Li Ang looked at the skill description and pondered carefully. "Hmm..."
As an Excellent quality skill, the 'Drown in Misfortune Assassination Method' was quite simple and unadorned. It had a super long casting range of 200 meters, paired with a Special Effect that caused the opponent's respiratory system to continuously produce hot water. This was enough to quietly and effortlessly strangle an ordinary person without resistance and without being detected at all.
Even for players or monsters with exceptional physical qualities, if they were suddenly hit with this during a life-and-death struggle, they were likely to choke suddenly and lose their fighting capability.
Since the 'Drown in Misfortune Assassination Method' had no learning threshold, Li Ang immediately learned the skill. With the idea of giving it a try, he ran to the bathroom, summoned Miss Chai to act as his protector, then faced the bathtub and released the Special Effect on himself.
As soon as he activated the 'Drown in Misfortune Assassination Method,' Li Ang felt an unending stream of warm water, close to body temperature, coming from his lungs, secondary lung, windpipe, and nasopharynx, making it impossible for him to breathe.
Water gushed from his mouth and nose like a small waterfall, and in less than the time it took for a breath, the empty bathtub was filled.
An anxious Miss Chai had to bend down to pull out the bathtub stopper to prevent the entire bathroom from being flooded.
The suffocating effect came much faster than Li Ang had imagined. His body trembled uncontrollably. Under the control of his central nervous system, the lobes of his lungs, trachea, and bronchi instinctively secreted a large amount of thick mucus. This slippery mucus rolled around inside the trachea with the water flow, even surfacing in his throat and oral cavity.
This feeling... was even more terrifying than water torture. Li Ang got a clear sense of the 'Drown in Misfortune Assassination Method's' strength and effect. He persisted for a while longer, until he was about to lose his physical strength, then he stopped the Special Effect.
"COUGH, COUGH, COUGH." He coughed, spitting out the residual water in his throat and lungs, stood up, and calmed his breath.
With this amount of water, comparable to a small waterfall, an ordinary person might not last even twenty seconds before they would suffocate and faint.
Unfortunately, the skill had a cooldown time of 10 minutes, so it couldn't be activated continuously. Otherwise, Li Ang could transform into a 'Spitfire Hero,' run to the deserts, and donate water for tree planting and afforestation.
For the following days, Li Ang busied himself back and forth in the Pet Breeding Box.
The first batch of bio-modified earthworms had already reached the size of a human arm, with a few abnormal individuals that could even match a python or boa.
The Pet Breeding Box, only slightly bigger than a basketball court, was already somewhat insufficient for raising them. Fortunately, the 'Automatic Ecological Adjustment System' Special Effect allowed the ecological cycle inside to be barely maintained. Li Ang also frequently rode his bike to the outskirts of Yin City to dig up some soil and plants and bring them back into the Breeding Box.
The development of the Bees was also going well. The first batch of modified Bee eggs had already hatched.
In these Bee eggs, the number of male Bees only made up a very small portion, with the majority being Worker Bees.
A normal Bee's sting is barbed, with the venom gland connected to the innards—once it stings a person, the sting along with the venom gland and innards would come loose, causing the Bee to die.
These Worker Bees had their stingers specially strengthened to be straight, allowing them to retract the straight stinger after stinging someone without dying on the spot.
Moreover, the Bees' body types were modified and differentiated. Some retained the characteristic of being hairy-bodied with pollen-carrying legs. Others lost these characteristics entirely, and even their chewing-sucking mouthparts sadly degenerated, turning into siphoning mouthparts. These Bees no longer had the role of gathering pollen but purely served as Soldier Bees to guard the Beehive.
Additionally, the muscle types of the Bees also differentiated into various kinds; some remained unchanged, while others had their wings and muscles enhanced. Their wings became lighter, thinner, and more delicate. The flight muscles in their backs that control the wings were adjusted to a higher-intensity Asynchronous Muscle (a type of flight muscle that contracts more quickly than synchronous muscles). This boosted the flapping rate from over two hundred times per second to over a thousand times per second, resulting in a tremendous increase in flight speed. During short sprints, their speed could approach 50 km/h.
Of course, such specialized Worker Bees consumed a great deal of Energy, resulting in shorter lifespans compared to the original ones.
Moreover, since these were the first batch of modified species, some of the mutant Worker Bees had no idea what to do. Even without pollen-carrying legs and chewing-sucking mouthparts, they would fly out to gather honey. Watching the normal Worker Bees labor away, they themselves would just flit about aimlessly, slacking off.
This was like watching from the sidelines and slacking off. Cunning, very cunning.
Up to now, Li Ang had not yet found a way to precisely control the swarm. He could only continue to collect pheromone samples, preparing to harness the swarm for the future.
Creating species was a monumental task, long and arduous. As the script task's deadline slowly approached, Li Ang also began to organize his equipment, readying himself to enter the script world.
Since player IDs might be exposed in script tasks that required teamwork, Li Ang used the Origin of Life and various colors of paint to slightly alter the appearance of the 'Triangular Bone Tipped Spear' and 'Virulent Poison.' He covered the surface of the Bonetip Spear with a thick layer of flesh and sprayed a coat of paint on 'Virulent Poison' to hide the mottled green glow on its blade, making it look more like an ancient Miao sword manufactured in modern times.
One evening, as Li Ang was sitting at the table eating stir-fried rice noodles, he finally heard the long-awaited System notification sound.
[Task trigger conditions have been met.]
[Task type: Script task (Team)]
[Task name: Mechanism Mansion]
[First Phase Task Objective: Enter Williams Mansion]
[Task Time Limit: 1 hour]
[Task Rewards: None]
[Task Failure Penalty: None]
[5 minutes before teleportation, would you like to teleport now?]
Already prepared, Li Ang immediately dropped his chopsticks, wiped the corner of his mouth, and went into the Automated Pet Box. He took out the Origin of Life to alter his appearance and physique, summoned Miss Chai, and then stood quietly in the living room, waiting for the teleportation.
Li Ang silently thought, This time it's another team-based script task. The task's objective, Williams Mansion, sounds like it's set against a Western world backdrop, but currently, the specific era and location are unknown. The one-hour time limit implies that upon teleporting there, I will not be near the mansion but will need to travel a considerable distance to reach it. I'm likely to encounter hazards along the way that could threaten my life or cause trouble. This means that once I'm in, I need to be prepared for combat. The blank task rewards could suggest that simply arriving alive at the mansion is a reward in itself. And the similarly empty failure penalty indicates that if I can't reach this so-called Williams Mechanism Mansion within an hour, the outcome would be almost as bad as death... or perhaps even worse than death. Unfortunately, the System has deliberately set first and second phase objectives, revealing no additional useful intelligence.
From the scant information revealed in the brief, Li Ang could already imagine the difficulty of this script task...