Chapter 375 Take Them On!
Inside the shelter, in Steven's room.
The phone chimed, indicating that the satellite phone Fluffy had placed in Cox Town was moving out of range.
Steven opened his phone, watching the signal slowly fade away, and narrowed his eyes.
"They finally showed up!"
He'd had Fluffy stash the sat phone in the students' room—a two-for-one deal.
First, it'd let external forces clean up the annoying students.
Second, he'd had Cindy rig the sat phone for real-time tracking. So, the second someone swiped it, Steven could pinpoint their base.
He moved to the window, peering through the blizzard toward Cox Town, a sharp glint in his eyes. "How's this gonna play out? I'm kinda pumped to find out."
He'd taken out the Psychics from both Silverlake and Emberwick—no way that beef was just gonna disappear.
Sooner or later, he'd have to face off with those two bases.
Either they'd talk it out, or things would get ugly.
At the end of the day, it all came down to who had the muscle.
Steven had zero doubts about the shelter's defenses—he wasn't sweating a combined assault from the bases.
But if they could settle this without bloodshed, that'd work for him too.
With that in mind, Steven headed out of his room and made his way to the control room to track down Cindy.
Cindy spent most of her time in the control room.
Her job was to lock down the shelter's network, keeping hackers out and their critical data safe.
In this post-apocalyptic world, everyone was armed to the teeth, hunting and being hunted in the shadows.
And intel was the ultimate game-changer—no contest.
Sometimes, it mattered even more than firepower.
Steven's takedown of West Mountain Base was a perfect proof of that.
Steven arrived at the control room. Cindy, dressed in black, was sitting in a wheelchair, eating chips while intently watching a screen.
It wasn't displaying any complex data but a classic movie.
Hearing the door open, Cindy quickly turned off the video.
She knew it must be Steven—only the two of them had access to the control room, and his clearance outranked hers.
"Hey, Steven! You're here," Cindy greeted with a warm smile, her voice dripping with sweetness.
Steven smiled and nodded, walking over and gently patting her smooth hair. "Watching a movie alone here, aren't you bored?"
"Not really! I wasn't slacking off," Cindy said with an innocent look.
If Steven didn't know her personality, he might really think she was just a simple little girl.
Steven sat next to Cindy and asked with a smile, "How's the data from those satellite phones I gave you a few days ago? Any important intelligence?"
Digging through all that data was a slog.
The AI still couldn't figure out what intel actually mattered to Steven.
Take something as simple as a photo of a meal—humans could use it to gauge Emberwick Base's living standards and piece together their situation.
That's why Cindy was stuck manually sifting through everything, bit by bit.
She hadn't even finished sorting through the mountain of data they'd grabbed from West Mountain Base!
Cindy said to Steven, "These guys are playing it safe—the sat phone didn't stay active long, so we've got slim data. But the chat logs confirmed it: the dude you took out was Christian. He was Megan's cousin—the big boss at Emberwick—and a team lead there."
Hearing this, Steven couldn't help but facepalm, "You've gotta be kidding me! I just offed the cousin of Emberwick's head honcho? This is gonna be a mess to clean up!"
Cindy smiled faintly, "Just a cousin. We don't know how close they were!"
Steven shrugged, "We can't be sure about their relationship. Anyway, just be prepared!"
Cindy continued, "And get this—from his chats, Emberwick and Silverlake are tight. Like, way closer than we thought. That's straight from his convos with some Emberwick folks. We're still in the dark on the full picture, though."
She shot Steven a wary look, adding, "Steven, if that's true, we might be looking at a two-front war here. Both bases coming at us? Not good."
Steven took a deep breath and leaned back in his chair, cool as ice. "I've already thought about it. After that long grind with West Mountain Base, I'm not scared of these big orgs anymore. They're all just glorified gangs. Without heavy artillery or serious firepower, they're not gonna be a real threat to us."
His eyes narrowed. "Honestly, I want to take them on. They need to learn that West Mountain's territory is mine now—Steven's turf. They don't get to mess with my life. One good fight, and they'll know not to cross us. Then we can all chill."
Steven was no longer the same as before.
He had strong and talented subordinates.
And after acquiring all the weapons from West Mountain Base, he had built an integrated defense line.
As long as he didn't actively attack any faction, purely in terms of defense and counterattack, he feared no one in Starlight City!
Cindy looked at the confident yet cautious Steven, her smile full of admiration. "By the way, Steven, their chats also dropped some stuff about the Snowfall Cult. It's not really our business, but I figured you'd wanna know."
"Oh?" Steven raised an eyebrow, his face darkening. He had zero love for the Snowfall Cult.
Snowfall Cult, a bizarre new sect that had evolved from a foreign religion, used human despair and ignorance to expand its influence, definitely not a good thing.
"What about them?"
Log in with Google Account
Chapters
Favorite
Settings
