Chief, We Have a Huge Advantage!

Even though the wind blew against him on his way back, Hein felt as if he were walking on air, and the arrow wound on his leg didn't hurt as much anymore. Out of necessity for the plan, he had stayed in those bluecoats' camp for a day. It was now the afternoon of the second day, and just a few hours earlier, he had even dined with that man at his invitation. That lunch had left a deep impression on him: the main course was steamed split-claw crab legs, accompanied by mushroom soup and mashed ram horn potatoes. To take down a split-claw crab, it seemed this group was even more formidable than he had imagined—at the very least possessing anti-armor firepower. What was more, the mashed ram horn potatoes had soy sauce drizzled over them for flavor. Formidable in martial prowess and abundant in supplies, the Bloodhand Clan had truly provoked a terrifying opponent. Losing two squads at their hands was by no means an injustice! Hein was a merchant, and merchants were pragmatists. He would always stand on the winning side... or at least the side with the greatest promise of victory. To be fair, when that man named Chu Guang was persuading him, it was obvious he didn't know the rules of the Horseshoe Trading Company very well. Even if Hein put on a stellar performance before the boss, he couldn't escape a life of risking his neck every day. Although he was nominally an "agent" of the firm, in reality an agent's role was much closer to a partner. Operating in the southern parts of River Valley Province, they used the Horseshoe Trading Company's network to conduct trade and took a cut from every deal. Hein had done some rough math. Even after losing two detachments, the Bloodhand Clan still had fifty to sixty able-bodied laborers. Factoring in cannon fodder, captives, and the like, that amounted to nearly a hundred people. If he could take even a third of them back, it would be enough to make him a legend in the Horseshoe Trading Company—and indeed throughout Red River Town. Those who could work would be sold to mine owners, while those missing arms or legs would be shipped off for organ harvesting and sold to Boulder City or other major survivor settlements in northern River Valley Province—at least a one-thousand-percent profit no matter how you sliced it. No matter which way he looked at it, this deal was an absolute windfall. As for whether these bluecoats could win? Honestly speaking, he hadn't even entertained the possibility that they might lose. These people could work as diligently as oxen and hunt as ferociously as wolves; even someone like him, who had roamed the wasteland for years, had been played by them. Tactically and strategically, they held staggering advantages. And their leader was an unfathomable man. This bunch was truly terrifying! Hein's intuition told him that building good relations with these people would definitely lead to great wealth down the line—quite possibly earning him far more than working for the trading company! ... Following the remnants of the elevated highway leading out of the city north, and skirting past several collapsed ruins, Hein soon spotted the tire factory occupied by the Bloodhand Clan. Sharpened wooden stakes and rebar were placed along the concrete outer wall as obstacles, while the wall itself was smeared in blood with cryptic, chilling graffiti. A headless corpse abandoned by a roadside drainage ditch was being gnawed on by several fat rats—undoubtedly another unlucky slave who had failed to amuse these savages. Hein clicked his tongue, quietly lamenting the waste. Clutching the wooden box, he walked without pausing toward the palisade gate lashed together from timber. "It's Hein! Open up, quick!" The bandage on his leg had long been removed and the bleeding had stopped, but Hein theatrically bellowed, waving to the sentry atop the wall. Recognizing Hein's face, the bald man smeared with scarlet paint walked over to a rebar winch and strained with knotted muscular arms to crank it. Accompanied by rattling clatters, the wooden gate slowly swung open. Hein didn't linger for a second, briskly walking into the Bloodhand Clan's stronghold. Led by a marauder sentry, he arrived before Bear's tent. Setting the box on the ground, he pressed his forehead firmly against the dirt. "Respected Chieftain! Those people are nothing but savages! I am terribly sorry, I did everything I could, but they cannot be reasoned with at all!" Looking expressionlessly at the man kneeling before him, Bear reclined lazily in his chair, resting his chin on his fist. "You didn't bring my men back." "Indeed... because there are no captives to speak of." "None?" Bear sat up straight in his chair, his already small eyes squeezed nearly into slits by the taut flesh across his face. "What do you mean, there are no captives?" He knew the nature of his men all too well. If they encountered vicious fiends, they might fight for their lives, but brawling with bluecoats... even if they couldn't win, there was no chance they would fight to the bitter end. Trading twenty chips for a captive wasn't a loss. Once they rested and recovered for a while, they