“It uses only 19 liters of diesel every hundred kilometers. That’s not a big problem. I would have been worried if I didn’t have the oil well, but since I do, I can fully exhibit the car’s power without caring about the higher fuel consumption!”
He closed the cover of the fuel tank. Suddenly, Su Mo felt quite heroic.
“The oil well is good stuff. Once I have the opportunity to collect enough cores, I will conduct the reparation for the oil well. Otherwise, if I leave it at the Deep-sea Shelter and it is destroyed or taken over by the enemy, it would be a terrible loss!”
He observed the large patch of bushes burning in the distance, as the fire crackled bright and high in the sky. Su Mo fell into deep thought.
His previous plan was to create a passageway between both locations. If the primary shelter was in danger, then he would be able to make his escape through the passageway.
This would prevent him from putting all his eggs in one basket. If anything happened to that basket, all the eggs would end up broken.
By making those arrangements, even if the primary shelter was destroyed and the psychic energy water well was gone, he could still rely on the motor-pumped oil well to stand on his two feet and wait for the opportunity to rise up once more.
However, from the looks of things, concentrating all his energy to develop a single shelter as a base was the current correct path.
Dividing up his energy and survival points between two shelters might result in him not being strong enough overall if a huge enough disaster occurred later. That would be a huge embarrassment.
“With so many treasure chests and the items I found inside them, I definitely have enough to exchange them for things I need in the secret realm!”
He called Oreo, who was still licking the car’s windshield, to get into the car. Su Mo then started the engine and drove in the direction that was the complete opposite of the Underground Shelter.
With such obvious tire tracks, the kobolds would be sure to track him down should he return directly to the base.
That was why, the best direction to head to was…
The lion clan!
“If I had been born during the warring era, I would probably have been an expert in manipulation and schemes!”
Su Mo could not help but laugh out loud at the thought of the lion clan while looking at the Lion God sculpture sitting quietly in the storage space of the trunk.
Su Mo had even thought about how enraged the kobolds would be, having experienced such devastating explosions, as they gave chase by following the tire tracks. He thought about what expressions would color their faces when they ended up finding the lion people’s base camp in the middle of the road instead.
A boorish fellow would choose to go head-to-head.
A smarter person would make use of a greater strength or power, but…
Only someone who had seen through people, and considered all the benefits and drawbacks at the end of the world, could be like Su Mo now; gathering whatever that could be gathered, and destroying whatever that should be destroyed.
“All alien races who come to this disaster-filled world on their own accord must have something they need here. Unfortunately, there’s a language barrier and no one can tell what it is that they truly need or what their intentions are!”
“All we can do is take things one step at a time!”
Su Mo had no idea of what the situation was like for others, and could only make judgments based on his own surroundings.
There were only a handful of magical creatures allowed, unlike the humans that had arrived in droves.
That was why, if these creatures wanted to develop further and strengthen themselves to achieve whatever goal they had in mind when coming to this world, the only way was to…
Continuously defeat the other clans in war!
This was the basic difference between humans and the magical clans when looking from the perspective of obtaining benefits. If humans wanted to develop in the vast wasteland, they had to try their best to hunt down these creatures and obtain treasure chests.
However, these rules could also be similarly used by other clans. Humans were considered a clan and, if the magical creatures were able to slay three hundred humans, they could also summon a portal.
This has resulted in a mutually antagonistic situation; where if humans met magical creatures, they would want to kill the creatures to obtain treasure chests, whereas the creatures would also want to kill the humans to open the portal and strengthen their clans.
Both parties could only benefit by using or destroying the other party. With the wasteland constantly causing death and disasters as well, it was only natural that there was no way both parties would ever honestly work together.
At the end of it all, there was only war!
“I will need to stay low for a while after this. It would be very dangerous to keep causing so much trouble frequently before I’ve even managed to find out more about my opponents!”
It was not Su Mo’s style to hide within a solid shelter while passively waiting for the different dangers to come knocking at his door.
He would always take the initiative when attacking, while also ensuring that his shelter was a safe retreat route and the final stronghold when danger came knocking. When it was time to be thrifty, then he would save to the extreme, but when the time came for one to spend, then he would spend without hesitation.
It was only then that he would be able to obtain maximum survival points through his personal abilities and keep up with shelters that had more people, and finally establish his own advantage in this doomsday world.
