Tempting. George really wanted to go down there and look.
But — what if this town's underground was the source of the magical radiation that had mutated the Rat King in the first place?
Maybe it was worth waiting until month-end, when headquarters would send new players and he could assemble a proper team to go down together.
He didn't decide either way. Instead he went back to hauling building materials from surrounding ruins, and spent a full day sealing every ground-floor opening with concrete blocks — doors, windows, every gap. Not a single entrance left.
With only one person in the Scavenger Camp, any large-scale construction was out of reach, and guard rotations were already a fundantal problem. Better to seal everything now and eliminate the issue permanently. The second-floor door was fine to leave open. Worst outco: sothing got through and damaged it. That was the kind of setback he didn't need.
When more people arrived next month, he'd reopen as needed.
'Food crisis resolved. Housing sorted. The next urgent issue is firewood. For firing bricks, for charcoal production, for winter heating and future construction — firewood is non-negotiable.'
'So for the remaining days, I've got three things to deal with.'
'First: the handcart. Liang Yuzhi stockpiled enough stripped vehicle parts — she even managed to get a wheel hub assembly. That's basically the hardest part already solved.'
'Second: once I have the handcart, I collect firewood and use the remaining spring season to start planting trees around the periter of the town.'
'Third: build the brick kiln and fire so clay pots.'
'After that: systematic, careful exploration of the town's underground.'
George's plan was solid. He went to the third floor first — Liang Yuzhi's forr storage area. Before he'd even located the wheel hub assembly, the wounded crow ca bursting out of a corner crevice, shrieking and pecking viciously at his hands.
Spirited little thing.
George grabbed it by the neck — actually considering wringing it — but at the last mont activated the Tracker Title instead. Curiosity, mostly. He wanted to see what would happen.
The instant the title activated, the crow stopped struggling completely. Its eyes shifted, as if sensing sothing, and George felt — sothing in return. An emotion? From the crow?
Hard to say. Interesting though.
He switched the title back off at the three-second mark.
Three seconds, and he was mildly dizzy. The sensation passed quickly, but it left him genuinely cautious about the consumption rate.
"Go on then."
He released the crow. It didn't run. It hopped along behind him instead, apparently undecided about where else it needed to be.
George was busy and paid it no attention. He dug through Liang Yuzhi's pile of stripped parts and eventually found a proper wheel hub assembly with two wooden wheels already fitted and rubber tire strips fastened across the top rim with nails. Not quite pneumatic tires, still considerably better than plain wood.
He assembled additional fra components and the handcart took shape. Two-wheeled. Functional.
Chief credit went unambiguously to Liang Yuzhi — a fact George acknowledged by donating the cart to the family as a fixed asset, which automatically notified Liang Yuzhi with a paynt of one standard gold coin for her contribution.
He imagined she'd be moved to tears.
Ha!
George's mood was good. He even took the crow for a test ride on the cart — a quick loop around. Smooth, fast, light for what it was. Only useful on hardened road surface, but that covered everything he needed it for.
Worth ntioning: the crow seed to enjoy the ride. Very much. Apparently this was what freedom felt like. Flying, but better sohow.
With the handcart, everything downstream simplified considerably.
It could carry up to 500 kilograms without complaint.
Each morning George set out — the ridiculous crow always sohow present — to the forest twenty li north. He made two trips per day, returning with logs, plus a solid load of cut firewood. Once properly dried, premium-quality split wood for fuel.
Between logging sessions, he gathered healthier branches from the forest edges and brought them back each evening, planting them as cuttings in suitable locations around the town's periter.
Within a few days, he had planted five hundred saplings.
Survival rate: ninety-eight percent.
Dayti was logging. Nights he used to build a brick kiln behind the Scavenger Camp building — bricks scavenged from the ruins, clay from the pit excavations, only water requiring a two-kiloter hauling trip to the well.
Manageable. A little each day. Two days before month-end, the kiln was essentially complete — just needed to dry out before the first pottery firing.
That was also when George decided it was ti to explore the underground.
He hauled twenty full logs out to the central park of the town — the Rat King's forr territory, the area with the most substantial vegetation, a green space of roughly seven mu. Even after a decade-plus of neglect and partial collapse, you could still read the original design: the sunken plaza, the stone paths, the deford sculptures.
