A-Rank Monster

Soon, Little Finger and Gao Gong split up and got to work. Little Finger mobilized his network to search for traces of desert worms in Scavenger City and even the farther urban clusters.

Gao Gong, meanwhile, decided to deal with the desert worms in the Heavy Metal Swamp first.

Both of them were in a bit of a rush. According to Little Finger, forcing the Mechanical Hunters to hunt radiation beasts was only the first step. Soon, the Security Corps would organize the Mechanical Hunters into armed squads and send them out to hunt wandering beasts.

Once they were assigned to squads, their movements would become quite restricted.

'Bang.'

With a faint gunshot, a mud pit suddenly exploded beside a metal worm, startling the giant insect into burrowing rapidly into the swamp.

"Fuck!"

Gao Gong ground his teeth. At first, he hadn't thought much of it, but once the desert worms 'realized' they were being hunted, the hunt became extremely difficult.

The moment these worms were startled, they would burrow into the mud pits. The deeper those pits went, the higher their metal content became. In some places, they were even as hard as metal.

Even a digger would be useless.

Aside from catching five on the first day, Gao Gong's harvest dwindled with each passing day. By the third day, he had spent the entire day and caught only one.

Apart from a few giant worms, his harvest over the past few days had been practically zero.

And from what he knew, Little Finger's harvest was even worse than his.

"Although I don't know why you're so determined to catch these giant bugs, your current state of mind isn't suitable for working."

Huang Yuanli, who was usually carefree, became serious for once. She sat up and said earnestly:

"Take a break first. I'll ask around in the tribe later and see if there's a better way to get these bugs out."

Gao Gong drew in a deep breath, letting the cold, rust-tinged air enter his lungs before exhaling. Then he looked at her in surprise.

"You actually know how to care about people?"

"Of course I do. I'm older than you, all right?" Huang Yuanli rolled her eyes. "You should call me Big Sis."

"Right, this is a new flavor of lollipop. Want to try it?"

"A new flavor? Give it to me!"

Huang Yuanli's eyes lit up, and she snatched the lollipop from Gao Gong's hand.

"All you do as a big sister is this?" Gao Gong let out a strange laugh and vigorously rubbed her head with his palm. He had to admit, her height made her very convenient to ruffle.

"Hey! I'm warning you! If you touch my head again, I'll let my bees sting your butt!"

Huang Yuanli instantly bristled. Her face flushed red as she bared her teeth fiercely at him.

"Let's head back. Looks like this is all we'll get today," Gao Gong said as he stretched. "We'll get off work early today."

"Exactly. You need to balance work and rest. You can't cut corners in life. If you get addicted to walking a tightrope, you'll fall sooner or later. That's what my professor told me."

On the way back, Huang Yuanli licked her lollipop and lectured him in a solemn, old-fashioned tone, trying to prove she had the bearing of an elder sister.

"Listen to Big Sis, and Big Sis will make sure you..."

Gao Gong's expression suddenly changed. He bent down, scooped up Huang Yuanli, and went all out. In a matter of seconds, he crossed more than ten meters and rolled into an abandoned house.

"Mmph, mmph—"

With her mouth tightly covered, Huang Yuanli thought he had suddenly lost control of himself and was dragging her behind the woods to do something to her. But in the next moment, she no longer thought that.

It was the first time she had ever seen Gao Gong this tense.

Then her pupils suddenly widened, and her entire body began trembling uncontrollably.

Thick clouds of dust and smoke spread across the sky. The intense light pollution produced by the spreading radiation flashed like breathing. The searing heat, as if facing the mouth of a volcano, and the blazing flames spewing from the dust cloud melted everything in their path. Metal trees and concrete roads alike liquefied.

The intense energy fluctuations made it impossible to see the monster's true form. Looking directly at it was like looking straight at the sun.

And the monster itself was a moving miniature nuclear explosion.

The two of them clenched their teeth. Those brief few seconds felt like an hour, even an entire day.

Once the 'nuclear explosion' had passed, Huang Yuanli's eyes had rolled back, her hands and feet trembled involuntarily, and white foam sprayed from her mouth.

Gao Gong's expression changed. He hurriedly set down his backpack, pulled out a radiation shot, and jabbed it directly into her neck.

Huang Yuanli finally came to her senses. She covered her mouth, crawled out of Gao Gong's arms, found a sewer, and began dry-heaving.

"Urgh, urgh—"

Gao Gong also felt extremely uncomfortable. How should he put it? It felt as if a cockroach had been stuffed into his clothes.

He opened his status panel—

[Heavy Radiation State: All attributes -50%, duration 10 days, has a certain chance of causing cellular mutations and severe organ damage, accompanied by anemia, lesions, premature aging, and other conditions]

Gao Gong shook his head, pulled out a radiation shot, and injected himself.

Soon, the condition changed.

[Light Radiation State: All attributes -10%, duration 3 days, causes mild nausea, blurred vision, and arrhythmia]

Huang Yuanli finally finished throwing up everything she could and wiped away her sweat. Stammering, she said, "That just now was—"

"At least B+, and very likely A-rank."

