Chapter 495 (2/2)

A 10-year-old child, who had been peacefully cutting wood, stopped and looked at them. Then he skipped over to them as if there weren't monsters in the surrounding area that would rip his stomach out as soon as look at him. Behind him, there was a strange sort of house, constructed of what looked like tightly wound together thorny roots.

”Oh wow! You found people so quickly!” The boy said. ”It's only been two days!”

Tykes shrugged, as if this was completely natural, considering his level of Skill, and ruffled the boy's hair as he walked past the kid to head towards the house.

Inwardly, Hank was shocked. 'What do you mean finding us in two days was fast?!?. We had a head start! How did YOU set up a vacation cabin here in the woods so quickly?'

The surrounding land was rocky but idyllic. It did not look like the type of area to be in one of the most dangerous areas known to man. At the other end of the rocky slope, there was a cleft in the rock that was the start of a ravine. Then entrance was smoking and ominous, and Hank's instincts were telling him that that path led into a danger zone. Yet this group was bold enough to just set up shop here?

”We got lucky,” Dinesh said to the kid. ”We encountered them in the wild. If we had to go all the way into the other Zone, it would have taken much longer. Where is Randidly?”

”Ah, him and Neveah went back in there.” The kid said, pointing towards the ominous opening. ”You know how pissed he was that the... uh... 'ogre-bastard' had the immunity Skill. He swore to finish it this time.”

”Thank god that crazy bitch is gone,” Tykes whispered, a flash of fear in his eyes as he continued to walk towards the cabin.

From the cabin, two people emerged, a short Hispanic man and a large, well-endowed woman.

”Guests!” The Hispanic man said, his voice almost hysterical from excitement. He instantly turned around and went back inside.

Dinesh rolled his eye, and turned back to Hank's group. The kid came and stood next to him, regarding them with interest. ”Don't mind them. It is obvious that all of you share some common military training. We are more... haphazard in our training. But I assure you that we are all strong, in our own way.”

”No offense taken,” Laurel said, turning on the charm for this strange. ”It's welcoming. Nothing is as important as genuine goodwill. I'm very curious, however; you are all wearing... leathers?”

The kid made a face. ”Do you jeans in my size? I really miss jeans.”

As one, the group chuckled. Dinesh said. ”Yes. Our Zone... had its advantages, but having stores of pre-System goods was not one of them. We were forced to make most everything form scratch, so we were technologically set back quite a ways. But of course, this meant that we learned very quickly to produce System style equipment, to provide modest boosts to our stats. It balanced out in the end, I suspect.”

Affina blinked. ”System style equipment?”

Dinesh tilted his head to the side, confused. ”Yes, like you can buy from Village stores you can purchase for points.,

”Oh.” Affina said simply, nodding. No one was fooled. Dinesh was now giving their group a very strange look. Hank rubbed the back of his neck.

”...as I understand it, our leaders made the decision to save all points and put them towards upgrading the Village. We very rarely used points to create the buildings offered.”

”Oh.” Now it was Dinesh who didn't know what to say.

”That's dumb.” The kid announced.