Chapter 95: Slaughtering the Mutant Corpse—The Tyrant

About seven hundred meters away from Zhang Ran stood a mutated creature roughly two and a half meters long, its body covered in a coat of red bristles and its form resembling that of a wild boar. Its most striking feature was the pair of ferocious tusks jutting from either side of its snout, each wreathed in flame.

This was a Flame-Tusk Boar, one of the level-three mutated beasts. Its attributes were stronger than those of the Fang-Boar, and it possessed the power of fire as well, making it a fairly ordinary specimen among level-three mutated creatures.

Using the chip to observe it and confirm the Flame-Tusk Boar’s attributes, Zhang Ran then temporarily stored Army Breaker in the space box.

“Boiling Blood!”

At the stir of his mind, the third red ability rune on the Tree of Evolution within Zhang Ran’s sea of consciousness suddenly blazed to life. At once, Zhang Ran felt his heart accelerate. Streams of blood were drawn in, ignited, and then pumped back out as searing currents that surged endlessly through his body.

As those torrid currents spread, Zhang Ran felt as though he had been injected with a fierce stimulant. His spirits soared, and both his bodily functions and attributes rose rapidly.

He broke into a run toward the Flame-Tusk Boar. With the boost from Boiling Blood, Zhang Ran’s agility had reached ten points. In less than fifteen seconds, he was already upon the beast, and then he activated the Space Box rune once more, drawing out the heavy sword Army Breaker.

By then, the Flame-Tusk Boar had also noticed him. Malice flashed in its eyes as its sturdy limbs thundered forward. With its tusks aimed straight for Zhang Ran’s chest, it lunged madly into the attack.

For a level-three Flame-Tusk Boar, those tusks were unimaginably hard. In a head-on collision, they were strong enough to pierce a thin steel plate forged from level-two alloy. More than that, the flames on those tusks burned at a temperature of over a thousand degrees, making them devastatingly destructive. Even though Zhang Ran’s physique had been raised to 9.8 points by his enhancement, he would still have found it difficult to withstand such a blow.

But with Zhang Ran’s skill, how could he possibly allow such a ridiculous thing to happen? Fixing his gaze on the beast, he swung the heavy sword in his hand and brought it crashing down at the boar’s tusks.

Clang!

A clear ringing note rang out as Zhang Ran’s heavy sword and the Flame-Tusk Boar’s tusks smashed together in midair.

Under that single strike, the Flame-Tusk Boar was sent flying outright. It crashed heavily to the ground, and a finger-width indentation appeared on both tusks, with cracks branching out around them, nearly cleaving the pair in two.

The Flame-Tusk Boar, sprawling on the ground, was left dazed and spinning. Before its brain could even recover, Zhang Ran had already stepped in close to its flank. Army Breaker slashed downward, the blade angling for the boar’s neck.

Thud!

With Zhang Ran’s thirteen-point strength behind it, the Flame-Tusk Boar’s head had no hope of resisting. Army Breaker severed it with ease, and the head dropped to the ground with a dull thump. The blazing tusks instantly went dark.

From the smooth, still-twitching stump of the Flame-Tusk Boar’s neck, scalding blood burst out like a spring gone mad, splashing over the earth and staining a wide stretch of wasteland and grassland crimson. Its body, meanwhile, lost all control and collapsed limply to the ground.

With its formidable vitality, the level-three Flame-Tusk Boar’s limbs still twitched for more than ten seconds before the loss of blood finally weakened it completely, leaving it motionless at last.

With the beast’s death, a stream of evolutionary energy surged from its corpse and entered Zhang Ran’s body.

Compared with the evolutionary energy provided by level-two mutated beasts, the energy from level-three mutated beasts was of a higher grade. Both in quantity and purity, it had grown considerably, enough to keep Zhang Ran, a level-three evolver, growing rapidly.

Once that energy poured into Zhang Ran’s body, it followed its set path of circulation. Part of it fused into his flesh and bones, while the rest completed a full cycle and entered his spine, settling at its base and forming the embryonic shape of the first evolution point.

“Slayed level-three Flame-Tusk Boar, absorbed evolutionary energy, evolution point condensation increased by 1.21 percent. Current progress: 1.21 percent (03).”

“Slayed level-three Flame-Tusk Boar. Physical qualities strengthened by evolutionary energy: strength +0.005, constitution +0.004, agility +0.003, spirit +0.003.”

As the evolutionary energy entered his body, the chip’s prompt sounded in Zhang Ran’s ear as well. He then exited the Boiling Blood state and, still gripping the heavy sword, cut off both of the Flame-Tusk Boar’s tusks.

Many commonly used level-two alloy formulas required tusks or claws from level-three mutated beasts, so these tusks could fetch a good price. They were also among the more valuable materials on the boar’s body.

Next, Zhang Ran split open the Flame-Tusk Boar’s body and removed the chunks of pork inside with the lowest degree of contamination.

As a level-three creature, the Flame-Tusk Boar possessed respectable resistance to radiation, and its body contained a large amount of low-radiation pork. Its flavor was also more delicate than that of the Fang-Boar’s meat, making it quite a good ingredient and thus highly valued by buyers.

Because he could not reveal the existence of the Space Box ability, he naturally could not sell this meat at will. But when needed, with a little processing, it would make excellent food, so Zhang Ran gathered it all up as well.

Once everything was done, Zhang Ran set out once more, hunting the various mutated beasts of the wasteland.

After two hours of hunting, Zhang Ran had slain two more level-three mutated beasts, and his evolution point condensation had reached 3.47 percent.

Ding! Level-four mutated beast detected — Mutant Walking Corpse Tyrant. This creature’s combat power is comparable to the host’s, and its explosive power is extremely strong. Please proceed with caution!

Just as Zhang Ran continued onward, the chip’s prompt rang once more in his ear. A red dot lit up, marking the tyrant’s location.

Following the direction indicated by the chip, Zhang Ran looked toward a point about nine hundred meters away. There stood a humanoid creature roughly two and a half meters tall, its skin gray-black and its body grown with enormous claws.

Its flesh was covered in large patches of rot, and some of its organs were even exposed to the open air. Most horrifying of all was its heart, which was completely outside its body, more than ten times the size of a normal human heart. Thick veins coiled directly across its gray-brown skin, making it look all the more terrifying.

As for the tyrant’s arms, they were even sharper and more vicious than those of an ordinary walking corpse. Its right arm, in particular, had undergone complete mutation, evolving into a gigantic claw nearly forty centimeters long.

In truth, it was already difficult to call this a claw. It had become a blade of utter sharpness, like a butcher’s cleaver, capable of cutting down any foe in its path.