Saving Unpermitted – Chapter 31

Table of Contents

Chapter 31: The First Encounter

The two of them didn’t spend too long on purchasing weapons — In any case, they were just putting on a show, thus there was no need to choose too carefully. Monday was already a peculiar broadsword, while Marshal Zhu’s weapons looked way too advanced. It wouldn’t be ideal to use them in front of other people, so the two had to find something else to make do with.

Seeing that they were moving quickly, Uncle Xiong simply waited outside the store. After shopping, the three went straight to Yu Jin’s place.

Zhu Yanchen was acting on his own volition and even knew the slang often used in these settlements, so Shu Jun subconsciously assumed that Yu Jin and Zhu Yanchen had some sort of connection to each other. But when they finally met the real person, Shu Jun wasn’t so sure anymore.

Judging from their appearances, Yu Jin and Zhu Yanchen were from two completely different worlds.

Yu Jin was a little shorter than Shu Jun, yet had an unusually sturdy body, which was almost 1.5 times the size of Shu Jun. His muscles were bulging below his protective clothing made of mutated animal leather fully covered with bright patterns. Just looking at his body shape, there didn’t seem to be many signs of deformity.

The man had a buzz cut, his hair dyed in a dazzling golden shade, and the skin on his left eye was smooth, entirely enveloping the spot that used to be his eyeball. It could be seen that Yu Jin was quite bothered by this defect, for the left half of his face was full of eye tattoos. Regretfully, tattoo artists in these settlements had rather shabby skills. As the fake eyes stood close to the real eye, they simply emanated a stiff sense of creepiness, as if the left half of his face was made of paper.

There were four purifiers in the room, and Yu Jin wasn’t wearing a mask. When the three of them passed through the door, he was tearing a braised chicken leg with his teeth.

“Lao Xiong.” He raised his greasy hand to greet Uncle Xiong: “Who are these two?”

“My brother’s guests. They managed to run away from a Corpse Parasite earlier. They’re quite interested in this NPC mission. Wasn’t your last partner last time totally useless? I can introduce them to you.” Uncle Xiong went straight to the subject.

Both sides were trying to appear favourable to the other, but Uncle Xiong didn’t exaggerate Shu Jun and Zhu Yanchen’s skills; in fact, he was rather honest about this introduction. Shu Jun withdrew his gaze from Yu Jin and turned to Zhu Yanchen. Marshal Zhu had returned to his usual expression of a statue, his face carrying absolutely no hint that he was acquainted with this Yu Jun.

“Last time, that brat was also able to defeat a Corpse Parasite, but when he got on the mission, he could do nothing but run away. When he saw a dangerous mutant monster, he fled faster than a thief.” Yu Jin snorted, blue veins popping up around his mouth. His eyes swept one round at the other two men: “But these two, they look like they’ve gone through training.”

Uncle Xiong was well versed in carrying out ‘successful sales’, so he dealt a blow right away: “Didn’t Lao Xu get a lot of good leather today? My brother was the middle man, the leather was from these two.”

Yu Jin tossed away the chicken bones that had been ripped clean and said with a smile that didn’t carry any smiling intent: “I don’t like bringing new people, but since it’s Pan ge’s recommendations, I’ll consider it. Let me give you a warning, those leathers better really come from you — if the mission fails, I’ll kill you both first.”

Then he casually turned to Uncle Xiong again, totally not bothered by the possibility that the other two men might be offended: “To prove my trustworthiness, I’ll give you an introduction fee when the mission is over.”

“Hey, it’s your own words alright.” Knowing that the sale had been settled, Uncle Xiong grinned from ear to ear. 

If Shu Jun and Zhu Yanchen were really newcomers, they could be considered to have found a good thigh, so it was hard to utter any complaint. But the truth was that they weren’t newcomers, which made Yu Jin’s presence even more necessary — The two of them originally planned to pass the test in the quietest way, such that they could hide from any possible eyes and ears around this place. Now that there was a veteran in the team to attract all the attention, it would be a lot easier.

Shu Jun specially gazed at Yu Jin’s eye, and the vague sense of familiarity grew a little stronger. But this person and his swaggering looks… If Shu Jun had ever seen such an NPC, he would definitely retain some impression.

How strange.

Until the test officially started, Shu Jun still hadn’t figured out where that sense of familiarity came from.

