Wasteland: I Awakened A Plant System - Chapter 233: Changes In Survivors (GT Bonus)

A special thank you to MoonLobster for the Golden Ticket! Your support truly means a lot and motivates me to keep writing and improving the story.

[Abhishek: Boss, I’m not dead, not dead! I’m perfectly fine.]

Inside Brown Wood Shelter, after a jolt of electricity, Abhishek looked around his surroundings.

Only after confirming that no one was paying attention to him did he quickly reply to Vikram.

Vikram breathed a sigh of relief. If Abhishek had died, Brown Wood Shelter wouldn’t be able to trace him, but Vikram would lose an information channel.

“Looks like I really gambled correctly. Is it really a lie detector?”

Shrugging, Vikram replied:

[Vikram: The thing I gave you previously was pretty good, right?]

[Vikram: How about it? I told you that if you listened to me, nothing would happen. Do you believe me now?]

[Abhishek: I believe you, I believe you! Thank you, Boss, for saving my life.]

Thanks to the fruit Vikram had given him earlier, Abhishek had indeed escaped the interrogation. He continuously thanked Vikram in the chat.

Strangely, Abhishek, sitting on his bed, checked his surroundings every time he replied to see if anyone was paying attention.

[Vikram: You’re welcome. By the way, I plan to explore the resource you told me about recently. There shouldn’t be any problems, right?]

Just as gratitude welled up in his heart, Vikram’s words made him grit his teeth again.

“Damn it, how dare this bastard go outside in this kind of environment?”

He had originally thought that by telling the other party about the resource, Vikram wouldn’t explore it so soon.

After all, the outside world is unusually dangerous right now.

At that time, he could take the opportunity to snatch some valuable items from the resource point before Vikram, which wouldn’t be bad.

But this plan went awry because Brown Wood Shelter was now under full martial law.

Except for a few members personally designated by the Brown Wood Shelter’s leader, Lawrence, everyone’s activity range was restricted to within a dozen meters of the Shelter.

They could only plant vegetables, mine, and so on inside the Shelter.

Speaking of which, this was also Vikram’s fault.

Originally, if Brown Wood Shelter had found the spy, this wouldn’t have happened at all.

But now that Abhishek had escaped, Lawrence, the leader of Brown Wood Shelter, had caused this result to prevent the spy from escaping.

The current situation was that if anyone’s behavior was found to be suspicious, their chat records would be checked.

This was also why he had been so cautious since just now.

[Abhishek: No…no, I haven’t explored the resource point yet.]

Hearing that Vikram intended to go to the resource he had discovered, Abhishek replied, almost squeezing the words through his teeth.

[Vikram: That’s good. Oh, and remember to delete the chat records. Don’t reveal our conversation to anyone, okay?]

Vikram grinned, left this light remark, and then exited the chat.

With the bracelet, just this one sentence was enough to firmly restrict the other party.

He wouldn’t need to worry about whether his subsequent whereabouts would be known by others.

“Get ready. Tomorrow, I plan to take you all out to gather resources.”

Vikram thought for a moment and said in a deep voice.

As for why he wasn’t going to explore the resource point today, because it was getting late today.

Upon hearing this, Anjali naturally agreed with both hands.

Divya, however, looked thoughtful.

“So sudden?”

“Yes, I found a resource point, and time is of the essence.”

The preparations for going out were basically all set, he was also planning to take Healer, Light Mage, Storm Mage and Phantom.

Taking advantage of the current large number of zombies outside and other survivors not daring to go out, it was the perfect time for him to seize the initiative.

Hearing this Divya nodded, buts he told him, “You should take Anju with you, she was complaining about wanting to go out before.”

Vikram thought for a moment upon hearing this, “Alright then, you stay, but don’t travel outside.”

“I’ll take everyone else.”

After settling on the plan, evening arrived.

Soon, the aroma of dishes wafted from the kitchen.

Fortunately, among the supplies Vikram had previously told them to stockpile with vegetables, there were various seasonings.

So there was no need to worry about the food being bland.

Tonight’s dinner was a large pot of stewed chicken.

The chicken, raised on exquisite-grade feed, was tender and juicy.

Paired with side dishes like corn, green peppers, and potatoes, the three ate with great relish.

“It’s just missing some staple food. It would be even better if there was a large flatbread to chew on right now.”

Speaking of which, Vikram’s planting had wheat seeds planted this time.

It will be ready for harvest in two more days.

At that time, the Shelter would be able to grind wheat into flour to make various dishes.

After this batch of crops was harvested, he planned to plant rice for the next batch.

By then, eating fragrant rice would also be a simple matter.

After dinner, Vikram plopped down on the sofa.

He opened the chat channel he hadn’t used in a long time.

