The fact that Hua Li behind had left her base to seek help from them meant that the RB13s definitely had the ability to damage the reinforced materials outside of the base.
Not long after Hua Li had arrived, a lot of large boxes were dropped onto the surface of the planet. The boxes were made of special materials and password locked. Parachutes opened above the boxes after they were dropped from the sky.
A couple of wild animals looking around for food stared at the falling objects curiously. They moved closer to the boxes after they hit the ground and gave them a sniff, but they failed to pick up anything at all. The boxes were sealed so tightly that they didn’t leak even a molecule of scent. The exterior of the boxes had also also processed so that none of the wild beasts sensed anything at all.
Bang!
The noise caused the beasts to jump back a little in surprise. A while later, they moved closer again curiously.
Bang! This time, the noise was even louder than before. It seemed like something was knocking against the box from the inside, the entire box shifting a little from the impact.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The noise grew more and more rapid, but the beasts had already gotten used to them. Instead of backing away like the first time, they hung around just three meters away from the box.
Di——
The passcode lock outside the box rang, followed by the unlock sound. The, the box opened to reveal a mouse with fur as white as snow. It was the RB13 Neo had spoken of. On the surface, RB13 looked perfectly harmless. It looked just like a lab mouse except it was bigger and over a meter tall. Compared to the wild animals around it, RB13 was way smaller.
The white mouse’s red eyes scanned its surroundings for a moment. They didn’t seem to be affected by the cold, and their gazes eventually stopped on the lingering animals after a sniff.
The wild beasts stopped being afraid after they saw what was really inside the box. The white mouse was nothing more but food in their heads, and they bared their fangs at their prey hungrily. One of the wild beast pounced towards the white mouse, and afraid that they would lose out on the delicious meal the rest quickly followed suit...
Painful screams filled the forest, followed by the sound of chewing and flesh being torn apart.
A short while later, the only things left on the scene were the empty boxes and bloody leftovers...
The passcode lock on the boxes flashed once, and the string holding the parachute and the boxes together automatically broke apart. The boxes then closed themselves, shrank to a smaller size, and sat there motionlessly until the snow covered them up completely.
At the living hall inside Neo’s base, everyone was gathered in front of a screen and watching a video captured from a hidden camera Neo had placed at a corner of the forest earlier. The camera hadn’t been activated because it could be detected by some bio-soldiers and wild beasts at a close enough range, but right now he couldn’t care less about that. The weather was bad enough that the chances of detection were pretty minimal.
A beginner rank bio-soldier and a wild beast were fighting inside the video, and a white mouse was attracted by their conflict. Although both wild beast and bio-soldier had suffered a bit of injury, they were nowhere done and the arrival of the white mouse did nothing to deter them. Neither combatants paid the white mouse too much attention after the initial glance, but the wild beast disliked being ambushed by an unfamiliar creature while it was in the middle of the battle. That was why it had let out a threatening roar at the white mouse. But before it could finish growling, the white mouse had already bitten off its heck.
Tossing the dead animal aside, the white mouse turned its attention next onto the bio-soldier. These things didn’t understand the concept of fear or retreat, so it charged towards the white mouse instead.
A splatter of brownish color painted a stark contrast on the white snow. The bio-soldier had been decapitated instantly.
A white mouse on a sheen of white snow. The combination of pure colors struck fear in everyone present.
“What amazing speed!” Gu Xin exclaimed.
“Its claws are very sharp too.” Erty stared at the departing figure in the video for a while before turning to look at the diced flesh and blood on the snow. That white mouse had torn that bio-soldier to bits in just an instant, and its claws were sharp enough that the bio-soldier’s bones failed to slow its momentum in the slightest.
Hua Li didn’t say anything. She simply caressed her long box once.
“They still have room to grow,” Neo added. “If the rest of the mice are the same as this one, then they are all only at the starting stage of their growth. Their appetite is huge, and their metabolism is swift. They can give birth to more mice very quickly in just a day.”
“What? That thing still has room to grow? Doesn’t that mean it’ll grow even more powerful?” Erty asked.
