Chapter 116: Reproductive Capacity

During patrols and sweep missions, the mutated rats were what they encountered most often. These oversized rodents were the most common of the native mutant creatures.

In the city, running into even three or four, or at most a dozen, was already considered a catastrophe.

But now, they were swarming like a mountain of mice and a sea of them—an endless wave that could neither be chased away nor fully exterminated.

“Not surprising.”

“A normal rat takes only two to three weeks from conception to litter, and the pups mature enough to breed in two months.”

“A female can produce eight to twelve pups per litter, and can reproduce eight to ten times a year. At maximum output, a breeding pair can bring in one hundred and twenty offspring in a single year.”

Su Xiaoke said in her usual explanatory way, “But if you account for geometric growth once those young mature, a single pair becomes—”

Everyone did the math for a moment and broke into cold sweat.

Even Bai Yuxi couldn’t turn the numbers around in his head fast enough to know how many that meant.

(Author’s note: Who can actually figure that out? I completely confused myself trying.)

“Studies from research institutes around the world on native mutant organisms—EN-UMA—show this too.”

“Mutant rats reproduce and grow at over three times the speed of ordinary rats.”

Su Xiaoke said evenly, “In other words, a mutant rat can produce litters four times in a month, forty-eight litters a year, and the pups mature and breed in only twenty days.”

“Good grief.”

“Su, enough! I can’t stand it!”

Maya finally cried out, and beside her, Lofi and Xia Youyou nodded frantically, their faces pale with terror.

Even though they were all overlimit warriors, they were still girls. To muster the courage to kill mutant rats was hard enough.

Just thinking of endless fields packed with nothing but rats gave the three of them involuntary goosebumps.

Needless to say, rats are among a girl’s oldest natural enemies.

“What’s there to fear?”

Su Xiaoke replied with little concern. “If I’m not mistaken, a rodent of ‘King-grade’ mutation has definitely emerged on Hualan Mountain.”

“You know, dimension-crossed creatures carry pheromones and X-particles that attract nearby native creatures of similar kind, and infect them.”

“They also establish a natural chain-of-command-like dominance over native mutants carrying their own pheromones and X-particles.”

She went on: “Mutants themselves have the same ability to attract and secondarily infect ordinary creatures. This viral-style spread creates an ‘ant colony effect’ between dimensional beings and mutants, and between mutants and ordinary life.”

The self-assured scholarling had started lecturing again with words nobody really understood.

So everyone fell silent and threw themselves into firing at the mutant rats running wild across the ground.

Even at full speed, even with all their reflexes, they still couldn’t stop the tidal surge of the swarm.

After several frantic close-range shots, Chicken Leg suddenly smacked his own bald head with a sharp crack.

That crisp slap made everyone turn to him in shock.

“Are we all idiots now?”

“With this many rats, what good is shooting?”

Chicken Leg threw his sniper crossbow away in irritation, kicked upward at a huge rat leaping at his feet and trying to climb his trouser leg, and muttered, “Then just use the shield, come on?”

Seeing him grab the square shield slung behind his back and bring it down with a thud at his feet, he crushed several mutant rats at once.

By Chicken Leg’s example, the others, already numbed by endless shooting, finally snapped to attention. They dropped their sniper crossbows, drew their weapons, and charged in with kicks and stomps. It was certainly much faster than shooting them one by one.

Bai Yuxi, still crouched in a tree, looked at his crossbow in hand—the pellets were gone—and with a silent sigh he leapt off the combat platform.

He landed in the swarm. A wide ring of circular shield-light flashed beneath his feet, and a chorus of sharp squeals rose as he crushed a patch of them underfoot.

“Huh?”

He had only deployed the One-Five Shield to cushion the impact from the jump, but he had not expected this effect.

And with rats of that size, bending down to strike was inconvenient, so he hopped up again, bouncing in frantic loops like a rabbit. He was still shouting the technique name as he did: “Thousand-One-Two, One-Five-Point-Five Form, Chain Shield Rebound!”

The X-energy released by the Thousand-One-Two One-Point-Five Shield technique was only in the low thirties—far too weak to hurt the members of Team Seven, who were already at F4 and F5.

So Bai Yuxi’s wild hopping didn’t bother them; he bounced wherever there were many rats. Yet the wave pattern from the shield’s release undeniably interfered with everyone’s movement.

Charging forward and calling out technique names like that, so absurdly adolescent, gave them the creeps—and at once made them furious.

Xia Youyou snapped first. She reached into the pouch at her waist, pulled out a big handful of iron spikes, and flung them straight into the swarm, shouting, “Torrent of Pear Blossoms, Silken Rain!”

Though this broad-area strike was hard for her to aim precisely, the swarm density and the number of spikes were enough that even random throws nailed plenty of mutant rats.

One volley of spikes made it seem as if a blanket of needles had burst from the ground.

Many rats not hit in vital spots were pinned alive to the earth, screaming and thrashing.

It was far deadlier and crueler than Bai Yuxi’s strike, but the girls hated rats deeply, truly from the heart. If one strike didn’t satisfy them enough, there was no delay—another volley flew, and Xia Youyou called, with excitement, “Torrent of Pear Blossoms, Silken Rain, Unending!”

Bai Yuxi, who had been bouncing around happily, almost stepped on a short spike in the ground. In panic he kicked through the air, with successive shields flashing in layers, adding just enough lift to give him, by sheer luck, a backward flip that narrowly cleared the needle-strewn carpet and left him drenched in sweat.

After he rolled and landed, he was nearly prepared to complain to Xia Youyou in annoyance.

But when he saw the ground littered with metal spikes, his eyes suddenly brightened. A bolt of arc flashed along his right arm, and he slammed his fist into the ground shouting, “Combo Technique: Thousand-Spike Lightning!”

With a sharp hiss, electricity burst from beneath his fist, running and ricocheting across the ground. Attracted by the nearby iron spikes, it leapt from one to the next, spreading into a broad electric net across the earth.