War Truck in the Apocalypse

Chapter 5: Chapter Five

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation

Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

The steel war truck raced across the sand, and its driver, Shen Cong, was becoming increasingly hotter. 

It was not because the temperature around him had increased. There was a thermometer in the truck, and it showed that the current temperature was 26 degrees Celsius. 

Instead, it was Shen Cong’s own body that was producing heat, and it spread from his stomach. It seemed to have a chemical reaction with the Activity ability given to him by Titan, and it was currently strengthening itself as well as Shen Cong’s body. 

The heat had arrived very quickly, and it disappeared just as fast. In less than five minutes, the heat faded away. 

Shen Cong could sense himself becoming a little stronger. 

‘Was this caused by that earth-digging insect?’

Clearly, it was. 

To Shen Cong, this was a major discovery. The earth-digging insect could actually improve his Activity, so it was an absolute treasure. Hence, Shen Cong began to hope that another one of the careless and idiotic earth-digging insects would come and attack him. 

But not even one popped up, and he smoothly arrived at the ruins of Wuwei. 

The only reason why he knew that it was the ruins of Wuwei was because he saw a collapsed iron tower in front of it. This was a building the county government had built two years ago to serve as a landmark, and it was known as the tallest tower in Anhui. Right now, it lay on the ground quietly. Its broken body silently recounting the tale of the disaster. 

Not far away from the iron tower were the ruins of a few broken buildings, and they bore the memories of a prosperous county town. 

Titan slowed down and quietly moved between the dilapidated walls. The battlefield surveillance radar on it turned around nonstop to scan the area. A few flashing dots soon appeared on the radar image. 

There were living creatures swiftly approaching Titan. 

When Shen Cong saw their speed on the radar image, he knew that they were obviously faster than Titan and he could not run away even if he tried. 

‘Then I won’t run from it.’ 

Shen Cong was not too worried since he had Titan to depend on. There was nothing in the world that could hurt him. On the contrary, he actually looked forward to a few more earth-digging insects coming to meet him. 

Eight expandable jacks stretched out from the sides of Titan’s undercarriage once Shen Cong pushed a few buttons. With a clang, they stabbed into the sand and shattered stones to secure the truck firmly in place. With the eight jacks, even if creatures similar to the earth-digging insect appeared, it would be very difficult for them to make Titan sway again. 

More than ten seconds later, the creatures approached him. 

Shen Cong thought that they would be earth-digging insects, but they were not. 

They were wolves. 

Or rather, they were mutated dogs. They were larger than Tibetan Mastiffs, and they let out growls that sounded like whines. By the looks of it, they had mutated from tame dogs into fierce wolves. 

Their mutation was especially prominent in the teeth. They were even more exaggerated than the teeth of saber-toothed tigers, and they shone with the same dark, silvery glow of the earth-digging insects. 

‘Since your teeth are so huge, I’ll call you fanged wolves.’ 

Shen Cong watched the mutated dogs howling at Titan through the surveillance camera, and as he saw them surround Titan, he silently gave them a name. 

It seemed like Shen Cong wasn’t the only to benefit by receiving extraordinary abilities from the disaster of the meteor shower. Various other creatures were also able to obtain supernatural power. 

However, no matter how fierce they were, they were just piles of meat to Shen Cong. Once he tasted the benefits of the earth-digging insect, he naturally became interested in the flesh of all mutated creatures. 

The hunt began. 

He opened the sunroof at the end of the container and used the same strategy as before: blowing on the whistle to lure the monsters to him. When one of the fanged wolves rushed to the sunroof in an attempt to bite him, Shen Cong used a handheld crossbow at its mouth. 

Shick!

The power contained in a crossbow bolt when fired from a handheld crossbow at close distance was incredibly great, and the fanged wolf’s head exploded. 

The fanged wolf did not even have the time to struggle. When it fell to the ground, it no longer moved. 

Its death, however, did not attract the other wolves’ attention. It seemed like after their mutation, they were completely dominated by their instincts and forgot the fact that they possessed intelligence. 

Shick!

Another head exploded. 

Shick!

This time, Shen Cong missed his target, and hit a fanged wolf’s throat. The mutated animal struggled for a while before it breathed its last. 

When Shen Cong killed four fanged wolves in a go, the remaining three fanged wolves finally sensed the threat of death looming over their heads. They no longer approached the sun roof, but they clearly did not know that there was a certain principle in the world called a shooting range. 

Shick!

Shen Cong’s accuracy when using the handheld crossbow was not lower than that of a professional arbalist, especially when it came to close distance shooting. His accuracy at that point was 100%. One of the fanged wolves was hit in the eye, and its brains leaked out of the wound. 

Shick!

Another arrow was fired, and another fanged wolf was shot in the eye. It died as well. 

No matter how dumb the last fanged wolf was, it knew that it had to retreat, but it seemed to be unable to accept defeat. It took two steps back before it turned its head around and growled at Shen Cong. 

It was then that it faced a crossbow bolt. 

Shick!

It accurately hit its left eye and struck its brain. 

The last fanged wolf was killed like that. 

Shen Cong had managed to kill seven fierce-looking fanged wolves while remaining unscathed, and he had not felt any pressure during the entire fight. 

