Chapter 91: Mutated Rats
Byeol looked incredibly excited.
The white blur of his body moved as fast as lightning.
A single cat chased several giant rats all over the garden as they scrambled desperately in every direction.
Joo Joowon stared with his mouth hanging open.
Was this what people meant by bloodline suppression?
Those rats were so fat that they were almost the size of three or four month old kittens.
Yet they were still being chased all over the place by Byeol.
Of course, rats in the hot environment had always been notoriously large.
However, these rats had clearly grown to an abnormal size.
At the same time, they did not really resemble zombies either.
Zombies certainly did not possess this much energy and vitality.
When Joo Joowon went out to kill zombies the following day, he had already noticed that their bodies had begun to rot.
The corpse spots and foul smell that appeared after human death were all present on zombies as well.
Their physical condition deteriorated further with every passing day.
The rats in front of him, however, were plump, healthy, and covered in soft fur.
They looked energetic and lively.
There was not the slightest trace of the lifeless aura that surrounded zombies.
Mutated beasts?
Could their meat be eaten?
Would eating them increase attributes?
One question after another surfaced in Joo Joowon’s mind.
Looking at the excited Byeol, he hesitated over whether he should join the battle himself.
After all, cats were creatures with notoriously terrible personalities.
Playing with prey was part of their instincts.
Meanwhile, Joo Joowon had come outside to gain levels.
He had no interest in wasting too much time.
"Byeol, stop playing around! Finish it quickly!"
Joo Joowon called out as a warning.
He had already decided that if necessary, he would personally step in and handle things himself.
In truth, he did not expect Byeol to understand a single word he was saying.
Unexpectedly, the moment his sentence ended, Byeol’s speed suddenly doubled.
The little cat leapt into the air and landed directly in front of one of the fleeing rats.
The fat gray rats were so frightened that they nearly jumped into the air themselves.
Their frantic squeaking was filled with obvious panic as they slammed on the brakes and immediately tried to flee in the opposite direction.
Unfortunately, although the leading rat managed to stop in time, the rats behind it were not nearly so lucky.
The largest gray rat watched in despair as one subordinate after another slammed directly into its back.
Joo Joowon could swear that he had just witnessed an expression of pure useless fools ruining everything appear vividly on the face of a rat.
The leader was sent tumbling backward by the impact.
Byeol immediately jumped aside to avoid being caught beneath the pileup, his fluffy tail swishing back and forth in amusement.
Unexpectedly, the leading gray rat turned out to be surprisingly clever.
Realizing that there was no way to avoid being knocked over, it simply chose to take advantage of the momentum and rolled backward along with its subordinates.
Together, they tumbled across the ground toward the old tree.
Seeing this, Byeol immediately chased after them.
The leading rat instantly began rolling even faster.
Cats simply could not resist moving balls.
"Meow!"
The moment that cat cry echoed out, the leading gray rat’s survival instincts exploded.
Its rolling speed immediately doubled.
A second later, a loud crash echoed through the garden as the giant gray meatball slammed directly into the old tree.
Joo Joowon: "..."
This dramatic turn of events was absolutely not something he had expected.
What shocked him even more was what happened next.
The old tree, which had appeared ancient, sturdy, and imposing only moments earlier, suddenly collapsed with a thunderous roar, sending clouds of dust flying into the air.
A white blur shot out from within the dust cloud.
Byeol stood there with his fur completely puffed up, staring at the scene before him.
His tiny little brain simply could not understand what had happened.
He had only been chasing rats.
Why had the tree suddenly fallen down?
At the same time, a series of system notifications suddenly rang out beside Joo Joowon’s ears.
...
[ Ding! ]
[ Your pet has killed a Level 2 Mutated Rat!
[ EXP +2 ]
[ Ding! ]
[ Your pet has killed a Level 1 Mutated Rat! ]
[ EXP +1 ]
...
Looking at the flood of system notifications, Joo Joowon blinked in surprise.
He had not expected the kills to be credited to him at all.
After all, he had not contributed even the slightest bit of effort.
Yet in the eyes of the system, Byeol apparently was not considered an independent entity.
Instead, the cat seemed to be treated as part of Joo Joowon’s own combat ability.
One Level 2 Mutated Rat and four Level 1 Mutated Rats had given Joo Joowon a total of six experience points.
He had expected the rats to die eventually.
What he had not expected was for them to die in such a ridiculous and dramatic fashion.
They had actually been crushed to death by a tree!
If the old tree had already been hollow on the inside, then even if it had collapsed, it should not have been heavy enough to kill the rats.
On the other hand, if the tree had still been solid, then how could it have snapped so easily in the first place?
Only after the dust on the ground gradually settled did Joo Joowon climb down from the wall.
If the plants in the courtyard had really been dangerous, there was no way Byeol and the rats could have been running around in there for so long without anything happening.
After landing on the ground, Joo Joowon reached out and brushed the dust off Byeol’s white fur.
Only then did he finally see how the old tree had actually broken.
Strictly speaking, the rats had brought this upon themselves.
The roots of the old tree were covered in gnaw marks.
The damage was so severe that it would not have been an exaggeration to say that even a strong gust of wind could have blown the tree over.
However, compared to that, what truly made his skin crawl were the corpses piled beneath the roots of the tree.