89: Chapter 89 Red Shrimp is Still the Strongest

Also falling into deep thought...

...were several Orc Bosss far away in the western region of the Northern Radiation Wasteland.

These massive Orks, covered in scars, were sitting atop a pile of smashed tank wreckage.

They had just finished a bloody internal duel.

After half a day of frenzied brawling, they had finally chosen the biggest, hardest-hitting fellow to be the "Boss of Bosses" for this area.

But strangely enough...

Although a new Orc Warboss had been born, the atmosphere among the thousands of Orc Boyz around them was unusually gloomy.

A one-eyed Ork Boy scratched his bald head and muttered indignantly,

"I reckon that humie in the red shell from the other day was way tougher than this new Boss."

Those words were like a spark falling into a powder keg.

Another Ork Boy immediately agreed,

"I reckon so too! That Red Boss from the other day made the Gorkanaut disappear in one go! The new Boss definitely can't beat the Red Boss!"

This wave of sentiment spread rapidly through the Ork camp.

The newly elected Orc Warboss was so furious upon hearing these discussions that he felt like his lungs would burst.

He stood up abruptly, kicked over a burning jeep, raised his massive choppa, and let out an earth-shattering roar:

"WAAAAAGH!!!"

"I'm gonna take you lot to smash that red humie's place! I'm gonna go duel him! Let you see who's the toughest!"

The new Warboss tried to regroup the troops with a fanatical war cry.

However, very few Orc Boyz responded to him.

Most Orks just listlessly raised the broken iron pipes in their hands.

In their simple logic, if the Boss wasn't tough enough, then the WAAAGH he started wouldn't be exciting enough.

And now, most of them felt that the distant Red Humie Boss was the true peak of violence they yearned for.

...

Inside the massive troop shuttle's cabin, the air was filled with the deafening roar of the engine and the pungent smell of low-grade engine oil.

Dim red signal lights flickered.

Black Tiger A-Fu opened his eyes amidst the jolting.

He looked around and found that the originally spacious cargo hold was now packed like a sardine can with a dense crowd of people.

Besides the four hundred players from their Hand of God Legion, the cabin was also filled with many gaunt, raggedly dressed natives.

These conscripted low-level wastelanders mostly crouched lifelessly on the cold metal floor.

Their eyes were numb and hollow, seemingly unaware of—or perhaps already resigned to—their tragic fate of being sent to fill the front lines.

As Afu was observing his surroundings...

...a native with eyes as fierce as a lone wolf's roughly pushed through the crowd and walked straight up to Black Tiger A-Fu.

"Hey, brother."

The person lowered their voice and asked in a raspy tone,

"Which settlement are you guys from?"

As a player from the second wave, Black Tiger A-Fu hadn't been in the game for very long.

But thanks to the Wasteland English Corner started by that linguistics expert in the camp, he had managed to memorize some commonly used low gothic vocabulary.

Although it was a bit difficult to understand, he still grasped the general meaning of the other person's words.

Afu didn't answer immediately.

Alarm bells instantly rang in his mind.

"Trying to get close right away? A hidden quest? Or... trying to trick me into getting my organs harvested again?"

After the painful lesson of the player Mudslide being drugged and disassembled by an NPC in Shahe Town, the players at the Shelter were now much more guarded against these wasteland natives who initiated conversation.

Afu calmly sized up the person in front of him.

Messy short gray hair, wearing a heavily worn old leather jacket and faded jeans.

The body was lean, but the muscle lines were tight, exuding the competence of someone who had lived on the edge for years.

Afu's gaze swept over the person's flat neck. No Adam's apple.

"So it's a woman," Afu judged internally.

He cleared his throat and, in broken, heavily accented low gothic, stiffly blurted out words: "Shelter. You, where?"

When the person heard this answer, her brow furrowed noticeably.

For one, she had never heard such a strange accent;

Secondly, the word 'Shelter' was too broad on the wasteland; it didn't sound like the name of a specific location at all.

But she didn't press further and instead introduced herself:

"My name is Bailey. A member of a low-level gang in Shahe Town."

Afu pricked up his ears, frantically searching his brain for vocabulary.

"Bailey" should be her name.

"Shahe Town" was something he'd heard other players mention; he knew it was a dangerous town to the south.

But the following words about "low-level" and "gang" were beyond his vocabulary; he didn't understand them at all.

"My name is Afu," Afu pointed to himself, simply stating his name.

Bailey nodded, just about to probe for more information about this group of strange soldiers.

Right then,

The newbies from the Hand of God Legion who had logged off earlier began to reconnect one after another, waking up in the cabin.

"Holy crap! This crappy ship still hasn't arrived?"

"Look, look! Why are there so many more NPCs around? This modeling is incredible; even the dirt on their faces is so realistic."

A few sharp-eyed players immediately saw Black Tiger A-Fu and Bailey standing in the middle of the crowd.

"Huh? What's the Legion Leader doing over there?"

