Starting Off Survival With A Small Treehouse

Chapter 124: Chapter 124: Killing the Blood-striped Marlin

The sound of rain hitting the water was loud, creating ripples that made it hard to see what lay beneath the surface.

Fortunately, Xu Xin was under the treehouse, and its roof shielded him from the rain. Although the strong wind blew some rain in, the water surface below the treehouse stayed relatively calm. It was just calm enough to barely make out the location and movements of the blood-striped marlins swimming beneath.

The blood-striped marlin that had landed in the water was readying itself to attack Xu Xin, who was in mid-air, once again.

It dove to the bottom, then accelerated towards Xu Xin, rapidly leaping out of the water, soaring four to five meters high!

Xu Xin deftly maneuvered aside with his roots, and the fish’s blood-striped body brushed past him, directly jabbing into the bottom of the tree canopy, piercing the first floor’s floorboard with a ”crack” sound!

”We can’t let it keep attacking! This really could damage the treehouse!”

You must know, the water surface now was five or six meters high, with only four or five meters to the bottom of the treehouse. This fish could leap four to five meters high, just enough to strike the base of the treehouse!

Xu Xin pulled out a crossbow, quickly pulling the trigger targeting the marlin about to emerge from the water surface.

”Whoosh!”

With his skilled technique, the crossbow arrow shot accurately into the head of the blood-striped marlin, which was thrusting directly upwards and had just leapt out of the water.

The mutant creature, with a crossbow arrow embedded in its head, let out a sharp cry, but due to inertia, it still thrust directly towards Xu Xin.

Xu Xin dodged again, quickly reloading, and at the moment the marlin was about to fall back into the water, fired another shot, this time accurately striking the marlin’s tail.

A sharp, piercing scream rang out again, and the marlin frantically accelerated under the water, attempting to leap out and attack Xu Xin once more. But Xu Xin wasn’t going to play with it anymore; he quickly entered the first floor of the treehouse, lunged toward the heavy crossbow positioned in this direction, and activated automatic firing.

The heavy crossbow in this direction was one of the enhanced heavy crossbows he made with cat claws. Its firing speed and power were much stronger than his first crossbow, and the accuracy of its automatic firing was also much higher.

At least higher than when operated by Xu Xin himself.

The blood-striped marlin was too fast. If he were to operate it himself, he wouldn’t be able to hit it at all.

Footsteps echoed down the corridor as Silver King and Mimi descended from the third floor, with Keke also riding on Silver King’s back.

”Yip!” Keke jumped over directly, and Xu Xin quickly caught it.

”Yip yip!” Keke wriggled free from Xu Xin’s arms, crawled down to the ground along his body, and began circling around his scratched foot.

It seemed the little one was worried that Xu Xin had been injured by the marlin.

”Alright, Keke, I’m not hurt, just my armor got scraped a bit.” Xu Xin patted Keke’s little head.

”Yip.” Keke finally relaxed, gave a reassuring pat to its tiny chest, and then turned to crawl up onto the windowsill to look outside.

Hearing Xu Xin’s words, both Silver King and Mimi relaxed. Silver King sat on the floor, and Mimi began licking its fur again.

Xu Xin also went to the window to gaze downward.

As he vanished from sight, the blood-striped marlin below was circling rapidly beneath the spot where he entered the treehouse, waiting for his reappearance.

By the looks of it, as soon as he showed up again, the marlin would rush out of the water at lightning speed to attack him!

Meanwhile, the heavy crossbow, set to auto-attack by Xu Xin, was rotating its aim along with the marlin but had yet to fire a single arrow.

”What’s going on? Could it be that the crossbow has determined it couldn’t hit, and simply stopped firing?” Xu Xin was speechless; couldn’t it be a bit more intelligent, predict a leading shot or something?

But seeing the marlin’s incredibly fast spinning speed below, Xu Xin realized that predicting its position was indeed a bit too challenging for his crossbow.

Looks like he’d need to step out once more to lure the marlin out of the water.

As soon as it flew out to attack him, being airborne would mean a lowest hovering speed, under which his top-grade crossbow would definitely hit it!

However, Xu Xin felt a bit uncertain.

The marlin had been accelerating in circles below for so long; its speed was already astonishingly fast, and with such velocity, he might truly not be able to evade its thrust.

Ah yes, the bat! His blood pattern bat!

It’s your time to shine, my little bat!

Xu Xin immediately released the blood-stripe bat from his wristband.

With his feeding over the past few days, combined with the influence of irradiated stone, this bat underwent significant changes.

The bat, which originally only had faint blood-red patterns, had stripes that changed significantly, now becoming truly a low-level mutant beast.

In addition to fast flight speed, it was a smaller target compared to Xu Xin, making it less susceptible to being hit, and it also had an ultrasonic capability to disturb the opponent’s senses, making it an ideal decoy for this operation!

Even if it were to die in this operation, as long as it took the blood-striped marlin down with it, it would be a worthy death.

A bat that wasn’t even a low-level mutant beast originally, being able to drag down a mid-level mutant creature to its grave sounded quite inspiring!

Xu Xin explained the task to the bat, then sent it outside the treehouse.

Underneath the tree canopy of the treehouse, the blood-striped bat suddenly emerged, flapping its wings to fly towards the direction outside the canopy.

