Chapter 7: Hunger on the Road

By the time the squad set off again, an hour had passed.

Since they could no longer reach the designated extraction point on schedule, Outcast sent a report to Rhodes Island requesting a delay in their return. With the revised plan, the team no longer had to rush as much.

The real reason, though, was Kanna.

After her meal, she only took a short nap before bouncing around with an almost terrifying level of energy. Everyone was curious—after eating that much, wouldn't she at least feel uncomfortable?

Apparently not.

When the second batch of food was finally prepared and everyone sat down for breakfast, Kanna once again wandered over to the large pot, drooling as she stared at the remaining food.

"…Still not full?" Misery asked, even though he already knew the answer.

"Kanna is fine!" she replied quickly. "But wasting food is worse than eating too much! So, um, if there's extra, Kanna can help eat it!"

Earlier, Kanna had discovered that the squad's meals were not only tastier but also far more nutritious, providing her with significantly more "electricity." Just from her last meal, her internal "battery" had increased by a whole 5%—something that normally took her days of scavenging to accumulate.

Still, she didn't want to use up all her energy at once, so she had left some stored for regular movement.

But when she saw more food, her natural instinct to hoard kicked in again.

Misery looked at her with a complicated expression.

To him, only someone who had suffered from hunger would say something like that. For a child this young to understand such a concept, what kind of hardships had she been through?

Without another word, he served her another portion and crouched down to hand it over. As she happily dug in, he gently patted her head.

"Don't worry. From now on, you'll never have to go hungry again."

Not far away, Outcast noticed Misery's gesture and couldn't help but smile slightly.

Back at Rhodes Island

Kal'tsit frowned as she read the report that had just been delivered to her.

Outcast and Misery were among the few operators she could trust to handle off-island missions. And they never disappointed. Every task assigned to them had been executed flawlessly.

This time, they had been sent on a routine scouting mission to assess the safety of the route for the landship. There shouldn't have been any issues.

Yet now, even on such a simple mission, Outcast had sent back a delay report.

Even though it was only a half-day delay, the fact that two highly capable operators—along with two entire squads—were being held up was a big deal.

The intelligence team had quickly flagged the report and sent it to her for review.

"The scouting and exploration mission has been successfully completed. On the return trip, an uncontrollable factor has caused a delay of half a day. Requesting the landship to adjust its docking schedule accordingly."

Reading the report, even Kal'tsit—master of cryptic language—was left speechless.

What the hell was an 'uncontrollable factor'?

Was it a natural disaster? An enemy ambush?

If it was a natural disaster, the landship's Catastrophe Messengers would have picked up on it.

If it was an enemy, Outcast wouldn't have worded it like this. Even if they couldn't eliminate the threat, they would have called for reinforcements, and Kelsey would have immediately deployed backup.

But this? This vague excuse? It didn't make any sense.

Something wasn't right.