What he needed to do then was to inspect the carcasses, but he was worried that there were earth-digging insects around, which was why he did not dare to leave his truck recklessly. He chose to use the bulldozer blade to scoop up the seven fanged wolves before continuing to drive into the county town. 

The ruins before him were in the form of broken walls that blocked his path. Shen Cong even ran into a huge building which had collapsed. Only half of it remained standing. 

The ground, however, was not covered by a thick layer of shattered stones and yellow sand. Sometimes, Shen Cong could even see cemented pavements. 

It made it obvious that the earth-digging insects could not dig around there. 

Shen Cong parked his truck in the street for a moment. When he was certain that there was no danger around, he tentatively got down. Ever since he ran into his first earth-digging insect, he no longer trusted the sand below his feet. 

It was a pity that his radar could not scan underground movement, which comprised his safety. 

He quickly picked up one of the fanged wolves’ carcasses and rushed back into the truck. No matter what, he was the safest inside his truck. Then, he began analysing the fanged wolf in his hands, just like he had done with the earth-digging insect. 

In the end, he came to the conclusion that fanged wolves were a type of mutated canine. They possessed low intelligence, had high movement speed, were rather weak, and were incredibly fierce. 

And just like he did with the earth-digging insect, Shen Cong cut off a strip of fanged wolf meat. He added a little more oil to the pan this time and fried it. When it was ready, he took a bite, and in a few seconds, his body began to heat up, just as he expected. 

The Activity ability in his body became a little stronger once more. It had improved more than compared to when he ate the earth-digging insect’s meat. 

Hence, Shen Cong added another line in the fanged wolf’s records. 

[Edible flesh. Contains a small amount of Activity.]

He thought a little more before he wrote another sentence. [The taste is slightly worse than that of dog flesh, but better than that of earth-digging insects.]

*****

Once Shen Cong ate some fanged wolf meat, he guided Titan to train its Activity. 

It was evening already, and the sun began to set in the west. The colors of sunset filled half of the sky, sweeping away the gloominess from before. Shen Cong climbed to Titan’s roof and let the wind blow against his face while he enjoyed this beautiful scenery for a short moment. 

When the setting sun disappeared in the horizon, Shen Cong suddenly realized that he was actually not in an apocalyptic world, but in a post-apocalyptic world. 

Natural conditions were horrid, fierce, mutated monsters lurked around the place, and ruins of former civilizations were everywhere. 

It was likely that there were other survivors too, just like Shen Cong. 

Yet without Titan, how were they struggling and surviving in this world?

Shen Cong did not know. 

He longed to meet other survivors so that he could prove that humans had not gone extinct, but he did not want to meet other survivors at the same time, because wandering alone in the post-apocalyptic world was the life that he had always desired. 

He had used six years to prepare for such a day, no?

The final traces of the evening were finally gone from the horizon, and the sky became completely dark. By then, Shen Cong had already returned to Titan and crouched while polishing the fangs of the fanged wolves. 

They were truly crazy. They were as long as the area from his wrist to his elbow, and each fanged wolf possessed two of these fangs. They shone with a brilliant dark silvery glow, and while they were still a structure made of sclerotin, they closely resembled metal. 

The fangs were similar to chelicerae from the earth-digging insect, but they were even firmer. Shen Cong tried to use an alloy knife on one, but he could only leave a few scratches. 

It seemed that regardless of whether it was the fanged wolves or the earth-digging insect, the structure formed by sclerotin had been strengthened by Activity, and it was much stronger than the other parts of their bodies. 

‘It’s like… metal? Titan is also made of metal.

‘So… is the Activity strongest when working with metal?’

Shen Cong wanted to search for the connection between everything, but he did not have a lot of leads. Since he could not wrap his head around it, he continued polishing the fangs. He liked them and intended to turn them into daggers he could carry around 

During ancient times, tribal chiefs would turn the teeth or bones from their prey into accessories so that they could boast about their strength. Now, Shen Cong thought to do the same thing. 

He used a steel file to polish the root of the fang before he welded a layer of metal there. Then, he wrapped up the part where he broke off the fang, and soon, a fang dagger was made. 

As for the other fang, Shen Cong put it away as a spare. Besides, he had six other fanged wolves outside, which meant that he had twelve more fangs to collect. 

He toyed with the dagger for a moment before realizing how late it had gotten. He laid down on his small bed, picked up his laptop, and got ready to play a few games before he went to sleep. 

Surviving meant that he should live his life well. 

Shen Cong was used to electricity and technology, and he did not want to live the life of a primitive man. He had prepared quite a few handphones and laptops. The only thing he found regrettable was that he could not use the Internet. 

He could no longer search for any information. 

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Shen Cong had already attempted to search for satellite signals from the sky using his radio, but he got nothing. 

He made a guess then: Wuwei might not be the only place affected by the disastrous storm. Anhui, too, was not the only place. In fact, China was not the only country affected either. The entire world might have been destroyed by the disaster brought by the meteor shower. 

Or else, it was impossible that he would be unable to obtain any meaningful signals using the radio on Titan even after so many days had passed. 

The entire Earth had become silent. 

It was now just as silent as the galaxy.