The test site was a wasteland next to the settlement, where there were still remains of a small town from hundreds of years ago. The billboards that used to be hung up high now became buried deep underground, with only their top edge protruding out. The wires on the utility poles scattered and dangled close to the muddy ground, looking like hair strands that stuck to the bathroom floor tiles after a shower. The parts of the building that were exposed on the ground were scattered all over the place, leaving only the collapsed walls toppling over each other.

Most of the candidates for the mission formed groups of three, with a few dazed faces joining in groups of two and only a handful of them coming alone.

Only a few people from the army were here and they set up a small tent against the wall. The content of the test wasn’t complicated. The military released a high-level mutated monster, and each candidate would be given a camera. The more detailed the images were and the injured the candidates were, the better their evaluation would be.

“Don’t think about attacking it, the monster this time is quite brutal.” The invigilator put up a grim expression: “We’ve placed a military purifier nearby, you can escape to the base if necessary. In the situation that you can’t escape… you should’ve signed an indemnity form. There are also other mutated monsters in the vicinity, so we’ve put a fluorescent collar on the testing monster, which makes it easy to distinguish. The time allowance is five hours, and each candidate is to prepare his own weapon — the test begins now!”

Noisily, all the candidates dispersed. Yu JIn didn’t rush, rather, he squatted down and began to look at the footprints on the mud.

“I’ll track it down, you two are responsible for driving away the monsters that get in the way, can you do it?”

Shu Jun responded and drew out the broadsword that he had randomly purchased earlier. Zhu Yanchen gazed at the direction of the army tent, then drew his gun a few seconds later. Shu Jun fiddled with the sword, feeling not quite right. He turned the temporary broadsword over and saw a large patch of ​​severe erosion in the back. The erosion was still new, and the shape of this eroded patch was a bit familiar.

Shu Jun poked Monday, which was wrapped inside a cloth and put on his back. It insisted on staying with this broadsword, so Shu Jun had to carry it with him.

Feeling the poke, Monday lowered its voice and exaggeratedly muttered under its breath: “……Bah!”

Shu Jun: “……” Obviously, this was deliberate.

Forget it, it wasn’t impossible to make do with this ‘eroded’ temporary sword anyway. Shu Jun’s expression remained unflinching as he turned the eroded surface towards himself. As a veteran, Yu Jin continuously rubbed the mud and sniffed it, and he ended up not encountering many dangerous monsters.

Shu Jun thought that they could pass this small test very smoothly. He totally didn’t expect that as soon as they walked deep into the town, things went wrong.

“Give it back!” A female scream came from a short distance away: “That was taken by me!”

A woman leaned on an eroded billboard, her body splattered with blood. There were two men standing in front of her, one holding a bloody camera in his hand. The three of them were clad in similar clothes, making it clear that they came from the same team.

“With all these injuries, you’re just going to hinder us.” The man holding the camera said: “There’s no way out, don’t you see?”

“Bullsh*t, you didn’t come to help me at all earlier! If it goes according to plan, I won’t… Cough.” The woman coughed up blood and gritted her teeth: “We made it clear before we began that —”

“You have to understand, if we’re injured, the overall score will only become lower.” The other man tried to act as the ‘good cop’1The full phrase for this scenario is ‘一个唱红脸一个唱白脸’, lit. translated as ‘one sings the red face while the other sings the white face’. Equivalent to ‘good cop, bad cop’ in English, this refers to a negotiation strategy where a team of two negotiators take opposing approaches to the subject, one of whom adopts a hostile or accusatory demeanor while the other adopts a more sympathetic demeanor, in order to convince the subject to cooperate: “Look, at least we didn’t throw you at the mutated monster. Let’s do it like this,. is it okay to give you 3% compensation?”

“Don’t bother struggling here with her. Let’s hurry up and find an unwounded group. We’ve only got one now, we need more photos.”

“Give it back to me!” Seeing no hope, the woman firmly grabbed one of the men’s ankles and dragged him to the spot.

“Motherf*cker, aren’t you done yet?” The man raised his leg and was about to kick her.

Shu Jun grabbed the hilt of his sword and Zhu Yanchen pulled out the gun. But, as they were almost striking, someone moved even faster than them — Yu Jin was the closest to the woman. He simply grabbed a big rock and accurately hit the man’s chest. The man staggered two steps backwards and slumped to the muddy ground.

