Chapter 9
The missing team.
With the woven plastic sack slung over his shoulder, Lu Li followed Jun Shutong.
After returning to the camp with a scare but no mishaps, Lu Li remembered another serious problem.
It suddenly dawned on him that collecting all these supplements was pointless. What he needed most right now was food and water, and supplements were no substitute for meals.
Still, knowing he could feed them to Feebas made Lu Li feel a little better.
Jun Shutong realized this too. Feeling that she owed Lu Li, she said somewhat apologetically, "You can ask the others later and trade for some necessities."
"If that doesn't work, you can trade with me for some food."
"No need for now. The camp provides two meals a day." Lu Li waved a hand, pretending not to care.
He wanted to feed these supplements to Feebas, so of course he wasn't going to trade them away.
After putting the supplements he had collected back in his room, Lu Li carried the sack up to the second floor again. This time, he headed straight into the skincare shop closest to the Emergency Exit, collecting products specifically for whitening skin, treating acne, and fading scars.
After his two rounds of shopping for free, Lu Li got to work.
First, he mixed fish food with some supplements and fed it to Feebas. Once he was certain Feebas wouldn't suddenly attack him, Lu Li scooped the Pokémon out of the tank.
Feebas wasn't very big, only about ten centimeters long.
Lu Li remembered that a normal Feebas could grow to 0.6 meters. Did that mean the one in front of him was still a juvenile?
Of course, it was also possible that this little fellow had been hungry for so long that its body had shrunk.
After Lu Li lifted Feebas out and set it on the cabinet, it lay flat, staring straight at him with vacant eyes, neither resisting nor struggling.
Lu Li even suspected that it wouldn't resist if he took a kitchen knife and hacked at it a couple of times.
Not caring whether the skincare products would actually work on Feebas, Lu Li picked them up and gave it a full-body treatment.
Pokémon had incredible vitality. Even without water, they could stubbornly cling to life.
Most importantly, Feebas didn't resist.
"You really don't care whether you live or die, huh?" Lu Li lightly tapped Feebas on the head, then put it back in the tank.
He wasn't sure whether he was imagining it, but after the full-body treatment, Feebas really did seem much better-looking. At least it didn't look as dirty as before.
"I hope I'm not imagining things. More importantly, I hope you don't turn out to be an ungrateful little fish," Lu Li murmured.
When lunchtime came, the others trickled back to the camp.
But they also received some bad news.
Of the seven teams, only six had returned.
Fatty Lei, sitting across from Lu Li, couldn't help muttering, "Yellow Hair's team still isn't back. You don't think something happened to them, do you?"
Fatty Lei's concern wasn't unfounded. After all, the mall was only so big. If they hadn't returned by mealtime, something must have happened.
Surely they couldn't have forgotten it was time to eat?
This was the apocalypse, after all. The camp had just established a rule of two meals a day. Miss one, and they would have to go hungry for an entire day.
Jun Shutong asked, "Little Lei, do you know which floor Yellow Hair and the others went to?"
Fatty Lei said, "I don't think they went downstairs. I heard Yellow Hair say they were going to search the arcade for any supplies that might have been missed."
Everyone grew even more puzzled at that. The sixth floor had already been checked once, and aside from the Aquarium, practically everywhere else was safe.
Jun Shutong asked in bewilderment, "Are you sure they went to the arcade and not the Aquarium?"
The middle-aged man beside Fatty Lei said indifferently, "Yellow Hair isn't stupid. He doesn't even dare go downstairs. How could he possibly dare go to the Aquarium?"
"Uncle Li's right. Yellow Hair really values his life. He'd never go anywhere that dangerous," Fatty Lei agreed wholeheartedly.
Yellow Hair was one of those people who firmly believed the Federation would send someone to rescue them. People like that always took the view that every extra day they could lie low was a day gained. Why would they go looking for supplies somewhere dangerous?
After a moment of silence, Jun Shutong slowly stood up. "Let's leave it at that for now. I'll go take a look after lunch."
Lu Li volunteered too. "I'll go with you. With two of us, we can watch each other's backs."
Jun Shutong was a decent person. When Mime Jr. had frightened them into fleeing, she had deliberately slowed down to cover his retreat. Lu Li hadn't forgotten that kindness.
Jun Shutong gave Lu Li a grateful look and didn't refuse.
Just as Lu Li had said, two people were safer than one.
After lunch and a half-hour rest, the two headed to the arcade together.
The arcade's exterior glass had been tightly sealed, letting in no daylight at all. The entire place was so dark they couldn't see their hands in front of their faces.
With flashlights in hand, they carefully searched the arcade. Wherever the beams swept, they found signs of rummaging and disorder. Several patches of blood, long since dried and blackened, were scattered across the floor.
Jun Shutong explained beside him, "These should be from three days ago. They aren't fresh."
"A Magical Beast killed people here?" Lu Li asked in surprise.
Jun Shutong nodded.
"Apparently, it was a steel monster that looked like a triceratops but could walk upright. It suddenly appeared in the arcade and attacked everyone here indiscriminately."
"But it didn't seem to eat people. The casualties happened because it charged around and rammed into people, killing quite a few."
As she spoke, Jun Shutong pointed at a completely wrecked coin machine nearby. "That monster ate all the arcade tokens here, then smashed through the wall and left."
"A triceratops... a steel monster that walks upright and eats metal." Lu Li had a pretty good idea of which Magical Beast Jun Shutong meant.
Aggron, a monster in the truest sense.
Its category was literally a large monster Pokémon.
The two searched the arcade thoroughly. Not only did they find no trace of Yellow Hair and his team, they didn't even find a single body.
Jun Shutong frowned as she considered the situation. "Could Yellow Hair and the others have changed their plans at the last minute and gone somewhere else?"
Normally, even if Yellow Hair and his team had fallen victim to a carnivorous Magical Beast, there should at least have been some blood or other traces left on the floor.
Yet there were no fresh signs of damage in the arcade, nor any clues such as bloodstains.
"Hm?"
Lu Li suddenly stopped.
Lu Li suddenly stopped. His flashlight beam swept across a claw machine. Lu Li's pupils abruptly contracted, and he immediately moved the flashlight away as though nothing had happened.
"Since there aren't any clues, why don't we leave for now?" There was a note of urgency, even fear, in Lu Li's voice.
Jun Shutong, who had still been considering where Yellow Hair and his team might have gone, noticed that something was wrong with Lu Li's expression.
Drawing on her professional instincts as a Law Enforcer, Jun Shutong asked no questions and readily played along. "Then let's go check somewhere else first."