"He actually still wants to go?"
Xie Xiaowu pursed her lips. "I disagree. Since he isn't here right now, you aren't allowed to take any reckless risks!"
Ming Kai ignored her.
"You aren't the vice-captain."
When Li Ban left, he hadn't appointed anyone to take over his duties, leaving the squad without someone in charge.
Just as the two were about to argue, Liu Yi spoke up. "Ming Kai, if you want to listen to the vice-captain, he told us to wait right here."
Ming Kai opened his mouth, then shut it without a word.
Willis, the shortest of the bunch, looked back and forth in silence.
Chu Ke, who loved fighting on the front lines, wiped his machete. "He became vice-captain after being in the camp for just ten days. He's way stronger than us. Just worry about yourselves."
If they preferred to hole up near the camp like Hemira, waiting for the monsters to attack before mounting some half-hearted counterattack, he had no patience to play house with them. He would rather find a place to sleep.
The faint roars of monsters drifted from the building ahead, which housed a monster nest.
Xie Xiaowu looked in that direction and bit her lower lip. "I think he's just looking to get himself killed."
Not everyone chose to keep surviving after entering the Recycling Station world. Many strong individuals—people far, far stronger than her—had chosen to embrace death the moment they arrived. Some had even voluntarily turned into monsters.
Because they couldn't withstand the mental torture.
They lived day after day in unchanging hardship, waiting for a "batch erasure" that could happen at any moment.
The others heard Xie Xiaowu's words, but no one said a thing.
Pledging loyalty to a new vice-captain was one thing, but they hadn't actually developed much loyalty toward Li Ban.
Who would be loyal to someone they had only met once?
A mix of various reasons had brought them together in the first place.
If Li Ban died at the monster nest, they would simply report the news to the captain upon their return and wait to be reassigned to new squads.
Chu Ke paused wiping his blade, his eyes darting around. "Or we could go meet up with Zhu Yao? To be honest, she's quite strong."
He knew Zhu Yao was someone who had fought her way in and out of the Sea of Monsters at the rift.
He liked fighting alongside the strong.
Just as everyone remained divided on what to do, a loud boom suddenly erupted from the building ahead.
Everyone shot to their feet at once, looking toward the building.
Right before their dumbfounded eyes, the darkest floor of that building collapsed with a thunderous crash.
"What... what did he do?" Xie Xiaowu's jaw dropped.
A fanatical light flashed in Chu Ke's eyes. "Damn. Trading one man for a whole nest. Badass!"
Liu Yi was a bit dazed. Were they about to change vice-captains again?
Willis rubbed his hands together, staring warily at their surroundings. He feared the commotion would awaken all the monsters lurking in the shadows.
But just as he glanced behind the group, someone who absolutely shouldn't be there appeared!
Their vice-captain!
Wielding a bizarre weapon, he stood right behind them!
Willis gaped, so utterly in disbelief that he couldn't even make a sound.
His shocked expression quickly drew the attention of the rest of the team.
Thinking a monster was ambushing them, they all hurriedly spun around and dropped into combat stances.
Then, just like Willis, they froze on the spot.
In the end, Xie Xiaowu was the first to speak.
"Weren't... weren't you going to that building over there?"
"Yeah, I'm back," Li Ban said calmly.
He flicked the black liquid off his Iron-Eating Sword.
Because the massive Spitters on the walls had eventually learned to fire in rotating volleys from multiple angles, even Li Ban—who could teleport mid-air—had been forced to use his weapon to block the unavoidable black nets.
The black nets, just like the black liquid, were highly corrosive and sticky.
Even though the Iron-Eating Sword was a Good-grade Creation-type element, it had still chipped under such concentrated corrosion.
Furthermore, Li Ban couldn't stow it back into his Cubic Space until he cleaned off the black substance.
That was why he had appeared behind them still holding the sword.
As for the building collapsing, that couldn't be helped.
The vast majority of the Spitters contained waste elements. At first, Li Ban had tried his best to tear apart only the Spitters without destroying the walls they were lodged in, but as the fight dragged on, he truly couldn't afford to care.
Fortunately, the other monsters were wiped out by the black nets' indiscriminate attacks, leaving Li Ban free to focus purely on what was above him.
Finally, after obtaining over fifty waste elements with varying reserves of spiritual rhinoceros, Li Ban ended up cleaving the building apart entirely.
Yet the falling Spitters continued to attack him.
This time it was an omnidirectional attack with no blind spots, so Li Ban simply retreated and found a spot to change his clothes.
His original outfit had been corroded full of holes and was completely unpresentable.
Xie Xiaowu glanced back at the building, which was still crumbling piece by piece from the tremors. She frowned in disbelief. "Don't tell me you never even went—"
She stopped mid-sentence, catching sight of the corrosive wounds on the back of Li Ban's left hand.
She had seen those wounds before. They were exactly the kind left after fighting a nest.
She licked her lips. "You really did just come back from fighting over there."
