Harvest

"Winuo, that guy..."

Yosef felt a weight in his heart as he saw Walter, split in two by Winuo's axe.

He knew the other man had used a special drug, relying on his mutated body to endure the strain and draw out even greater potential.

His strength, speed, defense, recovery, and vitality would all increase dramatically. The effects far surpassed what adrenaline could do for an ordinary person, but the price was a loss of reason.

Not only might he lose the ability to tell friend from foe in battle, but he might even become more likely to go berserk!

But now that things had come to this, and with the corrosive blood so effective against Winuo, the other man probably had no choice...

Boom~

Another booby trap went off. An approaching Alien was blown to pieces, and a few drops of its acidic blood splashed onto Yosef.

Yosef's expression darkened as he looked at the only three traps left in front of him.

There weren't just a dozen or so of these damned things, like the ones they'd seen earlier!

They'd deliberately given us hope and created a false impression!

He glanced back at Winuo, who had started slaughtering everything in sight after taking the drug, but was now covered in more and more acidic blood. Yosef let out a sigh.

"Buddy, let's split up and run!"

As he spoke, he retreated to the edge of the cliff. Tap-tap—a pebble was nudged by his foot and rolled down toward the valley below. At the same time, he spotted three distinct groups of people fleeing below.

Damn it!

It was such a pain before we'd even officially entered the Cannon Fodder Sequence. Otherwise, how would they dare run?!

Standing at the cliff's edge, Yosef's irises once again displayed a series of numbers. Then his legs visibly changed as well.

He looked across the valley at the lower ground on the opposite side, nearly a hundred meters away, and took a deep breath.

If those things caught up, they'd be a nightmare to deal with. He definitely didn't have enough ammunition. He could only go for it!

He pushed off with his feet and leaped. Flames burst from the bottom of the box on his back, which looked like an ammunition case, helping him jump even farther!

As he began to fall along a parabolic arc, Yosef adjusted his direction in midair and fired another burst.

After making four such adjustments in the air, he crashed hard into the opposite side of the valley, where the terrain was lower, slamming into a tree branch.

The branches snapped one after another, cushioning his fall. In the end, Yosef landed on the leaf-covered ground.

He struggled to his feet and quickly ran into the rainforest.

Meanwhile, Winuo paid no attention to his companion's departure. He kept fighting the Aliens head-on in a frenzy, looking utterly mad.

The Aliens were more agile, faster, and stronger than humans, yet against the enhanced Winuo, they seemed unable to get close.

He barreled through them, sending acidic blood flying everywhere.

Double-headed axe, impact, headbutt—every blow landed with brutal force.

He could even catch an Alien's attacking tail, swing it to the ground, and crush it underfoot!

And yet he didn't seem to have the slightest intention of using this strength to escape.

He let the acidic blood corrode his weapons and armor. His once-intact full-body armor had already lost several pieces to the corrosion.

A great deal of acidic blood splashed onto his keratin-like skin, but he seemed unable to feel any pain.

But right then, a tail far longer than an ordinary Alien's whipped out from deep in the rainforest and pierced straight through Winuo's body.

Winuo had been able to catch an ordinary Alien's tail with one hand and even fling it back at them. But against this sudden strike, all he could do was clutch the tail with both hands. He had no other way to fight it.

His feet planted on the ground and his abdomen pierced through, he clung tightly to the long tail, far larger than those of ordinary Aliens, and pulled at it. The frenzied Winuo seemed intent on dragging the creature at the other end out of the rainforest.

But as the tail pulled hard and lifted him off the ground, his feet dangling in the air, his movements became somewhat ridiculous.

Amid the rustling and scraping against the ground, a massive Alien unlike any ordinary one slithered out from the rainforest's shadows. It bore a slight resemblance to a giant python and looked especially terrifying in the moonlight.

Its body was covered in black exoskeleton. It had no arms or legs, and its head looked like that of a giant trilobite. Its body was as long as a giant python's, but even thicker!

Rather than a giant python, it looked more like a supermassive trilobite with a long tail!

The Giant Python Alien slowly lifted Winuo's frenzied body and drew it toward its face. It seemed to sniff him, but didn't kill him with its even more disgusting mouthparts. Instead, it flicked its tail and flung Winuo into the rainforest.

The ordinary Aliens rushed toward the place where Winuo had landed. Then the Giant Python Alien fixed its gaze on the far side of the valley. It let out a roar and charged toward the other side.

It didn't seem interested in the few insignificant runaways. The few ordinary Aliens left behind to transport Winuo followed close on its heels, charging toward the opposite side of the valley.

They couldn't leap across such a wide gap, but the sheer cliff along the valley's edge was as easy as flat ground to the Aliens. It didn't slow them down at all!

They crossed the valley with ease, climbed up the other side, and disappeared into the trees.

The battlefield, which had been filled with furious fighting, fell silent in an instant. Only Alien corpses littered the ground, along with heaps of giant python corpses below.

The night wind swept through, carrying the sour stench of acidic blood and a rank, fishy odor.

A moment later, the shadows twisted, and the black smoke within them seemed to gather into a human silhouette.

Tao Yu, still chewing on a Blood Orchid, looked at the battlefield before him with a grave expression.

"As expected of Inner City kids. They've got deep pockets and plenty of trump cards."

Seeing the Aliens blown to pieces, and recalling Yosef's homing booby traps and Winuo's sudden berserk transformation, Tao Yu couldn't help but marvel.

Who could have guessed how far those two could go based only on how they'd dealt with the giant snakes at the beginning?

If he'd used their performance back then as a benchmark for dealing with them, he'd have been dead without even knowing what hit him!

But the Aliens really were powerful.

It looked like the people from the primitive tribe hadn't fled to escape the giant pythons after all. Most likely, the Aliens had captured them and were using them as hosts for their offspring.

The Aliens might have been drawn here by the sound of his gunfire. Or perhaps they'd come to hunt the giant pythons in the first place!

Thinking of that terrifying Giant Python Alien from earlier, Tao Yu felt a chill in his heart.

If those twenty or thirty giant pythons had all been captured by the Aliens, it would have been true hell difficulty for newly awakened rookies like them!

But Tao Yu had no time to dwell on it. He immediately began searching for the Wish Power items formed from the dead Aliens, holding back his disgust.

Most of the wish power had gathered in the Aliens' tails, with a smaller amount in their mouthparts. Tao Yu didn't even bother with the acidic blood that got on his hands as he collected it. Relying on One Proof, Eternal Proof—an ability even more absurd than Combat Continuance—he accelerated his work.

Tao Yu had worried earlier that the Aliens might be able to sense him. But after trying to approach one or two isolated Aliens and using Bullet Time to observe them, he confirmed they really couldn't detect him. That gave him the courage to act.

He'd been waiting for an opportunity in the shadows at a distance.

Remaining hidden in the shadows consumed a lot of mental energy. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn't have been able to stay there for so long.

But the Blood Orchids he kept eating strengthened him and had the added benefit of rapidly replenishing his mental energy.

Blood Orchids didn't just strengthen the body when eaten. They also contained far more energy than ordinary meat, so Tao Yu's energy reserves were replenished faster than he could deplete them while lying in wait.

For ordinary people, they might simply provide a full stomach and a boost of energy. Blood Orchids had no healing properties.

But for Tao Yu, even the wounds from the acidic blood he'd suffered while searching for loot were healed in the process!

Now was the time to reap the rewards. The wait hadn't been in vain...