Chapter 36
"Do you think it looks like a dragonfly?" Qiao Ning asked.
"It looks like one, how could it not? Although the color is a bit strange, it's normal for a mutated creature to be a little strange. Look at those wings, look at those six slender, long legs... wait, do dragonflies have legs that long? Could it be a mutation?"
Tao Tao belatedly realized that something seemed amiss. "Wait a minute, Sister Qiao, when I look at it more closely, it doesn't quite look like a dragonfly anymore?"
"It can even make a buzzing sound, and that buzzing sound sounds familiar... Could it be a bee? But it doesn't seem like one. Bees don't have such thin abdomens, their legs are much thicker, and their bodies have a lot of fine hairs..."
"I was so excited just now that I didn't even check the pet information before coming to tell Sister Qiao the good news. I'll go check what this contracted pet is in a bit."
Before opening the pet panel, Tao Tao imagined countless kinds of insects, but she never expected that she would contract a giant mosquito!
[Vampire-sucking mosquito]: Female mosquito, carrying potent venom. From the moment it hatches from the egg, it gains the ability to freely change its size. It loves the blood of all living things, especially males. After reaching adulthood, it goes into estrus every seven days, during which it feeds on the blood of a male to produce one mosquito egg.
【Friendly Reminder】: Mosquito eggs are fragile and emit a scent that attracts other creatures to eat them. Owners are advised to protect them carefully and not to be tempted to eat them themselves.
Qiao Ning saw the pet panel information sent by Tao Tao and felt that this girl trusted her quite a bit.
"A pretty good offensive pet. It can also change its size, making it a great tool for ambushes. It can be a huge help in battle!"
Tao Tao's expression was initially horrified when she saw that she had contracted with a mosquito, but after reading the pet's information, she suddenly felt that... a mosquito might not be so bad after all?
Qiao Ning's first pet is Green Wisteria, whose ultimate form has the following attack methods: vine piercing, leaf throwing knife (ultimate version), and vine strangulation (group).
Second-born Iron-Eating Beast: Female, can evolve. Upon reaching adulthood, it can freely transform into a giant bear form. Skills: Panda Press Down, Mighty Panda Paw, Bear Mouth Swallows the Sky, Panda Thunder Fist (5% chance to inflict thunder).
Today, Qiao Ning was only responsible for capturing cubs in the wild area. Hunting mutated beasts and mutated plants was done by her two pets.
Her dog, Fatty Tiger, looks round and chubby, but he is surprisingly formidable in battle. Even though he is not yet an adult, his bite force and the power of his paws are already quite astonishing. Almost no wild animal can withstand his panda paws and panda fists.
Fat Tiger seems to have inherited its master's luck; the Thunder Fist, which triggers with a probability, can be triggered almost every three or four punches. Sometimes it can even trigger continuously without any interval.
After Qiao Ning unlocked the pet system for the entire server, the number of players with pets skyrocketed. By the end of the sixth day, with the help of pets, the survival rate for the entire server finally stabilized and stopped dropping so quickly.
In addition, Qiao Ning also discovered that the number of pets a player can tame is related to their experience points and vehicle level.
Around 7 PM, she tamed another pet, which cost her a whopping 300,000 experience points. If it weren't for Green Pearl and Fat Tiger helping her farm a lot of monsters in the wild today, she would probably be bankrupt by now.
After taming her third pet, she only had 20,000 experience points left.
Her third pet was also an insect—
【Poison-eating locust (mother locust)】: reproduces parthenogenetically.
Weaknesses: Ordinary poisonous locusts are afraid of water and fire, but the queen locust is impervious to both and can even swim and breathe underwater for extended periods. Seawater is an exception. Even the queen locust will gradually weaken and die when exposed to seawater.
All kinds of creatures are on the diet of the poisonous locust.
The poison locust is highly venomous, feeds on poisonous creatures, and is naturally immune to all toxins.
After reaching adulthood, the female insect will have an estrus cycle every 7 days, which lasts for 24 hours.
