Safe City Ch.56

Chapter 56: Dazzling Star People’s Way of Life

The snow beast just… died like that?

What was going on?

Was this type of snow beast simply too weak? Or had they somehow grown stronger without realizing it?

The two young men were still buzzing from the aftermath of the fight. Their blood was pumping, every inch of them itching for another battle. They wiped the blood from their faces and forced down their fighting spirit.

Somewhat bewildered, they turned their attention to the only two living people left at the scene.

First, they looked at the injured adult lying face-down in the snow.

—Weak.

Then they looked at the child, who merely stared blankly up at them without even crying.

—Super weak.

Tian Buke whispered, “What are we supposed to do now?”

Before they had left the city, the adults had given them a few instructions, but they had all been things like, “Do whatever you want,” and, “If you can beat it, fight. If you can’t, run.”

Nobody had ever told them what to do after rescuing the local natives.

According to Blue Sea’s way of thinking, saving someone meant you should receive compensation.

But this one adult and one child were so weak. It was obvious they hadn’t been eating well. What kind of reward could they possibly offer?

How had everyone handled this back on Velvet Star?

If he remembered correctly, after rescuing people, they simply brought them back to the outer city and made them temporary residents there. But Dazzling Star’s environment wasn’t suitable for bringing people back to the city—that was the whole reason they had come out in the first place.

Arnold was also trying hard to recall the instructions from the Dazzling Star Survival Manual they had received before leaving the city.

“Uh… first, let’s see if the snow beast dropped an item card?”

“Right!”

Only then did Tian Buke turn to look at the snow beast’s corpse. Right on cue, he saw a silver item card materializing above it.

Their very first day outside the city, less than two hours after setting out, and the very first snow beast they killed had actually dropped a building-type item card?!

Our God truly has blessed us!

Overjoyed, Tian Buke picked up the card. Only then did he finally have the time to examine exactly what kind of snow beast this had been.

Although its head had been separated from its body, the head was fortunately easy to identify. The two of them had memorized the snow beast database distributed by the AI months ago, so they recognized it at a glance.

Burrowing Ambush Rabbit—a Tier 1 snow beast. About two meters long, with a keen sense of smell. Skilled at digging, destroying buildings, and launching sneak attacks.

Item card drop rate: 1%.

A one-percent drop chance, and they had actually hit that one percent.

Looking at the silver item card in his hand, Tian Buke was even happier.

Our God truly has blessed us!

“What a stroke of luck. This thing will keep us fed for several meals.”

The two of them were happily celebrating when they heard the injured man’s voice from behind them.

He said, “#￥%%.”

They couldn’t understand a word.

But they did understand the gesture. As he spoke, the man held out a blue item card that represented food and water.

Tian Buke could hardly believe how lucky they were. This poor injured man couldn’t even defeat a single Burrowing Ambush Rabbit, yet he still had an item card to offer as payment.

He walked over and accepted the card.

“All right, I’ve received your thanks. You’re injured—do you need me to help you? Should I carry you back to your home?”

The man shrank back slightly, but continued rattling on in incomprehensible “@%*#%” sounds.

Arnold walked over as well.

“What’s he saying?”

Tian Buke gave his wings a slight flutter.

“Maybe he’s saying thank you?”

“He’s shivering. He must be freezing. Do you think his cold-weather suit is damaged?”

Arnold replied, “He could also be shaking because that snow beast scared him. My mom says aliens are really strange. Instead of getting excited when they face danger, they become terrified—so scared they can’t even move.”

“Huh? They’re that weird?”

“Yeah. Though I guess we should add one more thing to the list: aliens tremble with fear while talking nonstop. It’s a shame we don’t speak the same language, or we could comfort him.”

“Let me give it a try.”

Seeing the silver-haired man trembling nonstop, Tian Buke thought for a moment before stepping forward, deliberately positioning himself between the man and the snow beast’s corpse.

“Don’t be afraid. It’s already dead. Shall we take you home?”

He was pleased to see that the man, who had been shaking just moments ago, had stopped trembling.

It seemed that even though they couldn’t understand each other’s language, his ability to reassure others was still pretty impressive.

The silver-haired man stared at the towering figure before him. The man’s massive build and overwhelming presence nearly filled his entire field of vision. It felt as though a powerful beast had locked onto its prey. His body stiffened, and he didn’t dare move a muscle.

