As someone in sequence 001, I also want to give up today.

Outside the barrier, the rat swarm seemed to have received some kind of command.

Instead of mindlessly charging and biting, they began to converge in an organized manner!

Countless gold-devouring rats stacked one on top of another, like building blocks, constructing an ever-growing "rat tower" outside the barrier!

At the top of the Rat Tower, we're getting closer and closer to the top of the barrier!

"They're trying to stack up and break through the weakest point at the top of the barrier?!" someone exclaimed in horror.

The teachers immediately mobilized their forces to attack the base of the rat tower, but the rat swarm was too large.

One after another, the rat tower, though swaying, continued to slowly grow taller.

The situation is critical!

"Let me do it!" Zhou Yan gritted his teeth, about to unleash all his power to release a large-scale flame.

"No! It will affect the barrier and the buildings!" the teacher stopped them.

Just when they were caught in this dilemma—

An invisible and intangible yet incomparably sharp "cutting" intent, like the aurora borealis skimming across the water, instantly swept across the area outside the barrier!

There was no sound, no light or shadow.

But the rat tower that was being built, several meters high, along with all the gold-devouring rats within a radius of tens of meters below, froze in their tracks.

The next second, countless fine cutting marks appeared on them, and the entire rat tower collapsed, turning into countless lifeless rat pieces!

A tall figure appeared outside the barrier as if by teleportation, her ponytail flying and her eyes cold.

It was Li Yu!

"Instructor Li!" the teachers and students exclaimed in surprise.

Li Yu did not turn around. She hovered in mid-air, surrounded by an invisible cutting force field.

All the gold-eating rats that tried to get close to her were instantly sliced ​​into countless pieces.

She looked at the still boundless swarm of rats, her brows furrowed.

"There are too many..."

She could feel that her attack just now seemed to have cleared out a large area.

But compared to the entire rat swarm, it's just a drop in the ocean.

Moreover, the rats seem to have learned their lesson, no longer gathering in easily cleanable piles, but instead spreading out more widely to various parts of the city.

Although her consciousness-splitting ability is powerful, it is not the most efficient way to deal with such a large number of scattered and weak targets, and it also consumes a lot of mental energy.

In the city, she can't recklessly use her large-scale clearing skills.

"Ensure the school's safety first, then we'll figure out a solution."

Li Yu raised her hand, and the more solid cutting force field reinforced the school's barrier, while clearing away the swarms of rats that continued to pour in from the outside of the barrier.

She saw the bell being protected in the center of the venue and nodded slightly to her, indicating that she shouldn't be afraid.

Seeing her aunt made Lingdang feel much more at ease, and she waved vigorously.

Lin Wanwan looked up at the figure in the sky, her purple eyes filled with shock and contemplation.

"Such precise and immense cutting power... Sequence 016, 'Consciousness Severing,' truly lives up to its name. However, facing such a large number of enemies, a swift victory may be difficult..."

Just then, another unexpected event occurred!

From beneath the school, a muffled sound, like countless claws digging and gnawing frantically, suddenly came from beneath the ground! At the same time, the ground trembled slightly!

"Underground! The rats are digging tunnels underground, trying to bypass the barrier!"

A perceptive teacher exclaimed in surprise.

Li Yu's expression changed.

The barrier primarily protects the surface and shallow underground layers. If the rat swarm digs in from deeper layers...

"All Earth and Rock type users, reinforce the underground! Everyone else, prepare to fight the rats that may crawl out from underground!" she immediately ordered.

A flurry of activity erupted inside the venue as teachers hastily organized a defensive response.

Lingdang suddenly tugged at the sleeve of a senior student next to her who was trying to build an earthen wall and whispered, "Um... senior, are mice afraid of cats?"

The senior student was taken aback, then smiled wryly, "Little sister, an ordinary cat can't handle so many strange beast rats..."

Before he could finish speaking, a powerful, penetrating voice, filled with anger and authority, faintly echoed from a distant direction outside the barrier—

"Meow—!!!!"

The sound wasn't loud, but it strangely drowned out the cacophony of the rats and clearly reached the ears of everyone (and the rats).

Immediately afterwards, the rats around the school suddenly became noticeably agitated!

Some of the gold-eating rats stopped eating and moving forward, turning their heads uneasily in the direction from which the sound came—Jiangcheng North District.

It was as if something that instilled their instinctive fear was fiercely battling there, and... very angry.

---

The streets of Jiangcheng were in chaos.

At the entrance of an upscale residential community, a security guard stood dumbfounded, holding a rubber baton, as a tidal wave of gold-devouring rats surged towards him.

He shakily took out his old-fashioned mobile phone to call the police, but found there was no signal.

He looked at his beloved, gleaming old-fashioned bicycle, which was being gnawed on by dozens of rats. The bell was gone, and the handlebars were getting shorter...

"My 'Phoenix'!!!"

The old man let out a heart-wrenching wail, then, anger welled up inside him, and he raised his rubber baton.

"I'll fight you to the death!"

Then he saw that the rats ignored him and were focused on gnawing on the car.

The old man stopped awkwardly halfway through swinging his cane.

In a jewelry store, the owner watched as the security metal roller shutter door thinned and developed holes at a visible rate.

The metal frame and ornaments on the counter inside were vibrating slightly (the rats were gnawing on the supporting structure underground).

The shop owner's face turned green. He squatted down under the only wooden table in the shop, holding his head, and muttered to himself.

"It's all over, it's really over... I should have listened to my wife and bought more insurance..."

On a food street, the owner of a teppanyaki stall watched as several rats sizzled and gnawed holes into his beloved teppanyaki grill.

He was so angry that he picked up the spatula to slap it, but the owner of the milk tea shop next to him held him back tightly.

