Of course they accepted.
Bai Shu explained the new mission to them. "M City has been attacked by quite a few packs of mutant animals lately. They're overrunning the surrounding area, and the base's perimeter walls are close to giving way, so they sent Headquarters a distress call."
"There's also a secondary mission: help the M City base capture mutant sheep and other animals. Remember, they need to be captured alive. Prioritize young animals, and help the base successfully raise them in captivity."
Neither mission was exactly simple, and both presented some challenges.
The first was the long journey. There was no telling what might happen along the way. The world outside was still buried in ice and snow, and with total blackout day still ongoing, dangers lurked everywhere.
Bai Shu checked the map. "Even before the apocalypse, it was a seventeen- or eighteen-hour drive."
Now, in the apocalyptic era, road conditions were unpredictable. Mutated plants or mutant animals damaged the highways every so often, which made things tricky.
They couldn't fly there directly in the Airship.
Several more massive geomagnetic storms had struck recently, making signals unstable too.
For safety's sake, flying was still out of the question.
Given the current conditions, the drive would probably take two or three days.
The second challenge was that they had no idea what horrors they might encounter along the way.
Any of the various creatures born from the darkness that they had seen over the past few days could appear. It wasn't just mutant animals and insects. They might even encounter a [Withered-Branch Old Witch], a mutant monster that had appeared recently.
She was similar to a Mutant Beauty Tree, but looked more like a hunched old witch. She moved fast and attacked by disguising herself as a dead tree. Once