Wasteland Development Diary

Night fell.

Beta and his friend He Gao were barefoot, digging in the sand on the beach.

The deathlight was faint at night, and the real sea recovered its vitality from under the shroud of the Dead Sea, with waves constantly washing the beach.

Two months ago, a super typhoon swept through Shell City, bringing many things with it, some scattered around, and some buried in the sand.

Beta dug up a strip of plastic and half a broken metal window frame. These were things from the Age of Gods, and he sold them to merchants for some money.

He Gao even found a soft hammer, which sounded like it was filled with sand, making a pleasant rustling sound when shaken, seemingly a prehistoric musical instrument.

Several merchants offered high prices to buy it.

But He Gao wouldn't sell it.

Beta didn't understand, "Why not exchange it for money?"

"I'm going to use this as my family heirloom."

He Gao held the soft hammer and said, "My family used to have a heirloom, made by my grandfather's father. His name was He Jue, and he had a silver cup engraved with very beautiful patterns, but when it got to my father, he sold the heirloom because of gambling, and then I was sold too."

"I want to make a new heirloom, a glorious one. That way my descendants will remember me."

"Do you know 'Jue'?"

Beta shook his head: "I can't read."

"'Jue' refers to a kind of easily broken jade, a type of gemstone. Because of the heirloom, my father and I both remember this ancestor we never met."

He Gao looked at the soft hammer in his hand: "I hope later generations will remember me as they remember him."

He always said things that were hard to understand.

Beta thought He Gao thought too much.

He just wanted to get some good food, like sweet potato jerky and peanuts from the Wasteland Development Company.

"Hey, there's something here!"

Beta suddenly looked happy, and his small shovel sped up, digging out a strange thing from the sand.

He squeezed it.

It was soft, very small, light, and about the size of an egg. It was yellow all over, stood on two legs, had short raised claws, wide fins on its back, and a mouth full of sharp teeth.

"A deity statue from the Age of Gods!"

He Gao exclaimed, "Your luck is really good, but why is it so small... such a small deity statue is really rare."

Beta brushed the sand off the deity statue, and under the light of the diamond-shaped lamps, its texture was very clear, but it looked a little wrinkled.

Does it need water?

Beta placed it in a small puddle next to him.

Then he and He Gao chatted and dug sand, just like the others on the coast.

The night grew colder, and the constant wind made Beta and He Gao sneeze constantly. They both wrapped their clothes tighter and sniffled as they worked.

Beta's eyes kept glancing at the puddle beside him.

After an hour, he couldn't help but shout, "It's getting bigger!"

"Really?"

He Gao also came over, looking curious.

Beta picked up the monster statue, and it was indeed bigger than before, already taking up most of his palm, twice as big as before.

He Gao frowned: "This deity statue actually drinks water. If we keep feeding it water, will it get bigger and bigger? Maybe it will revive in the end."

"Do you know the Church of the Night? They revived the gods of the Age of Gods and brought the Night God to descend. Maybe this one of yours is also a god, but it looks a bit fierce..."

Beta also felt a little worried.

They both scratched their heads, not knowing what to do.

In the end, Beta decided that to prevent it from harming the world, he had to seal the monster statue. He took it out of the water, wiped it dry with his clothes, wrapped it up, and put it in his close-fitting pocket.

He Gao suddenly said: "This is your family heirloom."

Beta thought about it and it seemed so.

He could understand that feeling a little.

Reluctant to sell it, wanting to keep it, to be seen secretly by his own people.

Suddenly, it started to snow.

The diamond-shaped lamps on the coast began to disappear one by one, and a large number of people rushed towards the city.

Beta and He Gao hurriedly packed up their tools and luggage and ran wildly towards Shell City.

Winter had arrived.

The war had begun.

...

Back in the mushroom house, Beta couldn't fall asleep.

He Gao, sleeping on the upper layer of the diaphragm, looked down through the hole: "Do you think we can hold out here?"

Beta said: "I don't know."

