Wasteland's Only King-Chapter 88 - 85: Dawn City, Your City Lord Has Returned

Chapter 88: Chapter 85: Dawn City, Your City Lord Has Returned

Boom—

Rumble—!

Up on the celestial vault, thunder rumbled.

Neil’s figure shuttled through it.

Thanks to the rewards that the official Wasteland game handed out when he first logged in, Neil’s ’Flying Thunder God’ was now at level 9, maxed out.

[Tier Two Thunder Attribute Ability: Flying Thunder God lv9]

[Active Effect: Transform into lightning and move at high speed, ignoring physical obstacles over short distances]

[Full-Level Effect: This ability has no cooldown. As long as energy is sufficient, it can be continuously unleashed]

Back on Blue Star, Neil could only shuttle ten meters using ’Flying Thunder God’.

But now?

Tier Nine + lv9 + no suppression.

With a triple buff, every step Neil took now could cover more than ten kilometers!

From White Rock City to Dawn City was two hundred kilometers.

For countless wasteland wanderers, two hundred kilometers—even if nothing dangerous happened—would take ten days or half a month on foot.

But for Neil?

Two hundred kilometers—all in all, just twenty steps.

"This is what a real superman looks like!"

Amid the thunder and light, Neil couldn’t help but sigh from the heart.

And while sighing,

he even had time to glance down at the wasteland below.

Come to think of it, since waking up, Neil hadn’t properly observed this world, this so-called A3 Wasteland Planet.

Light Touch Lv1 activated.

Neil took in every scene below him.

On the yellow-brown earth, there wasn’t a hint of green.

The sky was gloomy, and except for the areas near Refuge Cities, everywhere was shrouded in a faint layer of black mist.

The wasteland was scattered with withered and ugly gray-black mutant plants.

These plants secreted pitch-black sticky liquid, which dripped to the ground with a ’sizzle’ of burning.

Neil noticed—

On a black mutant vine hung dozens of corpses of refugees.

Their faces were still frozen in the despair and terror of death.

At this moment,

the black vine was drawing blood and energy from their bodies.

The scene was extremely unsettling.

Whoosh—!

Neil raised his hand and blasted it with a ’laser’.

In a split second,

the black vine vanished into nothingness.

"I hate this kind of thing that keeps tormenting corpses even after death!"

Neil spat and looked away.

On the desolate and vast wasteland, there were quite a few refugee bands moving, clustered like ant colonies.

They crawled forward slowly, nervously on guard against dangers that could surface at any moment.

There were far more roaming, ferocious mutant beasts than refugees.

They wandered the plains, hunting humans as prey.

And deep underground,

using Spatial Perception, Neil ’saw’ one enormous, honeycomb-like nest after another.

"So these are mutant beast and infected nests?"

Neil frowned slightly.

On the incomplete map from the system and the map given by Yin Shanhai, the most marked spots after Refuge City locations were all kinds of nests.

Originally...

Neil had thought those nests would be exposed on the surface, so refugees could just avoid them by steering clear.

But in reality...

the nests were all extremely well-hidden deep underground.

Atop a nest, it looked no different from the surrounding wasteland.

But...

if any refugees ever stepped onto that ground, what awaited them was nothing but hopeless death.

At this moment,

Neil became keenly aware of just how vital ’maps’ were as resources in the Wasteland World.

"Whew—"

Thinking of this, Neil let out a heavy breath.

He thought of Blue Star.

Though before crossing over, he’d done his best to purify eighty-nine percent of Omumuamua’s pollution source,

still, eleven percent of the source crashed onto Blue Star.

That meant...

Blue Star would remain polluted and keep evolving toward a ’Wasteland Planet’.

Pollution source? Infected bodies? Mutant beasts?

The dangers faced by the half of humanity that stayed on Blue Star were hardly any less than those in the wasteland.

"Hope Brother Tongzi finishes the update and gives us a boost..."

"That way, I can hurry back to Blue Star sooner."

Neil thought this, but his feet didn’t slow down at all.

Rumble——!

Lightning flashed.

At the edge of Neil’s eyesight, a faint virtual outline of a not-so-large Refuge City appeared.

"Dawn City, my city!"

In Neil’s heart, a rush of indescribable warmth and excitement rose.

At this moment,

he even ignored another voice echoing in his mind.

[You have defeated and killed ’Tier Five Evolver—White Rock City Lord’!]

[Strongman’s Spoils (lv1) activated...]

[You have acquired one of his attributes!]

[You have awakened your seventh attribute: Giant Stone!]

[...]

At this moment,

what Neil didn’t notice was that

as he transformed into lightning and shot off toward faraway Dawn City,

down on the wasteland beneath him,

in an ordinary-looking refugee band of just over twenty people, a petite figure hidden beneath a thick hood suddenly stopped walking and looked up.

"Nia, what’s wrong?"

"Is there danger ahead?"

The moment the small figure named ’Nia’ stopped, the leader of the band—a burly shirtless man—nervously called after her.

These past few days,

if not for ’Nia’ sensing danger in advance every time, their whole group would have been wiped out long ago.

"No."

Under the hood, the tiny figure shook her head.

"That’s good!"

The band leader let out a long sigh of relief.

The other refugees’ tightly strung nerves also eased instantly.

"Sigh!"

"We’ve been escaping from Bright City for days now. Who knows how long it’ll take to find another Refuge City."