He could clearly smell the scent of blood clinging to the man and sense an overwhelming killing aura—as if he had slaughtered a thousand people (or rather, the intense battle intent radiating from him). He had no doubt whatsoever that the man could crush him to death with a single hand.

These two “people” were enormous, with impossibly broad shoulders and tremendous strength. During the fight, he had personally witnessed the terrifying winged man wrap both arms around the snow beast and literally snap several of its bones by sheer force. The spot where he had restrained it had visibly caved in.

And after they had dispatched the snow beast as effortlessly as if they were chopping firewood, he had clearly seen the two “people” turn their cold gazes toward him and his child.

They conversed in a language he couldn’t understand, occasionally glancing back at them.

Danger! Danger! Extreme danger!

On the land of Dazzling Star, there was an unspoken rule: except for close relatives, people generally never entered another person’s residential territory.

Partly because traveling was dangerous, and partly because once a building item card had been used to construct a house, it remained permanently rooted in that location unless one possessed an exceedingly rare Relocation Card. As a result, the people of Dazzling Star rarely, if ever, moved.

The people of Dazzling Star generally lived either alone or as married couples. After having children, they would raise them until they were capable of fighting, at which point the children would move out and live on their own in an area that was some distance away—but not too far.

Some families with especially close relationships would return to their own homes each night but gather together during the day to hunt, so it wasn’t unusual for them to visit the territories where their relatives lived.

Other than those cases, however, ninety-nine percent of the people wandering near someone else’s home were snow bandits.

Snow bandits were the robbers of Dazzling Star. They preferred taking shortcuts rather than fighting for their own survival, choosing instead to seize the fruits of other people’s labor.

They had no permanent homes. They sought out Dazzling Star residents who lived alone, murdered them, stole the supplies and item cards they had accumulated, moved into their houses, and squandered everything they had. Once the stolen resources were nearly exhausted, they would simply look for their next victim.

In short, there was no such thing as “just passing by” in Dazzling Star’s frozen wilderness. If someone entered another person’s territory, a fight was all but inevitable.

Before setting out, Tian Buke and Arnold had intentionally made themselves look as imposing as possible to match the coolness of their flight wings. They wore things like the currently fashionable skull necklaces, matte-black combat suits, and mysterious-looking hooded cloaks…

And, of course, the enormous, sinister four-winged wings that resembled those of flying snow beasts.

To the locals, they looked even more terrifying than snow bandits.

The silver-haired man pleaded desperately and humbly,

“Please… you can kill me if you must, but don’t hurt my child. I know this item card is nowhere near enough. There’s also a green item card inside my house—you can have that too. And… my father is a very powerful hunter. I’ll draw you a map to where he lives. You can take my child and exchange him for item cards. He’ll give you a great many of them.”

“Please… I’m begging you. He’s just a child. He doesn’t understand anything, and he won’t remember what you look like…”

Arnold effortlessly picked up the silver-haired man, who was still talking nonstop.

He smiled in satisfaction.

“He’s pretty excited. He must be thanking me over and over. This feels great. No wonder everyone loves going out beyond the city.”

Arnold had never been the one helping others before, and now he found the experience incredibly rewarding.

Tian Buke felt much the same. He walked over to the child. After a moment’s thought, instead of picking him up, he simply reached out and took his hand.

“Come on, little guy. Big brother will take you home.”

The child stared blankly at the enormous creature before him, with its terrifying four wings and towering frame, then turned to look at his father.

Seeing that the two strangers had not killed them immediately, the silver-haired man hurried to reassure his son.

“It’s okay. Be good. Don’t resist them.”

Children growing up in the apocalypse matured early. Although he was terrified, the boy obediently placed his hand in Tian Buke’s and allowed himself to be led back to the little wooden cabin.

The cabin was an ordinary one, small and low, with almost every inch of space piled high with supplies, leaving barely enough room to walk.

With a wingspan of three meters, Tian Buke obviously couldn’t fit inside the cramped little house, so he remained standing at the doorway, watching as Arnold carefully laid the injured man on the bed. The little boy, only a few years old, immediately ran over and stayed by his father’s bedside.

