Chapter 1103: The Strange "Autumn Hibernation"

Then, a gigantic humanoid creature broke through the earth and crawled up. It still had the appearance of a boar-man. Its most striking feature was the long spike-like bristles going down its back all the way to its buttocks, making it actually look more like a cross between a porcupine and a human.

Its skin was thick and rough, and chapped like a tortoise’s shell. With one glance, one could tell that it had extremely strong defence. The only similarity it had with the old Ramtas was the crystal in between its eyebrows, but the colour was different.

The old Ramtas used the crystal to mobilise the power of nature, so its crystal was light green in colour. Meanwhile, the crystal between this new creature’s eyebrows was a blood red!

When it engaged in close combat, it could use a shield and a bone staff to fight like a shield warrior, but when it carried out long-range attacks, it would lie on the ground so that the bristles on its back would stand up. The sharp bristles were over a meter long and as thick as fingers. They were the colour of blood and had natural barbs!

Using the contraction of its muscles, the creature could shoot the bristles to attack the enemies. The maximum shooting range of the bristles was 150 meters, while the most effective range was between 50 meters to 100 meters. Because the crystal between its eyebrows would constantly make correction to its aim, the accuracy of its attack was quite decent.

“Master.” The boar-man bowed deep in front of Sheyan. “I, the mighty Ramtas, am born again, ready to fight for you.”

Sheyan asked in astonishment, “Do you still have your old memories?”

Ramtas nodded.

“I am Ramtas! The strongest boar-man!”

The “native” humans watched on with dumbfounded expressions. In this era, cultivating a combat creature through genetic technology was not anything unusual, but Sheyan had done it in such an environment using alchemical tools from the 15th and 16th centuries of Old Earth, and he had done it in just a few minutes. This was beyond their comprehension. There was a hint of awe in their eyes when they looked at Sheyan now.

When the contestants introduced themselves to the “native” humans, this was what they said:

“We’re a highly confidential special force of the Empire possessing extraordinary abilities.”

Those natives did not believe them at first because some among them had access to fairly high-level secrets, but after witnessing the ability Sheyan displayed, they had no choice but to believe it.

Instead of seizing the command right, Sheyan insisted on handing it to Hadrick, because the native humans should be more familiar with the habits of the Violent Beasts. A qualified team leader was one who knew to hand certain matters to the professionals.

At Sheyan’s insistence, Hadrick took over command. Strangely enough, he did not bring them directly to the Violent Beasts. Instead, he took a different route, at least a dozen kilometers longer, leading them to higher ground. To be precise, he went back upstream along the river the contestants came down from, but he did not enter the plateau. He took them to a different tributary.

“This tributary of the river will flow down to the territory of the Violent Beasts,” explained Hadrick to the contestants. He continued, “Based on our previous observation, the Violent Beasts have a very unique habit of autumn hibernation. Animals like bears, turtles and snakes will fall into hibernation in winter because of the lack of food and the difficulty in hunting, but why do the Violent Beasts go dormant in the autumn when food is plentiful? We think that there must be a reason behind this.”

When Hadrick reached this part, he could not help grinning.

“The Doctor finally found out the reason. In the autumn, there’s a kind of tree upstream called the curly paulownia that’ll bear fruit. The fruits are somewhat similar to Dandelion flowers; when they ripen, the seeds flutter with the wind. When the seeds of the curly paulownia trees fall into the river, they dissolve, causing subtle changes in the water. When the river flows through the swamp area where the Violent Beasts live, it’ll cause fear among the Violent Beasts. The main reason for that is because even a small amount of curly paulownia seeds in the water is enough to cause a strong allergic reaction in the Violent Beasts, bringing a lot of suffering to the beasts. They’ll feel so itchy that they’ll scratch their skin with their claws until they bleed all over, but of course, it’s not fatal. It’s rather similar to pollen allergy in humans. Therefore, the autumn hibernation of the Violent Beasts is actually for the purpose of avoiding the ripening fruits of the curly paulownia trees that are all over Planet Hunting Ground.”

Sheyan’s eyes lit up after listening to Hadrick’s explanation.

“But it’s now early summer….”

“The difference between humans and beasts lies in the use of tools. When I learned that Raphael had an accident in the swamp, I brought with me a bottle of the curly paulownia seeds I collected last year,” Hadrick proudly said.

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As Hadrick said that, he took out a military tin can box the colour of grass containing the seeds of the curly paulownia. Looking closely, Sheyan found that they looked rather similar to the fruits of paulownia trees on earth.

