Volume 1 - CH 29

The computer in the lobby issued an electronic warning once again. 

Experiment No. 857 was successfully injected with Accelerant hallucinogen.

Experiment No. 857 is accelerating growth…

The incubation period will end in 5 seconds.

5…

4…

3…

2…

1——

Experiment No. 857, Electro-Optic Phantom Maturation Awakening, please be on high alert! Please be on high alert!

The snake, who had a keen sense of hearing, spun around furiously and immediately abandoned the Ghost Hunting Team who had attracted her attention. 

The Snake Girl’s gland differentiation had reached M2-grade. For each grade of the gland, it would randomly obtain a differentiation ability that matched their biological characteristics. The higher the grade, the stronger the differentiation ability obtained. 

The Snake Girl became agitated as the scent of berry pheromones in the air became stronger. She summoned back the two Floating Eyes back to her sockets, then ripped off the medical gauze that had been covering her golden vertical eyes, her gaze full of aggression. She gathered the power in her entire body into her glands and with no regard to the consequences, activated her M2 differentiation ability, Swamp.  

All of a sudden, the hard ground melted into a swamp. The feet of the people standing on it sank uncontrollably into the swamp.

Everything that could be grabbed and climbed on turned into mud. The only thing the participants could do was watch themselves sink into the muddy earth, which was sinking quicker than a true swamp. They would certainly suffocate and die if their mouths and noses went below the earth.  At this time, the crowd could no longer think about the second monster that appeared here.

Even the steel bars supporting the building melted. The steel bar that pierced through Bai Chunian’s chest had melted into mud and flowed away, leaving him without support. He fell from the suspended ten-story platform, crashing in the turbulent sea as small waves splashed out.  

Rimbaud had no choice but to jump into the sea. 

Lu Yan repeatedly used the Cunning Rabbit’s Cave to shuttle through the various floors, but it was futile. The Snake Girl’s M2 ability encompassed a huge range; all the floor became a muddy swamp, making the entire building B in a melted state.   

The Snake Girl glanced down at the turbulent waves and her lips arched into a mocking smirk. She solved these little things that were obstructing her way first. 

She gently shook the tip of her tail. There was a golden hollow scale at the end of the dark brown snake’s tail.  The scale armor shook and rustled as the snake raised its jaw slightly, its attention falling on Lu Yan, who was struggling on shuffling on each floor.  

The Snake Girl’s associative ability, “Rattle Tail”, could randomly force a target to resonate with her.  

Lu Yan’s body suddenly stiffened, and his mind was filled with noises of fingernails scratching against a blackboard that had been amplified countless times. All of his nerves from his head to his limbs were numb in an instant, and searing agony could be felt as if shrapnels were bursting in his body after the brief numbness.

The omega’s delicate body fell to the ground. Lu Yan curled up into a ball and tightly covered his mouth to prevent himself from screaming, then his body slowly sank on the muddy ground. 

Just when Lu Yan was about to suffocate to death by blocking his mouth and nose on the muddy ground, his body suddenly became lighter, as if something was supporting him from underneath. He opened his eyes with difficulty and found several intersecting black vines, weaving into a web of vines from underneath to support him. 

By the time he opened his eyes, the entire ten-story building had been densely covered by black vines like an impermeable finch cage.

The tip of the black vines wrapped around Bi Lanxing’s waist, lifting him up into the air and then he brought him down with a swoop like a zipline. Bi Lanxing held the Uzi submachine gun with both hands and shot the Snake Girl’s left eye from above. 

With Uzi’s super high shooting speed and extremely strong melee ability, combined with Bi Lanxing’s glide from the sky, the Snake Girl was caught off guard. One of her eyes was blown out, then she retreated in pain and covered her bleeding eye socket. The swampification of the entire building immediately stopped.  

The Poison Ivy Armor’s M2 differentiation ability, “Thorns of the Tree of Life”[1] an offensive and defensive instant ability that could quickly spawn poisonous vines in a limited space, densely covering up the space. 

