Reborn as a Mechanist with a God-Tier System-Chapter 321: Lt. Colonel Umar Farouq [1]

After eating to his fill, the Helmet man belched in satisfaction before finally standing up to leave the restaurant.

As he left, he deliberately glanced at a few of those faces who had been observing him since in a taunting manner.

They all cowered immediately they felt his stare.

He snickered, then he left.

VROOM!

"Helmet man!"

"Helmet man!"

Unsurprisingly, the children had been waiting for him outside the restaurant since. And as he drove off, he threw a few pound bills at them, making the children shriek in excitement.

The local militia didn’t dare to stop him, they only waved him off in a friendly manner as he drove outside the gates of the Town.

He drove far into the wasteland, far away from the Town to the depths of the wasteland that were infested by Neon Beasts.

He was driving towards his hideout.

His hideout, well, it was hidden. Or at least, it was supposed to be hidden till an unknown Mechanist took it on himself to find him.

As he drove deeper into the wasteland, orange ADE gently flared around his body as he activated an ability.

Bio-bot Creation!

Bzzz!

5 different bee-like drones were instantly born out of his ADE.

These temporary organic drones flew around him in the 4 cardinal directions with one levitating high up into the sky, combing the area to confirm that no one was following him.

Once he confirmed that no one was following him, he veered off the previous path that he was following and drove towards a distant hill.

This hill looked normal.

When viewed from the sky even with some of the best reading devices in the world, if you didn’t know what you were looking for, it would reveal nothing.

It looked like just another wind-carved rise in a wasteland of brown-colored dunes and the occasional scrapyard.

The hill’s surface is irregular, broken by scraggly, radiation-twisted brush and sheets of oxidized scrap that glinted dully under the sickly neon haze of the atmosphere. There was no straight line cuts, no symmetry, nothing that suggested intent, but the hill was lying.

The back slope that was shielded from the main surveillance corridors is where the illusion begins to fracture, though only if you know exactly where to look. The Zerphyr-7 knew where to look.

At the back slope, if you look closely, there is a cluster of jagged rocks sitting at an unnatural angle, their shadows slightly too consistent and their edges too perfectly imperfect.

Beneath them, a composite skin mimicked stone, dust, and decay down to the micron level, constantly shifting its texture to match the wind patterns and light conditions around.

It absorbed radar, diffused lidar, and bled off heat into buried sinks that stretched deep into the earth. But it couldn’t stop the Zerphyr-7’s penetration.

There, a seam existed.

When the wind howled loud enough, a section of the hillside panels retracted inward with a soft, hydraulic hiss. There, the rock folds into itself, revealing a narrow entrance that was wide enough for a person to pass through.

That was the entrance to Lt. Colonel Umar Farouq’s hideout.

After arriving there with his super bike, the Lt. Colonel looked around one last time to confirm that he was not being followed, then he entered through the narrow entrance.

At the same time that he entered, a few dozen meters away from the hill, 3 Ascended dropped down from the sky.

Thud...

They walked toward the hill.

...

A few minutes later, standing in front of the narrow entrance to a hideout that should have been camouflaged and hidden, Daren scratched the back of his head in hesitation. "Um, is this really ok?" 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

He looked at Leon. "Is this not unlawful entry and trespassing?"

Leon looked at him and patted him on the shoulder in a reassuring manner. "It’s not unlawful entry if you can survive it," he chuckled. "Be calm, I’m here".

He looked at the narrow entrance, then he confidently led the way inside.

Talia and Daren followed behind him.

Inside the hideout, the chaos of the wasteland gave way to precision as the tunnel sloped downward, lined with matte-black alloy that swallowed light.

Embedded strips glowed faintly in the darkness. The air inside is cool and filtered, carrying none of the chemical burn of the outside world.

The 3 of them moved quietly as they deliberately killed the sound of their footsteps with technique.

Further in, the tunnel opened into a chamber that was carved directly into the bedrock beneath the hill.

The ceiling is low but layered with dense equipment: signal scramblers, power relays, and jury-rigged tech that were scavenged. Cables snaked across surfaces like exposed veins, feeding into a central core where a dim, pulsing energy source hummed with restrained violence.

Leon’s first impression was that this is not a bunker built for comfort, this is a den. It reminded him a bit of his shelter in his early days.

One wall of the chamber is lined with screens- some cracked, some pristine, cycling through intercepted feeds showing corporate patrol routes, satellite sweeps, and encrypted chatter.

Another wall held weapons of different types. They were positioned for reach, for speed, and for instinct. Everywhere here is within arm’s length almost as if the occupant expected interruption at any second.

And yet, he was nowhere to be found.

Leon scratched the back of his head. ’Is this because he was so sure that no one was following him?’

At the far end of the chamber, partially obscured by shadow is a raised platform that was not a bed. It was reinforced and anchored, scored with marks that suggested that immense force has been exerted there, over and over again.

Above it, the rock has been hollowed into a vertical shaft, a narrow slit that reached all the way to the surface. It allowed in a thin blade of the dim outside light- filtered, refracted, and almost unreal.

Standing behind him, though nothing happened yet, Talia and Daren were tense as they looked at their surroundings, and then...

Thud!

A footstep. A pause, then...

Whoosh!

Leon reacted fast as he took a step back, shielding Talia and Daren with his body as his eyes tracked what seemed like a bullet shoot past his previous position at a dizzying speed.

With a loud BAM! It embedded itself into the wall.

Leon looked at it and discovered that it was not a bullet, it was actually a blood-stained fingernail. ’A fingernail?’

He immediately looked towards the direction where the attack came from. "Is that how you welcome your visitors...?"

He paused as...

Beep! Beep! Beep!

’Eh?’

KABOOM!

The fingernail detonated in a violent explosion!

Talia and Daren survived only because at the last moment, Leon’s overlapped R9 energy shields activated which protected all of them.

At that moment, a deep and cold voice finally asked.

"Who are you?"

...

[It’s the last day of the month! And man, what a month. Thanks for the consistent support throughout the month guys, I really appreciate all of it. The comments, the reviews, the Golden Tickets, the Power Stones, the Gifts, I appreciate all of it.]

[Also, Special Appreciation to Yametekudastop for the Golden Ticket, thanks for the support man.]