Chapter 560 (2/2)

Roaring, Ace pounded his chest. The strange fuzziness surrounding him grew stronger, but then Alana thrust forward with her spear and a wave of flames washed forward, crashing into Ace. The other man stumbled, whatever Skill he had attempted to use broken. Again and again, she advanced and battered him.

“He is cocky.” Dozer grunted, with another shake of his head. Then he waved his hand. “Begin to move out.”

“The duel…” Hank said, nonplussed, but Dozer just shook his head and said nothing.

Hank turned back to regard the two people. Alana continued to smash her way forward. She raised her spear up and thrust it downward. Like an eel, Ace twisted around the blow and brought his foot up in a brutal high kick that struck Alana in the temple.

She didn’t even tremble as she thrust her spear through his side and pinned Ace to the ground. Then she raised her fist and smashed it into his head. Ace bellowed again, so Alana did it exactly seven more times. Then, with a grunt, she removed her spear from the prone body.

As the group began to move forward, Hank watched as Alana turned to another woman, one who had come out of the Refuge.

“You are simply going to let this happen?” Alana asked the woman. Honestly, she simply sounded curious.

The woman said nothing for several long seconds. Then she said, “Be careful. He has not let me see him since the early days. I’m not sure what he is up to.”

Alana just grunted. Swept up in the momentum of the hunting posse, Hank followed the group West after the Undying Hero.

*****

As Dinesh, Karlito, and Bruya began to take an inventory of all of the new “recruits” Randidly returned to his spot in the steel working facility. It was almost nostalgic to see the grungy men and women trudging into the smelting areas. Today, Randidly was here for a very specific purpose: he wanted to see what was the limit of the metal he could make.

Before he could enter into his private room, Foreman Davey spotted him and walked over to chat for a while. They didn’t talk about anything important, but Davey did give Randidly a pretty good idea of the rising and falling value of different materials and metals.

“Oh, by the way,” Davey said, as he was about to leave. “You must have really done something to impress people because I’ve been instructed to get you anything you need to help your research. Plus, there is a charity dinner this weekend you are invited to. No need to give me an answer now, just think about it.”

In the smelting area, Randidly breathed in the smell of hot metal and smiled. There really was just something about the air in these blast furnaces that he enjoyed. Then he began to forge metal. This time, he didn’t use the weak materials.

The steel was refined and refined again. Then the impurities were extracted and extracted again. Only then did Randidly grind up a significant amount of Raid Boss bones to mix into the metal. In addition, a drop of Randidly’s own blood went into the metal.

He took his time during the forging process. Part of it was proof of concept, but the other part was to work out the details of how much bone, metal, and blood should be a part of the finished product to make it as strong as possible. To this end, Randidly made as many as ten iterations which he compared against each other. He was rather perplexed, and pleased, that there were three that he simply couldn’t test under normal conditions.

They were all so strong he couldn’t affect them easily, and he had left Acri at the farming compound to help deal with any wandering Raid Bosses. Randidly shook his head sorrowfully. It was obnoxious that a piece of metal could make him feel weak, but at least the person who made that metal was him.

With that accomplished, Randidly made himself about a hundred ingots of something he considered mid-tier. That is, stronger than Erickson Steel, but nowhere near the stuff he had made for his own uses. Then he returned to the drone making facility.

Apparently, Foreman Davey wasn’t lying about giving him everything. Henrik had pulled some strings and now Randidly had access to every single blueprint that Ghost had in its database. Immediately, Randidly immersed himself in it. As a show of good faith, Randidly also produced five more Pterodactyls, which was more than enough for Henrik to hop with glee.

With the demands on him satisfied, Randidly turned to another goal; to make the drones that others could use to protect the various cities in Zone 1. To that end, Randidly carefully began designs for three drones. One to locate and identify threats, one to take care of small-scale problems, and another that could be used to stamp out locations that were filled to the brim with Raid Bosses.

They were called Hunter-Seeker, Stalker-Reaper, and Reaver-Crusher.