With that settled I bunkered down in my crafting room for the next three days and only came out to use the bathroom and eat. While I did this the others started to grab some quests from the bounty board. Three for now that while I would have liked in on I could skip without issue. The first was to kill some midget bandit who called himself “King Wee Wee” and lived in a literal garbage fort in the Tetanus warrens. These Warrens were actually just hollows under the mountains of rusting scrap and trash and just as dangerous as that sounded.-

The second quest was to kill off some of the Scythids that lived in the trash piles around New haven as they had gotten a little too many. The final quest was to repair the Claptrap by the bounty board that a bandit had shot and no one else bothered to fix but whose whining “death” speech was getting annoying to listen to. The second and third quests I got involved in sort of as the Scythids corpses were brought to me to drain the lifeforce from and the Claptrap was flat out thrown into my crafting room for me to fix unceremoniously, it was kinda annoying.-

The hunt for Wee Wee though proved really good as he apparently had a VERY fucking nice shield.

[Name: Wee Wee’s Super booster

Level: Rare

Type: Shield

Damage type: N/A

Manufacturer: PANGOLIN

Customizations: N/A

Fast recharge rate, Powerful Biobolstering field]

Now that might seem like a fairly weak shield since it was only Rare quality but that Biobolstering field was a seriously rare thing to find on a shield much less when it was so fucking strong. –

Not only did this thing allow for faster healing, almost on par with fucking regeneration. But it also made the person using it ever so slightly more fit passively. The ridiculous thing actually improved your health to use. Needless to say I gutted the shield and stole that tech without hesitation for myself. Well I say myself but really I mean Brick as I stuffed it on his Rare quality shield which also raised it to Epic quality. The Warrens apparently held a new type of creature too that Brick was so kind as to bring a corpse of back to me, a Spider ant.-

{Spider ant

Lifeforce: 529

Traits: [Tough Exoskeleton-Uncommon grade]- 1,500 units, [Colony mind-Common grade]- 700 units, [Poor vision-Trash grade]- 50 units, [Rapid reproduction-Common grade]- 700 units,}

The corpse was about the size of a cat and had a hard exoskeleton everywhere on it except it’s thorax which was much softer tissue. These things were clearly not designed to run away as their “heads were larger than even their thoraxes and were used to tank damage since their thoraxes were highly vulnerably and stored most of their organs. In other words they would never retreat because they were literally evolved not to without risking death.-

The naming sense behind the things were also highly uninspired as they lived in colonies like ants while using a web like substance regularly like spiders. It also didn’t help that besides having only four legs they looked like a weird mix of spider and ant, just without large eyes. I wasn’t all that impressed with the things to be honest as they were basically all swarm as their weakness was too fucking easy to hit. Still besides these minor distractions I had managed to gather all the parts for the furnace, scanner and shields in these three days alongside some rather simple bots designed like mini centaur goblins with baskets on their backs and shovel hands. –

Four weight bearing movement legs and two limbs for collecting scrap while a basket was on it’s back to be filled with said scrap before being dumped. Not many of the things mind as I was still limited on my resources at the moment but I did create ten of them. Thankfully I knew enough programming to get them set to collect scrap and toss it into the furnace without also yeeting themselves into the thing or anyone else for that matter.-

I grimaced when I left my house for the first time in days and filled my nostrils with the rank air of New Haven. I grit my teeth and ignored this as I dragged the large shield projector out of the room and up unto the roof of Zeds place before flicking it on. I watching as a beam of energy shot out the top and formed a massive dome around the whole of New Haven.

“What the hell do you think you are doing!?” Pierce demanded through my echo moments later with clear anger in her voice.

“What don’t recognize a fucking shield? You’ll forgive me if I don’t trust some welded together scrap metal to provide much protection. As an added bonus it also purifies the air coming through so the town doesn’t smell like it’s situated in mountains of trash.” I sent back mockingly.

“I’m watching you.” she returned coldly but didn’t try and argue about the shield at the very least.

“You know she’s going to do something if you keep antagonizing her like that right?” Mordy asked and I shrugged.

“Let her try, she’s so far out of her league it’s pathetic.” I said blandly.

