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…