“A few hundred?!” A-Da was shaken. “Let me see!”

Bai Youwei, ahead of him, said, “Then keep quiet—don’t let the little mutants below hear you… These things are disgusting. They can already crawl that fast right out of the egg…”

She muttered to herself and inched forward.

Shen Mo followed close behind. He crawled to a vent opening and looked down through the latticed grate. Below was something like a swamp—an even thicker layer of sludge-like slime, eggs packed within it. A portion had already cracked open, and from them emerged small mutants—large-headed, narrow-bodied—crawling about.

These newly hatched little mutants moved like cockroaches, nimble and quick, their teeth sharp and pointed. Occasionally they tore off fragments of eggshell to eat, and they were growing at a visible rate.

But they didn’t seem capable of walking upright—likely because their limbs weren’t yet strong enough to support their disproportionately large heads.

Shen Mo watched for a few seconds, then quietly pulled his gaze away and crawled forward, making space for A-Da.

A-Da reached the vent opening and sucked in a sharp breath, muttering under his breath: “Oh damn.”

Natasha came after him, crawled past the vent, took in the scene below—and her expression went through several rapid changes.

Even though they’d come prepared to deal with the hatched mutants, their plan had only accounted for half this number. With the series of “unplanned events” along the way, their ammunition had quietly drained faster than expected. How were they going to manage this?

Natasha bit her lower lip, her mind racing through every possible scenario.

Knives weren’t out of the question—but she feared that if these little things swarmed all at once, those teeth were far from decorative.

Grenades? …That might work too, but their current position was terrible. Dropping a grenade from here would put themselves in the blast radius as well.

What to do…

Shen Mo seemed to sense what Natasha was thinking. He said quietly, “If we’re going down there to deal with them, it has to be fast. They’re growing quickly.”

“This is a nightmare,” A-Da muttered, on the verge of panic. “There are just too many of them…”

And it wasn’t just the people inside who were anxious—the viewers in the livestream were as well. With their bird’s-eye view, the audience could see the entire building. In the camera feed, the little mutants were hatching one after another, blanketing the entire 32nd floor. They’d even begun consuming the Queen’s corpse as food, gnawing and chewing, swarming across it like ants over a drop of syrup.

【So stressful!】

【Right?! Trapped up here, neither advancing nor retreating—this is unbearable!】

【Honestly, if it weren’t for that useless Cabbage causing so many problems, this instance would have been cleared by now.】

【Hey—front row—wasn’t getting slapped in the face enough last time?】

【I’ll say one honest thing myself: even though I really want to un-fan, I’m going to wait and see just a little longer… woof.】

【Wait and see +1.】

【Wait and see +2.】

【Has anyone else noticed something subtle? Yuri is technically the captain, but Cabbage has been controlling the entire rhythm—blowing up the parking garage, the cinema, the elevator, the ventilation shaft… I hope I’m just overthinking this.】

【I’m raising an eyebrow. I feel like there’s something to this.】

【Oh no… I’m getting chills down my spine. Think about it carefully, people—what exactly are we fans of?!】

【Stop, stop, I’m going to have a breakdown!】

【Quick, look! Cabbage is about to do something!】

……

Bai Youwei, watching from a vent up ahead, spoke quietly:

“Doesn’t anyone find it strange? Inside the Queen’s nest, there’s a lot of dark, dirty slime. The closer you get to the hatchery, the thicker and more abundant the slime. And right here at the hatchery itself—there’s even more of it, great thick pools…”

“It’s probably because the mutant larvae require a certain level of humidity,” Shen Mo said. “The slime makes the environment damp and also blocks some of the light.”

“Blocking light is also for moisture purposes, right? Sunlight accelerates evaporation,” Natasha mused. “So—could sunlight be their weakness? …But we’ve encountered mutants outside the building too. They move just fine in direct sunlight.”

Bai Youwei was quiet for a moment, then said softly, “True—they move fine in it. But their bodies… always seemed to stay wet.”

—