Chapter 120: Second step
Dhruv signaled Alaric to pack every slime in the vicinity. Initially, Dhruv thought of using a metal box to contain them, but after some thought, he abandoned that idea as there wasn’t any real use for it, and he would have to constantly maintain those spells.
Looking at the fifty slimes Alaric was dropping into his shadow, Dhruv couldn’t shake the feeling that something was missing. He couldn’t let go of the notion that the number of slimes was just too few for a wave on the third day.
’Does the gang kill the rest of the slimes and only keep these ones with them? But why would they do that if their motive was to earn Coins? Doesn’t it make sense to let the number increase as much as possible?’ As this question appeared in his mind, Dhruv began to think about it.
It took some moments, but Dhruv finally realized why the gang hadn’t just let the number of slimes increase much. ’So, with the number of people available here, they couldn’t achieve more production than they were already doing, and they had to kill the extra slimes in order to not overwhelm the people and cause an accident.’
Dhruv nodded in agreement, satisfied that he had come up with a plausible explanation for why the gang had killed the rest of the slimes.
"But how can a gang just think and execute all this to almost perfection? If I hadn’t come here today, they would have continued their work without any disruption. There sure are some big players involved in this... But why are they demanding this many coins? The only thing these coins could buy is either potions or basic armor and weapons or, increase stats. What are they planning...?" Dhruv pondered, his mind was thinking of all the possibilities...
"Everything’s done here, master," Alaric’s voice echoed, and Dhruv finally came out of his trance of thinking about the whole matter.
"..O-Okay, let’s fall back," Dhruv said as the group began to head back toward the sleeping area.
While traveling to the sleeping area, they found numerous dead bodies of the gang members they had killed. Following Dhruv’s command, Alaric would pick up every gun or any kind of weapon he came across.
Dhruv wasn’t planning to leave a single thing behind. This decision of his was partly due to his greediness but also because he didn’t want another gang to form after acquiring these weapons and doing this whole thing once again.
After walking for another five minutes, they finally reached the sleeping area. There, Dhruv saw Thala dead-staring at him with a face that seemed to be saying ’seriously, dude.’
’What’s up with him...’ Dhruv thought as he tried to figure out why Thala was staring at him. Then suddenly, he remembered the reason.
Dhruv walked toward Thala and whispered ever so slightly so nobody could hear their conversation.
"Oh, you’re awake, Thala. I was about to go and wake you. We are finished here. Everything is okay," Dhruv’s voice increased in volume at the last part of the sentence.
"Yes, my lord!" Even when his lord had forgotten about him, Thala, out of respect, bowed in acknowledgment and confirmed.
"Okay, everything is finished here. We are going to leave this place and head to an island where I and another few hundred people live. At the moment, you’ll have to live there in tents for a few more days. If you still want to go there, please follow me. If not, please raise your hand," Dhruv’s voice echoed as he voiced his intention.
After saying his final warning, he looked at the crowd of people, wanting to see if anyone had raised their hand or not. After scanning the crowd two or three times, he couldn’t find any raised hands, so he signaled everyone to follow him.
Dhruv and his crew began to move toward the gate. Dhruv was fully expecting guards with their machine guns aiming at him, waiting to kill him.
But the more he traveled toward the gate, the more he noticed that he was giving them more credit than they actually deserved. Even when he reached the place where the machine guns had been seen, there was no one there.
All the guns were still in their original place, but the ones who were supposed to be controlling them were nowhere to be found. A chuckle escaped from Dhruv’s mouth as he ordered Alaric to pack those machine guns as well.
After thinking for a moment, Dhruv found this behavior was obvious; after all, who would want to guard a gate when their boss is dead?
After walking for a moment, they finally reached the entrance of the station. Dhruv began to look for vehicles that could carry all of them at once, so the risk of getting killed by monsters would be kept at a minimum.
He began to search for that type of vehicle on the road, and after searching for a minute or two, he found a truck. The truck was quite long, the type used to carry very big loads around the city, so Dhruv was quite sure that everyone could fit in it.
He looked at the people who were standing at the gate and said out loud, "Does anyone of you know how to drive this thing?" Dhruv asked as he signaled toward the truck.
A middle-aged person came out from the group and said, "I know how to drive that."
"Okay, you go to the driver’s seat. Everyone else, go in the back. We will first stop at a place where we will gather supplies, and then we will move forward," Dhruv said as he observed the driver.
From his build, it was quite clear that this man had worked in physical labor before all this. All the man’s hair was slowly turning into a shade of white despite him being in his twenties and there were visible wrinkles on his face.
The more Dhruv looked at him the more he remembered the hardships of the world one had to endure to live here.
Sigh!
With a sigh, he waited for everyone to board the truck, and he and the group got on the roof of the truck and signaled the driver to start it.
With this Dhruv had once again taken one step toward his goal...
