Chapter 70
Max’s party’s pickup truck was surrounded by modified motorcycles.
A truly brutal scene.
Even so, Max leisurely rolled down the Driver’s side window.
Vrrrm──.
As Max rolled down the window and showed his face, the guy who had been showing off a heavy gun and demanding they stop lifted his Holographic Goggles and likewise revealed his bare face.
He had a prosthetic eye blinking with red light and no nose, as if he had been bitten by a beast. It was a menacing face densely packed with scars.
“Oh my, as I look at the license plate, it’s a vehicle I haven’t seen before. What brings you to this rugged Wasteland?”
The bastards didn’t just attack right away, because being a robber and an Outlaw was a profession where Discretion was essential to keeping one’s lifeline intact.
Even when avoiding MegaCorps and raiding small and medium-sized enterprises, they also avoided indiscriminate murder.
In most cases, they treated Small and Medium-sized Enterprises and civilian vehicles as long-term, periodic 'customers,' extorting only a manageable toll before letting them go. It was a bizarre sort of business ethics unique to the Wasteland.
Max bluntly asked the guy waiting for an answer.
“I heard there’s a restaurant called Chili Oasis in the Wasteland. Which way do I need to go?”
At the name of an actually existing shop, the guy’s facial muscles twitched minutely.
Chili Oasis was a local restaurant frequented by nomads and outlaws of the Wasteland. It wasn’t a shop name that should come out of an outsider’s mouth.
“Chili Oasis… Why are you looking for that shop?”
“A Nomad friend I met in the city praised it to no end. I was thinking of branding it and maybe opening a chain in the Lower District of Haze.”
Naturally, it was a lie made up on the spot.
Among the locations recorded on the route heading to Oil Sink, he had simply recalled the name of the closest shop from here.
“A pale-skinned Sheltered Person is going through the trouble to get his hands on some money. Seeing as you’ve studied the ecology of this place, you must know exactly what we want, right?”
“Well, roughly.”
At Max’s nonchalant attitude and informal speech, the Outlaw’s eyes rolled.
In the passenger seat and the backseat were women with most of their faces covered, exposing only their eyes.
Looking at their eyes, one could see they didn’t seem to have any fear of the current situation.
A momentary sense of incongruity.
An uncomfortable sensation chilled the back of his neck.
[What are these guys? The car is a cheap model and they don’t even have weapons…]
The Outlaw ignored the signal in his head telling him to run and decided to continue the conversation.
Wasn’t this the first plunder he was leading after stirring up Public opinion over insufficient profits and unfair distribution to usurp the Leader position? Stepping back here would put his own standing in a difficult spot.
“We’re all just doing business to make a living, so as long as we can communicate well, we won’t act like beasts, yeah? We don’t do that.”
“I don’t have time, so get to the point.”
“The toll is 5 million per Person. An additional 5 million is for the Chili Oasis information, making it 20 million credits. Then we’ll let you go nicely.”
“Hah.”
“Don’t look so surprised, you know? Originally, Ten Million Credits per Person was the standard, but since you came to do some grand work, we made a big decision and gave you a discount.”
Max quietly observed the Outlaw who announced the price as if he were being generous.
His situational awareness was lacking, but from the way he spoke, it seemed he had been doing this for a long time.
Bastards like this were surely stationed on the countless paths leading from Haze to the Wasteland without fail.
[Not just Haze, but Newman and other cities must be the same.]
He figured that plundering must also be a Family business and a Red Ocean.
“It’s obvious that if I pay here and drive a little further, another group will stick to us, isn’t it?”
“Whoa now, once you leave our Territory, we don’t know either. If there are guys like that, they’ll have their own circumstances.”
“Whatever. Chili Oasis is that way, right?”
Max’s finger pointed to one side, but the Outlaw didn’t give the answer he wanted.
“20 million credits.”
“…”
Max’s eyes twitched with annoyance.
Magic power spread out smoothly.
“I asked if it was that way.”
Along with the voice asking again, the Outlaw’s prosthetic arm fell to the dirt floor with a thud!
The Leader screamed upon seeing that his prosthetic arm had been severed at some point.
“Sh-shoot…! Kill them!”
At the Outlaw’s single word, metallic sounds rang out from all directions with a clack!, and countless gun barrels were aimed at the truck.
They had absolutely no hesitation in pulling the trigger.
Rat-tat-tat-tat!!!
Deafening gunshots spread out, and the acrid smell of gunpowder flew, mixing into the sandstorm.
However, not a single bullet touched the car.
The bullets were all stopped in midair.
“!!!”
The bullets caught by Max’s Psychokinesis fell to the ground with a patter.
As a murmur mixed with fear spread at the unprecedented situation, the Plunderer Leader’s decision was the fastest.
“Scatter!”
He pulled a string of flashbangs and smoke grenades from his chest and threw them to the ground.
Bang!
At the same time the light and smoke erupted, all the motorcycles roughly spewed out exhaust noises.
Vrooooom!!!
