in the edge

Chapter 503: Survival of the Fittest, Arms Race

In the forest full of charred ashes, a strong leopard was sniffing the blackened tree trunks.

Ordinary animals dared not approach here. The fear left by the fire was so strong that even though the fire had been put out by heavy rain, this area still hadn't regained any vitality.

In other words, if an animal dares to come here, it must not be an ordinary animal.

"It's... crazy."

Sure enough, after sniffing the ground for a while, the leopard spoke.

Yes, he was also one of the people who came in to seize the inheritance of the cave, but he was cautious and did his homework before coming in - the original owner of this cave had used the identity of a fisherman, which meant that the cave as an inheritance was very likely to be one of the baits. In addition, this fisherman had transformed mortals into beasts several times before, so the possible problems in the cave could be basically guessed.

"The most troublesome competitor is probably that Greedy Wolf. He was personally enlightened by the Fisherman and knows the Fisherman too well. So no matter what, he must be eliminated first."

This is what Leopard thought when he first entered the cave, and he was sure that the others who came to fight for the inheritance should think the same way.

After all, this test is extremely beneficial to Greedy Wolf no matter how you look at it. You know, only Greedy Wolf will show people the posture of an animal all day long. In other words, after all the participants are influenced by the rules of the cave and reincarnated as animals, Greedy Wolf will definitely be able to leave his competitors far behind by virtue of his adaptation to the posture of animals.

Of course, this is not necessarily a good thing. For example, if an intruder like him is reborn as a leopard, then as long as he pretends to be a leopard, no one will think there is anything wrong with him - as for other competitors, it is probably the same. As long as they do not take the initiative to reveal their identities, no one will discover them.

But it's different with Greedy Wolf. It's clear that the wolf as a species has problems. If you just kill the wolf when you see it, you can effectively eliminate a competitor with the greatest advantage.

Therefore, the basic strategies of these intruders are basically the same. They first smoothly pass through the development period to ensure combat effectiveness, and when they can fight, they kill all the wolves first, and kill other competitors in the meantime. Finally, they take the entire cave, including the lifelong wisdom of the fisherman, into their pockets.

The idea is good, realistic, and even takes into account all possible situations.

The only thing I didn't take into account was the fire.

"It was deliberately set on fire."

Looking at the two torches scattered beside the dead tree trunk, the leopard's face looked quite ugly.

Deliberately setting fire in the woods is something that no one with normal intelligence would do. After all, such behavior is as stupid as putting oneself into an oven - but such a stupid thing was actually done, and it was done in a grand and earth-shaking manner.

"That monkey...what does he mean?"

Leopard felt a toothache when he thought of the figure who was setting fires wantonly.

With the environment provided by the fisherman and the living example of the star lord Tan Lang, everyone actually already had a clear idea of ​​what to do - but when all the competitors were eating, suddenly a beast jumped out and overturned the table. What did this mean?
"The wolf must die! The monkey must die too!"

At this moment, the leopard had already put the monkey on the kill list.

And he believed that not only him, but all the competitors who came to fight for the inheritance at this moment should have put the monkey on the kill list - just because this kind of behavior of eating and destroying the pot was really too bad. If it weren't for the heavy rain, all those who came to this cave would probably have been burned to death in it.

"You will be punished!"

Thinking this, the leopard began his hunting.

Ordinary animals might be afraid of fire, but he was not. Even if the monkey used fire on him again, he would not hesitate - if there was any problem with this hunting, it was that he did not know which monkey had set the fire.

After all, he was quite far away that day, and the forest was ablaze with flames, so he could only vaguely see the shadow of a monkey through the billowing smoke.

But that's enough, the worst that can happen is to kill all the monkeys.

Anyway, monkeys are weak enough. Even if he is using the body of a leopard, he can still bite through the brains of those monkeys easily...

"...huh?"

The leopard, which had just locked onto a monkey and was about to attack it, choked on the spot.

Theoretically, his teeth are sharp enough to bite through a monkey's skull.

But if the monkey wore a helmet...

"Wait? Why is the monkey wearing a helmet?"

The leopard shook its head vigorously, and for a moment it thought it had seen it wrong.

However, no matter how it looked, the monkeys in the distance were all wearing helmets.

It's not just a helmet, the monkey in the distance is even wearing armor.

The helmet was made of bones, from some beast's skull, and was padded with thick hard leather pads, which provided protection that could not be bitten through by teeth. The hard leather armor was also covered with hard bone plates, which were obviously not decorations but reinforcements at key locations.

In the hands of these monkeys, there are sticks tied with sharp stone flakes. Although the killing range of this simple stone axe is far less than that of a spear, it is just right for monkeys to use - anyway, as long as you can swing your arms, you can use it, and every monkey can use it.

"Don't..."

Leopard was already sweating slightly, as the development of the situation was a little beyond his understanding.

If he were outside, he would only laugh when he saw these monkeys in helmets and armor. And those toy-like weapons, probably only monkeys would play with such things - but now, since he has turned into a leopard, he can no longer laugh when he sees such monkeys.

However, what made him even less able to laugh was yet to come.

Perhaps it was because he was too surprised that he stared for too long, or perhaps it was because the monkeys were too alert. In any case, before he could react, the armored monkeys had already met his eyes.

The moment their eyes met, more than thirty simple stone axes flew directly towards him.

"What a beast!"

The leopard was horrified.

It was at this time that he realized that the number of these armed monkeys was far more than what he had seen!
"run!"

This was the leopard's first reaction.

He could kill one armed monkey easily, and he could fight off three or five armed monkeys with his elusive skills - but more than thirty armed monkeys, even if they just threw stone axes, would be enough to bury him alive. Who could deal with such a situation?
"hateful!"

