Kingdom of Corrosion
Chapter 557 - 276: Robbery_2

Chapter 557: Chapter 276: Robbery_2

Nightmare: "There’s no need to remind me; you’ve been to my place before."

Maya: "Silence." To avoid pointless arguments.

The password came out quickly. It was an 8-digit mix of upper and lower-case letters, numbers, and various symbols. In a world where an ordinary person needs to manage dozens of passwords, some websites and apps have all sorts of formatting requirements—just to make sure you can’t remember your own passwords. Ironically, many accounts related to this are of no interest to be stolen. Take safe work practices, for instance. Do you really expect a hacker to steal your account to help you clock in and do quizzes?

Following the display on the computer, Maya keyed the password into the keypad. Just like in Nightmare’s safe house, a section of the floor tilted upwards and slid aside, revealing a sloping staircase bathed in a soft light, likely from a sleep lamp.

Nightmare handed a shock bomb to Maya, who nodded. Weapon at the ready, Nightmare slowly descended the staircase. If she were shot, Maya would throw the shock bomb in for a forceful assault.

Fifteen seconds passed, and then gunshots rang out from below, stopping abruptly. Lin Wu and Maya stood quietly on either side of the entrance, waiting. Nightmare’s voice came through the earpiece: "He’s dead."

...

The structure and amenities of Nightmare’s safe house weren’t much different from those at Nightmare Safe house, except for the arrangement of the facilities. Nightmare’s small bed was against the wall, and his body lay on it, obviously caught unaware by the intrusion.

Lin Wu slid down the staircase and immediately, two Wind Stingers rushed to Nightmare’s body and began corpse looting. Turning on the lights, Nightmare looked at the array of weapons and disdainfully said, "Please broaden your horizons."

Lin Wu replied, "The stuff won’t disappear, but the body will." A submachine gun, a handgun, dozens of rounds of ammunition, and night vision goggles.

Nightmare was taken aback by the night vision goggles: "This, this thing is very expensive." It took so many points just to exchange for night vision goggles.

Lin Wu packed the night vision goggles into his backpack: "Only those with small visions deserve to use night vision goggles."

Nightmare couldn’t refute this at the moment, but fortunately she was broad-minded enough not to squabble with Lin Wu, instead turning her attention to Nightmare’s collection. It was clear at a glance that Nightmare’s collection rate of firearms, Skill Books, and Crafting Diagrams was somewhat lower than hers.

Nightmare took the firearms she was missing from the display cabinet and placed them on the pool table. Meanwhile, Maya gathered the bullets at the bar for later distribution of the spoils.

Nightmare efficiently located the basement mechanism. The basement was divided into two rooms: one housed the generator, the other was filled with large quantities of fuel and canned food. Lin Wu visually checked and roughly estimated about forty barrels of fuel and three hundred cans of food. There was a wide variety including canned meat, peas, tuna, meat sauce, and more—the variety was comprehensive.

It wasn’t until then that Lin Wu and Nightmare fully acknowledged Maya’s point that cooperation was more beneficial than confrontation. The difference was the absence of mutual benefits; once there were enough shared interests, the other party would become kind and amiable.

...

Moving is a happy yet arduous task. After quickly dividing up the spoils, the three of them started transporting goods, each carrying large and small bags. Bullets, Skill Books, and Crafting Diagrams were the easy part, usually handled in one or two trips. The tricky part was the variety of firearms; there were over sixty guns in all shapes and sizes, with more than half being large firearms. Then there were the fuel and canned foods, which had them running back and forth nonstop.

What Lin Wu loved and dreaded the most was the Barrett Anti-material Sniper Rifle. Although they were both Barretts, the one from Nightmare weighed a staggering 18 kilograms. Lin Wu complained about this during breaks, but the outcome of the complaint was predictable.

Even if Lin Wu didn’t like Nightmare, he had to admit that she was a very credible partner. She didn’t lie about lacking a rope gun and instead consulted with Maya, who let Nightmare have a bit of a bargain. Eventually, Nightmare exchanged 50 pistol rounds for the rope gun. The rope gun was definitely worth more, and Maya’s concession showed their side’s sincerity in cooperation.

