Wow! The item-dropping rate is really high!-Chapter 808 - 586 Empire Capital!

A squad of ten warriors, along with the diplomat and his team, a total of seventeen people led by Bai E, followed behind the messenger team from the Capital as they departed from the growing city of Blackwater.

To ensure an absolute victory in this mission, Bai E, serving as the final safeguard, naturally had to join the team.

A total of four off-road vehicles and two heavy armored transport vehicles cut across the desolate wilderness.

The armor of the ten Storm Warriors was immense in size; without two heavy transport vehicles, it would have been impossible to deliver them to the Capital.

The journey to the Capital was long and would take four to five days on the road.

Bai E sat alone on the cargo bed of one of the transport vehicles. While guarding the equipment, he also provided the warriors a chance to catch their breath.

Whether Bai E wanted to admit it or not, with his current status, anyone sharing a small, confined space with him would inevitably feel pressured.

A few hours or half a day might not have been an issue, but spending four to five days in proximity could overly burden the warriors.

Only the team captain of the messengers from the Capital, unbound by subordinate relations, mustered the courage to climb onto the roof of the vehicle for a casual chat with Bai E.

"Mr. Bai, have you ever traveled so far from the city before?"

The two sat atop the roaring vehicle as the fierce winds of the desert swept the landscape around them.

An endless expanse of earthy yellow extended to the far horizon, merging with the dark canopy above.

Without human intervention, nature had failed to halt the encroachment of desertification.

Grainy winds brushed past their faces, threatening to carry off spoken words as they left the lips.

But the messenger captain's strength was extraordinary. Words guided by Spiritual Energy reached Bai E's ears effortlessly.

"About this far," Bai E nodded, gesturing toward the north with a wave of his hand. "But in that direction."

"That direction?" The messenger captain surveyed briefly before conjecturing. "Near Grey Iron City?"

"More or less, though I've never been there myself."

"Indeed... Communication between cities has been effectively nonexistent for a long time." The messenger captain, evidently an ambitious man, sighed. "I wonder how long it will take for true connections to form between cities after this alliance meeting."

Mere communication through the internet held no meaning. Only by unleashing the flow of production capabilities and human resources between cities would the essence of this alliance be realized.

"But before that, we need to eradicate those threats first." Bai E's gaze stretched to the horizon.

A towering black pillar stood tall on the earth like a colossal smokestack, its oppressive aura of death radiating outward.

That was another hive.

One even more daunting than the Blackrock District Hive near Blackwater City.

And that was just the most conspicuous threat.

On the journey from Blackwater City to the Capital, Bai E had repeatedly spotted traces of intelligent machines and wandering beastmen.

Fortunately, these entities seemed to recognize the deterrent presented by such a standardized convoy, while the convoy members, focused on reaching the alliance meeting, refrained from unnecessary skirmishes. Thus, an uneasy peace was maintained.

However, in the future, all of them... would undoubtedly become threats.

Not to mention the few mutated beasts Bai E had personally slain along the way, including a pack of mutated hyena-dogs.

At present, Blackwater City could only protect an area of three to four thousand square kilometers centered around the urban zone.

Beyond that, these diverse threats remained like nails deeply embedded across humanity's map. Without eradicating them, ordinary people would never dare venture beyond the cities into the wilderness.

While Bai E had the capacity to swiftly annihilate major static threats like the hives, the countless scattered threats across this vast expanse would require an army of elite warriors to execute comprehensive sweeps.

And to nurture such warriors, integrated resources and production capabilities were absolutely essential!

Even population, too, had to be treated as an invaluable resource.

Unity was imperative.

The messenger captain, too, stared at the towering black pillar ahead with a heart full of worry. "Yes... Even after those threats are cleared, trade routes will need to be reopened. We'll have to build highways and railways between cities and assign troops to patrol and defend them..."

Everything once achieved during the Golden Age had been buried under nearly 500 years of winds and sands.

What remained was a landscape filled with scars and the knowledge locked away in archives, waiting for humanity to reclaim its place atop the world one day.

"...I just don't know if I'll ever get to see that day."

"You will," Bai E, who took a liking to this messenger captain, smiled and assured him, "Trust me. It won't be long."

Infrastructure's speed has always been humanity's miracle.

What humanity lacked was merely hope.

One only had to glimpse at Blackwater City to catch a hint of what was to come.

Since the issuance of the city's expansion decree, an abandoned building that once served for illegal fighting had been completely repurposed, and numerous makeshift structures had sprung up on the open grounds outside the city.

Blackwater City's walls would soon transform into honorary relics of its history, and its residents would carry humanity's glory to every distant land guarded by soldiers.

With Bai E leading the way and the warriors taking shifts to rest, the journey, originally forecasted to take four to five days, was compressed into three and a half days.

The Capital's platinum-and-gold interwoven walls appeared from the extreme distance, visible to everyone long before they arrived. Yet, as the saying goes, "seeing the mountain doesn't mean you're close," and approaching the Capital consumed nearly the last half-day of their journey.