Hammer put his gas mask back on, took out a long-handled probe, and intended to dig for his minerals while they walked.
Big Sister could even use her power armor to help him dig; how delightful.
Lynn would provide the lighting.
It was absolutely perfect.
It was just according to plan.
It sounded exactly like the opening of some RPG game.
Then there was only one final problem remaining.
Hammer suddenly stopped in his tracks and turned back around.
He unhooked his gas mask and hung it back on his belt, revealing that young, freckled face.
Hammer scratched the bridge of his nose, his grayish-blue eyes looking at Lynn, somewhat embarrassed and hesitating to speak.
“Um…
do we have enough supplies?” Lynn was taken aback for a moment.
“Supplies?” “Food.
Water.” Hammer’s voice grew quieter and quieter, as if he was too embarrassed to bring up such a base need.
“I don’t have any food left on me at all.
The dry rations I brought when I came out were finished long ago while I was trapped in the caves.
These past two days, I’ve just been holding on by drinking groundwater.” Then his stomach let out a loud rumble.
Hammer’s ears turned red.
He reached down to press on his stomach and said embarrassedly, “It did that on its own.” He was hungry.
Lynn looked at Cecilia; Cecilia looked back at him innocently.
Cecilia’s pockets were cleaner than her face, too.
She had only brought three days’ worth of food when she left, and while she indeed found Hammer within fifteen days, she also had no food left after finding him.
“You guys haven’t eaten for days?” Hammer lowered his head and kicked a small pebble on the ground.
“I ate some wild rock fungus.
Isstvan III’s underground caves have those things; they are gray and growing on the stone walls.
They don’t have any nutritional value, but they’ll keep us going for a while.” Cecilia didn’t say anything, but Lynn noticed her right hand unconsciously press against her stomach.
Lynn took a deep breath.
Damn it, why were they so pitiful?
Lynn took off his backpack and dumped out all the supplies inside.
There were three packs of dry rations, three packs of protein blocks, and three waterskins.
If the three of them ate this, it would barely last them two days.
During the 15 days the cultists had been chasing him, he had pretty much eaten all the supplies he had stolen.
It would take about half a month to walk out of the underground cave system from here; they needed more supplies.
On this planet that had nothing but cultists, there was only one source of supplies, and that was the cultists’ warehouse.
They had to go pull another heist.
“Gotta go steal again,” Lynn said.
“Gotta go steal again,” Cecilia said.
The two of them sighed at the same time.
They had just barely escaped.
Those Psykers were truly too hard to deal with; Cecilia couldn’t fight them all alone.
Hammer squatted to the side, looking at Lynn, then at Cecilia.
Sigh, there was no other way but to steal.
They’d have to be more careful this time and see if they could sneak it out without a fight.
…
The three of them stealthily snuck back.
Hammer used his dataslate to pull up the map of the cultist cave system and found a branch mineshaft closest to the cultist camp.
The three of them hunched over, held their breath, and quietly snuck to the edge of the cultist camp in the dark.
Lynn crouched behind a rock, poking half his head out to look into the camp.
They had stolen all the previous supplies; he wondered if the cultists’ new shipment had arrived yet.
Good news: it arrived.
Bad news: the cultists were defending their supplies like a fortress this time.
The original storage room had been abandoned.
This time, the cultists set up a new tent directly in the open space in the middle of the camp.
The tent was piled with wooden crates and metal barrels.
The style of the wooden crates was exactly the same as the ones Lynn had stolen from before—dry ration crates.
Cultists from all directions kept their eyes glued to the supplies in the tent.
The area around the tent was entirely open space.
Even a fly flying past would be seen, let alone three grown people.
Several new ropes and iron chains had appeared on the ground, stretching all the way from the center of the camp into the depths of the passages.
Cultists walked back and forth through the camp holding these ropes and chains, looking like they were patrolling or dragging a net.
They learned to be smart.
Lynn pulled his head back and said to Cecilia, “Sister, it looks like it’s going to be very difficult.” Cecilia also saw the scene over by the supplies from the other side of the rock and fell silent.
It was indeed difficult.
Those cultists had surrounded the supplies like an iron barrel, without even a crack.
Without initiating a conflict, there was absolutely no way they could steal this group of cultists’ supplies.
Sister Big Sister didn’t say anything, but her expression already explained the problem.
Cecilia glanced at Lynn, then at Hammer.
“We can’t steal it.” There were simply too many cultists.
Even if she could jump out and instantly kill a few, there were still hundreds left.
She was injured saving Lynn last time; carrying supplies out this time would only be more difficult.
Hammer crouched to the side, turning the brightness of his dataslate screen to the lowest setting, and drew a few circles on the map.
“The supply area is right in the middle of the camp, with patrols on all four sides.
Their shift changes overlap, so there’s no window of opportunity.
Unless they knock themselves out, we can’t sneak in.” It was sad.
Today, all three of them were Pepe the Frogs.
The dark red light of the cultists swayed in the passage behind them, and the cultists’ footsteps rustled against the gravel.
Cecilia suddenly spoke up.
“Um…
I want to discuss something with you.” “Hm?” Lynn and Hammer obediently looked up at her.
Wearing her silver power armor, with the power sword sheathed on her back and the bolter at her waist, Cecilia spoke with some hesitation.
“…Could we stay here for a bit longer?” “Hm?” “I want to eliminate this batch of cultists.” Cecilia’s voice slowly grew resolute.
“I can come sneak attack them every day, grab a little bit of supplies each time, kill a few, and leave.
If you give me more time, I can definitely wipe them all out.” Lynn looked at her.
Her vertical pupils gleamed with golden light in the darkness, incredibly resolute.
Hmm…
That…
that works too.
Eliminating cultists is everyone’s responsibility.
They had no other options anyway, and Sister Big Sister’s strategy of defeating them one by one was indeed a good idea.
But immediately after, Lynn realized that he, possessing [Thirty Days], was the ultimate ace in the hole for being bait.
Lynn’s brain started turning.
He had Thirty Days.
Thirty Days stated that he could survive thirty days in combat against any enemy.
He wasn’t meant for fighting; he was meant to take a beating…
no, he was meant to be bait.
He could lure these cultists out and lead them right under Sister Big Sister’s sword.
Or, if Hammer knew how to lay traps, he could lure the enemies into traps set by Hammer, and then Cecilia could charge out from the side, instantly delivering a dose of justice from above upon these cultists.
They could fight them in small waves.
They didn’t need to fight them all at once; they could fight a few at a time, run after the fight, come back and lure them out again, then fight again.
It was a video game mob-clearing strategy.
Day by day, kiting them wave after wave; eventually, there would come a day when they could kill off every single one of these cultists.
Thaniel_a_goodchild.