Mutant Tribe!

Before leaving Linghu Wetland Park, Chu Guang first took Night Ten to the Mutated Leech nest near the parking lot.

"That's where we found those mushrooms," Night Ten said, pointing at a damaged concrete pipe not far ahead.

"Good thing you didn't go in."

Chu Guang patted Night Ten's shoulder.

"Let's go."

"That's not our target today."

He'd heard that leeches could be used in medicine, but he didn't know about mutated leeches.

The two carefully bypassed the Mutated Leech nest, avoiding the dense vegetation and concrete ruins, trying to stay in the sunlight.

After walking east for a while, Night Ten, who was following Chu Guang, couldn't help but ask, looking at the elevated highway bridge and residential buildings ahead.

"Aren't we going hunting?"

"Yes."

"Then why are we getting further from the forest?"

"The forest is up ahead."

"?"

Chu Guang didn't explain further. He silently took the Pipe Rifle off his back, chambered a round, and his aura changed.

Not far away was a broken elevated highway bridge.

On the moss-covered concrete support pillars, the passage of time was hidden by the shadows of green plants.

Rats as big as washbasins licked the muddy water in the stone pits of the gutters. Upon discovering the two unexpected intruders, they quickly scurried into the grass on the side.

Night Ten looked up, his pupils slightly dilated, reflecting a touch of shock.

Behind the broken elevated bridge were towering buildings covered in vines and moss. Thick roots had broken through the cracked concrete ground, and tree trunks rose from the center of the road, overturning cars and bus stops that had long turned into scrap metal.

In this green hell, life thrived, yet it also concealed a killing intent that could devour everything.

The world in his eyes was too shocking, every frame like a post-apocalyptic work of art, so much so that Night Ten even forgot that this was the "game world."

And at this moment, he finally understood the meaning of Chu Guang's words.

This was the real forest...

"We need to be careful from here on."

Chu Guang said, while opening the safety on his Pipe Rifle, exploring forward step by step.

Although this was only considered the far northern suburbs of Clearwater City, nowhere near the core urban area, they still couldn't let their guard down.

High-rise residences, sewers, vertical gardens, parking lots, drone hives, CNC planting towers, maglev stations, and behind every window...

All man-made marvels, after being abandoned by civilization, had become natural greenhouses and nurseries.

After the nuclear war, there was indeed a long Cold Winter on this land, but it only lasted for less than half a century.

The power of nature reversed everything.

The first to fall were the high-rise buildings. Moss began along the shaded sides, eroding upwards, eventually covering their entire bodies.

The non-high-rise buildings were not spared either.

In the years of human decline, just a few torrential downpours and a muggy summer were enough to turn this place into a paradise for the wild growth of fungi and angiosperms.

They provided abundant food for wild animals.

And after the city's drainage system collapsed, the freshwater resources in the urban area were even richer than those in the nearby Ling Lake.

Wild animals and out-of-control poultry began to migrate from forests, lake sides, and farms to the more comfortable urban environment, and under the triple action of radioactive substances, genetic weapons, and time, they evolved into fierce and bloodthirsty Mutants.

They were collectively referred to as Mutants!

Of course...

The dangers here were far more than that.

Walking carefully along Street 76 for a while, the surroundings were quiet. Just as Night Ten was wondering where the Mutants had gone, Chu Guang's voice came from beside him.

"Something's up."

In front of a scrapped car, Chu Guang suddenly stopped.

Night Ten immediately snapped back to attention and stopped as well, nervously looking around, but saw nothing.

"What happened?"

Chu Guang's expression was serious.

"There are traces of survivor activity."

"Other survivors?!" Night Ten was startled, lowering his voice like Chu Guang, but unable to hide the excitement in his tone. "Are they natives of the Wasteland?"

He was finally going to meet other NPCs!

He had been waiting for this moment for a long time!

Chu Guang glanced at him, knowing what he was thinking.

"You don't need to be so excited. This isn't something to be happy about."

"Why?"

"Because in a place like this, strangers are more dangerous than Mutants."

Without explaining further, Chu Guang squatted down and found a string of aluminum cans tied together with wire behind a scrapped car wheel.

The aluminum cans were ripped open, and from the broken edges, it looked like something had exploded. He could still faintly smell the lingering odor of rotten eggs.

"Gunpowder with excessive sulfur, thumbtacks, and iron scraps..."

Chu Guang's brow furrowed.

Mutants?

