Steampunk Era: Mad Abield
Chapter 895: Section 591: New Life (Part 1)

Chapter 895: Section 591: New Life (Part 1)

Aps joined Malin’s faction, and Malin established a teleportation passage in his core area, allowing the Seafloor Base to be resupplied with a portion of materials, twenty engineering mechanical bodies, as well as Eleven and Seventeen.

Aps was very satisfied with the assistance provided by the combat bodies—it planned to send Eleven and Seventeen to deal with the nearby old town which, after falling into ruin, became a bandit’s den. And then Chaos came, the bandits vanished without a trace, and Chaos showed no interest in the wasteland, leaving it desolate.

Eleven and Seventeen will go to the old town to protect the engineering mechanical bodies while they collect usable raw materials and check for any twisted Insectoid bio-armors.

If all goes well, the Holy Nest base will become Malin’s largest trump card aside from the Semi-Plane, just like the Seafloor Base.

The so-called cunning rabbit has three burrows; this is the principle it refers to.

The management of the Holy Nest base was naturally entrusted to Lulu, who was somewhat surprised by this — she couldn’t fathom how such a huge base could be managed by her, but Malin told her that as a member of the Hagelberrys, she was qualified.

The girls were so excited they were about to explode. She burrowed into the base until she saw the Wall of Souls with Malin.

The Wall of Souls was covered with electronic photos of various sizes, representing survivors fortunate enough to escape to the sanctuary during the beginning of the great cataclysm, but who lost contact with their families.

Lulu opened the message boards attached to the electronic photos one by one, feeling the sorrow from eight thousand years ago until she gave up clicking and turned to hug Malin.

Listening to her sad sobs, Malin patted her back.

"Even after such a long time, I can still feel their sadness and despair," Lulu exclaimed after calming herself.

"Fate has changed the life trajectories of many people. Now, Fate presents the final punctuation of their lives in front of us, nothing more," Malin consoled Lulu, as he saw a Thainan child with a look of bewilderment. Malin clicked on his message board.

· My brother and sister are gone, Dad said to stay outside waiting for Mom... Mom, where are you.

A single sentence conveyed the sorrow of a family torn apart eight thousand years ago.

In the end, Malin comforted Lulu and left the hall. As they were leaving, Malin turned his head and, in that moment, he saw the bright hall, the survivors hugging and weeping, and the little Thainan child at his designated spot on the wall, leaving behind his confusion and anticipation.

Then the illusion vanished, and Malin shook his head.

Folks, may you all have sweet dreams, and... good night.

.........

After spending three days at the Holy Nest base, Malin handed over the coordinates to Lulu after completing their analysis, so that she could fly there by herself. Then he left the Holy Nest base with Lulu and Ails, who couldn’t stop thinking about the steel Underground City — after all, Ails held secondary access rights, since sometimes when Eleven and Seventeen couldn’t handle the Chaotic forces they discovered, they could summon Ails to assist.

Aps was only accountable to Lulu, a very important detail, as Malin intended to run Holy Nest base parallel to the Seafloor Base.

After settling all this, Malin returned to Halsan City, where Zem did not disappoint, flipping the local branches of the Chaotic Believers in the city upside down.

They even borrowed a group of Sharpshooters, led by Rhodes. Upon seeing Malin, the young man immediately ran over to greet him, "Your Excellency."

Fortunately, he was only paying lip service, and wasn’t foolish enough to forget military discipline and salute Malin.

"Rhodes, is there something you wanted?" Malin asked, urging the young man to relax.

The young man refused to speak with so many people around, so Malin took him to the balcony. "Speak."

After making sure no one was on the balcony corridor, the young man finally spoke up—it was simple; he was imploring Malin to forgive Sudel for his past mistakes, saying his brother now understood how his silence had caused harm to Chandler Halsan.

"You really care about your cousin," Malin remarked, patting Rhodes on the shoulder empathetically.

"Your Excellency, can you forgive my cousin, just like you said? Indeed, he was a bit foolish, thinking he was honoring his agreement with Chandler Halsan without considering the harm it could do. Now he understands, Your Excellency, please forgive him," Rhodes looked at Malin, hoping to hear an expected answer.

"I was never angry about his actions; I just felt both Chandler and your brother irresponsibly harbored a bit of undue hope for the average moral values of this world. If Chandler had contacted me directly, I would have warned the Dole Vince family immediately, and perhaps none of this would have happened. And if your brother had come to me sooner, I might have been able to intervene in time, at least preventing the Dole Vince family from raising their swords against the Chandlers."

With that, Malin took out a cigarette case, pulled out two cigarettes and handed one to Rhodes.

"So what was the outcome? Chandler was my man, yet he pinned the hopes of resolving this matter on the kingdom’s laws. And your cousin, after promising Chandler he wouldn’t reveal his issue, stubbornly kept silent for days, and now here we are: Chandler is severely injured, his family wiped out, and your cousin still spends his days taking care of him, doesn’t he?"

