Chương 24: Blinding Treasure Light

[POV: Syrin] The howling wind slowly mellowed as golden rays of morning sun peeked through the heavy clouds overhead. Outside Syrin's now Tier Two vehicle stood a large, now-shattered wall made up of tree trunks. It had been makeshift from the start, thrown up in a hurry by her new crewmates, so it didn't surprise her that repeated collisions with the sprinters had outright shattered it. Inside her now-advanced Tier 2 Cyanic RV sat two of her most important teammates.

On her bed were her left- and right-hand men: Nirun and Max. Brown-haired Nirun, clearly in his fifties, served as her advisor—a former military martial back on Earth. The guy had grown a lot lazier since then, but it had been his idea to spend the lion's share of their time crafting this shelter around the foothills of the Western Stardew Mountains. He'd come up with all sorts of weird ideas throughout the night to save them from what could've been far more loss of life than the mere two they'd suffered.

The other, younger Max, blond-haired, was his vice-captain. It was thanks to his unique skill that they'd managed to get by with mere wooden walls instead of sandbags against a horde of two hundred zombies, generating barriers to hold the line. Her crew was still just ten men. She'd handpicked two barrier-unique skill holders, a strategist, and the rest brawlers and strength-enchantment-type skill holders.

For their upcoming expedition against the winged serpent, she needed defense and offense in proper proportion, and she believed she'd assembled the best team she could, given that many other big fleets were recruiting the cream of the crop with huge compensation packages. She leaned back in her seat, enjoying the refreshing breeze of the AC. Outside, the atmosphere had begun shifting from cold and dry to damp and warm.

The change in temperature and humidity was drastic, and if she wasn't mistaken, the air had been growing steadily more humid by the day. The other day, she'd spent most of her time walking the central plains trying to recruit people for her crew, and had noticed firsthand just how much more humid it had become compared to the first day. Outside, five more vehicles sat parked beside hers.

Initially, she'd managed to recruit only five people of substantial potential and bring them under contract—these vehicles belonged to them. Later, when she started advertising her fleet's hiring on the group chat, she'd managed to snag seven more people. Unfortunately, two of them had died the previous night in the zombie attacks. The seven hadn't had a functional vehicle of their own from the start, so they were sleeping in other crewmates' vehicles instead.

Right now, she was busy selling information about chest locations, since many people had already begun hunting for them. She'd acquired a large batch of locations the day before, and after selling twenty of them across various rarities, she'd earned thirty gold so far. She stretched her muscles, a yawn escaping her as she closed the system panels.

"Phew, I guess I should start hunting for more chests right now. The early bird gets the worm, as they say." She started her vehicle's engine while simultaneously messaging her remaining crew.

"Clean up the place once you're all up, and make sure to add some more reinforcement to the walls… Sent." With that done, she drove out through the broken section of the wall and into the plains. Far to her left, she could see other vehicles—jeeps, ORVs, and the like—racing across the plains in search of supplies. Their vehicles, painted red with dried blood and scratched all over, only reminded her that she wasn't back in her own country, but out in a downright apocalyptic hellscape.

While driving, she opened the regional chat for some entertainment. It had become her replacement for TikTok and Instagram since arriving here. Without it, she would've long since gone mad from the lack of entertainment. Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

"Humans need to do fun stuff to unwind, after all." Except the chat greeted her with something not so fun. She squinted at the pinned comment.

"A threat?" It was insane—the poster's name was dense, nearly blinding with how thickly the threads of treasure concentrated around it.

"What is she? I've never seen such a dense concentration of treasure threads on anything…" Scrolling up several posts, she soon discovered the poster was none other than the Heavenly Demon.

"No wonder. She wasn't just being boastful after all. Scary. Who dared to steal from her of all people?" Scrolling up a bit more, she found out it was the same thief who'd previously stolen from the Heavenly Fleet and the Green Ghost Fleet.

"Some people really love courting death, huh." Shaking her head, she went back to observing people with notable strength. Golden threads of treasure usually wrapped most densely around such people. After finding a few, she sold the rest of her locations to them and netted herself some more coins.

"Ah, I wonder what Nyx is up to these days." Chatting with someone she knew was always fun. Plus, she'd been thinking about recruiting the guy for a while now—she just hadn't found the time to reach out, with all the hectic stuff going on around her. So she opened her private chat and sifted through her contact list, which included people like Julius, Shuai, and others, since they were her most consistent customers.

The golden treasure threads around their names were intense, but nowhere near as dense as what she'd seen on the Heavenly Demon's name. After scrolling through the rest of the list, she stumbled upon a contact that sent her jolting back in her seat, her Cyanic RV shaking violently as she lost control. Two thumps sounded from the back of the car, followed by groans from her teammates—they'd probably fallen off the bed from the sudden jolt. She quickly reined in her surprise and steadied the vehicle.

"What was that, Captain? I thought it was just a stereotype that women are bad drivers. Don't tell me it's true…" said Max, still half-asleep, swaying forward, while Nirun lay sprawled out, still dead to the world.

"Ah, sorry about that, Max. Can you wake up Uncle Nirun for me? We'll need to meet someone in a minute—go take a shower too." She gave the instructions while typing out a message to Nyx, who went by Blacktail in the system's chat features. The guy probably liked cats or something. That thought definitely had nothing to do with her own love of cats…

"Are we meeting someone important? Like one of your fellow fleet captains, maybe?" Max asked, still rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Syrin didn't steer the vehicle toward Nyx's location just yet, since she didn't know exactly where he was. So until he texted back with the details, she kept following the golden trails.

"Not a captain, but he's someone important, yes." The location of a treasure chest she'd been eyeing came into view. She reached it, confirmed the chest's rarity as black iron, then drove off toward the next nearby location.

"Oh, then I guess we should look presentable when we meet him. I'll go wake up the old man."

"Hey, who are you calling old?!" came the groggy voice of the old-timer, Nirun.

"Look who's up," Max said, turning around. He grabbed a towel before heading into the last compartment of the RV, where the bathroom was.

"Good morning, Uncle." Syrin called out, earning another snort from the old man in response.

"What good morning? It hasn't even been three full hours since I went to bed. Ugh, my brain's still throbbing." He complained, rolling on the floor like a child. It was hard for Syrin to believe this old man was a military martial—she'd never have recruited him, or believed his claims, if it weren't for her [Treasure Eyes] and his performance the night before. If there were two people who'd contributed most to their survival against the insane hordes last night, it was Max and Nirun.

After another twenty minutes of hunting down treasure chest locations, Syrin finally got a text back from Nyx, with the location of his residence attached. Having received her cue, she immediately turned the vehicle around and headed toward the location. It still boggled her mind how this seemingly ordinary guy, who'd once had only an above-average concentration of treasure threads, had grown so significantly.

Although his power didn't compare to someone like Regina Rare, she had to admit he was probably the closest thing to that monster. Then again, the concentration of treasure-light threads didn't necessarily imply strength—it was still a solid indicator of potential and talent, which equaled value. What also surprised her was that he was residing in the Stardew Mountains too, just like them, only a bit deeper in.

"The world's really small, huh." She said, earning another grunt from Uncle Nirun. She shook her head as the location of Nyx's residence came into view. From a distance, she could make out a matte black vehicle parked outside a cave. And the closer she got, the larger it seemed to grow, until her eyes went wide at its sheer size.