"Thank you for helping me just now, I was almost bluffed by this bastard."

Sitting in the green military tent on the east side of the reservation's trade area, Andy was trying to talk to Horatio about what he had said about measles, but Horatio might be a good source of information as the slave supervisor of the reservation, and he should learn more about it at this time.

The tall ghoul sat in a rickety chair, the terrifying features of those ghouls were elongated on his huge physique, and a long hair that was rare among ghouls made him even more prominent with a grotesque temperament, and if he stood in one place without speaking, the visual impact was very strong.

Of course, as one of the three trade chiefs who are resident in the trade area like Hank and Betty, he is not just a slave owner, but a merchant, so that doesn't mean he can't communicate or lacks the ability to communicate.

Andy looked at the tall creature in front of him, imagining how strong he must have been before he turned into a ghoul to remain in this state after being burned by radiation.

"Can I ask? How old are you? ”

Horatio let out a breath from his leaky mouth and blew away a strand of hair that had fallen from the top of his head.

"206 years old."

Andy couldn't help but be a little shocked, this age shows that....

"You were alive before the Great War, weren't you?"

Horatio didn't have any expression on his face, just stretched out two fingers and twisted his hair.

"Yes, I was a 30-year-old hippie when those bombs fell, and when the nuclear bombs fell to the ground, the first light that appeared was like a falling star... Then it burned like the sun, and the light burned me through, and when I woke up from the ruins, the burnt smell of flesh and organs rushed into my nose, and then it, it fell... There are many parts that gradually fall off in the back. ”

His bloodshot, cloudy eyes looked at Andy, his gaze resting on the contours of his muscles that he could see through his hazmat suit.

"I was a professional athlete and I liked boxing in my spare time, when I was in my early 20s, it was the strongest and most confident time in my life, both in competition and in life, maybe you won't believe it, I used to be almost as strong as you, but fate changed me."

Andy scratched his arm, it was too torturous to wear the stuffy and hot radiation suit all the time, but it was better to continue wearing it than to see a large area of radiation burns on his body.

"Do you mean radiation? Radiation makes you what you are. ”

Horatio shook his head, pulling the braid at the other end.

"You are mistaken, I was already a destroyed person long before that day, the peak of my life lasted only a few years, and after a few years all my glory and value were abandoned to me, and my relatives and friends regarded me as garbage, which forced me to run to the sewers to live, where I comforted each other with some people who had a similar experience to me, until our last little home was also destroyed by the light, and I was the only one who survived."

"Why?"

"It's simple.... Medicine. ”

Horatio made a muscle-flexing move, although now his muscles were rather barren.

"At first, it was a strong spirit, because that thing can make people grow muscles quickly, and after eating a piece, I felt like I became infinitely powerful, once I was fighting with someone in the gym and almost punched that person to death on the spot, and then I started to try more types, and then it was addiction and all kinds of severe side effects, I couldn't be an athlete anymore, it's not that I was found out by taking medicine, at that time everyone was popular to do this, but I was too addicted to those things, and I couldn't take care of myself in the most difficult time, I'm running out of money. ”

"Everyone left me, seeing me as a burden and a monster, and that day we were playing a song in the sewers, and the name of the song was called."

Andy smiled, this is really ironic, and it can be regarded as a wish.

"Did you roam the reservation for a long time after that?"

Horatio raised a hand and touched the skull around his neck, it was supposed to be a real skull, even though it was a very common piece of garbage in the wasteland, and it was worthless.

"It doesn't count... For a long time, I was actually one of the first members of the reservation, and after the end of the world everything was a mess, and it was hard to live alone, but I was like this, and people were always shooting or screaming and running away at the first sight of me. Until a bunch of gang members came to me and they thought it would be cool if I joined them, so I was a predator for a while, but those people treated me badly and they saw me as a tool to scare people, or an ugly looking dog, and the damn gang leader was always laughing at me in front of me and making nasty jokes about me. ”

"Of course, he can't do it now, but I still tell him jokes occasionally."

Horatio plays with the skull, and Andy believes that the skull may be the man in Horatio's mouth....

"And then? You've left there and gone all the way here? ”

Horatio was silent for a moment.

"I rarely talk to people so much, today is an exception, I never talk about these old things in small talk with others, especially with a slippery skin, but you helped me today, Measles seems to trust you very much, and you seem to be involved in more things on the reserve in the future... Then it doesn't hurt to talk to you about that. ”

"Gang life is terrible, every day we do evil, but the worst part is that I find that the drugs have become ineffective for me, the radiation has spared my life, but it has taken away a lot of things from me, including the ability to get pleasure from chemicals, even the best kind of kind for me is only the limit of drinking saliva when I am thirsty, plus the pressure that those bastards give me, I don't want to get away from them, but I have nowhere to go without them, I don't know where to go and what to do."

"Until one day they blocked a special group of people, and I saw that they were all like me, and the radiation destroyed them as if they were destroying me, making their skin wrinkled, their flesh and blood withered, and their hair falling out, like zombies or undead in a horror story, ugly and pitiful. The gang members wanted to treat them like toys, so they put them all in cages, and they spent the night discussing how to design new games, such as strapping them with bombs and dropping them in a rival gang's camp at night to do a 'ghost raid' or driving them into a closed, abandoned building full of traps, turning it into a 'haunted house', throwing those who offended the gang into it and listening to the screams. ”

"I didn't have much sympathy for them at first, but then when I was bringing them food, Dr. Clark spoke to me, and he told me a lot... He explained to me that he had come all the way from a far east place to save as many of his own kind as possible, like those people and my kind, and that he had encountered countless ups and downs along the way, and that he had seen with his own eyes how those slippery skins had cruelly insulted us, abused us, and killed us, simply because of our looks, and I knew this very well. That's when he convinced me, persuaded me to join them, to follow them, and he said that he knew a place, the place where he came out, that place was far away from the slippery skin, that it was inhabited by all our kind, and that we would live a peaceful life there, and you now know where that place was, and it was at our feet, and that was this reservation. ”

Andy listened to Horatio's story, and the Dr. Clark in his mouth was obviously William Clark, the current ruler of the reservation, but was he actually a scientist? This is not surprising, since the reservation was once a military research institution, it is normal for scientists to exist here, but I didn't expect the origin of the reservation to be like this, that Dr. William Clark once went out to look for his own kind to help, no wonder the ghouls revered him so much, and even gave him honorific titles such as Messiah and Savior, which now seems not excessive.

