Chapter 137 - 135: Fifth Tier Wind Element

The commotion in the yard was loud enough to draw the three children out of the house. Rose’s eyes widened, her face brimming with pleasant surprise.

"Mom, did an Angel from Heaven come to deliver supplies to us? I didn’t even get a good look at what they looked like!"

Rusty and Zephyr both discreetly rolled their eyes. Only their silly little sister would believe in Angels delivering warmth and care. Over the past few days, they had broadened their horizons considerably, having witnessed firsthand Mr. Jenkins and Mr. Quinn taking items out of their Space Buttons. The mountain of supplies piled up in the yard had clearly been dropped off by someone using a Space Button before leaving in a hurry.

"They weren’t delivered by an Angel. They’re what Mom traded for by working for someone," Sev Steele said seriously.

Although she really wanted to weave a beautiful dream for the little girl—one where a benevolent Angel loved the world and could grant all wishes—the harsh reality of surviving in the wasteland meant she had to make her face the truth.

"Mom, you’re so amazing! You actually traded one day’s work for all these supplies!" Rose looked at her with stars in her eyes.

"It’s not that I’m amazing, but that my employer is very generous. You all need to remember her name, and if you have the chance when you grow up, help her out too. Her name is Artie Sawyer. Have you memorized it?" Sev said.

Zephyr’s eyes immediately lit up. So it was Ms. Sawyer! She truly was as kind as she was beautiful, gifting their family so many supplies! Even though Zephyr wasn’t very old, he was smart enough to know that his mother’s daily wage couldn’t possibly be worth this much. At this moment, his impression of Ms. Sawyer reached sheer perfection!

Rusty was the first to calm down from the excitement. "Mom, I’ll take care of all the wood chopping!" he volunteered.

Having just awakened his Ability, he was still figuring out how to use it, and chopping wood was the perfect task. It would train his Ability, and he wouldn’t have to worry about the negative consequences of a sloppy chop. In short, he could practice on this firewood as much as he wanted.

Not to be outdone by her eldest brother taking the lead, Rose chimed in, "Mom, a lot of those wild vegetables are still alive. We can plant them in the yard and pick them whenever we want to eat! Maybe we can even grow them a bit bigger and harvest more leaves!"

Silas Lynn had likely lost his patience while picking the vegetables and just yanked them out by the roots, so a portion of them hadn’t completely died yet. With Rose transferring a little bit of her Ability into them, they would bounce back in minutes.

"Alright, you can do whatever you like, as long as you don’t overexert yourselves and get hurt." Sev smiled and nodded.

With their mother’s approval, Rusty and Rose immediately sprang into action.

Using his mind, Rusty drew out the metal armor covering his heart and coalesced it into a pair of hands—a trick he was now quite proficient at. Once these hands finished their task, he would mentally command them to return to the surface of his heart and morph back into golden armor.

He mentally guided the hands to pick up a pile of metal scraps from the corner of the woodshed, which he had scrounged up from the junkyard today. Over there, these metal scraps were practically worthless. Rusty had helped the boss work for half a day, sorting the scraps collected over the past week, and had been rewarded with half a sack of scrap metal. He brought them home specifically to practice manipulating metal.

Now, using the hands forged from his will, he grabbed the scrap metal, intending to mold a sharp axe. While shaping the axe, he noticed the mottled rust stains deposited on the surface of the metal scraps. With a thought, the hands formed by metal particles became incredibly agile. With a gentle swipe of the fingers, all the rust on the surface of the scrap metal was wiped clean, revealing the dazzling metallic luster beneath. Under the kneading of these deft hands, the scrap metal transformed into a sharp axe, absorbing free-floating Gold attribute particles from the air during the process.

Rusty tested the grip and found that this axe was lighter and sharper than a normal one. Moreover, he could now effortlessly control this axe with his mind, commanding it to execute the wood-chopping motions. Seeing his sister preparing to treat the half-dead wild vegetables, he molded a shovel out of scrap metal and maneuvered it to dig a row of deep holes for her.

