Dawn found the Hock Trading Caravan already a receding scar on the horizon, a dwindling smudge of dust against the pale lemon sky. Its wagons, noticeably lighter, seemed to ride higher on their massive axles. Yet, as the caravan melted into the heat-shimmer of the badlands, there was no dejection in its wake. Old Man Hock, perched in his truck's cab, wore the serene expression of a man who has traded a headache for a diamond. The transaction, in his meticulous mental ledger, was a masterstroke.
In exchange for a significant portion of his mobile warehouse, he had acquired a bulging sack of pre-Collapse treasures—foodstuffs sealed in miraculous polymers, their flavors a direct line to a lost world of plenty. More pragmatically, he had secured a compact, growling diesel generator, a piece of functional sorcery that would be worth its weight in caps in any settlement. And then, there was the promise. The whispered possibility of medicine. Real, targeted, unguent-based salvation. That promise alone made the journey worthwhile, painting a golden, pain-free future in his mind's eye. He left Cinder Town not as a chastised merchant, but as a partner in a nascent, potentially glorious, enterprise.
Back in the town, a mood of profound, almost disbelieving satisfaction had taken root. The spoils of the trade were laid out in the central square, a tangible argument for the wisdom of their strange new lord. The sheer tonnage of it was staggering. Five metric tons of assorted grains—tough, hardy maize, knobby tubers, and sacks of a gritty, protein-rich legume—were carried into the basement strongroom in a reverent procession. As each sack vanished into the cool darkness, a visible tension seeped from the shoulders of the watching townsfolk. For the first time in living memory, the specter of imminent starvation receded, replaced by a novel, heavy sensation in their guts: security.
Beyond the grain were other treasures. Ten large barrels of various alcohols, which Michael had acquired not out of desire, but as a throw-in during the final haggling. In his mind, the harsh, throat-searing 'Atomic Vodka' and the sour, thin beer were swill. He had grander plans involving distilled spirits from his own world, rebottled and sold as legendary vintages. But for now, they were a commodity, stored away.
The real prizes, however, were the instruments of violence. The haul was modest but significant: three long, heavy M1 Garand rifles—relics of a war so ancient it was myth, their wooden stocks worn smooth by generations of uncertain hands, their mechanisms still oiled and deadly. A single, sleek Beretta 92S-1 pistol, its blued steel cool and purposeful. Michael had claimed it instantly, the weight of it on his hip a new and potent truth. The accompanying ammunition was a sad, eclectic family: eighty-one precious rounds of .30-06 for the Garands, a hundred and twenty 9mm parabellum for the Beretta, a handful of shotgun shells, and a cache of over two hundred 5.56mm rounds. The last was the bittersweet find—a sizable supply for which they had only one compatible weapon: Andrew's old, carefully maintained M16. Of the five hundred total rounds, only eighty were factory-new, shining and perfect. The rest were reloads, their brass casings fire-formed and reused, a testament to the Wasteland's desperate, thrifty ingenuity. As Old Gimpy explained, the Hock Caravan was merely a distributor. The real source was a place two weeks' travel away, a legend in its own right: the Bullet Farm. The notion took root in Michael's mind—a future errand, to cut out the avaricious middleman.
But the most thrilling prize, the one that made his modern heart beat faster, came in a soft, heavy pouch. Eighty-six gold coins. Each was roughly ten grams, cool to the touch, and stamped not with the face of a dead American president, but with the serene, crowned profile of an elven queen, her features sharp and alien. The origin was a mystery, the value was not. A quick, euphoric mental calculation placed their worth in his world at over two hundred thousand yuan. He wrapped them carefully in a scrap of plastic and nestled them deep in his satchel. The return home, now imminent, glowed with new and urgent promise.
The following three days were a blur of focused activity. His cultivation of the Foundational Aura continued, a warm, constant hum in his background. But to this, he now added a new discipline: the art of the gun. Behind the town wall, using crude targets painted on splintered boards, he schooled himself in the language of powder and recoil. Ammunition was too precious to waste, so each shot was an event. He would stand, arms extended, the weight of the Beretta steady in a grip strengthened by Aura and strange metabolisms, aligning the sights until the world narrowed to a front post and a distant knot in the wood. The crack of the pistol was sharp, a punctuation mark in the dry air. The rifle's report was deeper, a physical shove against his shoulder. He consumed sixty pistol rounds and a hundred of the precious 5.56mm, and in return, he gained a shaky competence. At thirty paces with the handgun, a hundred with the rifle, he could reliably hit a man-sized target. It was a start. A violent, expensive literacy.
By the third night, Cinder Town slept the deep, exhausted sleep of the legitimately fed. Michael's generosity, fueled by the grain windfall, had escalated. The workers' daily ration had upgraded from three bowls of gruel to two of gruel and one of actual, solid rice, now occasionally speckled with precious flakes of salty meat. It was a feast. The resulting contentment translated into back-breaking labor by day and dreamless, recuperative slumber by night. The tavern was quiet, the usual desperate frictions of a struggling community soothed by full bellies. The town, in its own wretched way, was thriving.
It was in this profound quiet, under a sky dusted with indifferent stars, that Michael guided the Wuling Sunshine out of the town gate. The engine's grumble seemed obscenely loud in the silence. He didn't head towards the cave, but to a familiar hill a few miles distant, a place that offered a final, panoramic view.
He stopped the van, killed the engine, and stepped out. The night air was cool, smelling of dust and a faint, lingering hint of the recent rain. He turned and looked back.
Cinder Town was a cluster of deeper shadows against the dark plain, marked only by the faint glow of a single, guarded fire. It was a miserable place. A collection of hovels clinging to a poisoned well, surrounded by a wall a determined child could breach. It stank, it was dangerous, and its people were a hard, strange mix of the broken and the resilient.
A complex, almost painful warmth bloomed in his chest, entirely separate from the Aura seed in his core. My town.The thought was absurd, and yet utterly true. In his own world, he was a man who rented a bathroom and owed favors. Here, he was Harry Potter Michael. He had a tank. He had an Ogre. He had people who looked to him, not with the transactional expectancy of a client, but with the raw, terrified hope of subjects. He had ordered wells dug. He had fed them. The shabby, three-story tavern with its stock of bug-riddled rice and rusted guns was more of a home than any place he'd known since leaving his parents' farm.
The portal, that green, spinning mystery in his soul, felt permanent. It was not a temporary crack, but a door. And a door works both ways.
"It's not just a stash house," he murmured to the vast, listening dark. "It's a… a fixer-upper."
With that settled, he climbed back into the van. He didn't look back again. He faced the empty hillside, closed his eyes, and reached for the cool, familiar knot of potential within. He willed it forth.
With a silent, emerald eruption that painted the sagebrush and stones in otherworldly light, the portal swirled into being. Michael took a deep breath, the air of this world tasting suddenly, keenly, of dust and responsibility. He put the van in gear, and drove forward, into the light, carrying a fortune in gold, the memory of gunpowder, and the fledgling, bewildering weight of something that felt, against all odds, like destiny.