Or Marauders?

Ordinary Survivors wouldn't deploy Tripwire Mines near their settlements.

These things were hard to injure Mutants with their keen sense of smell. In other words, they were meant for humans.

Judging by the residual smell, the explosion must have happened recently, at most five hours ago, or even less.

Chu Guang turned his head and asked.

"When you came out from underground, did you hear an explosion from the east?"

Night Ten shook his head nervously.

"No."

"Wait for me here."

Looking at Chu Guang, who had put down the aluminum cans and stood up, Night Ten asked nervously.

"What are you going to do?"

"Scout the situation ahead."

"I can go with you—"

"You, stay here."

Night Ten wanted to insist, but meeting Chu Guang's gaze, the words on the tip of his tongue were choked back. He finally nodded slowly.

The pressure from the Authority Dog made him feel that this man in front of him wasn't messing around. He might really be kicked offline...

He instructed Night Ten to hide beside the abandoned car.

Chu Guang put away his gun, pulled out the sharpened Steel Pipe from his back, and quickly slipped into the building on the side of the street, keeping low.

Although he had indeed planned to use this Player as bait when they came out, the situation was different now.

The people on the other side were other Survivors, and very likely Marauders or a Mutant Tribe. Bait had lost its meaning and would instead alert the enemy.

Chu Guang's expression was solemn, and he tightened his grip on the Steel Pipe.

The straight-line distance from here to Linghu Wetland Park was at most 1 kilometer. It was too close to Shelter 404!

Especially now that the Players were engaged in large-scale production, even if some of the smoke and noise were blocked by plants and concrete barriers, over time, they would eventually be discovered by the people here.

Leaving these dangers behind was always a hidden threat.

Chu Guang was prepared to kill.

Once he judged that the other party might pose a threat, he would not hesitate to strike first.

The ten-story building along the street had a very narrow fire escape, and the cramped space was covered in moss.

But fortunately, there were no particularly dangerous Mutants here.

Around the fifth floor, there were a few plump Mutated Rats. Perhaps thinking they had "strength in numbers," they bared their teeth at Chu Guang, not knowing their place.

If he had turned his back and run, they would have swarmed him, but this uninvited guest wasn't scared at all, which made the inherently timid creatures not dare to act rashly. They only dared to make tentative lunges and shriek, baring their teeth.

He was already accustomed to this.

Without a word, Chu Guang thrust his pipe forward, stabbing at the nearest Mutated Rat, killing one instantly.

Seeing how fierce this guy was, the other rats scattered like birds and beasts, scurrying into the floor entrance and disappearing into the shadows.

"Looks like it's not a rat's nest."

"There should only be about ten or twenty of them..."

Any more, and these guys would be difficult to deal with.

Swarming Mutated Rat packs were tricky even for fully armed mercenaries, let alone himself with only a Pipe Rifle.

Chu Guang breathed a sigh of relief, shook the pointed Steel Pipe, and flicked off the dead fat rat and the bloodstains.

He went straight to the top floor, the tenth floor.

Chu Guang used the Steel Pipe in his hand as a crowbar, pried open the rusted door panel, and entered the rooftop.

The wind on the rooftop was strong.

He walked over to the rusted water tank and looked towards the residential area to the east. What he saw confirmed his suspicion.

In the open space between the concrete buildings stood a camp made of wood. Rags and construction debris blocked the view from the outside.

Survivor settlements in the wasteland are generally divided into two types: one lives directly in pre-war buildings that haven't collapsed, and the other sets up camp in ruins or open spaces, depending on the surrounding situation.

Marauders living in urban areas usually reside in buildings and rarely build such primitive houses and fortifications.

Only Mutants, with an average height of two meters and weighing over 300 pounds, would build these wooden shacks when there are perfectly good houses available.

The wooden stakes at the entrance of the camp were sharpened like a beast's fangs, with several severed limbs and corpses haphazardly impaled on them. Dried blood stained the ground.

They eat everything.

Not just fungi, plant fruits, but even the flesh of mutated flies, rats, and cockroaches.

Of course, what they love to eat most is their former kind—

Two-legged humans.

Searching along both sides of the street, Chu Guang indeed spotted a Mutant Sentinel carrying a Metal Longbow on the rooftop of a street-facing shop building at the end of Street 76.

Their green skin was very similar to orcs in fantasy movies, and in fact, they were as strong, savage, crude, and bloodthirsty as orcs.