could gather everyone to settle the score. As for those missing limbs, he had intended to let the slave trader before him handle them entirely. The Bloodhand Clan didn't keep freeloaders, nor did they have surplus food to waste on them. He even suspected that the man in front of him was lying—using his name to negotiate, only to divert those captives somewhere else. Hein was acutely sensitive to shifts in atmosphere. Even without seeing Bear's expression, he guessed what this muscle-brained oaf was thinking, so he quickly mustered a look of grief and indignation, bringing out the story he had prepared long in advance. "Those people are scumbags, rats, maggots in blue coats! They have no sense of honor or morals—every single cell in their bodies is etched with deceit!" "They feigned accepting your men's surrender, yet the moment your men laid down their weapons, they brutally hanged them at their gate!" As he spoke, Hein opened the box in his hands. Inside lay finger bones strung together into necklaces. Bear's pupils instantly shrank to pinpricks, and his right fist slammed violently against the chair's armrest. "I'm going to chop off those rats' limbs and throw them into the dungeon to feed the roaches!" The guttural roar reverberated through the tent, making the flames in the brazier flicker. The veteran marauders standing nearby gripped the knives and axes at their waists, their eyes glinting ominously as they glared at Hein. Awaiting only their chieftain's order, they would charge forward to hack this impudent creature who had angered him into minced meat to vent their great chieftain's wrath. Sensing Bear's fury, Hein dared not slacken for a second. Weeping and sniffling, he continued his impassioned accusation. "Respected Chieftain, you don't know what I endured over there! I entered their camp with peaceful intentions, even voluntarily surrendering my weapon to their sentry. Yet the moment I met their leader, that man ordered me thrown into prison!" "They didn't want to negotiate at all, nor did they ever intend to! That man tossed this wooden box at me, sneering and saying the people you wanted were all here, and even told me... told me to burn it as an offering to you!" "Though they didn't hang me right away, they likely feared I would expose their secrets, so they kept me locked up and refused to let me leave. Fearing that more delay meant more danger and that I'd be silenced come daybreak, I used chips hidden in the soles of my shoes to bribe the guard and fled their camp under cover of night with the wooden box." "Yet those people reacted swiftly, quickly realizing I was gone and sending hunters after me. I didn't dare flee north, so I had to detour around the east gate, but before I could reach the city ruins, I was shot by an arrow." "Fortunately, the arrow missed anything vital. I hid your men's remains in a trash can while I crawled into some ruins. Barely had I gotten inside when they swept over the area! Luckily, they didn't spot me. I hid in the ruins until dawn, when they finally turned back." "Once I confirmed it was safe, I didn't delay for a second, immediately retrieving the box and returning to report to you!" As Hein blubbered with snot and tears streaming down his face, Bear, seated on his chair, finally diverted his fury away from him. Fixing his gaze intently on Hein, Bear asked in a deep voice, "You said they worried you'd expose their secrets? What secrets do they have?" Hein rapidly continued: "Those people aren't vault residents at all! They're just scavengers who wandered in from who-knows-where. Through trickery, they seized the nest of others, taking over a vault hidden in Wetland Park, stripping the residents' blue coats, and pretending to be vault dwellers themselves to swindle passing wastelanders." "They aren't nearly as strong as they seem on the surface—just a bunch of fierce-looking cowards who bully the weak and fear the strong. And there aren't many of them either, only about thirty people. The rest are captives from the original vault! Their favorite thing to do is light a bonfire in the middle of camp late at night, then drag out the good-looking captives for parties... you know what I mean." "So if you intend to strike them, it's best to choose the dead of night or the early hours before dawn." Hein lowered his brow, fluently delivering the tale someone had fed him. "That's when their guard is down the most; many aren't even wearing clothes... That was the very moment I slipped away." Captives. From a vault. A gleam of greed surfaced on Bear's face. The clone offered up by Bet Street had long been broken by his abuse and was probably disassembled into spare parts by his men by now. Besides, a plaything with zero emotional response, one that neither screamed nor wept, couldn't hold his interest in the slightest. Without screams, how could he show off his valor? People from a vault were different. No matter where you were, they were top-shelf goods. "What about guns? How many guns do they have?" Bear asked, cutting straight to the matter that concerned him most. Seeing that the chieftain had taken the bait, Hein was delighted inside and quickly