Forty-three-year-old Turner had almost twenty years of army experience, and he was also a reliable commanding officer. Currently, he was leading his troop through a barren mountain ridge, allowing them to gain a clear line of sight. Everything within an area of over ten kilometers was within the scope of their vision. As for trees that could block the sunlight, Turner did not seem to care much about them. Large expanses of greenery often signified unpredictable dangers.
The howls of rotting wolves echoed from within the mountains. Turner immediately looked towards the direction of the noise, and his pupils quickly dilated and contracted, and his eyeballs’ shape also seemed to correspondingly change a bit. Without using any binoculars, his eyes locked onto several small black specks several kilometers out. Only now did Turner raise his binoculars, and from within the lens, he could see several gray and black rotting wolves. They were currently restlessly roaming about the reddish-brown cliffs, and from time to time, they would roar towards the sky.
The range of Turner’s eyesight was only 1.5 times that of a normal human’s, and it had used up a point of evolution, or in other words, a chance at genetic modification. An ordinary person only had chance to undergo genetic improvement once or twice in their lifetime, so most people chose to improve their physical strength or their bodies’ defenses. However, Turner decided without the slightest regret to use his evolution point in his eyesight. While trying to survive within the wilderness, if one could notice danger a moment faster, it would be equivalent to obtaining another chance of survival.
“Fuck! Those fellows look like they’ve grown larger in size again.” Turner cursed a few times and set out with his men towards a valley in a different direction.
These rotting wolves were able to move about under the powerful sunlight for some reason. These were creatures that were usually nocturnal in nature. However, Turner did not need to know these things. Through his experiences, he deduced that there was a wolf’s den within the mountains and valleys, and that was all he needed to know. Summer was the mating season for the rotting wolves, and so there should be a few small wolves that have only recently weaned within the wolf’s den. His mission was to find out information about these rotting wolves and their variations, as well as report back if there are any new unknown creatures that have emerged. Lastly, he had to bring back a few rotting wolves’ corpses to be researched within the base.
Typically, this mission required Turner and his men to walk around the wilderness for half a month, but the difficulty wasn’t that high. This wasteland region that stretched roughly a hundred kilometers in circumference was something Turner knew like the back of his hand. The places that were suitable for different species to live in were things he could recite with his eyes closed. As for his nine-man party, even if they encountered a large wolf pack with over a hundred rotting wolves, they would still be able to deal with them.
However, the biggest problem lies in how quickly everything changed in this world. Turner had personally witnessed the gradual enlargement of the rotting wolves. At first, a single bullet would be enough to deal with a mature rotting wolf, yet now, they frequently needed to be shot two or three times successively before dying. Their movement speeds were becoming faster, and their bodies were only getting stronger. From what the base’s research director said, in just the last twelve months, the fully grown rotting wolves on average were 12% heavier, their muscles became 23% more powerful, and their nimbleness increased by 18%. In addition, their defensive capabilities improved by 35%, and their resistance towards radiation increased by 50%.
Turner naturally couldn’t remember all this, nor did he have any interest in memorizing such precise statistics. His thinking was much simpler: the rotting wolves are growing larger and becoming more and more dangerous. His small troop that could defeat a hundred and fifty rotting wolves in the past could only deal with no more than a pack of a hundred now; that was all there was to it. Even though the situation seemed to still be within the base’s control, each time Turner left for his mission, the bad feeling in his mind would become stronger. What if the wolves became as large as tigers, and had the wisdom of man? This thought had crossed Turner’s mind more than once.