Willis rushed over immediately, untying the waterskin from his back as he ran. "Vice-captain! Vice-captain, let me help treat your wounds."
Li Ban had originally planned to clean up with his own water once they got back, but since Willis was so enthusiastic, he figured he might as well use his.
Li Ban stopped Willis from doing it himself. He took the water-soaked towel, rolled up his sleeve, and began wiping the wounds.
His pitted, corroded arm was revealed to everyone.
Even the few troublemakers in the squad drew sharp breaths.
It wasn't that they feared the injuries; in the Recycling Station, there was no sense of pain anyway.
But looking at those wounds painted a vivid picture of what fighting a monster nest entailed.
Those densely packed black nets and that thick black sludge that could melt a person into a puddle were the stuff of nightmares.
Furthermore, monster nests devoured almost all edible resources and possessed zero combat value, which was why the camp almost never waged war on them.
Li Ban scrubbed his arm forcefully, watching the damaged flesh shift back and forth beneath the towel before a new layer of membrane and skin gradually grew back under the moisture of the clean water.
However, the flesh membrane didn't replace the missing flesh, so even though the wounds closed up, the area remained a patch of pitted scar tissue.
"Thanks."
Li Ban handed the water and towel back.
Willis took the towel and waterskin, gripping them tightly. His eyes shone as he stared at Li Ban, absolutely thrilled.
This new vice-captain was way too strong!
"Vice-captain, what's our next move? Find another monster nest? I know where one is! Can you take me with you?"
Chu Ke also stared at Li Ban with a fanatical zeal, though his gaze was driven more by a burning desire to fight alongside him.
"No rush," Li Ban said. "The commotion here might draw Zhu Yao and her group over."
Sure enough, not long after Li Ban returned, Zhu Yao arrived with another squad of gatherers from the outer perimeter.
"What happened?" She immediately spotted Li Ban's exposed arm. She was all too familiar with those kinds of wounds. "Did you attack a nest?"
At first, Zhu Yao thought Li Ban had led the five rookies to assault a monster nest. But even if Li Ban knew spells and possessed spiritual rhinoceros, his squad still would have likely lost two or three people.
Yet seeing that everyone aside from Li Ban was completely unharmed, Zhu Yao realized he had gone alone again.
Even knowing she had no real right to lecture him, she pulled him aside. "Aren't you still trying to get out? Aren't you worried you'll run dry soon, wasting spiritual rhinoceros like this?"
Li Ban smiled and replied softly, "Spiritual rhinoceros isn't saved up by hoarding it. It's not like this world has no ways to replenish it."
"I know about the Spiritual Rhinoceros Fruit that grows from those seeds, but they're incredibly rare. Finding even one is a miracle. It's not like the more monsters you kill, the more pop up."
Zhu Yao was genuinely a little angry now.
Just how much spiritual rhinoceros was required to battle a nest?
She pulled a small pouch from her clothes. "I'd better give the Spiritual Rhinoceros Fruit back to you."
Having just harvested over fifty fragmented waste elements (since the Spitters had already used a portion of the spiritual rhinoceros inside them), Li Ban was currently flush with energy.
He pushed Zhu Yao's hand back. "I'm definitely not short on spiritual rhinoceros right now."
Zhu Yao frowned. "How many Spiritual Rhinoceros Fruits do you still have?"
"You just need to know that the number is growing."
Li Ban had yet to tell anyone that he could absorb waste elements.
Only the Cat Girl knew he was collecting elements and waste elements, and even she hadn't pried into what he used them for.
Unless the day came when he could no longer hide it, he had no intention of telling a soul.
Zhu Yao carefully observed Li Ban's expression. Sensing he wasn't just putting on a brave face, she nodded and put the Spiritual Rhinoceros Fruit away, though she still found it strange.
"Fine, then."
After tucking it away, she still seemed somewhat dissatisfied. "I don't trust you; I trust your obsession with getting out. If the day ever comes when even you give up on that obsession, I... I won't care either way."
She had already given up long ago, anyway.
And she wasn't helping Li Ban just so she could laugh at him someday.
The two of them muttered to each other for a while, making the rest of the squad highly curious about what they were discussing.
But whenever anyone tried to lean in, Ed would glare them back into place.
"I really don't get it," Xie Xiaowu muttered. "Aren't you being excluded from their inner circle too?"
Because Zhu Yao consistently took care of her savior, Ed, many in the camp recognized her kind heart.
But just as many felt she was simply asking for trouble.
It was obvious that the idiot she was looking after would forever be a dead weight dragging her down.
As soon as Li Ban returned, he sensed the strange atmosphere within the team.
Zhu Yao's team was fine, but the members of his own squad clearly all had their own separate agendas.
Still, Li Ban didn't care.
Though he wanted to build a small camp, he wasn't going to take just anybody with him.
If there was no one here worthy of his approval, he could just as easily take no one at all.
"Alright," Li Ban said, standing before the group. "Before we decide whether to keep exploring or head back to rest, I have a question for you all."
"Does anyone know how to store the black liquid from the nest?"