The situation was no longer a question of whether Chen Luo should enter the grain depot's basement. The Rat Swarm had caught their scent and come running out.
Chen Luo wasn't afraid of ordinary swarms of rats. Even a few hundred wouldn't rattle him much.
The problem was that he had no idea how many were in the Rat Swarm. If there were thousands, it was game over.
At present, Chen Luo lacked any means of dealing damage over a wide area. If they surrounded him and knocked him down, all he could do was wait to die.
The Stun Baton definitely couldn't kill a large Rat Swarm. Its charge was limited.
Without knowing the full situation, Chen Luo had no intention of fighting to the death. He grabbed Su Dazhu and ran.
Chen Luo finally understood why there wasn't a single survivor in the grain depot.
With the Mutant Rats' sharp teeth, nothing short of a thick, solid iron door, like one on a safe, could stop them. Ordinary security doors and wooden office doors were useless.
Rats also had an excellent sense of smell. Unless the survivors escaped the grain depot, they had no chance of surviving.
The Dharma King was startled by the dark mass pouring out of the basement and immediately took off running.
The Dharma King gave an anxious bark.
It meant, "You two run first. I'll lure them away."
The Dharma King had also realized that the Rat Swarm wasn't made up of zombies. Their speed was nothing a zombie could match. The two men in armor would definitely be caught in no time.
Chen Luo and Su Dazhu ran toward the exit of the office building. Once they climbed into the heavy truck, they would be mostly safe, even though they couldn't use it to deal with rats this small.
The Dharma King chose a corridor to the right instead.
The Dharma King couldn't run in the same direction as the two men. At that speed, Chen Luo and Su Dazhu would certainly be left behind.
The two men trailing behind would be screwed.
But only some of the rats that had emerged first chased after the Dharma King.
The rats were fairly quick, but they still fell a little short of the Dharma King, who had awakened a lightning ability.
An enormous rat, roughly the same size as the Dharma King, glanced at the fleeing dog. After a moment's hesitation, it chose to head after Chen Luo and Su Dazhu instead.
Humans tasted better, anyway.
Despite its enormous bulk, the Rat King wasn't clumsy in the slightest. It was every bit as fast as the Dharma King.
If it could match the Dharma King's speed, it was certainly much faster than the two men.
Chen Luo heard movement behind him but didn't look back. Running was the right choice. With the Rat Swarm's numbers still unknown, he couldn't fight them head-on. He needed to assess the situation first.
Just as Chen Luo reached the office building's steps and was about to get outside, the Rat King leaped high into the air and slammed viciously into him.
The force was astonishing.
Ordinary sharp objects couldn't penetrate the armor, but it couldn't block or cancel out a powerful impact.
A sharp pain shot through Chen Luo's back, and his body pitched forward uncontrollably.
Chen Luo hit the ground hard. The armor he wore only made the pain worse.
Ignoring the pain, Chen Luo scrambled to his feet, but those two seconds had been enough for the Rat Swarm to catch up to him and Su Dazhu.
Su Dazhu glanced back, and his hair stood on end.
Hundreds of rats surged toward them in a dark mass. Every one of them was more than twice the size of a normal rat.
An astonishingly large Rat King stared at him with bloodthirsty eyes.
The Rat King's fur was grayish-black, filthy, and greasy. It looked wet, as though it had just been fished out of a sewer.
Most striking were the two large incisors protruding from its mouth. They were over ten centimeters long and gleamed in the light.
Su Dazhu had never seen a rat like this. A chill spread through his whole body.
Rats didn't bother with threats before a fight. They pounced straight at them.
Chen Luo and Su Dazhu came under attack at the same time.
Hundreds of rats lunged at them together. Some jumped straight onto Chen Luo's legs, while others landed on his chest and began climbing upward.
In mere moments, both Chen Luo and Su Dazhu were covered in rats.
The rats piled densely on top of one another. From a distance, the two men looked like rat people. Their armor was no longer even visible.
Each man had at least fifty or sixty rats on him.
The remaining rats had nowhere to get a foothold and squeaked anxiously.
Every rat weighed over half a kilogram. Combined with the force they exerted, Chen Luo felt as though he were carrying a sack weighing more than fifty kilograms.
They hadn't quite knocked him down, but he could barely stay upright, let alone move a step.
The Rat King watched coldly from the side. Once its little brothers bit these two humans to death, it would naturally eat first as their boss.
Without armor, anyone else would have been bitten to death in seconds.
The ordinary rats' teeth still couldn't bite through Chen Luo's custom-made armor.
Chen Luo cursed inwardly, pulled out the Stun Baton, and shocked them.
The rats were small and packed so tightly together that the half-meter-long Stun Baton could shock at least three or four at once.
Ordinary rats certainly couldn't match zombies in vitality. Even zombies were instantly stunned by the electricity; ordinary rats died on contact.
Chen Luo had considered this possibility and had nonconductive materials incorporated into his custom armor.
The electrocuted rats dropped to the ground one after another.
But a second later, the remaining rats waiting anxiously below filled their places.
The Rat Swarm didn't number a thousand, or even several thousand, as Chen Luo had feared. That reassured him considerably.
The Stun Baton had enough charge to electrocute all these rats.
But the Rat King, which had yet to attack again, weighed heavily on his mind.
A mutant.
In the Apocalypse, all creatures, whether survivors, zombies, or mutated animals, grew stronger slowly.
But certain zombies or mutated creatures could undergo a sudden mutation, causing their strength to surge.
These mutants seemed to burn through their life potential. Their lifespan was only a few months at most, and sometimes just a few hours. The greater the increase in strength, the shorter their lives.
Their strength would also become fixed, unable to increase any further.
But however long they could live, encountering one while it was still alive was as unlucky as stepping in dog shit.
The Rat King before him was clearly a mutant. Otherwise, there was no way it could have grown this large on only the second day of the Apocalypse.
After drawing away some of the rats, the Dharma King reached the end of the corridor and crashed into the glass without slowing, breaking through the window to escape.
Ignoring the pain, the Dharma King hurried back toward Chen Luo and barked loudly, trying to lure the Rat Swarm away.
The rats that couldn't cling to Chen Luo or Su Dazhu weren't very intelligent, and most of them immediately chased after the Dharma King.
The Rat King narrowed its eyes. It figured that even with its speed, catching this dog would be difficult. Better to eat the humans first.
This time, it attacked Su Dazhu, who was in front. It leaped ferociously, knocking him down with tremendous force.
Even in danger, Su Dazhu didn't panic. With a fierce expression, he pressed the Stun Baton firmly against the Rat King's body.
But the Stun Baton, which had always worked so well, failed him. Only a flicker of pain crossed the Rat King's face.
Instead, it bit down on the armor even harder.
With a crack, its teeth left a deep split in the sturdy armor. One more bite would punch right through.
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