replied: "At most thirty! Half of them were looted from your men! Furthermore, their ammunition reserves are scarce—more than half of them still use bows and javelins." "Look at my leg wound—it was left by one of their arrows!" Hearing "bows and arrows," Bear's expression grew even more contemptuous. Such primitive junk was the weaponry of scavengers. Unless one was an Awakened with exceptional abilities or a heavily muscled mutant, most people with any means would rather use crude black-powder muskets than fight with spears and bows. Bear stood two meters tall and was bursting with brute strength; even if four men arm-wrestled him together, they couldn't budge his arm. Ordinary people could barely walk carrying twenty or thirty jin of armor, but his armor weighed a full hundred jin, with a breastplate alone forged from fifty jin of homogeneous steel! Let alone bows, crossbows, and javelins, even ordinary bullets hitting it were like scratching an itch, leaving scratches at most. In his eyes, crushing those scavengers was no different from stomping on a nest of ants. "My lord, I believe we still need to consider this carefully," the horse-faced man standing nearby said, bowing his head and speaking in a low voice. "Neither Badger nor Cha was weak, and their warbands were fierce and battle-hardened. Yet both were wiped out one after another by those scavengers. I can't help feeling something is amiss." Hearing this, Hein grew anxious and was about to speak, but Bear waved a hand, cutting off the horse-faced man mid-sentence. "Badger had brawn but no brains; Cha had brains but no brawn. Neither could be called elite. They're just a bunch of scavengers. If I lead the charge personally with all our men assembled, crushing them will be child's play." Bear didn't want to drag this out. The longer it dragged on, the heavier the snow would fall and the colder it would get, making a fight much harder to wage. Besides, if those vault captives ended up tormented to death by the scavengers, what would be left for him? What was more, he had never thought much of Cha and Badger in the first place; his true main force consisted of the men who had followed him up north to raid. Hein breathed a quiet sigh of relief. To remove any lingering hesitation from Bear's mind, he decided to drop another bombshell. "Chieftain, you really don't need to worry. We have a massive advantage on our side!" "When I entered Wetland Park, I discovered they've set up camp by the river on the northwest side and are building a brick kiln. They're probably trying to reinforce their shelters before the snow gets any heavier, which only exposes the fear and weakness in their hearts!" "You only need to advance under cover of night and launch a direct raid on their brickworks! They'll inevitably fall into utter chaos! Then all we must do is press our advantage, pursue their fleeing troops straight into their camp, and all their wealth and supplies will be yours for the taking!" Saying this, Hein put on an indignant expression. "And I'll finally get to vent my rage and avenge this arrow in my leg!" "A brick kiln?" Bear stroked his chin with interest. "How many people are there?" "At least a dozen! Sixty percent are men captured from the vault, and forty percent are their own people!" Bear was overjoyed in his heart and slapped the chair's armrest. "Good!" While he couldn't say he trusted this slave trader completely, a brick kiln was easy to verify; one look was all it took. With that, Bear immediately turned to the horse-faced man and barked an order: "Send a lackey over. Find a vantage point and watch toward Wetland Park. If you spot campfires and smoke rising by the river, report back to me immediately!" The horse-faced man bowed his head in acknowledgment. "Yes, sir!" ... Meanwhile, by the river on the northwest side of Wetland Park, Fang Chang and a few others were propping up shanties on an open clearing using plastic tarps and wooden sticks. Shanties like these leaked wind from every direction; living in one would guarantee arthritis, but they couldn't bear to use better materials. After all, in a little while they would be stashing gunpowder kegs and wood tar inside... "I don't think the Administrator ever expected us to actually bake any bricks," Ye Shi grumbled while using a shovel to dig a kiln cavity into the earthen slope by the river. "Otherwise, why would he assign us an exclusive quest like this?" Fleeting White Horse, on the other hand, was a man of action who didn't waste breath while working. "Quit your yapping and hurry up with the job at hand... Give it a little longer, and the quest timer should just about be up." "Damn it..." "Speaking of which, Gale Force 8, don't you have classes during the day?" "Sent my slides to the TA." "Badass!" The first exclusive quest received by Cow and Horse Brickworks wasn't to produce a certain number of bricks, nor was it to construct a kiln with a specified daily output. Instead, it was to lay traps throughout the camp. Did this sound like something production occupation players were supposed to do?! Well. Then again, it wasn't as if they were true production players to begin with.