Mystical Journey

The attacker bended her waist slightly, held back the pain, and swung a powerful kick at Garen’s head.

Bang!

Raising his arm to to grab the attacking leg, Garen realized that the attacker was the girl who was supposedly sound asleep just now.

One of her legs was now locked on Garen’s neck. With only one leg standing, she could not use much energy to attack, what more to hide her private area which was now pulled open and clearly seen by Garen. She was not even trying to cover it. She suddenly produced a black dagger in hand and stabbed it at Garen’s waist ferociously.

“Let go!”

Garen grabbed her wrist accurately, and with a twist, took down her dagger.

“Who are you?!” The girl glared at Garen coldly. She tried hard to wriggle her legs to close them but could not exert energy to do so.

“Were you the one who rescued me?” Garen motioned towards the thigh unit with his chin.

“You were the one inside?” The girl seemed surprised, then noticed that the both of them were in an inappropriate position and that his eyes were directed at her private parts.

“Are you having a good look?” Her face turned cold once again.

“That is none of my business,” Garen let go of her and took a step towards the side. There was a glimpse of smile in his eyes.

With a cold face, she put on her pajamas.

“Why were you hiding inside?”

“Take a guess.” Garen found a chair to sit down. “This is the radiation belt, right?”

“You’re from the territory?” The girl understood him. If he was a radioactive person, he would not have asked within or outside the domain because radioactive people were not allowed into the domain.

“I’m Garen,” Garen leaned back in the chair and introduced himself. “Your place seems troubled.”

“I’m East Perrin, and this is Leo Town, a small town in the radiation belt near Blackboard Region for radioactive people. If you are from the domain, you should’ve heard about the predators’ wave then?” East Perrin explained swiftly.

“I don’t care who you are, where you are from, and what your background is. Our biggest trouble now is that the predators will be attacking soon. If we don’t have a solution to that, we will all die here! So do you have any ideas or strategies? If you don’t, I believe you should help contribute and see how to help us defeat the predator wave.”

Garen may have showed up in an odd way, but she had no time to find out who he was – not during a dangerous period like this, anybody who popped out will surely be food to the predators and won’t be able to escape. An extra pair of hands means one more share of strength.

“Well, you sure are straightforward. Predator wave, huh?” Garen came across it from the academy Inner Courtyard’s library. If it was not for his elite rank in the Inner Courtyard, he would not even had a chance to read about the predator wave.

Predators were extreme mutated humans. They looked like normal human beings on the outside, but they in fact had already detached from the general human species and became a completely different species of their own.

The predators were extremely atrocious. Long-range attack meant nothing to them as they have hard and tough skins which greatly deflect the force of ray guns and other long-ranged firearms. Only short-ranged attacks and explosives would inflict the biggest harm on them.

These were private and confidential information stored in the library, not to be leaked to others.

“Aren’t you worried that I’m a bad person?” Garen regarded the girl standing in front of him with respect. She was charmingly bold.

“I don’t care if you’re a bad person or one of the good guys, as long as you’re human, you’re going to die when the predators come attacking.” East Perrin started to suit up and put on her full armor.

“If we go according to rules, I should have you locked up and keep you under surveillance for a period of time. However, we do not have sufficient manpower now. So if you don’t want to die, you better come with us and help to defend.”

Garen laughed.

“Do you think I’m joking?” East Perrien glared at him coldly. “Follow me.”

She quickly unlocked the door and walked out.

Garen followed her out of the bedroom. It was an an ordinary second-floor corridor with iron railings. Down the stairs on the left, ten or so men were squatting in the open space. They looked tired and drained. An elderly with a white-gray beard came over and looked at Garen.

“Perrin, who is he?”

“An unlucky bastard who was seeking refuge in the Mech’s missile compartment,” East Perrin replied casually. “What’s the situation now?”

“Most of the predators have moved to Vulture Town. I tried using my wireless signal to contact the people there but there was no response, most probably…” Malone muttered.

“Damn it!”

East Perrin frowned.

“If we go on like this, we will die from being siege alive!”

Listening to their conversation, Garen observed that the men around did not look happy when they saw him walking out from East Perrin’s room..

He did not mind, though. His powers have yet to be regenerated. If East Perrin were to attack him with Willpower force, he would be dead meat; but it was pretty obvious that this girl did not know any Willpower techniques.

After all, these techniques were exceptionally rare to achieve within the domain.

Without any Willpower force techniques and based on his current physique, if he was up against these people who just throw punches and kicks, it would simply be a unilateral massacre.

“You guys do now that the predators are less active at night?” Garen could not bear the pointless discussion going on beside him and decided to butt in.

“At night?” East Perrin was stunned for a moment. “How do you know?”

“Me? I was a former top student after all.” Garen smiled. “Let’s go, we’ll have a look at the situation from above the wall first.”