With New Haven covered it was time to start assembling the furnace and getting that set up. It took multiple trips from my house to decently clear a spot that may or may not have been a bandit camp before I “borrowed” it. Not like the original owners will miss it after I had a nice snack before clearing the camp out. Setting up the shield of course came first and then I set up the furnace itself that was all nice and fucking shiny, had that new car smell too. Finally I cranked on the thing and let my bots go start shoveling the scrap into the furnace.-

After that it was finally time for me to get some action of my own while my minions worked to slowly dismantle the heaps of trash nearby. I headed into town and Scooter flagged me down with an exclamation point above his head which meant he had a quest.

“Hey man I just got a call from my good buddy, T.K. Baha. You met him right? Blind as a bat in heat and twice as looney. He’ll watch your back in a fight though. Just make sure you yell a lot so’s he knows where ya are. Anyways he called me but he didn’t say nothin. That coot never calls unless he’s got a reason, y’know? Would you go check on him? Make sure a Skag didn’t eat his other leg or somethin.” Scooter said with a worried look.

I nodded “I got it, if he’s still kickin but in danger or something like that i’ll make sure he gets out of it alright.” I said confidently which seemed to relieve him a bit.

The others stayed here in New Haven as I took the fast travel near Scooter to Fyrestone and shook myself after the digital transport ended as it always felt weird.-

One thing I had to give Fyrestone was that it smelled a whole fuckton better than New Haven did. Sure it smelled of dust and dryness but compared to the smell of literal mountains of garbage it was heavenly. I headed out of the town with a wave at Zed who was in his building and shot the Skags that had reclaimed the empty dens we cleared out mere days before. This gave me a small but satisfying amount of lifeforce to add to the piles before I got to Baha’s place.-

I knew something was wrong before I even arrived as I could sell the blood in the air. It wasn’t fresh but it wasn’t very old either. Smelled like it was a day or so old at most. The second sign that something was wrong was the smell of flesh beginning to decay along with the buzzing of flies. Baha wasn’t on his porch like usual which along with these smells and sounds made me think the worst that was soon confirmed when I walked into his shack.-

His arms were tied behind his back while his body slowly swung around upside down from the blade of his ceiling fan. He was still clothed but the blood pooled beneath his slack jaw on the floor and faint fist imprints of dust and dirt on his shirt told me what had been done to him. They used him like a fucking punching bag, I was PISSED.-

“He’s dead Scooter, bandits, smells like close to a dozen or so of them. They strung him up and beat him to death. I’m going hunting.” I sent Scooter over the echo.

“Make it painful will ya?” he asked with a firm tone.

“They’ll scream till the blood takes the breath from their lungs!” I said with a vicious grin.

___________________________________________

https://www.pa treon.com/user?u=81578854#:~:text=pa treon.com/pa treon_loskro

_______________________________________________

Alexander Drake

Lifeforce:234,847

Integrated Traits: [Gun expertise-Uncommon grade]X4, [Clever mind-Rare grade],[Enhanced senses-Epic grade]X2, [Demi-supreme body-Legendary grade], [Supreme armored hide-Epic grade]X2, [Energy projection-Legendary grade], [Superior vitality-Epic grade]X2,[Flame breath-Uncommon grade],[Regeneration-Epic grade]X2, [Disease resistance-Epic grade],[Amphibious lungs-Uncommon grade], [Thermal sensing-Uncommon grade], [Water resistance-Common grade],[Active camouflage-Epic grade], [Eridian engineering expertise-Mythical grade], [Efficient lungs-Rare grade]x2, [Fire resistance-Epic grade]X3, [Elemental body(fire)-Legendary grade], [Shock resistance-Epic grade]X4, [Energetic sustenance(shock)-Epic grade]X2, [Radiation resistance-Epic grade]X3, [Energetic sustenance(radiation)-Epic grade]X2, [Biometallic bones-Epic grade],[Elemental body(shock)-Rare grade]X3,[Quick thinking-Rare grade], [Minor spatial awareness-Epic grade], [Buzzaxe expertise-Uncommon grade], [Siren(Phaselock)(Altered)-Mythical grade], [Pugilist expertise-Uncommon grade], [Adrenal rush-Rare grade], [Mechanical engineering expertise-Rare grade], [Gunsmithing expertise(degrading)-Common grade]X3, [Elemental body(Corrosive)-Rare grade], [Corrosion resistance-Rare grade], [Mechanical Savant-Epic grade], 

Stored traits:

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep