Chapter 43: Bullfrog
Translator: Letty / Editor: DarkGem / IceTea
“Roughly between three and four,” Jing said. “The survivors in our base are about 2 now, meaning they are about two times stronger than they used to be. Some individuals have reached 8. Their physical conditions are even better than the huge wolfhound that we ran into.”
“I am wondering if those people have special abilities.” Chang said while he casually rubbed the tangy grass paste onto his exposed skin.
“I don’t think so. Mr. Li was talking about this few days ago; he said the correlation between physical strength improvement and acquiring special abilities is almost nonexistent. Some of the people significantly improved their physical strength, but did not acquire special abilities like what I have. For example, me and Mr. Li have special abilities, but our physical strength is pretty average.” Jing smiled, “You are lucky that not only your physical strength improved but you also acquired a special ability.”
“True, maybe that’s why it was easier for me to get food. Alright, cheer up! Let’s get something new today.” Chang chuckled and stopped the discussion, Jing closed her eyes and started to probe the surroundings.
When Chang entered his hunting mode, his mind was highly concentrated and the sound of his footsteps became unnoticeable. The pores on his skin were closed through involuntary contraction, helping him to hide his scent. The experience these days had allowed him to adapt to rhythm of hunting, and his body also responded to such adaptation by enhancing the strength of certain muscles.
“The reason why giraffes have long necks is because its ancestors wanted to reach to the leaves on tall trees; individuals with long necks survived in the difficult times and such genes were passed onto their offspring.” This was a Lamarckism explanation before Darwin’s evolutionary theory.
Before the red fog, if a species wanted to change their trait or physical structure, they needed to go through several generations of eliminations before the effect could be shown; it was an extremely slow process. However, the red fog seemed to be a catalyst for evolution. If an individual wanted to reach the “leaves on a tall tree”, genetically, the barrier of evolution had to be broken. An individual could not evolve on its own. In this era, the speed of evolution was incredibly and unbelievably fast – this was truly a splendid era for living organisms on this planet.
Chang sneaked between the gaps of the grass bush almost soundlessly; he was like a ghost hunter wandering in for food and prey.
The morning had passed before they realized; there were 7 times that they almost initiated the hunt, but the prey was either too powerful for them or it was a large group of gregarious insects. They were not ideal targets—until the last time.
“Chang, there is a level 5 lone animal, about 110 meters to our 2 o’clock.”
“5?” Chang stopped searching, “We can give it a try.”
“If you can sneak attack it, we’ll have a chance.” Jing nodded. “But you have to be careful, you are not an equal match for it if you directly confront with it.”
“Don’t worry.” The two had been hunting together for more than a week, Jing learned how cautious Chang was, she no longer discouraged him very often like she used to do.
Upon detecting this living organism, her job was done, she jumped off from Chang’s back and hid herself in the lush grass – in terms of lurking and fighting, she was not helpful at all.
Therefore, Jing would ensure her own safety before Chang left for the prey – not getting into trouble was the most helpful thing she could do for Chang in this stage.
Jing curled up in the grass and wrapped her tiny body with two pieces of giant leaves, she slowed down her breath and watched Chang remove his shoes before he slowly moved forward.
From downwind, Chang lurked like a cat. His bare feet made no sounds while he moved, and he leaned forward to ensure the direction of the wind was correct as he entered his hunting zone.
While he marched forward, he locked a bolt into his crossbow, and adjusted his position so that he was at the downwind direction all the way to the front of the prey. Without Jing, he took a while to find the organism that she was talking about, after a few hundred meters of finding and keeping up with the wind direction; he crouched in the grass and finally, saw the prey he had been looking for – a bullfrog.
Yes, a bullfrog.
It was not a normal bullfrog in his understanding, it was a bullfrog the size of a bull. The skin was grayish green and it had a pair of huge eyes. The bullfrog kept puffing its cheek and blew out the air with a steady rhythm. It looked like a frog he knew but somehow it was different.
Except for its size, there were also rhino-horn-like keratin tissue sprouting from its back. They were distributed evenly as if it was wearing a suit of armour; it appeared to have a strong resistance to external attacks.
“This is going to be thorny…” Chang clenched the crossbow and calculated the chance he could succeed. “I have a weapon and I may be able to make a sneak attack, but its index is one level higher than me. That is to say, if my first attack cannot cause significant harm to it, I will fail the hunt.”
Facing one that was slightly stronger than him, he needed to make sure the first attempt was his best shot, otherwise the bullfrog could swallow him with ease, or even worse, the bullfrog might just jump away before he even tried. Therefore, Chang was more attentive and alert than usual.
He carefully searched for the weak spot on the bullfrog but there weren’t any obvious ones – the keratin tissue covered its whole body, and the thickness of the tissue made it hard to penetrate even if he had a crossbow.
It seemed like only the mandible and the eyes were the spots where a bolt could cause useful harm. Chang stared at its watery eyes and he made up his mind.
“Should I try shooting bolt into it eye? It could be a fatal attack!” Chang moved forward with light footsteps while he was thinking. “Its static vision is not as perfect as dynamic vision, and frogs can’t smell; if I approach it slow enough, it won’t notice me.”
Step by step, Chang was confident about his plan, he spent quite a while aiming at its eye. After double checking, he pulled the trigger. The long bolt turned into a black shadow, flying through the fog and going straight to that moist and bright spot.
Whoosh!
The bolt was so fast that Chang’ dynamic vision only captured a touch of black light, and the red fog merged together again.
And because the bolt was so fast, within a blink of an eye, it flew right to the giant frog eye. While Chang was delighted by his accurate aiming, the giant frog opened its mouth suddenly and the tongue popped out swiftly, it precisely slapped on the black shadow.
Chang was petrified.
He didn’t know how fast the bolt was, nor the speed of its tongue. The one thing he could conclude was that the scarlet tongue had successfully intercepted the flying bolt; although the bolt was powerful enough for the tongue to knock it, the direction of the bolt had changed.
Puff!
The tilted bolt made a deep slice on the giant frog’s tongue and then deeply stuck into the keratin tissue on its forehead, causing the bullfrog to croak painfully.