The Reborn Otaku’s Code of Practice for the Apocalypse – CH227

Chapter 227 — A Thank-You Gift?

The newly formed “ponds” near the Otaku Team’s new base weren’t particularly large. Scattered across the landscape, they looked exactly like neatly partitioned paddy fields from a distance. Because the water wasn’t very deep, the wild birds and waterfowl active in the area weren’t exceptionally large either.

Yet, even if they weren’t massive, these were still mutated creatures boasting thick hides and significantly increased body mass. When they slammed into the steel plating, they hit like miniature cannonballs. No matter how sturdy the metal sheets Yan Fei fabricated were, the entire defensive line rattled violently under the impact.

The thunderous racket sent a wave of numbness crawling across everyone’s scalps. It was a profound blessing that Yan Fei had erected these metal walls in time; had the flock slammed directly into the vehicles, they probably would have flipped the trucks and the crew god knows where.

At this thought, the group couldn’t help but spin around to glare at the two wolves that had led the agroed mob straight to them. The two wolves had already slunk down to the absolute rear of the convoy. They were currently looking back toward the metal barricade, their furry ears twitching rhythmically with every heavy thud, as if evaluating whether the flock of birds could force their way through.

“Deal with them first. If all else fails, we can just drive them off,” Luo Xun ordered. Although they had recently wanted to upgrade their dining table with some wild fowl, they couldn’t possibly finish off a flock this size! Their freezers were already packed with an immense stockpile of pork and beef—even if they gorged themselves on meat every single day, the current reserve was more than enough to last them until the New Year.

Hearing the command, the young men immediately rolled up their sleeves and began blasting the birds. Naturally, the ones that had slammed head-on into the steel plating and were already breathing their last were casually gathered up to serve as a dinner upgrade.

These waterfowl possessed elemental superpowers of their own. However, once they perceived that this group of humans was equally armed with superpowers—and were exceptionally difficult to handle—they turned their clumsy, heavy bodies around. Running on their mismatched legs, they pedaled furiously back toward the ponds they had previously claimed, their waddling forms looking highly comical.

Before Luo Xun and the team could even let out a sigh of relief, they felt a faint vibration ripple through the ground. The two wolves that had just fled in absolute panic behind their trucks suddenly leaped to the absolute front of the convoy. Without a shred of courtesy, each clamped their jaws around a waterfowl, gave them a few brutal shakes, and shamelessly curled up on the asphalt to feast right then and there. Their massive jaws instantly transformed into literal “blood-soaked muzzles.”

Staring at these two insolent wolves blocking the thoroughfare to gorge on the very birds their team had brought down, Luo Xun and the crew were rendered completely speechless for a good while. They watched open-mouthed until the wolves finished off their first round, stepped forward to clamp their jaws around a second bird each, and leisurely sauntered off toward a stretch of the lake far away from the remaining waterfowl, wagging their tails with an elegant, slow-paced stride.

“…To think they actually left two birds for us. Should we look them in the eye and say thank you?” Luo Xun looked at the sea of feathers littering the ground before the steel plates—and the two suffocated waterfowl left pinned at the absolute bottom of the pile—feeling both amused and exasperated as he asked for everyone’s input.

Zhang Su suddenly pointed a finger toward the lone remaining pair of waterfowl. “Haven’t you noticed? The two they ‘left’ for us happen to be the absolute smallest out of the entire flock.”

So the wolves had systematically picked out the largest ones for themselves, leaving the undersized runts they disdained behind for the team?

Turning their gazes once more toward the silhouettes of the two wolves curled up beneath a massive tree by the pond, the lingering dread and tension everyone had harbored upon their initial encounter vanished completely. Instead, they glared at them with the exact same look neighbors reserved for a pack of unruly brats who had just hurled a brick through their front window.

“Brother Luo, why don’t we just drive them off completely? It’s really not a viable long-term solution if we have to clean up their chaotic messes every single time we return from an excursion,” Han Li suggested, feeling somewhat slighted.

“Even though they are incredibly pathetic runts…” Luo Xun managed to suppress the twitching corner of his mouth. “Having them around can still serve to deter other humans or wild predators.” Although these two cowards vanished without a trace whenever a genuine crisis struck, having canines of that monstrous size—two of them, no less—nesting in the immediate perimeter still carried an objective level of deterrence.

This was especially true now that a network of ponds had formed nearby. With these waterfowl temporarily nesting here, alternative carnivorous mutated predators or independent survivor expeditions out on a hunt would definitely think twice before daring to approach their coordinates.

For Luo Xun and his team, this served as an incredibly critical security guarantee.

Hauling up the two waterfowl, well, though they were the absolute smallest of the bunch, they were still mutated entities after all. The body length of each specimen reached roughly one and a half meters, and if you factored in their elongated necks and webbed claws, their standing height on the asphalt would easily hit nearly two meters. They would serve as a perfect treat to satisfy the team’s cravings back home, while allowing them to experiment and see if the livers of these birds could be prepared to match the flavor profile of authentic foie gras.

Steering the vehicles back into their complex, everything at home remained virtually identical to the moment they had locked up. At most, a few rows of vegetables had grown substantially larger, a portion of the crops had ripened and required harvesting, the quail eggs inside the bird room had piled up, and a fresh batch of quail chicks had successfully incubated.

Upon returning this time, the group didn’t immediately throw themselves into the embrace of their video games like last time. Instead, they prioritized official business—they still had a fair number of bedrooms requiring decoration, and several empty rooms in the basement didn’t have their planting racks fabricated yet.

