Swallowed Star

Volume 3 Chapter 1: The Wilderness

There was a military camp a few hundred miles away from the northern part of Jiang-Nan city.

[RUMBLE~~] The train slowly came to a halt at the military sector’s station.

Fully armed fighters got off the train one by one, for a total of twenty. These twenty people naturally formed four squads.

“Luo Feng, usually when we fighters go out to hunt monsters, we enter the military sectors to resupply” Chen Gu pointed ahead of him, where a tall, steel tower that was around 50 or 60 meters high was, “See this tower? Across China, and even the world, the military cuts out a special sector of the wilderness to serve as a base for fighters to rest and resupply. These resupplying locations are marked with these lighthouses. In other words, it shows us fighters the way home”.

Luo Feng nodded.

In the resupplying base in the military sector, there was a solemn, small building, which had a good environment.

“Fire hammer squad, you guys will stay at #E6 to rest” an officer of the base gave the captain of the fire hammer squad, ‘Gao Feng’, a key as he laughed and patted his shoulder, “Old Gao, how long do you plan on hunting for this time? If you ever get anything good, you’re welcome to sell it to my underground alliance. I’ll be sure to give you a great price”

Even though most of the staff here were wearing military uniforms….

In fact, most of the service staff came from the Dojo of Limits, the Thunder Dojo, the government’s army, and the underground alliance. Even though they were there to serve, they also purchase precious ingredients obtained from monsters from the fighters.

“Haha, sure” laughed Gao Feng, “hurry and arrange for people to make us lunch”.

The resupplying base wasn’t that big.

“E6, over there” The fire hammer squad quickly found the small three story building representing ‘E6’. The key was in a form of a chip. After sliding the key across the door, it opened. Before the fire hammer squad leaves the resupplying base, the ownership of the building belongs to them.

“Gonna lay for a bit and sleep, didn’t sleep well last night” Chen Gu put down his two metal boxes and jumped on the sofa. He stretched his body across the sofa and got comfortable.

“If you want to rest then rest now, we’ll officially depart tonight. At that time, you’ll need to focus” commanded captain Gao Feng.

“Understood”

‘Spear’ Zhang Ke and the Twin Moon Scimitar brothers laughed in response, since they knew about the rules ages ago.

“Departing tonight?” Luo Feng was surprised.

“Luo Feng, aren’t you even paying attention to the weather? It’s the end of September, which is the hottest time of the year. Running with a couple hundred kilograms worth of things in the middle of the day? No matter how much water you bring, it won’t be enough, so you can only drink from the river” Chen Gu laughed as he looked at Luo Feng, “Isn’t it better to run during the night? And it saves water”

Luo Feng laughed awkwardly.

Even though he read many posts, he never realized this point.

“Hm?” Luo Feng’s gaze passed through the window and saw someone in the resupplying base, “Brother Chen, look, isn’t that Zhang Ze Hu?”. At that time, Zhang Ze Hu’s body was covered in bandages and there were marks of blood on the sandbags, clearly showing that he was injured and was recovering in the resupplying base.

Chen Gu turned his head to look: “Yea, that is Zhang Ze Hu”

“Heh!” Chen Gu walked to the door and delightly yelled, “Mountain Tiger, what’s wrong? Weren’t you just fine last time, how come you got so injured in just a blink of an eye?”

Zhang Ze Hu, who was outside walking and chatting with his comrades, turned his head and saw Chen Gu and Luo Feng at the door. He got so mad his teeth started to itch, and as his anger raged, he gave a loud, mocking retort: “Fire Cannon Chen, your fire hammer squad is an elite squad, so how come you brought a rookie? Haha, I bet your entire team will get dragged down by that burden!”

Elite squads usually aren’t willing to bring rookies.

Because even if the rookie’s body fitness is good, without any experience, he could mess up during crucial moments, which could mess up the veteran members.

※※※

Zhang Ze Hu and Chen Gu exchanged some insults, but because captain ‘Twin Hammer’ Gao Feng’s yell, Zhang Ze Hu went silent. Even though he was brave enough to argue with Chen Gu at times, he didn’t dare to argue with Gao Feng! Because, Gao Feng uses cold weapons while Chen Gu uses heated weapons.

With heated weapons, even if you reach the top, you can only reach the ‘beginner warlord rank’, because heated weapons like guns usually can only harm ‘low level commander level’ monsters.

Zhang Ze Hu was very close to the ‘warlord’ rank.

“****, can’t believe Luo Feng drifted into the fire hammer squad”. Zhang Ze Hu walked with his comrades on the road, his mouth still cursing, “I thought he would get into a regular squad. That way, I can cruelly teach him a lesson to let him know the consequences of messing with me. However, he got in the fire hammer squad!”

Zhang Ze Hu’s teeth seethed in rage.

“Tiger, that young man next to Chen Gu just now, is the Luo Feng who made you spend 100 million?” said the one-eyed middle aged man next to him.

