Grand Voyage : Surviving on a Ghost Ship-Chapter 274 - Ambush – part 2

There wasn’t much change inside, aside from the heavy stench of rats drifting in from all directions.

Yang Yi pretended not to notice and led the robots towards the third floor.

The route was familiar. Before long, they reached the exit of the stairwell on the third level.

The rat odor was even stronger here, suggesting that House Rats had likely set a trap ahead.

Yang Yi readied his weapon and slowed his pace. As he stepped into the corridor, his body surged upwards to over three metres in height, transforming into his werewolf form.

The corridor wasn’t tall, just a little over three metres.

But a werewolf could move on all fours if needed, so the space wasn’t particularly restrictive.

Yang Yi scanned the area with his wolf eyes. There were no visible traces of rats. On the surface, these House Rats had done a very thorough job.

If they could also rein in their stench and stop breathing altogether, they might actually have succeeded in ambushing him.

He removed his blindfold and walked towards the elevator shaft.

The moment he arrived, a massive fist shot out from inside the shaft and slammed down at him with terrifying speed.

With his third eye, Yang Yi saw the enormous fist clearly. It was larger than his head, covered in sparse black hair.

Beneath the hair, the skin had split open, exposing dense, powerful muscle, yet there was very little blood.

“Limb Enhancement?”

The sensation felt oddly familiar. He recognised it at a glance.

The punch landed squarely on him, sending his body flying backwards into the metal wall behind.

His arms, raised to block, went numb. The force of that strike had to be around seventeen, maybe even eighteen points of strength.

Yang Yi hadn’t used Limb Enhancement himself. Even with the armour’s bonus, his strength was only sixteen, and he still couldn’t stop that blow.

If not for the Atoner’s Armour, his bones might have shattered.

A moment later, an ugly, twisted creature crawled out of the elevator shaft, and Yang Yi froze when he saw it.

It looked as if three people had been fused together back to back, forming a body with three torsos and six arms, yet it had no fewer than eight legs.

The limbs were clearly uneven. Two of the arms were several times thicker than the others, almost as thick as an adult man’s waist.

One arm was unmistakably a lobster claw.

The legs were slightly better. Only one was abnormally thick; the rest looked human.

Staring at the grotesque thing, Yang Yi felt a strange sense of familiarity and called out its name.

“Spider?”

No.

It couldn’t really be called a Spider. Its entire body was covered in black hair, and its chest cavity had fused into a single mass. From within it emerged a massive rat’s head, chittering loudly.

The three human heads looked lifeless. Their eyeballs had been occupied by House Rats, and rats poured continuously from their mouths, ears, and bodies, swarming towards Yang Yi.

Some of them even launched themselves forward in explosive leaps.

Zzzzt!

Zzzzt!

Several beams of light shot in from the other end of the corridor. It was Xiao Yi and Xiao San, the two robots.

Their mechanical arms were damaged, but together they still had thirteen gun ports. Their firepower was nothing to scoff at.

Large numbers of rats were blasted apart, especially those leaping at Yang Yi, which were reduced to ash midair.

The fused monster was hit as well. Two of its legs were blown off on the spot.

But it had plenty of legs. Its mobility was barely affected. It immediately switched targets and charged towards the robots, scuttling like a spider.

At the same time, its arms didn’t stop moving. One pair of hands pulled out a strange surgical toolkit.

The kit was filthy, coated in a dark brown patina of grime. But the tools inside were complete: knives, saws, axes, drills, everything one could need. A few were rusted, stained with dried blood.

Using the toolkit, its long fingers moved with serpentine agility. In moments, it reattached the severed leg, stitching it back together, though it ended up slightly shorter.

This was limb graft surgery, and at a very high level. The technique was practiced and efficient, completed in just a few seconds.

Compared to the procedures recorded in the notes, this method was far more brutal. It was battlefield surgery, perfectly suited for combat.

Yang Yi realised who these three people must have been. They were likely crew members from that native ship encountered not long ago.

For some reason, the three had been fused into one body and parasitised by House Rats.

The fused monster charged towards the robots, getting hit by beams several more times along the way. Its legs were blown off three times, and repaired each time.

It reached Xiao Yi and clenched its massive hand into a fist, clearly intending to smash the robot to pieces.

“Chitter chitter!!!”

The giant House Rat in its chest issued a command, and the iron fist came crashing down.

“Chi?”

The giant rat froze.

Because the arm that was about to swing down suddenly vanished. The entire limb had disappeared without a trace, leaving behind a carbonised cross-section where it had been cleanly severed.

“Pretty easy to take apart, actually.”

Yang Yi spoke as he opened his mouth, having somehow appeared beside the monster. In his hand was a massive arm he had just torn off.

At over three metres tall, he didn’t give up much in size even compared to the fused monstrosity.

【Name: Cyclops’ Right Arm (Condition: 23%)】

【Attributes: Strength 15 + 3, Agility 8】

(Note: Limb enhancement surgery causes a rapid decline in limb condition.)

【Description: The right arm severed from a Cyclops’ body. Parasitised by House Rats, partially damaged and mutated, with reduced condition. Provides some resistance to darkness.】

“Chi!”

The giant House Rat hadn’t expected Yang Yi to be completely unharmed. It immediately ordered the fused limb-spider to attack him, while directing the smaller rats to crawl onto Yang Yi’s body in an attempt to parasitise him.

But Yang Yi was prepared. He slapped a molotov cocktail against his armour, then lit it with a Longevity-brand lighter. In an instant, he was engulfed in flames.

The armour was resistant to fire, and Yang Yi himself wasn’t afraid of it either. It was perfect for dealing with small rats.

After that, the limbs of the fused limb-spider were removed one by one by Yang Yi. The cuts were clean and neat, like picking fruit straight off a tree.

Yang Yi wasn’t skilled at limb graft surgery, but he understood the structure of limb-spiders inside and out. He dismantled it with astonishing speed.

Like a master butcher carving an ox, he soon reduced the monster to nothing but a torso. All that remained was the giant House Rat’s head, chittering wildly.

Yang Yi couldn’t understand a word it was saying, but he felt sure it wasn’t anything nice, so he punched it.

One punch wasn’t enough. He followed up with three hard stomps. Finally, the giant House Rat stopped moving.

Still burning, Yang Yi grabbed it with his hand and obtained its information.

【Name: Fused Rat Nest】

【Description: A rat nest formed by the fusion of rat thralls. It has no fixed form, and fusion requires a considerable amount of time. The resulting rat nest obeys the head rat, while each rat thrall retains part of its consciousness and abilities.

Can be fed into the Monster Vending Machine.】

“Rat nest…”

Yang Yi frowned as a sense of unease rose in his chest.

The shelter had previously housed seventy to eighty thousand players. If all of them fused into a single entity, that would be extremely troublesome.

He sent the rat nest’s information to Suna. She replied quickly.

“Try to bring it back if possible.

Also, the Nightmare Star has come under attack as well. The two may be happening simultaneously.”

Suna replied, but the situation wasn’t urgent. Those rats couldn’t get onto the deck.

After reading the message, Yang Yi stored the severed limbs in his ring and dragged the rat nest towards the dock.

Behind him, the two robots continued their indiscriminate slaughter through the rat swarm. The rats couldn’t bite through the metal of their bodies anyway.

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