Whether B+ or A-rank, monsters of that level had a name among players: boss leaders. It meant that these monsters often possessed sufficiently vast genetic territories, where they ruled over a group of genetically similar bosses. Their greatest difference from S-rank monsters was that they had not taken that final step.

Taking that step meant breaking through the limit of the second tier and reaching the third tier.

Generally speaking, monsters above level 60 had another title: planetary monsters.

Huang Yuanli's calves trembled so badly that she couldn't stand. "But this is clearly a low-risk zone."

According to the scavengers, ordinary urban clusters were divided into low-risk zones, medium-risk zones, and high-risk zones.

A high-risk zone was guaranteed to contain an A-rank monster.

In Scavenger City, there were two publicly recognized A-rank monsters. One was the Scarlet Empress of the Red Lantern District, and the other was the Mechanical Fortress of the Metal District.

The Red Lantern District, where the former resided, was a universally acknowledged forbidden zone. Even aircraft flying overhead would be shot down by the Empress.

The latter, meanwhile, was the source of one-third of Scavenger City's mechanical biobeasts.

If nothing unexpected happened, Scavenger City would soon designate another high-risk zone.

Even if it wasn't A-rank, it was certainly on the verge of metamorphosis.

"You should be glad it was an A-rank monster just now. In its eyes, we were no more than ants. If it had been a B- or C-rank radiation beast, it probably would have attacked us on the spot."

Gao Gong exhaled, his mood heavy. "Let's go. From now on, every zone in Scavenger City will be dangerous."

The two were extremely cautious on their way back to the city. They stopped and went, with Gao Gong releasing his Head Hound and Huang Yuanli releasing her electronic bees. Only after confirming that the area was completely safe did they continue forward.

It wasn't until they reached the outskirts of the city that Huang Yuanli finally relaxed. She opened her mouth, wanting to say something.

But her expression soon changed again, because the electronic bee she had sent out had returned, bringing another electronic bee with it.

The two electronic bees flew around each other, intertwining as if they were transmitting something.

Huang Yuanli's expression changed drastically. She instinctively grabbed Gao Gong's arm. "This is bad. Our tribe's people have been surrounded by monsters."

Scavenger City wasn't completely surrounded by a steel jungle. Before the Mechanical War, it had been a famous tourist city, preserving the oldest forest on the planet. After the war, that ancient forest had become a rarely visited forbidden zone.

The off-road vehicle roared at full power, speeding toward the forest along the broken asphalt road.

The road leading to the forest was already difficult to travel, full of potholes and bumps. Fortunately, the mutations here weren't severe, so the road wasn't completely blocked.

"Is it this way?"

"That's right. The electronic bee says it's here."

Gao Gong glanced at the electronic bee in her palm and wondered how the two communicated. Neural transmission? Variant-species domestication? Or biological conduction?

The trees on both sides grew taller and taller. Their branches twisted together, like two rows of towering walls standing between heaven and earth.

Gao Gong inexplicably thought of the term 'megalophobia.'

Soon, Gao Gong spotted a corpse on the road. Its eyes were white, its body had been severed at the waist, and its intestines spilled across the ground.

The farther they went, the more corpses they saw. Every one of them had been hacked into pieces. Some corpses' nerves had not yet completely died, causing their hands and feet to twitch.

Huang Yuanli suddenly covered her mouth.

"We can't go any farther!"

At a bend in the road, Gao Gong slammed on the brakes, picked up the heavy sniper rifle, and grabbed some equipment Huang Yuanli had never seen before.

Before, Gao Gong had held back to recover the injuries in his palm. Now, two weeks had passed, and his injuries had mostly healed.

Watching Gao Gong draw the large saber he had used when they first met and carve a wide opening through the wall of trees with several swipes, Huang Yuanli suddenly felt an intense sense of security for some reason.

The two took a detour and climbed up the hillside. After climbing roughly a hundred meters, they heard screams and shouts.

"I'll go take a look."

Gao Gong flung out a grappling hook, catching it on a branch as thick as a thigh. He climbed up in just a few movements, then repeated the same trick and quickly reached the treetop. His right eyelid blinked rapidly twice, activating aiming mode. His vision continuously magnified, passing through leaves and undergrowth to lock onto the road.

More than twenty people dressed in animal hides were hiding behind makeshift fortifications, rifles in hand as they fired into the distance.

Several people at the very front were especially tall, at least two meters in height. Holding rebar and hammers, they charged out whenever the opposing mechanical biobeasts rushed forward and forced them back.

In the rear, several girls about Huang Yuanli's height had their eyes tightly shut. Above them, more than a dozen metal sparrows circled overhead. Whenever the situation at the front grew unstable, the sparrows would charge like miniature fighter jets and knock the creatures back.

Gao Gong pushed his vision to its limit and finally saw the monsters opposite them clearly.

Huh. An old acquaintance.