73. Contacting the Soldiers

Contacting the Soldiers

“The hunt went very well. Little Black and I…”

He patted the portable cannon resting on his shoulder with the fondness of a man petting his own son. Since he treated the shotgun that way, the name was not even the strangest thing about him.

“…took down quite a few stronger ones. The invaders building those towers have been trying some new tricks in the eastern suburbs.”

Then, as if performing a magic trick, a bottle of beer appeared in his hand. He casually flicked the cap off with his thumb and started drinking.

If Force Sense had not shown me several warped spaces inside his pockets, each forming storage space about the size of a drum, it would have looked like he had learned a beer-summoning skill.

Which, in its own self-contradictory way, would have been kind of cool.

“Does beer still work on you?” I asked curiously. “The one drink I tried after getting powers tasted more like piss than anything else.”

That was not the only food-related problem I had run into recently. If I did not use my powers to make food more chewy while reducing my own base strength several times over, everything felt like mush.

Zhao Linshou did not answer. Instead, he produced another bottle of beer and threw it at me like a fastball.

I softened the impact with Force Adjustment to make sure the bottle did not shatter, caught it, popped the cap, and took a careful sip.

It tasted amazing.

No, far more than amazing. It was sweet and salty, carbonated and rich, with a hint of some spice I could not identify and just enough bitterness. It was the best beer I had ever tasted.

And despite my superhuman constitution, I could already feel the warmth of alcohol and the faint edge of intoxication.

“This… is perfect.” I stopped sipping and started drinking properly. “Where did you get it?”

“Everything I make by hand comes out better,” he told me after finishing his own bottle. “Shells cast for Little Black, leatherwork, hunting traps, homemade explosives, glue, shoe polish, and this hat.”

He touched the broad brim, which did indeed look brand-new and polished.

“The more care I put into it, the better it turns out. And the longer I keep doing the same thing, the faster I get. If it ain’t machine-made, I can make it better and quicker. Sarah also gave me some very fine barley she grew.”

That was a very interesting ability, and I did not say that only because it meant I could get drunk again.

I was about to ask him how long the brewing had taken, because where had he found the time?

Didn’t most fermented drinks need months or even years?

But that was when the first soldiers started arriving.

They came in twos and threes over the next several minutes, a little more than a dozen in total. Their ages ranged from early twenties to nearly fifty, and they all wore some kind of worn, patched military uniform while carrying ready firearms.

Even here, on a seemingly cleared patch of open ground at the edge of town, with not a single monster in sight, the last two weeks had taught everyone to treat gun safeties as an unnecessary delay between them and shooting the instant some monster showed its ugly face.

“Hey, fearless leader,” a vaguely familiar soldier greeted Old Zhao after giving me an assessing look.

Naturally, he was far from the only one doing so.

“Why are we gathering in an empty lot this far from the front?”

As time passed, more and more soldiers glanced my way. Their expressions ranged from friendly winks to openly lecherous stares.

“We are waiting here because if you go to the front now, you may die,” I muttered.

But since every survivor who did not want to be brutally murdered in an ambush had enhanced senses, about three quarters of them reacted in some way, or stared at the blonde girl drinking with the veteran gun maniac.

Some found it funny. Some grew increasingly angry or dismissive. Others looked curious.

Almost all of them glanced at me more than once, and not at my face.

The ones who showed no reaction at all, I mentally sorted into the idiot category, either because they had not enhanced their senses or because they were not paying attention.

“What are you doing here, little girl?” asked one of the taller, stronger men.

His tone was not friendly, but I had not been trying to be friendly either. That part was deliberate.

He looked nearly thirty, maybe just past it, with a solid body built for function rather than appearance. His skin was a shade lighter than mahogany, and he carried an aura stronger than ordinary humans should have.

He had a broad face with hard lines, close-cropped black hair, coal-black eyes, and a rather serious, gloomy expression. His smile was warm, but also a little condescending.

“I was sent here to solve a problem,” I said, rising from my non-chair until my feet hovered steadily a meter above the ground.

Some timid-looking blond man in the back muttered, “Flying vase,” which made several of his companions snicker and drew one or two crude gestures.

I rolled my eyes at the expected reaction. Temporary irritation was softened by anticipation of what came next.

“No, not the problem Martin back there is thinking of.”

Several people laughed openly, while the troublemaker whose name I had called looked me up and down with a pleased smile.

Actually, his eyes started at my toes, traveled appreciatively up to slightly below my head, and only then did he respond to being singled out.

“Hey, you know my name! You read my mind or something?”

No. I had peeked at his wallet while trying very hard not to look at anything else.

“Come on, can you guess what I’m thinking right now?”

More people laughed.

“Everybody knows what you’re thinking, Martin!” Old Zhao said with a laugh, clearly amused.

I found it slightly funny too, though mostly annoying.

The strong black man did not find it funny at all, judging by his clenched fists.

Handsome, but not calm. What a disappointment.

I had never liked brooding types, mostly because I brooded enough for several people already. And since I had removed Coach from the battlefield, I wanted to find a different way to have some fun.

So…

“You are obviously thinking something very complicated and impractical, definitely involving a big gun,” I told Martin with a cheeky smile while his friends whistled and threw out comments like “cute.”

“Tell you what, big guy.”

He was actually more than a meter shorter than me and at least sixty pounds lighter, but details are where comedy goes to die.

“Raise your gun.”

To avoid any misunderstanding, I pointed at the rifle beside him.

“If you can hit me once with a gun, we can see whether there are more interesting things to do with other guns.”

More jeering rose around us.

“You want me to shoot you?” Martin sounded confused, and in my experience people like him usually covered confusion with “witty” remarks.

At least in that respect, the young soldier did not disappoint.

“Why would I ruin such a pretty face?”

“You won’t. You’ll help me make a point. Pretend I’m a demon or something.”

Despite the others teasing him about chickens, manhood, and the usual tragic collapse of human dignity, Martin hesitated.

From the side, Zhao Linshou waved to get my attention, then pulled the ugliest face he could manage while putting his fingers over his head like horns.

I nodded to him. He sat back with a satisfied smile.

“Actually, why don’t we make it more realistic so you don’t have to pretend?” I told Martin, confusing most of the crowd.

My feet touched the ground. Dry sand and broken gravel stirred as I stepped forward, as though pulled by invisible cords behind me.

One more step, and more sand and gravel rose, swirling around my knees.

By the third step, the sand had reached my waist.

After the third and fourth steps, several tons of loose earth swallowed me completely. My head and long hair were the last things to disappear beneath the rising tide of stone and grit.