Mugglers... Saw ’em in the Surveillance Division intel, but weren’t they Type-3 variants? Type-3s spawn that uniform like that en masse?”
“You skimmed it. What chased us were Mugler offshoots. The real body’s in 32. It sprouts ’em like pus-filled zits from a mushroom body—pumps ’em out nonstop.”
Community intel pegged the main body as a mid-to-large variant over 7 meters tall. Unlike the toothy offshoots that lunged at anything moving, the body was surprisingly quiet and sluggish.
“Sluggish? Then just kill the body.”
“That’s... tangled in some messy vested interests.”
“Make Skin Masks from their respirators.”
Bex, having wrapped up, dragged in the blood-dripping tarp and chimed in.
“Those fanatics in 32. Their sole income’s these Skin Masks. No clue how, but they process Mugler respirators into half-alive masks—that’s the Skin Mask.”
“Respirators... into living masks? Possible?”
“Dunno. But they make and use ’em fine. Wanna see?”
Bex dropped her Bubble and mask, smearing a few drops of tarp blood onto the gray mask.
...Twitch.
“Eek!”
“Oho.”
Twitch-twitch, flick-flick!
As Bex said, the oddly shaped gray mask turned white where blood soaked in and wriggled faintly.
“Ughhh! Gross!”
“Heh-heh! Gross or not, no choice, Angel. Everyone in the 30s—from babes to geezers—wears ’em. Kill the Mugler body? That’s threatening wastelanders’ livelihoods.”
“You know an awful lot.”
“No scavenger lacks wasteland bio-profit knowledge. When Silk Road crews hole up for winter, Muglers sometimes roll into the 40s. Easy to snag one or two—Dome buys respirators pricey for research, meat’s in demand. We call ’em ‘rolling silver coins.’ With this haul, selling to that blind fanatic in the 30s covers today’s losses nicely.”
“If we survive to get there.”
The Professor irritably wiped a blood drop from the map, connecting black dots of their path with charcoal.
“Surveillance supply calorie bar wrapper at 46 entrance. Exosuit prints mid-Silk Road, plasma-melted rock, multiple vehicle tracks. Matches the ‘missing’ team the Commander mentioned—same route as us.”
“So...?”
“Dome transport took our planned route, hit combat midway too. These Type-2 hordes and Mugler packs? Probably drawn by their traces. Exosuit fights are noisy as hell, and variants charge any sound, as we know.”
Squeeeak—
With a black pen, the Professor dragged the transport’s path up to Sector 39.
“Transport signal cut at 39. So the vanguard pushed ahead, tightening the loose wasteland with battle noise galore—expect hordes and Muglers thick at least that far. Good thing we overpacked sellable ammo and explosives—we can bulldoze if we commit...”
“No water.”
“...Yeah. Dropped the water trailer fleeing today—can’t go like this.”
Scccrape—
Midway sketching their alternate path in white chalk along the transport route, the Professor’s hand veered sideways, stopping at a green dot near 42 entrance.
“So push to here, resupply at Station 42-a. The Dome comms staff there’ll know why variants surged suddenly, any recent incidents. Refill water, unwind a bit.”
“42-a... Big detour? Temps too—we dally, might miss home before the cold snap.”
“Worst case, ditch trade, do the Commander’s quest and bail. Don’t forget—somewhere up there, a monster wiped a Dome elite squad with two exosuits, no sweat. Wanna rush? Me too—but cautious.”
Rustle, rustle, swish!
With the Professor folding the map, the meeting concluded.
****
Two days later.
Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!
“I-It’s an attack! Attack! Unidentified mid-sized variant approaching the station!”
Dome external Station 42-a admin trooper Hazan, back to the sun, spotted the horizon-slowly rising vehicle caked in blood, fluids, and flesh chunks. Forgetting the wired report handset, he madly rang the emergency siren.
[Crackle—Outpost. HQ here. Emergency response team dispatched. Report enemy form, scale, distance.]
“H-Here’s southeast outpost! Distance 2km... D-Dunno! Fast approach! Three mid-sized!”
[Crackle—Reconfirm. Three entities. Not usual horde or Muglers—different type? Answer carefully.]
Hazan gripped the handset with trembling hands. Why’d he volunteer post-training for this backwater? Not for the fat bribes from passing caravans and scavengers! Not for the promise of a cozy Upper Dome house after one year!
He tightened his grip. Report right, or die. Can’t kill that alone!
Fear-filled eyes turned back to the horizon.
The now-closer variant—oddly familiar up close.
[Crackle—Southeast outpost. Respond. Response team en route. Exact form and scale.]
“I-I-Infested Terran...”
[...Reconfirm.]
“Infested Terrans! Three vehicles infected by variants!”
Dome-born rookie at external station, Hazan. In his teary eyes, the blood-, flesh-, tentacle-draped vehicles charging the station were straight out of external station ghost stories: ‘machines infected by variants.’
“We’re here! We made it! Hey! Open the gates! Thirsty! Water! Gimme water!”
Clack!
Clack!
Clack!
Clack!
Clack!
“...Huh?”
Naturally, those ‘vehicles’ were the Professor’s group—utterly spent, lacking strength to pry off dead Mugglers clamped to their rides. What greeted them wasn’t warm welcome, but dozens of gun barrels.
****