The Reborn Otaku’s Code of Practice for the Apocalypse – CH232

Chapter 232 — The Zoo

“Puppy!” Luo Xun’s voice carried both strictness and worry. When on earth did this guy slip away? And when did it hook up with these two idiot wolves? Does it even know how dangerous it is out here? Last time they ran into zombie dogs, who was the one bitten so badly that it turned tail and ran with its tail between its legs? How could it lose even this tiny bit of vigilance?!

Luo Xun put on the expression of a strict father, but unfortunately, the puppy didn’t feel it at all. Excited and covered in rainwater and mud, it rushed right up to him, eager to give Luo Xun’s face a passionate wash with its big tongue.

Hurriedly pushing the dog’s head away, Luo Xun gritted his teeth at the two massive, muddy paw prints on his chest—this guy just begged for a lesson.

At this moment, the two wolves sat down obediently side-by-side not far away. Their incredibly thick tails kept wagging back and forth, and their bright, massive eyes carried a melancholy look. It stared so intensely that it made the group feel a bit creeped out, and they couldn’t help but lower their voices to mutter among themselves—

“What’s wrong with them?”

“Do they want to play with the puppy?”

“The size difference is so huge, what if they accidentally crush the puppy to death with one step?”

“Could they be hungry? Do they want us to take them in?”

“Stop joking! With that size, could we even afford to take them in? Even if we could expand the tunnel to let them crawl inside, there isn’t a room in the base they could fit into! The basement doesn’t have that much space either.”

Luo Xun’s mouth twitched as he listened to everyone wildly opening their minds. Hearing the words “hungry,” a sudden realization struck him. He looked at the two wolves, then down at the puppy circling around his ankles. Luo Xun raised his head and asked the two wolves, “Did you come looking for us because you couldn’t find anything to eat these past few days?”

The two wolves tilted their heads—one to the left, one to the right—and their pointed ears twitched. But quite obviously—there was a language barrier. They didn’t understand a single thing Luo Xun was saying…

Luo Xun helplessly covered his face. He swore his brain must have been infected by the puppy’s stupidity just now to ask two wolves that kind of question. A language barrier was truly a nightmare; the puppy was like this early on, their baby Baozi was like this later, and now these two wolves were like this too… Wait, what did this have to do with Baozi, who hadn’t even learned human language yet?

The group huddled together to discuss it, and then they decided—they would try to make contact with these two wolves. If they truly needed food, it wouldn’t hurt to help them out. After all, they were neighbors; they saw each other all the time, and everyone was already so familiar… Wait, something felt slightly off about that?

Luo Xun took a few steps forward, walking right up to the two wolves. Several superpower users carefully followed beside him, maintaining high vigilance in case the two wolves suddenly turned violent and attacked.

However, the two wolves seemed even more cautious and prudent than Luo Xun’s group. Seeing these humans approach, they immediately stood up and alertly took a few steps back.

Luo Xun thought about it, then pointed toward the direction of the ponds. The group slowly walked along the road toward the ponds while keeping a fraction of their attention on the two wolves. Sure enough, once they had covered about half the distance, the two wolves stood up and, keeping their footsteps as light as possible, trailed behind them.

Facts proved that when superpower users used clever tactics to hunt, the results were vastly superior to two silly wolves whose intelligence was visibly concerning. In any case, ever since Luo Xun and the team first encountered these two wolves, aside from that one time the pair drove a flock of flightless, non-elemental mutated ducks and geese and successfully caught a few, almost every single time, they relied on the strength of this team to help them secure prey!

And once Luo Xun and the team made a move—with the water attribute and metal attribute leading the main assault, supplemented by the efficient coordination of the rest—they handily sorted out five large waterfowl in no time.

After the waterfowl were brought down, Luo Xun and the team didn’t hand them over to the two wolves right away. Instead, they directly gouged out the crystals and scalded away the fine, soft down from their bodies before giving them to the two creatures.

Although the wolves clearly looked a bit eager to pounce upon seeing the prey, they seemed to understand that these targets were brought down with the help of Luo Xun and the team. Consequently, they didn’t directly rush forward to snatch them away, instead sitting anxiously to the side to wait. Seeing Luo Xun and the team toss the food over, each clamped their jaws around one bird, gave their tails a wag toward Luo Xun’s group, and dragged them beneath the massive tree they used as a resting spot. Then, they eagerly trotted right back to cart away the remaining ones.

Staring at those two towering figures, Wang Duo looked a bit envious. “Should we… just take them in for good?”

Before Luo Xun could even formulate a reply, Zhang Su shot him a sideways glance. “With an appetite that massive, can you afford to raise them? Where does our home have that much meat to feed them? Once winter hits and they run out of food, if they feed on you, you won’t even be enough to plug the gaps between their teeth.”

And wasn’t that exactly the case? Forget about after the apocalypse; how much food did a large-breed dog consume even before the apocalypse? Wang Duo actually recalled a neighbor back in his hometown before the world ended who raised a Golden Retriever. Every single day, just buying steamed buns required getting massive sack after massive sack for the dog, and one sack only lasted a single day. And that was with the family disdaining alternative foods as too expensive. Forget about meat or vegetables; how much dog kibble would disappear in a single meal?

Currently, it was after the apocalypse. Even if the physical bulk of mutated animals had ballooned, it still couldn’t sustain two mutated wolves standing roughly three meters tall eating and drinking every single day!

