Meanwhile—

Outside the train, among the ten enforcers on patrol, three men huddled in a corner, whispering to each other.

Boss Mang had told the ten of them to choose a leader. They had already picked one: the man at the center of this small group, a burly, scar-faced brute who looked like he wasn't to be trifled with.

The three of them already knew each other. They had been enforcers on another train before they were separated from their crew during a supply run, ambushed by monsters, and captured by Boss Kun to be used as slaves. After being selected as enforcers by Boss Mang, the leader, with the support of his two old subordinates, naturally became the head of the new patrol.

They had just made the decision and hadn't had a chance to report it to Boss Mang yet.

"Brother Biao."

A skinny young man standing beside him glanced nervously at the train before leaning in close. "Are we still going to run?" he whispered. "This new train captain looks younger than me. Can we really rely on him?"

Their original plan had been to find a way to escape when Boss Kun's train neared a city ruin. They had been keeping an extremely low profile, but plans rarely survive contact with reality.

In the blink of an eye, Boss Kun had been replaced by Boss Mang. And the three of them had been promoted from slaves to enforcers.

"Run?"

The man called Brother Biao hesitated. They were enforcers now, and he was even their leader. To put it bluntly, he was the train's third-in-command.

Should they still run?

The whole world had gone to hell. Where could they even run to? Even if they made it back to their old train, he'd just be a regular enforcer again, with no status or power to speak of. Of course, their old train had over thirty enforcers and was already at Level 2. It was much larger and safer than Boss Mang's current setup.

He had been a construction foreman before the apocalypse, with a crew of brothers under him. They were all manual laborers with plenty of brute strength.

After the apocalypse hit and after a period of frantic, panicked survival, he had gotten lucky and found a "Train Token." With more than thirty brothers still with him, he had been ambitious, dreaming of building a completely safe fortress on rails.

In the end…

Even with him personally joining the mining efforts, they failed to gather the 7,100 units of iron ore needed to upgrade to Level 2 and build a Crafting Station before the initial Energy Stone ran out. The train was stranded in the wasteland and became a hunk of scrap metal. Just searching for mines in the vast wilderness had wasted a huge amount of his precious time.

He only learned later that most people didn't activate a Train Token right away. They first built a team and found a sufficiently rich and remote iron mine before activating the token, building a "Pickaxe Head Production Line," and starting to mine frantically. The goal was to upgrade the train to Level 2 in the shortest time possible. Other methods included hoarding iron ore and wood through trade or robbery beforehand, or defecting from another train with a stash of resources to start your own operation.

He learned from the experience. He eventually got his hands on another "Train Token."

This time, he managed to reach Level 2. But his crew was nearly wiped out in a zombie horde, with only the three of them managing to escape. That disaster completely shattered his dream of being a captain. He finally accepted that not everyone was cut out for it.

For people like them, the best they could hope for was to follow a truly powerful train captain and serve as his enforcers. They had followed a few other captains after that, but those trains were either swallowed up by bigger ones or destroyed.

"…"

Brother Biao's face was a mask of conflicted thought. He was silent for a long time. Back on Boss Kun's train, they had planned to escape because the treatment of slaves was abysmal, and there was no hope of moving up. He had no way of even speaking to the captain or vice-captain. As for trying to reason with the enforcers, that was just asking for a beating.

But now…

On Boss Mang's train, he had become the "Patrol Leader." It was, frankly, the highest office he had ever held. Even if he ran, he'd just go back to hiding in some city ruins or being a common enforcer on another train. His situation wouldn't be any better than it was right now.

Besides, although Boss Mang was young, his actions were decisive and steady. From the moment he'd exploded into violence in the slave carriage, Biao knew this was a man who understood how the world worked. It had seemed like a fight over a straw mat, but that was just the beginning. The kid had ambition. Even as a slave, he had to have the best spot in the carriage. If Boss Mang hadn't insisted on claiming that mat, none of the following events would have happened.

And what's more—

Biao looked down at the "Dragon Assault Rifle" in his hands. This was not something a Level 1 train could produce. He'd been a captain himself, however briefly; he knew exactly what a Level 1 train was capable of crafting. This weapon also hadn't been scavenged from Kun's train, or it wouldn't have been able to harm Kun.

This meant Boss Mang had his own special fortune.

In the wasteland, an outstanding train captain had to possess at least one of three qualities.

One: Ability. Anyone could get lucky and become a captain, but that didn't mean they had the ability to lead. He'd seen plenty of captains with no strategic sense. He'd even seen one who refused to make women slaves, instead keeping them all in his personal harem, which crippled his resource collection speed and ultimately led to his doom.

Two: Fortune. Even without any ability, if you had enough luck—if you could find high-grade accessory blueprints just by walking around—then even a complete idiot could live comfortably for a while.

Three: Cunning. If a captain lacked the cunning to manage his crew and was so out of touch he didn't even know he was being undermined, it was only a matter of time before his subordinates revolted or ran off with his resources.

You only needed one of these qualities to get by. And Boss Mang seemed to have all three. His ability was obvious. His fortune was proven by the assault rifles and the train's engine, with its great, bloody maw of countless gears—he didn't know what that accessory was, but it was clearly a high-grade piece of equipment. As for his cunning, his performance in the slave carriage was enough to show that with him in charge, no one would dare to rebel. He would squash any dissent before it could even start.

Analyzing it carefully, Boss Mang was probably the most qualified captain they had ever encountered. After a long, deep thought, Biao took a breath and looked up at the two workers who had followed him for so long. He saw the look in their eyes, paused for a second, and then couldn't help but laugh and curse.

"Damn it!"

"What you two are saying and what you're thinking are two completely different things."

Although they were verbally asking him if they should run, their eyes screamed that they wanted to stay. It was clear they also thought following Boss Mang was a good bet.

"Heh heh…"

The skinny, dark-skinned boy who had spoken first clutched his assault rifle, a little embarrassed. "Brother Biao, look at this thing! It's a fully automatic rifle! Before, all we had were little handguns. Whenever we went out to gather supplies or capture slaves, we had to run at the first sign of real danger."

"But now, with this thing? Eight or ten zombies? I wouldn't even break a sweat."

"In this apocalypse," he said, "what does everyone want? Isn't it just a bit of security and a better life?"

"With this in my hands, my sense of security has skyrocketed."

"But don't worry, Brother Biao. We'll listen to you. If you say run, we'll definitely run with you."