Chapter 29: Chapter 29: Bena’s Past
The slide wasn’t long, and Bena’s feet quickly touched the bottom.
This space beneath the ruins wasn’t actually very large. It was a hiding place Bena had discovered using his innate talent.
From a very young age, Bena knew he might be what the adults called an ability user—someone with abnormal powers.
It was just that his ability wasn’t super strength, the power to shoot fire, or skin hardening. Instead, it was the rather strange ability to sense hollow spaces.
At a close enough range, he could perceive certain voids that others couldn’t.
Of course, this ability sounded completely useless, so he never told anyone about it.
After all, in this terrifying wasteland, you couldn’t even fully trust your own parents sometimes. Not to mention, his parents had died when he was very young, and he had been living with his uncle since he was nine.
So, he never dared to speak of his body’s abnormality.
However, as he got older, Bena joined Scrap Copper Town’s Scavenger Team, following his uncle to scavenge in the wasteland.
Scrap Copper Town was a typical small town in the wasteland, with a population of only a few thousand. It was named that because many discarded copper parts could often be found nearby.
The town’s own output wasn’t high, and it had no special products, so it had to pay a monthly tribute to a nearby raider faction to ensure its safety.
As long as everyone could find enough high-quality copper parts and sufficient food, it wasn’t a huge problem.
But if they failed to meet the month’s quota, the only thing awaiting them was the raiders’ wrath.
But as everyone scavenged relentlessly like a swarm of locusts, all the easily accessible materials on the surface had long been stripped clean. All that remained was either useless scrap or massive objects that required heavy machinery to move.
Of course, heavy machinery still existed in the wasteland, but those sophisticated machines were all in the hands of large organizations.
A town like Scrap Copper Town, which no one was even willing to protect, certainly wouldn’t have any machinery for hauling.
As gathering became more difficult, the Scavenger Team could only venture into more distant and dangerous areas to collect supplies and hunt prey.
Farther-off places meant the possibility of strong radiation, as well as dangerous mutated beasts or Corpse Ghosts hiding in the shadows.
But they were in no position to refuse. If they couldn’t make the monthly tribute, the raiders would snatch some of the town’s residents.
In the wasteland, people were also a resource. Turning them into canned food or jerky, or selling them to black market clinics to be parted out for organs, all generated a handsome income.
Of course, unless absolutely necessary, the raiders rarely wiped everyone out.
After all, there were only so many humans in a given area. If they harvested too ruthlessly, their own lives as raiders would also worsen.
This situation, however, improved slightly after Bena came along.
Although Bena’s ability seemed useless, even worthless, in daily life, it often had unexpected uses during scavenging runs.
Areas that appeared to have been picked clean often still had underground hollows or even hidden compartments within buildings, and his ability was perfect for discovering them.
Repeated successes slowly improved the Scavenger Team’s hauls and also brought attention to Bena, the once-inconspicuous little orphan.
Thanks to this, Scrap Copper Town enjoyed several years of relative peace.
Bena was always extremely careful. As an orphan, he was more sensitive than others, terrified that if his secret was ever discovered, he would meet a grisly end.
After all, an ability user like him, with little to no self-defense capability, could never become a powerful figure. He could only become a bargaining chip in someone else’s hands.
Therefore, he was careful not to make his ability too obvious. No one noticed anything unusual. Everyone just thought Bena’s keen observation skills, combined with good luck, allowed him to lead them to good harvests time and time again.
However, just when Bena thought he could live out his life in peace, something that filled him with dread happened again: the resources in the surrounding area began to dwindle once more after years of collection.
Although he could find nearby hollows, his ability wasn’t infallible.
He had already found all the hollows within the ruins that he was able to sense.
With the monthly tribute once again at risk, the town and the Scavenger Team were trapped in the same old cycle.
Once the resources near the town were exhausted, they had no choice but to go farther out to gather more.
As for relocating, that was completely out of the question.
Scrap Copper Town was situated near a water source, and the radiation in the soil wasn’t high. They could grow grain and crops there. Although the yield wasn’t massive, it was enough to sustain several thousand people and pay the monthly tribute.
If they were to leave Scrap Copper Town, the lifeline for these few thousand people would be cut. And in the wasteland, unless faced with certain death, no one would ever abandon a source of water and arable land.
Helpless, the Scavenger Team had no choice but to travel on foot to more distant places to scavenge.
And Bena, as always, secretly used his ability to find more resources, trying his best to keep everyone away from overly dangerous areas.
However, when you constantly walk into danger, it’s only a matter of time before something goes wrong.
During one unremarkable scavenging run, Bena found another hollow space hidden behind a giant metal wall. He could even faintly sense that there might be something good inside.
In his excitement, he immediately found a crack and slipped behind the massive metal wall.
However, what greeted him wasn’t treasure, but a severely damaged sub-miniature reactor, its old nuclear fuel having leaked out long ago.
The so-called giant metal wall wasn’t a wall at all, but a sealed containment chamber that had been hastily built to seal off the reactor.
But after several hundred years, the protective chamber had fallen into such disrepair that its purpose was no longer recognizable.
Although Bena was wearing the simple protective suit that was essential for any wasteland dweller, this kind of suit was only somewhat useful against ordinary radiation.
But against the reactor’s high dose of lethal radiation, all it did was keep Bena from dying instantly.
Although Bena immediately sensed something was wrong and fled the containment chamber, his body had already been exposed to an extreme concentration of radiation.
The members of the Scavenger Team were quite experienced. After all, as natives of the wasteland, they had been exposed to radiation since birth, to say nothing of a team that frequently went on expeditions.
Everyone immediately used various folk remedies to try and save Bena’s life. It’s unclear whether their methods worked or if Bena was just lucky, but he managed to survive. He was, however, left a cripple.
Although Bena was fortunate to survive, the accident left his physical condition far worse than before. His ability was also severely affected, and naturally, he lost his job with the Scavenger Team.