"Don't be impulsive! They don't bite! What if they bite you if you slap them? Is the metal plate more important than your life?"

The boss watched helplessly as his livelihood quickly turned into a honeycomb-like structure.

"My board... my board..."

The various teams dispatched by the Jiangcheng Special Abilities Bureau also encountered various predicaments.

Su Lin's team was responsible for evacuating residents from an old-style residential area.

Looking at the dense swarms of rats in the walls and on the stair railings, Su Lin couldn't shake the goosebumps all over her body.

She is a healer, with limited offensive methods; she can only use a gentle mental field to drive them away, and the effect is slow.

An old woman refused to leave, insisting on taking her "treasure"—a set of ancestral pewter teaware—and was locked in a stalemate with a mouse trying to gnaw on the teaware box...

"Grandma, we can buy more things, but your life is more important!" Su Lin advised, both amused and exasperated.

"This was passed down from my great-grandmother! It's been with me for eighty years! These damned rats!"

The old lady waved her cane, but dared not actually hit her.

Fang Yuan and Lao Zhao were assigned to a team to use physical and non-metallic methods to clear the rats from a main road in an attempt to open up a rescue route.

Fang Yuan applied his "local hardening" ability to the soles of his shoes and gloves.

Stepping on a mouse is like stepping on a cockroach, but when you step on it, there's a "crunch" sound all over it, which feels disgusting.

Old Zhao was waving a huge solid wooden stick that he had taken from somewhere (it might be a shop signpost).

Sweeping around like playing whack-a-mole is very effective, but it leaves you breathless and exhausted.

"When will this ever end?!"

Fang Yuan looked miserable.

"I feel like they've licked the soles of my shoes thin!"

(Gold-eating rat: We only gnaw on metal, thank you.)

The magnetic string is responsible for a region on its own.

His electromagnetic control should theoretically be effective against metallic creatures.

However, the gold-eating rats have high energy resistance and there are too many of them.

His area-of-effect electromagnetic pulses consume a lot of energy and have a short duration.

He tried to use electromagnetic force to form a barrier to block them, but the rats quickly began to gnaw on the metal particles that made up the barrier (which he summoned with his ability), forcing him to repair it frequently, which was very frustrating.

"Where did these things come from?"

As Magneton looked at the seemingly endless swarm of rats, a hint of annoyance and deep doubt appeared on his usually stern face.

This incident is too strange.

---

North of Jiangcheng, near an abandoned dock.

Fat Orange squatted gracefully on a rusty section of a crane beam, its heterochromatic eyes narrowing into slits in the afternoon sunlight, looking down with scrutiny and a hint of displeasure.

It set off early in the morning to "inspect" this area that made its underlings uneasy.

The closer you get to the riverside dock, the more pronounced the cold, rusty, and dark energy in the air becomes.

At this moment, the scene in the huge, half-collapsed old warehouse below it is quite eerie.

On the warehouse floor, there were piles of various kinds of garbage and debris that had been gnawed away, leaving only non-metallic parts—plastic, rubber, glass, wood, and so on.

And among these mountains of garbage, there were countless gold-eating rats, almost covering the entire warehouse floor!

Their numbers far exceeded any other rat colony it had ever seen in the city!

Most of these gold-eating rats lay quietly, as if asleep, with only a few moving slowly.

The energy they emit is extremely weak and restrained, which explains why they were previously difficult to detect over a wide area.

And in the deepest part of the warehouse, in that shadowy corner...

Fat Orange's pupils contracted slightly.

There, something was lying there.

A gigantic gold-devouring rat, the size of a small car, covered in dark metallic scales, with a ferocious head, sharp metal fangs crisscrossing its mouth, and a tail as thick as a steel whip?!

No, it's not just about being big.

Fat Orange could clearly feel the energy fluctuations emanating from that thing. They were cold, obscure, and filled with greed and a desire for control. The intensity had reached the peak of Grade B, and even faintly touched the threshold of Grade A!

This giant gold-eating rat king appears to be in a dormant state, similar to "commanding" or "laying eggs".

It exudes a special pheromone and energy field, affecting the entire warehouse and even the ordinary gold-eating rats throughout Jiangcheng through the underground tunnel network.

Beside it, there were piles of metal blocks and parts from various sources that had not yet been eaten.

There were even some fragments of supernatural metal that emitted faint energy fluctuations.

Clearly, its "subjects" offered it the best "tribute" they had collected.

The chubby orange cat licked its paws, a hint of understanding and...disdain flashing in its heterochromatic eyes.

It turned out to be the case.

No wonder so many gold-devouring rats suddenly appeared underground in Jiangcheng.

It turns out that a large creature has "settled down" here, and somehow managed to create and gather such a massive population.

The cold, dark energy that made the Scarface and the others uncomfortable was emitted by this guy.

The Rat King seemed to sense that it was being watched, and its massive body moved slightly.

The eyelids, covered in metallic scales, lifted a crack, revealing a scarlet, cruel light that locked onto the fat orange on the crossbeam.

"squeak--!!"

A sharp, piercing screech, carrying a mental shock, erupted from the Rat King's mouth!

At the same time, the densely packed, previously quiet swarm of gold-eating rats inside the warehouse suddenly came to life as if a switch had been flipped!

Countless pairs of scarlet eyes stared at Fat Orange, their hissing sounds coalescing into a terrifying sonic wave!

The fat orange cat's fur stood on end slightly, but its eyes remained calm, even carrying a hint of "I knew it" laziness.

It flicked its tail, looking down at the restless swarm of rats and the large creature that exuded an aura that displeased the cat.

A low, threatening growl escaped his throat.

It seems that my "royal expedition" has run into the main character as soon as I stepped out the door.

Yeah.

That saves me the trouble of looking for it.