During their mating season, the poisonous locusts will stop attacking, stop feeding, and lose their toxic immunity, making them the weakest period.
During this period, the poisonous locusts will spontaneously conceive and lay a large number of eggs, a process that takes about an hour.
The female poisonous locust is vulnerable after giving birth and is very easy to die. She needs to be carefully cared for and provided with enough blood and food. She will not recover until 12 hours after giving birth.
The insect eggs have a texture similar to tofu, are slightly sweet, and have a faint milky aroma. They are non-toxic and have no side effects. They can be eaten after cooking and are considered a top-grade and rare antidote.
Once the larvae develop and hatch from the egg, they become highly poisonous insects.
The larvae need a lot of fresh flesh and blood to grow and develop. If they are starving, they will turn on their mother and owner.
Adult insects can also turn on their owners when they are hungry.
Besides the queen insect, the remaining spawned poisonous locusts are categorized as follows: insect king, insect general, high-level insect soldier, mid-level insect soldier, and low-level insect soldier. Their intelligence and attack power also decrease in that order. Each time the queen lays eggs, the largest number are insect soldiers, numbering in the tens of thousands. There are 20 insect generals and 2 insect kings.
As long as the queen insect lives, the poisonous locusts she breeds are also very difficult to kill, as they can regenerate limbs indefinitely. However, the insect soldiers only live for 7 days, after which they will die naturally.
The insect's lifespan is 28 days.
The lifespans of the Insect King and the Insect Queen are linked; as long as the Insect Queen lives, the Insect King has no lifespan limit.
Besides the Insect Queen, the Insect King can breed 1 Insect General and 1000 Insect Soldiers. The Insect General can only breed 100 Insect Soldiers, and all Insect Soldiers have no ability to reproduce.
The queen insect can control all her insect offspring. When the queen insect is in danger or injured, other poisonous locusts will voluntarily sacrifice their lives to restore her body and build up her defenses.
Players own the Insect Queen, which occupies one pet slot, while the Insect Queen's offspring do not occupy pet slots.
【Friendly Reminder】: The Poisonous Locust can grow into an adult in 7 days. Its growth cycle is short and its reproductive capacity is very strong. A swarm of locusts is terrifyingly destructive, but its appetite is astonishing and the possibility of backlash is extremely high. Players are advised to carefully control the number of locusts they cultivate.
Perhaps the destructive power of the poisonous locusts is too great, so even the system didn't dare to be perfunctory when providing an introduction, giving a long and detailed description, for fear that if players make a mistake, the locusts will become rampant.
Qiao Ning wasn't an insect enthusiast, but she had heard plenty about the infamous locusts in the real world, and the horrors of locust plagues were unimaginable.
As an aggressive pet, the Venomous Flying Locust Queen is undoubtedly powerful. It eats everything, carries potent poison without crawling on the poison, reproduces quickly, and can fly and climb. Apart from being afraid of seawater and being weak during its mating and childbirth periods, it has no other weaknesses.
When Qiao Ning was preparing to tame her fourth pet, the system prompted her that 600,000 experience points needed to be deducted. She did not have enough experience points, and her car was not yet level 4.
Tao Tao trusted those she approved of completely and had little suspicion of them. Qiao Ning secretly inquired with her and learned that all animal pets, unless they were tamed voluntarily, would have their experience points deducted.
The first time you tame a pet, you lose 10,000 experience points; the second time, it becomes 100,000; the third time, it becomes 300,000... As far as Tao Tao knows, no one has obtained three pets yet, so she doesn't know how much experience points she will lose for the fourth time.
The more pets you capture, the lower the success rate of capturing them next time.
This is already the sixth day of the second natural disaster cycle. The players who have survived to this point have vehicles that are at least Tier 2, and there are very few Tier 3 vehicles. I'm afraid that in the entire 1408 region, the number of players who own Tier 3 vehicles can be counted on one hand.
Upgrade blueprints for vehicles are too hard to obtain.
Even Qiao Ning doesn't have much stock left.
Even with a level 3 vehicle, there are still experience requirements, and pet cubs are not easy to find; even if you do find one, the failure rate to tame it is quite high.
