Chapter 321: Chapter 220: The Fatty
On the fourth day, Paige Summers and Sean Raines arrived at the destination marked on the map.
Silvanus Base.
It was a small base.
About the size of a pre-apocalypse town.
Rather than being in the same direction as Norgate, this place was actually further west.
Paige Summers had passed by here before when traveling from The Dead City to Central City, but she hadn’t needed to resupply at the time, so she didn’t go in.
She and Sean Raines entered the base without any trouble. The guards at the gate gave them fawning smiles.
Although these men couldn’t discern the pair’s Superpower Ranks, the sight of the enormous and fierce Mutant Bird, Sweetie, told them everything they needed to know: these were experts far more powerful than anyone in the base.
From them, Paige Summers learned that Marcus Monroe had indeed come here, but he had left the very same day and hadn’t been back since.
The base was peaceful; there were no signs of any recent fighting.
A search of the inn where Marcus Monroe had stayed only led to disappointment; the place was deserted.
She did another lap around town and found the contact point for Jovitas, but that too was empty.
’This was awful!’
They didn’t even know where to look next.
Paige Summers stood on the spot, her mind racing.
Beside her, Sean Raines hesitated for a moment before suddenly saying, "Wait here. I need to go somewhere for a little while."
"What for?"
"Don’t ask. Just wait for me to get back."
Paige Summers watched him disappear down the path, then raised an eyebrow and followed.
To her surprise, Sean Raines went back to the inn where Marcus Monroe had stayed.
’Strange.’
’Why go back?’
’If he’d noticed something, he would have said so earlier.’
Sean Raines entered the room. Paige hesitated, deciding not to follow him in. Instead, she went back to the inn’s entrance.
’If I get too close, he’ll definitely notice me.’
’Better not.’
Unexpectedly, she ended up waiting for nearly an hour before Sean Raines finally emerged, his face pale.
Paige Summers frowned slightly and walked up to him. "Are you all right?"
Sean Raines didn’t seem surprised to see her there. He forced a smile. "I’m fine, just a little tired. But at least it worked. It would have been a waste of your time otherwise."
Before Paige Summers could reply, he added, "Let’s talk as we go. I know which way they went."
Paige Summers was surprised for a moment, but then it dawned on her.
’He must have used some kind of Secret Technique from The Taoist Order to find them. It couldn’t have been easy. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have hesitated earlier, and he wouldn’t look so awful right now.’
She gave him a long, searching look. "All right, let’s go!"
The two of them quickly mounted Sweetie. Sean held a palm-sized Jade Plate with a triangular pointer. Following the direction it indicated, they traveled another fifty or sixty kilometers until they reached the foot of Mount Silvanus.
The further northwest they went, the more mountainous the terrain became, with fewer and fewer plains.
Mount Silvanus wasn’t particularly tall, but it stretched far to the northeast, extending for what looked like hundreds of kilometers.
’Finding anyone here wouldn’t be easy.’
But just then, the pointer on the Jade Plate stopped moving...
Sean Raines sighed and shook his head. "It’s no good. They left too long ago; their trail has gone cold. I was only able to track them this far because no one else had stayed in that room."
Paige Summers turned to look at the sprawling expanse of Mount Silvanus and declared fiercely, "If they’re here, we’ll find them!"
Sean Raines was still weak, but Paige Summers couldn’t wait any longer.
Understanding her urgency, Sean Raines waved a hand. "You go on ahead. Leave Sweetie with me for now. I’ll recover soon, and with its help, I’ll be able to catch up."
’That’s a good idea.’
’Sweetie can not only navigate, but it’s also a strong fighter. It can protect him while he recovers.’
Paige Summers agreed, "Okay," then turned and headed into the mountains.
The mountain path was rugged, but that was no obstacle for her.
She activated her superpower and reached a point midway up the mountain in about ten minutes.
Despite her speed, she remained observant. Strangely, she couldn’t find any sign that someone had passed this way.
’This either means they didn’t come this way, or someone intentionally covered their tracks.’
’I trust Sean Raines’s abilities, so it has to be the latter.’
’The tracks wouldn’t have been hidden from Mutant Beasts or Zombies. They were hidden from people. To avoid being found!’
’Marcus Monroe came here hunting Sheldon Reid. But this situation forced her to wonder... could the tables have turned? Was it Sheldon Reid who had the upper hand now, hunting his pursuers to the last man?’
The more she thought, the faster she moved. Before long, she reached the summit. Finding nothing there, she continued running straight to the northeast.
She ran for nearly an hour without realizing it, pushing deeper and deeper into Mount Silvanus.
The woods were dense, with trees providing thick cover. There were plenty of Mutant Beasts and plants, but luckily, none were powerful enough to pose a real threat. Clearing a path was just a matter of a few swings of her blade.
But even after all this time, there was still not a shred of human presence. Paige Summers couldn’t help but slow her pace.
The moment she slowed down, she made a discovery.
She thought she heard an extremely faint cry for help coming from ahead and to her right.
’You’ve got to be kidding me. Who screams for help in a place like this?!’
Paige Summers moved forward, half-believing, and found that there really was someone weakly crying out for help. It was a pale, chubby man, and he was stuck in a tree.
The tree wasn’t a mutant.
It looked like a single tree that had forked at the base, but it was actually two trees that had grown too close together.
The gap between the two trunks wasn’t that small; she could have slipped through sideways without any trouble.
But for the pale, chubby man, reality was far crueler.
Not only was he wedged between them, he was stuck tight. The flesh of his stomach was pinched so hard it looked like it had been split in two, and his whole body shivered as he cried for help.
If the sudden appearance of a man on this desolate mountain weren’t so bizarre, Paige Summers probably would have burst out laughing.
It was the apocalypse; you could barely find fat people even in the large bases. And yet here was this man—not only fat, but pale, too. He looked suspiciously well-fed.
To anyone else, it would look like a blatant show of wealth!
But it was precisely because someone like him had no business being here that Paige not only stifled her laughter but approached with extreme caution.
’Since he’s in these mountains, he might know something.’
The man hadn’t noticed her arrival at all. In between cries for help, he was sniffling and whimpering, his mumbled voice a litany of complaints. He complained about his bad luck, about his heartless companions who’d abandoned him, about how hungry he was, about how this damn tree grew in such a bizarre way...
In short, he complained about everything he could think to complain about.
Once Paige was closer, she confirmed there was no one else around and sensed no immediate danger, so she took a moment to listen to what he was saying. After just a few words, she found his voice incredibly grating.
"Shut up!"
The sharp command startled the man into silence for a second. But then, he cried out in excitement, "You! You... Miss! No, ma’am! My savior! Please, you have to help me!"