"Will our city be broken like Emerald City broke our city before? If that's the case, what should we do then? We have to find a way out."

Beta rested his head on the soft grass pillow: "Now is not the time to say such things..."

The mushroom house suddenly began to shake violently.

The two of them curled up.

The shaking lasted for a moment, then there was a second round.

Then it returned to calm.

After waiting for a while, Beta dared to pull open the fiber layer of the mushroom house and look outside.

Less than six meters away, a large pit had been blasted, and the mushroom house on the other side had turned into burning rubble.

There were bursts of thunder in the air, but he couldn't see what was attacking.

He Gao tied up his luggage and said calmly: "It may not be safe here anymore, we have to go to the city, there are more soldiers there."

"That's not right."

Beta tried hard to suppress the discomfort in his heart, he remembered Doctor Feng Ying's instructions.

"When you need help, stay in an open space. The mayor also said before that we should try not to run around and wait for the city's rescue and follow-up notifications."

"This place has already been attacked, so it might be safer."

He Gao frowned, but ultimately did not object.

So the two stayed in the mushroom house, hanging diamond-shaped lamps outside so that the soldiers could find them.

Beta pulled open the fiber layer and looked out.

Glowing meteors were falling from the sky, in pink and white colors, they slammed straight into the land where Shell City was located, and the ground kept shaking and trembling.

Many places in the distance were set on fire, and fleeing figures could be seen in the firelight.

But he couldn't see the enemy anywhere.

Beta only knew that they were throwing meteors to destroy this place.

Every meteor that fell made Beta tremble with fear, he tightly grasped the monster statue and silently prayed that the bombing would stay away from here.

When it dawned, the bombing finally stopped outside.

Beta came down from the rope ladder, his legs were weak.

Outside was a scorched black mess. Except for the mushroom houses that were directly hit and destroyed, there was another mushroom house with only half left, as if the mushroom cap had been bitten off by a giant beast.

Not many people stayed to defend the mushroom houses, most of them had fled.

A soldier was counting casualties everywhere.

Beta went over and asked him: "What should we do now?"

"Stay at home, don't run around."

The other party was just recording on paper with a charcoal pencil.

Beta noticed that the soldier had a blood-stained bandage wrapped around his forehead and looked very tired.

At night, the mushroom house shook again, this time for a longer duration and with greater intensity.

He Gao shook the soft hammer.

Beta squeezed the monster statue hard.

For three consecutive days, the Doom Company launched multiple rounds of aerial bombardment on Shell City.

It is said that the attackers were B-level monsters called Thunder Beasts, which could fly thousands of meters in the sky and release a powerful deathlight ball. Another part of the enemy in the air threw a special energy bomb to bomb the ground.

The deathlight ball was the red meteor, which caused powerful destruction and explosions, but the range was limited, and the mushroom house that was bombed into coke was its doing.

The energy bomb was the white meteor, its power was much weaker, but it had splash damage and ignition ability, causing a wider range of high-temperature damage and causing fires.

The two types of high-altitude weapons took turns bombing, launching indiscriminate attacks on Shell City and the surrounding towns.

Everywhere was filled with a choking smell of smoke, accompanied by the cries and screams of residents.

All of this made Beta feel despair.

He now understood that when Shell City was breached before, the Wasteland Development Company's Emerald City was extremely restrained.

This was the true appearance of war.

The hardest part was that Shell City seemed to have no counter-measures against the air raids.

The Thunder Beasts were too strong and too high.

The Phantom Fish, as high-altitude combat power, could not rise to that height, and the Thunder Beasts left after bombing, never staying.

The enemy only bombed, bombed.

There was no offensive or defensive battle at all, only one side being beaten unilaterally.

Beta went to the city to collect relief rations every day, and he saw it very clearly.

The entire Shell City was visibly becoming dilapidated, with broken walls, collapsed houses, and roads full of potholes everywhere. The mushroom houses that had been built with great difficulty were also damaged.

