From-DIDIDA Novels
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
“Looks like we’re the only ones in this exam area who can put up something of a fight against each other,” Fang Da said lackadaisically.
“That’s right. I really can’t muster any interest to fight when I have to face you two and the Rapid Biting Rats.” Xie Feng pursed his lips.
Luo Hai looked away and cast a glance at the darkness in the distance. He quirked his eyebrows.
‘Strange? Meng Chao did not get in. Did I make a misjudgment and he’s really just someone slow?’
Luo Hai did not say anything more and charged in with his two competitors.
They were in the largest department of Dawn Machine Factory.
Now, it was the home of tens of thousands of Rapid Biting Rats.
“Screech!”
When there was a sufficient number of them, the Rapid Biting Rats unleashed a terrifying ferocity. They bared their teeth and pounced at the trio.
Bang, bang, bang!
The trio fired calmly using burst mode. Practically every bullet they fired delivered a headshot to a Rapid Biting Rat.
The cameras and the infrared scanners immediately captured the images of their kills and completed the calculations once they were uploaded to the tactical data link.
Twenty points, thirty points, fifty points, one hundred points.
The trio’s points shot up by leaps and bounds.
The numbers representing their ranking in the city became smaller, and they drew closer to the top.
There was a rule set during the practical test: Students were not allowed to snatch each other’s prey and to have any internal conflicts; otherwise, they would be chased out of the exam area.
Besides, there were a lot of Rapid Biting Rats. With the ammunition they brought in, they would not be able to kill them all.
Hence, the atmosphere between the three elites was rather harmonious. They killed the rats in a relaxed manner and were even in the mood to joke with each other.
“Hey, Luo Hai, let’s talk about that idiot from Tiger Forest Region. Why did he choose ten expensive grenades, flame bombs, and the cheapest saber, but didn’t get a single pistol or bullet? Does he really lack confidence in his shooting skills?” Fang Da asked with a smile.
“His shooting skills aren’t good? At least he knows his limits by choosing so many hand grenades. But he still wasted a lot of points. Why did he buy an emergency health kit and MREs? Heh, he’s pretty interesting. Is he afraid of hunger or death? Seriously, all sorts of talents come out of Tiger Forest Region.” Xie Feng was smiling as well.
Luo Hai gritted his teeth and said nothing. He just continued shooting.
The three elite examinees’ performances were seen by the high school teachers, university recruiters, powerful fighters in the military, and the bosses in the business industry through the monitor in the monitoring center.
“Fang Da’s gun technique is pretty good. As expected of Eagle Eye Fang Rui’s son,” said a military officer in the uniform of a colonel. “Every bullet goes through a Rapid Biting Rat’s eyeball. He fired a total of three hundred and twenty-seven shots, but missed none. He’s a talented young’un and we’ll be taking him!”
“Old Xing, no one is going to snatch him from you. You don’t have to look as if you’re about to stake your life to fight for him.” A university lecturer who looked very elegant smiled. “Dragon City University has more of a fancy for Xie Feng. I heard that he completed the training with Raging Wave Stance when he was just thirteen.
“During his three years of high school, he continuously ranked at the top of stance competitions in the city. Regardless of which university he goes to, he will become a powerful martial artist, but if he wants to enter Deity Realm, he has to enter Dragon City University’s martial arts course and learn the Overkill Style!”
“Wait, why are you being so impatient?” A superhuman with a gaze as sharp as blades smiled. “Soul Breaking Saber Luo Wu is a master of sabers. Even so, his son didn’t fall too far behind in points compared to Fang Da and Xie Feng when it comes to shooting technique. Later on, when they finish using their bullets, they will need to start killing with cold weapons. We’ll see just who will be the king of the exam at that time!”
The powerful fighters looked with admiring gazes at the youthful but fierce children in the test area.
However, as they listened to the three children bicker, they could not help but be curious. “Who is this Meng Chao they speak of?”
He had attracted quite a lot of attention during the mental strength test in Tiger Forest Region, and now he also brought eyes to himself when he decided to take another path and choose a large amount of hand grenades, flame bombs, emergency health kits, and MREs.
A powerful fighter brought up Meng Chao’s test footage and data, then put it on the screen.
The invigilators and powerful fighters noticed that he had not managed to get even a single mark even though the test had begun five minutes ago!
“Is this student… taking a stroll in the exam area?” one of the people could not help but ask.
If Meng Chao could get into the practical test for university entrances, it meant that his speed, strength, and shooting technique had already reached the standard of best humans on Earth.
At that moment, aside from him, even the weakest examinees had already killed more than ten Rapid Biting Rats.
But he had his hands placed behind his back while he took a stroll around the factory. Sometimes, he even crouched down to grab a handful of dirt or vines and sniffed them. He did a lot of strange things, but never fought.
While the invigilators and the powerful fighters were puzzled by his actions, he started working calmly.
After going through handfuls of dirt, he finally found a place that satisfied him. He brought out his military shovel and started digging. Soon, a huge pit was before him.
He tore open an MRE meant for a single soldier and mixed the refined sugar as well as chocolate with some of the high-calorie nutritional fluid in the emergency health kit. He then rolled them into a few small balls and threw them into the pit.
Soon, a large number of mutated earthworms, millipedes, and all sorts of creepy crawlers of strange shapes crawled out of the cracks in the earth and the broken walls. They were all attracted by the sweet scent.
