Chereads / Gamble With The Heavens / Chapter 2 - Reward For Weakness

Chapter 2 - Reward For Weakness

It's already been a week since the hunting team came back with the Dawn flower and the weather has only be getting worse up to the extent that the hunting team were not able to go out and hunt anything.

Luckily they came back with a bountiful hunt the last time and the harvest from the fields wasn't bad this year so the Northwind Shelter should be able to barely tide over this season as long as they rationed supplies.

Don had already stepped into the ranks of those special experts and these days he had been familiarising himself with his new abilities. Although not much was currently known by anyone in the shelter about these special abilities but this was only because they didn't have an expert to make such findings for them after all it would be difficult for a normal person to interact with that world and walk out alive especially since their shelter wasn't a very resourceful one in the first place.

'With Don representing the shelter, as soon as this damnable weather clears he will be able to go out and look into this. He might even be able to find a way for us to raise more experts and with his strength we will be able to expand the shelter.' The Northwind Shelter's leader Gale, was currently sitting back in his recliner and thinking about the beautiful future for his shelter.

Just when he had reached the part of marrying his boy off to that Penelope girl sirens blared out across the shelter and his face immediately went pale. Usually even under extreme circumstances, it would usually be the big bell that would be struck to alert the residents.

Using sirens, although it's louder and more efficient used up too much battery cells and they didn't have any factories that made battery cells. Every use of the siren, permanently reduced the amount of energy they had left and at the degree it was being blared the person spent no expense in pushing it at full capacity.

If this was not a very disgusting prank then it could only mean that the shelter was currently faced with a crisis that could lead to it's extinction. Just when he was about to completely break down, hope lit up in his eyes when he remembered that Don had already become an expert.

If it were before he broke through, he would have despaired but with Don on the Shelter's side they should be able to handle this danger. Taking a deep breath he reached out to a mic and barked down orders. This was not the time to conserve battery cells, luckily a while after that missy came aboard they had found a fairly big stash of battery cells at an underground store.

"Immediately activate the generators and enable the Battery Canons on the walls and activate the Barrier at full power don't hold back. All persons, regardless of gender or age, as long as you can hold a gun or swing a blade rush to the armoury and get a load out. Priorities would be given to people with combat experience in handing out loadouts. Finally the hunting team, both retired, reserve and present members are to rendezvous with Don at the North wall in 10 no 5 minutes."

Immediately the orders were announced through the speakers powered by a reserve battery unit they were quickly carried out. The common fighters were armed with normal bullet rifles and refined blades while those with combat experience were armed with high firepower guns and could pick a weapon of choice while also being allowed to use beast hides as armour.

The hunting team was loaded with the same thing with an addition of Battery Charged Plasma hand guns, a nice armour made out of a material that was although difficult to wear for extended periods was good for skirmishes and provides good defense against normal rifles and blades with some Plasma Blades for close range fights while any extras were distributed to reputed fighters among the other residents.

Don himself held a Plasma Knife and a customised armour that was purchased at a market village. He also had a Plasma Rifle with better damage and longer range and it didn't heat up fast and could hold extra battery cells. Gale wasn't geared up much apart from some simple armour and a plasma blade, he was more of a civil official while Don was the general.

He looked towards the horizon and what he saw made him take in a cold breath. At the moment the weather was still thundering away and the weather was so humid from all the heavy rain that there was already fog in the area.

At the moment there were faint shadows charging through the fog towards the shelter and they were being led by a couple of people dressed in mismatched gear riding a mount that looked like an ostrich but more stocky.

"Dammit, it's those fucking Raiders. Although we knew they were operating in the area we specifically covered our tracks and made sure not to leave them any leads. Add with this weather it's impossible for them to track us back to the shelter and even stumbling upon us is impossible as they would need to be fairly close to the shelter cause of all this fog and if they were that close they would have been spotted by our patrols. How exactly did they find us!!!"