Luo Xun, in particular, had an alternative critical project to analyze—the mountain of surveillance equipment they had hauled back last time hadn’t been deployed or installed yet!!

Everyone was a mature adult possessing a disciplined mindset. Letting themselves go for a couple of days to unwind was fine, but when it was time to get serious, their priority had to center on building a functional life.

Besides, since they were thoroughly holed up at their base and faced zero scheduling deadlines, once the core chores across the complex were finalized, everyone could manage their daily labor hours reasonably. When they retreated to their bedrooms to rest at night, no one would police how long they chose to lose themselves in their games.

Consequently, even little Xinran only pulled out her pink handheld console to play quietly to the side during her leisure hours after completing her studies and assisting with base construction. If the puppy nuzzled her playfully or the baby woke up, she would always prioritize keeping them company.

Luo Xun sat by the long dining table in the cafeteria, the surface littered with a mountain of structural blueprints, tablet computers, and laptops. His hand held a pen over a sheet of paper covered in chaotic sketches, while several crates packed with cameras and instruction manuals rested by his feet.

Consuming a full two days of labor, Luo Xun completed a thorough inventory of every single camera stashed at home, separating the waterproof models from the dry units, while isolating the pinhole lenses from the larger hardware variants. Once the absolute quantities were tabulated, he began sketching across the comprehensive master blueprint of the complex, strategically mapping out the installation coordinates for the cameras. After allocating the lenses for the interior rooms requiring monitoring, he shifted his focus toward the surrounding perimeter.

Although the territorial footprint of their new base wasn’t massive—and the ring of mutated plants handily assisted with their defense—they ultimately lacked the hands to maintain a round-the-clock physical watch over the entire perimeter. This was the inherent vulnerability of a compact base. Therefore, now that they possessed such convenient hardware, they naturally had to exploit it to the absolute maximum.

Deploying the cameras within the complex was simple; as long as Yan Fei stepped up to manage it, running the wiring and mounting the hardware was incredibly elementary. The real dilemma lay in how to handle the cameras destined for the exterior.

Luo Xun intended to mount surveillance units along the highways outside—and not merely the immediate access roads, but the major regional expressways further out. Furthermore, the coordinates couldn’t be positioned too low; at the very least, they had to sit above a height where a heavy winter snowstorm or a downpour would bury or obstruct the lenses.

How were they supposed to run the wiring seamlessly out from the base? And how should they select the mounting coordinates for the hardware? One had to realize that although wild vegetation grew rampantly along both sides of the expressways, the absolute height of those plants was limited. The ideal clearance Luo Xun harbored in his mind was preferably level with pre-apocalyptic traffic monitoring cameras mounted above major intersections.

Crucially, once these units were deployed outside, they had to explicitly ensure they remained completely invisible to passing travelers; otherwise, it would be far better not to install them at all.

Refining his sketches over these two days, Luo Xun finally drafted the initial routing layout. He evaluated that mounting the monitors along the highways would ultimately require relying on Yan Fei’s superpower, or perhaps little Xinran’s assistance. If they could use their superpowers to streamline the process directly, they could choose the shortest geometric trajectory, letting the electrical conduits run straight to the target coordinates. For now, the layout had to wait until the team gathered to brainstorm after returning upstairs.

While Xu Mei and Song Lingling bustled inside the kitchen to prepare lunch, and Luo Xun was deeply buried in his sketches at the dining table, Yan Fei was busy fabricating custom metal furniture for the rooms based on everyone’s specific requests. Since they couldn’t scavenge pristine, pre-fabricated furniture, they might as well craft it themselves from scratch. In any case, they had unearned a substantial amount of reference material from the database they had intercepted previously. After filtering out the furniture styles they desired, Yan Fei would assemble the structural frames, leaving the rest of the crew to manually complete the finishing details.

With a bit of casual coaxing, Luo Xun turned the young men loose to independently figure out how to stitch the fabric cushions and anchor the foam sheets onto the metal sofa frames. Logically speaking, this level of meticulous manual craftsmanship should have relied on the two ladies combined with their resident handyman, Luo Xun. Regrettably, with noon rapidly drawing near, the ladies had to focus on cooking while Luo Xun was locked down by the blueprints, leaving the guys with no choice but to slowly tinker and figure it out on their own.

Before long, the savory aroma drifting from the kitchen grew intensely rich, accompanied by the sound of approaching footsteps outside. A stream of the young men who had been working through the morning filed inside, lively debating the decoration of their bedrooms and how to process specific fixtures along the way.

Yan Fei walked over to slide into the seat beside Luo Xun. Without raising his head, Luo Xun handed him a sheet of paper covered in fresh sketches. “Once you finish up with those fixtures, carve out some time to see if we can run subterranean metal conduits to route the wiring straight to these coordinates.”

Meticulously studying the contents of the blueprint, Yan Fei noticed that the coordinates flagged on the map mapped out the outer perimeter of the base, and he couldn’t help but chuckle. “You want to mount cameras along the expressways to monitor the outside conditions? Running subterranean metal conduits isn’t difficult at all; we just need to evaluate how to disguise those exterior fixtures so they don’t draw the attention of passing travelers.”

“Yeah, that’s exactly what’s giving me a headache. Once those units boot up, they all emit a tiny red indicator light, especially at night. But those elements are utilized for night-vision illumination; breaking them isn’t an option either…” Luo Xun expressed his total frustration. He was highly tempted to just dismantle that specific component directly. Disabling a simple power indicator light was easy enough, but if they compromised the infrared array, the cameras would become completely useless in the dark.

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