In his leisure time, he wanted to see how the survivors who had been surviving with him these days were doing.

But just as he opened the regional chat channel, the information inside made Vikram look surprised.

“(Coordinates: 267, 558) Private message if you’re close, don’t bother if you’re far.”

“(Coordinates: 343, 190) Same as above, close by, come if you have cotton.”

There were very few normal chats in the channel, with the screen full of shared coordinate locations.

Even though Vikram knew the outside world was dangerous now and no one dared to go out easily, he found such behavior difficult to understand.

He finally found a few normal messages that didn’t expose coordinates, but the results filled him with endless emotion.

“Crimson Desire Shelter sincerely invites Survivors from all shelters to come and visit. The sisters in the Shelter are all slender or plump, graceful and charming. The entry threshold is only one bread or equivalent food. The price is fair and honest, guaranteed to satisfy you. Survivor brothers who are interested can add a friend to learn more.”

“If the girls take a liking to you, you even have a chance to be taken back to the Shelter!”

The message was sent by a female survivor who looked quite charming.

This Survivor also added a ’you know what I mean’ emoji at the end.

It made his eyelids twitch.

“Hiss!” Vikram gasped.

“What in the world is this?” He hadn’t opened it for just a few days, and the drastic changes in the chat channel made Vikram unable to adapt at once, leaving him dizzy.

“This couldn’t be…” He rubbed his forehead and thought for a moment, and an idea instantly popped into his mind.

But then he reconsidered, wondering if he was thinking too much?

“Maybe it’s a legitimate female shelter?” Adhering to a pragmatic attitude, Vikram still tried to add the female Survivor who had just sent the message as a friend.

Vikram swore he wasn’t adding this Survivor as a friend because he wanted to go…

—

Vikram casually fiddled with the chat channel on his finger for a bit, then sent a friend request.

During this time, he wasn’t idle, continuing to scroll through the messages in the channel.

“Trading metal for vegetables, for immediate transactions with suitable distance. Interested bros can contact me.”

“A set of genuine leather sofas, only a couple of pounds of food needed to exchange. Anyone interested?”

“Damn, upstairs, are you still pretending everyone just survived in the Wasteland?”

“You dare to ask for two pounds of food for a broken set of furniture? Are you crazy?”

“Tch, what do you know? This is furniture I collected from a resource point, the quality is top-notch, definitely much more durable than your shoddy stuff.”

“Hahaha, looks like he really is a fool. How many Shelters haven’t explored resource points by now? No one would even take your furniture for free, let alone trade food for it.”

“Really? Then if I give it to you, do you want it?”

“Cough cough, that’s a different matter. I don’t mind having more furniture in the shelter, trade it for me.”

“Get lost, you just want to freeload, and you make it sound so good.”

“Massively acquiring vegetable seeds can be exchanged for light bulbs. Offline transaction coordinates 233, 233. Only wait for ten minutes, come quickly!”

“Violet Shelter is recruiting. We have already explored two resource points and have strong strength. Interested parties can apply with their physical fitness.”

“So that’s what’s going on. I was wondering why everyone was acting so crazy.”

Looking at the constantly flashing messages on the screen, Vikram nodded thoughtfully, finally understanding the situation.

The trading market was almost paralyzed; one trading opportunity per day was completely insufficient for them to conduct large-scale transactions.

These survivors, who didn’t have private trading partners, chose to shout out in the chat channel.

Vikram watched for just a few minutes on the sofa, and hundreds of transaction messages had already scrolled past.

The purpose of these reporting survivors was very clear: they were all for offline transactions.

Reporting the location was just to prevent those far away from adding them as friends if they saw the message.

As for the issue of exposed coordinates, Vikram could figure it out with a little thought.

These locations were probably not the coordinates of their shelters, but just a coordinate close to their shelter that they sent out.

Besides that, he also noticed that the food circulating in the market seemed to have already shifted from food found in various supply crates to agricultural products like vegetables and fruits.

Finally, regarding resource points, Vikram quickly scanned and found that the size of these resource points varied greatly.

Most of the resource points discovered by survivors were small bungalows.

Most were about a hundred square meters in size, and it was good if they could even take away some useless appliances from them.

As for a resource point as large as the Hospital Ruin that Vikram had explored earlier, he hadn’t heard anyone mention anything similar so far.

Only a few scattered shelters were using the gimmick of having explored a certain resource point to recruit people.

“It seems that only a minority of survivors can truly find resource points.”

Vikram sighed with relief.

At least it proved that while he was developing steadily in his territory, he hadn’t been left too far behind by other survivors.

Just as he was about to close the chat and get some good rest to conserve energy for exploring resource points tomorrow, the friend request he had sent earlier was accepted.