With the help of activity, Brian Sullivan estimated that it would take less than a week for his arm to fully recover.

“Disaster has made the world different. It’s not just about destruction—there are also things to look forward to.”

The activity quickly healed his wounds and also reduced the pain, allowing Brian Sullivan to do other things. The first thing he did was study the mutated giant rat.

The mutated giant rat’s watermelon-knife-like incisors, along with the digging worm’s pincers and the fang wolf’s fangs, seemed to be made of the same material, and were collected by Brian Sullivan.

Then, he entered the information about the mutated giant rat into his laptop.

Giant-toothed rat: a mutated rodent species, low intelligence, quick movements, weak combat ability, and a fierce temperament.

He had originally planned to write that its combat ability was strong—after all, it had bitten him, and if it weren’t for the fang wolf’s fangs coming into play, he might have died in the Carrefour supermarket. But compared to the fang wolf and the digging worm, the giant-toothed rat’s combat ability wasn’t strong; it was just that Brian Sullivan no longer had the King Kong as cover.

So, the giant-toothed rat’s combat ability was still considered weak.

Chapter 7: The Remains of Survivors

For three days in a row, Brian Sullivan encountered “survivors” three times, but they turned out to be the digging worm, the fang wolf, and the giant-toothed rat—these three types of mutated creatures. It seemed that all the creatures that survived had already mutated.

Brian Sullivan could only explain all this by saying that the “activity” brought by the meteor shower had changed the world.

Including himself, everyone had already been changed by the activity.

“Is this a post-apocalyptic world, or a new world?” Brian Sullivan couldn’t help but ask.

No one answered him, so he could only slowly adapt.

The fang dagger could chop off the giant-toothed rat’s head, which gave Brian Sullivan a lot of inspiration. He discovered that the uses of activity were far more than the three functions he had previously speculated—extension, alloying, and substitution.

Take the fang dagger, for example: when no activity is infused, it’s just a relatively hard ornament, but once activity is infused, it immediately undergoes a qualitative change. Brian Sullivan tried injecting activity into it and was able to cut a regular knife in half.

He named this ability—Sharpening, the fourth function of activity.

Brian Sullivan also discovered that only this pair of fangs on the fang wolf could be infused with activity for sharpening. It seemed that these fangs were the essence, or the core, of the fang wolf’s activity.

The digging worm’s pincers and the giant-toothed rat’s incisors were likewise their activity cores.

“So where is the activity core of the King Kong?”

Brian Sullivan focused his mind, using his willpower to guide the activity in the King Kong, trying to find the place where the activity was most concentrated, but after searching everywhere, he couldn’t find such a spot.

“What’s wrong here? Could it be that non-living things don’t have an activity core?”

Thinking of this, Brian Sullivan turned his willpower back to himself. He had also been strengthened by activity, so logically, he should also be considered mutated. If other mutated creatures had an activity core, maybe he would too. However, after ten minutes, Brian Sullivan shook his head again.

He didn’t find an activity core in himself either.

“Could my hypothesis be wrong?”

Without enough data, he could only set the hypothesis aside for now.

Because his arm needed to heal, Brian Sullivan didn’t leave the Carrefour supermarket for the next few days. With one hand, he welded a mousetrap, then put on digging worm meat and quietly placed it in the supermarket, preparing to wipe out all the giant-toothed rats there—if there were any left.

As for why he used digging worm meat as bait, it was because among the three mutated creatures—the fang wolf, the giant-toothed rat, and the digging worm—the activity content in their meat, as well as the taste, ranked from high to low.

So Brian Sullivan no longer ate the digging worm, that junk food.

It was just right to use it to lure the giant-toothed rat.

However, the luring process didn’t go smoothly. On the first day, there was no movement at all.

The second day, still nothing.

On the third day, Brian Sullivan roasted the digging worm meat before putting it on the mousetrap, but still nothing happened. In addition, Brian Sullivan took another batch of drinks and alcohol, but still didn’t encounter the giant-toothed rat. It seemed there really was only that one mutated rat.

But on the fourth day, there was finally some action at the mousetrap.

The digging worm meat was gone, and half of the mousetrap had disappeared as well. It seemed that something had bitten through the steel bar of the mousetrap, which was as thick as a thumb. At the break, there were obvious tooth marks and scratches.

This discovery made Brian Sullivan break out in a cold sweat.

He had thought that steel was the most direct barrier against monsters, but now he suddenly realized that there was actually a creature that could bite through steel.

The King Kong gave Brian Sullivan his greatest confidence because of its thick steel armor.

It was truly terrifying.

Brian Sullivan dropped the half-mousetrap and immediately retreated to the King Kong, then, without hesitation, set off toward the waterworks.

Safety first.

……

It was hard to associate a pile of rubble with the original waterworks. There used to be a reservoir next to the waterworks—not exactly vast and mighty, but at least shrouded in light mist. Now, all that could be seen was rubble and yellow sand; there was no sign of the plant or the reservoir.

“This should be about the place. Let’s dig around and see if we can find the location of the warehouse.”

The mineral water he had taken from Carrefour was really too little—altogether, it probably didn’t even add up to two barrels’ worth, and the small bottles took up a lot of space.