C11 The Day of Harvest

Around four in the afternoon, Payson and company made their way back. Moorer was busy loading something onto the truck at the time.

"Moorer? Why didn't you go scavenging? And what are you about to load onto the truck?" Ashes noticed Moorer holding a 12-bottle dark green plastic beer crate, all filled with beer bottles.

Payson came over to inspect the items. He pulled out a beer bottle and saw it was brimming with gasoline, the opening sealed with gasoline-soaked cotton.

"Is this... some kind of homemade bomb?"

"More precisely, it's a gasoline bottle, or you could call it a Molotov cocktail," Moorer chuckled.

"How many of these did you make?" Payson gazed at the crate filled with gasoline beer bottles, his heart aching. He thought such equipment was inefficient, crude, and impractical, believing that gasoline, a valuable resource, shouldn't be wasted like this.

Ashes, on the other hand, had the complete opposite reaction. He loudly commended the gasoline bottles, convinced that they effectively filled their current gap in firepower. With these, they wouldn't have to fear even a swarm of monsters.

"I made about three crates, that's 36 bottles in total. Of course, for this mission, I'm only planning to bring one crate. We'll need the rest to stock up elsewhere," Moorer explained.

Meow's attention was drawn to the baseball bat Moorer had slung over his back. The red wooden bat had been modified by Moorer with wrapped chains and embedded nails, transforming it into a formidable spiked club. The power had certainly increased, though at the cost of added weight...

"It looks like you spent the whole morning working on these... weapons. So... Ashes, Meow, what weapons did you manage to find?" Payson almost let the word "junk" slip out, but considering the items were useful, he swallowed the word.

With a slight smile, Ashes drew a gleaming machete from his robe. The 60-centimeter blade caught the sunlight, making even Payson, a layman, recognize it as a fine weapon.

"I found it in a mountaineering enthusiast's tool shop," Ashes boasted, "In addition, I scored two fairly new climbing axes and a large coil of tough rope, about 50 meters long."

"Ashes, you seem to have good luck. How about you, Payson?"

"I..." Unlike Ashes, with his assassin background, Payson wasn't focused on finding these old-fashioned bladed weapons; he was after a gun.

In fact, as an idealist, he wasn't even interested in conventional firearms that relied on gunpowder. He yearned for high-tech weaponry like laserguns, Ion Cannons, and at the very least, something like an automatic rifle.

But reality was a hard pill to swallow. Forget automatic rifles; Vage didn't even have a proper gun shop. And guns, being the valuable strategic assets they are, were likely looted at the onset of the disaster. How could someone 58 years late to the party expect to find any?

Eventually, with a nudge from Meow Meow, Payson crafted a makeshift double-edged machete using a steel pipe and two relatively new kitchen knives, fixed at opposite ends of the pipe. At least he didn't come back empty-handed.

Moorer and Ashes couldn't help but stifle their laughter when they saw Payson's improvised weapon, especially Moorer, who mused that Payson's pickiness had resulted in a weapon less reliable than their own.

But this wasn't the time for jests. Once everyone settled down, they resumed organizing their supplies, readying for departure.

At eight that evening, after confirming the darkness of night, Moorer and the others roared off from Vage in the six-wheeled pickup.

The night was dark and still, but the pickup's twin high-beam headlights stood out, casting two powerful beams that pierced the darkness ahead, lighting the way.

Since Ashes had driven the pickup to Vage, he was its rightful owner and naturally took the driver's seat.

Payson sat beside him as the navigator, a role that suited him perfectly; Meow Meow was sprawled out in the back seat, resting as per Moorer's instructions, ready for the tasks ahead.

And Moorer? He was comfortably stretched out in the pickup's bed, despite Ashes and Payson's repeated suggestions to take advantage of the spacious back seat. Moorer had declined, insisting his chosen spot allowed for quick reactions and provided the driver with an enhanced field of vision.

In truth, Moorer had his own ulterior motives.

In the midst of the Nuclear Era, the time of Moorer's birth, the environmental pollution in the Antathira world was alarmingly severe. The city where Moorer lived was perpetually shrouded in smog, the sun a rare sight.

For the first half of his life, Moorer had never glimpsed the starry sky. After becoming an agent for the Foundation, the overwhelming pressure to survive left him with little desire to look up at the heavens.

But now? The polluting chemical factories had ceased operations for decades, and the abnormal weather caused by meteorites was gradually subsiding. The sky had brightened once more, and the dazzling starry sky had reappeared in people's view.

Moorer was now captivated by the brilliant stars above. He dared not blink, for fear of missing even a moment of the breathtaking vista.

The six-wheeled pickup finally made it onto the elevated highway. As Ashes had mentioned, the road was clear, which was exactly what Payson found peculiar.

"Ashes... Why aren't there any vehicle wrecks on the road?"

"It's quite simple. They've been cleared away. To us, those car wrecks are like metal ore exposed on the earth's surface! But we didn't clean up this thoroughly. It's likely that the DS organization did some tidying up after we were defeated..."

On July 17th, at one in the morning, Moorer and his companions reached the spot Ashes had directed them to. It was untouched by the DS organization, just as he had described.

"See that building?" Ashes pointed to a three-story structure ahead. "That's a small canning factory, they produce all sorts of canned goods."

"A juicy target like this... It can't be that no one has scavenged here," Payson remarked.

"Indeed, it's been scavenged, but what if I told you that this place is actually a hideout for our Assassin Group?" Ashes said with a hint of pride.

"The kind of things that professional assassins like you stash away are probably only found by your own kind."

"Meow, you've got night vision. Scout ahead and find us an entry point. Give us a signal when you do, got it?"

Meow nodded understandingly and swiftly leaped to the second floor of the factory. In under a minute, a familiar meow echoed from a window.

"Fantastic, it's found the path!"

"Payson, stay here and keep an eye on the truck. We'll be right back!"

"Got it!"

Ashes hurled a climbing axe tethered with a rope toward the window. Once they made sure the axe was securely anchored, Moorer and Ashes scaled the rope to enter the building.