Chapter 142 – Flower
With their leaders exterminated, the mice swarm devolved into a complete mess. They instantly lost their ability to launch group counter attacks and could only shriek and cry out as they scattered in all directions.
A few more figures crashed down from the trees. They were all dressed in heavy arms and held large s.h.i.+elds as they blocked the mice swarm from scattering away in all directions.
Level 1 mutated mice were around the size of a dog. The rest still possessed quite a bit of strength when they ran and dashed around, but with them in such an unorganized state, they were completely played into the hands of the heavy soldiers.
A few s.h.i.+elds were erected as the heavy soldier roared with might, creating shockwaves that swept out in all directions
Bang Bang Bang Bang Bang!
The low ranking mutated mice were sent scattering in all directions as they were smashed back into the middle of the area. It was as easy as smacking a headless fly to the ground.
The entire fight only lasted a short two to three minutes. Other than those that had slipped past and only numbered less than ten, the rest ended up as corpses beside the firepit. No less than a hundred mutated mice in all. As for those partic.i.p.ating in the fight, only the two heavy soldiers who were in charge of surrounding the swarm had suffered minor injuries.
“Ha! Another big harvest!” Padilu hurriedly ran over and was clearly gasping for air. As a part of the outermost interception force, the mutated mice were like small cannonb.a.l.l.s that were constantly smas.h.i.+ng against his defensive line. It was only because of his s.h.i.+eld and strength that the mice were driven back. If it had continued a few more rounds, even stronger heavy soldiers would’ve been hard-pressed to withstand such an a.s.sault.
In the past, such a scene of mutated mice corpses littering the ground would’ve made them turn away in disgust. But after eating quite a number of these during the first training phase, it was just like child’s play to them.
Everyone from Saint Judgement had gathered together. They were all very excited as this had been the fourth mutated beast wave the society had planned and hunted. It was both highly efficient and very safe. This was, without a doubt, due to the cornerstone of the academy: Sir Reeves!
They had made sufficient preparations and arranged an encirclement as well as used their techniques with incomparable precision. The mice swarm consisted of several Level 2 mice, five Level 1 mice, and a hundred cannon fodders. If they had just relied purely on their strength and numbers, it would be common for two to three of them to lose their lives even if they had proper coordination and everything occurred according to plan. To completely exterminate an entire mice swarm without any casualty was unheard of!
The Black Rose Society had much lower hunting rate. As for the pretentious Prodigy Society, they weren’t even worth mentioning. In this last test, it would be Saint Judgement that takes first place.
Reeves also jumped down from the trees, a confident smile on his face. From start to finish, he hadn’t launched a single attack of his own. It was fine to go slow to acquire the token. Afterall, he had to rely as much as possible on the group to exterminate the most number of mutated life form to guarantee his advancement into the finalised list.
Before coming, he had already guessed that they would be heading to the Disorderly Burial Lake Region. From that, he managed to also estimate the goal of hunting mutated lifeforms. He made adequate preparations before and made full use of them. In the end, the role of captain would belong to him. The only unknown in all of this was how many spots Black Rose would steal from his hands.
This was considered a part of the ‘game’ held between Scarlet and him. As for the remaining pile of garbage, he would have to see if Lu Zhan Tian had any brains in that head of his. He revealed quite a bit of important information during their chat so he should have made plenty of his own preparations beforehand. w.a.n.g Zhong and Grai’s existence threatened the prestige of both Saint Judgement and himself. They needed to disappear!
☀
Black Rose’s situation was naturally poorer when compared with Saint Judgement’s, but it was still pretty good. They had chosen the middle route which lacked large-scale mutated beast hordes. Even so, they encountered many small, scattered hordes of mutated lifeforms.
The strength of the whole team wasn’t weak and was at a comparative standard to the middle of the OP’s heroic division. While they weren’t exceptionally strong and had an incomplete strategy for rotating between offence and defence, it was still enough if they just listened to the commands.
Scarlet’s commanding and leaders.h.i.+p abilities could be considered as pretty good. There were a few times when she had ordered an attack and some times when she would order a pa.s.sive counter-attack. All of this displayed her extremely high talent in commanding. She possessed keen foresight on the ongoings of the battlefield and thought in a clear and organized manner.
Despite this, her main flaw was her soft heartedness and lack of aggression. She was inclined towards making more conservative decisions, causing her to lose a few opportunities. They had, in fact, missed a couple of chances to increase their harvest by deciding to forgo chasing after the hordes. However, there was nothing wrong in being cautious to ensure that her team was safe.
Over the last two days, they managed to acc.u.mulate a few dozen beasts as harvest with the only casualty suffering a minor injury on her leg.
On the other hand, their movement speed was much faster than Saint Judgement’s. By morning of the third day, they had already entered the middle area of the restricted region. Scarlet’s idea was to first secure the token before thinking of hunting down mutated beasts.
In the last place was the Prodigy Society, the most miserable of the three. After two whole days, they had only met with four to five scattered cannon fodder level mutated beasts.
They discounted it as a stroke of bad luck at the start. Mercenaries frequently came to hunt in the outer areas of the restricted region so the mutated beasts around these regions could have been reduced to smaller numbers a short while ago.
But this went on for three whole days and they soon felt that something was off. It was absurd to think that these mercenaries would take it upon themselves to hunt mutated beasts to create such a huge ‘safe region’. Yet, even though they were sure that they had reached the middle region, they had not met many mutated beasts. The mutated beasts in the middle region should not have been eradicated yet.
The group’s atmosphere wasn’t as relaxed as before. If they were unable to hunt any mutated beasts, how could they have the face to report back. Other than Hymin, who continued to chat up Grai to ease the tense atmosphere, even Emily lacked the desire to fool around. Her eyes constantly s.h.i.+fted left and right, as if itching to dig around the first bird’s nest she found and grab at a mutated bird’s egg.
This situation continued all the way until nightfall.
w.a.n.g Zhong had in fact felt something wasn’t right with this. He took advantage of the time when everyone was resting and opened up his skylink to check the map to see if he could orient himself and try to find a new route. Suddenly, just as he wanted to test it, the entire map turned fuzzy.
The others who saw this were shocked. They hurriedly opened their skylinks—
Calibrating…
“I am unable to access the map as well.”
“Mine is gone too!” Emily’s pleasantly surprised tone made it sound like she’d found a new continent. It made w.a.n.g Zhong’s heart hurt.
Hymin gawked as she turned to them and then smiled. “There shouldn’t be anything to worry about. It’s definitely because we went too deeply into the restricted region. I heard that there would be interference from the dimensional energy and radiation particles, making it difficult for the skylink to receive signals.”
“Impossible. There was a signal booster installed at the camping grounds. It was a Model II and ensured that the skylink signal would cover the entire restricted region,” w.a.n.g Zhong explained with a shake of his head. He pointed toward the continuous blank signal displayed on his skylink and continued, “This dispersion pattern shows intermittent stripes of a vertical form. It isn’t that the signal isn’t strong enough but that it isn’t being sent at all. What this means is that there are people intentionally jamming the signal and have gained access to our skylink broadcasting signal pattern.”
Hymin was dazed as she realized that the person before her was the academy’s theoretical expert. She heard how this fellow even became a permanent resident of the academy library. “This is as complicated as trying to examine a snowflake and yet you understood the situation in an instance… then could it be a part of the test?”
w.a.n.g Zhong frowned. This was a possibility. They’d walked down this path for a very long time without meeting any obstacles. They travelled quite quickly and were close to entering the center region…
Whoosh…
Grai’s body suddenly swayed once before collapsing to the ground.