The Reborn Otaku’s Code of Practice for the Apocalypse – CH186

Chapter 186 — The Intelligence of Mutated Animals

“Boss! Boss! Are we going to have rabbit meat?!” Wang Duo’s excited voice suddenly blared through the walkie-talkie. Before Luo Xun could even reply, Wang Duo continued to clamor inside, “Wifey, wifey! We’re going to have meat to eat again! Maybe we can even have dog meat this time!!”

Luo Xun was now somewhat bewildered—which exactly of these two had the deeper obsession with meat?

But regardless…

“Should we… give it a try?” Luo Xun was tempted too. To be fair, ever since the sheep they hunted before the New Year, they had eaten it until even the sheep bones were completely used up by now. Although everyone still had a small amount of frozen meat stashed away, they were deliberately hoarding it because they were terrified that once it was gone, it would be gone for good! If they didn’t get any other harvest soon, they would be right back to the miserable days of being forced vegetarians with no meat to eat. Well… of course, it wasn’t strictly true that they had zero meat left; they still had a bit of air-dried meat stored up, but dried meat was completely different from fresh meat!

Seeing the two animals not far ahead, all four people present were thoroughly tempted.

Yan Fei nodded slightly. “Let’s draw closer to the spot where we buried the metal last time. The metal we collected along the way right now isn’t enough.” They had already traveled this road several times back and forth, casually stripping metal each time they passed. Although the truck carried a bit of metal for emergencies, the quantity was ultimately limited and clearly insufficient to deal with two such massive creatures.

After communicating with Zhang Su over the walkie-talkie, the four glutton-possessed people reached an instant consensus—forget cutting wood and gathering metal, let’s solve the problem of their stomachs first!!

The two fiercely built creatures, whose sizes and physical features vastly exceeded those of their pre-apocalyptic counterparts, were currently fighting an incredibly chaotic battle. When Luo Xun and the others first saw the two massive animals rolling together from a distance, they had assumed the rabbit was merely oversized and didn’t possess much lethality. However, looking closely at the two creatures tangled together, they discovered that not only were the grey rabbit’s two incisors massive, but they were also incredibly sharp! Right now, those two large front teeth were covered in blood—bitten right off the dog’s body during their rolling scuffle! Furthermore, its fur was clearly not the soft, fluffy coat of the pre-apocalyptic days, but was instead incredibly tough and leathery—the kind that even the dog might not be able to bite through!

Yet the dog wasn’t completely useless either. Its skeletal structure and features were clearly different from pre-apocalyptic dogs, and Luo Xun and the others couldn’t even determine its breed for the moment. As it rolled around, the dog realized it couldn’t match the rabbit in pure physical strength. Its eyes flashed, and a blast of purple electrical currents erupted from its body, sending the rabbit into violent tremors from the shock!

Just as Luo Xun and the others were unearthing the metal to set up a trap, the group watched open-eyed as the rabbit, whose whole body had gone numb from the electricity, kicked its legs a few times—and a row of earth spikes suddenly shot up around it!!

“…A giant earth-type monster rabbit fighting a mutated lightning-type dog.” The corners of Luo Xun’s mouth twitched twice as he shot a somewhat awestruck look toward the two superpower users in their team. “Can we… actually beat them?” With a setup straight out of a special effects movie, could their own two guys—who weren’t exactly Ultraman—really win?

Zhang Su’s brow furrowed as well. “The rabbit is manageable, but a lightning-type dog…” He cast a glance at Yan Fei. “This attribute directly counters your husband’s. It’s not going to be easy to deal with.”

“Catching it by surprise is still possible. Worst case scenario, we’ll just scare it away.” Yan Fei looked completely unperturbed, but in reality, both he and Zhang Su felt a sudden urge to test their skills against these two animals. They hadn’t moved an inch for an entire winter; whether it was their superpowers or their combat reflexes, everything required long-term training. Having been lazy for so long, trying their hand at some big game wasn’t a bad idea.

“Alright, let’s give it a shot.” Luo Xun gritted his teeth, unslung his crossbow, and adjusted the angle, ready to react to any situation at a moment’s notice.

“These two animals are too massive. You two make sure to keep your distance from them; we’ll draw their aggro.” As Yan Fei spoke, he spread the metal he extracted from the ground across the terrain. Without little Xinran here, certain traps couldn’t be constructed, but even on his own, he was fully capable of securing the right prey.

The two superpower users quietly crept forward. Hidden behind a building, Luo Xun and Wang Duo raised their crossbows and carefully observed the battle between the two mutated animals near the factory. Truth be told, a fight between two animals capable of using superpowers was highly spectacular, and the commotion was… massive.

After all, the rabbit possessed an earth-type ability, giving it a certain resistance to lightning. Although it would still be paralyzed, it could fiercely retaliate before the dog could find a proper angle to bite it to death.

Finding a concealed corner, Zhang Su began firing wind blades at the dog and the rabbit. The wind blades he unleashed were incredibly cunning; instead of flying in a straight line, they looped in half-circles around the flanks and rears of the two animals.

At first, the two creatures assumed the various large and small wounds opening on their bodies were caused by their opponent’s attacks. However, once they reacted and realized that the dense, unceasing barrage kept striking them even after they stopped moving, they finally understood that other living things were nearby.

A dog’s nose is a highly sensitive organ, and it picked up the scent of humans much faster than the rabbit. The rabbit, however, instantly erected an earth wall to block the incoming wind blades. But those wind blades seemed alive—even though the earth wall blocked a portion of them, the remaining ones actually “curved” right around the wall and continued to chase after it!

