Steampunk Era: Mad Abield

The caravan hadn’t experienced any unexpected incidents on its journey, and Malin’s face was well-known to the Northern Alliance troops—his portrait was on all the canned food supplied to them.

Although resembling a brand like Lao Gan Ma or Thirteen Spices wasn’t Malin’s intention, he couldn’t argue with the packaging chosen by Faye, so when Malin appeared before the troops, his face was more useful than any identification the military could provide.

Soldiers from the lower ranks sang high praises for Mr. Malin’s canned goods, even though the meat content had been reduced for cost reasons (a cost-cutting measure required by the military, which made Malin feel somewhat disoriented). For them, being able to eat meat every day was already extraordinary—after all, the troops from the other two kingdoms didn’t even have this luxury, and only their officers had access to it, not even on a daily basis.

Upon hearing that Malin was going to investigate the ruins, the soldiers marked the exact location of the ruins on Malin’s map and offered plenty of help—such as finding the headquarters of division commander Aljom.

After completing a campaign with Malin that resulted in the beheading of forty thousand Black Orcs, this commander had been promoted—an advancement the military initially didn’t want to grant, as he was too close to Malin. Ultimately, it was the King of Mowish who personally refuted the army’s foolishness, promoting Aljom and assigning him command over a newly reclaimed national defense division.

Now as a commander of two divisions, Aljom, who came from humble beginnings, had attained a position he could never have dreamed of.

After conversing with him, Malin confirmed the recent situation in the area—the retreat of the Chaos forces left behind a huge battlefield. The numerous remnants of Chaos turned this region into a very dangerous war zone, and now his two divisions were clearing them out. The ruins in question were even more affected, with rogue Machine Souls, Chaos remnants, Undead from the old world, and sly and cruel Spirits of a different kind... Basically, any sort of mess could be found in the ruins.

"How on earth did Jon and his team find that thing?" After confirming the intelligence, Malin thought those guys were incredibly lucky to have penetrated such a troubled ghost town. He wondered what their scouts were fed to grow up, managing to safely enter and exit the ruins unscathed and come back whole.

After seeing the new satellite surveillance images, Jason said it was purely luck, as Malin’s team would not have been able to reach that location at any other time.

Of course, when Aljom heard of Malin’s situation, he decided to launch an offensive on the other side of the ruins. They were clearing the ruins anyway, so attacking from the east would draw the city’s rogue Machine Souls and Spirits of a different kind, and their curiosity would cause the Chaos remnants to be attacked from both front and back.

As for Malin, his team could enter from the west side, reach the place where the tablet was found, then head to the location Jason had mentioned before to find a usable energy core, and afterward proceed to the refuge—if nothing went wrong, the refuge would have to be restarted to gain entry.