Inside the tent, an old man with not a single hair on his head sat with his back to the door curtain.
After Captain America and Steve entered the tent, he remained seated and smoothly spun around in place, an elegant smile on his lips.
“Captain, you’re ba—”
The elegant smile froze.
The thing next to the Captain… what on earth was it…
“Don’t be so surprised, Professor.” Captain America pulled over a nearby chair and sat down.
“Let me introduce you, Professor. This one is also named Steve. Steve, this is Charles Xavier; you can call him Professor X.”
Professor X…
Steve was greatly impressed; the nicknames of these people were all so cool.
He used the skill [Rapid Crouch] again to show friendliness, but it had zero effect.
“It… is… a robot? Where did you find such a thing?” Professor X asked hesitantly.
Steve didn’t quite understand why this bald old man called him a robot, but Captain America’s expression turned much more serious upon hearing this.
“A robot? You mean… you can’t feel his mind?”
Professor X nodded slowly.
“It… well, he, in my view, does not seem to belong to the category of living organisms.”
Captain America stared at Steve for a long while without saying a word, as if deep in thought.
Steve felt a bit uneasy under his gaze.
“Don’t be so nervous, Steve.” Captain America suddenly laughed.
“I was just thinking that maybe one day this trait of yours could be of great use. By the way, Professor…”
“Yes?”
“Steve is a good guy, and I hope he can join us. I’d like to trouble you to help notify everyone about this so they aren’t startled by his appearance.”
“…Alright. I trust your judgment, Captain.” Professor X nodded, closed his eyes for three seconds, and then opened them.
“Everyone has been notified.”
Steve: ◨▂◧…
Huh?
Captain America seemed to see Steve’s confusion and explained patiently, “Professor X has the power of Telepathy. With just a thought, he can tell everyone that you are our companion.”
Steve understood instantly; it was like typing in the chat bar, something players often do in multiplayer servers.
“This is what Barton found in that place you mentioned; it might be useful.” Captain America said, placing several documents on the table.
“I’ll take Steve to find an empty room first.”
Captain America had just said his goodbyes to Professor X and was about to leave when Professor X called out to him, “Wait.”
“Is there something else, Professor?”
“As you know, the zombie tides have been getting fiercer lately. This camp was built with the help of Eric and Stark. Now, we don’t have the ability to reinforce our defenses, we lack high-end combat power, and our resources are already…”
Professor X’s face was so grim it looked like it could drip water.
Captain America naturally knew what he wanted to say.
Currently, the only ones in the camp who could be considered high-end combat power were himself and Hawkeye; that mage named Hassan barely counted.
Hassan’s mastery of spells was not high, and the three of them did not have very efficient means of killing the zombie tides, not to mention…
Among the zombie tides were their former comrades.
Very powerful comrades.
However, with the current manpower of the camp, it was almost impossible to make any qualitative improvements to their defensive measures.
Eric could move multi-ton vault doors from underground vaults to the surface and stack multi-ton shipping containers from the docks to serve as walls.
And that man named Stark could surround the camp with autonomous turrets produced by his own factory.
He and Hawkeye didn’t have that kind of capability.
As for food, it had been over a year since New York fell to the Zombie Virus, and the only food left was basically canned goods.
The survivors had used as much space as possible to grow crops like corn, fruits, and vegetables on rooftops, but conditions were limited and simply not enough to support the survival of the hundreds of people in the camp; they were still living on borrowed time.
This is difficult…
“I’ll think of something, don’t worry.” Even though Captain America said this, to put it bluntly, he himself knew the key to solving the problem didn’t lie here.
Only if that ‘wall’ was broken and all the survivors here were allowed to go to Wakanda would there be a glimmer of hope.
“You know my ability, don’t you?” Professor X sighed helplessly.
“I know exactly what you’re actually thinking. Pale words of comfort don’t work on me.”
Captain America had nothing to say and could only give a bitter smile.
Professor X rubbed his brow, his expression weary.
“Negative emotions in the camp are running higher and higher. For now, I can still use my power to suppress them, but this isn’t a long-term solution. Perhaps we need to find another way out.”
“I understand.” Captain America nodded.