Don was extremely vexed as he knew for the Raiders to have found the shelter it can only be the fault of his hunting team. Most shelters although built to withstand attacks would prefer not to encounter such things. As such they would come up with different methods to hide their shelters and make them hard to find.

Northwind Shelter was located in the centre of a concrete jungle. It's walls were made from stones gathered from the area and they purposely allowed moss to grow on it allowing it to seamlessly blend in with the sky high constructs around it.

Patrols were already established to spot intruders and prevent them from finding the shelter. In the past the patrols would reach out far beyond the shelter however with the weather they were unable to allow their members to be so far away from the shelter under such disastrous weather and as such Northwind shrinked it's patrol line.

Furthermore, this stone jungle was the residence of many ferocious beasts. For the Northwind Shelter to exist here for so long is because they had established relatively safe paths through which they can leave and reach the shelter.

These paths were only taught to the hunting team's top captains and because there were so many variations to the pathways it was very difficult to memorise. Without using this pathways intruders would face disastrous losses before even reaching the shelter.

At this moment the Raiders had definitely used one of the pathways to arrive, if not their losses would be too much no matter what they stand to gain from the shelter, before using the other pathways and luring over fierce beasts towards the shelter.

It was also strange that they were able to lure these beasts over so easily. After all this time in the Outland, several methods had been developed to keep away fierce beasts from recklessly invading shelters. Although not completely foolproof it was enough to avoid situations like this.

However at the moment the beasts were red eyed and charged at the shelter with fury but at the same time ignored the Raiders leading them over on the ostrich looking mount.

"Maybe it's not the hunting team's fault that these Raiders were able to find our shelter...." Gale spoke out with a sigh as he handed the binoculars to Don and pointed out towards a particular direction.

Don was confused at first but he took the binoculars and looked in that direction. After a moment he threw down the binoculars on the ground and roared out in fury "Those two bastards deserve to DIEEEEEEE!!!"

Gale sighed again and shook his head. His slight show of weakness in banishing those two brothers and not killing them had come back so quick to bite him in the ass. What was he thinking back then.

Before the incident they had with Penelope they showed promising talent plus the fact their father was a retired member of the hunting team, they were being groomed for captain positions and as such were given access to some of the Shelter's less important secrets but he also forgot that their father was a former reputed fighter. It wasn't impossible for him to have gotten a hold of one of the passage ways and taught it to his boys, add in what they learnt during their grooming they had enough knowledge about the shelter to cause a catastrophe.

At the time however they didn't have the strength to cause the shelter any damage and they didn't have any background besides the shelter so he took it as his last act of kindness towards them for their father's service. Now that he thinks about it, he was just being a hypocrite. He already knew they were going to die, he just didn't want it to be at his hands after all, he was not as simple minded as the rest of the residents and he indeed thought that rape case was indeed too fishy but with his son emphasising greatly for them to be dealt with he could only blame their bad luck and fulfilled his son's wish. After all he only had this one son.

He doesn't regret punishing them, he only regrets not killing them. If he should survive this he swore to be more ruthless towards anything that could stand in his way.

He looked once again towards that direction. Although the binoculars were broken he could still see the ginger coloured hair of the two brothers as they sat on that weird mount and looked towards the shelter with hate. He already vaguely understood what happened, most likely their family encountered this Raiders. Somehow in exchange for their lives, they offered information about this shelter. Not only would they save their own necks they would also have their revenge.

"At this point it can't be helped. Luckily, we have had no little bit of favour this few months. The shelter they knew has already changed a lot and we have better equipment, more importantly Uncle Don has already become an expert. We'll definitely be able to pull through this."

After hearing Gale's words Don nodded. With just this few sentences he saw that the morale of the people was stabilising and he was indeed right. The Northwind Shelter of now and that of a few months ago was vastly different. The current NorthWind shelter even had the ability to expand beyond the Stone jungle. He'll just take it as culling these beasts early to make way for their growth.