The rabbit’s earth wall couldn’t completely enclose it. Even if it could shield itself within the earth to resist for a short while, it couldn’t hide inside the wall forever. Realizing that its superpower was useless against these annoying pests, it decisively spun around and fled!

The dog, on the other hand, seemed to have encountered humans after the apocalypse. After identifying the scent of the group, it hesitated for a fraction of a second before charging directly toward Zhang Su’s position.

The moment it lunged at him, Zhang Su instantly recalled a portion of the wind blades attacking the mutated dog and redirected the power to his own body, boosting his speed to sprint in another direction. Meanwhile, the remaining wind blades tasked with chasing the rabbit continued to harass it relentlessly.

Having been staring intently at the situation, Luo Xun and Wang Duo immediately raised their crossbows and began firing at the dog charging toward Zhang Su. Wang Duo’s aim left a bit to be much desired, but Luo Xun managed to land almost every bolt on the dog’s weakest points—its throat, its eyes, its neck…

Animals that mutated after the apocalypse generally became thick-hided and tough, and this dog was a prime example. Despite bearing places that had been gnawed raw by the rabbit, it remained incredibly resilient and possessed sharp reflexes. Although Luo Xun scored several hits and opened wounds on its neck, the attacks aimed at its eyes were mostly dodged as it sensed them just in time and rapidly whipped its head away.

Nevertheless, this successfully disrupted its attempt to pursue Zhang Su.

Just as the dog’s movements ground to a halt, a massive, thunderous thud suddenly erupted from the other side where the rabbit was being driven by Zhang Su. The sound caused the nearby group to feel the ground beneath their feet shake violently three times.

Luo Xun and Wang Duo were completely filled with doubt—how could a single movement cause such a massive commotion? Meanwhile, Zhang Su and Yan Fei, who had been keeping a close eye on the rabbit, couldn’t help but twitch the corners of their mouths.

How does a rabbit run when fleeing for its life? Wait, run? Run my foot! Don’t rabbits move by hopping! At close distances, they might move with a half-run, half-hop, but once they truly started running for their lives, they would just bolt by leaping wildly, completely uncaring of what was chasing them. If danger loomed, they just hopped.

Thus, facing the threat of Zhang Su’s wind blades, this rabbit adopted the exact same survival method. It leaped at breakneck speed toward the only direction free of wind blades. However, instead of leaping directly into the metal trap Yan Fei had prepared, it head-dived straight into the massive pit that had been left with only a thin layer of topsoil after its metal was “extracted”…

Yan Fei’s reflexes were lightning-fast. The moment the rabbit plunged headfirst into the pit, he manipulated the metal to slam shut around it, cleanly snapping its neck.

Smelling the blood and realizing the rabbit had vanished in an instant, the mutated dog’s reaction speed was terrifyingly swift. It immediately abandoned its pursuit of Zhang Su, completely ignored Luo Xun and Wang Duo who were hiding nearby and taking potshots, and spun around to flee with its tail tucked between its legs without a shred of hesitation. Before the group could even recover from their shock, it had already vanished without a trace…

Luo Xun and the four left on the first day and returned on the third, maintaining a highly rapid round-trip speed. To Xu Mei and the others who had stayed behind at the base, it came as a massive shock—”A rabbit! You guys actually managed to hunt a rabbit!!”

Luo Xun smiled helplessly at them. “Because of this extra addition, we had absolutely no way to bring back that pile of solar panels. We’ll have to wait until next time, and we couldn’t bring back much lumber either.”

“It’s fine, it’s fine! As long as there’s meat to eat!”

“Exactly, it just so happens the meat at home was almost completely gone.”

“How do we cook rabbit meat to make it taste best?”

“And there’s the rabbit fur too, we can make… Uh, why is this rabbit’s fur so coarse? The hide is incredibly thick as well…”

A single rabbit managed to hook out all the gluttonous cravings in everyone’s stomachs. Although rabbit meat wasn’t actually all that flavorful on its own—often taking on the taste of whatever meat it was stewed with rather than possessing the natural richness of livestock like pork, beef, or mutton—it was still vastly superior to having nothing to eat at all!

Skinning, air-drying, hanging, gutting, and butchering. Once the entire rabbit was processed, the meat yielded wasn’t as much as it had appeared on the surface—the rabbit’s thick fur and hide made up a large percentage of its bulk, especially since winter had just ended and it hadn’t shed its winter coat yet. Combined with the fact that rabbits had many bones and consisted mostly of lean meat, and that this rabbit was rather lean after surviving the winter… regardless, aside from leaving a portion behind to give everyone an extra dish tonight, the remaining rabbit meat and offal filled a brand-new freezer to the brim!!

“…How are we cooking it?” A group of people gathered around the freezer, staring longingly at a single rabbit leg that Xu Mei had specially left out. This single foreleg alone was enough to serve as their entire dinner tonight!

“Let’s make spicy diced rabbit,” Luo Xun suggested. “Rabbit meat has more flavor when made spicy… Of course, we can make it milder.” Remembering that little Xinran was still at home and couldn’t handle overly spicy food, he quickly corrected himself.

Xu Mei laughed. “We have so much meat, it’s not like we can only make one dish. How about we make one dish of spicy rabbit, another of braised rabbit, and stir-fry a few more dishes to go with them?”

“Yes, yes, yes! Let’s do it, let’s do it!” A chorus of cheers erupted from the group. They were outside the main base now, so no matter what they wanted to cook, they never had to worry about the delicious aroma drifting over and bringing uninvited guests to their doorstep! Let alone spicy food, even if they ate barbecue feasts and hotpot every single day, they didn’t have to fear being discovered!

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