After the initial fear and cries, people gradually became numb and collapsed, and many people were in a daze holding the corpses of their relatives and friends.

Inside and outside Shell City became extremely depressing.

Everyone dared not discuss the territorial lord Bei Du Gong, and could only curse Mayor Bei Jianxin's incompetence and weakness.

He Gao said: "Don't think so much, live one day at a time."

Beta suddenly wanted to summon the monster statue, so that it could continue to grow and revive to fight against the invisible Thunder Beasts in the air.

But he knew that this was impossible.

A statue is just a statue, it cannot become a god.

This was just his unfounded fantasy.

On the sixth day, a soldier came to notify: "You two children, pack your things and follow me immediately, go to the south. Lord Bei Du Gong ordered that all women and children be transferred to Steel Refinery City."

Beta didn't feel happy.

He felt vaguely uneasy in his heart, was Shell City about to fall?

The two followed the soldier all the way to the southern coast, which also had large and small pits bombed by air raids, making it very inconvenient to walk.

The shore was crowded with children and women.

The North Ocean Corps was guarding here, and the Iron Man soldiers held guns and sword shields, maintaining order and security.

Two long ships were docked on the coast, flying flags with a blue background and a white anchor.

It is said that these two ships were from the Seventh Fleet of the Dead Sea Knights, and together with the North Ocean Corps, they were hired by the Wasteland Development Company to help Shell City defend.

People crowded into the narrow cabins, the room was filled with a strong smell of sweat and various body odors. The Dead Sea was more bumpy than expected, and coupled with the fact that people would feel weak and uncomfortable on the Dead Sea. Many people were vomiting and crying softly, making the room even more stuffy.

Suddenly someone shouted outside: "The company's air support has arrived!"

Many people drilled out of the cabin and ran to the deck.

Beta also squeezed out to see.

A semi-transparent sphere of light appeared in the air, with a machine gun spitting fire sticking out of the sphere, tilting dense dotted light bullets towards the clouds above.

He Gao next to him said: "Is this shooting distance too far... can it hit?"

His voice stopped abruptly.

Some small black dots visibly fell in the air, seemingly enemy air units hiding in the clouds.

"It's a Spine Hunter! It's the company's Spine Hunter, I heard Doctor Feng say."

Beta remembered: "It's very strong! It has the power of a territorial lord level!"

Suddenly red meteors fell from the air, launching a cover-style bombing against the spherical attacker.

The Thunder Beast launched an attack on the Spine Hunter.

The Spine Hunter dodged rounds of red meteor impacts nimbly, causing people to cheer.

The two sides bombarded each other for a moment.

Suddenly a cyan light flashed in the clouds, accompanied by an exceptionally loud thunder, and then a behemoth slowly fell from the sky.

It looked like a giant black arrow, much larger than the Spine Hunter. This thing had two still glowing holes pierced through its body, and it caused a seaquake after falling into the Dead Sea.

The people on the deck cheered immediately.

The previous extreme depression and despair were finally completely released at this moment.

The Spine Hunter in the air lowered its altitude and hovered above the ship: "The Thunder Beast has been killed, but subsequent air raids will still come, you should transfer as soon as possible, do not stay."

The Dead Sea Knights drove the crowd back into the cabin.

Although the narrow cabin was still stuffy and smelly, the victory just now made everyone calm and reassured a lot.

"Amazing."

He Gao murmured: "The Wasteland Development Company is really amazing..."

Beta looked at the monster statue in his hand.

No need to ask for help from imaginary gods.

We already have warriors who bravely kill the enemy.

Whether it is the ordinary soldiers who go around counting and searching for survivors under the air raids, or the North Ocean Corps who have been deploying defenses on the coast, or the Spine Hunter who just used the small to defeat the big and fought the Thunder Beast head-on... they are all fighting in their own way.

Transferring children and women, those who remain are warriors.

Whether they are young warriors, or old and injured warriors, warriors are warriors.

The battle of Shell City has only just begun.