"So you helped them out of trouble and followed them to the reservation?"

Horatio's expression was as cold as ever, or rather expressionless, as he seemed to be used to it, presumably for the sake of his profession.

"Yes, I let them out of the cage and told them that there was no point in running away, that the gang members would come after us and kill us all if they found out, so we had to kill them before that happened. We succeeded in the end, and when we launched the sneak attack, they were scared and I killed the gang leader myself, and I became Dr. Clark's bodyguard until we finally made it to the reservation.... He doesn't need bodyguards anymore, but I've decided to dedicate my life to him and be loyal to him. We started trying to revive some of the production lines here, but it took manpower, and we didn't have enough manpower, so we started talking to the slave traders to buy slaves from them, and when the business was big enough, it needed someone to sit down, and I was considered a good fit by Dr. Clark for the job. ”

At this, Horatio remembered once again the centurion named Caius with whom he had quarreled today.

"Caesar's Legion, a recently emerging organization in the East, I believe they may have built some sort of slave empire and have been in a state of conquest, and those people have supplied us with the vast majority of slaves, and most of the time the trade with them is fair, but it seems that it is mostly our wishful thinking. Those slippery skins are quirky, unlike most others, like a swarm of worker bees serving the queen bee..... They sent two men to trade with us from the west, named Caius and Terrence, who alternately sent slaves to us, the one you have already met, and the other one a grumpy little man. ”

Andy said that not only did I see Terrance but I also killed him, but these two things will never be known....

"Are you really going to adjust your trade with them as you said before?"

Horatio was still obsessed with Caius, and his tone had changed a little.

"Of course, those inexplicably arrogant slippery skins, they can't really feel that our goods are dispensable as they say, whether before or after the world becomes what it is now, no one will refuse to have more equipment, with guns there is everything, just like the SA constitution of the old world said, guns are the foundation and key to human equality. Unlike us, Slippery likes to kill each other, and if we can benefit from this and sit back and watch them continue to do so, we are happy to see it, we are not afraid of them, where radiation is our greatest umbrella, and our unity and large stockpiles of weapons and ammunition will definitely defend us against any enemy and protect ourselves from aggression. ”

As he spoke, Horatio remembered that Andy was not a ghoul, and quickly changed his tune.

"Oh, you know, it seems to me that you are already an 'honorable new human', and you are different from them."

Andy shrugged, he had even started to get used to the way the ghouls spoke, as long as he took some offensive words as a deaf ear.

"Of course, I understand, measles says something happened to you recently, and I might be able to help you out."

Horatio nodded, cocking Erlang's legs.

"I'm in charge of dealing with all the slave traders who come to the trade zone and dispose of them, it's not an easy job, I have to keep an eye on them and don't try to make small moves, but most long-term suppliers understand the importance of maintaining friendly relations in order to continue to make more profits in the future, but this rule doesn't apply to those speculators, they don't want to make any long-term profits, they just want to make as much money as possible, and by the time I found out, the damn thieves had already taken a few shotguns, some ammunition and even a few slaves, Now they're on the run, and we don't have the manpower to go after them, but we need to teach them a lesson, and let the hidden little ones know the cost of doing this, and I need the stolen stuff back and... their heads. ”

Andy lowered his head and thought about it, he has done too much of this kind of thing, headhunting a group of businessmen who steal things, and he has been caught, but those people have already run away, how to find this?

"How do I know where they are now?"

Horatio let out a low sneer.

"Those fools don't know anything, the collars our slaves wear here are not ordinary collars, as long as we want to, we can blow them up at the touch of a button, but this is a sacrifice of our own property for no reason, their few slippery cheap lives are not worth our losses, and a ball of meat sauce is far less powerful than a skull, the positioning signals of these collars are exposing those fools who think they are clever in real time within the signal coverage of the reservation, I guarantee that their clever heads will become a classic ornament of the reservation .... Of course, you won't do it for nothing, I'm willing to pay you 500 bottle caps in payment, and Measles will be happy too, and you'll have the opportunity to meet Dr. Clark and get whatever you want from him. ”

Andy saw the Pip-Boy vibrate and pop up a new quest prompt, which was the last one.

He doesn't like to deal with slave owners, not to mention a group of racist slave owners, but the situation is stronger than people, and now there is no other force around the reservation to help him get out of trouble, so he can only cooperate with them temporarily, and he also wants to find out what is going on with those mysterious things in the reservation, and he may be able to get information by penetrating the inside....

"Okay, I'll leave right away."

Horatio stood up from his chair, looked at Andy with a strange look in his eyes for a moment, and suddenly spat out some ominous words.

"I'm very impressed with you, although we've only met from afar before, you're really strong, I believe your strength and endurance are extraordinary, such a person... We're actually very welcoming here. Right now, I can't go into too much detail with you, and I'll talk to you in depth when you successfully complete this task, and trust me, that's a good thing. ”