Two enormous two-headed camels, each over three meters tall, slowly approached from the north, pulling a little train painted yellow and blue.
The bells tied to the camels chimed, "Jingle, jingle."
Their echoes drifted through Four Mountains.
Flags were painted on the little train—the emblem of Colossus City.
The three of them were instantly dumbfounded.
Thin Dog: "What kind of creature is that?"
Demon Fox: "What kind of pattern is that?"
Lin Tang raised his crowbar. "I don't know what kind of mutant that is, and I don't know what those patterns represent. I only know that I'm going to go all out—whoa whoa whoa!"
The other two hurriedly covered Lin Tang's mouth.
"Damn it, don't get us killed! We don't even know if they're enemies or friends, and you already want to fight? This cutscene looks like it has a ton of information. We need to think before we act. Let's first see what the people on that little train are doing. They might be plot characters meant to trigger the next part of the story."
Demon Fox added, "And I don't think we can beat them."
Lin Tang pursed his lips. "But that little train looks like it has a lot of supplies."
Thin Dog said, "A lot of supplies? Then it's even less likely that we can touch it right now! When the designers made this game, they definitely wouldn't let us cheat our way through the early game so ridiculously. If we got a whole cartload of supplies right away, wouldn't we be able to steamroll everything afterward? So this is obviously a story cutscene. Let's follow it and take a look. Maybe we can get a quest from an NPC or something."
"That makes sense."
The three moved closer.
The two camels stopped, then folded their front knees and knelt on the ground.
Boom—
The little train behind them also came to a stop.
The yellow door of the first carriage opened, and two well-dressed Asians stepped out. They did not look like wastelanders at all.
One man and one woman called out to the three of them.
"This is the Colossus City Caravan, a symbol of integrity in the wasteland. Do you have anything you would like to trade with our caravan? As long as your goods have value, you can exchange them for anything you want from our train!"
The three players looked at one another.
Thin Dog said, "Uh, it seems like they're talking to us? But why can't I understand them?"
Demon Fox said, "Based on my extensive linguistic knowledge, what they're speaking doesn't belong to any domestic, Japanese, Korean, or Western language."
Lin Tang said, "Nice!"
Demon Fox said, "But they don't seem hostile. Lin Tang, go over and see if it's dangerous."
Lin Tang said, "??? Why me?"
"Because you have the least health, and you're injured. It wouldn't be much of a loss if you died."
"I'm furious and shaking! When will the wounded ever be allowed to stand up?!"
Although Lin Tang said that, he still walked over and tried to talk to the people who had stepped off the little train.
But after struggling for quite a while, neither side managed to communicate successfully.
Lin Tang spread his hands at his two teammates behind him. "Obviously. We don't speak the same language. This must be a mistake by the designers. We'll report this bug to Sentinel later."
Just as he was about to leave, the man from the little train grabbed his arm.
He pointed at the two hyena corpses Demon Fox and Thin Dog were carrying, then pointed at the little train behind him.
Clang!
The upper portions of the last two train cars flipped open like lids, revealing neatly stacked goods inside.
Food, clothes, materials.
Lin Tang immediately understood.
"Thin Dog! Demon Fox! Bring the prey over! This should be a merchant in the game! They want to trade the goods they brought for ours!"
The moment the cargo compartments opened, the other two had roughly guessed as much.
A brief exchange of glances was enough for them to reach an agreement.
"We can hunt more prey in the mountains, but we might not run into a caravan often. This could be a tutorial event in the game, teaching us how to trade with caravans."
"Let's go! Let's see what we can get!"
The two carried the Mutated Hyenas over. The man and woman from the caravan nodded and gestured for them to place the prey on the scale.
After weighing them, the woman nodded.
She led the three of them to the last two train cars and gestured for them to choose.
Rice, beans, bread, salt, seasonings, jam, clothes in various sizes, sexy lingerie. An entire carriage was packed full.
Demon Fox immediately said, "No need to look at this stuff. I secretly checked on the Base Lord this morning, and he has plenty of beans. We can just go back and ask him for food. Regular quests give food too. As long as we don't starve, it's fine. We can eat for taste and texture in real life. We can't waste this opportunity."
