"No way, right?" Yang Bo muttered. He had strolled around a massive area, yet these cattle were the largest creatures he could find. There were no tigers or Leopards like he had imagined.
Upon closer inspection, the cattle were built like elephants. Looking at their horns—nearly a meter long, a meter wide, and shaped like three-pronged steel pitchforks—he pretty much understood the situation. They also lived in herds. They were basically bulldozers—a whole group of spiked bulldozers.
"Sigh." Seeing no other large animals around, Yang Bo let out a breath and dragged all the dead cattle into the underground cave.
"But I don't have any status," he thought as he worked. "Otherwise, I could just buy the tissue samples of these cattle and cultivate them myself."
For a moment, the idea of exploring the dangerous zones sprouted in his mind, but his rationality quickly shot it down. His Mecha was the absolute worst model. If it got damaged, he might instantly go bankrupt.
"No rush, no rush," he told himself. Considering how little time had passed since he arrived, he had already made decent progress. He needed to stay rational.
He tossed the cattle carcasses into a spot he had scouted beforehand and settled down to wait.
Wild animals could rarely resist the scent of food. The smell of fresh blood from eleven cattle continuously diffused throughout the underground space, attracting countless reptiles that swarmed toward the feast.
There were all sorts of creatures. Yang Bo waited quietly on the sidelines. He had chosen a long, narrow passage with an exceptionally high ceiling, positioning himself on a small platform near the top. It was very quiet. Yang Bo had even turned off his radar because, according to official information, some mutant animals could detect radar scanning signals.
Since he had already chummed the water, he didn't care what kind of "fish" showed up. As long as it was a fish, it was welcome to swim into his trap.
He turned on his sound receiver. In the silent underground space, the Mecha's audio sensors could even pick up the noises of bugs acting aggressively toward each other.
"This method of luring prey is a bit too costly," he muttered as he watched the time tick by. It was burning hundreds of Credit Points an hour.
He waited like this for five hours. From below, he could hear the sounds of flesh being torn, especially the thick cowhide ripping, mixed with loud chewing and various other noises.
He pulled out two Shock Wave Bombs, casually twisted them to arm, and tossed them down—one to the left and one to the right of the passage.
BOOM!
Even inside the Mecha, the deafening noise made Yang Bo wince. The entire space shook violently. Of course, he had already flicked his radar back on.
Disguise +1!
Disguise +1!
Dynamic Field of View +1!
The dense stream of incoming notifications made him grin from ear to ear.
He looked down at the lizard corpses littering the ground. Their bodies had been completely deformed by the massive blast. The narrow confines of the passage had only amplified the shockwaves. Inside the hundred-meter-long corridor, all kinds of dead lizards were densely packed together. There weren't many bugs left, as the lizards had already eaten them all.
"It's a pity humans can't physically come down here. Otherwise, there'd be so many other ways to do this, like using poison," Yang Bo sighed. He could only utilize less than a tenth of his usual tricks. Just imagining igniting highly toxic chemicals several levels deep to create a chimney effect in the underworld—the poisonous smoke would kill an untold number of animals.
Chuckling mischievously, he placed a Hydrogen Bomb under one of the remaining cattle carcasses, set the timer for five hours, and headed back to the base.
As for whether it would accidentally blow up one of his own people? Not a chance. Any approaching Mecha would receive a hazard warning, as the friend-or-foe identification system was fully functional.
Upon returning to the base, Yang Bo looked at his maintenance fees. Even though he had plenty of Game Coins, the cost still pained him. And this was just for the lowest-tier Mecha; higher-grade models would incur exponentially higher upkeep costs.
"I'll have to check out the trading center next time," he thought to himself.
After closing the game and logging out, Yang Bo walked over to the floor-to-ceiling window. The weather outside was perfect with clear skies for miles. Against the blue expanse, the airport was a perpetually brilliant and enchanting sight, looking just like a giant Diamond ring suspended in the sky.
He silently called up his Skills in his mind.
Swimming: Grandmaster (Speed in liquids +300%, permanent underwater breathing, underwater attack power +120%)
Flying: Master (1402/10000)
Disguise: Master (5210/10000)
Sound Wave Control: Grandmaster (14350/100000)
Dynamic Field of View: Master (4832/10000)
Charge: Intermediate (11/100)
Thermal Imaging Vision: Advanced (301/1000)
Electric Energy Control: Advanced (112/1000)
Light Energy Control: Basic (4/10)
Mecha Pilot: Intermediate (56/100)
Invisibility: Intermediate (16/100)
Slap: Advanced (134/1000)
Walking into the bathroom, Yang Bo stared at himself in the mirror. The muscles on his face rapidly shifted, and even his facial bones underwent subtle adjustments. A few minutes later, a face that was both strange yet familiar appeared in the reflection.
He touched his face. It was his exact appearance from his past life.
"My bone structure can be micro-adjusted. It seems that when this Disguise skill reaches its peak, I can completely turn into a different person." He carefully felt out the intricacies of the ability, continuously shifting his features to mimic various people, even female faces.
He stared at the woman's face in the mirror—it belonged to a female celebrity he had liked in his previous life. Brushing a hand against his cheek, he suddenly felt an inexplicable urge to vomit.
"Disgusting." He even suspected that once he maxed out this skill, he might genuinely be able to turn into a woman.
Shaking off the thought, he hurried to bed. He no longer worried about depleting his own Energy because he had simply accumulated too much of it.
However, he ended up having a nightmare. He dreamed he had turned into a woman and gone into a public bathhouse with other women... He wondered why he would have such a nightmare when he wasn't even a perverted person.
When he woke up, he saw that he had only slept for four hours. Suddenly, new streams of information flooded his mind.
Dynamic Field of View +1!
Disguise +1!
But mixed within the dense cluster of notifications were a few that shouldn't have been there.
Invisibility +32!
Invisibility +8!
Invisibility +4!
Yang Bo was utterly bewildered. Invisibility? With so many points, what kind of animal was that?
"Could it be a human? Someone from the Mutants' side? Plus 32... holy crap, that's an A-class target!" He scrambled out of bed, logged into the game, instantly purchased a flying attachment, and rushed straight toward the blast site. Naturally, he made sure to bring another Hydrogen Bomb along.
The underground passage was a scene of utter devastation, littered with corpses. A rat the size of a tiger, boasting a coat of silver fur, stood out strikingly amongst the wreckage. In the distance, the carcasses of several other rats could also be seen.
"What a treasure! I need to leave, now." Yang Bo grabbed the giant rat and made a run for it. The reason he fled so fast was because the bounty for an A-class biological target was astronomical.
He whipped out a massive sack and stuffed the silver rat's corpse inside. This was standard procedure for killing contaminated creatures. Around the ruins, there were other Mutant Animals—rats clearly the size of dogs.
But Yang Bo didn't have the time to bother with them. As long as he secured the biggest prize, that was enough. Hoisting the sack over his shoulder, he charged out of the Underworld and flew straight back to the base to claim his reward.