Chapter 53: Hunting
Nothing much happened that night, and everyone prepared to set off in the morning after washing up. The only incident was how Woolf’s toothbrush became quite useless. He held the toothbrush in his hands, not knowing how to go about brushing his huge terrifying alligator-like mouth.
“Damn it!” In the end he got angry for no reason and smashed the tap.
Irritable!
Bai Yi looked at Woolf and observed his actions. Woolf was being slightly irritable lately, was it because there was too much stress lately, or perhaps… Anyway, this was a problem. As their bodies grew bigger, the daily items they usually used became unsuitable for their body size and shape. For example, for Woolf it was not only the toothbrush but even his clothes were made out of a few pieces of clothing sewn together.
“Come on, calm down and just roughly washup. We need to set off soon.” Bai Yi patted Woolf’s back and said.
“En, got it.” Woolf nodded and some of his irritability gradually faded away.
Bai Yi saw that Woolf had calmed down and didn’t say anything more, but a slight wariness slowly grew in his heart. The naming of the phases by the researchers weren’t just for fun, an important criterion for being a researcher was being realistic and practical. If LV1-1 meant binge eating in the Binging Phase, then the violence in LV1-2 Brutal Phase would definitely appear as well.
Along the way, no other monsters appeared, and they smoothly drove along the road to enter the next city. They encountered a few car accidents along the way, but it became completely normal to them by now. The moment they entered the edge of the city, the sky started to drizzle and caused the entire Te Kuiti to appear extremely shady.
Te Kuiti was located in a small basin surrounded by small hills. Due to the geographical limitations of this place, it was also not a big city.
It was very quiet; the four cars gradually drove through Te Kuiti and they didn’t even find the slightest trace of any living things. Not only were there no evolved lifeforms, but there weren’t even any signs of humans.
“Weird, there shouldn’t be any experimental monsters in Te Kuiti? There aren’t any signs of large-scale destruction either, where’s everybody?” Sara asked through the communicator.
“This is a city! It’s normal to have nobody around.” Bai Yi replied.
“Why? Shouldn’t there be more people in a city?”
“That… was in the past. A normal city definitely has more people, but it is different now. Due to the Binging Phase, all the food was rapidly consumed so there’s nobody left in the city now.”
“Let me put it this way, a normal city is usually made up of consumers and not producers. For the sake of keeping food fresh, food is kept flowing and circulating. Normally, all the food stock in a city won’t be kept for more than a week.”
“A week? So short?” Sara was not the only one surprised and the rest of them also made sounds of disbelief through the communicator.
“I’ve seen the things in the supermarket many times before, it doesn’t seem like it’s only sufficient for a week?” Heloise also added.
“That’s why I said food stock inside a city is kept flowing. The abundance of food you guys see normally is because food is constantly being imported and replenished from outside, such as from farms and gardens. However, it is different now. New Zealand underwent a great change and this supply chain had long been disrupted. Without the replenishment from outside, the city is just purely a steel forest. Even the dumbest person would gradually leave this place when they find that there’s no more food to be found in the city. They would head for places like the rural farms, croplands, and even the forest where humans do not usually visit.”
“Hence, that is why the city is this quiet now. There’s definitely still people remaining here, but it won’t be many.” Bai Yi concluded.
“So that’s what happened, it’s like that.”
“But Bai Yi, I really couldn’t tell, but you really know a lot, huh?” The latter half of Sara’s sentence caused her true colours to be shown, casually teasing Bai Yi.
“I’m a chef, I just know some things related to food.” Bai Yi said nonchalantly.
What Bai Yi didn’t say was that this city just appeared to be quiet on the surface. Now that order had completely broken down in New Zealand, nobody knew what was happening underneath. There were a lot of records detailing what happened during famines in ancient China.
Since they didn’t encounter anything along the way, they didn’t stop in this city but continued onto the next city.
The next city was Taumarunui; the city was really far away, as far as the distance from Hamilton to Te Kuiti. Moreover, this path wasn’t like the one they’d taken previously where there were cities in between to replenish their supplies. Fortunately, along the way there were various households and small farms.
“Martin, help me stop it! This guy can feed us for a few days!” Woolf shouted and chased after an ancient beast-like ‘cow’.
