Starting Off Survival With A Small Treehouse-Chapter 71 Blood Patterned Cat

Xu Xin pulled the trigger, firing another crossbow arrow at the swiftly approaching Blood Patterned Cat!

The Blood Patterned Cat, charging at full speed in his direction, saw the incoming arrow and had to dodge sideways.

But the arrow was too fast, and the cat’s explosive power was too strong, making it difficult to change direction forcibly. The poisoned arrow wasn’t completely avoided, grazing the cat’s body and leaving a real bloody streak on its skin.

This shot not only slowed down the Blood Patterned Cat but also injured it.

"As expected of the best crossbow below the purple level!" Xu Xin wasn’t idle either, quickly loading another arrow.

Once again injured, the Blood Patterned Cat became enraged, emitting a hoarse, sharp cry as if it had lost its sanity, accelerating even more and rapidly closing the distance between itself and Xu Xin.

"Silver King, speed up!"

"Awoo——!" Silver King desperately sprinted forward.

The arrow flew out swiftly, but this time the beast had learned its lesson. Seeing Xu Xin lift his crossbow, it dodged to the side at that very moment. The arrow grazed past the cat’s fur without harming it at all.

"Damn! This wildcat is so fast!" Seeing the distance between the wildcat and Silver King getting shorter, Xu Xin steadied himself, continued loading, and scooped a stone from the ground to throw it at the relentless wildcat.

The wildcat dodged instinctively. In that instant, Xu Xin pulled the trigger.

"Meow——!"

The extreme speed and force of the arrow, combined with the wildcat’s own swift momentum toward him, left it with no time to react while dodging. Only a slight head tilt, and the arrow hit the upper-right side of its head directly.

A sharp cat scream followed, with the arrow piercing through one side of the Blood Patterned Cat’s head, sending one ear flying with a splash of blood.

"Beautiful!"

However, Xu Xin didn’t have time to reload the crossbow. The Blood Patterned Cat, now missing an ear, burst forth at an even greater speed, red eyes glaring viciously as it charged toward Xu Xin.

Retrieving the crossbow, Xu Xin pulled out his brand-new spear.

"Come on, let me try my new weapon!"

The Blood Patterned Cat rapidly closed in on Xu Xin and, at the moment of near capture, suddenly leaped, rear claws kicking off from a tree trunk, darting toward Xu Xin! Its exaggerated claws gleamed like Wolverine’s, clawing directly at him!

The claws were long, but Xu Xin’s spear was even longer!

Gripping the tail of the spear with both hands, Xu Xin thrust forth with force the moment the cat closed in!

If it continued attacking Xu Xin, the cat’s head would be pierced directly. It didn’t dare go on, but its surging body couldn’t stop, so it could only use its claws to block Xu Xin’s spear.

The friction sound of metal collision arose, and Xu Xin even saw sparks flying!

This strike halted the Blood Patterned Cat’s movement, pushing it back another dozen meters behind Xu Xin.

His spear tip, like the cat’s claws, was a special part from a mutant beast, thus they were evenly matched.

"Looks like, to harm those claws, I’ll still need the altar dagger." Xu Xin contemplated while winding the crossbow.

But Xu Xin didn’t pull out the altar dagger; it was too small to be effective unless at close quarters, and engaging in hand-to-hand with the Blood Patterned Cat was suicidal.

A dozen meters was trivial for the Blood Patterned Cat, which once again surged forward, reaching its claws out to strike at Xu Xin!

Xu Xin quickly fired another arrow, using the spear to block the claws once more.

The claws were blocked again, but the arrow penetrated through the right side of the Blood Patterned Cat’s chest.

The spear’s resistance combined with the arrow’s penetrating injury flipped it to the ground, rolling and jumping back up, giving a wailing cat scream as it lunged again at Xu Xin.

"Even now it won’t flee. Looks like these blood-patterned creatures emerging from the altar are truly mindless."

Xu Xin raised his weapon to block again, feeling distinctly that the Blood Patterned Cat’s strength had waned significantly compared to the previous two strikes.

"Its stamina is running out!" Xu Xin rejoiced.

"Ying-ying!" Suddenly, Keke tugged at him twice from behind. Even Silver King’s pace slowed down.

"What is it?" Xu Xin felt a sudden sense of crisis, different from the threat posed by the Blood Patterned Cat, but from behind, the direction Silver King was advancing toward.

He glanced at the map and was instantly startled: "Silver King, turn, left turn!"

In the forward path of Silver King, a bright red dot was motionless, less than dozens of meters away from them.

It was a tiger! The tiger had returned! Lurking there to ambush its prey!

With the command received, Silver King made a sharp turn, making the Blood Patterned Cat that surged to attack miss, lunging a few steps forward, falling into the tiger’s hunting range.

From the brush, a large orange silhouette suddenly sprang out, pouncing towards the freshly landed Blood Patterned Cat.

"Holy shit! That tiger is enormous; it must weigh four or five hundred kilograms at least!"

The less than a hundred-kilogram Blood Patterned Cat seemed like a tiny toy in front of a four or five-hundred-kilogram tiger. Yet, faced with the ambush, already injured and enraged, it didn’t dodge, slashing out with a claw straight away.

"Reckless, brother!" Xu Xin was stunned, letting Silver King stop, watching from a distance as the cat and tiger battled.

Despite their similarity in being felines, the predation of small cat subfamily members by muscular brothers of the pantherine subfamily was a common occurrence; they didn’t care about the resemblance.

The orange tiger perhaps didn’t expect the little creature to resist instead of fleeing and didn’t take the claw seriously, pinning the cat down with its paw, aiming to bite down on its neck.

However, the Blood Patterned Cat’s claws, empowered by mysterious forces, were mutant. Pinned by the tiger, its claws contracted, stabbing deeply into the tiger’s leg, causing the tiger to leap up in pain just as it was about to bite down.

Xu Xin vaguely saw several deep blood wounds on the tiger’s paw and leg.

"These claws are really something!" Xu Xin marveled. If he hadn’t had the proportionately matched rabbit-eared spear to confront it, he would probably struggle against the Blood Patterned Cat’s assault, ending up as battered as Ji Chaoyang was yesterday.

Quickly regaining its footing, the Blood Patterned Cat hissed threateningly at the tiger. The tiger wasn’t going to indulge the little beast, responding with a roar that resounded through the forest, once more pouncing and pinning it down.

"Speaking of which, the Blood Patterned Cat’s meat should be similar in nature to the rabbit meat polluted earlier, right? If the tiger eats it, won’t it just keel over? Or worse, mutate?" Xu Xin murmured.

If it’s the former, it’s just a pity you couldn’t gather materials from a tiger that died eating polluted meat. But if it’s the latter, that would be disastrous. Just one mutant wildcat was this formidable; if the tiger were to mutate...

Xu Xin couldn’t fathom the thought.

Yet he lacked the capability to intervene at the moment; handling that enormous tiger with cold weapons alone was beyond him.

"Don’t mutate, don’t mutate, just die, just die!" Xu Xin fixated his gaze on the tiger, silently chanting in his heart.

Wait, if the tiger kills the Blood Patterned Cat, won’t he miss out on points?

The tiger bit down on the Blood Patterned Cat’s neck, snapping it.

[Killed a polluted mutant wildcat. Points obtained: 500.]

Hearing the notification, Xu Xin sighed in relief. Good, the points remained. After all, he had sacrificed materials to summon the cat, injuring and exhausting it. Counting the kill to his credit was fair.