“Of course. As an artificial creature and a test subject, they have low stability rate but very high mutation rate. They may change and evolve at any moment, and they have no fixed evolution path. This one could evolve into an armored defender, but another one might evolve into a hard striker. It’s impossible to predict. That’s why I said RB13 is a pretty huge failure.” Although RB13 was pretty threatening, Neo still looked down on them. From the standpoint of an experimenter, RB13 was a failure to Neo no matter what.
“Really? I wonder if you’d turn into their feces in a couple of days,” taunted Erty.
“Do you think I’m stupid? Why would I head out and provoke these failures? That’s your job.” Neo didn’t look worried for his life in the slightest.
Hua Li gave her gun a wipe and said, “Idiot!”
Neo was just about to shoot back a retort when Cillin pulled him once and asked, “Will the Tri-colored Bean work on them?”
Neo’s attention was successfully pulled towards Cillin. “That I don’t know. We can give it a try, but you’ll have to use a different gun. The ones you’re using won’t even penetrate its skin.”
Cillin nodded and walked into Neo’s weapon cache. A short while later, he walked out and said, “Neo, let me borrow a couple of parts from your lab.”
“No way!” But Neo immediately charged to the door of his lab and raised his arms. “You’ll have to walk over my corpse if you want to touch my stuff!”
Erty, Gu Xin and Hua Li looked towards Neo at once. Gu Xin started spinning his gun, Erty started toying with a short knife, and Hua Li straight up pointed her assembled sniper rifle at Neo’s direction.
Neo: “...”
A minute later, Neo raised his neck stubbornly and yelled, “I’d rather die! This is my place, I’ve already shown you enough kindness by letting you in!”
“It’s only a matter of time before you die if you run into those things alone. You know this base couldn’t hold them back. Sure, you have an isolation tank, but do you really think you can hold out for ten days with that weak body of yours?” Hua Li verbally attacked Neo without mercy.
Neo fell silent. It was true that living on nutrient solution alone was suffering, not to mention that his body didn’t sit well with them. Moreover, he firmly believed that hibernation would affect his intelligence, so neither choices were appealing to him. Hua Li’s words was without a doubt a like a sword through the chest.
Hua Li didn’t like being on the passive. That was why she had sought out a partner immediately after learning that RB13 would be released to the planet pretty soon. It would be very difficult to survive alone, not to mention that she couldn’t sit on her bird’s back all the time. Plus, people were generally the greatest threat out there, not the animals. She was aware that a lot of strangers had arrived in this region before her, and she could guess that these people were probably the reserve newbies the organization had mentioned.
Ah Shou’s base wasn’t the only base that was occupied. Hua Li knew of three more excluding Ah Shou’s, although she couldn’t tell if they had been taken over by force or cooperative partnership. When Hua Li came, she hadn’t known that Neo had visitors with him. Her reason was purely because Neo’s base was built on pretty good terrain, and he had some lab instrument that could prove pretty useful.
Most people in the organization knew that Neo’s standards for experimental research were very high, which meant that most of the high-end parts of his instrument could be used to make weapons. That was why she had come all the way here. Hua Li was less worried of her chances of persuading Neo after seeing Cillin, Gu Xin and Erty, however. The extra hands meant more security in this situation.
Neo’s face scrunched up like a bun. A moment later, he finally said, “In that case... you may use some of them. But you must tell me every instrument you’re planning to use! Without my orders they won’t come active anyway!”
“Of course.”
After Cillin walked into Neo’s lab, he stopped in front of a test bench like he had done this many times. There were a couple of instruments on top of the desk, and Cillin swiftly dismantled a couple of parts from them after Neo had unlocked them with his passcode. Neo couldn’t stop making noises from the sides, worried that Cillin might slip up and damage his instrument permanently.
Both Gu Xin and Erty were astonished when they saw how Cillin had dismantled Neo’s instruments with just a multi tool knife. He sure hid his skill well!
Neither Gu Xin nor Erty knew anything about Cillin at all. They hadn’t even heard of such a person until today. If Gu Xin was still in the army, it would be child’s play to dig info regarding Cillin. But of course, he wasn’t in the army right now.
