"Making cannonballs?"

Colonel Green sat in his chair as usual, tilting his head to question what Andy had received from Florence.

"That old woman is not mistaken, is she? I know all the armaments and supplies on the entire reservation, anything that can fire or throw shells and anything like that is rotten, what's the use of making shells? ”

Andy shrugged.

"Maybe something like a cannonball? That's what she said. ”

Colonel Green pondered for a moment, then asked another question.

"So where are the crazy ones? Was he captured in the temple and used as experimental material for William Clark? It must be so, right? ”

The corners of Andy's mouth twitched, it turned out that he had guessed so.

"Probably not, Florence told me that she had seen with her own eyes that all the captured lunatics were imprisoned in a room in Level 1, and they were all contained."

Colonel Green put the cigar in the ashtray and thought for a moment, his face looking a little disappointed.

"That's it.... But what the hell is he doing? Cannonball.... Those crazy people who were caught..."

After a few moments, he got up from his chair and ordered Andy solemnly.

"You've got to keep exploring and figure out what that bastard was up to, and if you find the truth, and I'm talking about the hot kind, then come and tell me these things right away, you might want to ask why, right? I knew I was telling you, I was ready to replace Clark at any time, but I needed a good reason for the time to improve the deformed interior of the reservation, and you wouldn't do it in vain, I would give you all the gear you wanted, the bottle caps, and my friendship. ”

..............................

Andy returns to the Sanctuary once again, this time aiming for tier 2.

Entering the elevator and pressing the button, no ghoul paid attention to his actions, it seems that Level 2 is not a significant place to note, as I have learned before, this is the factory where the reservation produces various equipment, and it is also the main workplace of the slaves.

Although he was mentally prepared, Andy still felt like he had been hit on the head as soon as the elevator door opened.

Because Andy was impressed by the clean and tidy environment of Level 1, he subconsciously felt that no matter how bad the environment of Level 2 was, there was a limit, but he didn't expect that he would suffer a huge impact of environmental differences here again, and the environment of Level 2 was very different from that of Level 1, as if Level 1 was compared to the surface.

The ceiling, the walls, and the floor were all dirt and dust, and it was pitch black, and a lot of debris was piled up on the spot, and then firmly glued together.

The most terrible thing was the billowing smoke that filled this layer, hot, unpleasant, foul, smelling like the smell of molten metal mixed with the ash of coal incineration, the first breath of inhalation in his lungs provoked Andy's serious reaction, making him cry and cough non-stop, and he had no choice but to take out the gas mask that he had not used for a long time and put it on.

Wearing a gas mask, the kind of exhaust fumes that can burn in people's lungs are kept out, and looking down at his body, he is already stained with some black dust in a moment, and if someone enters Level 2 wearing light-colored clothes, they will be blackened in a few moments.

The first thing that catches your eye is a few large boilers, then the flickering of welders and the clanging of forging tables.

It was these devices that were constantly producing a large amount of exhaust fumes, so thick that people couldn't see the road clearly, and only occasionally some Dharma Protectors could be seen wandering freely on the edges, their green robes had turned pitch black, and they carried guns in their hands, and they didn't wear any armor to walk in such a harsh environment without any reaction, which may be due to the fact that the ghouls had different physiological characteristics from humans.

They glanced at Andy, but didn't move.

Continuing to walk forward, some slaves passed by in twos and threes, each wearing only a pair of rag trousers, and their bodies were full of traces of destruction suffered in high-intensity labor, such as cuts and burns, and the dirt accumulated by not bathing for a long time and being too dirty made people unable to see their original skin color, and their faces were hastily wrapped in a dirty rag, which was a simple protection.

Everyone was skinny and weak.

"Ahem, cough, cough...."

From time to time, a difficult cough came from their mouths, and Andy wiped the goggles of his gas mask, a person who worked in such an environment could only live for a few years at most.

In front of a huge boiler, a few slaves shoved mountains of coal into it with dirty shovels, and the fire was so fierce that it almost roasted people to jerky.

Not far from the boiler are metal tables, which are piled with a large number of metal armor pieces, which are processed, and the high temperature of the boiler manufacturing melts the recovered piles of metal waste or ore, and then the mechanics forge and shape these semi-solid metals that glow yellow-red to create pieces of armor.

There are also two large vats in the vicinity, which contain pitch-black water, which are used for quenching.

The mechanics are all ghouls, there are two people in total, and they are only responsible for the manufacture of armor, but the coolies are all done by human slaves, such as shoveling coal, cleaning slag waste, and carrying and tidying, all of which are slaves, and there are about six slaves here.

According to Betty, these ghoul mechanics are her apprentices and imitators, and the armor design of the reservation continues to be her design philosophy to this day.

"Hey! The action is sharp! It's all piled up here! ”

A ghoul mechanic turned around and roared loudly, after all, the noise was too noisy.

After a while, he shouted again when he didn't get a response, but still no one came up to pick up the equipment that was piled up on the table in front of him.

The enraged mechanic put down his tools and ran to a corner to pull a scrawny slave from the ground, but the other man could not stand at all, and as soon as he let go, he fell to the ground again, no matter how much he kicked and beat, to no avail, and finally he had to give up, throw the slave to the ground and turn back and call out to the soldiers.

A Dharma Protector was approached, and in disgust he kicked the motionless slave lying on the ground.

"I guess it's dead, I've been a little short of slaves lately, I'll help you find one in a few days."

The ghoul mechanic yelled in displeasure.

"It's all three this year, isn't it just slippery, don't those beasts have them? I've heard that Horatio has taken over some big ones, but every time they are sent to me, there are only some hemp sticks that fall down with a push, and the good ones can work for three or two years, and the bad ones will die in a few months, that's why?"

