The northern offense did not stop. Instead, more investors poured money into it. A large number of veteran superhumans were mobilized from the other battlelines around Dragon City to provide reinforcements. The Supernatural Tower and universities brought out their cultivation resources, which they had accumulated over decades, as rewards.
The spirit energy and runic symbol technology research centers, monster research centers, and zombie research centers also brought out all sorts of high-tech which had yet to be tested. It soon began to look that the battle would be the deciding factor whether Dragon City would prosper or fall.
However, the murderous humans noticed an even more troublesome matter after they rushed into Shattered Starlake, which was ravaged by a storm and a flood.
The monsters were evolving.
In the past, the monsters faced interference from spirit energy, and their genes were not stable. The speed at which they evolved was one hundred times faster than that of the creatures on Earth.
Now, the speed at which they evolved was ten times faster than even that.
It was as if the gears controlling their evolution were broken, and they broke through the limit that kept their evolution in check. Animals, plants, fungus, bacteria, and viruses started evolving at unbelievable speeds.
In the beginning, their evolution was limited to their organs.
The venomous spikes from the Ghost-arrow Pigs became longer and sharper, and they could be fired farther. Before, they could be blocked with anti-explosion shields, but now, the spikes would drive themselves half an inch into alloyed armor. And if one hit the human body, it pierced right through it. There was no trouble for the spike to go through a skull.
The Hundred-eyed Toads could jump higher and excrete even more acid. The corrosive properties of their acid became stronger, and it became even easier for them to use it. They could now form acid fog that would permeate through everything while they were a few meters in the air.
Even if the humans managed to avoid the acid, it was far too easy for them to get in contact with the acid fog and breathe it in. It burned their retina and respiratory tract.
The Wolf Crocodiles’ biting strength increased by leaps and bounds. After they evolved, their mouths were like saws, and they could bite through a strengthened exoskeleton. Then, when they activated their Death Spiral, they could crush and rip apart the humans’ limbs and even their strengthened exoskeletons.
The mutation of organs alone was enough to make the low-grade superhumans feel troubled.
But the monsters’ intelligence when it came to fighting also rose.
It was as if all the stupid monsters had been killed by humans. It left only the cunning ones alive, and they reproduced.
They knew how to use a large variety of strategies to dance around humans. They lay in ambush, launched sneak attacks, feigned death, lured enemies deeper into their territories, and even surrounded humans to provide reinforcements for each other.
Even the monsters who were famed for living alone gradually gained the habit of forming groups.
As for the monsters who were already used to living in groups, they started forming larger groups composed of dozens of monsters. They created mighty hordes that resulted in unbearable consequences to solo human hunters.
What was even more frightening was that monsters of different races started showing signs of working together.
In the past, the monsters treated each other as mortal enemies. Before the humans transmigrated to the Other World, they fought against each other and ate each other for an unknown number of years. Hence, it was very difficult for anyone to imagine feline-type monsters working together with Demonic Halberd Pigs or other artiodactyla-type monsters, much less working together with reptile-type monsters.
If anyone analyzed this from the perspective of biology, they would find that the difference between a Demonic Halberd Pig and a Hundred-eyed Toad was even bigger than the difference between a Demonic Halberd Pig and a human. After all, no matter how weird Demonic Halberd Pigs and humans found each other, they were still mammals in the end.
But now, when they faced the humans’ powerful offense, the monsters were threatened, and they broke through the restraints imposed on them by their instincts. They discovered the benefits of having a variety of different soldiers from different races.
Because of it, the humans faced even greater problems.
In the beginning, when they faced a single monster or a horde formed from a single type of monster, they could find a way to deal with them. If they faced monsters who were skilled in close-quarters combat, they would defend their forts and wait for the monsters to charge at them on their own. They would, then, die in front of humankind’s heavy machine guns and rocket launchers.
If they faced monsters skilled in long-distance fighting, they would carpet bomb the area before using smoke bombs to obstruct vision. After that, they would send superhumans to fight them.
In the decades of the Monster War, such simple and crude strategies always worked.
But now, the classical strategies written in textbooks just led to increasingly more devastating losses.
There were no longer any cheers in the east and west bases.
Casualties covered head to toe in blood were carried back to the bases by their similarly injured comrades practically every day.
Many of the new and young superhumans with bright futures ahead of them were stuffed into black body bags and carried back by their coursemates with numb expressions.
Those who managed to die with their whole bodies intact were considered rather lucky.
Many of the people disappeared without a trace seconds after they stepped into a swamp. Perhaps one day, when humans completely conquered Shattered Starlake and drained all the swamps, they would be able to find their incomplete corpses in the depths of the mud.
The bases were filled with a solemn atmosphere.
But no one lost their fighting will, regardless of whether it was the seniors who had seen even more devastating battles rage through the city or the ignorant newbies.