The Husky alpha ploughed the ground with effort. He pulled his feet out of the ground, looked up towards the sky, and whistled towards He Suowei. “Ge, look at that little poisonous grass[2], it’s actually M2 differentiation. So awesome oh, didn’t even have the slightest intention to hide it. No wonder it’s called Casually Fighting, this team is full of big bosses ah.” 

He Suowei made a ‘silence’ gesture to him. 

The Bellbird and the Spittlebug omega who were hiding in the corner looked at each other strangely. They muttered in low voices and shrank back into the ruins.

The vines wove into a cradle and sent Lu Yan’s huddled body to Bi Lanxing. Bi Lanxing turned deaf ear to the whispers around him. He reached out and touched Lu Yan’s trembling rabbit ears and quietly released pheromones to soothe him.

“Differentiating into second grade at such a young age…Can you still go out alive?” The snake slowly recovered and held onto the ground. The Floating Eye guarded her from the sides, forbidding others to approach. When the shattered eye socket was restored, the snake raised her hand to pick one Floating Eye from the air, then placed it back into the restored eye socket, and it turned intactly. 

The Snake Girl controlled several Floating Eyes. She plunged them into the water to search for the missing merman and Bai Chunian.

When Bai Chunian fell into the sea, the salty cold water rushed over his head and into his nostrils, nearly forcing him to open his eyes. He then felt a smooth, soft, and chilly creature stroking on his body.. 

Bai Chunian forced himself to open his eyes. 

Small jellyfish swarmed in clusters in front of him, flashing blue lights. They floated and swirled in the blue water. The smallest was only the size of a fingernail, it pierced into Bai Chunian’s palm that was clenching weakly like an obedient mushroom.

His gaze followed the blue jellyfish’s path and he saw a blonde merman swimming towards him with his tail surrounded by blue electricity. As the tip of the tail swept the saltwater, a series of bubbles of varied sizes developed, and the bubbles immediately transformed into a life-like blue jellyfish, swimming along with the current. 

Bai Chunian was so surprised by the scene in front of him that he forgot to breathe, until he felt a pair of cold human arms embrace him from behind. Rimbaud carried him as he swam upwards rapidly. The water pressure on Bai Chunian’s body gradually lessened. The moment his head resurfaced above the water, he regained oxygen.  

Rimbaud pushed him onto the reef. Half of his body was submerged in the water, while his bandaged upper body was covered in a black bulletproof team uniform. The sharp and graceful lines of his arms were widely exposed, and the leather bands were tucked over his shoulders, exposing his thin and narrow waist.

Bai Chunian forgot to cough for a moment. His gaze stuck on the merman’s exposed smooth belly that made him excited, cold pale skin wrapped around the explosive muscles within, which rose and fell along with his breathing.

Rimbaud propped his hands on the reef, raising half of his body out of the water. He leaned his lips close to Bai Chunian’s face and kissed the corner of his eyes before leaning to Bai Chunian’s ears and saying, “I hope we can stay like this for a little longer.”

Bai Chunian had never heard Rimbaud speak the human language so clearly. The unintentional sexiness of this clear and steely voice whispering in his ears made him unable to resist.

“I’ve always wanted to tell you that I’ve lived for a long time. At that time, you were a white kitten in my eyes who still needed to be fed, cuddled, and soothed, but I couldn’t find a common expression of ‘age’ in our language.”

“Do you know why the snake was here? One day, you went out to train in the morning, only to be carried back at night with a broken little arm and ribs. One of your hands was crushed, and your glands were injured…The researcher told me that they put you in the same eco-box as the snake because they wanted you to fight the powerful ones. I know that snake enjoys torturing his prey.”

“…That night, you kept groaning in pain. When I touched your face, you were still trembling even in your sleep.”

“So I killed him, leaving only his brain intact.” Out of regret, the researchers left the brain and copied the neural data. They sold it to the 109 Institute to recover the monetary loss, where the snake’s consciousness would experience being infinitely abused to death by various experimental subjects.  

“That’s what I want him to suffer from.”

Bai Chunian was stuck dumbstruck on the reef. Rimbaud’s voice was so clear that he couldn’t quickly associate him with the fish that he was familiar with. 

