Kingdom of Corrosion
Chapter 747 - 349 Angel’s Alliance_2

Chapter 747: Chapter 349 Angel’s Alliance_2

That night at Torrent Base, Snow Egg demanded Alliance arbitration over a bitter grievance. Most of the base supported Snow Egg, and faced with pressure, BC Base apologized to Snow Egg and Little Knife.

The boss of Torrent Base confided in Snow Egg privately, saying his biggest mistake was providing the base with power. At first, everyone was grateful to Torrent for the light, but then they began to treat Torrent Base as their own home. Some people played cards all night long within Torrent Base, much to the irritation of its residents.

Owing to its infrastructure skills, Snow Egg’s base was also one that had an endless supply of resources. The boss of Torrent said either don’t tell anyone you have such skills, or from the start, refuse everyone—don’t lend vehicles, building materials, bullets, nothing. Otherwise, you have to accept that people will take advantage of your facilities and sheer away benefits like sheep shearing. Otherwise, incidents like tonight’s arbitration will become more frequent.

In the end, the boss of Torrent asked Snow Egg a question. After revealing his feelings and speaking up for Snow Egg at the arbitration, if he asked to borrow a vehicle from Snow Egg for a day, would she lend it? Seeing Snow Egg at a loss for words, the boss of Torrent said earnestly, "For many people, it’s not easy to say no."

The next day, Snow Egg contacted the boss of Torrent to inquire about the surroundings. The boss told Snow Egg that if you follow the tunnel road towards Fantasy City for 20 kilometers, there is a large farm called Plains Great Farm. Within it is a system-recommended small base: Farmstead Courtyard, which was once a part of Torrent.

The biggest drawback of Farmstead Courtyard is that it’s surrounded by fields without any forests, making it hard to obtain building materials. Another downside is the lack of alternative bases nearby, so if a zombie siege occurs, you can only brace to withstand it or abandon the base. Once the base is abandoned, to take it over again, you must eliminate all zombies within the base range.

Besides that, it’s a pretty decent base.

The following day, Snow Egg and Little Knife left the Angel’s Alliance, and the boss of Torrent wasn’t sure if they had gone to the Farmstead Courtyard.

Stone asked the boss of Torrent: "Do you have any suitable employees to recommend?"

The other replied: "Everyone in the Alliance isn’t bad, it’s just that private interests and differing viewpoints lead to conflicts. So hiring anyone isn’t a bad choice."

Stone asked: "A good choice, then?"

The other replied: "Only the brothers who have walked the path with you are good choices."

"This dumbass speaks like he’s more pretentious than me," Stone rolled up his sleeves, turned the car around, "but I have to admit he makes sense."

Would it kill not to offer a way out?

Lin Wu knew Stone’s temperament very well. If Snow Egg and Little Knife were doing okay there, Stone might not have extended an invitation to come home. But upon hearing that old brothers who had followed him for over a year were suffering outside, his thoughts began to waver, so he laid the groundwork for a way out, to avoid an awkward situation later.

Lin Wu remembered the days at the hilltop church, where Shadow, the leader, had placed a sign at the entrance, clearly indicating the base was closed to visitors. Even if someone came knocking, the reception was extremely brusque. Shadow’s partners weren’t the neighboring players, but rather Wanderer and Invincible, far away but equally strong allies. In the days that followed, Shadow profited handsomely from trading with both.

...

Following the directions given by the boss of Torrent, the jeep drove down the main road towards Fantasy City for about 30 kilometers and reached the Plains Great Farm that the boss had described. The terrain was correct, but the fields were now overgrown with wild grass.

Every few kilometers there was a farmhouse where the owners used to live, managing the surrounding land. After parking and searching with binoculars for a while, they could not find any safe farmhouse. Lin Wu launched Little Fight; it ascended and searched the area with no success, then continued to climb to three thousand meters to cruise and take in the entire Plains Great Farm.

Lin Meng leaned over to look at Lin Wu’s wrist computer, helping to search for the safe zone, but Little Fight’s scouting ability could not match that of a reconnaissance drone, and the returned images were also not clear. Lin Meng patted Lin Wu on the shoulder, "Lower, lower."

Lin Wu reduced the cruising altitude, Lin Meng: "Lower, lower."

Lin Wu asked, "Are you teaching me how to do my job?"

