Volume 16 Tower of Babel Chapter 868 Bloody Game
The hem of this young man's clothes, trousers and boots were all splattered with mud. The dark brown stains were particularly conspicuous on the pure white fabric. In addition, the number "No. 32" was printed in the language of the Nest City civilization on his right chest, the outside of both upper arms and the trouser legs.
Although Ke Lan could not see his back from this angle, the image unlocked by the memory fragments could generate a 360-degree image in Ke Lan's mind - on the back of this young man, there was also a huge "Number 32" printed on it.
The wrist holding the hunting knife was trembling slightly. There was still undried blood on the blade. Judging from the color and viscosity of the blood, it did not seem to be human blood.
"Is he a hunter participating in the hunt?" Ke Lan thought to himself, "But he looks a little embarrassed..."
In Ke Lan's impression, the nobles who participated in hunting were basically riding tall horses, wearing expensive and sophisticated windbreakers or hunting suits, holding bows and arrows or hunting rifles in their hands, chasing the running prey in the woods, and surrounded by a large group of servants...
Speaking of which, people with insufficient authority should not be able to enter the upper city, right? Then where do the servants and servants that these dignitaries usually need come from? Are they robots or armed personnel with authority level 4?
Or... servants are just "items" owned by the powerful, not "people", so they are not counted in the hierarchy system of the hive residents?
The young man in front of Ke Lan did not give her the feeling of a level three high-ranking resident. She could not sense the temperament of a superior from him at all... Ke Lan even caught a glimpse of fear in the eyes of this young man.
Could it be that something unexpected happened during the hunting activity?
As for the number on him… could this be a “hunting competition”?
At this moment, the young man seemed to sense something. He immediately left the tree trunk he was leaning against, lay on the ground, and swept the fallen leaves next to him onto his body, creating a simple but extremely effective camouflage.
Although it is an artificial forest, the environment inside the forest is extremely complex. The bumpy ground is covered with a large amount of fallen leaves and humus. The young man happened to be lying in a shallow pit at a low level. He blended into the surrounding environment almost in the blink of an eye. At first glance, it is impossible to tell that there is a living person hiding in this place.
"This guy's camouflage skills are very proficient... He must be a veteran who is proficient in hunting..." Ke Lan commented in his heart.
But when a beast resembling a cat appeared in the picture, Ke Lan knew that this guy's disguise was completely useless.
The beast tracked the man by sniffing the remaining scent on the ground. Even if the young man buried himself in the ground and lay motionless, temporarily blocking his heartbeat and breathing, he could not escape the beast's tracking.
This is a giant cat with brown and yellow hair all over its body. Its appearance is very similar to the saber-toothed tiger that has long been extinct on Earth. However, compared to the African giant saber-toothed tiger with a shoulder height of one meter and a body length of three to four meters, the giant beast in front of it is more exaggerated. Its shoulder height is more than two meters and its body length is close to ten meters. Its iconic fangs are like two long swords that can easily pierce a human chest - it can even string two or three people on it like a string of candied haws without any pressure.
Ke Lan didn't know the strength of the giant beast, but just based on its weight of several tons, one could imagine its lethality when it pounced... If the young man had only a hunting knife in his hand, he would never be a match for this giant beast.
The young man seemed to realize that his camouflage was ineffective against the giant beast. Before the beast could get close to him, he suddenly jumped up and landed on a tree branch that was five meters above the ground!
This scene immediately made Ke Lan feel a little outrageous - unless the gravity of this forest was set to only a fraction of the normal environment (referring to the gravity coefficient of Alpha and the Earth), otherwise, this person must be at least a level seven enhanced person.
There were no signs of modification on his body, and apart from the muscle lines on his legs showing through the fabric of his pants, there was no outline of any mechanical device... In other words, this man jumped onto the five-meter-high branch entirely by relying on his own physical strength.
"Are the bodies of the residents of the Hive City so strong? In contrast, the physical abilities of the 'tunnel dwellers' in Channel 4 have actually degenerated?" Ke Lan frowned. "Or... because this young man is from the third-level aristocratic class, he can enjoy treatment that ordinary people don't have... For example, enhancement surgery?"
The moment the man jumped up, the giant beast also pounced over, but its pounce height was not high, and its speed was not as fast as that of the young man, so it just passed through the jumping young man and missed.
But the missed attack did not mean that the giant beast had no way to deal with the young man - the next second, the giant beast suddenly rose up, and the branch that was originally above its head suddenly reached its chest.
It opened its bloody mouth and bit towards the young man squatting on the tree branch. With a loud "crack" sound, the branch, which was as thick as an adult's thigh, was bitten off in an instant. At this critical moment, the young man jumped up from the tree branch again and jumped above the head of the giant beast.
A fierce look flashed in the young man's eyes. He gripped the hunting knife tightly with both hands and stabbed straight down!
Under the dual effects of arm strength and falling inertia, the blade of the hunting knife penetrated the back of the beast's neck unhindered, and then quickly cut downwards along one side of the spine!
The sticky and hot blood plasma spurted out crazily . Although it was only a fragment of memory, Ke Lan seemed to smell the strong smell of blood. The young man's originally white clothes were dyed dark red in just one second.
He rolled on the giant beast's back and fell back to the ground. The giant beast, whose spinal central nervous system was severely damaged, had no way of fighting back and fell straight to the ground.
It was not dead yet, but its body had lost control and it could only lie on the ground, twitching and struggling in vain.
The young man was breathing heavily, his chest heaving violently - he did not try to kill the giant beast immediately, but looked around vigilantly, as if he was worried that there were other beasts lurking nearby waiting to reap the benefits.