"... Yes, exactly." Rhodes nodded, his face full of embarrassment: "Your Excellency, you really don’t blame my brother and Halsan, do you?"

"I don’t blame them. Your cousin may be a bit naive, but tight-lipped loyalty is a virtue. As for Halsan... although he may seem even more clumsy, in my eyes, Halsan at least believes that the law will deliver him justice. He might be a fool, but at least he’s a fool willing to believe in good things. I am angry because, as the divine champion of the Lord of Justice, these two fools wouldn’t even seek my help! I represent justice itself, yet they don’t trust me!"

Honestly, the only thing that truly angered Malin was this reason. In his view, the only thing that upset him about these two young men was that they would rather trust in the distant law than believe in the divine champion of the Lord of Justice, a walking justice wholesaler.

Rhodes laughed awkwardly, while Malin waved his hand: "Alright, for your sake, is your brother taking care of Halsan now?"

"Yes, Your Excellency."

"Then wait for me. I’ll take you to see him, give Halsan a hand, and after I have treated him and left, you can tell them my opinion of them." Malin decided to give these two young men a verbal lesson.

Of course, Rhodes had no problem with that.

So Malin turned and called for Lulu—Ails had already returned to the Northern frontlines. During the three days he was absent, his legion had been through two battles. Because he was not present, all of the Soul Coins, as agreed, had been split among his Lich subordinates.

How could the great (iron) Lich (public) Ails (chicken) endure this, so after leaving a message for Lulu, he rushed away.

All the better, Malin took Lulu with him back to Koser Town.

The subsequent forces of Malin’s first battalion had already reached Koser, and now they were waiting for spring—further north, the world was now covered with an average of seventy centimeters of snowfall, and any human troops could only wait south of the heavy snow line.

The nearby nobles of the Northern Kingdom as well as some from the Southern Holy Kingdom were having interminably long days—look, this tens of thousands strong army, each day their food and clothing costs a fortune. It wasn’t so bad for the Holy Kingdom; Prince Malin’s army was merely passing through, and they were also buying with Mowish gold coins by the Sydney standard, which is indeed real hard currency.

But the nobles of the Northern Kingdom were already dead broke, and even when Malin’s quartermaster bought things with genuine gold and silver, their stores were quickly emptied by Malin’s purchases, so they feared even more being seen as deliberately not selling supplies.

Fortunately, Malin’s political commissars verified their situation and even returned some food to them—after all, it wouldn’t do to let these nobles, willing to sell food, starve to death this winter.

So now, in addition to maintaining the nearby defenses, Malin’s army also scattered two battalions of soldiers in the southern forests of Koser, which are below the snowline, where the woods contain all sorts of food—from fungi in caves to out-of-season edible wild fruits, from herds of deer to Spirits wild bears hibernating in caves as well.

These soldiers, once hunters and poachers from the North, were engaged in a bloody purge of everything in the woods, and the farmers hired to transport the game were awed by the soldier’s professionalism.

And the nobles of the Holy Kingdom showed an extreme desire to survive regarding the weapons in Malin’s soldiers’ hands and the hundreds of Mages who conducted daily drills in the Koser town— the forests are theirs? No problem, we support Prince Malin’s army marching north to strike Chaos.

Those deer and Spirits bears? No problem, their meat is the best destiny if it can be consumed by the soldiers.

As for the discounted money, really, there’s no need, just so long as your Mage lords don’t use my little plot of land as their target for no good reason—we really could not withstand that tormentation with what little we have left.

After reading the reports written by the political commissars, Malin expressed some sorrow and instructed Tuojin to collect those scraps so that every farmer who came to help could take a bag home every day.

As for the nobles, Malin would share with them some fruits produced from the Semi-Plane—every person willing to offer help will gain Malin’s friendship.

After handling these matters and delegating these tasks to Tuojin to take care of, Malin followed Rhodes to the field hospital.

The place had now become a rear hospital, where some seriously wounded but not fatally injured soldiers and certain inconvenient-to-discuss related parties had been brought over through the teleportation channels, which Malin did not mind—as long as those related parties could pay their medical bills in full. As for the true warriors, Malin would not have them pay out of their own pockets.

Just like last time, Halsan lay half dead in bed, and Sudel, who was still peeling apples for him, immediately stood up when he saw Malin.

"Lord Malin... I..." This young man seemed at a loss for words, appearing to have realized his mistake.

This somehow made Malin feel a bit better: "Let me talk to Halsan for a moment, Sudel."

So, the young man stepped aside, and Malin sat in front of Halsan, looking at the young man and his leg that had to be amputated because of the severe injury. Malin introduced an absolutely tempting subject.

"Do you still want to stand up, Halsan?"

This time, the half-dead young man finally raised his head.

"I... a cripple like me, can I really stand up again?"

He asked, his voice thick with the verge of tears.

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