"Not surprising there are so many armed people in the streets," Li Qingyu thought. "So the Underhive gangs are carving up territory."
A hive city is a colossal metropolis where tens—sometimes hundreds—of billions live packed together.
The Planetary Governor often has neither the strength nor the desire to govern the inhabitants of the lower levels. Naturally, someone has to fill the vacuum of power—hence all these gangs.
Li Qingyu decided to accept the job. Knowing how vile traders are in games like this, the more quests you complete, the higher their disposition gets—and the more valuable the goods they put on the counter.
And the quest rewards get fatter too. Work is all upside.
"So, ten guns?" Li Qingyu repeated. "I'll look for them on the battlefields up top. Wait for news."
"May the God-Emperor protect you, my good guest."
After taking the quest, Li Qingyu left the Fertilizer gang's base and headed for the surface through the steel tunnels.
Five minutes later, a green timer appeared in his field of view.
"Deploying. Map: Northern Combat Zone. 10, 9, 8, 7..."
When the countdown hit zero, a whistle sounded, and Li Qingyu vanished from the tunnel. Everything swam before his eyes; his vision cut out.
When the picture returned, he was standing in the middle of a field some thirty kilometers from the hive.
That was the power of the "Raid" System. After choosing an entry point, it teleported him to a completely safe location, saving him from wasting huge amounts of time on travel.
Returning worked the same way. The extraction point in the ventilation shaft was more than twenty kilometers from his Hideout if you followed winding routes deep underground.
On foot, getting home would take hours—and with a full rucksack of trophies you could drop dead on the way!
So reaching an extraction point and teleporting straight back to base was extremely convenient.
After a successful drop, Li Qingyu began scouting the area.
It was some kind of farm. Most of the buildings had been shattered by shelling; only two three-story concrete barracks remained intact.
Crouching, Li Qingyu approached under cover of night and pricked up his ears. Silence. Nobody inside.
He climbed in through a window and started scavenging.
Agri-World 496b had two moons, so visibility at night was decent. Once his eyes adjusted, he could see everything clearly enough.
By moonlight, Li Qingyu looked around the room. It was a farmers' dormitory; the building had sixteen such rooms. The workers cultivated the surrounding fields.
He rummaged through every locker and drawer but found nothing valuable. Rebels and the PDF had passed through here repeatedly, so anything useful had been looted long ago.
However, when he reached the farthest room on the third floor, he felt around under a bed and found a wooden figurine of the Emperor, about the size of a thermos.
"Holy shit! A gold drop!"
Li Qingyu opened the interface: the crude wooden trinket really did glow with a gold rarity tag.
Name: Wooden Emperor figurine.
Market value: Worthless.
Description: A sacred image of the Emperor carved by a farmer. Though the workmanship is atrocious, the maker's faith was sincere. The figurine carries a faint charge of belief and can be used to create an Emperor's Shrine.
Hint: An important item for upgrading the Hideout.
Li Qingyu was overjoyed. Finally—a base upgrade!
The Hideout had an option to build a Shrine, and this was the exact item it required. If you placed ordinary water or oil in the Shrine, the output would be holy water and sacred oil.
Holy water purges the body of the taint of Chaos, and sacred oil, applied to the face, protects against mental intrusion. If you anoint a melee weapon with it, you gain a bonus to damage against daemonic creatures.
Pleased as could be, he stuffed the figurine into his pack and headed to the second barracks. But that one was completely bare—not even a rotten rag left. Everything had been licked clean.
"No, this won't do. It's too poor."
Li Qingyu shook his head and opened the map in the interface. There were two options.
Three kilometers north—the trench line. There might be military supplies and weapons left there, but it was a rebel-controlled zone, so a garrison could be present.
Four kilometers northwest—a grain terminal. Before the war, harvests were brought there; now rebels were squatting there too. Most likely it was their transfer hub, meaning even more people.
"Where to?"
Li Qingyu hesitated. The only weapon he had was a knife. One rebel with an autogun—and it was game over.
Most of all, he loved places where the fight had just ended. One side routed the other, a pursuit began, and nobody cared about the battlefield. That was when he crawled out, greedily looted everything, and ran.
And as if in answer to his thoughts, from the direction of the trenches came the thunder of a vicious firefight and explosions. The night woke instantly!
He reflexively dropped to the ground, hid behind the ruins, and listened.
Most of the shooting was from PDF autoguns. As for the explosions—this wasn't heavy artillery, but a heavy autocannon. Most likely mounted on armored support.
"PDF infantry and armor. A night raid on rebel positions!"
"Oh yes, baby—thoughts become reality!" Li Qingyu was ecstatic. He'd been planning to go pick up trash on a battlefield, but he didn't rush. He had to wait for the right moment, or he'd get caught in the crossfire.
The cacophony of shots and blasts continued for about twenty minutes. The autocannon was especially busy—boom-boom-boom-boom without pause. Live rounds, caliber around forty millimeters, no less.
What vehicle mounts guns like that? Judging by the standard organization of the Imperial Planetary Defence Force, it should be a Chimera.
As he was thinking, the sounds of battle began to shift. Someone had been forced off their positions.
By the sound of it, the rebels had been driven out of the trenches and were running toward the grain terminal, with the PDF pursuing and pressing the advantage.
He shot out of cover and sprinted for the trenches.
Right now both sides were busy chasing and fleeing; nobody cared about trophies. He had to strip everything before the PDF came back.
And indeed, when he reached the trenches, nobody was there except corpses, the stink of gunpowder, and blood. The soldiers and vehicles had pushed forward; the cannonade had shifted toward the terminal.
Li Qingyu dropped into the trench, yanked an autogun off a rebel corpse, hung it around his neck, darted to the next body, grabbed a second, a third.
As he gathered weapons, he sized up the scale of the slaughter. The battle was around a hundred people. The PDF had committed roughly a company and a single Chimera, striking under cover of night.
The rebels had been about two hundred strong, but surprise did its work—losses were monstrous. The trenches were choked with bodies riddled with bullets or torn to shreds by autocannon shells.
Soon, Li Qingyu had seven guns hanging on him, and he'd stuffed twelve magazines stripped from bodies into his pockets. Weight: 53 kg. Yellow overload triggered; speed reduced by 30%.
These seven rifles, plus the three in storage, were just enough to finish Nepal's quest. Li Qingyu decided not to get greedy and to make a run for it.