Wild grass everywhere now, thick and rich. Small flowers blooming in the undergrowth — so kind of berry plant — harvestable in a couple of months. Insects. Occasional birds.
George walked to the Rat King's tunnel entrance. The sll hit well before he arrived. But the tunnel itself was genuinely large — it had to be, given the creature's size.
He braced the logs near the entrance as precautionary support — in case of collapse.
"Stupid — you stay here. Eat so insects. Don't follow."
He addressed this to the crow, which had acquired an informal na sowhere along the way, and ducked into the entrance.
The crow hopped in after him imdiately.
George didn't repeat himself. Co if you want. Die if you get unlucky. Your call.
Outside it was mid-morning with full sun. Light penetrated the first thirty ters or so without any problem.
George moved carefully, Heavy Wooden Sword in hand. Since the battle with the Rat King, he'd decided he needed to develop his close-combat capability more seriously. Readiness for surprises, readiness for enemies that required it — lee was unavoidable. And close combat gave you a better window for detecting weak points.
At range, the Tracker Title's fifty-ter radius barely overlapped with a thrown Bloodthirsty Spear's range. The spear was devastating but left several seconds of cool-down afterward — during which activating the Tracker Title would have to align perfectly to get value.
So the pattern was: one second of Tracker, one-second switch, then Heavy Wooden Sword landing on the identified weak point. Precision kill. He needed to practice and refine that rhythm.
Flutter.
The crow rose and landed on George's shoulder. Its wing injury was much better, but it seed to have no interest in leaving.
George glanced at it, slowed his pace, and kept moving. The tunnel darkened steadily ahead. Even with his vision, total darkness was so ways ahead.
Fortunately — he ca prepared. He lit a handmade torch coated with rat fat. Problem solved.
He walked and navigated by the compass of his sense of direction, keeping constant track of his position relative to the building above and monitoring the structural integrity of the tunnel. He needn't have worried.
About two hundred ters in, the tunnel widened into a larger space — an old sewer main. The sll was significantly worse here, but the airflow was surprisingly good. Ventilated.
He followed the air current and erged — out through a large collapse zone on the western edge of town.
He went back in, reoriented, and moved directly toward the building's foundation to the north. Intuition told him that was where the real answer was.
Through the sewer passages, straightforwardly enough. The town wasn't large. These things were designed to go end to end.
Midway through, the torch went out. But by then, a dim ambient glow had started appearing — the Rat King's tunnel-digging had punched through into building basents, which connected to the sewer system and let in thin threads of daylight. Enough for George to navigate.
That was when he found the bones.
Scattered. Not entirely intact. Human — unmistakably. They'd died here, right at the start of the disaster, most likely — and were probably the reason whoever was still alive back then had made the decision to seal the basent entrance.
George noted this thought and felt sothing in his chest tighten that he hadn't expected.
Sothing was wrong. He hadn't felt this coming anywhere along the route. Which ant the answer was ahead.
The feeling intensified as he continued forward. He wanted badly to activate the Tracker Title — and held back. Burning Stamina and Spiritual Power prematurely was exactly the wrong move here.
He swapped to the Rat Exterminator Title instead.
Sothing shifted. Hard to na it — but he felt imdiately more settled.
"Caw!"
The crow on his shoulder cried out, then launched itself forward in a fluttering, lopsided flight. It had found sothing.
George followed quickly — and reached the dead end. Beyond it was a gap barely large enough for a three-or-four-year-old child to squeeze through. On the other side: the building's basent.
This was where the Rat King had made its entrance ten-plus years ago, terrorizing whoever had been down here.
George was still working through the implications when the crow squeezed through the gap and disappeared inside.
I'm being scouted for you, aren't I?
The thought had barely ford when a thread of danger hit him. He stepped back sharply — and the crow shot back out through the gap a second later, eyes blazing red, the aura around it twisted and wrong. That controlled, savage energy. The runaway-power look.
He recognized it.
That was a Blood Crow.
Whatever was in that basent — it had just turned his stray crow into one.
First the Rat King. Now a Blood Crow. If this keeps up, he was going to have very interesting enemies.
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