“I’ve been thinking, why has there been so much trash in the NPC missions lately? It turns out there are really things like this happening.” Yu Jin snatched the camera from the man’s hand and threw it to the woman who was still in a daze: “This kind of mission and you’re already betting on someone’s life just to win? What a joke.”

Then he snorted and kicked the man again. Since he spotted Yu Jin approaching, the ‘good cop’ man had already fled without a trace left behind.

“Sorry, I can’t get used to these sorts of douchebags.” Seeing Shu Jun and Zhu Yanchen both about to shoot, Yu Jin’s attitude got a lot better: “Let’s continue… Grey Claw, what’s the matter?”

As Shu Jun stood there, the vague impression gradually gathered. With a slight headache, some images rose from the depths of his mind.

[Your name is Yu Jin? This name is so interesting, does it refer to tulips2Yu Jin’s name is written as 郁金, which are the first two characters in 郁金香 [yu jin xiang], which means ‘tulip’. ?]

Before his 11th birthday, Shu Jun had his first field mission. The mission location was near the stronghold, and the task was actually quite simple.

The task required them to find a boy who was lost on the border of the erosion zone. They quickly found their target — a little chubby boy covered in black mud, who had only one eye on the right. Seeing them coming to rescue him, the boy covered his left face with his chubby hand and tried to put up some resistance.

That was how the above dialogue came about.

After all, children were innocent beings. The moment Shu Jun brought up the topic concerning the target’s name, the other team members began to chat about this interesting name, and no one cared about the non-existent left eye any more. After gazing at them for a while, the little boy stood up obediently and wobbled along.

This was just the most basic training mission, and the whole process only lasted less than two hours.

However, a problem emerged during the return journey.

There was a cute little girl in the group, who was a tad younger than other members. She was just nine years old. Perhaps because her resistance against erosion is low, her whole face turned blue and she was in a hurry to get back to the stronghold. At this moment, they were only a small distance away and there weren’t any mutated monsters nearby, so Shu Jun pondered for a second and agreed to take the lead.

Then, the little girl was attacked.

The attackers weren’t monsters, but a group of three children about the same age as them, which consisted of two boys and one girl. They hid behind a rock, wounded her with pocket guns and gathered around her — They fired several shots that didn’t actually deal much critical damage, but the girl was still left crumbling on the ground. It was as though they were torturing  a kitten.

The little girl wore protective clothing so the bullets couldn’t penetrate her body, however, the impact was still horrifying. She was struggling in pain and couldn’t get up.

In the distance, Shu Jun didn’t know about the attack and couldn’t arrive in time. But afterwards, the little girl recounted to Shu Jun what the three children said.

[Look, this brat’s serial number is K-786. Its number reaches K! It definitely doesn’t have strong abilities.]

[Is this really okay?]

[In any case, they’re young, so they won’t waste lots of our resources. They… Chie, we can’t talk about this. It’s fine anyway, my family can pay for the compensation later.]

[Wow, this is the first time I see them.]

[Look, it’s okay to look up close. Even a girl like you has the gut to come over, yet that trash from the Zhu family objects. But now that we talk about it, what would he be here for? My mother wants me to take care of him, and I’ll be scolded if something happens to him—]

[Didn’t you take away his protective mask? He can only stay in the stronghold, nothing will happen.]

[Trash is forever trash. The moment we talk about hunting, he’s already scared stiff. No wonder the leader doesn’t like him. Let me tell you, he must be the kind of coward that doesn’t dare to step on even an ant. Ah, do you want to try hitting its neck? I’ve heard people say that this might kill it.] The boy handed the gun to another boy.

[Hey? But, it really looks a lot like…]

[‘It looks like’ doesn’t mean that ‘it is’. Didn’t you say that you can compensate later, give it a try? Then later you can tell people about how cool it feels.]

[Who just pushed me?!]

As Shu Jun ran over after hearing the the gunshots, he saw this scene from a distance —

As the three children stood close to the girl wriggling on the ground, a fourth child bolted towards them, knocking the three children away. The fourth child struggled to support the little girl. He was wearing a hood that was obviously out of size, and the sealing buckle wasn’t properly fastened. It was apparent that he hurriedly rushed here.

There was no serial number on that child, so he should be an NPC. He clumsily tried to comfort the little girl and wrapped her arms around his own shoulders, then he walked slowly towards Shu Jun’s direction.

Shu Jun was too far away to hear the fourth child’s voice, but he could hear the boy with the gun roaring.

[Did you tell my parents? ! Traitor! Prick! Trash! Are you even a man?!]

