Chapter 352 – The Ferocious Rat Swarm

Zhizhi’s spatial defense wasn’t actually blocking attacks—it was deflecting force?

But where was the force being deflected to?

Mo Lan asked Zhizhi, who looked completely clueless. “Zhi?”

It didn’t even understand what force deflection meant.

Mo Lan felt that educating Zhizhi was going to be a long and arduous journey.

Since Zhizhi didn’t know, she would have to experiment herself.

She used the Levitation Spell to float over a blade of grass, sending it “attacking” toward Zhizhi’s shoulder, which was covered in spatial power.

The moment the grass blade touched the spatial power on Zhizhi’s shoulder, it vanished. At the same time, on the other side of Zhizhi’s body, a few fragments of the grass blade drifted out.

After experimenting several times with different objects, Mo Lan finally confirmed that Zhizhi’s spatial defense deflected force from the surface of its body to the air on the other side—essentially warping an attack past and around her body.

However, this teleportation-based deflection wasn’t one hundred percent effective. Judging by the degree of fragmentation of the grass blades, a portion was still being blocked by Zhizhi’s spatial defense.

Roughly ten percent of the force wasn’t deflected and was instead absorbed by the spatial defense.

This discovery made Mo Lan want to call that Woodgrain Python an idiot.

It could have used any attack method, but it just had to use constriction.

Force from one side got deflected to the other, back and forth—all its constricting force ended up acting on itself.

So it wasn’t actually that Zhizhi had easily withstood its constriction. Rather, the python had constricted itself.

Zhizhi had actually had it easy in there.

Even that earlier bite was the same—upper jaw and lower jaw clamping together with Zhizhi’s arm sandwiched between them. Force from one side deflected to the other, and ultimately all the force acted on the python itself.

The Woodgrain Python specialized in exactly those two attack methods, and both were perfectly countered by Zhizhi.

So even though this magical beast was comparable to Zhizhi in overall size and a full tier higher in rank, it had still been beaten so miserably.

“Zhizhi, are you injured anywhere?” Mo Lan asked.

After all, the deflection wasn’t complete—there was still a portion to bear. She wasn’t sure whether the spatial power had fully blocked it at the time.

But there were no wounds on Zhizhi’s body, so it should be fine.

“Zhizhi zhizhi~”

Zhizhi shook its head, then patted its belly and chattered away with a long, rambling explanation.

“You mean…”

Mo Lan had barely started speaking when she heard a short, sharp “zhi.”

That sound hadn’t come from Zhizhi!

Mo Lan and Zhizhi immediately went on alert.

Zhizhi was the first to spot where the sound was coming from. “Zhizhi!” Red-eyed stinky rats!

Mo Lan spotted them shortly after—a swarm of Ferocious Rats. She wasn’t sure whether they had been drawn by Zhizhi’s “zhizhi” chattering or by the Woodgrain Python’s blood and brain matter.

“Zhizhi, these are Ferocious Rats. Only the leader is an Intermediate magical beast—the rest are all Beginner magical beasts. Their teeth are venomous, so be careful not to get hurt by them,” Mo Lan warned.

Zhizhi didn’t wait for the Ferocious Rat swarm to approach. It teleported above the swarm and stomped down on the head of the leading Intermediate Ferocious Rat.

The size difference was enormous, the power gap overwhelming. The swarm lost its leader in an instant.

The swarm erupted into chaos.

Magical beasts with “Ferocious” in their names all shared low intelligence, were easily provoked, and once enraged, only knew how to charge blindly without any thought of retreat. This swarm of Ferocious Rats was no different.

With their strongest and most rational leader killed, there was no rat left to restrain them. Hundreds of Ferocious Rats surged madly toward Zhizhi.

Although the Ferocious Rat leader—the one most likely to pose a threat to Zhizhi—had been taken out at the very start of the fight, this many calf-sized Ferocious Rats rushing forward together still represented a considerable collective force.

Even Mo Lan, with three layers of protective Magic, wouldn’t dare carelessly wade into the swarm and get “intimate” with them.

But Zhizhi had a thin layer of spatial power wrapped around its body, and it had even extended its spatial power to cover Mo Lan as well.

Then it threw itself into the rat swarm, using all four limbs, leaping up and down. Any Ferocious Rat that got close either had its head smashed in by a punch or was sent flying by a kick.

Still, two fists couldn’t overcome a horde of rats. Some Ferocious Rats did get close, and though they couldn’t climb onto its body, they managed to bite at its legs.

But they were only Beginner rank—they couldn’t break through Zhizhi’s force-deflecting spatial defense.

Seeing that Zhizhi could handle the situation for now, Mo Lan held back from intervening and instead observed its fighting.

The question was how long it could keep this up.

A magical beast’s magical energy was also finite. Their magical energy was stored in their magic crystal—essentially their energy core.

For the extraordinary, the magical energy inside a magic crystal was crude, but after Alchemy processing, it could be used as a magic gemstone.

Once a magical beast’s magic crystal energy was depleted to a certain point, it required time to recover.

Zhizhi had just been through several battles in succession. Though each had been resolved swiftly, it hadn’t had any time to recover.

Only its gigantified state was a racial talent driven by bloodline power, requiring no energy expenditure and able to be maintained indefinitely.

After about half an hour, Ferocious Rats were still pouring in endlessly, and Zhizhi was beginning to show signs of exhaustion.

The spatial power on its body started flickering, and superficial wounds from the Ferocious Rats began appearing on its legs.

Mo Lan felt this was about Zhizhi’s limit. If it continued any further, it might sustain serious injuries.

She was just about to step in and help Zhizhi finish things off when it let out an angry “ZHI!” and pulled a large wooden barrel out of its companion space, glugging the contents down into its belly.

From the aroma, it was fruit wine from the Wine-Cellar Cave—probably a gift from the old monkey king.

After drinking, it didn’t forget to put the barrel back into its space.

The instant the wine went down, the spatial defensive power around Zhizhi’s body surged back to full strength.

Its punches were powerful again too. Before, at its most ferocious, it could only flatten a Ferocious Rat with one punch. Now it could shatter one with a single blow.

Most crucially, Mo Lan noticed that the wounds on Zhizhi’s legs were undergoing rapid healing, and even the Ferocious Rat venom in the wounds was slowly dissipating.

The tide of battle reversed in an instant.

Mo Lan settled back into the crook of Zhizhi’s neck, content to watch the fight.

Zhizhi had so much wine stored in its space, and this wine could replenish both its stamina and magical energy, heal its wounds, neutralize poison, and even boost its strength. In terms of endurance, the Ferocious Rat swarm couldn’t possibly outlast Zhizhi.

Watching Zhizhi like this reminded Mo Lan of someone—Vasida.

Vasida could continuously recover stamina, Mana, and heal injuries as long as she had food in her stomach.

Zhizhi, on the other hand, could continuously recover as long as it had wine in its belly.

Zhizhi was practically the wine-exclusive version of Vasida—only alcohol worked for it.

Though its attack and defense couldn’t match Vasida’s, and it didn’t involve the Power of Laws or the ability to freely share its gifts with others, it also needed far less wine!

It was a natural-born damage sponge, the perfect partner for a spellcaster. If those physically frail human mages ever found out about this, they’d be green with envy.