Zephyr didn’t have an Ability, so he took the initiative to clean up the wild vegetables that Rose had deemed completely dead. He washed them clean and laid them out to dry on the bed board that Sev had scavenged and brought back earlier.

Sev watched her eldest son manipulate the metal with his mind for a while. Once her amazement subsided, she finally felt the exhaustion setting in. Having worked as a cook all day, she was incredibly tired and just wanted to rest. Leaving the busy children behind, she went inside and sat down on the Arhat Bed. Just as she was about to boil some water to soak her feet, she saw Rick Kaye walking over on his crutches.

"Did you know? That man who came into the yard just now to deliver the supplies is a Fifth Tier Wind Element user!"

"What? Wind Element? And Fifth Tier at that?" Sev was somewhat shocked. She had assumed that the highest Power Level in District Nine would only be at the Fourth Tier. After all, during the last rat tide, the upper management of the safe zone had sought help from Rick Kaye. If there had been High Tier Ability Users in the safe zone to begin with, why hadn’t they stepped forward to protect the Scavengers in The Slums?

Rick Kaye seemed to see through her confusion and explained, "Every safe zone has a number of High Tier Ability Users, but they don’t stay at home most of the time. They need to go out frequently to hunt High Tier Mutant Beasts and obtain High Tier Crystal Cores so they can continuously level up their Abilities.

"The Guard Corps within the safe zone is capable of fighting off small-scale Mutant Rat tides. But the rat tide that day came too suddenly and on too massive a scale. That’s why the defenses fell, leading to the tragedy.

"Although the upper management of District Nine sent out alarms and calls for help in time, they simply couldn’t hold out long enough for those High Tier Ability Users to rush back. I just happened to be passing by the vicinity of District Nine, so I rushed over after receiving the distress signal. When the other High Tier Ability Users far away learned that I had answered the call and was on my way, there was no need for them to desperately hurry back."

What Rick Kaye left unsaid was that there were also a few Third Tier Ability Users among the upper echelon. If they had fought to the death, not nearly as many people in The Slums would have died. However, they were all craven cowards who clung to life and feared death; they would never risk their necks for those Scavengers. What was more, the walls of The Gilded Ward were taller and thicker. With the Scavengers on the periphery acting as meat shields, there was no way the Mutant Rats could breach The Gilded Ward in a short amount of time. As long as The Gilded Ward didn’t suffer any real losses, the higher-ups wouldn’t have to face any accountability from the Powered Individuals’ League.

What Sev didn’t know was that Artie Sawyer and Silas Lynn had also been out at the time and couldn’t make it back. When they returned and learned of the situation, Artie had been both furious and bitterly disappointed, which was what ultimately fueled her resolve to leave District Nine.

Although Rick Kaye had omitted the fact that District Nine still harbored Third and Fourth Tier Ability Users, Sev could roughly guess as much. After all, in a safe zone this large, it was impossible for all the High Tier Ability Users to be out at the same time. So why hadn’t the High Tier Ability Users who stayed behind stepped forward to fight the rat tide? It was nothing more than the fact that they didn’t want to risk their lives for those Scavengers. And at that time, she and her four children were also Scavengers living in Area D. They were all part of the demographic that had been abandoned.

The more she thought about it, the colder her heart grew. As it turned out, Scavengers’ lives were the cheapest commodity here; no one cared whether they lived or died.

Looking at her expression, Rick Kaye knew she had likely guessed the truth. He quickly changed the subject, returning to the matter at hand.

"As far as I know, there are no more than five Ability Users above the Fifth Tier in District Nine. How do you know that Fifth Tier Wind Element user?" Rick Kaye asked with a serious expression. He was worried that the other party might harbor ill intentions toward Rose. If he hadn’t been heavily injured, he naturally wouldn’t have paid any mind to a Fifth Tier, but now...

"Don’t worry! He has no interest in our family of ordinary folks..." Sev briefly recounted her interactions with Artie Sawyer.