Hmm, this dog is pretty good, doesn’t bark. Malin sighed in relief as he put away the tender branches—if this dog dared to bite, Malin would have bashed its brain out of its skull. Just then, the Vengeful Spirit finally kicked the bucket. With a wave of Malin’s hand, the gem left behind by the Vengeful Spirit landed in his palm. After inspecting its quality, Malin dispelled the Negative Energy from the gem and tossed it to the captain, who caught it, still in a state of shock. Malin shook his head in exasperation and spoke up: "Consider this stone a reward from me. Once you reach a safe place, sell it and split the money among yourselves." Even as Malin stepped into the teleportation rift, the captain and his squad still hadn’t recovered from the surprise. This left Malin a bit emotional—it wasn’t their fault, after all, not every kid could anchor a Dimensional Anchor and slay a Legendary Vengeful Spirit with a single strike. Back at Tulin’s side, Tulin had already seen through the surveillance camera that Malin had taken down the Vengeful Spirit. Tulin, Hal, and the Camp Master all expressed a certain level of awe at Malin’s ruthlessness and speed in action. Having dealt with the most formidable Vengeful Spirit in the pursuing team, the southern tunnel was much quieter now. Earlier, when Malin went in, he could sense many Chaos units lurking not far away. But after dispatching the Vengeful Spirit, those in his sensory range scattered immediately. This confirmed the scattered nature of the Chaos stragglers. Perhaps the Chaos attacking the northern camp here were merely a self-organized Tide of the Dead. In Westland, such a Tide of the Dead posed a grave threat to small villages and towns, but when it came to attacking large cities, Chaos would be at a loss. It was in this context that North American survivors found themselves without large cities—Malin thought a core area population of tens of thousands was quite a lot, but in terms of defense systems, how could underground camps compare to surface cities? Although both parties engaged in attritional warfare, humanity would have to be insane to fight a war of attrition against Chaos. Fighting Chaos in an attrition battle? Raising some punk for fifteen years to fight an endless Chaos that can resurrect in the Subspace? Maybe with a population of a trillion or more, there wouldn’t be any fear, but with a mere twenty or thirty thousand people in a camp at most, it would make Malin suspect that the guy was a traitor to humanity. So when the purple lights of the northern tunnel lit up, Malin finally relaxed. The civilians had almost completely evacuated, and the Guards at the southern tunnel entrance started boarding the trailing carriages of the locomotive, which was originally the Camp Master’s ’villa’ divided into two parts: the main body attached to the locomotive’s front and the back carriage armed with two machine cannons. Originally intended for directional firing support, the discovery of this arrangement immensely delighted Malin—this was indeed a strategic withdrawal. Given the Camp Master had three pregnant wives and seven children, Malin, Tulin, and Hal chose to turn a blind eye. The locomotive followed at the rear as cover for the civilians. News kept coming from the Guards up front, and thankfully there were no signs of Chaos creatures. The fleeing convoy safely reached a camp called Amothek Station, reportedly not far from the core region, dubbed as its gateway, with fortress-level defenses and large iron gates Malin hadn’t seen in previous camps. Because a fearless messenger had already risked his life to reach there, Amothek Station camp didn’t open its gates but rather redirected the tracks—the civilians entered the camp from the left side for isolation. Malin’s locomotive went directly to the transfer area on the right side for vehicle repair and maintenance and personnel inspection. After hearing that Malin and the others had fled from Stafford Camp, Amothek Station Camp’s leader decided on such arrangements responsibly. Malin didn’t mind, in fact, he thought it was a responsible move for the entire Amothek Station camp. If the guy ignored it, Malin would indeed suspect that he was already possessed by Chaos. Of course, their inspection yielded nothing. Malin had already checked everyone once, and the unfortunate few with wounds and infections had them treated by Malin, so the medical team in charge of the inspection reported nothing wrong after a thorough check. It wasn’t until then that the Camp Master of Amothek Station camp appeared in the transfer area. He chatted with the Camp Master of Dunfris Camp, Fatty, for a while, then approached Malin, extending his hand: "Hello, Lord Malin, I heard you’re from the Old World." "You could say that, but actually, I’m from Europe." Malin called himself a European for a reason, as North American and Thainan relations hadn’t been particularly amicable. Malin didn’t know what their view was of Thainan over such a long period, but Europeans clearly fared better, as everyone was still of fair skin. No matter how bad, it wouldn’t stoop to racial issues. In Malin’s view, North America excelled at this kind of subtle discrimination. Upon hearing Malin was from Europe, the man indeed became more enthusiastic. However, he still said that Malin and his people couldn’t head north just yet, as he had received orders to intercept all civilians from fallen southern camps and recruit the able-bodied into the military—in the critical situation of the north, the core zone couldn’t spare much strength to protect Amothek Station camp, so they granted authority for the camp to form a defense unit. The camp master of Amothek Station, Rick, had discerned the northern crisis from this order from the officials in the core zone and was indeed embarrassed to ask for help, so he was left with no choice but to make sacrifices for the survivors from each camp. After discussing with Tulin and Hal, Malin decided to go with Rick—heading towards the core zone now would pose issues with accommodations and food, better to stay, as Amothek Station camp’s defense was decent. Fatty, the Camp Master of Dunfris Camp, also mentioned that there were plenty of weapons in Amothek Station’s arsenal, and his Guards could temporarily join the military to defend there—most importantly, they all felt it was better being with Malin than living precariously in the core zone—having a strongman who could slay a Legendary Vengeful Spirit by one’s side was better than standing with someone weaker than oneself. Following the former might be dangerous, but it was better than certain death with the latter. Of course, the most crucial reason was that Malin had potatoes to eat—potatoes were from a zone of wild growth identified by Malin on the surface, with some radiation contamination, but safe after Purification, and they were indeed filling. Given everyone’s consensus, Malin readily accepted and pulled out some obsoleted single-shot rifles. Though single-shot, they were much better than the steel pipe rifles handed to civilians at Amothek Station camp, which had an effective range of a hundred meters with a spread of roughly half a meter, and its lethality was about the same within a hundred meters. Beyond one hundred and fifty meters, shooting an iron Breastplate bullet couldn’t penetrate. With such firepower, Malin’s rifles were definitely superior. With such junk, two civilians shared one rifle, and another was issued two shell clips. Fatty, the Camp Master of Dunfris Camp, accepted the rifles given by Malin and distributed them among his Guards, giving the excess rifles and those steel pipe junk to his camp’s civilians. So Rick from Amothek Station camp came to ask if Malin had more arms. Originally, Malin intended to say no, but the guy began by offering two hundred pounds of gold, stating that if there were no more arms available, he would trade for some old-era caliber military bullets. Without hesitation, Malin delivered fifty thousand bullets to the man. These stockpile rifle bullets had been falling out of sales due to the mass production of small-caliber semi-automatic weapons; Malin didn’t expect to find a customer here. Rick was a straightforward person; seeing the large number of bullets, he brought out another two hundred pounds of gold, expressing willingness to buy another batch if there were more available. So Malin directly delivered the entire stockpile of one hundred and thirty thousand rounds to him. In this day and age, such quality customers were a rare find.