Apocalypse Trade Monopoly
Chapter 115: – Drop Point Delta

Chapter 115: – Drop Point Delta

The White Elephant came into view like a dead thing waiting to be robbed.

The logo—three elephants stacked on top of each other like corporate optimism—was cracked straight down the middle. One tusk was missing, the glass entrance doors were shattered, and the storefront was littered with sun-bleached flyers for canned milk and expired rations.

It looked abandoned.

It wasn’t.

Lucas was already halfway out the door before the hummer came to a full stop.

"Standard procedure?" Ava asked, already pulling up her scan overlay.

"Give me two minutes," he said. "No delays."

"Try not to bleed on the produce section," Cassi muttered, leaning over the steering wheel. "Messes with the flavor."

Lucas didn’t respond.

He stepped through the broken doors like he was clocking in for work.

Inside, the air was hot, still, and sharp with the sour-sweet smell of rotted packaging and dried blood. Something had moved in. Recently. A pack, maybe. Or one large thing that moved like five.

Lucas didn’t hesitate.

His boots crunched over old tile as he slipped down the main aisle, ducked under a collapsed freezer unit, and paused at the endcap display.

Then he heard it—clicking claws. Back by the pharmacy section.

A four-legged thing with too many joints scrambled into view, jaws slacked open sideways, tail twitching like an antenna.

Lucas didn’t break stride.

One shot. Center mass. Then another.

The body dropped before the echo finished bouncing off the shelves.

He cleared the next row. Another two of them—smaller, faster.

He dropped one with a clean headshot and elbowed the second hard into a shattered freezer door, then knifed it once through the neck before it even shrieked.

By the time he reached the back storeroom, his coat had fresh cuts, his knuckles were bleeding, and he looked exactly like someone who didn’t think five-on-one was bad odds.

The cache was still there—buried beneath a floor panel marked "Storage A5," wrapped in plastic sheeting.

He opened it.

Inside were two sealed packs of Type-3 energy cores, a set of spare encrypted bracers, and an old-school courier case.

He took them all.

Outside, Ava sat perched on the roof of the hummer, hood up, system running hot.

Her scan wasn’t just wide—it was layered. Now that her system had fully adapted to her new build, the perimeter tracking had depth. She didn’t just see movement—she could tell how fast, how many legs, and what kind of traction it was using.

[ALERT: MULTIPLE INCOMING CONTACTS – ETA: 5:03]

[SIGNATURE: NON-HUMAN, PULSE-BASED TRACKING – HUNTING MODE ENGAGED][PACK BEHAVIOR: CONFIRMED – LIKELY 4-6 UNITS]

[RECOMMENDED ACTION: EVACUATE]

Ava’s jaw tightened. "Cassi."

"Ready for exits," Cassi replied without turning around.

"We’ve got five minutes. Maybe four."

"Of course we do."

She reached up, flicked on the internal lights, and adjusted the rearview. "This better be the good kind of chaos, Bai."

Lucas stepped back into daylight like he’d just gone for snacks.

Blood on his boots, pack slung over his shoulder, face calm as stone.

He was ten feet from the hummer when Ava called out, "Go!"

Cassi didn’t wait.

Lucas’s foot hit the floorboard, the door slammed—

And Cassi stepped on it.

The hummer roared forward, tires spitting gravel and heat, just as something screeched in the distance behind them—shrill, sharp, and close.

"Anything good?" Ava asked, settling back into her seat.

Lucas opened the courier case, revealing three drives wrapped in foam and labeled with military tags.

"I’d say yes," he said. "But depends how fast you can crack them."

"And people say grocery runs are boring," Cassi muttered.

She didn’t ease up on the gas.

The hummer tore across broken asphalt, engine snarling like it had something to prove. Smoke curled behind them, masking whatever pack had been closing in from the store—whatever hadn’t already eaten a bullet or Lucas’s boot.

Inside, it was all motion and quiet concentration.

Ava had the courier case open in her lap, fingers moving fast across the drive interface. Three black data rods, sealed military format, layered in redundant encryption—clearly never meant to be cracked by civilians.

[MIL-GRADE ACCESS NODE DETECTED][STATUS: CORRUPTED FORMAT HEADER – AUTH CODE REDACTED][OVERRIDE PATHWAY AVAILABLE – SYSTEM ENGAGED][DECRYPTING – 12%]

Ava’s eyes flicked sharp lines across the interface. "First one’s sloppy. Masked it like a weather archive. Someone didn’t expect it to make it this far."

Lucas sat across from her, too relaxed for anyone with blood still drying on their collar. He had one arm slung over the backrest, coat folded beside him, shirt rolled to the elbows. Calm. Collected. Zero adrenaline.

He examined the rest of the drop like he was shopping. Like the beast-killing, data-stealing, military-looting part had been the warm-up.

Cassi glanced at him through the mirror and scowled.

"Do you ever stress?"

Lucas didn’t look up. "Not unless it’s cost-efficient."

"Normal people get rattled after a pack encounter."

"I’m not normal," he said mildly, lifting one of the energy cores to eye level. "These are Tier-3, properly sealed. Value’s up thirty percent since the core reset rumor started."

Cassi groaned. "Of course you know the market rate off the top of your head."

"I am the market," he said simply.

Ava didn’t even look up. "Second drive’s cleaner. No dummy files, straight log system. Looks like early sync testing—maybe tied to Shifter bloodlines. The tags were rewritten, though. These weren’t supposed to be in the same crate."

Lucas tapped one of the spare encrypted bracers. "Packaging was rushed. Whoever moved it was told to compress and hide. Makes me think we’re missing a fourth."

"You’re enjoying this," Cassi muttered, eyes still on the road, hands white-knuckled on the wheel.

"I enjoy order," Lucas said. "And this is puzzle-shaped chaos. That’s my version of a nap."

Cassi scoffed. "Great. So while I’m dodging live fire and burnout tires, you two are what? Solving war crimes and flirting through espionage?"

Ava cracked a smile. "We multitask."

"Kill me," Cassi muttered.

Lucas leaned forward slightly, eyes still on the last item in the case—a silver-black cylinder, unlabeled. He turned it over once in his hands.

"Not standard military," he murmured. "This wasn’t part of the scheduled drop."

Ava finally glanced at him. "You saying someone snuck it in?"

Lucas nodded. "Or someone knew I’d get here first."

Cassi’s grip tightened.

"Someone like who?" she asked.

Lucas didn’t answer.

Search the lightnovelworld.cc website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.