Chapter 50: Chapter 50 : Trailing The Bandits Into The Mountains
"Buzz... buzz... buzz!"
"Buzz... buzz... buzz!"
"Buzz... buzz... buzz!"
The drone rose steadily into the air.
Alex did not waste a moment, pulling on his VR headset and piloting the Ninja UAV to the Mangshan Mountain range on the outskirts of the city.
Ironhold city was huge, stretching across valleys and plains.
Luckily, the southern gate was within a stone’s throw of Mangshan.
In just four kilometers, the drone arrived at the rough rim of the mountains.
The drone was a high-end customized model, Its range of wireless control reached almost fifty kilometers.
Easy to fly and harder to locate due to its small size, Alex had nothing to fear.
"Bandits, eh?" he growled to himself. "Let me see where you are."
He turned on the infrared scanning and heat imaging system of the drone.
The VR screen flickered slowly coloring the desolate, famine-wasted mountains with strips of color.
The Mangshan slopes were desolate with little to no heat signatures.
The majority of the trees were dying, skeletal trunks and dead leaves only remaining to cling to the branches.
Half an hour went by as Alex swept up the range.
Occasionally, a weak heat signature would show in the headset but it was very small, likely animals, not some human.
But suddenly, something different showed on the screen of the VR headset.
"Hmm?" Alex’s eyes narrowed. "Why is there such a hot cluster signatures down there? Could it be..."
He tweaked the drone lower. Through the lenses, figures became more distinct. A parade of men appeared eight in all, pulling a wooden cart loaded.
Their faces were dark and ferocious.
Some were armed with machetes, others wore crude maces slung over their backs.
The cart they pulled was piled high with rice sacks.
Alex’s heart raced. "So I actually finally found them..."
The drone traced their trail.
The men led the heavy cart towards a rocky crevice in the mountain side.
At first sight, it seemed nothing more than fallen boulders.
But Alex observed intently through the headset, and suddenly it hit him.
"No wonder no one could find them."
"They are using the terrain itself... concealing their entrance behind a rockfall!"
Alex leaned back, exhaling slowly. "Smart bastards... they actually managed to bury themselves in plain sight."
At this time someone finally noticed the drone following them behind their trails.
"Hey, what is that sound? Look that bird looks strange. What kind of bird is it?"
A bandit with a scar across his face pointed up at the drone circling in the sky.
His shout drew the attention of the others.
"Yeah, it does not look like any bird i have ever seen. And why does it make that buzzing noise?"
"It won’t be some kind of bad omen, will it?"
"You idiot! Since when do birds look like that?"
"Wait... is it following us?"
"Dare to tail us? That thing must be looking for death. Shoot it down we’ll have roast bird tonight!"
The group broke into noisy chatter.
Soon, several of them bent down, grabbed stones from the ground, and began hurling them upward at the "black bird."
But the drone also had its own evasive software. It dodged left and right, evading every rock with supernatural accuracy from the onslaught of bandits.
"Fucking shit, this bird’s really slippery!"
"Forget it. We can’t spend all day tossing rocks on it. We have to get this food back to the village before the boss gets upset."
"Yeah, let’s go. Leave the strange bird alone."
Growling, the bandits gave up their attempts and just kept pulling the heavy wooden cart further into the mountain forest.
Far behind, Alex finally breathed a soft sigh of relief.
Luckily the drone was quicker and managed to dodge their attacks. If it had been hit, all his strategy would have been for nothing.
Shrugging away the thought, he clutched the controller tighter.
The pursuit had just started he guided the drone ahead, silently following the bandits deep into the mountains.
When the bandits entered the mountain, the bandits walked around a hundred meters, and then came to a cliff of naked rock.
Left and right, across the chasm lay nothingness, and above it hung three heavy chains of iron—three hundred meters or more in length, weakly swaying in the wind of the mountain.
One of the robbers pursed his lips and let out a few rhythmic whistles.
A little later, a big wooden crate glided along the chains from the opposite side, creaking with every jolt of the metal links.
"Quick, fill it up," the bandit with the scar barked.
The others tossed the looted bags of grain into the box until it was filled to the brim.
Then, another series of whistles sounded. Hands unseen from the far side pulled on the ropes, sliding the load across the open labyrinth.
Back and forth the box went two times once to transport the provisions, once again to carry the bandits themselves.
Alex, observing with his VR glasses, felt his heart rate increase. His eyes bulged as he mouthed to himself:
These bandits... actually concealed their hideout here? On a cliffside?
He zoomed in on the drone, taking in every aspect the rocky terrain, the boulders stacked at the mountain pass, obstructing any easy path.
"Utilizing Mangshan’s treacherous terrain to cover their trail..." he muttered.
"Obstructing the sole passage with stones..."
And trusting in iron chains to sever pursuit from anyone stupid enough to chase."
"No wonder they are so rampant having the audacity to steal even the relief grain destined for Ironhold city. They’re not merely brutes, they’ve got tricks up their sleeves."
For any human being in the current era, finding this hideout would’ve been impossible.
Unless a traitor gave away the bandits, there was no way to even assume such a lair existed in the mountains.
Alex reclined slightly, a keen glint flashing across his eyes.
"Alas.... for them," he whispered with a slight smile, "they happened to stumble upon me."