After living in the forest for three days, Cillin and Wheeze had mostly figured out of its laws of survival.
The bio-soldiers and the wild fauna were basically two sides of this world, but both factions could be broken down into smaller, different categories. For example, the bio-soldiers were separated by ranks. The higher ranking a bio-soldier was, the deeper the color of their skin. This meant that the bio-soldiers Cillin and Wheeze had ran into earlier were pretty low on the totem pole. Cillin had witnessed exactly one high ranking bio-soldier with very dark skin in the past three days, and he was able to get a feel on how tough its skin was just by watching from a distance.
His crossbow arrow could sink into a beginner rank bio-soldier’s flesh completely, but not a high rank bio-soldier’s. Even in the best case scenario, the most it could do was puncture the first layer of its skin, unable to deal any real damage at all. Since then, Cillin had been thinking up ways to upgrade his crossbow.
Food wise, Cillin ate raw meat directly just like Wheeze, and a diet of plants and fruits on the side. He didn’t feel repulsed or disgusted because he had had similar experiences since a long time ago. The reason he avoided cooking his food was because heat energy was a source of attraction to all kinds of bugs and wild animals in this place. Every time they picked up a heat source, they would rush over madly like moths to flames.
After three days of surviving in the forest, Cillin could confirm that most mechanical equipment became a crutch in this place. It was probably why Cillin hadn’t seen any traces of gunfire despite having stayed here for three days. He was certain that the rest of the entrants had also been avoiding using firearms whenever possible.
“Cillin, a couple more beginner rank bio-soldiers are coming towards us,” Wheeze contacted Cillin from atop a tree.
Cillin looked towards the direction Wheeze had pointed to and spotted a couple of brown figures as expected. However, they weren’t coming for them specifically. Cillin stayed completely still in his hiding spot with his crossbow notched and its arrowhead already smeared with toxins.
Cillin had acquired all of his toxins from the forest’s plants. He had also been experimenting on some bio-soldiers and wild animals for the past three days to see their exact effects. Unfortunately, what should’ve been lethal to the average person barely affected both entities, and he found only two toxins that were actually combat effective. Both toxins were nerve agents, and they had their own separate functions.
The reason most of the toxins Cillin had gathered and experimented on the local fauna was ineffective was because a large majority of the forest was made out of poisonous plants. The wild animals would sometimes consume their fruits and eventually grew resistant towards them. The bio-soldiers were similarly resistant to these toxins, but the source of their resistance was their genes, not natural adaptation.
The two toxins Cillin found to be effective could suppress their polysynaptic reflexes and disrupt their neuromuscular transmission, causing their muscles to become relaxed.
The bio-soldiers were very muscular and capable of explosive force, and neither of these toxins were capable of incapacitating them outright. However, they could slow them down and buy enough time for Cillin to deal with them.
Suddenly, Wheeze ear’s flickered once before it said, “A large group of bio-soldiers is coming our way! I sense some high-ranking bio-soldiers among them too!”
Cillin frowned. Where did these bio-soldiers come from? Unlike a normal person, a bio-soldier was no social creature. Their numbers were scattered, and sometimes they would even engage each other in battle. So what was going on here?
The commotion was close enough for even Cillin to pick up with his ears. They moved quickly almost as if they were chasing something…
A bio-soldiers’ footsteps were heavy to begin with, and when they ran it sounded like there was a stampeding beast. Put ten of them together, and the commotion was probably loud enough to shake the earth itself, not to mention that more and more wandering bio-soldiers were joining in on the chase because they were lured in by the noises. It was like a chain reaction that kept growing bigger and bigger.
The bio-soldiers in Cillin’s vision had obviously heard the nearing commotion as well. They turned away and walked towards the source of the noise.
A while later, Cillin finally saw the culprit who had started all this. A somewhat thin and weak-looking young man could be seen running for his life with almost twenty bio-soldiers behind him. He was quite fast too, or he wouldn’t have been able to elude capture for this long.
Two high rank bio-soldiers with much darker skin could be seen leading in front of the chasers. Cillin was bewildered: How on earth did this person come to provoke this many bio-soldiers, and two high rank bio-soldiers no less?