Su Mo’s thoughts had drifted far off while traveling on the way to the lion clan.
Without realizing it, the Earth Tiger, which was now equipped with windshields and a heightened chassis, had sped up faster and faster on the flatlands.
It maintained an average speed of fifty or sixty yards per second. The lion people’s base camp began to appear on the horizon within an hour.
Su Mo pulled the car over and removed his seatbelt. He took out the binoculars from the trunk space and popped his head out to observe the distant lion clan.
The core shelter that had been blown up by the picric acid bomb had now turned into a pile of ruins.
Beside the parts of the house that were still standing, the surrounding has been burnt bald. No matter how one looked at it, it did not look like a house.
A darkened group of lion people stood surrounding the front of the core shelter that had been burnt and left half in ruins. They seemed to be conducting some sort of ritual.
“The lion people have retained their effective strength. The kobolds won’t be able to do a thing if they rely on their speed to escape… though they would probably end up losing this village.”
He returned to his seat and fastened his safety belt. Su Mo blatantly started his car and drove straight toward the lion people’s village.
When he noticed that the lion people did not react when he was within three hundred meters range, Su Mo pressed on his horn twice in slight amusement.
Honk!
Honk!
The long honk of the horn interrupted the process of the lion people’s prayer in front of the core shelter. Hundreds of pairs of eyes immediately turned in his direction, staring at Su Mo in the car.
“Hello, how are all of you doing?”
He waved and, from such a close distance, Su Mo was able to see the shock and rage on the Lioness’s face.
“Oreo, tell them that we will one day deal with them for killing humans without restraint. This was just an appetizer.”
“Oh, right, tell them that you’re the vanguard general of the kobolds, and that I’m a human working together with the kobolds!”
Oreo, who was sitting in the passenger’s seat, immediately revealed a naughty smile on her doggy face after hearing Su Mo’s words, as if they had just pulled off a successful scheme.
She stretched out her head and barked out loud toward the lion people from the window. Her tone was filled with disdain and ridicule.
It was a bark imbued with ‘vigor’ similar to when the Kobold Mage had ridiculed Oreo as a third-class clan member; a sense of superiority which Oreo now displayed!
After hearing Oreo’s dialect, Su Mo could feel the murderous intent almost overflowing out of the lion people’s village without even looking at them.
“Good job, that’s a pretty decent amount of hate you’ve brought out of them. There’s no need to rush. We’ll just let the bullets fly about for a few seconds!”
Su Mo was not at all anxious as he watched the lion warriors rushing out of the village. He pressed his foot down on the accelerator while his hand rested on the car’s window pane, quietly enjoying the evening breeze.
Su Mo could see the Lioness at the center of the charge. She looked like she was in a crazed state as she sped toward him with wind magic.
It was quite an amazing sight to see hundreds of lion people charge forward. Unfortunately, he did not have a camera. Otherwise, Su Mo would have liked to record this historical moment.
It was only when the first of the lion people had reached the hundred-meter mark that Su Mo’s right foot pressed down hard. The roar of the exhaust pipe could be heard roaring into the wilderness.
The next second, a cloud of black smoke appeared and the car’s tires spun rapidly.
The AT tires had strong traction as it aided the car’s increase in speed. Su Mo stared at the side-view of the lion people’s charge and clenched both hands tightly on the steering wheel as he accelerated forward in a straight line.
When all the lion people saw Su Mo move, they had no choice but to chase after him behind the car.
Su Mo maintained the Earth Tiger’s speed within a range where the lion people were able to follow, but not catch up.
He waited until the lion people behind him had covered three hundred and fifty meters of tire tracks before reaching his hand out of the car to wave goodbye. Then he pressed down hard on the accelerator pedal.
40…60…80!
The Earth Tiger sped up faster and faster, and the lion people could only helplessly cease their pursuit. They watched on with raging eyes as the car sped far away into the distance.
The Lioness, who had been squeezed to the very back of the group, walked out to the very front now that the entire group had stopped.
As she watched the car slowly vanish from her sight, for some reason, she felt that she had never experienced this level of helplessness when facing the kobolds. She paused for a moment before waving her hand, and the lion people began to return to their village.
The large stretch of land was only left with marks of the lion people’s feet, with no trace of the tire tracks to be found at all.