Among the strange and curious cards collected by Nightmare, there was one Death Card that wasn’t part of the collection. It caused instant death upon use—not someone else’s death, but your own. Its one distinctive feature was that after death, no item from your backpack would drop. One could say it was a card exclusively used by fortress operatives, but since Nightmare had already traded for the rope gun and saw Maya draw it, she didn’t have the face to bring it up.

By the time the looting had concluded, it was already three in the morning. After a final check, the three climbed the staircase and left the safe house. Just before the safe house door closed, Nightmare threw an incendiary grenade inside. How much it burnt was left to fate. For Nightmare, the best part wasn’t the resources gained but rather eliminating Nightmare, a competitive rival.

Dirt-poor Nightmare would have to rely on his remaining points to purchase weapons and equipment from the fortress and continue taking on missions. If his points were insufficient or the missions failed, it would be almost certain that he would rank at the bottom in the fortress competition. Even if Nightmare managed to make a lucky comeback, reaching his current height again would be impossible.

Feeling talkative when in high spirits, Nightmare revealed a bit of the secret on the way back, "You all should pay attention to the anniversary event, which is the hardcore event held on the last week of late summer."

Maya asked, "What do you mean by ’pay attention’?"

Nightmare said, "I don’t know how to put it, but we’ve received a task for the anniversary event, and it might be related to your activities. This should be quite normal, but after synthesizing your tasks and ours, I believe this event comes with mandatory participation and real death penalties."

Maya, "So either participate in the anniversary event or leave Hardcore Mode?"

Nightmare, "That’s what I’m guessing."

Maya said, "The fact that they specifically added ’Hardcore Anniversary’ when they announced the event also made me suspicious."

Lin Wu said, "I’m more concerned about whether the car can get through the tunnel. If we can’t drive through the tunnel to reach Lower Right County, how are we going to clear out Blood Meng’s house?"

Maya said, "We can only go on foot." The steps on both sides of the train tracks are too narrow, and there are train obstructions on the tracks. Plus, the zombie density inside the tunnel is very high, and with that Blood Heart thing, we definitely can’t just drive through.

"Oh..."

Maya, well aware of Lin Wu’s character, said, "Only with ample bullets do we stand a chance of holding the Sawmill."

"Got it," Lin Wu was more concerned about how much walking this trip would involve.

Upon hearing this, Nightmare curiously asked, "The Sawmill?" With your level, are you still worried about not being able to hold it?

Maya said, "Yeah, the Seven-Star Siege."

Nightmare asked in surprise, "How did you manage to nurture seven stars?"

Maya didn’t understand, "Are you saying that’s a good thing?"

"Of course, it’s a good thing." Nightmare said, "The points for each zombie during a Seven-Star Siege are double those of a six-star siege, though naturally, the difficulty is also twice as high. But isn’t the whole point of playing the game to get points? Maya, can I stay at the Doomsday Fortress first?"

Lin Wu interjected awkwardly, "That’s a bit..."

Nightmare said, "I’ll use my share of the bullets to help you defend the Sawmill. Think about it, having one more person like me might just be enough to hold the Sawmill."

Lin Wu questioned, "Are our points and yours directly linked?"

Nightmare answered honestly, "For the past half-year, I’ve been focusing on attack and search tasks and haven’t done any defense tasks. Among those is a defensive task to assist players in defending a fortress. Completing the task certainly yields a good number of points, but this task has a feature that allows converting points earned from killing siege zombies into fortress points. Considering the rewards of completing the task, it pales in comparison to assisting with a single six-star defense, let alone seven."

Nightmare eagerly added, "You might not be able to hold it." With defenses above six-stars, there’s a qualitative change, not only are the points much higher than five-stars, but the zombies and mutated zombies are also far more powerful than those at five stars. Not to mention seven stars. And for Nightmare, she was not afraid of death.

Maya, unlike Stone, answered immediately, "Of course, you can." For Shadow, holding the Sawmill equates to victory. Now she was considering, with so many more bullets, could they change their tactical strategy? Maybe they really could hold the Sawmill? The reason why Maya and her team were reluctant to give up the Sawmill was that they were about to complete the eighth research item, which once unlocked, would allow them to go directly for the twelfth research item, the Auto Turret.

The greed of humans is the cause of downfall, but also the drive for progress. Whether it’s good or bad doesn’t matter much to the process; it all depends on the outcome.