The person being chased by the group of bio-soldiers cut a sorry figure from a distance, but in reality he looked pretty energetic. Cillin was impressed; he might not know how long this person had been running away from the bio-soldiers, but it certainly didn’t look like he wasn’t going to falter any time soon.
Still, he no longer needed to worry about the local fauna thanks to the group of bio-soldiers. No wild beast was foolish enough to get in their way.
The person and the bio-soldiers grew closer and closer, but judging from their running path Cillin estimated that they would pass by his hiding spot by around twenty meters or so. It was why Cillin had chosen to stay instead of running off himself. Based on his understanding of these bio-soldiers over the past few days, the bio-soldiers shouldn’t be smart enough to discover his hiding spot, not to mention any sudden movement now would only get him involved in this mess. Right now, he had no intentions of provoking an entire group of bio-soldiers and two high rank bio-soldiers at once.
Cillin was just wondering what this person had done to cause such a relentless pursuit when the person made a sudden turn and ran straight towards Cillin just fifty meters short from his hiding spot. Cillin’s eyelids twitched as a bad premonition struck him. Clearly this person had discovered Cillin sometime on the run.
Is he trying to drag me down with him?
Cillin packed his stuff swiftly and motioned at Wheeze to take off. This wasn’t the time to deal with their griefer.
The person ran towards Cillin like the wind. The idiot let out an impatient yell just as he got close to Cillin, “Are you waiting to die or something? Run!”
Cillin: “…”
If Cillin hadn’t seen the worry and total lack of malice in his eyes, he would’ve choked this bastard to death right there and then. You’re the one who led the bio-soldiers straight towards us!
“Faster, faster! Follow me…” The person was in mid-shout when he suddenly discovered that Cillin was running even faster than he was.
“Don’t run to where the forest is thick!” The man hurriedly shouted.
Cillin curled his lips downwards. You think I don’t know that?!
Now the bio-soldiers were chasing two people instead of one.
Cillin had the terrain of this place memorized in his head, and he had even set up a couple of traps a day ago just in case he might need them. Today, his caution turned out to be well founded.
Cillin was in the lead while the person closely behind him. Seeing that Cillin wasn’t heading towards the thicker parts of the forest, the person decided to keep following him.
While they were passing through the side of a hill, Cillin suddenly ran in an arc before changing directions slightly. The person following behind him copied his movements and stayed on Cillin’s path. A couple of thumps soon rang behind him, but he didn’t turn around to catch a look. Also, since Cillin hadn’t stopped running, he didn’t stop running either.
Thanks to the traps, Cillin was able to slow but surely shake off his pursuers. When he was certain that he had shaken off the bio-soldiers completely, he stopped at a small, secluded cave and walked in.
Cillin had found the cave on his first day, and he every night he would return here with Wheeze to rest. The cave was made up of pretty sturdy stone, and he could prevent most local fauna from slipping in just by sealing off the main cave entrance. For safety purposes, Cillin had set up a lot of disguises around the cave and placed tree branches that could effectively conceal their scent. He had even dug out two separate exits inside the cave that were just wide enough to fit one single person, preventing any large animals from making their way into the cafe through the side exits. As for the bio-soldiers, they were a tad too muscular for their own good. They could come in through the side exits, but it wouldn’t be an easy task.
The person had followed Cillin all the way back to his cave. He immediately dropped down on a heap of dry grass and rolled the moment he went in.
“So… so tired!”
At first Cillin was preparing to interrogate the person with a knife, but the latter had simply rolled on top of his temporary “bed” and fell asleep right away as if he couldn’t sense his hostility at all. The person’s heartbeat, blood circulation and pulse all pointed towards him being either a master actor and manipulator, or a complete idiot.
Cillin was more inclined to believe the latter.
Wheeze circled the person once and gave him a sniff, “I can’t smell anything else from him except some plants. He also has nothing on his person except a dagger.”
“He knows how to hide his own scent with the plants too, but who on earth is he? He doesn’t belong in a test like this.”
