The Ultimate Evolution

The horrible lightning storm certainly left a deep impression on the two Predators. One of the Predators failed to escape the plant roots summoned by Dardanian in time and had to take the full power of the ‘Spiritual Storm’. He died after sustaining heavy injuries. The other beat a hasty retreat. Ever since then, the contestants did not sense anyone else following after them.

The team was able to bypass the territories of some of the stronger creatures along the way thanks to the regional map drawn by the spaceship. Those that they could not circumvent, they sneaked past by covering their smell. In that way, before sunset, they reached the territory of the Buffalo Criminals, a mountain range named the K2 Mountains.

The karst topography of the K2 Mountains was very similar to that in Guilin, China. Although the peaks were not high, they were steep, and the climate was relatively dry with the absence of fog. The vegetation here was not that lush.

This kind of terrain had greatly accelerated the progress of the team. Furthermore, when they reached the mountain range, they found that their Pi detectors had changed from light green to dark green, and were also heating up a little. This was a good sign. It showed that the concentration of Pi element in this area was higher than in other places. Of course, it meant that the probability of extremely rich veins existing here was greater.

After bypassing a huge rocky hill that was almost cylindrical, the team abruptly saw a strange sight in front of them. The place was supposed to be made up of a random scattering of large stones, but it had now completely turned into a white wasteland. The large slabs of stones had all turned into grayish-white powder and pebbles, with the largest piece no bigger than a fist. The plants had all been mercilessly trampled on.

This scene was reminiscent of the highway construction sites on Old Earth, where a large amount of uniform gravel was used to pave the roadbed….but that was done using specialised large gravel crushers. On this planet, who would do this kind of heavy manual labour? The Buffalo Criminals, of course.

To be able to find trails of their targets so soon after entering the K2 Mountains was truly fortunate, as time was tight for the team.

Ronnie sneaked onto the clearing like a ghost. He felt the stone powder with his hand, then came back and reported, “Although the climate here’s somewhat dry, today’s not a sunny day, and the stone powder here is still quite dry. This shows that the Buffalo Criminals have been digging here today, or the stone powder would be wet from the dew. We should be able to catch up to those guys if we follow their trail.”

***

Sheyan naturally trusted Ronnie’s judgement. After less than half an hour of tracking, they heard strange grunts and shouts coming from ahead, most of which were in single syllables. When two syllables were uttered together, they would usually be accompanied by the sounds of fighting and wailing.

The team sneaked close and saw a stretch of rocky shore in front of them. During the rainy season, the mountains must be bursting with water. The water rushed down the mountains, carrying large rocks and other objects in it, and turned into a wide river. When the dry season came, the river shrank to one fifth of its peak size, and this strange topography was formed.

There was a group of Buffalo Criminals working hard among the giant rocks. The pickaxes they waved were similar to those used by the humans, except the handle and the head looked much thicker; they must have been specifically reinforced. When the Buffalo Criminals raised their pickaxe high, they would release their biological power through the aneurysm on their shoulder onto their pickaxe, making it vibrate violently in high-frequency. Therefore, the pickaxe only needed to be embedded into the rock, and the violent vibration would break the rock.

With every wave of the pickaxe, a stone would burst into small pieces. Occasionally, the red nose of the Buffalo Criminals would twitch, after which they would pick up a small black crystal within the stone pieces and throw it into their mouth. That should be the Kurut mineral they needed.

But these guys seemed to carry a mission. When they dug out a piece of Kurut mineral, they would eat some of it, then hide the other part in the sack around their waist. There seemed to be signs of oppression in this race too.

Sheyan and his teammates exchanged glances. Right now, time was precious for them, so of course they would not prove their well intentions by showering the Buffalo Criminals with gifts and food in order to slowly improve the relationship between the two sides. They would just rush up, grab a few of the creatures, and interrogate them with force.

However, as soon as they showed themselves from afar, the Buffalo Criminals turned out to be even more excited than they were. The monsters raised their pickaxes as they howled and rushed towards the contestants, saliva dripping crazily from their mouths.

Sheyan was initially afraid that these monsters would run away and disperse so fast that they would not manage to catch a single one alive. He did not expect them to be so eager for a fight. He felt a sudden sense of danger and urged everyone to be careful.