Meng Chao used the military shovel and dug out all these Other World crawlers. They came in all sorts of colors, had faint acidic properties, and weak poison. He tossed them on the ground and started identifying them carefully.
“What is he doing?”
The invigilators and the powerful fighters looked at each other, but they could not understand what he was trying to do.
The Other World crawlers could be considered as monsters as well, but only somewhat.
If Meng Chao killed them, he would not get any points!
Meng Chao did not know that he had become the center of attention.
But even if he would have known, he would not have cared.
He chose the Other World crawlers he needed and brought out the lancet knife and suturing needle from the emergency health kit. He cut the dozens of Other World crawlers up and dissected them to get some materials.
Then, he used the heater from the self-heating MRE and the items in the emergency health kit to make a simple extraction device.
He carefully crushed the materials from the Other World crawlers and tossed them in. Then, he added fructose water, heated it, stirred it, and extracted it.
Half a minute later, the originally murky crawler liquid released a crystalline blue shine.
Meng Chao straightened his arms in front of him so that the crawler liquid would be as far away from his body as possible. Then, he used his palm to gently fan the mouth of the extraction device .
A slightly stimulative and gamey smell wafted into his nostrils.
He nodded. ‘That’s the scent, all right.’
Meng Chao sealed up the test tube and calmly started hunting.
At that moment, most of the students had already killed dozens of Rapid Biting Rats.
Most of the elites from the three famous schools had taken down close to two hundred rats. Some even managed to kill more than that.
Meng Chao did not bring any guns with him, and his effectiveness was not high.
Besides, he seemed to have some sort of preference when it came to hunting the Rapid Biting Rats. There were a few times when he just ignored the large Rapid Biting Rats strutting by his feet. He could not be bothered to use any of his strength.
When another ten minutes passed, he only had five Rapid Biting Rats under his name.
“Is that student… killing just female rats?” an invigilator voiced his puzzlement in the monitor center.
Male rats were slightly larger. Their fur was shinier, and their fangs were also slightly sharper.
But when they were converted to points, both male rats and female rats were worth the same amount of points.
The female rats were small, so it was harder to hit their vitals, making it harder to kill them.
Did this student have a grudge against female rats?
“Look, he sat down again!”
On the screen, Meng Chao lifted the five female rats by their tails and searched for a dry spot to sit down comfortably. Then, he continued with his harvesting job.
His lancet knife danced about like a silver butterfly, and the suturing needle moved as if it had some form of strange magnetic force. It always managed to bring out incredibly fine and fragile materials from the depths of the female rats’ stomachs.
Meng Chao tossed the slightly red materials into the crawler liquid and added acetaminophen and cardiotonic drugs [1]. They were both commonly seen medicine in emergency health kits. The former could be used to increase blood pressure, and the latter could stimulate the heart.
This time, he only heated the liquid until it was around sixty degrees before he moved the heater away.
Then, he squeezed out all of the meat stock fried rice from the single serving MREs. It was fragrant and greasy, and he rolled it into ten huge rice balls.
Next, he divided the semi-translucent liquid that was mixed with monster materials and crawler liquid into even portions which he injected into the rice balls.
Soon, the rice balls that had crawler liquid released a strange, bluish light.
“He seems to have extracted the female rats’ reproductive glands, and the crawler liquid can stimulate the nervous system.”
At that moment, a few university recruiters were finally able to decipher what he was doing. “He added acetaminophen and cardiotonic drugs in them to turn them into some sort of… dope? And it’s not for humans…”
Meng Chao brought the ten rice balls which had additives in them to a pipe full of murky water in a corner of the machine factory.
Decades of dirty water and mud had accumulated there, which made the place stink so much that he wanted to puke.
The place was also covered in traps. The ground might have seemed to be black at first glance, but if he stepped on it, he might actually die.
The normal examinees and the elites from the three famous schools were not willing to come here to hunt.
Besides, there weren’t many Rapid Biting Rats here anyway.
A few could be seen here and there, but before anyone could aim at them, those rats would run into the drainage pipe at lightning speed. The bullets were not able to catch up to them.
Meng Chao grinned. He tossed the ten rice balls around the drainage pipe.
His movements were very skilled. He made sure that there was a distance of several meters between each rice ball.
Once he was done, he took two steps back and crouched down. Then, he removed all the hand grenades and flame bombs from his body to line them up in front of him.
Since he was far away, the other examinees could not see that he had thrown the rice balls out. They only saw him cradling his face and squatting in front of the drainage pipes.
They could not help but laugh after seeing that.
‘What exactly is that guy doing? Everyone knows that the Rapid Biting Rats are very wary creatures. If you squat there, even if they can’t see you, they’ll still be able to smell you.
‘You can wait for the rats to come to you, but it won’t work. Even if you squat there until it becomes bright outside, you won’t see a Rapid Biting Rat crawling out.’
The examinees shook their heads and looked at the empty cartridges in their hands. They tossed the guns in their hands to the side and drew their cold weapons to begin their second stage of hunting.
Meanwhile, the recruiters, powerhouses in the military, and the bosses of the business industry had completely different expressions.
Through the infrared scanners they had installed inside and outside the drainage pipes, they saw that a large group of Rapid Biting Rats had started charging madly at the mouth of the drainage pipe.
It was as if Meng Chao was blowing a clarinet that they could not see and controlling the minds of the Rapid Biting Rats with a mysterious piece!
Translator’s Note:
[1] What the author wrote doesn’t exist. So I searched for something that did based on his descriptions.