"Precise timing control... The position and angle of the blade's insertion are also impeccable..." The layman watches the excitement, the expert watches the doorway - although Ke Lan has never participated in this kind of hunting activities, but with his high-level enhanced human abilities and rich combat experience, he can clearly see that this young man has very high combat skills, and... he is very familiar with the body structure of this giant beast.
"This is weird..." Ke Lan muttered in a voice that only he could hear. "If he was familiar with this beast, he should know that the beast mainly relies on its sense of smell to search for its target. Then why did he find a pit to hide in? Isn't this disguise useless? ... Could it be... Could it be to avoid other beasts?"
Just as Ke Lan was puzzled, the forest ground in the memory fragment suddenly shook slightly, as if there was a huge monster with a much larger tonnage than the mutant saber-toothed tiger running at high speed in the forest. At the same time, the fear and tension in the young man's eyes reappeared, and were much stronger than before.
"Pause." Resisting the curiosity to continue watching, Ke Lan seemed to have thought of some details that he had not noticed just now. He paused the playing picture and pulled the "progress bar" back a bit.
Different from the "déjà vu", memory fragments are like videos stored in Ke Lan's brain. As long as he wants, he can pause, replay, and repeat them.
The scene went back to the time when the young man buried himself with fallen leaves. His whole body was pressed against the bottom of the pit, with only a pair of eyes showing through the gaps between the fallen leaves. Ke Lan noticed that when the young man realized that it was the giant saber-toothed tiger chasing him instead of something else, the tension in his eyes obviously subsided a lot.
"Fast forward five seconds."
The scene returned to the moment when the giant saber-toothed tiger bit off the tree branch and the young man jumped up to launch an attack. At this moment, there was only determination in the young man's eyes, and there was no trace of the nervous and fearful look he had before.
But when the footage showed the ground starting to shake, the tension and fear came back.
"Could this vibration be caused by some kind of beast that is more terrifying than the giant saber-toothed tiger?" Ke Lan thought to himself, "This young man can easily hunt down a giant saber-toothed tiger, but in front of this beast, he has no power to resist at all... So what he was avoiding before... was not actually the giant saber-toothed tiger, but this beast?"
Perhaps this giant beast relies entirely on its eyesight to search for prey, which would explain its earlier behavior of hiding in the pit and burying itself in fallen leaves.
"continue."
Perhaps because the half-dead giant saber-toothed tiger on the ground was too conspicuous, this time the young man did not disguise himself again. Instead, he quickly chose a direction and ran away.
But before he could run a few steps, an arrow shot out from the woods, accurately piercing his calf and nailing him to the ground.
The arrow arrived first, and then the crackling sound of the bowstring came from the woods.
The slight vibration came from far away and got closer. It was not until Ke Lan saw the source of the vibration with his own eyes that he understood why the young man who could hunt a giant saber-toothed tiger alone would feel so fearful.
They were three young men of about the same age as him, but they were not wearing the kind of white clothes with numbers printed on them, but a set of high-end hunting clothes that were obviously worth a lot of money. They held hunting crossbows with complex mechanical structures, the quivers on their waists were full of arrows, they wore top hats with beautiful feathers, and behind them were retro hunting rifles with golden hollow decorative patterns - compared to the young man in white clothes and pants holding a hunting knife, the outfits of these three people were more in line with Ke Lan's cognition of "the children of the rich and powerful who participate in hunting activities".
But what attracted Ke Lan's attention the most was the mounts of the three people - it was a three-meter-tall horse... To be precise, it was a mechanical vehicle made in the shape of a horse, with a streamlined muscular torso made entirely of alloy. On the inside of the knee, one could see a nested hydraulic rod and a composite bearing used to reduce friction...
According to Ke Lan's estimation, such a mechanical horse might weigh three times as much as the giant saber-toothed tiger. If it were to run at full speed through the forest, it would not be surprising that the ground would vibrate to this extent.
On the hip of each mechanical horse, there is an emblem of a thorn gear shield, so the identities of the three young men riding the mechanical horses are naturally obvious - they are the descendants of the big family that rules the western half of the upper city of the hive city.
"Good harvest." The youngest of the three people controlled the mechanical horse and walked to the front of the young man who was shot down. "This guy is number 32, the guy who ranked first in the points in the Bottom Nest Qualifiers. Add the points of this gamma-level mutant, and our top three positions in this group should be secure."
"What's the point of being in the top three? I just want to be the first." The leading young man said sullenly, while loading an arrow into the hunting crossbow - Ke Lan noticed that most of the mechanical parts of this hunting crossbow, as well as the arrows, were all made of Nino alloy, and as for the bowstring, it was made of a polymer material with excellent ductility.
With the technical level of the Hive City, they can even make weapons like gravity guns. Hunting crossbows like these, which are exquisite in structure but seem a bit primitive, may have been made simply to satisfy the interests of the rich and powerful...
Even so, Ke Lan would not underestimate this seemingly simple hunting crossbow - the arrow just now , before hitting "No. 32", first pierced through two tree trunks with a diameter of several meters, and then hit the target at supersonic speed... Not to mention how he aimed at the target with his vision blocked, the penetrating power of the arrow alone was enough to defeat most of the individual firearms on the Ark.
"What a pity! Most of the selected bottom nesters have already been hunted down... Only this 'No. 32' has a good enough camouflage ability to hide until now... If it weren't for the rule that we can't attack other participants, I would have wanted to shoot those guys in the head."
It was not until this time that Ke Lan realized that the "No. 32" in white clothes and white pants was not the hunter in this hunting activity, but a prey like the saber-toothed tiger.