To the side, Xu Mei caught the comment and turned to smile at Wang Duo. “Don’t look at them right now as if they have no way to hunt and nothing to eat. If we hadn’t happened to be out here this time, they would have gone hungry for two days at most before definitely securing food.” Saying this, she pointed toward the two wolves. “We’ve encountered them a few times. Aside from these newly arrived waterfowl that carry inherent elements, which alternative animals did they actively drive over previously that weren’t ordinary mutated animals? It seems they aren’t completely stupid; at least they know they can’t beat the elemental ones, so they can go look for the non-elemental ones.”

“That’s true.” Luo Xun also snapped out of it, looking thoughtfully toward the two wolves currently gorging on bird meat by the pond. “Out of these two wolves, we’ve only seen one utilize the earth attribute so far, while the other has never used a superpower. Perhaps that alternative one possesses some method to discern whether a target creature has an element.” And wasn’t that exactly the case? Before these migratory mutated waterfowl flew in, these two wolves had just driven over a flock of non-elemental ducks and geese. There was a high probability they truly wanted to hoard those domestic fowl near this sector as reserve rations, but it was just a pity a flock of migratory outsiders had flown in, and they unluckily happened to be the kind the wolves couldn’t afford to provoke.

Under these dynamics, helping them out occasionally was fine, but hunting for them over a prolonged duration was an absolute impossibility. Putting alternative issues aside, if all these chores of finding rations were carried out with the assistance of Luo Xun and the team, over time, these two wolves would likely lose even their basic instincts to survive on their own.

If they only possessed the physical size of the puppy, Luo Xun and the team wouldn’t mind adding two new members to the household. Regrettably, their bulk was far too massive; raising them was completely unrealistic.

Currently, among the waterfowl acting arrogant across the ponds were those original geese and ducks driven over by the two wolves. It was just a pity they were mixed into the larger flock of waterfowl, so even if the two wolves wanted to provoke them, they couldn’t get close. It was likely due to this that they turned their attention toward Luo Xun and his team.

After a busy day out harvesting crystals—and casually helping their “neighbors” hunt along the way—the Otaku Team returned to the base right as the sky turned dark, their vehicles packed to the absolute brim. After stashing the crystals into a corner of a room dedicated exclusively to storage, the group rested for the night. Exploiting the fact that the standing water outside hadn’t been baked dry yet, they rolled right back out the next morning to continue sifting for crystals across the mutated farmland.

Luo Xun figured that even after this rainwater dried completely, they could completely have Song Lingling artificially manifest water to flood the mutated farmland and continue tinkering this way. It was just that doing so would be highly grueling for Song Lingling. Since they had currently discovered a pristine method, they had to seize the time before the floodwaters evaporated to completely screen these fields for a round; otherwise, once the water dried and the crystals sank deep into the mire, it would likely be even harder to pry them out.

Over the next two days, once they mastered the fine maneuvers, Luo Xun and the team accelerated their pace to rapidly complete a sweeping screen across the surrounding mutated fields. What left everyone feeling a mix of excitement and total speechlessness was—the density of mutated animals in the perimeter had skyrocketed once more.

Following the conclusion of the last heavy rainstorm, the surrounding “ponds” had become intensely lively again. Aside from an additional stream of migratory waterfowl flying down to treat this sector as a resting station, a great number of terrestrial mutated animals looking for a drink had also arrived along the way.

What left Luo Xun and the team even more speechless was—high in the atmosphere, a powerful silhouette was circling and soaring directly above the ponds. Visibly, it was an eagle!

Luo Xun couldn’t verify whether this eagle was the exact same one nesting on the concrete high-rise they had visited previously, but currently, this raptor had clearly claimed this perimeter as its personal hunting ground. Over the past two days, the group out harvesting crystals had already witnessed the hunting scene twice—the eagle would dive down to startle the birds across the ponds, pursue them into mid-air, clamp its talons directly around one specimen, and calmly soar off into the distance.

This image left the team—who had never truly interacted with raw nature before the apocalypse—along with the two wolves whose very rations relied on human assistance to capture, completely open-mouthed with astonishment.

This was a total cheat code! That hunting scene was so majestic that it left Luo Xun and the team staring wide-eyed. At the exact moment the eagle snared its prey, those with exceptional eyesight like Luo Xun personally caught a flash of lightning crackling across its talons. Visibly, this eagle possessed the lightning attribute. Snaring its prey while simultaneously shocking them unconscious could both minimize the target’s resistance and keep the meat completely fresh. Waiting until it returned to the nest to directly dispatch and consume it—talk about saving a ton of worry and effort, right?

By the time Luo Xun and the team finally finished working overtime to complete a sweeping screen across the surrounding grounds and returned home, they stood by the third-floor windows, listening to the distant and near cries of the various mutated animals echoing through the wild, their hearts twitching slightly along with a wave of boundless sentiment.

“Tell me, when do you think they’ll leave?” He Qiankun asked Wu Xin beside him in a low voice.

“No idea. The feng shui of our coordinate is so excellent; what if they just settle down here permanently?” Wu Xin gave a slight shudder, casting a trace of worried eyes out the window. He still remembered that on their drive back today, a mutated cat boasting three distinct tails had suddenly darted onto the asphalt, raising its claws to slash directly at their truck. Fortunately, Zhang Su’s elemental reaction was incredibly instantaneous and deployed a shield to block it, and right at that moment, an alternative mutated animal had charged over from the perimeter, causing the two predators to completely ignore the convoy as they locked into a rolling brawl with one another.

With the volume of creatures coming for a drink rising, if they ventured out too frequently, running into bad-tempered mutated predators was bound to happen. Thank goodness, thank goodness, their base was already completely and thoroughly constructed.

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