"That NPC has no Adam's apple; looks like a girl. I get it! The Leader is hitting on a local girl!"

"Brother Afu is a dark horse; he triggered a pick-up plot as soon as he got on the ship!"

Black Tiger A-Fu was a bachelor in his thirties back on Earth.

Being teased publicly by this group of players who loved chaos, his old face instantly turned beet red.

"Get lost, get lost! All of you shut up!"

Afu cursed in embarrassment and anger,

"Can't you put something serious in your heads? We're about to go to the battlefield!"

The players burst into laughter.

For a moment, the originally dull, oppressive, and deathly air of the shuttle cabin was filled with a joyful atmosphere.

Bailey stood there, watching this group of people laughing and talking, the confusion in her eyes deepening.

"Is there something wrong with their heads?"

Bailey was secretly alarmed,

"Don't they know the Defense Force grabbed us to be meat shields for those monsters? Death is imminent, so what on earth are they happy about?"

She truly could not understand the mental state of these people.

Bailey shook her head, gave up on communicating, and turned to squeeze back into the crowd of conscripts from Shahe Town, where many of her gang brothers were.

The shuttle stopped and started in the air, with constant turbulence.

Afu didn't know exactly how long they had been flying, but the roar of the engines finally began to weaken.

Accompanied by a dull hydraulic sound, the massive hatch at the rear of the shuttle slowly lowered, letting blinding light and howling winds rush into the cabin simultaneously.

"Everyone off the ship! Move it! Don't dawdle!"

Fully armed Defense Force soldiers brandished electrified batons, herding everyone out of the cabin like cattle.

Afu followed the flow of people out of the hatch, his feet stepping onto a desolate saline-alkali flat.

He looked up and surveyed his surroundings.

The northern sky was shrouded in a layer of green toxic mist so thick it wouldn't dissipate.

Afu recognized this mist; it was the hallmark of the Northern Radiation Wasteland.

Deep within the mist, the silhouettes of several trash mountains towering into the clouds could be vaguely seen.

And turning around to look south...

All the players sucked in a breath of cold air.

It was a massive complex of buildings that stretched as far as the eye could see!

Hive City spires pierced the clouds, and countless thick exhaust pipes spewed black industrial waste gas into the sky.

Gray concrete buildings extended infinitely along the coastline like a forest of steel.

That was Coastal City.

And on the east side of the city was a deep blue, vast ocean.

The sea breeze blew over, carrying a strong, salty, fishy smell.

Afu sniffed and couldn't help but gag:

"This sea breeze... why does it smell like a mix of dead fish, rotten shrimp, and chemical waste?"

At this time, the wide flat ground around them was filled with troop shuttles.

Groups of despairing natives were being driven by the Defense Force into square formations.

At a rough glance, there were several thousand conscripted able-bodied men at this assembly point.

"Quiet! Everyone shut up!"

A man in a crisp officer's uniform stood on the roof of an armored vehicle, beginning to lecture through a high-powered megaphone.

He spoke extremely fast.

Afu pricked up his ears and listened for a long time, but he didn't recognize more than half the words.

He could only barely catch clichés like "For the Great Emperor," "Sacrifice," "Sacred Duty," and "Hold the Line."

After the long-winded speech ended...

...the crowd was divided into several columns to line up and receive weapons and equipment.

Soon, it was the Hand of God Legion's turn.

A quartermaster pulled two long guns from a crate full of wood shavings, tossed them into the arms of Afu and another player like they were fire pokers, and then threw over a box of bullets in low-grade cardboard packaging.

Afu looked down at the weapon in his hands.

It was an autogun with a rusty bayonet.

A blurred serial number was engraved on the gun body.

Although this gun was also called a Logging Gun, compared to the Heavy Stubber produced in the Fire Seed Shelter's arsenal, it was worlds apart!

The caliber of this gun was a whole size smaller.

Afu pulled the bolt and found that the parts were loose, making a clattering metallic sound.

He looked down inside the barrel; the rifling was worn down until it was almost invisible.

Even more despair-inducing was that the Defense Force had given them only a single box of bullets!

At most, there were thirty rounds.

A newbie player nearby weighed the crappy gun in his hand, his face full of disbelief:

"Leader, this NPC Defense Force is way too stingy, right? Giving us this kind of scrap metal that could explode at any moment to go fight a war?"

With this firepower configuration, forget fighting Orks—even fighting a few mutant rats would be a struggle!

Afu, however, unconcernedly pressed the bullets into the magazine and pulled the bolt with a click:

"What's the panic?"

Afu gave a cold laugh,

"The shittier the gear they give us, the more regular army soldiers have died on the front line! What's the best part of this quest? Looting bodies!"

"Remember the special quest we took. Loot is fully tax-exempt! Once we're on the battlefield, forget this crappy gun; there'll be high-end gear all over the ground. Whoever picks it up, keeps it!"

Hearing Afu's words, the complaining newbies suddenly realized the truth, and that greedy green light belonging to The Fourth Calamity ignited in their eyes once more.