East Perrin glanced at Malone, and he nodded giving his consent.

“Alright.”

East Perrin and Garen casually greeted the others who were resting before she led him to the interior wall’s ladder to climb up the ten-meter high black iron enclosure.

Garen assumed that the predator wave just started and would not be much of a problem. They could leverage nighttime to rest and defend again during the daytime.

However when they reached the top and he had a good look at the surroundings through the infrared binoculars, he was instantly speechless.

“How can there be so many of them!!?” His face fell all of a sudden.

Standing beside him, Malone and East Perrin were devastated once again. They thought that as someone from the domain, Garen would be knowledgeable and would be able to come up with some sort of strategy. They both had their hopes high, but it seemed like their only glimmer of hope has also vanished.

Garen was astonished. The predators’ shadows could be seen everywhere. Huddling close and tight together, there could be more than hundreds of them. They do not even know if there were any Level Two or even higher level predators among the crowd.

He was only left with Level One Willpower, and his Energy Machinist Willpower was not fit for battle. He had only his martial arts skills but that will not help much. The defense set up by the predators was not something he could easily defeat as well; the most he could was to kill ten of them but the others would just swarm up and he would be screwed for sure.

“This is troublesome…” Setting down the binoculars, Garen looked grim.

“You’re from the domain, do you have any ideas? If it’s troublesome, that means there’s still hope!” East Perrin’s eyes flashed as she asked quickly.

“I do have an idea, but it all depends on when will the predators attacking and how long are your people able to delay the attack,” Garen replied lightly.

If only he was alone, it would be much easier. He could just simply pop a Distortion Seed in and he would stand a chance to escape already. However, one of the biggest disadvantages of consuming the Distortion Seed was that it is uncontrollable. Besides the host’s body, the parasites would madly attack any other living creatures around until the host finishes all potential and the genes crash.

In other words, once he relies on the Distortion Seed, he might kill everyone around him, including East Perrin who saved his life. That was something he did not wish to happen.

Furthermore, if there were higher ranked predators with extraordinary speed and power around, using the Distortion Seed will not help much as well.

“Then tell us, what should we do!?” East Perrin asked immediately.

“Just drag the time, all I need is time!” Garen recalled some strategies from an Energy Machinist recording. If there was a Biochemical Pool, he could actually process his own cannon fodder. In addition to the Distortion Seed, he can produce longer lasting cannon fodders that would not easily crumble so fast. With that, he would be able to increase their defense system immensely. The dead bodies of the predators could also be used to process new materials for the cannon fodder too.

“How long, exactly?” East Perrin asked in a hushed tone.

“I don’t know, but I’m waiting as well. At least we still have a glimmer of hope, right?” Looking at the distance, Garen replied softly.

Malone and East Perrin were silent.

He was right, this was better than no hope at all.

“I’ll go calm everyone down,” She turned and went down the ladder.

With the predator siege for the past few days, the people were frightened. They did not know how long would the predators stay, but their food supplies could only last for just a week. If they were still under siege after a week, nothing mattered anymore because they were going to starve to death.

Malone remained above the wall, staring at Garen.

“Young man, we are now in the same boat, none of us can escape. Even if we are able to hold our defense, what about our food?”

“What do your people eat before this?” Garen asked.

“Mutated fish from the radiation lake.”

“The predators can be eaten also…” Garen said lightly.

Malone shuddered. He felt a chill rising up behind his back. This was something said by one who have never eaten it before.

Staring at Garen’s back, his guts told him that the future of Leo Town will change because of this young man.

Malone turned around and left.

Garen continued to stay up and looked around when all of a sudden, sounds of panic could be heard from below.

“Caster! Caster has escaped!”

Somebody was yelling. It sounded like chaos below.

One of the gates opened and a motorcycle rushed out in full speed. Its engine was roaring and ejecting blue flames similar to those by a Mech.

“Damn it! He took the only power furnace we have!”

“That was the only power furnace in the processing workshop!! If we don’t have weapons we’re screwed! Damn you, Caster!!!”

“Half of the drinks are gone! Even the food!” One by one, the voices were getting louder.

Garen looked at the motorcycle charging ahead as fast as lightning towards the North where the number of predators were the least.

“An escapee? If there’s a first there’s going to be a second…” Garen murmured.

Below, East Perrin and Malone were both staring grimly at the motorcycle rushing across the distance through the embrasure.

As one of the three leaders of the town, Caster had the nerve to run away himself. Not only did he dare to bring along almost half of the town’s food supplies, he even took the only power furnace in town that was used to produce firepower.

“Without the power furnace, we won’t even have our production line anymore!” Malone said solemnly.

East Perrin bit her lips but remained silent, her nails digging into her palms hard. The small glimmer of hope they originally had moments ago just became a little smaller…