For ordinary players, the failure rate of taming a third pet after they already have two is as high as 90%.
With such a high failure rate, coupled with the previous conditions, it's no wonder that apart from Qiao Ning, no one else in the entire region obtained a third pet.
Even Qiao Ning was able to successfully subdue the Poisonous Flying Locust Mother today because she was lucky enough to trigger the Lucky Star passive skill [Auspicious Star Descends]. Otherwise, with such a high failure rate, she probably would have failed as well.
After this natural disaster cycle ends, Qiao Ning is very likely to get car upgrade blueprints and parts blueprints from the Wish Blind Box. Although she has enough materials to upgrade the car, for some reason, she always feels that she still doesn't have enough metal materials.
The amount of mixed metals might affect the vehicle's future attribute values, which caused her a strong sense of crisis.
Qiao Ning had more dried goods than she could use, so she simply used the dried goods and vehicle repair cards to exchange for metal materials.
Players mainly use metal materials to repair car parts that have been corroded and rusted by moisture. If there were a vehicle repair card, who would be willing to repair cars day and night?
You know, no one else has such a useful tool as a car management system.
Therefore, what people lack more than metal materials are vehicle maintenance cards.
Currently, one vehicle repair card can be exchanged for 500 gold/silver and 5000 iron/copper, but even that's hard to find; nobody's willing to sell. Qiao Ning's material drop rate is low, but others' are much higher.
Iron and copper are abundant during this natural disaster cycle, while the drop rate of gold and silver is relatively low.
Qiao Ning kept only fifty vehicle repair cards for backup, and exchanged the rest for other vehicles.
With the addition of dried goods, medications for treating and killing fungi and mold, fresh edible food, canned goods, and clean drinking water free of mold, batch after batch of supplies were exchanged, and Qiao Ning's material inventory quickly became abundant...
After midnight, the humidity suddenly increased dramatically, and woodlice swarmed in everywhere.
Many players die in their sleep before they even have a chance to react.
Qiao Ning was awakened by the noise from the green ivy and Fatty Tiger. As soon as she opened her eyes, she saw the green ivy strangling and killing woodlice that had somehow crawled into the car.
Fat Tiger sat by her bedside, catching the stray woodlice one by one and eating them as snacks.
The scene was indescribable.
Qiao Ning's face turned green when she saw it. She knew that pandas were omnivores, but did the evolved Fat Tiger even eat insects?
Won't it give me diarrhea?
Qiao Ning released the poisonous locust from the pet enclosure. Less than ten minutes after the locust came out, it had devoured all the woodlice in the car.
The two companions, the Iron-Eating Beast and the Green Vine, were stunned. They even began to doubt themselves, wondering if they were too useless. The woodlice that they couldn't kill for so long were not only eaten up by the Poisonous Flying Locust so quickly, but the locusts were also scared of them.
Qiao Ning witnessed the poisonous locust flapping its wings and landing on the car door handle. The woodlice, which had originally intended to crawl through the gap, seemed to sense this and began to retreat.
Even though Qiao Ning wasn't an insect, she could vaguely sense that the poisonous locust mother was threatening these woodlice, with the air of someone who would devour everything in sight and everything that came near them.
A moment later, Qiao Ning suddenly received a signal from the giant locust, a sound wave that only its owner could hear and understand.
[Master, let me out. I'm a six-day-old worm, almost an adult. After I eat their leader, I'll have enough energy to successfully advance to adulthood.]
Qiao Ning glanced at the dense swarm of woodlice outside and asked, "Is it okay if it's just you? There are so many of them."
Even a large number of ants can kill an elephant.
"If all else fails, I'll have Green Pearl and Fat Tiger come over and help you."
Giant Locust: [No need, I'm afraid that when I cook rice later, I might accidentally eat the wrong thing and bite them.]
Qiao Ning: ...Okay.
She opened the window and let the giant locust fly out. The giant locust's body only expands significantly during its egg-laying period, and its current size... is about the same as Tao Tao's mosquito girl.
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