With great difficulty, the man rolled onto his side and opened a hidden compartment in the cabinet beside the bed. Trembling, he took out a green item card and handed it to Arnold.

“Thank you for sparing our lives. This is a very valuable green item card. Please accept it. I know it still isn’t enough. My father would be willing to pay many item cards to ransom this child’s life.”

Arnold accepted the card and activated it. Inside was an ordinary healing injection.

The man continued chattering away in a language Arnold couldn’t understand. Arnold patted his own chest confidently.

“Leave it to me. Don’t worry!”

He gave the silver-haired man a quick once-over, recalled the instructions from the AI guide, and skillfully injected the medicine into the man’s most seriously injured leg.

The man let out a cry of pain.

Then, as the wound healed, his face filled with astonishment.

Arnold looked at the silver-haired man’s shocked expression. His own confidence began to waver.

“Why do you look so surprised? Did I misunderstand? Weren’t you asking me to give you the injection?”

An injured person was lying in bed and had handed him a green item card containing medicine for treating wounds. If that wasn’t asking him to administer the injection, then what else could it mean?

It never even crossed Arnold’s mind that the item card was meant as a gift for them.

Hadn’t they already received their payment?

The blue item card, of course.

The battle had lasted less than twenty seconds. Getting an item card as payment for such a short fight had already made Arnold and Tian Buke ecstatic.

Giving someone an injection? That was just a simple favor!

The silver-haired man stared blankly at his fully healed leg. In the dim light filtering into the little cabin, he slowly raised his head.

He saw the burly, six-foot-one Arnold, his fierce-looking face still streaked with blood, wearing an expression of nothing but pure confusion.

By the time the wife, who had gone out hunting, returned home, Tian Buke and Arnold had already managed to establish some basic communication with the man through an elaborate game of gestures.

They learned that the household consisted of a family of three.

The husband had been injured while hunting some time ago. Since it was the kind of injury that would eventually heal on its own, he had been reluctant to use a precious green item card. Instead, he stayed home to recover while looking after their child, and his wife went out hunting alone.

The snow beast had likely caught the scent of blood from his injuries, dug its way into the cabin, and launched a surprise attack.

Unable to fight because of his injuries, and with his young child too little to defend himself, the two had no choice but to flee outside. Had the two Blue Sea residents not arrived in time, they would already have become the snow beast’s next meal.

Tian Buke and Arnold also learned about the Dazzling Star people’s way of life. Since they hadn’t really made any concrete plans of their own, they immediately decided they could simply follow the locals’ example.

They would first fly to an area where no one lived within a one-kilometer radius, then activate their building item card to set up a small wooden cabin.

The man took out a hand-drawn map.

The map had been added to and refined over generations by his family and his wife’s family. It marked how many Dazzling Star residents lived in each region and their approximate locations.

“When our children are old enough to live on their own, we choose an empty area from this map for them,” he explained through gestures.

Still filled with gratitude, he continued gesturing.

“If you’re looking for a suitable place to settle, you might find this useful.”

In truth, he didn’t really understand what the two young men were saying.

The flight wings were incredibly fast. To Tian Buke, it had felt like they had flown for less than two hours, but in reality they were already very far from Blue Sea Safe City.

As a result, most of the Dazzling Star people living in this region had never even heard of the Safe City, much less imagined that an enormous city could simply descend from the sky out of nowhere.

This world had endured the endless freezing apocalypse for so long that scientific education had long since disappeared.

The silver-haired man couldn’t understand it, so he simply stopped trying. Whatever the truth was, these two were his family’s benefactors—that much was certain.

“Here… there’s a huge rift valley.”

He gestured while sketching on the paper.

Item cards didn’t always produce useful supplies. They could just as easily contain miscellaneous items like paper, pens, toys, or hourglasses, so he used colored pens to make the map clearer and easier to read.

“You have wings, so you could live here. If a truly enormous and terrifying snow beast appears and you can’t defeat it, you can simply fly across to the other side of the rift valley.”

“And it’s not far from my father’s hunting grounds. He’s a highly experienced hunter. You said you don’t have much experience, so he can teach you everything he knows.”

It was at that moment that the lady of the house returned.

The first thing she saw was the snow beast’s corpse outside and the damaged cabin. She practically sprinted inside, where she found her husband and child alive.

Along with two towering men, one of whom even had wings.