The other two nodded in agreement.
In a game, food was food!
Close your eyes, pour boiled beans into your mouth, and it became premium caviar!
Demon Fox's gaze traveled down the carriage and landed on the shelves in the unopened third-to-last train car, where a stack of Three-Fan Graphics Cards sat.
"Electronic components!"
He hurriedly pointed at the graphics cards inside and said to the woman, "We want those! Those ones!"
They were quest items!
There was no way they could find something like that in the wilderness.
However, the woman shook her head and gestured that they could not be exchanged.
Demon Fox said, "Why not? We can't trade two huge hyenas for a few lousy graphics cards? Fresh dog meat would sell for thirty yuan a pound on the market. The two of them weigh over a hundred pounds combined, so that's three thousand yuan, right? Three thousand yuan could buy me ten pounds of secondhand mining cards! Isn't that a rip-off?"
Yet the woman still waved her hand and indicated that they could only trade for things in the last two carriages.
"Looks like good electronic components are valuable even in the wasteland."
Thin Dog said this.
The three of them could now only stare at the electronic components needed to complete their quest, sitting in the third-to-last cargo compartment where they could not reach them.
Lin Tang gripped his Wolf Tooth Club. "Brothers, have you played that city game where you ride around causing destruction? The fastest way to get weapons and supplies early on is called... Zero-cost purchase.
"I don't think these two have much combat power. We ambush them, take control of them, then make them operate the camels and haul this entire little train full of supplies back to our base. Whatever the lord needs, he can take directly from the train! We'll max out our contribution points in one go!"
The other two were slightly tempted, but before they could speak—
Four green-skinned Raiders carrying clubs charged out of the Raider Camp to the east.
"Awooo!"
Like four muscle tanks, they charged straight at the food carriage.
The Raider Camp also began to stir.
The three immediately tightened their grips on their weapons. They would have to retreat if even two Raiders walked side by side. Four Raiders were absolutely beyond what they could handle right now.
Facing the charge of four green-skinned Big Muscle Men, the two caravan members remained completely calm.
The man snapped his fingers.
Snap—
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Four gunshots rang out from the carriage. Blood burst from the heads of all four Raiders, and they fell to the ground in unison.
Thud—
The next second, the commotion in the Raider Camp abruptly stopped. From afar, the Raiders inside all seemed to become much more civilized.
The woman still wore a smile as she gestured for the three to choose their items and not let themselves be disturbed.
Gulp—
Thin Dog swallowed. "Lin Tang, what was that plan you mentioned just now?"
Lin Tang looked at the Raiders' powerful bodies, then at his own thin frame.
"I said... we should view the world through the lens of sustainable development. It wasn't about shooting anyone in the head or anything. I mainly wanted to build a good relationship with the caravan. Let's hurry up and pick something!"
The three turned their attention to the last carriage, where all kinds of miscellaneous junk had been piled up.
A Silicone Doll that could make sounds, a bag of well-preserved sealed plastic bags, a box of glass marbles, and a tetanus knife.
It all looked like trash someone had picked up.
"This!"
Demon Fox pulled out a box of broken, rusted circuit boards and ruined batteries leaking fluid.
Clearly, these things would be difficult to repair. Who knew how many years they had endured? In any case, they were definitely incomparable to the graphics cards displayed in that tightly sealed carriage.
After taking one look, the woman directly handed the box of broken materials to Demon Fox, then closed the carriage.
The two boarded the train. The camels stood up and pulled the little train onward to the west.
Jingle, jingle—
The bells began ringing again.
Thin Dog asked, "Demon Fox, do you think... we can use this stuff to turn in the quest to the lord? It all looks broken."
Demon Fox said, "I'm gambling too. Gambling that these materials can still be used. If I lose, we'll have wasted two prey animals. But if I win, this box of stuff will provide all the electronic components needed for the Clones of the three of us!"
"And no matter whether we win or lose, we've already profited."
Demon Fox looked toward the four Raider corpses that had been shot in the head by the caravan.
Two regular chapters today, five thousand words.
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