Thud-thud-thud-thud-boom, thud-thud-thud-thud-boom…
A strange sound suddenly came from outside the tent, and Captain America only then realized that Steve had disappeared again.
He pulled back the tent curtain.
“Steve, what are you doing again…”
On the ground outside the tent, a rectangular pit measuring 1 meter by 2 meters had suddenly appeared.
Captain America was full of question marks.
He leaned forward to look and saw Steve already seven or eight meters underground, holding a torch in his left hand and something resembling a pickaxe in his right, digging downward at an extremely fast speed.
The hard rock seemed as fragile as tofu before his pickaxe.
“Hey! Steve!”
The pit was so deep that Captain America could hear a slight echo when he shouted.
Steve raised his square head and stared at Captain America with a dazed, cute expression.
“What are you doing?? Where do you plan to dig to?”
Steve lowered his head and continued to strike the rock with his pickaxe.
“I can… build.”
Having said that, he stopped going downward and began to dig horizontally, disappearing from Captain America’s field of vision, leaving only a small glow of firelight spilling out from the angular cave.
Captain America helplessly rubbed his forehead.
What on earth did this guy want to do??
Just then, a call came through his earpiece.
“Captain, please come to the observation post on the apartment rooftop. There’s movement in the direction of Avengers Tower.”
It was a member of the Scout Team.
Captain America’s expression tightened.
“What’s the situation?”
“An orange glow has appeared on the rooftop, suspected to be Inter-dimensional Teleportation Magic. It’s been sustained for about five seconds and is still there.”
“Understood. I’m coming up.”
He took one last look at the 2-square-meter deep pit.
“Don’t run off later. Go find someone named Liz; she’s in charge of dormitory assignments!”
An “OK” came from the pitch-black rectangular cave.
Captain America didn’t delay any further and turned to walk toward the fifteen-story apartment building behind him.
This apartment was now the main dormitory for the survivors, but the elevators had long since stopped.
The generator was only enough to maintain basic lighting and essential equipment; there was no extra power to run the elevators.
But people always find a way.
A platform secured with ropes and pulleys hung from the edge of the building, suspended by its four corners, just large enough for one person to stand on.
Captain America stepped onto it and pressed his earpiece.
“Pull me up.”
The faint sound of a winch turning came from the rooftop as a sandbag dropped from above, causing the rope to slide rapidly.
Clank-clank-clank-clank—
Amidst the sound of metal friction, the platform rose steadily.
In less than two minutes, Captain America stepped onto the rooftop.
“Captain.” The scout handed over a pair of binoculars.
Captain America took them and looked toward Avengers Tower.
Avengers Tower stood silently four blocks away.
Its glass curtain walls were long since shattered, covered in moss and vines, and the once bright red ‘A’ logo was now rusty.
There, it had once been a lighthouse, a beacon, the hope of everyone.
But now, it was like a forgotten tombstone.
Even more terrifying was that their former comrades, after being infected, had occupied that place as their nest.
Through the binoculars, Captain America saw the orange light the scout had mentioned.
It was on the platform at the top of the tower once used for aircraft takeoffs and landings.
Although it was partially obscured by walls and the brightness flickered, it remained constant.
It looked undoubtedly like Inter-dimensional Teleportation Magic.
It was unlikely to be a living mage; if it were, Professor X would surely have sensed them long ago.
It could only be the Zombie Heroes.
But why were they opening a teleportation spell?
Was a zombie planning to leave, or was something coming from somewhere else?
“Keep watching. Report every half hour.” Captain America put down the binoculars.
“Also, notify Team B to expand the scouting range by two blocks. I want to know about any movement nearby.”
“Understood.”
“Right, and regarding the subsequent resource recovery schedule…”
A map of downtown New York lay on a nearby table.
Captain America began discussing it with the Scout Team members while referring to the map.
Resources within a several-kilometer radius had been almost entirely depleted.
Nowadays, the difficulty of going out to acquire resources was getting higher and higher, requiring travel to more distant locations, so the discussion lasted for over half an hour.
Until Captain America was interrupted by a call in his earpiece.
“Captain…”
Captain America pressed his earpiece.
“What is it?”
“Look over by the main gate.”
Captain America went to the edge of the roof and looked toward the vault door, and he was completely stunned.