The boy holding the gun threw it to the ground, picked up a stone and began to hit the back of the boy in the hood. The boy in the hood was also clad in protective clothing so the stone couldn’t hurt him, but he was wearing a heavy hood while supporting the girl, thus his center of gravity was unstable. After receiving a few stones on the back, the boy in the hood tried to stand firm but still ended up falling to the ground.

[You fell by yourself!] The boy with the gun yelled, clenched the stone tightly and was about to throw again.

Seeing that there was still some distance, Shu Jun directly fired a shot.

At that time, they were too young to own any custom-made weapons, but only small, universally-designed pistols for self-defence. The bullets from such guns weren’t very powerful, but they were at least sufficient — The bullet accurately hit the rocks and beautifully knocked it into the air. Blood trickled out from the mouth of the boy holding the gun, after which he screamed and ran away. The other two children huddled together and fled after him.

The boy in the hood struggled in the mud but was unable to get up even after a while.

Shu Jun walked closer and took a look at the two’s injuries. His team member was hit by the bullet on the ribs. She was a little frightened, but no serious damage was found. The boy in the hood sprained his ankle and couldn’t stand up.

[You go find a stretcher, she’d better lie down. I’ll carry this boy.] Shu Jun pointed at the boy lying on the ground.

The boy gripped the hood tightly and tried to stand up, but even after a few attempts, he still muttered painfully under his breath. As such, he could only let Shu Jun carry him on the back.

[Let’s head back and report this incident. Theoretically, we can only be exposed to random events like this after we reach 13 years old. There seems to be an issue with the mission this time.] Shu Jun calmly gave the order as he carried the boy on his back: [You all go ahead, send Xiao Yu back first. She isn’t very comfortable with the outside world.]

Yu Jin blinked his right eye vigorously and walked to the girl’s stretcher, stuttering: [We, well, I… I should actually say thank you… well…]

He stuttered for a long while, but eventually he could only stay rooted to the spot and watch the stretcher be carried away.

[Does it still hurt? ] Feeling the arms on his neck tightening, Shu Jun turned his face to his side. [If it hurts, just say it.]

 [……] The boy in the hood pressed down his quick breathing and said nothing.

It seems that he doesn’t like talking. Shu Jun adjusted his posture to make the boy behind him more comfortable: [This is the first time I’ve encountered this kind of emergency.]

[…But you’re doing very well.] The boy finally responded with a rather low voice: [I couldn’t even take her away for more than a few steps.]

[What are you talking about?] Shu Jun stopped in his tracks: [If you hadn’t bought us some time, she would’ve been more seriously injured.]

[……]

[It’s not that I’m showing off, but I’ve seen a lot of N… people from this world. You’re the coolest I’ve ever seen! ] Shu Jun put up quite a serious expression: [You’re much more handsome than those crazy kids. Be a little confident, okay?]

[……] The boy remained silent.

They weren’t far away from the stronghold and soon arrived at their destination. Many adult NPCs were standing by the gate, probably waiting to deal with this emergency. As they quickly approached the gate, the boy tugged at Shu Jun’s clothes and motioned Shu Jun to put him down.

[Is someone picking you up? ] Shu Jun said as he glanced at the beautiful woman who was hurrying over: [It’s good that someone is here to take you. Be careful, I’ll put you down now.]

As the boy’s feet touched the ground, he heaved a long sigh. His body quivered and he rubbed his head against Shu Jun’s body, and the hood that had been loose fell to the ground.

The boy was about the same size as Shu Jun of that time, with well-defined features and slightly longer hair. He looked at Shu Jun, acting a little nervously and cautiously, as if he wasn’t used to looking directly into other people’s eyes.

[I…..] He glanced at the hood that fell to the ground, his tone a little struggling: [Can I touch your gun?]

[Oh? No problem at all, just touch it.] Shu Jun generously pulled out his gun. The boy touched the gun through his gloves, his expression a bit complicated.

[Thank you.] After retracting his hand, he said softly.

Shu Jun blinked. He wanted to say a few more words, but the child was picked up the next moment.

Compared to the farewells that he often had to say to his teammates in the future, this was just a small encounter. It was pressed in the deepest part of his mind, as if it had never existed. However, for Shu Jun of the present, that wasn’t simply just a memory.

He recognised that face.

On the day he defeated Sweet Vanguard, in that strange dream, he saw that child.