All the living things in New Zealand got infected with the activated cells and their body size grew greatly. However, just like Bai Yi said, the ‘common sense’ these creatures had of their bodies previously impeded their ability to display their true power. For animals like cows, goats and horses, even though they grew greatly to become like monsters, a portion of them still remained on the farm and grazed on the grass.
Of course, it was difficult to find livestock now, most had already run off or were already caught and eaten by humans.
The cow that Woolf was chasing was 3 meters tall, with a pair of thin wings on its back just like that of a warble fly. Even though it had wings, it was still completely unable to fly and ran around on the ground as usual. However, the limbs of this cow became rather strange and its leaping ability evolved to become extremely outstanding. One leap could bring it more than 10 meters into the air, so it could move around rapidly in the meter plus tall grass field.
Seeing Martin standing in front of it, the cow didn’t attack Martin but powerfully kicked with its back legs and ‘flew’ over the top of Martin’s head in the tall grass. Although it couldn’t fly, it still subconsciously opened its wings by a bit, and there were even signs of gliding.
Martin saw the cow flying over him and thought to grab onto its hooves, but he immediately lost courage looking at that gigantic body.
“Hey! Fuck, no wonder this guy still remained here, I’m so tired.” Woolf tripped and fell down in the thick grass, planting his face into the grass patch and eating a mouthful of it.
“Bai Yi, let’s just use the guns. We really can’t catch it!” Woolf shouted to Bai Yi from the other side.
To let everyone familiarize themselves with their changed bodies, Bai Yi instructed them to use their own bodies to hunt and not use guns as much as possible. This was the fastest way for them to get used to their new bodies.
Bai Yi glanced over after hearing Woolf’s voice and didn’t say anything. In reality, with the strength of Martin and Woolf’s bodies now, they could completely hunt this ‘not too threatening’ cow bare-handed. However, Woolf and Martin’s common sense were still restricting them, so they were still quite timid and hesitant to take action. If not, Martin could have easily dragged the cow down from the air just now.
“Continue, the mission you guys have today is to hunt this cow. Be careful not to touch its blood, unless you want to merge with its genes.” Bai Yi did not accede to Woolf’s request.
Woolf and Martin looked at Bai Yi’s expression and knew that there was no room for negotiation, they had no choice but to continue chasing the cow. Unknowingly, the cow very quickly ran to a distant place, Woolf and Martin also disappeared inside the underbrush and shrubbery.
“Hong Qi Hua, go give them a hand.” Bai Yi said.
“En!” Hong Qi Hua nodded and jumped down gracefully like a cat, landing without a sound. She then rapidly ran out towards them.
Cat’s gracefulness!
Very quickly, Hong Qi Hua caught up with the two of them. Judging by the direction they were running in, she quickly found a large tree, easily climbed up and ran along the branches. While running, her eyes that had become incomparably sharp mapped her surrounding situation. Not only was she observing the humans and cow running below, but also everything that was happening on the large tree.
An insect with wings and sharp teeth suddenly shot out towards her from underneath a leaf while she was running, however her short knife was already moving through the air.
With an almost inaudible ‘chi!’, the insect split into halves and she lightly jumped down from the branch. At this moment, the evolved cow just happened to run below the branch as well. As though a real cat, Hong Qi Hua nimbly landed on the head of the cow. At the same time when her body crouched down slightly, two short knives sliced across both its eyes.
“MOOOO…!” A booming cry shocked their ears.
Hong Qi Hua completely ignored the cow’s cries as she agilely ran across its back and landed on the floor. After landing on the floor, her hands rapidly moved for a moment and the two knives left several afterimages in the air. The blood that was on the knives was all completely flung off of them. Hong Qi Hua then sheathed both knives back into the sheaths on her back on either side.
“Hong Qi Hua, why are you here?”
“Uncle Bai said that the forest is too dangerous to us now, so he asked me to come help you guys. Let’s hurry up. Kill this guy and rush back.” Hong Qi Hua said and did not continue helping them. If they couldn’t even handle a blinded mutated cow, then it was really not doing justice to the training that Bai Yi had made them go through during this period.
“Really! Making you help again, let me show you!” Woolf rushed forward, holding that frightening greatsword in his hands.