Their two-meter height and bulging muscles were covered in armor pieced together from metal scraps. An advertisement sign serving as a breastplate even read "Second one half price."

The two outwardly flared steel bars embedded on their shoulders were directly taken from bicycle handlebars—this thing is surprisingly effective against slashing and blunt force damage, capable of jamming chainsaws or axes.

It was quite cyberpunk.

If Chu Guang and Night Ten had continued forward just now, they would have encountered an ambush by that Mutant Sentinel at the intersection at most!

A sense of lingering fear welled up in his heart.

Chu Guang's Adam's apple bobbed slightly. He shifted his gaze and continued to look at the Mutant camp within the eastern residential area.

Due to too many obstructions, he couldn't see how many people were inside, but he could roughly estimate the number of Mutants to be between twenty and thirty based on the scale of the camp and his experience.

"Small Mutant settlement..."

Chu Guang's expression gradually became serious.

These guys were not to be trifled with!

Almost at the same moment, a light blue System pop-up appeared in his field of vision.

[Quest: Annihilate the Mutant Tribe located on Street 76
Type: Side Quest
Reward: 200 Reward Points
]

Wait—

He could trigger quests outside the Shelter?!

Chu Guang was startled at first, then immediately tried to summon the System, but there was no response.

The light blue quest pop-up dissipated as if it had never appeared.

It seemed correct that the System could only be opened near the Shelter, but quests could be triggered anywhere outside the Shelter?

However...

These two hundred Reward Points were quite impressive.

Without hesitation.

Chu Guang immediately put away his weapon, turned around, and went downstairs, quickly leaving the area with a bewildered Night Ten.

That was 200 points in rewards!

The Side Quest to summon a hundred Players only gave 100 points, but this reward gave 200. It was clear that this quest wouldn't be easy to complete.

There might be a huge trap hidden inside!

Chu Guang wasn't stupid.

He wouldn't fall for such an obvious trick.

"Manager, what did you see?" Night Ten, panting and resting with his hands on his knees, couldn't help but ask as Chu Guang finally stopped.

Chu Guang, who had stopped to rest, casually replied.

"It's a Mutant camp."

"Then we... just leave like this?"

"Otherwise? Fight them? Get thrown into a boiling pot if we lose?" Chu Guang glanced at him. "Think with your brain, we only have one gun."

And only one person could even use it.

Night Ten closed his mouth and said nothing more.

His mind hadn't processed it earlier, only thinking of Mutants as NPCs in this game. Now, hearing the Manager say this, these Mutants must be a hostile force?

And they eat people...

Silently noting this information, Night Ten planned to share it with the other players when he returned.

"Provoking those beasts now isn't a good idea. We need more thorough preparation. We should focus our strength to take them out and be done with it once and for all."

Chu Guang, who had walked further away, cursed under his breath.

"What goddamn bad luck... The Mutant Tribe's camp is actually on Street 76, directly opposite the east gate of the park."

"No matter what, we have to be careful!"

Their planned hunting route had to be changed!

Chu Guang led Night Ten around Street 76 and walked north along the elevated expressway bridge for about a mile, where they discovered an abandoned construction site.

The construction site was large, appearing to be a building project that had just started. One building had reached seventeen or eighteen floors, while the other large pits were likely foundations being dug.

Most of the construction machinery was already废弃, and a crane had even crashed onto the unfinished building, forming a ramp.

It was clear that the quality of this building was quite good.

Even the crane had been blown over by the shockwave of the nuclear blast, yet the concrete structure only had a gap smashed into it, without even damaging the main structure.

The steel piled up at the construction site had rusted, and the cement in bags had hydrated and deteriorated, making it unusable.

However, to their pleasant surprise, Chu Guang discovered a large amount of unused greenish-gray pebbles here!

Chu Guang recognized it at a glance. This stuff was limestone, and if he remembered correctly, its main component was calcium carbonate, which could be used as a raw material for burn cement.

"This is good stuff!"

Chu Guang was secretly delighted. He took out his map and made a mark on it.

Refining all this limestone into cement wouldn't be a problem for building two buildings.

As long as Old Bai unlocked the technology for burning silicate cement, they wouldn't have to worry about the raw materials for cement for a long time to come!

Thank you to "Kakarot from the Future" for the Alliance Leader reward!! The new book is still quite young, please support with votes~~~ Also, any students who haven't invested yet can invest a wave. Trust me, it's a stable bet!