Chapter 071: The Plasma Toad

"Holy crap! This makes no sense!" Bai Yuxi and Willy were both shocked out of their wits. How could such tiny creatures fire off 'plasma' energy? It was utterly unscientific!

"We're done for! We're done for! We're so dead!" Willy shrieked, instinctively raising his arms to shield himself.

With the incoming plasma orbs offering them nowhere to hide, the two could only desperately activate their superactive shields, bracing for the onslaught that rained down like a storm.

Don’t underestimate those mutant toads, each only the size of a bowl—though the plasma balls they spat were no bigger than marbles. Yet to electrolyze atmospheric oxygen into ozone required at least 3,000 volts! What's more, what people call 'plasma'—that is, ionized gas—is terrifying not just for its charged particles, but for its theoretically immense temperatures, reaching millions or even tens of millions of degrees, enough to vaporize anything in an instant.

Their own superactive shields, themselves an unscientific kind of defense, could block and neutralize energy attacks, but the warriors’ internal reserves of superactivity were limited! Take Willy’s F3-level, with a superactive threshold of 1,600°. Even if the mutant toads were rated at a mere 0.1 danger level, and their plasma balls only delivered a 10°X energy hit, a single volley from 160 of them would be enough to drain his shield entirely. If even one plasma orb struck home, it would instantly vaporize him on the spot!

But as Willy reflexively squeezed his eyes shut and waited, the expected paralyzing jolt never came. Blinking in confusion, he realized that Bai Yuxi had thrown his own shield wide, enveloping them both within its protective field.

"What are you staring at, idiot?!" Bai Yuxi yelled, sensing his shield rapidly weakening under the barrage of plasma orbs. Knowing he couldn't hold out much longer, he grabbed Willy by the arm and roared, "Run!"

There was no time for disgust now. They dashed forward, trampling countless mutant toads beneath their feet, and somehow managed to break out of the encirclement of warty monsters. Bai Yuxi himself wasn’t sure just how fast an F7-level supernormal warrior could run—seven times the speed of an ordinary person had never been measured precisely—but as he poured on the power, they burst more than a hundred meters away in a flash, leaving the densest cluster of toads behind.

Luckily, the mutant toads’ plasma attacks had limited range due to particle dissipation in flight—no more than a few meters at best, and the temperature seemed far lower than theory suggested. When the plasma balls hit Bai Yuxi’s shield at close range, he felt only the drain on his reserves, not any searing heat—it seemed to be a ‘cold plasma’ effect.

Unfortunately, Bai Yuxi was no expert in the field, and in the chaos he couldn’t tell if the toads’ plasma was corona discharge or glow discharge. But as long as it posed no threat, he didn’t care. Moreover, this level of energy attack seemed to be a heavy drain on the toads themselves; they couldn’t fire continuously, which gave the two men a slim chance at survival.

Realizing this, both men shuddered with belated understanding. Now they saw why the great powers of the supernormal world—even the official authorities—were terrified at the mere mention of a “supernormal creature tide.” Unless you were completely immune to supernatural energy, no matter how strong you were, you’d be hard pressed to withstand the collective assault of a swarm of low-level supernormal beings. This was the literal truth behind “enough ants can kill an elephant.”

By that measure, a “supernormal creature tide” was even more destructive than powerful dimensional entities, no wonder it was classified as a “catastrophe.”

Bai Yuxi and Willy fought their way forward, retreating as they went. But the swarm of mutant toads—perhaps more accurately called ‘plasma toads’—was endless, hurling themselves forward in wave after wave, making it nearly impossible for the pair to shake them off.

Especially as Willy could barely move outside the radius of Bai Yuxi’s shield, which seriously dragged down their speed. They could only hack their way forward, struggling toward the direction of their duty vehicle.

At this point, Willy no longer cared about the destruction of valuable supernatural resources. Whenever the plasma toads gathered too thickly, he lobbed a blazing fireball to clear a path and ease the pressure on Bai Yuxi, who was tasked with shielding them.

The fireball was devastatingly powerful. Even without a direct hit, the flames radiating from the explosion instantly incinerated every plasma toad within a ten-meter radius. But such expensive X-energy weapons were meant only as a last resort, so a supernormal warrior typically carried only the standard set of four. Willy, in this brief skirmish, had already hurled three, clinging desperately to the last one for fear they’d be trapped again with no way out.

What was strange, however, was that despite the lack of any barrier concealing the fight, and all the energy being unleashed, no support arrived from their teammates. Clearly, things were even worse out there than they’d imagined. It was likely that Loffy, Maya, Drumstick, and Xia Youyou were all under attack by plasma toads as well, leaving no one free to come to their aid.

“Hey! Bai! Don’t you have that ‘energy micromanipulation’ and ‘supernormal battle technique’ thing?” Willy, sweating and exhausted, yelled, “Is this really the time to be saving up for a big move? If you’ve got your ultimate ready, now’s the time to use it!”

Bai Yuxi paused at this. The dense volleys of plasma toads had kept him too busy staying alive to think of any technique like ‘energy micromanipulation’. But now, forced to keep the superactive shield up to block the plasma balls, he realized that out of the more than half a million degrees of superactive energy in his body, over a third had already been consumed in this short time. At this rate, he might run dry before even rejoining the rest of Team Seven.

Yet the X-particles, rapidly condensing in his body under the intense attraction of his overactive pheromones in this “super-convergent” state, were barely consumed at all; the toads’ pathetic defenses meant he hardly needed to expend energy to kill them.

Willy’s reminder sparked a sudden inspiration. The defense of the superactive shield mainly relied on the mutual neutralization of supernatural energies. If an attack formed of X-energy could cancel out the superactive shield, did that mean he could also use X-energy to neutralize incoming supernatural attacks? He didn’t know if the still-unfinished ‘supernormal battle technique’ would work in this situation, but it was certainly worth a try.