As for Erty, he knew almost all the infamous criminals such as Orville, but he had never heard of Cillin before.
Cillin used the parts he dismantled from Neo’s lab instruments to assemble a couple of simple devices. It would allow him to modify the guns in the warehouse. Complex modifications was impossible of course, but simple ones were easy enough.
An hour later, Cillin tossed Gu Xin and Erty a gun each before shooting Hua Li her a glance. He then tossed her a gun, and the woman accepted it.
Cillin had also modified the bullets. They were not lacking in toxin since Neo had made plenty earlier.
“Let’s head out and give it a try. If the toxin doesn’t work then we need to find another way immediately,” said Cillin after distributing the bullets.
It was always a bad idea to resign oneself to one’s fate, and Cillin especially loved fighting battles where he was prepared. If one must fight, then one must first understand their enemy.
It was still snowing, and the temperature was very low. The group of four wore a thin protective suit, put on a gas mask and left the base immediately.
Their protective suit was colored white, and it had the ability to insulate body temperature. This way, the animals wouldn’t be able to detect them using their heat source. However, the trade off was a bit of mobility.
Although Neo had mentioned again and again that he wasn’t interested in a failed, second-rate experiment like RB13, he was very concerned about the reaction his toxin could generate within them. So after the group of four had set out into the snow, he went into the data processing room as well.
There were a lot of RB13s, and they had been airdropped over a wide area. Cillin’s region alone had three RB13s, and the one they were tracking right now was the one who had appeared in Neo’s hidden camera. It was also the closest to the base.
When a white dot came into view, all four people held their breaths at the same time. The white mouse had just killed a wild animal and was chewing on its flesh.
According to the plan, Hua Li and Erty were to cover for Cillin and Gu Xin while they pump their target with poison bullets. That was why Hua Li and Erty were carrying normal weapons and penetrative bullets.
Using the trees as cover, Cillin and Gu Xin slowly made their way towards the white mouse. Behind them, Erty’s eyes flashed once in astonishment as he watched Cillin’s soundless movements. Just based on stealth ability alone, Cillin was as good, if not better than Gu Xin. However, neither of them had never heard of such a person. Speaking of which, he wasn’t expecting Cillin to trust him this much. It was common sense that one should never leave their back open to another person easily.
What Erty wasn’t aware was that the gray cat sitting next to him and yawning would swallow him in a gulp if he dared to point his gun barrel at Cillin.
In fact, it was exactly because Cillin didn’t trust Erty and Hua Li fully that he decided to leave Wheeze behind. The second they acted strangely, the gray cat had permission to eat them the way it liked.
After making their way to their positions without being spotted, Cillin gestured at Gu Xin with his hand. Since the hand gesture was commonly used in the military as well, Gu Xin of course understood what he meant and returned a “ready” hand gesture of his own.
The duo pointed their guns at the huge mouse and opened fire. Originally, Cillin was planning to fire into the mouse’s ear, while Gu Xin was aiming at its eyes. However, the white mouse had noticed them the second they opened fire and moved its body, causing both bullets to miss their intended target and hitting it in the body instead. However, both gun and bullet had undergone a modification, and the shots had successfully penetrated some of its skin. The drugs should be able to make it into the mouse’s body.
Cillin had taken off immediately without even checking if his aim was true after opening fire at the mouse. The next second, the wounded mouse was already jumping after Cillin already.
Cillin didn’t stop running. The moment he noticed the movement behind his back, he moved sideways to dodge a powerful swipe and turned around to throw a kick straight at the mouse’s neck. A white mouse’s neck was generally very fragile, but that only applied to normal white mice. Cillin’s kick contained enough force to break a tree trunk with the width of a man, but the white mouse had only staggered a couple meters sideways.
Thanks to Cillin’s kick slowing down the white mouse’s movements, Gu Xin, Hua Li and Erty were able to pump the mouse full of bullets.
A couple of red spots appeared on the mouse’s body. It was a clear sign that their shots had penetrated its skin. However, the white mouse looked as vigorous as ever as it chased after Cillin relentlessly, ignoring the people shooting at it.
Was the toxin ineffective against RB13?!