"And we can’t be sure if the new Refuge City will be just like Bright City and use us wanderers as black slaves."

The band leader gazed ahead with a low sigh and a hint of bewilderment in his eyes.

"Let’s go there."

Nia suddenly spoke, pointing toward the direction Neil vanished.

"There. Maybe there’s a pretty good Refuge City."

...

...

Wasteland, Dawn City.

The giant steel city gates were tightly shut.

Outside the gates,

there was a black mass beyond sight, mutant beasts and infected bodies clustering together, letting out piercing, shrill screeches.

Inside Dawn City,

over a hundred thousand wanderers crowded on the streets of the Outer City.

Listening to the screeches outside, their bodies trembled ceaselessly in terror.

Atop Dawn City’s walls,

the mere one thousand Evolvers of Dawn City all looked tense.

Three days ago,

the mutant beast and infected nests around Dawn City inexplicably went berserk together.

In three days,

hundreds of thousands of mutant beasts and infected bodies surrounded Dawn City from all sides, sealing it tight.

And now?

After several probing attacks, it seemed the beast tide was finally going to strike.

On the wasteland,

sieges by beast tides were not uncommon for Refuge Cities.

But...

what was truly fatal was that Dawn City’s strong and mysterious New City Lord had gone missing at the worst possible moment!

He vanished without a trace.

Like he’d never existed at all.

"Sigh—"

On Martial Arts Plaza,

Chen Gang looked up at the figure standing at the very front of the city wall.

Angelina Neil, Tier Five Mechanical Evolver, the strongest in Dawn City now.

Chen Gang had seen this boss’s strength first hand.

Just two days ago, his second day after crossing into the wasteland, it was through her exam that he became part of the Dawn City Guard Team.

Thinking of this, Chen Gang looked to his side.

Yin Yao. She was now captain of the Guard Team, and his direct superior.

But...

Senior Sister Yin’s face was now filled with worry.

"Tier Six Infected Body, Tier Seven Mutant Beast..."

"Dawn City just can’t hold them off..."

Chen Gang heard Yin Yao mutter softly.

"Sigh—"

Chen Gang couldn’t help but sigh again.

It was just his third day after crossing over.

"No clue if Old Yu made it across yet?"

"No clue what’s up with Old Cui and Yu Fei right now?"

"Looks like Brother Gang’s gonna be the first one to bite the dust..."

Chen Gang mumbled, glancing at the crowd behind Yin Yao.

This group wasn’t Guard Team members, but newbies who’d joined Dawn City only three days ago.

There were only about forty of them, guys and girls, all looking pretty green.

Funny thing was, not only were they from Jiang University, they were all members of Yu Jin’s Environmental Protection Club.

Three days ago,

after crossing over, they’d started out right in Dawn City.

Back then,

they were overjoyed, thinking they’d dodged ’wasteland survival in the wild’.

But now?

All these guys and girls wore long faces, unable to force a smile.

What felt like a god-tier starting hand turned out to be a disaster from the get-go.

Roar—!

Roaar—!

Outside Dawn City,

hundreds of thousands of mutant beasts and infected bodies let out even sharper screeches.

"They’re coming!"

Chen Gang’s face instantly tensed up.

Bzzt—!

He triggered his ’Electric Current’ attribute, sparks crackled between his hands.

Come to think of it...

Right now, besides Neil, the Tier Five Evolver, the strongest in Dawn City were honestly just the Tier Three Evolvers.

There were seven Tier Three Evolvers in total—five indigenous, plus Yin Yao and Chen Gang.

"Damn!"

"I already made the top ten in the whole city, and Dawn City is still screwed?"

Chen Gang looked at the electricity in his hands, lips twitching hard.

"Here they come!"

Another low cry.

This time, from the very front of the wall, Angelina Neil.

Ka—

Kaka—!

As Yin Yao, Chen Gang, and the others watched,

the Tier Five Evolver triggered her ’Mechanical’ attribute ability.

After a few seconds,

Neil vanished.

In her place stood a massive, black humanoid mecha, more than ten meters tall.

"Hiss—"

"Battle mode?"

"This is way too cool..."

Even with the looming siege, seeing Neil’s mecha form for the first time, Chen Gang’s eyes were wide with awe.

Whoosh—!

At that moment,

Yin Yao, seeing Neil shift into mecha, drew a deep breath and activated her ’Sandstorm’ attribute.

A swarm of small sand tornadoes appeared out of thin air around her.

But the next second,

Neil’s move stunned Yin Yao, Chen Gang, and all the others.

In mecha mode, instead of attacking the mutant beast tide starting to storm the wall,

she...

raised her hand to her chest, bowing slightly toward the eastern sky.

"Is that...?"

The whole crowd was dumbstruck.

Chen Gang gaped even wider, totally baffled.

And then—

Boom—

Rumble—!

Suddenly deafening thunder echoed in everyone’s ears.

The thousand-plus people on the wall, and the over a hundred thousand refugees inside, all instinctively looked up, tracking the noise.

They saw—

far off at the eastern horizon, 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

a dazzling bolt of lightning, bright enough to almost split the sky, was streaking toward Dawn City at unbelievable speed!

"My Lord—"

"Neil humbly awaits your arrival!"

Angelina Neil’s reverent shout echoed inside and outside Dawn City.

Countless refugees, still dazed, instantly broke into cheers.

"Wow, City Lord!"

"City Lord, the City Lord!"

"Dawn City’s City Lord has returned!"