Lead box

The next day, the man called Seamus approached me. He handed me a new phone and took me to eat breakfast. We ate bread. That was it. It was fairly fluffy but the taste was fairly bland.

If you think about it a bit it makes sense. Animals and plants became much rarer after the fallout. All things considered, it's a surprise anyone can have breakfast at all. I mean, if it wasn't for the very paranoid, humans might have gone extinct.

I haven't seen any underground farms so far so those must be tightly guarded. Bread requires nothing more than flour and water. Flour is made from grain such as wheat and corn. Needless to say, those things only grow on the surface or in a greenhouse.

The surface city, whatever its name may be, must export those things underground. It made me wonder if one would have easier access to fruits and vegetables there as well. The lacking variety here makes me think that the surface solely exports wheat underground.

After breakfast was done. I was finally given the final instructions.

"Use these to break open the back of the cargo truck." Seamus handed me a pair of wire cutters.

"This is a bit… out of my expectations" I said after grabbing the wire cutter. The security must be far laxer than I had initially anticipated.

"I honestly don't know what you might have expected" Seamus said while looking at me oddly.

"Can you send me the location on my phone?" I asked to change the topic.

"Sure." Seamus replied. He took out his phone and sent me the location.

"Where are the gates?" The last time, the GPS didn't mark any of the gates for me.

It was a bit ridiculous to expect me to jump onto a speeding truck or van. I need to steal the cargo while it is stopped or at least hitch a ride on it for a bit.

"Oh, right. That's a spare phone so you only have 0 authority rank." Seamus recalled. He instead showed me his phone for a bit.

The streets that had a gate were clearly demonstrated on it. Were gates really an important thing to hide? Well, it was what we were going to use to steal the cargo so I suppose so.

I chatted for a bit more with Seamus. He volunteered to help me as he was quite adept at disguising himself. That coupled with his experience meant he would be able to easily run away on the worst-case scenario.

It was more like watch from a distance, but it was still reassuring in case things went wrong.

I also found out that Seamus had his genes exalted, but he was still in the first grade. This explained why he never found out I was tailing him. It was a bit surprising to me since I would expect him to be exalted or not at all if it was to only be in the first grade.

It turns out, for the people in the underground, it was extremely difficult to acquire crystals. The shady higher-ups sometimes gave them grade one crystals, but it's because they are essentially worthless. These crystals are even used as currency due to their low ME capacity.

A grade one crystal is worth exactly one energy point. That means that to advance from the first stage using solely grade one crystals, the person would need 100 of them. Unsurprisingly, with this as both a form of income and the only way for people to get stronger down here, most of them stay in the first grade for years.

The next few hours were spent with me playing waste miner extreme to kill some time. I was quite close to becoming a waste king again. Nonetheless, it was soon time to carry out the plan.

I made sure to leave an hour in advance and was currently lounging around near a gate. Nobody noticed my presence as I simply stood there leaning against a wall awaiting the cargo.

I waited and at around 8:30, I could see home headlights. The sound of the truck was also a good sign that it was finally here.

The small truck came to a stop right before the gate and the driver talked a bit with the gatekeeper. After a good minute of back and forth between both figures, the gate finally opened. I simply waltzed right in and right before they took off, found something to hold on to, and jumped on.

The truck started to move out and I saw a man flash me a thumbs up. This was obviously Seamus. This indicated I was free to break into the truck and take the cargo.

I didn't loiter around, it wasn't like the situation I was in was exactly comfortable. The truck was going at about 30mph even in this residential and commercial zone. In a way, you could say I was holding on for dear life.

To be fair, not many people were on the street at this time. Nonetheless, their fast and arguably reckless driving meant that they would also be able to quickly make it to the library. I couldn't afford to waste time.

The door was secured by a chain. Using the wire cutters and my altered strength, this was the same as putting nothing. Still, I had to be careful to not make too much noise.

The chain snapped and I made sure it didn't fall off the truck. I slowly and silently opened the truck doors and made my way in. The inside was quite dark but this didn't mean anything to me.

There were empty boxes and some small crates here and there. This must be the last item they had to deliver. Unfortunately, I will have to take it for myself.

I scoured the room with my eyes and found a square metal box. I went over and made sure there were no special mechanisms. I lifted it and the lead box was quite heavy. This made me quite sure it was what I was looking for.

It also made me curious. What would they use to reward a government official? A crystal perhaps? I feel like that makes sense. An official that is stuck doing desk work underground wouldn't be able to receive any crystals after all.

Then… How high was the crystal inside the box? It was already much larger than the fist-sized one I consumed. I haven't seen any other crystals for comparison though… It's impossible for me to tell based on this alone.

Regardless of what it was, I felt quite tempted to keep it for myself. But that obviously wouldn't do since I would be the obvious culprit. Meh, I guess I'll just do the job correctly.