Trash in the Apocalypse

Chapter 245: Energy Drink

After receiving the Altar's Blessing, the group spent some time relaxing and playing around at Calvary Hill. Jun collected another rainbow seed together with Evo in the second resting area. He still hadn't eaten the first one he got and had no plans on eating the two rainbow seeds.

The group returned to the compound when night arrived. After making sure that Grandma Teresa feels well, Jun bade farewell and called Evo for a chat.

Evo agreed and invited him to his room.

"Hahaha! Why is this room so cramped.? This place looks like a mess. Do you not clean up Evo?"

"Shut up. I have too many things on my plate. You were gone for two weeks, so you should manage this town. I'll focus on experiments and research, so don't bother me anymore." Evo grumpily replied then sat on his swivel chair.

Jun examined a few papers scattered on the floor before sitting down on a chair. "Alright, alright. Isn't this just the usual? You sub in for me when I'm gone somewhere to deal with things? Besides, didn't you do well?"

Evo sighed. "The usual, but on a larger scale. Do you have any idea how populated this place is? The town might appear barren but the current food production speed is not enough. We have two towns under us, which means we have three towns to protect and provide and sell food for. If we can't give them proper benefits, it might be better to just let go of some of them."

Jun became surprised. He hasn't told Evo about Taytay but it seems like information travels quite fast. "Do you already have people at Taytay? I told my new recruits from Angono to visit the place. Did they visit recently?"

Evo frowned in confusion. What Taytay? Did you do something there? I know you went there but please don't keep claiming towns! We don't have enough food! Haven't you played any civilization simulation games?! The number one resource for expansion is food! Unless you have a stable production of food, you can't go expanding your territory!"

Jun covered his ears. "Wow, calm down Mr. Nice Guy. If people hear you, they might think that your a cruel petty bastard."

"Tsk!"

"Haha! Regarding that, I think I have an idea for our food problems. Do you know that dungeons on "destroyed towns" produce real mobs? If we can find those dungeons from Angono and Taytay, the food problem would be temporarily solved. I think Angono had bats, but as for Taytay I have no clue!"

"Oh, that's something welcomed to hear." Evo excitedly said. "You should assign quests at the mission section of your smartwatch. I added an admin feature where you can edit missions on the go. Just don't go giving excessive rewards! Also, I set the value of 1CP to $1."

"There's a new feature? I didn't know about that... I mean, about the smartwatch; I gave it to Marianne." said Jun.

"What!? Hey, I know she's your girl, but there's a lot of information stored in the library. What if she discloses them to the government? Would our hard work become free then?"

"Tsk. Can't you just revoke access to admin rights and other permissions?"

"What else to do besides that?" Evo shook his head and accessed his smartwatch. He made a few motions and returned back to his computer after closing the smartwatch's hologram. "It's done. By the way, I didn't mean Taytay when I said we have two new towns under us. I meant Angono and Cardona."

"Cardona? What happened?"

"Black Haven's Elite Scavengers and the regular scavenging group was way ahead of everyone. We cleared the next town due east. The portal was destroyed and we later learned that most of the residents escaped via fishing boats. Cardona is a port town after all. They rely mainly on fishing, so it isn't hard to get themselves on a fishing boat. The problem was they willingly joined us, and we had no valid reason to reject them."

"Hey, hey, I thought we're done playing saints? Didn't we agree on that?"

"What do you mean? You solely decided on that. Don't worry, after I get my revenge I'll stop this useless act. And just for your information, Adrian was the one who accepted them. They were already streaming in droves to pay 'tribute' when I saw them."

"Haa... so how are the boys doing?"

"You mean Adrian's group? Edward reached level 10 and passed the tribulation easily. It was quite a sight to watch if you ask me. On the other hand, Adrian and Sheila had a bit of a problem. Sheila applied Heal and Cure on Adrian, which caused the bolts of lightning to also target her. Fortunately, both of them had stable stats, so the damage they received was manageable. I heard Nik's group was about to reach level 10 too."

"That's great to hear. At least we know that the town's strength is improving. Is there anything else I should know?"

Evo pondered for a bit before continuing. "I secured the surrounding area with security cameras; the town hall, the gymnasium, the TESDA, and the nearby streets. Tatang Robin also hired a friend of his to share shifts with him. Oh, have you noticed the armors the people wore around? It's Old John's works. He managed to changed professions. He became a smith after producing items steadily. I also think that anyone can change professions accordingly if you repeatedly do something. We assigned people based on their skills, so we really didn't realize this sooner, but with Old John's smithing skills unearthed from the past, we finally have things to look forward to. Speaking of which, I planned to train a bunch of freeloaders into farmers. Do you still need the Northern Plains?"

"Yeah, I need it for something. Is that all?"

"Hmm... I can't think of anything of importance right now. I'll send you a chat when I remember them."

"I don't have a smartwatch anymore," Jun said with a grin.

Evo dejectedly opened his dimensional storage and threw a gray smartwatch to Jun. It felt like he would grow white hairs a bit faster than it should. "Don't give it away, please. We can't have other people get access to these things."

"It's fine. I didn't give it away to some random people." Jun said then stood up. "See you later. Send me a message if there's something. Oh, and give me admin rights and other stuff, okay?"

"Sure, sure. Go away, leave me alone." Evo waved his hands shooing him away. He operated his smartwatch and gave relevant permissions to Jun.

"Now I can do what I want. However, first things first. Let's relax and surf the web."

There's a lot of information on the internet. Some were trash but there were rare useful ones. Through surfing the internet, he learned that there were other mutations of carriers. When a nuclear plant exploded due to unknown reasons, carriers that appeared were toxic and had weird forms. According to the person who posted it, the carrier can even spit toxins and chemicals.

Also, when dead carriers were left alone, they would coagulate into a new type of carrier filled with fats like an abomination. An extremely tough and durable variant but had slow movement speed and weak attack power.

These things only proved that the environment affects the evolution of the carrier.

Evo opened the web browser and started surfing various bookmarked information boards. He looked at his messages but there was none. On one information board that he joined, there was a friendly man called TruthSeeker. He shares his knowledge with everyone who seeks for them with no requirements. His actions made him popular and the community cared for him. Not much was known to him, except for the generally accessible knowledge that he was a monk and is scouring the remains of the earth in search of the truth about the apocalypse.

Evo closed the messages tab and started gathering useful information across the information boards.

Jun sat on the chair and waited for Mike to serve him some real food. To his surprise, Mike served him a lemonade before even serving the main dish.

"What is this?" Jun asked in confusion.

"It's a new dish I made. Please try it and give me some feedback." Mike stated then stood by the side, intently watching Jun. He received a green fruit from Evo earlier and he decided to make some refreshments out of it.

Jun drunk half of it and felt that it was particularly sweet, so he finished it all in one gulp. The glass wasn't big in the first place and by the time he drunk them all, a notification appeared in front of him.

+1 Energy

[The user has become "energized". Increase energy recovery by 20% for 1 hour.]

Jun become dumbfounded. Did he gain additional energy just by drinking this lemonade-thing? 

"M-Mike? How did you make this?"