After another round of communication through gestures, the silver-haired woman was overwhelmed with gratitude. She pressed another item card into their hands—today’s hunting reward.

It was a golden card, a Special Item Card, the rarest type of all.

She knew exactly how precious it was. But compared to owning a special item, she cared far more about having her family safe and alive.

Besides, she had already learned from her husband that these two formidable men—who had practically killed a snow beast in an instant—would be settling somewhere nearby.

While a golden item card could produce all sorts of extraordinary items, there was no guarantee that any of them would be useful to her family.

It would be better to give it away as both a token of gratitude and a gesture of goodwill.

If they could earn the favor of these two benefactors now, life for their family in this area would likely become much easier in the future.

The two young Blue Sea residents, who had endured no hardship whatsoever, flown for barely over an hour, spent thirty seconds killing a single snow beast, and somehow walked away with a Building Card, a Food Card, and a Special Item Card, could only stare blankly.

“Huh?”

They hadn’t even been away from home for six hours yet!

How many contribution points could this Special Item Card be exchanged for?

…

Watching the entire sequence unfold, Cheng Qisheng fell into deep thought.

She had only intended to observe the world through her followers’ perspective to see how much smoother combat would become once they had flight wings.

Instead, she ended up witnessing the pair’s unbelievably lucky journey from beginning to end.

“Aether… is there such a thing as a luck-based supernatural ability?”

Aether, who was busy catching up on a new TV series, answered immediately:

“Yes, City Lord. There are luck-based ability users, but they come in many different varieties. They’re very difficult to identify, and most aren’t discovered until the middle or later stages of their development.”

“Show me the different types of luck-based abilities.”

Aether immediately compiled and summarized the information, sending over a long list.

Sure enough, there were many different kinds.

Some became luckier whenever other people suffered bad luck.

Some experienced random bursts of good fortune.

Others had the opposite effect—their own misfortune brought good luck to those around them.

Cheng Qisheng’s eyes settled on one particular entry:

“Wish Fulfillment Tendency: The ability activates randomly, causing events to align with the user’s heartfelt wishes. A Tier-1 user experiences extraordinary luck approximately once or twice per year. The stronger the user’s conviction, the greater the chance of success.”

She looked over Tian Buke’s profile.

It really did seem similar.

When Tian Buke wanted flight wings, he had incredibly lucked into killing a Skywing Dragon.

When he wanted a little cabin, he had conveniently obtained a Building Card.

Of course, a Tier-1 luck-type ability user’s luck still had its limits. If Tian Buke wished for every snow beast in the world to die, that obviously wasn’t going to happen.

After a moment’s thought, Cheng Qisheng directly issued a divine oracle to Tian Buke:

“The Special Item Card you open will contain a Universal Translation Meme, capable of translating the languages of all intelligent lifeforms.”

It was an item she had been wanting to buy for quite some time.

Once installed into the AI system, the Universal Translation Meme could translate every language. It could also be installed on electronic devices for the city’s residents to use.

It would be incredibly convenient for Blue Sea Safe City.

Unfortunately, it was far too expensive.

It cost 160,000 contribution points.

Blue Sea simply couldn’t afford it at the moment, so Cheng Qisheng had resigned herself to admiring it from afar.

But now, a thought suddenly occurred to her.

If she issued an oracle like this…

Then would Tian Buke—who would believe her words without the slightest doubt—really be able to open a Universal Translation Meme from the Special Item Card?

One hundred and sixty thousand contribution points was an ideal value for her test. Cheng Qisheng had a vague feeling that if this actually worked, it would probably be the once-or-twice-a-year stroke of extraordinary luck granted by Tian Buke’s ability.

Sure enough, Tian Buke believed her immediately.

Every citizen of Blue Sea trusted the words of the Great Creator God unconditionally.

His faith was absolute, without the slightest hint of doubt.

He exclaimed excitedly,

“Thank you, our God!”

As expected of our God!

Our God is truly omniscient. Knowing that I wanted so badly to communicate properly with the silver-haired brother and sister, She has bestowed such a miraculous gift upon me.

Filled with joy and gratitude, Tian Buke opened the Special Item Card, already certain of what it would contain.

Before Cheng Qisheng’s eyes appeared:

[Universal Translation Meme].

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