However, the motorcycles couldn’t move forward at all. They were just loud.
The sounds didn’t grow distant. No matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t escape the smoke created by the smoke grenades.
Caught by Psychokinesis, they were merely idling repeatedly.
It didn’t end there.
The motorcycles rose into the air, then tilted, cleanly shaking off their drivers.
“Huh? Uhh…!”
“Fuck, what is this!”
“Captain! Captaaaain! You’re 2nd-tier! Do something!”
Even all the weapons the plunderers were holding rose into the air.
CRUNCH!!!
An unimaginably powerful physical force was exerted on the motorcycles and weapons, a loud crash ringing out.
As the smoke cleared, a Metal Sphere floated above the truck.
Since it was self-evident what the sphere was made of, the plunderers went blank.
“I’ll ask again. Where is Chili Oasis?”
“I-if you go that way for about t-two hours…”
Looking at the direction the collapsed guy was pointing, Max checked his compass.
If these guys' words were true, the compass was working normally and the target Junk Town could be found without issue.
[As expected, analog has its own charm.]
Max roughly tossed aside the lump of iron he had created and grabbed the steering wheel.
The plunderers couldn’t stop the departing vehicle and just watched blankly.
“…”
“…”
Their motorcycles and guns, which were like their lives in the Wasteland, had become crumpled lumps of iron.
The plunderers became pedestrians in an instant. Returning to their hideout wasn’t within walking distance, and at this rate, they would unconditionally become targets.
With more than one or two groups aiming for the plundering rights of this path right now, this was akin to a potential death sentence.
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Max drove through the Wasteland without hesitation.
Even if the road wasn’t good, just driving without obstruction felt good. There was a unique sense of openness.
“Max, why didn’t you kill those guys earlier? You should’ve just mashed them into a pulp.”
“Magic power should be used efficiently. If we leave it be, it’ll die on its own.”
“Hmm~”
Max answered Ellen’s curiosity as he crossed a hill.
A new landscape welcomed the three of them.
“Good. We came the right way. From down here, it’s a place called the Chireu Plains.”
Far outside the window, wind turbines with stopped blades were left neglected. On the rough ground nearby, solar panels were discarded like eyesores.
In the past, they had accounted for a pillar of the city’s power production, but now they are just remnants of outdated technology that were no longer used.
Ellen pulled out her phone as if to take a picture of the scenery she couldn’t see in the city.
Only then did she realize.
“Huh? What! The internet works fine?”
“The internet works?”
At Ellen’s words, Max pulled out his phone with one hand. He checked it, but it was still dead.
“How about you, Flora?”
“I can use it too.”
“Max, don’t tell me you’re using data that only works in Haze?”
“Then what else is there─ ah!”
These two were using Satellite Internet, not base stations. It was a service Max hadn’t even considered because the fees were too expensive.
As Max, who had been pushing through the Wasteland with analog methods, made a rare flustered face, Ellen giggled.
“Max, you’re really something else. Why are you still using that? I naively believed you, even though there was no reason it shouldn’t work.”
“Sorry. Really sorry. I’ll have to change mine too when we get back.”
There were areas where money should be saved and areas where it shouldn’t.
He was now getting requests that took him out of the city like this, wasn’t he? This was the latter.
Flora reached out her hand from the backseat.
“Max, I’ll connect you to the internet with mine.”
“Then I’d be thankful.”
“Max, use mine. Mine will be faster than that Girl’s.”
“I’m on the Premium Plan too, so there’s no difference, you know? Max, hurry up and give me your phone. I’ll connect it.”
As Max handed his phone over to Flora in the backseat, Ellen pouted her lips as if she didn’t like it.
Max immediately informed them of precautions.
“Try not to show that you have internet access. If you look too wealthy, unwanted attention might be drawn to us.”
“What if just looking like me makes me look wealthy?”
“You have to wear your hood and mask properly.”
“Tch.”
Saying the answer was no fun, Ellen tilted her head and poked Max’s shoulder with her horns.
At the protest that was merely ticklish rather than painful, Max could only laugh.
And he checked the dashboard.
There was still plenty of gas left.
[I guess we can just go to Chili Oasis first, refuel, and fill our stomachs.]
It was nice that there was no boredom in driving since they were just speeding through a wide-open space.
They passed by a Giant Cactus that wouldn’t be lacking in size even if called a massive tree.
They also passed by a Brown Locust that had grown as large as a big dog, as if it had eaten something wrong.
Ellen, who had been busy taking pictures of things she was seeing for the first time, checked a message that had just arrived.
She let out a voice filled with bewilderment.
“Uh, Max, we have a big problem.”
“Why?”
“Mom says she wants to talk to you on the phone, Max?”
“!”
A request had come in from the Clements Family Head of the Magic Noble Family.
Following that, another message arrived.
Ellen frowned and brought up the Fight Club alias that Max had forgotten about.
“…Tell the Married Woman Hunter to call when he’s free. Who is this talking about?”