Chapter 132: Coordinated Missions
"Did you want to start the missions today? Or do you need time to prepare?" Kalli asked. "Either way, there will be plenty of monsters to kill, and you can send heroes out fishing anytime."
The Captain considered the options, and then nodded slowly.
"We will send teams ashore today to gather as many points as possible. They’re exceedingly rare, and while there is a quest active, we need to take this chance. If necessary, we will arrange flights for you from the base to the shore so that the corridor doesn’t need to be secured."
Kalli drummed her fingers on the table as the decided how to deal with the issue of having teams in two very different locations.
"I can arrange something if the helicopter rides become too troublesome.
While we might not have the numbers that you do, we have decent combat power. Please don’t hesitate to have your teams start on the missions, and I will meet with them tonight."
The Captain’s radio beeped once, and a message appeared on the screen.
"They say that they’ve got two hundred heroes per group coming ashore, in case we are attacked. Is there anything that we should be aiming for, other than collecting points for skills?"
Kalli shrugged. "That’s really up to you. But increasing their combat experience will drive their level up, and that comes with boosts to their physical abilities. Just keeping them on the path to getting stronger should be enough to put you in good stead at the end of the Trial.
I suspect that it won’t be long, unless we’ve got another major disaster coming our way."
That made sense to them.
With the satellite data, the military knew that the seasons all over the world had changed, as the majority of the world was subsumed by the other after the first trial.
The Captain slowly sipped the milk tea, and then stared around the strange building that he had been brought to.
There was definitely something off about this place, and he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.
The technology. That was it.
While it was all familiar, in a way, none of it was any brand he recognized. Nor a familiar pattern. He might have only gained the role after the apocalypse, but he was a military strategist, so he had been made familiar with every bit of equipment that should be useful to them.
However, this looked more like what was on their System provided survival Arks.
It wasn’t the same, but it was closer to that than to anything else that he’d seen on this world.
And the holographic display that the Coordinator was using to keep track of notes and data? That was identical to the display screens on their vessels. Even the button icons were the same.
So, it had to be a System granted item, but she seemed so familiar with it, while they weren’t even able to access the basic functions of their ships.
"What might you be doing now, Coordinator?" Captain Kavalev asked, while Kalli seemed immersed in lines of gibberish on her screen.
"Oh, I established a link to your ships, and I was going to query them as to why you’re locked out. It appears that whoever was in charge of accepting them never bothered to set up a password or administrator account.
It’s all set to defaults."
"Defaults?"
Kalli nodded. "Once I sent you a message, it asked me to log in. The account was Administrator, and the password was twelve zeros.
Seriously, OpSec. It’s more than a slogan.
I’ve reset that password for you, and input your biometrics. You should have full access, and you can assign roles to everyone else in the fleet from there. I would recommend syncing it to your military database, but you don’t have your computers linked to the ship’s, so I can’t do it remotely."
The Captain laughed as she turned the screen to face him, then realized that he couldn’t read any of it. It wasn’t in the Bevilian standard script at all. Could it be that her position as Coordinator allowed her to understand and access the System in a way that nobody else could, and she simply didn’t realize it?
"How did you access the ship systems?" He asked carefully.
"With my Communicator. It’s from the System, and operates on a peer to peer link with nearby devices. Similar to a digital radio. It’s the same type that your ships use, and since nobody bothered to put a password on anything...
Seriously, even your Wi-Fi was set to guest mode with no password."
[ Teasing these guys is addictive. They get so flustered every time that you joke with them. They’ve gotten so used to being serious all the time that they think everything is important business. ]
The soldiers with Captain Kovalev smiled slightly, then schooled their faces before he caught them. "That was our doing. Answering questions about what the password was ended up being more hassle than it was worth."
Kalli had been joking about the Wi-Fi. They were kilometres away, far out of range of the signal from the ships, even if it had been escaping the radiation resistant armoured hulls.
"You don’t seem to be short on conventional supplies. I still see packaged candy here in your store," the Captain noted.
"Actually, that’s a great idea. We should send you guys with a team into the Rat King Dungeon. It’s only a level one dungeon, but there are collectible supplies in it. You don’t get a skill point for it anymore, as there is no quest unless you’re level two or lower. But the setting is the basements of the warehouse district, so there are whole cases of random supplies that aren’t damaged.
The rat demons are waist high humanoid rats, easy enough to kill with swords or skills.
Would you like to give it a try? I can send the three of you with an experienced team leader and a healer."
"So, that’s the secret to the candy? You just have some repeatable event where you can go grab it at will?"
"The contents of the dungeon vary. Most often it’s bags of flour, rice, that sort of thing. It is a bulk storage warehouse, after all. But sometimes it’s eggs, cases of candy bars, or other foodstuffs.
Plus, completing the dungeon and killing the Rat King gives a reward in the form of common grade items.
If it weren’t for the fact that you have to be a hero to enter, we would be sending far more people in every day. But for now, we’ve got enough supplies coming to us that we’re not at risk of starvation."