The fruit of Earth’s paulownia looked like a round ball when it ripened, and when it was pinched open, a small hard core could be found inside surrounded by a large amount of dandelion-like feathery seeds. But the fruit of the curly paulownia was bigger than that of Earth’s paulownia, about the size of a goose egg. The seeds were also much more fluffy. When the wind blew, they would fly everywhere.

Sheyan watched as Hadrick grabbed a few pinches of curly paulownia seeds and sprinkled them onto the water. He found that they would quickly dissolve in the water like sugar or salt. Then, Hadrick carefully kept the rest of the curly paulownia seeds like they were priceless treasures.

Ronnie frowned as he watched the dark river slowly flow into the swamp. He asked dubiously, “Is that really enough? Won’t we need to sprinkle a bit more?”

Hadrick shook his head frantically.

“That’s more than enough! I’ve already put in an extra amount just in case. If I add any more, it might cause the Violent Beasts to panic and force them to relocate. That would be a disaster!”

They waited for half an hour before they moved out again. It was the darkest time before the dawn. They quietly sneaked behind the area of the swamp where the Violent Beasts were residing. They were quite vigilant along the way, but it proved to be unnecessary.

That was because all of the Violent Beasts had run onto the island. Most of them were scratching their skin so hard with their claws that they had started bleeding. A lot of them were also roaring in pain. Forget about keeping watch, they could not even keep their basic reasoning.

Using their high power binoculars, the humans could see that most of the Violent Beasts had soybean-sized rashes on their skin. The rashes were so densely-packed that their skin looked like the skin of a toad. Some Violent Beasts had even started attacking each other in a frenzy, seemingly trying to suppress the body’s uncomfortable allergic reactions with intense physical pain.

“It actually works,” muttered Paul to himself.

Hadrick shrugged and said, “Unfortunately, that’s all I can do. I can only make them suffer; I have no way of killing them.”

“It seems like the curly paulownia seeds have no effect on the Xenomorphs?” Sheyan suddenly asked.

Hadrick nodded. “The Xenomorphs are very powerful creatures, and their genes evolve very quickly, so the seeds are useless against them.”

Sheyan looked at the densely-packed island from afar, then turned to Aldaris and told him, “If you can get close to them and unleash a ‘Spiritual Storm’, that’d be really nice.”

By now, Sheyan had already obtained some useful information from Hadrick about the Violent Beasts and the Xenomorphs. The relationship between the two sides was not a slave-master relationship like they had imagined, but rather a peculiar symbiotic relationship.

On earth, many ants and aphids will choose to coexist symbiotically. Ants like to eat the sweet secretions of aphids. In return, whenever a ladybug tries to feed on the aphids, it will be swarmed by the ants.

Similarly, the Xenomorphs produced a special acidic fluid that was very effective in killing a type of parasite, even if the acidic fluid was diluted by water sources. This type of parasite happened to be quite lethal to the Violent Beasts.

As a result, the average lifespan of Violent Beasts that lived together with Xenomorphs would increase by 50%. This led to a strange phenomenon – the number of Violent Beasts in communities that live with Xenomorphs tended to be much larger than in normal communities.

Based on Sheyan’s calculation, the number of Violent Beasts in a community that coexisted with Xenomorphs was usually more than 1,000. During the conflict last night, Sheyan and the other contestants had killed about two to three hundred Violent Beasts. If they could use this opportunity to kill another two to three hundred Violent Beasts, their following operation would become much easier.

Which was why Sheyan had turned to Aldaris. If Aldaris could unleash a ‘Spiritual Storm’ on the island right now….the result would definitely be amazing. However, Aldaris resolutely refused this unreasonable request, because based on his spellcasting distance, he would risk being attacked by the Xenomorphs under the swamp.

More importantly, the ‘Spiritual Storm’ was a spell that required continuous casting. If he was interrupted in the middle, the spell would not show its greatest power.

After doing a bit of thinking, Sheyan pulled Hadrick to the side for a discussion. Hadrick said because it was nighttime, and the foul-smelling plant juice they used to cover up their smell was very strong, Aldaris could get close to the island without being detected. But that was the best they could do.

Sheyan gave the matter a bit more thought before he pulled Aldaris to the side to tell Aldaris about his idea, emphasizing several key details. Aldaris stared silently at the dark marsh. At last, he nodded reluctantly.