Rimbaud’s sapphire eyes were too clear and beautiful, while his lips were as pink as jelly, and his blonde hair paired with his pale cold skin made him look like a delicate little angel, leading Bai Chunian to think that he was a young fish cub that had broken its shell not long ago. During those days when they were together, Bai Chunian went crazy and forced Rimbaud, while for the rest of the time it was like taking care of a baby. Every night when the milk was brought in, he’d feed it to the little fish lying on the quilt. 

While the two of them were talking, a Floating Eye rushed in between them and suddenly directed its gaze at Bai Chunian. However, before the eye could move, it was mercilessly squeezed by a slender hand with long fins to a handful of bloody foam. 

Rimbaud washed his hands with the seawater with slightly furrowed brows. “He’s as disgusting as always. He still thinks he’s alive.”

The Snake Girl had already spotted their trail and swooped down the outer edge of the building. However, Rimbaud didn’t leave the Snake Girl to build up her strength to unleash her powers. He dove deep into the water, turning into a bolt of blue lightning in the water, then he suddenly rushed out of the sea, rising up to almost eight meters high in the air. The cyan blood vessels in the translucent fishtail burst out, then lightning flashed meanderingly.    

He gathered the seawater in his hands, then the transparent water immediately solidified into an extremely hard material, forming two transparent Browning Auto-5 shotguns. The merman’s gaze was cold as his two hands fired two rounds of transparent shotshell one after another, simultaneously hitting the Snake Girls left chest on the upper body and her tail on the lower half. Two hearts were shot and burst by the shotshell, innumerable drops of sharp water pierced through the snake’s body into a sieve. 

The Manta Ray’s gland association ability, Steel Hydration: an ability to compress water molecules to form atoms of elements similar to a steel weapon in a dense arrangement, achieving the repeated phase changes of austenite and martensite  which were referred to as steel hydration, where handheld weapons were formed from hydrated steel. 

The sky plunged into silence, then the electronic sound finally sounded.

【Casually Playing】 Rimbaud eliminated Experiment No. 1513

At the end of the exam, the candidates were asked to take a five-minute break to wait for the stats and calls for the team’s resurrection.

After the brief burst of power, the transparent weapon in Rimbaud’s hand returned to its water form and fell back into the sea. Rimbaud himself lost support and fell down from a height of almost eight meters.  

Bai Chunian jumped into the sea and swam as fast as he could. After that, he reached out his arms to catch Rimbaud the moment the merman fell into the sea, saving the merman from the impact of falling into the water from high altitude, then the two of them sunk into the deep sea together. 

The sea engulfed their bodies. Bai Chunian hugged Rimbaud tightly, pecked the corner of his lips, then kissed the omega. 

Rimbaud responded to him by wrapping his tail around his, then raising his hand to tilt Bai Chunian’s face to make Bai Chunian look at him straight in the eyes, and with raised eyebrows, he asked.

“What kind of temper are you throwing at me these days? Are you holding a grudge? It turns out after I exhausted my pheromones to feed you till you’ve matured and took the trouble to send you out of the prison, you’ve been holding a grudge against me all these years?

“You did grow up fast. You’re highly talented, and your level is high enough that no one can bully you now…So, is this the reason why you turned around, to insult me because you resent me?

“Well, then go ahead and hold a grudge against me unless you’re never going to [email protected]#$ me again in your life.”

“This shot is to retaliate against you, so you’ll know how your attitude hurts me.”

Rimbaud raised his right hand. The water swirled, converged into his palms, forming into a transparent hydrated steel Desert Eagle Pistol, and then he aimed it at Bai Chunian’s heart and pulled the trigger without any hesitation. 

From the area where the bullet was shot, blood spewed out into a fan of shape in the water. The health bar in his chest was emptied again, but the test was over so no more elimination was broadcasted.  

Bai Chunian’s eyes bent into crescents, then he slowly raised his hand through the blood mist and touched Rimbaud’s face.

Rimbaud carried Bai Chunian’s body and swam towards the shore, as groups of jellyfish flashing blue lights and sharks attracted by the blood chased after him.