Hunter of Mysterious Creature

Chapter 870 - 107: Four-Person Squad

In the year since he joined, he completed a total of four missions.

The first mission was a false alarm, with the culprit being a python not infected by the meme. Because it killed three villagers consecutively, the village sheriff reported it to the Anomaly Investigation Bureau as the work of a Mysterious Creature. The Investigation Bureau, facing manpower shortage, submitted a support request to the Mysterious Creature Research Institute that Cheng Ming belonged to.

At that time, Cheng Ming, still a rookie Hunter, was sent down, along with a group of investigators and assisting soldiers, to search the mountains for four days and nights. Finally, they found the fat python in a valley and discovered the remains of the deceased villagers in its belly.

During that mission, Cheng Ming did nothing. The armed investigators and soldiers easily killed the python — nonetheless, it became the first completed mission in his Hunter’s credentials.

It seemed that the first mission used up Cheng Ming’s luck because the second mission confronted him with a thorny target — a group hunting operation involving six Mysterious Creature Hunters including Cheng Ming. Led by an experienced Hunter who had completed nine missions, the other five were either complete novices or rookies like Cheng Ming who had completed one or two missions.

Three died, two were severely injured, and it was only because of the veteran Hunter’s ’berserk mode’ that they managed to deal with the target — Cheng Ming lay in the medical department of the institute for two whole weeks before barely being able to get out of bed.

Thankfully, the logistics department sent an intern to take care of Cheng Ming’s mother. Otherwise, Mrs Cheng, who lacked self-care abilities, might have starved to death at home.

The latter two missions were both completed by Cheng Ming alone. The targets were not threatening. Cheng Ming simply used the container provided by the institute to contain the Mysterious Creature, completing the containment task.

In fact, an ordinary person could have done this job, but ordinary people face the risk of meme infection by Mysterious Creatures, while Cheng Ming, being already infected, does not have this problem.

After completing four missions, theoretically, Cheng Ming was no longer a rookie Hunter... but only he knew that his real combat experience was limited to that second mission.

In truth, during the second mission, Cheng Ming was knocked unconscious by the tail of the Mysterious Creature crocodile within five minutes of the fight.

In other words, this so-called practical experience is practically negligible...

Cheng Ming’s source of infection was the cactus pot on his desk. One day during lunch break, he observed many strange red spikes growing on its surface. Curious, he touched one with his finger, and suddenly his body convulsed violently as if electrically shocked.

His coworker, surprised, tried to pull him, resulting in the coworker’s skin turning bright red, followed by countless tiny blood beads seeping from their pores.

In just seconds, the seeping turned into gushing, plunging the office into chaos.

When the sheriff and anomaly investigators arrived at the scene, Cheng Ming’s coworker was nothing but an empty husk, while Cheng Ming himself had fallen into an unconscious frenzy, not caring about the bloodied state of his hands and mouth, grabbing the cactus and swallowing it whole.

After the cactus entered Cheng Ming’s body, it quickly integrated into his flesh, turning Cheng Ming from a regular person into a meme-infected individual.

This cactus was a gift from Cheng Ming’s ex-girlfriend. Cheng Ming had been nurturing it for two years. Despite thorough investigations by the Mysterious Creature Research Institute, Investigation Bureau, and Public Security Bureau of Cheng Ming, his ex-girlfriend, the florist, his company, and even couriers and security guards who had entered the office, no reason for the cactus’s transformation into a Mysterious Creature was found.

The cactus, like others of its kind, was cultivated in a floral base at the city suburb. There were no abnormalities during transportation and sale; no meme infection was found in other cacti from the same batch... after exhausting all leads, the researchers could only reach one helpless conclusion: the cactus likely self-mutated upon satisfying certain special conditions.

It’s like spontaneous human combustion; rare but not impossible.

The Mysterious Creature Research Institute compensated for the death of Cheng Ming’s coworker, but as an infected individual, Cheng Ming certainly could not return to his old company, and finding a decent job in this city was difficult for an infected person without any skills or fame.

Even if the institute issued a meme stability report for Cheng Ming, people around him still viewed infected individuals with prejudice — no one knew if an infected person, seemingly normal one moment, might turn into a devouring Mysterious Creature or cadaver the next.

The odds are low, but nobody dares to wager.

Especially for ordinary people lacking knowledge of Mysterious Creature memes and infected individuals.

This isn’t Chunming City; Mysterious Creature Hunters are not celebrated as big stars. In the eyes of passersby, Cheng Ming is a ticking time bomb, ready to explode at any moment.

After all, he’s already "blown up" one person.

The subsidy issued to Cheng Ming by the Federation Government and Mysterious Creature Research Institute barely covers his living expenses; he must find a way to pay for his mother’s medical bills.