Chapter 57: Boss, Please Keep Me!

Lily Rhodes thought for a moment and replied to the message.

"Thank you for the invitation, City Lord Shaw, but I have no intention of joining any faction."

Lily thought her wording was perfectly polite. She did not expect Ryan Shaw to react like a cat whose tail had been stepped on. He replied in a mildly threatening tone:

"Are you really not going to join? I am the City Lord of First City. With your resources and my status, our alliance will definitely achieve great things. When the time comes, you will answer to no one but me.

"I know you cannot bear to part with your vehicle. I can allow you to keep it, but from now on, your vehicle must belong to First City. You will only have the right to use it."

Reading this message, Lily did not even feel angry. She just laughed out loud and wondered if this was the legendary Impostor.

In the past, she had only read novels about Impostors and could never truly empathize with the protagonists. Now that she had encountered one herself, she finally understood how genuinely powerless it felt. It was that frustrating feeling of wishing you could reach straight through the screen to slap someone.

With people like him, if you gave them an inch, they would take a mile. Furthermore, Lily had long lost any desire to communicate with this man. She simply dragged his name into her blacklist to save her eyes the trouble of reading his nonsense.

In the chat channel, a few people had actually fallen for Ryan Shaw’s tricks. They gave up their vehicles and chose to join First City.

Truthfully, Lily did not understand their choices at all. Even though living in a vehicle meant having no fixed address, at least it belonged to them. It was like an old house back in one’s hometown—it might be old and run-down, but living in it brought peace of mind.

Those people who gave up their vehicles to live in First City were like people who bought a house in a metropolis and took on a heavy mortgage. If the City Lord got upset one day and cut off their supplies, they would be kicked out onto the streets with nowhere to cry.

Forget it, she decided not to worry about those people.

Lily looked outside. The rain was still pouring. The number of Treasure Chests had gone from just a few at the start to over a dozen, proving that Shelly was moving incredibly fast.

Right at that moment, Shelly suddenly slammed on the brakes.

Because the stop was so abrupt, Lily nearly tumbled right off the sofa.

"What happened?" Lily asked as she stood up.

"There is someone ahead."

Lily widened her eyes at the message Shelly transmitted back. She wondered how that was possible. This was the ocean. How could there be anyone else out here in the water?

Although it was still raining outside, a mere thought from Lily caused the rain clouds overhead to shrink, clearing a sunny patch in the sky above. The scattered Fire Spirit Pearls around her immediately went to work, baking the damp ground dry.

Lily quickly moved outside onto Shelly’s shell. Sprout wrapped its vines securely around her waist to prevent her from falling off.

Then, she saw it. A submarine idled right in front of Shelly. A girl wearing a plush pink bunny onesie stared out through the window. Her eyes were wide with disbelief as she looked at Shelly and the girl standing on top of it.

For a brief moment, the expressions on both their faces perfectly synchronized.

Floating right between the two of them was a bright golden Treasure Chest.

The girl in the onesie suddenly darted away from the window. She ran back a moment later holding a whiteboard, her other hand scribbling furiously with a marker.

After a long pause, the girl pressed the board against the glass. It read: "I mean no harm."

Seeing this, Lily looked around, hoping to find a board to write on, but she could not find anything. She did not have any substitute props on hand either.

Searching through her inventory, she remembered she had a megaphone stored away.

She turned around, retrieved the megaphone, and returned a moment later.

"Can you hear me?"

Inside the submarine, the girl’s eyes lit up and she nodded frantically in delight.

"Come up to the surface. It is hard to talk down here."

The girl quickly scribbled a few words on her whiteboard in agreement.

With her Absolute Defense active, Lily naturally had nothing to fear, so she nodded.

As they ascended, Lily strapped on her Soft armor just in case. Her other piece of gear was still undergoing Enchantment and would take some time to finish. Initially, she thought Enchantment was a simple matter of gathering materials and applying them. However, just collecting the necessary materials had taken her several days, and the Enchantment process itself required a few more days of waiting.

Shelly and the nuclear submarine slowly rose above the water’s surface.

Lily walked to the top of Shelly’s head and glanced down at her own gear. Even though she had Absolute Defense, it was always better to be fully prepared.

The submarine’s hatch slowly cranked open. The girl in the bunny onesie, wearing glasses, awkwardly scrambled out of the hatch.

Seeing Lily standing there fully armed, she immediately threw both hands into the air. "Do not shoot! I do not have any weapons!"

"I have no intention of doing anything to you," Lily said. "This is just a precaution."

Hearing this, the girl breathed a massive sigh of relief. She then spoke up with immense excitement. "This is my first time meeting a Survivor who can dive underwater like me! Hello, my name is Mimi Bishop."

"You have met other Survivors?" Lily asked.

However, Mimi seemed entirely oblivious to the question. Upon hearing Lily’s voice and putting the pieces together, she let out a piercing shriek.

"Lily Rhodes! You are actually Lily Rhodes! Boss, please adopt me!"

Watching Mimi’s hyperactive display, Lily suspected that if there had not been a gap of water between them, the girl would have leaped over to hug her thighs.

"Answer my question first," Lily said.

"Yes, yes, of course! Ask whatever you want, I will tell you absolutely everything," Mimi promised, patting her chest confidently.

"Have you met other Survivors?" Lily repeated.

"Yeah, I have," Mimi said. "But I just passed by underwater beneath them. I am pretty timid, so I never met them face-to-face. If I had not been completely unable to avoid you this time, we probably would not have met either."

That was good. She was cautious.

"Boss, can I follow you? I am super useful! My Talent is an SS Level Talent called Synthesis. I can take two identical items and synthesize them into a more Advanced item. It only works on inanimate objects, though, no living things."

Mimi desperately pitched her value.

"Plus, I barely eat anything, and I am a hard worker! I can be your logistics support."

Hearing this, Lily was genuinely tempted. Not by anything else, but by Mimi’s Talent.

She currently had quite a few duplicate blueprints in her possession. If she could upgrade them...

But she quickly discarded the idea of having Mimi live with her.

Besides, even though Mimi put on a pitiful act, the fact that she owned a submarine proved she was developing quite well on her own.

Being able to dive was a massive advantage. She did not have to rely on a fishing rod to test her luck over and over again like the others.