The leopard gnashed its teeth as it fled in a panic.

If he were outside, let alone monkeys, even three hundred or even three thousand fully armed soldiers would be a piece of cake for him. No matter if it was evil spirit, mental strength, or the power of incense and vows, if he could mobilize even a little bit of strength, he would not end up being chased by monkeys - but that was the problem. God knew what the fisherman had done, and he insisted that everyone could not use any strength and could only fight like beasts.

"Beast..." When he mentioned beast, he couldn't help but think of the dozens of armed monkeys just now. Obviously, this must have been the work of the arsonist dog.

Unlike their competitors who had normally comprehended the wisdom left by the fisherman, that beast seemed to have no sense of its surroundings at all. Apart from overturning the table, what else could that beast do?
"We need to think of a solution..."

However, the solution could not be found in a short time, so the leopard that finally escaped simply changed its hunting target.

If you can't kill the monkey, then you can kill the wolf. The wolf must be eliminated anyway.

Even if we take a step back, wolves can't wear helmets, right?
"……Bar?"

Looking at the wolves wearing helmets in the distance, the leopard thought for a moment that he was hallucinating.

But no matter how many times he looked, those wild wolves still seemed to be wearing helmets. In fact, it was not just helmets, these wolves were wearing hard leather armor - just like the armor on the monkeys, these hard leather armors were also embedded with bone plates in the weak positions that were prone to injury as reinforcement. The most outrageous thing was that this armor did not seem to affect the movements of these wolves.

"How could this be?"

The leopard shook his head vigorously, but he still felt that he must have seen it wrong.

It doesn't make sense. This really doesn't make sense. It's okay for monkeys to wear helmets and armor, but why are wolves starting to wear these things too?
"Fortunately, these wolves don't know how to use throwing axes..."

The leopard forced himself to put on an ugly expression.

Yes, from the perspective of funerals and weddings, these wolves are much weaker than the armed monkeys. Unlike those armed monkeys that can throw flying axes, wolves that can only bite with their teeth are still far behind in terms of attack.

In other words, it's not yet to the point where we can't defeat him.

"Then you deserve to die."

Thinking of this, the leopard jumped out.

He was not an ordinary leopard to begin with, and his several months of development had made him as strong as a tiger. Now that he suddenly rushed out from the shadows, it was naturally impossible for ordinary wild wolves to deal with him - but these wild wolves did not need to deal with him, simply because his fatal bite directly hit the hard leather armor.

The soft and thick texture was impossible to bite or tear, and he almost broke his teeth when he exerted so much force suddenly.

"This beast..."

Biting didn't work, so the leopard simply swung its claws. Its sturdy arms seemed to have the strength of a thousand pounds, and with just one claw it ripped off a wolf's helmet.

The helmet was just blown off, and the wolf didn't even die, because the inside of the helmet was padded with soft leather to absorb impact.

"This beast!"

The leopard became more and more angry.

However, at this moment, the wild wolf not far away suddenly raised its head and howled.

Yes, howling. This behavior made the leopard a little puzzled - when its companion was attacked, it did not come forward to help, nor did it turn around and run away, but stood there howling. What was it doing?
Were the wolves crazy? Did they think they could kill him just by howling?

As expected, beasts are beasts...

"Om-"

Just as the leopard was about to continue its attack, more than thirty simple stone axes buried him alive on the spot.

Dry howling certainly can't solve the problem, but it can call in armed monkeys.

When the leopard realized this, there was no longer a single piece of good skin left on his body.

More than a dozen sharp stone axes had pierced into his flesh. He was losing a lot of blood, so he fell to the ground after only taking two or three steps.

But the monkeys had no intention of getting closer. Instead, they kept throwing stone axes from a distance. Some monkeys even found stone spears and threw them clumsily.

The armed monkeys did not stop until the leopard was nailed to the ground by five stone spears. After picking up the stone weapons on the ground, the armed monkeys carried the leopard's body all the way into the forest.

"Survival of the fittest! What did I say? Survival of the fittest!"

This was Du Chengfeng's comment after seeing the leopard's corpse.

"If he can't even adapt to the stone axe, how can he live? If he doesn't die, who will die?"

After giving a sharp review of the leopard, Du Chengfeng looked at the armed monkeys who were carrying the corpse.

"And the rest of you, could you please be gentler? This is such a nice leopard skin... forget it, just pretend I didn't say anything."

Just by looking at the confused looks in the monkeys' eyes, Du Chengfeng knew that there was no way the other party could understand what he was saying - in fact, as the Monkey King, he could force these monkeys to wear armor and teach them to attack when they heard the wolf howl, which was already the limit of these monkeys.

As for more complex instructions, this is a bit too much for a group of monkeys.

"But it doesn't matter! As long as we kill them all!"

Du Chengfeng is quite open-minded.

"Who cares about our competitors? As long as we kill all the other animals in the forest, we who are left will be the absolute winners!"

"You're not very good."

The coyote on the side couldn't help but speak.

"It's not that your behavior is bad, it's mainly that your method is not good... Yes, you gave those monkeys and wolves leather armor and weapons, and asked those monkeys to help us go out and kill, but have you ever thought that other competitors can also learn this method?"

As it turned out, the coyote's guess was correct, because only three days later, the monkeys armed by Du Chengfeng encountered another group of goats also wearing hard leather armor.

By the fifth day, brown bears in the wild also covered themselves with tree armor. By the seventh day, tigers also put on a layer of hard skin. By the tenth day, even pythons in the forest had learned to walk in their turtle shells.

However, these armored animals had no intention of attacking each other.

Just because their leaders have reached a consensus, they have a common enemy.

(End of this chapter)