Cillin grabbed the person’s dagger and gave it a look. It was sharp, sturdy, light, and anti-corrosive. The weapon suited this person very well.
“Should we kick him out?” Wheeze asked.
“Let’s just ignore him for now. We should rest up ourselves.”
Cillin sensed no malice from this person, and he had always trusted in his own instincts. That didn’t mean this person wasn’t annoying though. There were always some people who thought that they did a good thing, but had no idea that they’d achieved the exact opposite.
The sleeping man looked like a simple and guileless person just like Wheeze. Moreover, there was nothing noteworthy about his physique except his running speed, which also meant that his combat ability was probably next to nothing as well. What really puzzled Cillin was that the person’s clothes indicated that he had at least spent ten days inside the forest, meaning that he was here even earlier than Cillin was.
There were a lot of scrapes on his shirt from both plant and animal alike, but somehow this person was able to survive to this day. The deep dark circles around his eyes seemed to indicate that he hadn’t had a good sleep since he arrived in this forest, and it was probably the reason why he was able to sleep like the dead after running all the way to this cave.
Finally, the person woke up after two hours of deep sleep. He looked a little drowsy since he had just awakened, but he immediately let out an “ah” when he saw Cillin and Wheeze. He had probably recalled what happened two hours ago.
“Who are you?” Cillin asked.
The man scratched his messy hair once before answering, “My name is Neo.”
Suddenly, Neo spotted his dagger in Cillin’s hands and grew angry, “You stole my dagger after I saved your life?”
“Those bio-soldiers would never have found me if you hadn’t ran my way,” Cillin showed no intentions of returning Neo’s dagger.
Seeing that Cillin’s tone and expression was completely serious, Neo pressed his eyebrows together before replying, “Is that so? But I really was just trying to warn you.”
Cillin stared at him suspiciously.
“You don’t believe me? Look at my face and you shall find your answer.”
“You mean the dark circles around your eyes?”
“No, I mean sincerity!” Neo replied very, very seriously.
“Well, I guess your sincerity is buried too deep for me to see. All I can see are dark circles on your skin.”
“Then that is your own problem. Let me tell you, the truth can normally be seen on a person’s face. An expression, a look, even pupillary responses can reveal a lot of things…” Neo started dropping all sorts of explanation before raising an example, “Take you for example, you look pretty angry to me right now. There are even some signs of violence. However, I don’t understand why you’re angry, does one misunderstanding really infuriate you this much? Also, here’s a friendly reminder: According to a study, workplace violence is closely related to domestic violence…”
“This is not a workplace,” Cillin cut off his long-winded explanation.
“It is, to me!”
Why did you follow me here?” Cillin asked.
“That’s because I had come to the conclusion that following you can provide me with better security. Looking at that situation and the way you had reacted, I compared the two options ‘following you’ and ‘running off myself’, did a safety probability analysis and discovered that the option of following you is about 12.26% higher than the option of running off myself.”
“You’re a very arrogant person,” Cillin aid.
“No, this is confidence. I did a test, you know. On average, I am 2.1792 times higher better than the empire.”
“What test? Ear twitching frequency test?” Cillin pointed at Neo’s ears. They had been twitching non-stop since he came awake.
“No, an intelligence test.”
Cillin: “…” Was the base reference a pig or something?
“Alright, Mr. Highly Intellectual Neo, may I know why you were chased so hotly by an entire group of bio-soldiers?” Cillin asked.
“Sigh, it’s a long story,” The mention of the subject clearly depressed Neo, “As you know, money doesn’t mean anything in an almost primitive environment like this, and knowledge is something that needs constant refreshing. Here, the only thing that truly belongs to yourself is the food in your stomach.”
“You mean you were chased while you were looking for food?”
“Yes, I was looking for a particular kind of fruit, but then an extremely unlikely event chose that exact moment to happen — I was accidentally found out by those dumb-as-rock bio-soldiers.”
“Alright, Mr. Highly Intellectual Neo, do you mind describing to me the fruit you were looking for and how you came to be pursued by a group of bio-soldiers who was as dumb as a rock?”
“Not at all,” Neo replied directly without any sign of shame whatsoever.
