Wonderful Insane World
Chapter 171: Enemy Bastion

Chapter 171: Enemy Bastion

The sound of construction echoed more insistently as the midday sun hammered against the corrugated sheets. Since the County of Pilaf had claimed the area, work on the base had begun—but it dragged on, lacking labor.

A dangerous delay. Because the longer the base took to build, the more exposed it was to potential attacks from the County of Martissant. So, despite the crushing heat, workers kept raising walls and laying foundations at a frantic pace. The base had to be up and running at all costs. The threat didn’t come only from Martissant.

The central territory, the one everyone coveted, was larger than the two counties combined. But it wasn’t empty. It teemed with creatures, beasts that had sculpted the land in their image over time. Building here meant erecting an outpost—a bulwark not just against human foes but against the environment itself.

Among the figures pounding concrete, hoisting beams, and following orders without question, there was a boy.

Not very tall, not very talkative. Copper-brown skin baked by the sun, features masked by stubborn dust, hair in long locked braids tied back—clearing his face of attention. His clothes were dirty, stained with cement, sweat, and engine oil. His body was partially wrapped in thick bandages—from his torso to his neck, as if a fire had scarred him deeply.

That’s what he claimed, at least.

A poor kid. His village burned in a border skirmish. An uncle dead, a mother gone, and a few coins in his pocket as inheritance. He said he came to help build the base to earn some money. Enough to reach the city of Pilaf, start anew—a life free of ash and ruin.

A lie, of course.

Every word of that story had been carved to sound authentic. Sad enough to avoid scrutiny, ordinary enough to raise no suspicion. A flawless cover. And the bandages? Nothing to do with burns.

They concealed his stigmatum.

A mark etched into his flesh, wrapped in silence and memory, a vestige of who he really was—and why he was here. Infiltration. Observation. A slow, methodical approach to this base under construction, a strategic keystone in the heart of the conflict.

He had a name, of course. But here, he went by Daan. A nearly forgotten name. Nothing that led back to Dylan. Nothing that recalled the city, the mission, or those he’d left behind. That world had to remain in the shadows—his belonged now to the beams, gravel buckets, and barked orders.

One only had to watch his eyes—gray, sharp, patient—to understand that nothing in his movements was by chance.

Even when lifting a stone, he listened.

Even when dragging his feet, he counted.

Even when he smiled, he lied.

That day, the heat struck as if the clouds themselves were on strike. The dust raised by shuffling feet settled in a thin film on hunched backs, damp planks, nameless faces.

Daan—no, Dylan—had worked since dawn.

His task was simple: sort the rusty iron bars behind the north hangar, stack them by size, then carry them to the makeshift smelting station under the big white tent. A shitty job. The kind they gave kids with no muscles but plenty of time.

And he endured it. Subdued. Deliberate.

Because it was here, in these invisible chores, that he overheard everything they didn’t want him to.

There was the foreman—a thick-necked man who spoke too loudly when he thought no one was listening. And the guards on break, dropping names between tobacco puffs. But more than anything, it was the silences—those stretched when someone spoke too much.

Today, he’d heard talk of a convoy.

A small unit was to depart at dawn tomorrow. Destination: the northern perimeter zone. Officially, to scout an old silo. Unofficially... he didn’t yet have enough puzzle pieces to piece it together. But in the way ’north’ had been whispered, he sensed there was far more.

So he took mental note. As always.

He noted everything.

The guard’s face when he said "silo."

The exact time he zipped up his jacket.

The rhythm of his steps as he left.

It wasn’t memory. It was machinery. A process honed by missions, betrayals, defections.

He hadn’t come here to survive.

He’d come to know.

And when he knew... he would act.

But not yet.

With a fluid motion, he hoisted a final bar of iron onto his neck. A bead of sweat slid down his temple into his collar. He walked straight to the tent, ignoring sidelong glances and the other workers’ taunts. Let them consider him a lost kid.

They hadn’t been there when he’d seen a city fall.

