Chapter 404

The heavy doors at the entrance of the Mission Hall were pushed open, drawing everyone’s attention. A sudden chill seemed to sweep through the room, dropping the ambient temperature by a degree.

The atmosphere turned heavy, a dense pressure hanging in the air that made people instinctively want to take a step back.

Standing by the counter, Suzy looked past Jenny’s shoulder toward the opening doors.

First came a single figure.

To be exact, one man stepped inside first.

He wore dark gray combat fatigues with a tear at the hem, the frayed edges of the fabric curling outward to reveal a dark lining underneath. His pace wasn’t fast, but every step was steady and grounded.

“It’s Captain Jackson!” Jenny whispered under her breath.

“Captain Jackson?” Suzy asked curiously.

Jenny explained while keeping her eyes glued to the distant figure. “Captain Jackson Rann, leader of the Sacred Fire Squad. He’s famous around here—their team is insanely strong, easily top ten in the base.”

“Impressive,” Suzy murmured.

Yet, none of the members of the Sacred Fire Squad looked good, especially Captain Jackson leading the pack.

As Captain Jackson walked into the hall, three people followed close behind him. Every subsequent person moved a bit slower than the one ahead.

The person at the very back had to be supported. His arm was draped over a teammate’s shoulder while his other hand hung limp at his side. His knuckles were wrapped in bandages, stained with uneven splotches of color—some dark, some light—looking like a healing wound that had been painfully torn open again.

The low chatter in the hall died down the moment the group walked through the doors.

Under the collective gaze of the crowd, the small team cut through the hall and moved straight toward a side corridor.

A faint speck of gray light flickered in the air for a brief instant, catching Suzy’s sharp eyes.

Frowning, she instinctively tracked the dim gray glow, realizing it was clinging to the body of the most severely injured man.

What is that?

It was Suzy’s first time seeing this exact phenomenon, yet it felt strangely familiar. Perhaps she had crossed paths with something similar before.

Only after the figures of the Sacred Fire Squad vanished down the corridor did the stifling atmosphere in the hall ease, allowing the air to circulate once more.

Someone spoke in a quiet voice, small yet starkly clear in the quiet hush: “Even members of Sacred Fire… got hurt like that?”

No one answered right away.

A man standing by the window crushed out his cigarette. He looked as though he had forgotten to smoke it, lost in thought during that brief silence.

“That’s the first time I’ve ever seen Captain Jackson with an expression like that,” another person remarked, his tone laced with uncertainty. “Whenever he came back in the past, even with torn clothes and bloody wounds, he never looked so grim.”

Standing by the counter, Jenny’s eyes remained fixed on the closed corridor door.

Her voice dropped a notch. “Captain Jackson used to be a provincial martial arts coach. When the apocalypse hit, he led a group of martial artists and fought their way here. Since reaching P City, they’ve barely taken a loss. I’ve seen them go on missions, and I’ve seen them return—but I’ve never seen them like this…”

Jenny stopped abruptly.

A thought struck her, and she snapped her head toward Claire. “Claire, do you know what kind of mission Sacred Fire took this time?”

While regular personnel couldn’t pry into other squads’ assignments, Claire was staff and had her own channels.

At Jenny’s question, Claire slowly set her pen down and thought back carefully.

“If I recall… Sacred Fire took an advanced mission: a regional reconnaissance task. Usually, those are reserved for the top five teams, but Sacred Fire applied for a few recently, and since they were willing, the base approved them.”

Her voice dropped very low, pausing slightly mid-sentence. “The objective itself wasn’t supposed to be complicated—just scout the designated sector, record data, and bring back samples. If everything went smoothly, it was supposed to be a routine run.”

“That counts as an advanced mission?” Suzy asked in surprise.

This advanced mission sounded quite different from what she had imagined—from Claire’s description, it sounded almost simple.

“Of course it does,” Claire explained. “It sounds simple when I put it like that, but nobody knows what can happen out on the road. Plenty of raiders are lurking around, watching our base’s supply runs. Once you run into them, a clash is unavoidable.”

Raiders. Suzy noted another new term.

“What are raiders?” she asked.

Jenny chimed in, “A bunch of scumbags! You can think of them as bandits—unorganized bandits who prey on their own kind.”

Jenny clearly held deep resentment toward raiders. Instead of scavenging for supplies when they ran low, those bastards preferred to ambush travelers on the road, robbing them of their goods and dignity.

Jenny had almost fallen into their hands once. Luckily, she crossed paths with a base squad, and by joining forces, they managed to clear out the threat. Still, every time she recalled it, she felt a wave of disgust.

“I see.”

Suzy realized she was picking up a lot of new terminology since arriving at the P City Base.

“Did they run into raiders this time?” Suzy asked.

“Hard to say. Could be something else entirely,” Claire muttered under her breath.

“Something else? Like what?” Jenny instantly leaned closer to Claire, eager for gossip.

Claire pushed her back helplessly and lowered her voice. “Don’t ask me, I don’t know either. Things haven’t been peaceful around the base lately, but we don’t get the details down here. Jenny, be extra careful when you take on missions.”

Seeing Claire’s expression grow increasingly serious, Jenny sobered up and nodded firmly. “Don’t worry, Claire, I’ll watch my back.”

After responding, all three of them turned their focus back toward the direction of the Sacred Fire Squad.

A thought suddenly occurred to Jenny, and she pressed on, “Claire, do you know which sector they were sent to?”

“Hmm, I really can’t recall off the top of my head.” Pausing, Claire added, “Hold on, let me look it up.”

She shifted slightly and began typing away at her computer keyboard. As she read the screen, her expression shifted several times.

Suzy and Jenny waited at the counter for a full five minutes before Claire finally finished her search.

“How is it?” Jenny asked impatiently.

Claire had a complex look on her face. “Found it. The location was the outer perimeter of the West Zone, about forty kilometers from the base. Previous recon reports marked it as ‘No Anomalies.’ But as you just saw, an area with no anomalies doesn’t leave people in that state.”

“Outer perimeter of the West Zone?” Jenny frowned, sinking into thought.

Claire continued, “Now that I think about it, a lot of the recent exploration missions have been concentrated around the West Zone. Something must be going on over there.”

Suzy knew nothing about the base, let alone the West or East Zones, but she carefully noted down their conversation.

Jenny said softly, “As far as I remember, there aren’t many raiders out by the West Zone perimeter.”

Most raiders gathered around the East and North Zones. The West Zone was unremarkable and lacked resources, so most people tended to ignore it.

“Do you have a map of the base here?”