Chapter 95: The Local Fauna
Chapter 95: The Local Fauna
The groups were all back within a few hours after lunch had ended, and the group leaders had reports for Kalli about what they had found.
"The snakes are nomadic, not territorial, for the most part. We suspect that the only ones who defend a territory and don’t just attack whoever comes close are the females with nests nearby.
Other than that, the monsters in the forest are not a major threat.
The Swineherd Demons have retreated from the forest after the last few days of attacks. I think that they believe the other monsters are responsible for their losses, since they only saw the groups enter and never return.
They don’t know that they actually made it to this side and were foraging when they were intercepted.
Other than that, we have spotted movement among the Ogres to the Northwest, inland of the beach. They’re retreating from the area, and appear to be most concerned about the mushroom cloud.
It’s got them spooked, but we can’t tell if they have the intelligence to know what it is, or if they think that it’s a threat too large for them to deal with, so they’re playing it safe."
Kalli nodded as she took notes. "Anything else? The crabs or the ocean monsters?"
"No signs of changes on that front. However, there is something happening far to the north.
It was completely silent for a long time, and the Navy thought that it was depopulated, but now it is bursting with signal traffic to the satellites. We don’t know what, and don’t have the technology to break the encryption.
But we do know that there is a lot of it, and the terrestrial source is moving south.
There is a chance that it is a group of survivors who are trying to escape the nuclear fallout."
Kalli frowned. "Perhaps we should invest in a few vehicles and send a scout team to find them and bring them here? The more people we have, the better. But where is the closest city up there?
Or military bunker, if there was one."
"A hundred kilometres north of Gomand is the port of Zrabi. Three hundred thousand people, give or take, unknown survivors. If they can get close enough, their heroes might be able to resurrect here, but if we can send a scout team, they might have civilians with them."
"Alright, I have an option to sell motorcycles that can be charged with mana. That’s more likely to be helpful than gasoline-powered vehicles, given how much of the city simply disappeared when this trial started.
If we can’t find vehicles to salvage, we’re not going to find fuel either."
Dirt bikes were 25 System Points each, and took 5 mana per hour to run. That was reasonable, and even the Warriors wouldn’t have any issues keeping up with that demand.
"Any ideas on who we should send? My default would be to send members from the Special Forces team, along with a healer, in case the refugees need one. But they don’t have any mages, and they don’t have a tank type warrior, as only the Sergeant is Awakened."
The Navy group shook their heads. "I think that it’s best if you send someone who isn’t from the government. Who knows what happened in their city before the first full trial? If they managed to take nearly every hero from Marimgar, and now almost all the people are gone, what about everywhere else?
It could be something like what happened with Gomand, and it is just those who were abandoned in the bunkers left to come our way."
"Good point. Alright, I will come up with a team and get them sent out in the morning to rescue who we can. If there are survivors from the west, they’ll likely be headed down the highway to try to get away from the fallout, assuming that the highway still exists."
The heroes dispersed to go about their evenings, and Kalli examined the equipment that she still had.
They had managed to get power back online at the apartment, with a bit of rewiring of the Academy’s power relays. So, they had the ability to use electric appliances. That would keep them for a little while, and everyone knew not to turn on lights at night.
Especially now that word was spreading that the Swineherd Demons were basically blind in the dark.
More than one team was making plans to do their hunt right after midnight when the missions reset so that they could ambush the Swineherds and get easy kills. There were far more boars than there were Swineherds leading them, so if they wanted to keep the food supply stable, it was better to take out the handlers without having to eliminate all the livestock.
Sure, that meant that the remaining monsters would have more boars with them when the teams went to hunt them, but eventually Kalli was hoping that they could reclaim the majority of the region for humanity.
If that was the case, then keeping at least some of the boars alive was the best call.
Once everyone was back, and Kalli had finished her trip to the gym and dinner, she found herself again with far too much time on her hands. They were rotating guard duty, and with so many more people, she wasn’t on nearly as often as she used to be.
There were too many volunteers.
So, she started to inventory her storage, to make sure that there was nothing she was short on.
Food, more food, crunchy food, snack food. A statue of herself...
Kalli inspected that one, as it was a reward from the System for the completion of the first trial.
{Statue of Kallista De Marimgar} System Object. Quests of Easy and Hard difficulty may be accepted and redeemed within 1 metre of this statue.
It actually had such a function? She could have saved herself so many headaches if she had looked at that first.
Now she needed to find a spot for it.