"A 'Lord', huh?" General Miller whispered to himself while he scrolled through the many options he now had for upgrading the military base.

It was honestly rather overwhelming for him to process all of it at once. He was heavily lacking in merit points since he had used almost all of them on buying the base from the system, so he could only think over what to buy in the future.

Leaning his head back, the General sighed. "What is it that I'm supposed to do? I'm a leader of soldiers, not civilians..."

The General's feelings of unease were interrupted by a panicked Private barging into his quarters. Calmly standing up from his seat, the General questioned the man. "Private Samson? What has you in such a state?"

"S-Sir!" quickly saluting, Private Samson replied. "Just like how you instructed the communication team, they told Corporal Link to redirect people from the skip site back to the skip site if he encountered any, but a problem has occurred..."

"Catch your breath, Private," General Miller told the young man before he pulled out a chair. "Sit, tell me what happened."

Private Samson took the offered seat and after a glass of water, he told the General everything that had happened thus far. All the while, General Miller had a frown on his face. At the end of the explanation, he calmly stood up.

"Thank you, Private Samson. Take the rest of the day off," he said before he made his way out of the office and headed towards the communication building. Samson left a few seconds afterwards and could only hope that everything turned out well for Corporal Link since the two were fairly good friends.

Upon entering the communication building, General Miller could immediately hear the unfriendly shouting of a familiar voice. 'Major Kabatay? She was always reasonable and the best communication officer under my command... I wonder what this 'Daz' person must have said to rile her up like this?'

"Like. I. Said! I don't have the authority to do that!" a rough, but distinctly female voice, shouted angrily down a walkie-talkie.

General Miller could now see Major Kabatay and he sighed. She still had yet to notice him and her beautiful face was all crumpled up in frustration, making her light-brown skin gain a few wrinkles on it.

"Is that so? This is the last time I'm going to ask you to put me through to your leader. I'm heading to the military base anyway. I have no ill-will towards you particularly, but these soldiers are still under my control, so like I said, put me through to your leader before I end up doing something we'll both regret," a monotonous and young voice of a man toned through the walkie-talkie.

"Major Kabatay, hand me that," General Miller loudly ordered. He was clearly aware of how serious the man on the other end was being, so there was no point in avoiding talking to him since he was already in possession of his men.

"Ah?! Who's interrupting me- G-General... I-I," Major Kabatay fumbled around with her words once she turned around only to meet the unamused and urgent face of her General.

"Oh? The General is there? Good, put me on to him," Daz said lightly. Major Kabatay almost dropped the walkie-talkie in fright since she had forgotten to let go of the button that enabled her to speak, letting Daz learn that the General was present.

Extending his arm, the General took the device from the startled Major and held it up to his mouth. "This is General Miller from Camp Waterford speaking. Is it safe to assume that I'm talking to Daz, the leader of the skip site?"

"Finally. Your customer service agent took ages to connect me with the right person. Oh well, we're here now. Yeah, I'm Daz," the Reaper jokingly replied.

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"A pleasure. So, from my understanding, you have one of my units held hostage?" The General was being cautious. He had to be very careful until he knew what Daz's motivations were or he might cause the deaths of his valued soldiers.

"Yup. They got pretty testy when I insisted on going to the military base, so what was I supposed to do except disarm them and 'hold them hostage'. Mmm, I don't like that term. I mean, we're both going back to the military base, and it's not like they're with me against their will. I'll just kill them if they try to run away," Daz calmed stated in a matter-of-factly manner.

General Miller, Major Kabatay and everyone else started sweating. 'That's the definition of a hostage situation, you lunatic!' everyone unanimously thought.

Trying his best to not aggravate the young man, General Miller replied, "I see. How kind of you. But one thing is bugging me."

"Please, General, speak your mind. You can comfortably speak to me," treating the war-veteran like a child, Daz replied.

Gritting his teeth, Miller lost his temper ever so slightly and said, "I'm finding it hard to understand why you're still coming to Camp Waterford. From what I heard, you only have seven people with you, yourself included. Two of which are children. So please, don't tell me you expect me to amiably welcome you when you attacked my men?"

"..." Daz remained silent. This caused a smile to surface on General Miller's face. 'He really is just a kid. This should be easier than I thought. Even if he was able to defeat a single unit, it's only natural for him to be frightened of an entire base full of armed soldiers.'

"General, let me ask you a question," Daz's cold and uncaring voice requested through the walkie-talkie.

"Please, go ahead," General Miller's mood was slowly getting better. He had assumed that Daz was going to ask for a few supplies in exchange for the soldiers or perhaps for forgiveness. Afterall, from what the General could tell, Daz seemed like a normal kid who had gotten lucky during the apocalypse.

"Are you a Lord?" Everyone in the room except for General Miller was confused while the General's eyes sharpened.

"... That's right," he hesitantly replied, unsure of where Daz was going with this.

"One more question. Did you defeat the monsters by yourself on day one?" This question confused General Miller. Obviously, such a thing was impossible. On the first day, the camp had been assaulted by ten-thousand zombies. Even with all of the ammo in the world, General Miller wouldn't have been able to kill them all alone.

"No. Do you mind if I ask you why you want to know something so specific?" General Miller's gut was telling him that something was wrong.

Daz's thoughts couldn't help but feel relieved. 'If he didn't do it solo, that means he didn't get onto the Lord rankings, which means he didn't get a Lord-related reward. Now there's not much for me to worry about.'

"It's fairly simple. If I were you, I'd hope you're lying. Because if you're being honest, you don't stand a chance against me. Please prepare one hundred side-arms, ten assault rifles, a single sniper rifle and two trucks. That shouldn't affect your overall ability to fight off the monster attacks too badly, right?" Daz demanded.

Now that he knew the Lord of the base didn't have any discounts available for the base shop, the General wouldn't be able to upgrade the camp to a point that would threaten Daz any time soon and so long as he and his group members were careful, raiding the Military base wouldn't be too difficult.

General Miller had an incredulous look on his face. Daz wasn't going to ask for a few supplies, but try to take a quarter of their weapons and two of their five army trucks? How unreasonable could you get?!

"Surely you don't think I'll comply with such an outlandish demand, right? You are only seven people, I have seventy-four armed soldiers. How about this, in exchange for my men being returned unharmed, I'll give you a week's worth of food and a single truck?" General Miller's offer was actually quite reasonable considering everything that he knew about Daz.

"It's up to you if you want to prepare what I want or not, I'll get it one way or another. Oh, also, release the Mayor. I'll be taking him with me too." With that, Daz destroyed the walkie-talkie. He and his group were only about ten minutes away from the military base now and he was finished saying what he wanted to say.

Lyle and Jorden were heavily impressed by Daz's domineering attitude towards a General. Ger was a bit displeased, but since they were a threat to his daughters, he didn't raise a voice of complaint.

Ellie wasn't sure what to think. She knew the soldiers were only doing their jobs and Daz had no right to demand weapons from them, but on the other hand, she knew Daz was only acting like this for Fort Skip's sake, so she was able to bury her morals and agree with his actions this time.

Heather was, as usual, silent and her opinion on what had just happened was difficult for Daz to discern from her facial expression and body language. On the other hand, Fiona looked ecstatic since Daz had specifically asked for her father's release, even if she wasn't overly fond of Daz himself.