Lin Meng looked at Lin Wu with a smile and raised a finger, "Just a little bit lower will be good."

Lin Wu glared at her, lowered the cruising altitude again, and began searching each plot of land, with Lin Meng watching intently without blinking. Indeed, Lin Meng couldn’t see as clearly as Lin Wu, but Lin Wu didn’t explain. He looked at Stone and shook his head, indicating that he hadn’t found a base safe zone in the dozens of farmhouses on the Plains Great Farm.

Stone gestured, indicating that since Lin Meng was so dedicated, they should allow her to watch a bit longer. Lin Wu snorted in disdain, and Stone snorted back at him. While the two were glaring at each other, Lin Meng asked, "Is that a truck?"

Lin Wu lowered Little Fight’s altitude, and this time the view was very clear, "Correct, it’s our armored truck. About seven kilometers away, turn right at the next intersection."

Stone leaned over and asked, "Any discoveries around the truck?"

"Anyway, I didn’t see a base."

Stone said, "The Plains Great Farm is too vast, even Torrent Boss couldn’t specify the exact location of the base, and the information Little Knife and the others received was roughly the same. They could only drive around looking for the farm base recommended by the system until the truck ran out of fuel."

Lin Meng added, "So they walked, picked a spot to camp or set up a temporary base. After getting fuel the next day, they continued driving forward."

Stone calculated the time, "They’ve been gone from Angel’s Alliance for about a week. Surely they haven’t been wandering around here for a whole week, have they? Can Little Fight see any people?"

"Of course, she can, but we’ll need to determine the general direction before searching at low altitude."

Stone, "Let’s go over there and take a look."

The three of them got into the vehicle, turned right at the next intersection, drove for about ten kilometers, and found that armored truck. Little Fight took to the skies once more, and Lin Wu searched with the truck as the center but still found nothing. It was then that Lin Wu couldn’t help but come to a pessimistic conclusion, "They must be dead. If they were alive, they wouldn’t abandon their transportation."

Stone deeply agreed, and couldn’t help but sigh deeply, "Ah."

Lin Meng asked, "Why would they just die like that?"

Stone explained, "Snow Egg has an oil-producing skill. If the issue were the car running out of gas, they would have camped nearby, or even lived inside the truck. There’s no need to abandon this armored vehicle. Since there are no zombies around, one possibility is they starved to death. Another is that after the truck ran out of fuel, they planned to take over a nearby farmstead and were unable to beat the zombies there. Yet another possibility is that their destination was nearby, the farmstead recommended by the system, where the zombies were too powerful for them and they died."

Lin Meng asked, "Is it possible that they found a vehicle that wasn’t so fuel-hungry?" Her optimistic nature made her automatically think of the brighter side.

"That is possible," Stone said, considering the idea of ditching the fuel-guzzling big truck for a smaller car. "Let’s keep looking down the road for a while longer; we can’t delay too much time as we have a lot of things to do."

...

After driving the jeep for another 20 kilometers, from the area near the second river to the vicinity of the third river, the jeep stopped on a bridge facing a three-way intersection. Lin Wu released Little Fight once more, and as Little Fight ascended, Lin Wu received information, "Two kilometers straight ahead, there’s a bar by the road, occupied by players as a base. No cars or people in sight."

It was a place to provide a little entertainment for staff working at the nearby farmsteads. Across the bar was a gas station; neither building was a system-recommended base, making the safe zone rather small.

The jeep parked near the gas station, with Lin Wu taking an assault rifle and slinging it in front of him, imitating Maya with one hand on the rifle, ready to aim and fire at any moment. They spread out and circled half of the bar’s base safe zone when Stone spoke through the earpiece, "There are no crops planted."

Lin Wu said, "Little Fight can’t perform thermal scanning on the base, but no people have been found within a one-kilometer radius of the base, nor any water sources. The nearest water source is two kilometers away; this place isn’t suitable for a temporary base. However, they have fuel and can drive to fetch water."

Stone suggested, "Maybe they went out fishing and hunting."

Lin Wu pointed at the base’s main entrance, "Stone, it’s them." A Fluorescent Fairy Stick hung at the doorway, serving as nighttime illumination, which Lin Wu recognized as Little Knife’s item.

After Stone confirmed the item was correct, the three entered the safe zone and pushed open the door to the bar.