“Yea, that’s him”

Zhang Ze Hu’s eyes shone fiercely, “This rabbit, I didn’t think he’d be so cocky. After that discussion, right after I turned my head, the security agency ran straight to my nephew’s home! This kid actually reported it to the security agency. I quickly gave the country a hundred million to let my nephew attain the ‘one star civilian’ rank. However, even after that, my nephew is still going to get locked up for a few months”.

When he thinks about how nervous his older brother was, and Zhang Hao Bai’s shock and horror as he was taken by the security agency, Zhang Ze Hu got even more mad.

Although later he spent 100 million to keep his nephew. However, Zhang Hao Bai wasn’t able to escape a few months of pain in jail.

“It’s ok, don’t think too much. Letting your nephew go through some hardship is good for him” The one-eyed middle aged man laughed softly, “You should use this time to rest. Your wounds should heal in about three days, and then we’ll depart and can keep dealing with that old guy. After killing that old guy, our team will become rich”.

“Okay” Zhang Ze Hu nodded heavily, and he stole a glance at the E6 building in the distance and sneered, “I’m willing to bet that Luo Feng will either die or receive a heavy wound in his first entry into the wilderness!”

“Haha, you sure hold a grudge against him. However, it is indeed hard to avoid injury in the first entry into the wilderness” laughed the one-eyed middle aged man.

※※※

Midnight, the fully equipped six members of the fire hammer squad departed the resupply base and entered the wilderness.

“Chen Gu, give me one of your metal boxes” commanded captain Gao Feng.

“Haha, thanks captain. I can handle carrying these boxes for a short period of time, but not for long periods” said Chen Gu as he handed one of his big metal boxes over to captain Gao Feng. Gao Feng easily took it with one hand and carried it on his back. This amount of weight is nothing to the strongest member of the fire hammer squad, Gao Feng.

[KA!]

Chen Gu opened the other box, which had a gray machine gun in it. The gun’s muzzle had a metallic luster. Other than the machine gun, there were tons of bullets all packed together, which filled up the entire box. Obviously, there were an immense amount of bullets.

“Brother Chen, what kind of gun is this?” asked Luo Feng curiously.

“Type m81, 12.7mm caliber. It can fire 50 to 300 rounds in a minute, adjustable” laughed Chen Gu contented, “The whole gun is made out of 3rd grade Ke-Luo alloy, so even if it continuously fires bullets, the heat of the gun won’t affect the accuracy of the bullets”.

Luo Feng asked curiously: “Brother Chen, how come you don’t use the fire-god cannon? Don’t the machine guns of the fire-god series have the greatest power?”

“You rookie!”

Chen Gu glared.

Spear ‘Zhang Ke’ laughed on the side and said: “Luo Feng, the machine guns of the fire-god series do indeed have great power. However, the fire-god series uses up crazy amounts of bullets. It fires 7,000 shots in a minute, and some can shoot even faster. Do you know what that means? 7,000 shots in one minute. And bullets that can harm a low level commander level monster is at lightest 50 grams! Ten thousand bullets will weigh 500 kg!”

“Running hundreds of miles with 500 kg of bullets on your back. And finally, when you kill the monster, after a minute or so your fire-god cannon has used up all its bullets”. Zhang Ke laughed and looked at Luo Feng, “So what do you say? Is the fire-god cannon good?”

Luo Feng was startled.

He really did not understand this. Yes, the weight of the bullets is a big problem. 7,000 bullets in a minute, how many bullets do you have to bring with you for the entire trip?

“Hauling a huge amount of bullets along with a fire-god cannon is only done by the army or when dealing with a specific type of monster. Usually, people like us will never use those types of guns, since there aren’t that many bullets for it”. Chen Gu laughed at himself, “I brought 10,000 bullets this time and even asked the captain to help me carry some”.

Chen Gu had bullet chains wrapped all over his body and held a machine gun. With Luo Feng, these two were in the middle of the team, protected by the others.

The twin moon scimitar brothers were in front of the team.

Captain Gao Feng and Zhang Ke were in the back.

“We’ll head along this highway. After about three days, we should reach our destination——#0201 country level city”, said captain Gao Feng, but Luo Feng couldn’t help but to keep looking at the highway in front of him. For the people living in the cities, highways only exist in legends.

The highway under their feet was already ruined; tons of cracks have already opened up on it.

Looking ahead, there were tons of broken or split cars, vans, and trucks all over the highway as it stretched down. There were even some broken tires lying around. Sometimes, you can see marks of dried up blood on the floor too.

“Let’s go!”

The red light of the sunset shone on this quiet, rundown highway that has been broken for dozens of years. The six members of the fire hammer squad continued to head forward.

[GROWL~~]

[WAIL~~]

Waves and waves of howling from the monsters carried from the two fields and ruined villages on the sides of the highway. Even Luo Feng could see quite a few monsters. The other five members of the fire hammer squad were relaxed, but Luo Feng was completely tense….. because he could feel the monsters everywhere.

“Hm, Luo Feng, there’s a horned boar ahead. I’ll leave it to you” captain Gao Feng’s voice rang, “This will be your first battle in the wilderness!”