Chapter 72: 59. Finger Bone Magic Wand
Translator: 549690339
Haste results in failure.
Impatience leads to mistakes.
Noland Lee understood these principles.
As much as he wanted to get hold of the item in the tent, he maintained a calm mindset, not letting his urgency affect him.
He looked around the campsite, his gaze sweeping over the numerous tents.
Sergeant Alvin Stafford, the commander of the Imperial Army, was bedridden with illness.
Acting Commander Pim had left the campsite under the pretext of rescuing the
Chief Officer, and had already met his end at the hands of Murphy, thanks to Noland Lee and the Sword Shark People.
The command authority on the scene was undoubtedly vacant, with nobody in control.
The various combat squads could only engage the enemy according to pre-arranged battle plans.
The Chief Officer’s guards were responsible for overseeing the battle.
They had followed their superiors through intense, continuous fighting, consuming a great deal of life force and suffering heavy losses.
Now, only four guards appeared on the front line, barely maintaining order in battle.
As for Pim’s guards, they had all been taken away by Pim himself and were not in the camp at the moment.
This meant that Pim’s tent was likely unguarded!
As long as they could bypass the supervisory guards, they would be able to explore Pim’s tent.
Noland Lee pondered for a moment, crouched down, and picked up the ammunition box on the ground.
He iozzed awav from Barrier 8, pretendinq to urqentlv need more ammunition, running past the guards on the high platform.
“Sin Soldier No. 888!” The guard, clutching his rifle, stared intently at the soldiers on the front line. As soon as he saw Noland Lee emerge from the shelter, he looked over.
“Sir, Chief Officer!” Noland Lee stood still and looked up at the guard on the high platform.
The guard glanced left and right, leaned slightly, and said to Noland Lee:
“Sergeant Alvin Stafford woke up a little while ago. He knows that Pim interrogated you without authorization and lost his temper, causing him to pass out again. Don’t worry, we’ll definitely settle the score with Pim.” “Thank you, Chief Officer.”
“…You’re the one who saved Sergeant Alvin Stafford and the rest of us sergeants. We can’t let Division Intelligence Unit Two suppress you. Otherwise, where would we, the military officers, put our faces?
The guard looked in the direction of Barrier 8:
“It’s a pity, Mars Squad suffered heavy casualties. Sergeant Mike Adams was seriously injured and unconscious, and Corporal Mars has yet to return. It’s not easy for you, a single Sin Soldier, to hold out…”
The guard looked down at the empty box in Noland Lee’s hands:
“Are you out of ammunition? Hurry up and load up.”
“Yes, Chief Officer.”
Noland Lee breathed a sigh of relief, ran past the high platform with increased speed, and rushed into the densely populated campsite.
There weren’t many people in the camp; the hurried soldiers coming and going were all there to transport ammunition.
As long as they avoided the route from the supply tents to the front line, it would be fine.
Noland Lee took advantage of an empty moment on the road, slipped into the nearest tent in a flash.
He moved from tent to tent under the cover of curtain and gunshots from the front line.
In just three to five minutes, he arrived near Pim’s tent.
As he had deduced, Pim’s tent was unguarded.
This was somewhat incredible but true since Pim had taken all of his guards away.
Pim was a clean freak.
Wherever he stayed would be spotless and shiny.
For Noland Lee, this was not good news.
Without careful attention, he would leave conspicuous traces of dirt everywhere.
Like a clean carpet, tidy tabletops, wrinkle-free bed sheets, and so on. These areas became particularly noticeable once dirtied and easily aroused suspicion in others.
Noland Lee paused at the entrance of the curtain, not rushing in yet.
He called up Pim’s memory fragment and played it in his mind, making comparisons with the actual scene before him.
Ten seconds later, Noland Lee looked at the bed in the right front and focused on the encrypted metal box underneath.
The magical artifact was in it.
There was an extremely complex mechanical lock on the metal box.
But that was not a problem.
Noland Lee had already obtained the lock’s password from the memory fragment.
It was a static number that wouldn’t change over time, with as many as 16 digits.
Now the only issue was how not to leave any traces.
Blood and dirty water had dried on his military uniform, forming stubborn stains. His pant legs, soaked and then dried by the chilly wind, were practically coated in mud…
As for his shoes, they were covered in dust from front to back.
It seemed he would have to sacrifice a bit of comfort…
Noland Lee took off his dirty jacket, pants, and, bending down, his grimy shoes as well.
These things were all hidden outside the tent.
He also took off his socks but didn’t put them outside. Instead, he wore them on his hands as temporary gloves.
Barefoot on the floor, Noland Lee approached the bed, pulled out the metal box, turned the password disc of the mechanical lock, and entered the correct password.
With a crisp “click,” the lock was disengaged, and Noland Lee slowly lifted the lid of the metal box.
Facing the contents of the box, Noland Lee took a deep breath.
Though he had already seen it in the memory fragment, he was still awestruck by its extremely bizarre appearance when confronted with the actual object.
It was a wand made purely of bone, about the length of a forearm, with a thin front and a thicker rear, resembling a slender spindle.
Noland Lee didn’t know why Pim, an ordinary person, would possess a magic wand, but it didn’t stop him from appreciating the wand from the point of view of an aficionado.
From Pim’s memory, the material of this wand was the bones of a little finger..
