Chapter 069 Surrounded

"Those are toads! Not frogs! They're poisonous!" Bai Yuxi gripped his battle blade tightly. Though he was a little tense, he wasn’t truly afraid.

After all, as Willy had said, these mutant toads were nothing more than trash with a threat level of 0.1 to 0.3.

After a full day of training and adaptation, Bai Yuxi’s physical stats had risen by another level under the state of super-evolution. By now, he could probably be considered an F7-level ultra-limit warrior.

Though his ultra-vitality and X-energy levels hadn’t increased yet due to time constraints, his reserves of several hundred thousand units of energy should be more than enough to handle a few hundred toads.

Perhaps because they sensed the powerful biological magnetic field radiating from Bai Yuxi, the swarm of toads didn’t attack immediately. Instead, they formed a loose circle around the two trapped figures, continuously making faint, guttural croaks. For Bai Yuxi, who had a slight fear of dense clusters, the sound made his scalp tingle with unease.

"Still can’t reach Senior Luo and the others?"

He tightened his grip on his blade, but the length of the weapon made him realize that such a long blade was ill-suited for dealing with these bowl-sized creatures. Yet the thought of attacking these grotesque, pus-covered toads with his bare hands turned his stomach.

"No, the team channel seems to be jammed!" Willy glanced nervously at the personal info terminal glowing on his wrist. Surrounded by so many extraordinary creatures and cut off from their companions, his anxiety spiked.

"Then we can only hope that Senior Su, seeing our situation through the battlefield recorder linked to me, will notify Senior Luo and the others!"

With the strange static field in the area, the two—now cut off from the rear—could only hope the battlefield recorder, which used a different transmission mode, would work.

"Oh no! We’ve been stupid!"

After a tense standoff, Bai Yuxi suddenly slapped his forehead in frustration, startling Willy. "What? What is it?"

"Didn’t you notice the toads are gathering in greater numbers?"

Bai Yuxi’s mood soured. "We were too cautious, and fell right into these toads’ trap!"

Willy still didn’t understand how two living humans could have been outmaneuvered by a swarm of toads, but Bai Yuxi had no time to explain. In just the span of their brief conversation, the number of large toads surrounding them had grown from a few hundred to over a thousand!

From the toads’ perspective, perhaps there was no real scheme—just an instinctive wariness of the aura of "higher lifeforms." That alone had been enough to keep them circling without attacking.

But all herd creatures share a certain trait: they rely on strength in numbers.

When their numbers are few, they wouldn’t dare attack beings stronger than themselves. But once their ranks reach a threshold, there’s nothing in this world they won’t attack.

After all, why else would a horde of spicy crayfish and steamed river crabs dare to assault humans?

Bai Yuxi was no biologist, but to have realized the behavioral habits of such creatures in this short time was already impressive.

If, when the toad swarm first began to gather, the two had charged out while only a few hundred mutant toads had encircled them, perhaps their situation would be better than now. But by the time they realized, it was too late!

A sudden croak, deep and resonant like a cow’s bellow or a drum’s beat, echoed through the swarm!

With a thunderous "Moo-ong," the toad horde circling five or six meters from Bai Yuxi and Willy seemed to receive a command.

With a unified "Guwa!" the fat bodies shot into the air like earthen shells, hurling themselves at the two with savage force!

Instinctively, Bai Yuxi swung his blade down. The day’s training had paid off: though he’d forgotten most of the fighting techniques he’d learned, his body remembered the movements.

He didn’t even channel any X-energy for added damage; relying solely on the razor edge of his energy-conducting regenerative blade, he cleaved an oncoming toad in two with ease.

After all, these revolting creatures had a threat level of just 0.1 to 0.3, with only 10 to 30 units of ultra-vitality and X-energy within them. Compared to the ultra-vitality shields covering the two, they’d have been safe even standing still.

The problem, however, was that while the ultra-vitality shield had exceptional defensive properties, it also bore a particular weakness common to all extraordinary energy.

Namely, it was nearly invulnerable to native earthly substances, but far less effective against materials carrying pheromones or contaminated by X-particles.

With a single, unimpeded swing, Bai Yuxi dispatched one of the leaping toads. He had just begun to relax when several droplets of the mutant’s bodily fluid splattered onto his ultra-vitality shield, rippling its surface with concentric waves.

Though uninjured and with the toad’s fluids unable to breach the shield, the sight of those ripples made Bai Yuxi freeze for a moment.

Only after hearing explanations from Seventh Squad did he learn: the extraordinary particles released by a creature’s death, or the X-particle sparks triggered during battle, could only be seen by extraordinary individuals. These represented collisions of energies carrying different pheromones.

In other words, though the mutant toads hadn’t touched them directly, their splattered fluids were laced with special toxins, or else they wouldn’t have reacted with the energy shield.

Realizing something was amiss, Bai Yuxi had no time to ponder it further, for it wasn’t just a single toad coming at them!

It was as if someone had flung a bucket of bouncy balls into a sealed room—all at once, the air was filled with ricochets and rebounds, dazzling the eye and overwhelming the senses.

Bai Yuxi whipped his blade in a sweeping arc, creating a whirling shield of steel, but still couldn’t completely fend off the barrage of mutant toads coming from all angles.

Though his ultra-vitality shield prevented direct contact with his skin, Bai Yuxi was still utterly repulsed.

Realizing that his long weapon was insufficient to block the onslaught from every direction, he sheathed the blade in the multifunction slot on his back and freed both hands.

Fortunately, he wore thick tactical leather gloves, so he wouldn’t have to touch the slippery, toxic, pus-covered skin of the mutant toads directly.