Instead, they joined the battle that would decide Dragon City’s future with even greater enthusiasm.
All sorts of new weapons, new technology, new martial arts, and new ideals were discussed with fervor and revered. Normal soldiers and superhumans looked for a secret weapon that could solve the problem of monsters which were leveling up nonstop.
The topic of the monsters evolving and mutating was the hottest one among the students at night, before they fell asleep.
One night, when they held one of their “meetings” before bed, Meng Chao said, “The monsters have always learned very quickly. We never noticed this because the monsters who entered Dragon City by mistake through the dimensional vortex were all killed by us, so they never had the chance to learn.
“Only the Apocalyptic Beasts are powerful enough to invade Dragon City and flee after being surrounded by Deity Realm elites. Aside from them, the normal monsters and middle-tier and low-tier superbeasts living in the wild don’t understand the terrors of human civilization at all, so they don’t have the experience or motivation to level up.
“But now that we started expanding our territory on a large scale, we entered the monsters’ home base, and with the advantage provided by the environment, many of the monsters might get injured, but not die after coming into contact with us.
“There is a saying in the military that a veteran who’s survived countless fierce fights is worth ten ignorant new soldiers. It’s the same for monsters.
“The monsters which flee back to their nests will naturally tell others about their experiences when fighting humans or use some kind of… really profound method to stimulate the strength hidden in the deepest parts of their genes. They will then become stronger in all aspects, from their limbs and organs to brains, and this strength will make them better against humans.
“Natural selection is decided by the survival of the fittest, and those who adapt are the ones who survive. I believe that the monsters which manage to survive the brutal environment of Monster Mountain Range are all smart and powerful. In the past few decades, they had never run into opponents as bizarre as humans, but those who can’t get used to fighting are eliminated by nature, so the ones who remain are the most troublesome.
“So, we must not think about trying to be lucky by winning the war in one effortless swoop. The real Monster War has just begun!”
The students fell silent.
After some time, one of them grumbled. “There are far too many monsters. I thought that we have already cleared 70% of Shattered Starlake and killed most of the monsters. I didn’t expect that after the three-day storm, these bastards would pop up endlessly from the swamp, and they became even fiercer and more cunning.
“Say, forget about the pests, why are there so many of those beasts of prey as well? It doesn’t make sense!
“Where have they been hiding? What do they eat? How can they reproduce on such a large scale? It seems like after we entered the Other World, not only have the laws of physics been distorted, even the ecosystem and the rules governing the food chain were destroyed!”
“What if the monsters were never naturally produced?” Meng Chao mumbled sleepily. He was exhausted after fighting for an entire day. “They might be bioweapons produced at a large scale.”
The students were stunned. “What did you say?”
Meng Chao was also surprised.
He did not know what he was saying either.
The students were beginning to be unable to see through Meng Chao.
There was one thing that puzzled them a lot. Was he lucky that he chose Gu Jianbo, the creator of the Ultimate Style, as his personal tutor when the semester started, or did he really have a secret no one knew about and knew that the Ultimate Style would soon shine brilliantly?
When the Monster War became more intense, the old martial art styles and weapons resulted in the fighters getting gravely injured, but the new styles, thought processes, and strategies ascended one after another.
Among them, the one that caught the most attention was, without a doubt, the Ultimate Style.
In over a month or so, the number of students who learned the Ultimate Style from Gu Jianbo through the remote classes organized by Meng Chao increased to nearly one hundred and fifty people.
Under the support of Dean Zong from Agricultural University’s martial arts course and the sponsor from Yan Organization, ten cultivation cabins custom-made for the Ultimate Style were shipped to the frontlines. This was enough to fulfill the requirements of the low-grade superhumans training in them for half an hour every day.
Aside from Wu Wu and Chu Feixiong, most of the students were not as strong as the monster that was Meng Chao. They could not withstand the dual shock of high-density gene medicine and super strong bioelectricity coursing through them. They could not clear 1,024 branch meridians in one go.
But even if they only cleared from thirty to two hundred branch meridians and their senses sharpened by 5%, the results of their battles were vastly different from their peers on the battlefield that was filled with dangers and could instantly decide their lives and deaths.
Before the storm, whether a person chose to practice the Ultimate Style or not did not have a great effect on the results of the war.
After all, those who practiced the Ultimate Style were all freshmen ranked either at the bottom or middle of their respective universities. It was very difficult for them to change completely within a short time. Besides, both Meng Chao and Gu Jianbo had suggested that they do not use any of their killing moves and do their best to curb their urges to create spirit energy magnetic fields.
They could not get used to the switch between the old and new fighting styles within such a short time, so their data and the results of their fights were average. They remained as nobodies.
But after the storm, everything changed.