Right after the initial clash, Sheyan and the others immediately understood why these monsters had the “honour” of being selected by the Predators to become game.

The Buffalo Criminals were actually rather strong in group fights!

The threat posed by a common Buffalo Criminal alone was not high, because it mainly used close-range attacks. Besides the the steel pickaxe it used for mining, it would also attack with anything it could grab – usually rocks, sticks and so on.

But when the number of these short creatures rose to three or more, one must be careful. Their excitement would cause certain glands under their armpits to emit a horrible odour. Not only would the odour assault the enemy’s sense of smell, they also acted as stimulants, enhancing the combat prowess of their peers.

The attack power/defence/movement speed/attack speed of the Buffalo Criminals would increase after sniffing the odour discharged by different companions. There was, of course, a limit to the increase, which was about 40% for a common Buffalo Criminal.

Another important thing to note was that the moment of killing a Buffalo Criminal was the moment one had to be the most careful during the whole fight, because the aneurysm on the creature’s right shoulder would explode as its life expired. The explosion would cause a great amount of instantaneous damage, in addition to continuous damage for the next ten seconds.

Sheyan suffered greatly after rushing into the midst of the Buffalo Criminals. The enemies increased their speed in an instant. Giant pickaxes imbued with biological power bashed into his body, completely ignoring his Defence. After taking a few hits, the unbearable pain forced Sheyan to concentrate on avoiding the blows.

He dearly missed Reef’s ‘Cardiac Shattering Roar’ right now.

To make matters worse, these Buffalo Criminals had no morals to speak of. They’d stamp on your toes, spit on you, throw stones, fling their snot, throw dirt at your eyes, stab your ass….in short, they’d do all sorts of shameless, underhanded, disgusting things when they fought. When Sheyan rushed into their midst, he originally expected to fight heroically against overwhelming numbers like a brave Spartan warrior, but who would have thought that he would end up being buried in dung instead!

Fortunately, Sheyan realised that something was wrong very early on, so immediately threw a curse-mix to the ground. The resulting shockwave stunned a whole circle of the Buffalo Criminals and a dark green curse cloud rose. The curse cloud actually smelled pretty bad, but it was now a salvation for Sheyan – at least now his nose would not be assaulted by the terrible stench of those monsters.

Sheyan and Ronnie became marginal characters in this battle. They were only able to display 70% of their full capabilities in the midst of the terrible stench. On the other hand, the elemental creatures who did not have a sense of smell made great contributions. Paul’s Iron Golem, Dardanian’s Ent and Pokan’s Rock Elemental, which he could now use as a conventional weapon as the cost to summon it had dropped dramatically after Pokan had combined with Stone Blader Raijo, showed their might in this fight.

Sheyan hung on with much difficulty at the front, trying to absorb as much damage as he could. The three elemental creatures, being the main force, went on a rampage inside the Buffalo Criminal crowd. The mage-type contestants also launched basic long-range attacks from the periphery. It did not take long for them to deal with this group of eight Buffalo Criminals.

They killed six of the creatures, leaving only two alive. The living creatures were naturally tightly bound and taken captive. The contestants wished to get as far away from this smelly battlefield as possible, but Cyborg No. 1 told them that the Buffalo Criminals had something very valuable on them, namely the glands under their armpits. The glands could be sold for a very high price and also occupied little space.

Profit was naturally the most important thing in this mission. Sheyan would, of course, readily follow the good advice of Cyborg No. 1, but he could not help asking what use the smelly stuff had. Cyborg No. 1’s reply left him speechless – it was actually used to make a type of very expensive perfume!

Only Dardanian seemed like he expected this answer. He seemed to have some knowledge in this field. He told the others that the human sense of smell was a wonderful thing; fragrance and odour was only separated by a fine line.

Take musk, a common material in perfumes, for example; a fresh musk would smell like sulfur after a while. Ambergris is a waxy substance that originates as a secretion in the intestines of sperm whales, commonly used in perfume manufacture. Considering its origin, one can imagine how terrible freshly-produced ambergris smells. Civet coffee, more expensive than its weight in gold, is collected from the excrement of civets, and yet it is always in high demand….