Encountering Marauders! The Players' First Battle!

Acetic acid, acetone, and methanol had a wide variety of uses. If the shelter's outpost was ever to truly industrialize, these chemical raw materials would be indispensable. Although they were of no immediate use, Chu Guang still rewarded the player [WC Really Has Mosquitoes] with 1,000 contribution points and publicly commended his outstanding contribution of "successfully producing acetic acid, acetone, and methanol using wood as raw material." Come to think of it, wouldn't this count as a server-wide announcement in an online gaming novel? Seeing [WC Really Has Mosquitoes]'s proud expression and the envious looks from the other players, Chu Guang felt it was necessary to uphold this fine tradition. Indeed. Not just in the game. It had to be announced on the official website as well! Down the line, he could even set up a Hall of Fame to record things like "on such-and-such date, player so-and-so unlocked an achievement." Such achievements could be solving a development bottleneck or clearing a high-difficulty dungeon. As an impoverished ruler, a cheap sense of honor was the only cost-effective reward he could offer his players. Once that was settled, Chu Guang took Ye Shi and Scavenger along the elevated highway heading out of the city past the Wetland Park, continuing north to scout. They searched for tracks of game while keeping an eye out for valuable exploration targets. Qingquan City's industrial clusters were mostly concentrated in the southeastern corner of the city, fanning out along the Third and Second Ring Roads. Meanwhile, the northern sector where Ling Lake Wetland Park was located was primarily residential; along the outbound highway, one could even spot quite a few unfinished housing developments. Aside from relatively complete public amenities like schools, hospitals, and transit hubs, this area had never developed large-scale industrial clusters—only a scattering of small light-industrial workshops out in the suburbs away from residential blocks, neighboring garbage incineration plants. Now, most of them were swallowed by the forest. When the nuclear war broke out, the northern outskirts of Qingquan City had suffered virtually no direct strikes from strategic weapons due to their huge population base and negligible strategic value. Relatively speaking, however, once order completely broke down, the immense throng of refugees brought a disaster of another kind. Supermarkets, convenience stores, wet markets, and shopping malls were swiftly ransacked. Next came hospitals, schools, office buildings, and every storefront lining the streets, right down to every refrigerator and cabinet in residential apartments. No shelter would gamble its own survival by opening its blast doors to admit them—nor could any have handled the volume—and the completely paralyzed transit system made it nearly impossible for them to leave. Even two hundred years later, the bullet holes in the walls and the shattered windowpanes bore witness to the tragedies that had unfolded here. In some storefront displays, beside shelves, and inside dumpsters, skeletal remains that had yet to fully weather still hung or lay piled. "Hiss... this is brutal." Looking at the two skeletons—one large, one small—locked in an embrace, Scavenger couldn't bear the sight and looked away, pulling the open dumpster lid shut. Ye Shi was relatively calm. After all, this was not his first long trek with Chu Guang, so he had long grown accustomed to such scenes. He even put on the airs of a veteran player to chime in: "Credit where credit's due, the environmental design in this game is top-notch... It really feels like a post-apocalyptic world." "This is a post-apocalyptic world," Chu Guang replied offhandedly. He carefully inspected the interior of a shop's display window and marked the location on his paper map. This appeared to have been a clothing store. However, hardly any garments remained on the racks, and the only two scraps of cloth still hanging were covered in dark mold. Evidently, scavengers had picked through this place long ago. And more than one wave of them, at that. "...I think we're wasting our time," Ye Shi sighed. "It's obvious this place was cleaned out." "You can always find something useful... like this." Pulling an unopened sewing kit from behind an almost pulverized cabinet, Chu Guang tossed it to Ye Shi. The needles were likely an alloy, and the thread was probably synthetic. Since the package remained sealed, oxidation was not an issue; never mind two hundred years, it would still be usable two centuries from now. Small tools like this were precisely what the outpost lacked most at the moment. Tengteng would probably be interested in it. With nothing else to scavenge, the group prepared to pull out of the shop. Just then, an agonizing scream echoed from the distance, followed immediately by two sharp cracks of gunfire. From the sound, it was likely 5mm ammunition. Chu Guang went on high alert instantly. Unhooking the pipe rifle from his back, he crouched low into the shadow along the base of the wall and peered cautiously toward the source of the noise. At the street corner not far away, beneath a lopsided billboard, a man in a gray coat collapsed after being shot, scrambling backward in terror. Blood seeped from his back, pooling across the pavement. "...A scavenger?" Before long, another figure turned the corner. A gunman clad in an animal-hide coat was chewing on half a cigarette, holding a pipe rifle cobbled together from scrap as he stalked toward the pleading man on the ground. Behind him followed another person and a dog. The accomplice carried a similarly fashioned rifle, with a fire axe slung at his waist and a dog leash in his other hand. Chu Guang's pupils constricted slightly. In less than a second, he made out who they were. Marauders! "What's going on out there?" Ye Shi leaned in from the side, keeping his voice down. He