Chapter 4: Escape!
Kael explained his plan to Lawrence and Jayem, detailing the location of some gears he had hidden earlier that could potentially aid them in the operation, before finally parting ways with the duo to perform their assigned parts.
"I'll leave the preparation of burning this junk shop to the two," Kael muttered. In the meantime, he has to take care of something else.
After traversing the terrain in the dark, Kael soon arrived at a certain location. He raised his hand and started taking out a bunch of rusted iron sheets.
What soon appeared in front of Kael was his luggage.
Opening the luggage, Kael made sure to check that everything was still inside before closing it again and leaving the place.
This time, he is going to wait at their agreed-upon checkpoint, which is located at the border of the junk shop. To be more exact, it was the wall closest to the entrance.
Why exactly?
Well, that's because if they're going to burn the junk shop, they obviously have to find a way to escape, right? And there's only one exit in this place.
Although it is possible to create another exit, they can't risk that because gang members are definitely outside the walls waiting. And they can't tell if there's one on the other side because the walls of every junk shop are not see-through. They're solid steel walls or sometimes concrete walls, and instead of assigning guards on top of the walls, they assigned them on the other side. After all, Rustfall doesn't care about security or order—they only care about maintaining profit.
Along the way to his next destination, he had to make a few stops and hide using the cover of the darkness because a bunch of gang members were closely patrolling the area, evidently looking for them.
Nevertheless, it didn't take him long to arrive at his destination.
Kael put his luggage in a safe corner and began looking for a place to hide and wait for Lawrence and Jayem's arrival.
Surveying his surroundings, he soon spotted dozens of scrappers being blocked at the exit of the junk shop by gang members.
Although it was already nighttime, a few hardworking scrappers were still roaming the area looking for scraps that they could trade for caps or use for themselves.
This was natural, especially if a scrapper has a family to feed.
"I used to be one of them," Kael can't help but reminisce.
In the past, he used to stay up until midnight, scrounging around from one junk shop to another in hopes of finding an item that could change his life for good. Although he never found such an item. And it was only later on that he discovered that local gangs who own the junk shop have the priority to look around first before allowing the public to search. That means every time there's a new shipment of junk coming from the other continents of Noverra, almost every valuable items go into the hands of the gang members, and rarely would there be a chance they'd miss such a type of item.
Only a handful of people knew this information, and he had been just lucky enough to stumble upon it. That's because every junk shop in Noverra promised the same thing to the public. "If you searched hard enough, you might just find an item that could make you rich."
Kael snicked. "Now I plan to use your trick to escape from this place."
After a bit more time surveying, Kael spotted Lawrence and Jayem approaching him.
"Is everything ready?" Kael asked.
"As soon as you give the signal, this place will start burning down to the ground." Lawrence can't help feeling excited. He was initially hesitant to do this, but as he thought about it deeply, he realized something. "If Kael was someone who would dare to burn a junk shop, then just imagine what kind of operation he'd plan on doing."
And evidently, Jayem agreed with him as well as they talked about it along the way.
Their conversation went like this;
"What do you think Kael wants us for?" Jayem was really curious about what Kael planned on doing.
"He's young, but he is stronger than us. And to top it all off, he doesn't hesitate to achieve his goal." Lawrence described what he noticed about Kael so far.
"Like burning this treasure trove to the ground?"
"A junk shop might be considered a treasure trove in Rustfall, but let's stop lying to ourselves, this here is nothing more than a landfill."
"So, you're thinking that he is recruiting us for an operation in one of the five rich continents?"
"Nobody in Rustfall is bold enough to burn a junk shop to the ground, at least not one of us. Only those rich people from the five continents would do that."
"Doesn't this mean we've just hit a jackpot?"
"Hold that thought for now. Until we've confirmed what we are getting ourselves into, we won't expect anything," Lawrence motioned with his hand.
That was the end of their conversation. And right now, they plan on finding more about this young man's capability in hopes of getting more clues.
"Good work!" Kael nodded his head. "Now, the two of you find a way to sneak in along that group of scrapers and make sure to not blow your cover. Otherwise, you both are on your own. In the meantime, I'll start the fire."
"That's easy," Lawrence smiled. They were masters of disguise, so blending in a group of people was as easy as breathing for them.
Kael left the duo behind as he made his way toward the closest trap.
It wasn't that far, so he arrived rather quickly. Besides, he didn't need to stand right next to the trap, he just had to be close enough to reach the trigger.
But along the way, he can't help but notice the increase in the number of gang members patrolling the place.
"They must be getting desperate," Kael smiled.
Unfortunately for them, they'd never be able to find them.
Taking out a lighter and the bottle with kerosene inside, Kael lit up its wick and prepared himself to throw it away.
"Let's go!" Kael hurled his hand forward and let go of the bottle of kerosene.
*Bang!
As soon as the bottle hit the ground, a huge light quickly engulfed the place as if a hungry beast was ready to consume everything.
*Bang!
In the next moment, another explosion erupted as another bottle that Lawrence and Jayem had set up earlier was engulfed by the fire.
*Swish!
Strong wind gushed out forward.
"Time to leave," Kael muttered as he pretended to run towards the exit.
He didn't mind the guard who spotted him running. After all, who wouldn't run away from fire, right? Not to mention, they didn't know he caused that fire. So, there was no reason to give chase since they'd just assume his one of the scrappers.
As Kael was running away, one by one, explosions erupted all over the place.
*Bang!
*Bang!
*Bang!
In a chain of effect, every bottle of kerosene immediately exploded as soon as flames touched it, thus causing a series of explosions all over the junk shop.
Seeing Kael starting with his act, Lawrence and Jayem also started with theirs.
"Let us out!"
"Nooo! Please, let me leave this place!"
Looking at the junk shop starting to burn down behind them and hearing the cries of help within their group, the scrappers finally couldn't hold it in.
"Fuck! Let us out!"
"This is madness! Do you want to kill us all?!"
"Sort your trouble yourselves, don't include us in your mess!"
Riot immediately started within the group of scrappers.
Looking at this, one of the gang members decided to step forward.
"I know this is too much trouble to all of you, but we have to find those perpetrators!"
Unexpectedly, one of the scrappers took out a knife and, without any hesitation, stabbed the gang member.
"Argh!" The gang member coughed out a mouthful of blood.
"You think we are fools? Those people you are looking for clearly started the fire, so why do you still bother stopping us from leaving this place?!"
These people might not have received an education, but they weren't stupid enough not to see the obvious.
If all of them were here and a fire started somewhere else, it's quite obvious already that none of them here started it.
The gang leader, who saw one of his members getting stabbed, simply glanced at it briefly before turning his attention back towards the continuously increasing fire.
Someone getting stabbed because of a disagreement wasn't a rare event in Rustfall. In fact, just bumping into somebody was already more than enough reason to get stabbed.
In other words, that person who got stabbed brought that upon himself because nobody told him to step forward to calm the masses.