The protector raised his gun and asked the two slaves to stop shoveling coal and take the dead slave's body away, and then he explained helplessly to the ghoul mechanic who protested with him.

"The sturdy slippery slaves have been sent to Dr. Sebastian, don't you know that?"

"No, then there's no need to send them all, right? Don't you understand which is more important? ”

"Which is more important than what you say? Are you sure you want to compare it to this? ”

"Without the equipment produced here, where would we have bottle caps to buy slaves? If there are no slaves, there will be nothing in the reservation, isn't it heavier for us here? Wouldn't it be easier and more enjoyable if everyone worked here was like Milt? ”

"You speak well, how many milts can there be in the world? Now the situation is like this, you ask which is more important, you don't need to ask at all, because someone can decide which is more important, but that person is not you, you and I both know who that person is... How? Do you have an opinion about his judgment? ”

“..............”

The argument ended in silence on the mechanic, and the protector turned around and saw two slaves crouching beside the man he had ordered to take away, not knowing what they were doing, and immediately set fire to him.

"Can't you understand what I'm saying? You slippery skins are really badly beaten! ”

He struck the two slaves with the butt of his gun several times, and the two slaves begged for mercy one after another.

"Drag him away and send him to the incinerator!"

The ghoul gave a merciless command, and the two slaves looked at each other and stammered, trying to make the ghoul in front of him understand that the man lying on the ground was still breathing.

"He... Still alive... Still panting..."

"I heard him say he didn't want to die..."

The Dharma Protector's eyes widened, and he directly raised his rifle and fired a shot, and the slave lying on the ground twitched slightly twice and stopped moving.

"Now he won't be panting and talking, next time I repeat my order, the bullet will hit you!"

The two slaves hurriedly dragged the fluttering corpse away.

Andy watched this scene from a short distance, feeling disgusted from the bottom of his heart, the slaves were cheap consumables here, and on top of that, the extreme racism pursued by the children of the wasteland made the situation even worse than Andy expected.

Further inside, there was a processing workshop, where the equipment was more advanced, there was a lot of cutting, grinding, drilling, and a lot of metal tables were placed there, and the slaves were feeding coal into the boiler or removing the weapons placed on a table and loading them into metal boxes.

On one side, there are a number of workbenches in front of which mechanics are standing to make ammunition.

There are significantly more Protectors on duty here than there are in the Armor Workshop, and for obvious reasons, the guns and ammunition produced are real goods, and if not properly guarded, if the slaves try to fight to the death, it will cause a chain reaction and lead to huge casualties and chaos.

A burst of flames burst out of the boiler, startling a coal-filled slave a few steps backwards.

"Are you alright?"

A nearby slave asked, and the Dharma Protector behind him snorted coldly and drew his whip.

"Don't talk here! Your memory is so bad that I have to help you remember this one myself! Work here is so busy, but still have the leisure to care about others? It seems that you are still not tired, do you need me to send you to a place where you can give full play to your abilities better than you? ”

Two ghoul mechanics assembling firearms stood beside the table without lifting their heads, assembling the parts on top of them, and the slaves transferred the finished products to another chest.

Andy walked over, observed for a moment, and then asked a Dharma protector not far away.

"Is Smith here?"

The man snorted, looked at Andy for a few moments, and seemed to remember something, casually pointing at a draugr who was wielding a hammer to forge steel.

"He is."

Andy then walked over to the ghoul, who looked at Andy in surprise, as if he couldn't understand why a slippery skin would walk up to him and talk to him without being stopped.

"Hello, are you Smith? I'm Andy, currently a Reserved Goodwill Ambassador recognized by Dr. William Clark, and I'm coming down to Level 2 to get a feel for it. ”

Smith stopped talking for a moment, as a man who only made weapons and was not good at talking to people, he didn't even know how to respond, and it wasn't until a few minutes later that he put down the hammer that had been held in the air in response to Andy's words.

"I.... I don't know, you go to Milt, he's the foreman here, I'm just an iron gunmaker..."

Andy then asked.

"Where is he? I thought you were the leader here. ”

Smith began to raise his hammer again, seemingly preferring to do things wordlessly.

"In the westernmost and northernmost house, where the foremen lived, and Milt was in it... I'm not good at managing work assignments, I said at the beginning that I'm only good at doing what I like to do. ”

Andy thought about it for a moment, no wonder, so Milt was the de facto controller of Level 2, which was unexpected, and the ghouls really didn't treat him as an outsider.

"More than one foreman?"

"There are four foremen here, who oversee the manufacture of weapons, armor, ammunition, and supply and cleaning, and Milt is the most important of the four... Okay, please don't talk to me anymore. ”

After being Unilaterally denied communication by Smith, Andy had to go to the room where the foremen lived.

There was indeed a room there, dirty, and when you pressed the button to open the isolation door, you could see that there were four beds in the room, each with a storage box next to the base of the bed, and a closet near the wall, in which some old books and magazines were placed, and it was predictable that these foremen would be able to relax with these old-world cultural products when they came back to rest.

As soon as I entered the door, I saw a man wearing a discarded hard hat lying on the bed and sleeping soundly.

Andy observes for a moment, convinced that Milt can't be him, because he's young.

"Hey... Wake up. ”

He pushed the man, and after a while, he opened his bloodshot eyes and angrily got up to look at Andy for a while, and then suddenly without saying a word, he took out an electric drill from the storage box next to the bed, pressed the trigger, and stretched the rotating electric drill bit in Andy's direction.

Andy quickly dodged, and then punched the electric drill in his hand away, pressing the inexplicable guy to the bed.

"I'm just asking you where Milt is, are you crazy?"

The man was still angry when he was pressed to the bed.

"I haven't slept for three days, and as soon as I fell asleep, you woke me up? Let me go! I'm going to dig a few more holes in your face! ”