Chapter 115: Rat Hole

"Yeah! You don’t have any over there?"

White Jade Seal was starting to feel almost flustered. "I’ve suddenly got a swarm over here!"

A tactical sniper crossbow was not an automatic weapon. Even with a scientific design, it was still much easier and simpler to operate than an ancient war bow.

But simple as it was, it still had to be cocked before it could fire.

It was fine when only two or three mutant rats appeared at once, because the distance let him pick them off one by one.

Yet for some reason, behind a clump of shrubs across from White Jade Seal’s interception point, mutant rats had suddenly begun pouring out endlessly, impossible to kill as fast as they came.

"Damn it!"

"So many! I can’t keep up! Come help, all of you!"

When White Jade Seal saw another wave of more than a dozen mutant rats burst out from behind the shrubs and, as soon as they surfaced, scatter wildly in all directions like headless chickens, he had no choice but to call for help from his teammates stationed at the surrounding interception points.

The crossbow’s cocking lever was snapped back so fast by White Jade Seal that it sounded like a continuous string of sharp clicks.

With the data visor’s automatic target-locking function, and his own lightning-fast neural reflexes as a foundation, he could not claim to hit every shot, but in the dark, fog-choked night, landing eight or nine out of ten was already excellent.

By the time the shooting turned frantic, White Jade Seal could no longer keep up.

Each time he finished cocking the weapon, he almost fired without even aiming.

Fortunately, his "brain enhancement" special ability, built upon the computational and judgmental power granted by "brain overclocking" and "insight into all things," seemed to have given him some highly unusual "sixth super-sense."

In physiological terms, it would be the vague bodily perception described by scientists; in mystical terms, remote sensing or precognition; in occult jargon, a mind’s eye or spiritual intuition.

In the language of the extraordinary, it was simply "supermagnetic perception within the living body’s magnetic field."

Once he sensed the target’s position, his own calculation and judgment would instinctively use himself as the reference point and instantly build an invisible grid of firing data.

So he did not need to aim at all; once his body reacted on instinct, he could simply fire.

This ability was not unique to White Jade Seal.

Even ordinary people, if they were not extraordinary, could sometimes achieve it through practice.

Certain veterans who had seen countless battles, or seasoned shooting athletes, could do the same; they simply called the feeling "gun sense" or "hand sense."

When the members of the Seventh Squad rushed over to reinforce him, they saw White Jade Seal working the cocking lever like a madman.

He actually made the tactical sniper crossbow feel like an AK-47.

Within the fan-shaped area fifty meters in front of him, more than a few hundred mutant rats were already lying on the ground, still twitching.

"Damn!"

Willy could not help blurting out an oath in shock.

Although the others could not see White Jade Seal’s astonishing results in the dark fog, they could see in their infrared vision the clusters of red shapes erupting from behind the shrubbery.

Under White Jade Seal’s frantic fire, those clusters were extinguished one after another. Very few mutant rats managed to escape his shots, and that was shocking enough.

Fortunately, strange things had happened to White Jade Seal before, and this was hardly the only one.

The others did not have time to ask in detail. They hurriedly found their own firing positions and began helping to clear out the rat swarm.

"None of the mutant rats ran out on your side?"

With his teammates plugging the gaps, White Jade Seal no longer had to worry about mutant rats slipping past the interception point he was guarding. He immediately relaxed and had the leisure to ask curiously, "Why are they all running to me?"

"We do have some, but nowhere near as many as you!" came the reply.

"But don’t be so tense. We’re not guarding the last line of defense."

"Even though this is already considered the outer perimeter, there are still three barrier walls behind us to prevent the mutant rats from spreading."

Lofty fired as she spoke. "All we have to do is try our best to stop the mutant rats from getting through here. Anything that slips past will be handled by someone else."

"Why did all the mutant rats run over to Little White?" asked Drumstick. His battle record as the team’s only ranged fighter had just been beaten by White Jade Seal, who was, in theory, supposed to be a close-quarters newcomer. He was somewhat disgruntled and muttered, "Do mutant rats have some kind of pack habit, like clustering together to move around?"

"Yeah. Even though rodents are nocturnal and like to come out at night," everyone was baffled, and Chicken Leg said in confusion, "that still doesn’t mean they should all show up so concentrated, does it?"

"If I’m not mistaken, there should be a rat burrow here that the Dawn Hunt hasn’t discovered!" Su Little-Delight, hiding behind the others and firing steel rounds in a casual rhythm, was slow but surprisingly accurate.

Originally, as a logistics member like her, there was no need to come to the front lines of battle.

But considering that the Seventh Squad’s mission was to intercept the spread of the rat swarm, and that the operation was a long-range attack, there was nothing for her to do if she stayed in camp by herself. So she simply came along to pick up some mission points.

"Don’t forget that the barriers the Dawn Hunt is using right now are only interception walls. They can only defend against creatures moving on the surface. Rats can dig burrows, so the internal cordon can’t possibly trap them completely. Otherwise the Dawn Hunt wouldn’t need to issue a call for recruits and bring in so many extraordinary personnel to help."

Su Little-Delight analyzed the situation as she shot. "The reason so many mutant rats are coming out now is probably because the inner area has already started a clearance operation. These rats, blocked with nowhere to go, must have been forced to dig their way out!"

"Is that so?"

After Su Little-Delight’s reasoned explanation, the others, who had only been idly speculating moments ago, lost interest in the topic and had no choice but to refocus on sniping mutant rats. That was probably another trait of the academic prodigy: she could kill any conversation.

As time passed, no one in the Seventh Squad knew how many mutant rats they had killed.

It was estimated that the fifty-meter area shrouded in thick fog was already carpeted with rat corpses.

Yet the rate of fire among the team did not slow; if anything, it increased. In particular, White Jade Seal, who was handling the main assault, had already returned to his earlier rapid-fire rhythm. But the number of rats surging out from behind the shrubs had not decreased in the slightest.

"Damn! This is just the outer edge of the outer edge, and there are already this many. How many rats have they got inside?" Willy complained, shaking his sore arm. "Did the people in there blow up a rat nest or what?"

"Usually I wouldn’t have noticed..." Chicken Leg was aiming so hard that his eyes were practically going cross-eyed, and sweat had broken out on his shaved, shining scalp. "Are these giant rats really this hard to deal with?"