They hadn’t been there when they’d told him: "Observe. Don’t get noticed. And above all, stay alive."

He entered the tent and set down the bar.

And finally looked up at the guard with the black armband overseeing the smelter.

A fraction of a second.

A gaze. Hesitant. Then curious.

Dylan smiled quietly.

The kind of smile people someday regret not fearing.

The bar thudded onto the pile, adding its staccato note to the smelter’s low roar. The heat inside the tent was stifling—a humid wall choking the breath out of you. Dylan dropped his gaze, pretending to brush dust and sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. A humble, invisible gesture.

But his gray eyes, lifting afterward, had already taken in everything.

The guard with the black armband. Not a superior, no. Not directly. But a man whose very stiffness betrayed importance. Arms crossed over a massive chest, he watched the smelting with a tension bordering on suspicion. His fingers drummed a nervous rhythm against his sleeve. Not the rhythm of a man waiting. The rhythm of a man counting.

Counting the bars? Time lost? Risks?

The guard’s eyes met his. A moment too long. Dylan saw the hesitation—a cold, evaluating glint—followed by that familiar cruel curiosity, like contempt toward a persistent insect. A wounded insect wrapped in filthy bandages.

So Dylan smiled. Softly. A timid lift of the lips barely reaching his eyes. A submissive, grateful smile for having put down his load. An empty smile, designed to disarm, to be forgotten before it was even noticed.

The guard held his gaze another moment, then sniffed, turned to the glowing molten metal in the smelter. A gruff exhale escaped him over the noise. Rejection. Contempt. Perfect.

Dylan dropped his eyes first, playing out his subordination until the end. He stepped back, then another, as if slipping away. But every fiber of his being recorded it all— the acrid scent of smelt and the guard’s sweat, nervous and unlike the workers’.

The exact stance of his feet, slightly apart, ready to move. The reflection of the smelter’s glow in his tired eyes. Most of all, the black armband. Not just a symbol. A patch of thick cloth, fraying at the edges, stitched hurriedly to the sleeve. A marker. But of what?

"The convoy north. The silo." The clues spun in his mind—silent, inexorable. Was this guard part of it? Going north at dawn? Or staying behind, eyes fixed on the useless smelting?

He reached the tent’s edge, the heavy canvas falling behind him like a curtain. The outside air, though fiery, suddenly felt breathable. He feigned a stretch, arms over his head, pretending vertebrae cracking.

A tired kid. His gaze swept the dusty horizon of the site and fell on the north hangar. The one behind which he sorted iron. The one near which the talkative guard had dropped the word "silo."

Nothing unusual. Just shadows lengthened by the blazing sun, heaps of materials abandoned, the endless ballet of hunched workers. But Dylan saw something else.

He saw the path. The one the convoy would take. A gap between two rocky hills, barely visible from here. A dirt road twisting toward the unknown threat of the north.

An older worker, stooped by years of labor, passed him dragging a wheelbarrow full of rubble. He spat on the ground— a brown smear in the dust.

"You alright, kid?" he muttered, not really expecting a reply, his voice coarse with dust and exhaustion.

Dylan nodded, offering another brief, hollow smile. "Yeah. Hot."

The man chuckled—a rough sound. "You ain’t finished suffering here."

"No," thought Dylan as the man moved off, leaving a trail of dust and despair, then he directed his attention back to the north hangar and the black-armed guard’s silhouette hunched by the molten hub inside the tent. "Not finished at all."

He drew a slow breath, feeling the rough fabric clutching his neck beneath the fake bandages. A reminder. A promise.

Dawn would come fast. And with it, the convoy. The information lay ahead, in the north, beyond the ghostly silo. And he—Dylan—would be ready. Not with weapons. But with ears. With memory. With patience.

He made his way back to the northern hangar, his steps slow, head bowed—just like a boy drained by heat and hard labor. But behind the damp strands of dreadlocks stuck to his forehead, his mind was spinning at full speed.

Every clink of metal, every burst of voice, every heavy silence was a data point. A variable. A thread to follow.