This was Xu Xin’s command. The heavy crossbow was installed on the outer wall of the treehouse, and the further out it was, the higher the chance of the heavy crossbow hitting its target.

Of course, the most important thing was that Xu Xin didn’t want the marlin to pierce the bottom of his treehouse at such a fast speed. Such a speed would have a tremendous impact, which might really cause damage.

At this moment, the bat flying slowly with flapping wings in the air was like a moving living target.

The Blood-striped Marlin, its eyes red from injury, saw something moving from the place where Xu Xin had just gone in. Without thinking, it adjusted its direction after circling a few times and suddenly leaped out of the water with great speed, stabbing straight at the bat, which had already flown outside the tree canopy!

The speed was like a bullet. If it had been Xu Xin, he probably wouldn’t have been able to dodge.

But the bat was also a low-level mutated beast; the sky was its domain, so how could it allow a fish to harm it?

It flapped its wings, tilted its body to the side, narrowly avoiding the marlin’s sharp jaw attack, but was still hit by the marlin’s body and knocked over ten meters away, flapping its wings chaotically before stabilizing itself in the air.

This time, the marlin’s thrust went straight up to the height of the third-floor treehouse!

The highest point of the parabola is the slowest point of motion. Because the marlin was almost thrusting straight up, it even achieved a brief moment of hovering at the highest point.

In an instant, the heavy crossbow made a loud twang of its string and a ”click” sound as it fired, launching the crossbow arrow rapidly toward the Blood-striped Marlin in the air!

With the speed and weight of the crossbow arrow, the enormous penetrating force directly shot the marlin through!

”Yay!” ”Awoo!” ”Meow!” Upon seeing this, Keke and Silver King both cheered, even Mimi let out a cat-like sound that didn’t match its appearance.

The heavy crossbow arrow continued to fly forward with the marlin’s body and fell into the water not far away.

[Killed a polluted mutated marlin, earned points: 100 points.]

points.

Calculating at a ratio of five to one, the points of this Blood-striped Marlin were the same as those of the Blood Patterned Cat and the Blood Pattern Rabbit, which means it was indeed a mid-level mutated beast.

Xu Xin let out a long sigh of relief. He finally managed to handle this fish. Fighting with a mid-level aquatic mutated creature in the water was really too dangerous.

First, let’s retrieve the carcass of the mutated marlin. The carcass of a mid-level mutated creature is all blue-grade materials!

Xu Xin quickly dove into the water, swimming toward the impact point of the crossbow arrow and the marlin’s corpse.

Soon, he saw the crossbow arrow embedded in the seabed and the marlin’s corpse skewered on it.

The crossbow arrow had hit the marlin’s head just right, piercing it through, which was why the fish died instantly.

Xu Xin immediately stored it in his backpack, swam back to the treehouse, grabbed a root, and was about to enter the treehouse.

Wait, where’s his bat?

He swung mid-air, looking around. There was no sign of the bat in the air. Looking back, he found the Blood Patterned Bat hanging upside down in the tree canopy below the treehouse.

Xu Xin swung over, intending to store it in his bracelet.

Unexpectedly, the bat withdrew a little, seemingly unwilling to enter the bracelet.

”Hmm?” Xu Xin frowned.

”Is this resisting my command? No, these creatures aren’t supposed to have their own will, right? Could it be... after upgrading to a low-level mutated beast through radiation stones, it has changed?”

He looked at the bat, tentatively asking, ”Do you want to enter the treehouse with me, or do you want to hang here? Stay still if you want to enter the treehouse; flap your wings twice if you want to hang here.”

Under Xu Xin’s surprised gaze, the bat hung upside down and nimbly flapped its wings twice.

It has its own response! It’s really regained its will!

This radiation stone has this kind of benefit. Then in the future, the mutated beasts created by using the mutation potion should also regain their will if needed.

Wonderful.

Xu Xin left the bat outside and told it that it could hunt the fish in the water by itself but not fly too far away and to alert him with a call if there was any situation.

Arriving at the first level of the treehouse, Xu Xin released the body of the marlin. The nearly three-meter body length plus the three meters of sharp jaws were utterly gigantic up close, scaring the three beasts nearby with curiosity.

Taking out the boning knife, Xu Xin disassembled the marlin’s corpse.

[Obtained polluted mutated marlin bone (Blue) *1, polluted mutated marlin jaw (Blue) *1, polluted mutated marlin dorsal fin (Blue) *1, polluted mutated marlin meat (Gray) *430kg]

Three blue-grade materials!

Among them, the jaw and dorsal fin were special materials. The jaw could be used to make weapons, similar to rabbit ears and cat claws, while the dorsal fin could make armor.

The weight of the polluted marlin meat made Xu Xin ecstatic, a whopping more than four hundred kilograms!

Note, a single bottle of mutation potion requires just five kilograms. With these four hundred thirty kilograms, eighty-six bottles of potions can be made. Adding the previous mutation meat, the number of potions he could make soared to triple digits, directly achieving freedom of mutation potions!

He had so much that he couldn’t use it all himself; it felt like he could start trading with the community of ”Explorers”!

Of course, a mutated beast contract was not feasible, as he didn’t have the capability to make it himself—one less each time he used one. Offering one to Li Wenxi was already the limit.

Next, let’s check out the vortex under the tornado and see what’s inside!