thought he was being quiet, but his stealth skills were still sorely lacking. "Shh!" Chu Guang barely had time to gesture for silence when the mutant hyena, leashed by an iron chain, whipped its head around and barked twice in their direction. Chu Guang's face dropped instantly. Holy shit! Did this beast dump every damn skill point into Perception?! In a flash, the two marauders looked over as well. Reacting with startling speed, they raised their rifles and fired. Bang, bang! Two shots rang out in rapid succession. Chu Guang pulled his head back immediately, though he soon realized he had worried over nothing. Those crude DIY rifles were almost certainly unrifled. Across the width of an entire street, they were firing at thin air. Sure enough, none of the rounds came anywhere near the doorway beside him, striking harmlessly into the concrete pavement. "A firefight?! What's happening?! Did we run into mutants?!" Hiding inside the store, Scavenger was not panicked at all; instead, he rubbed his fists together in excitement. Ye Shi was the same, immediately drawing a javelin. "Don't panic, everyone, let me take a peek—" "Peek at my ass!" Seeing that neither of these fools had an ounce of fear, Chu Guang was nearly fuming. Reaching out, he clamped a hand over Ye Shi's head and shoved him back down. "They're marauders! Both have guns, and they've got a dog! Fall back through the back door and rendezvous at the bus stop three hundred meters directly south—" "Respected Manager, why should we retreat? There are only two of them plus a beast, and we outnumber them!" Scavenger clenched his fists. "We can fight too!" "That's right! We can fight!" Ye Shi nodded eagerly, picking up the crossbow the Manager had just set down, and said with high morale, "We may only have one gun, but we've got Molotovs... and this two-meter-tall lizard. I refuse to believe he can't beat a dog!" Hearing this, the tense Chu Guang suddenly snapped out of it. Right. Why run? In the past, he had been all on his own, putting his neck on the line while trailblazing the wasteland, so it made sense to duck away from vicious bandits like this. Now he had guns, he had men—why the hell should he run! Besides, there were only two of them. Chu Guang reacted quickly, making up his mind on the spot as he cycled the bolt to chamber a round. Let's fuck 'em up! "You, take the Molotov and head over there." Chu Guang thrust the incendiary bottle and matches into Ye Shi's hands, pointing toward the diagonal corner across the street. "Follow my lead! As soon as I fire, light it and throw!" The enemies had no idea how many people were on this side; if they saw someone bolt out, they would definitely give chase. Taking the Molotov, Ye Shi froze for a second. "H-How do I get over there?" "Run! What, you want me to carry you? Don't worry, their guns aren't rifled. They won't hit you." With that, Chu Guang gave him a shove. Ye Shi stumbled out toward the doorway. Though panicked out of his mind, he realized this was his chance to show off in front of the Manager. Gritting his teeth, he braced himself and went for it. Dammit. Time to go all out! What the hell is there to be scared of in a game! Sure enough, just as Chu Guang had anticipated, when the two marauders saw Ye Shi bolt from the store, they immediately broke into gibberish shrieks and took two shots at him. "Haha, little darling, where do you think you're going?" "Give it up, you can't get away! Surrender now and maybe we'll spare your life!" Ye Shi had no idea what they were shouting; he only felt the bullets whizzing past his scalp. He didn't dare slow down or look up for a second, barreling straight into a store on the other side of the street. The two marauders exchanged sinister grins and pressed forward one after the other with guns raised, unclipping the dog's leash. No gun on him. Probably just a scavenger picking scrap around here. To them, crushing a scavenger was no different from stepping on a cockroach. Hiding inside the store, Chu Guang stayed motionless, quietly biding his time. Hearing the barking draw nearer, he suddenly leaned half his body out, aimed at the charging mutant hyena, and pulled the trigger. Bang! The 9mm bullet burst from the barrel. At a distance of under five meters, there was no dodging it; the shot ripped right through the beast's flank— Even though Chu Guang had aimed for its head. Before it could even let out a whimper, the hyena crashed headfirst to the ground, rolled a couple of meters, and stopped moving entirely. The marauder charging up close froze for an instant, clearly not expecting the other side to have a gun too. When he snapped out of it and saw that his everyday companion was dead, his face twisted in rage. "I'll skin you alive!" "Qiong, calm down! There's more than one of them—" Before he could finish, a Molotov cocktail came flying over and smashed with a crash against the rusted wreck of a car behind them. Flames surged upward alongside scattering glass shards. Seeing that their opponents even had Molotovs, the marauders scrambled away, thoughts of retreat budding in their minds. But with their escape route cut off by fire, they found themselves with nowhere to pull back to, trapped in a dilemma. Right then, out of the corner of his eye, one of the marauders caught sight of a terrifying silhouette beneath the eaves of a roadside shop. It was a lizard with dark green skin. Or rather, a humanoid lizard. "A mon—" Whoosh! A piercing whistle through the air cut the marauder's shout short. A javelin hurtled straight into his chest, pinning him dead against the burning wreck behind him. Even in the final moments of his life, he couldn't comprehend why a monster that looked like a mutant would be running with scavengers. He had heard of taming mutant hyenas as pets, and even of people keeping bears or horses, but this was the first time he had ever heard of anyone taming one of these things. It made no damn sense at all!