Chapter 503: Warhammer: What Do You Mean You Conquered the Tyranids? Chapter 503 Ayla (II)

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Protagonist:

Lin En

Lena

Ever since Mei began taking Ayla out scavenging, their little household had never suffered famine again.

At first Mei worried his advanced age would make him unable to teach the child, but reality quickly made him realize one thing.

Ayla's learning ability and growth speed far exceeded the imagination of any mortal on this wasteland.

She had been scavenging with Mei for less than a week, yet her harvesting efficiency had already far surpassed this old man who had spent over a decade rummaging through rubbish heaps.

Now every time Mei went out, he brought back more than three times the supplies of the past.

Abundant food brought even more frantic growth for Ayla.

In just over half a year, by the time Ayla turned one year old, her development was already no different from that of an ordinary sixteen- or seventeen-year-old youth.

Her racial genes seemed innately superior to the native humans struggling to survive on the planet Wade Tower.

At merely one year old, Ayla's height and physique were already taller and stronger than any adult man in Mei's settlement.

Her every gesture contained explosive power far beyond her peers, and in those amethyst-like eyes settled a calm and sharpness utterly mismatched with her tender appearance.

But this precocity also brought another side.

Ayla's emotions were exceptionally faint, even describable as cold-blooded.

At first, aside from Mei, she disdained to communicate with anyone in the entire settlement.

She was like an emotionless precision machine — precise, efficient, yet understanding nothing of human affairs.

Others' pleasantries she treated as meaningless noise; others' warm greetings she could not even be bothered to respond to.

Until once, Mei got into a verbal dispute with someone, who, emotionally agitated, merely uttered a slightly harsh remark.

No one saw clearly how Ayla struck.

In the blink of an eye, she had closed the distance, a single blade precisely striking the left side of the opponent's vital point.

That strike's angle was tricky, its force just right — it instantly robbed the target of resistance without being immediately fatal, clearly calculated in an extremely short time.

In Ayla's simplistic, almost single-track judgment, the person who had spoken rudely already harbored ill intent toward Mei; not eliminating the threat at its root was already her greatest kindness.

It was at this moment that Mei was jolted awake.

He realized that for Ayla, education in morality and worldview was thousands of times more important than teaching survival skills.

This child was too powerful, powerful like a living being that would only exist in myths and legends.

But once she lost the constraints of human ethics and morality, this power would sooner or later push her onto a path of no return.

He did not want to see his own daughter ultimately degenerate into yet another ferocious beast on this wasteland that had only instinct, no soul.

So Mei began deliberately taking Ayla to help others in the settlement.

He taught her how to properly interact and converse with people, how to reciprocate when receiving others' kindness, how to discern the true intent behind a person's words.

He fed her, bit by bit, patiently, the worldly wisdom he had accumulated over years of struggling in the mortal world.

At first Ayla did not understand why Mei would give away the food and medicine the two of them had painstakingly exchanged, why he would repair tottering roofs for others without charge.

But she gradually discovered that those who had been helped would sincerely say a word of thanks, would secretly gift back a bit of their own precious supplies.

And after Mei was accidentally injured during a scavenging run and lay bedridden, the settlement's men, women, old, and young took turns coming to care for him.

They brought hot water, sent wound medicine, silently patched the holes in his shack.

Bit by bit, warmth silently permeated into Ayla's icy heart.

That time, Mei lay on the sickbed, using a weak yet gentle voice to tell Ayla a small story.

"Child, the earliest hallmark of human civilization is actually not tools, but a healed femur."

Ayla listened quietly, without interrupting.

"In nature, once any animal's femur fractures, it is almost equivalent to death.

The injured cannot walk normally, cannot hunt, cannot gather food, and cannot escape predators.

But at an ancient site, anthropologists found a completely healed femur.

It had healed so completely that it showed during the weeks or even months of that person's injury, fellow beings had continuously cared for him, provided him food, protected him from being devoured by beasts, until he fully recovered."

Mei gazed into Ayla's clear eyes and said, word by word:

"Therefore, civilization never began with the strong conquering the weak, but from the moment humans were willing to lower themselves to care for injured, weak companions."

These words, like a clap of thunder, blasted open in Ayla's heart, deafening and awakening.

From that day on, this child who had once believed only in efficiency began trying to understand those things she had previously been unable to understand.

She gradually understood why Mei helped others, why a group of strangers would be willing to gather together.

Jointly resisting external enemies and beasts, sharing food and campfires, relying on each other through the endless wasteland nights.

Those instincts belonging to tribe and civilization, latent deep within her human genes, began to quietly awaken.

She wanted to create a better world for humanity, or rather, for Mei.

To achieve this goal, she first needed a truly united, and obedient, team.

Although she knew in her heart that even if everyone in this settlement combined, she had full confidence she could kill them all within a minute.

But she knew that to accomplish an undertaking, relying on individual martial force alone was far from enough.

Yet the current settlement had no true leader in the real sense; everyone was purely held together by that simple human affection maintaining a fragile cohesion.

Mei had taught her that as a human, one must not be too barbaric.

So she could not conquer everyone with her fists to seize the position of Tribal Chief; that would not be civilized enough.

She needed an opportunity, one that would let everyone see clearly that this gathering place needed a leader.

The opportunity came quickly.

One deep night, all was silent, everyone sunk deep in sleep.

Dozens of pairs of eyes glowing with Ghost Light were silently approaching the Camp.

A pack of Tusag Hunting Dogs.

These beasts bearing the name "Hunting Dogs" actually had no relation whatsoever to true canids.

They were pack-dwelling giant lizards mutated by radiation, standing an exaggerated one point five meters at the shoulder, covered in hard scales, with backward-facing spines growing on their spines and limb joints.

Perhaps describing them as "giant lizards with backward-facing spines" would be more apt.

Yet before this pack of Hunting Dogs had closed within fifty meters of the Camp, they had already been noticed by Ayla's Perception.

Ayla did not alert anyone, silently waking the sleeping Mei and all adults in the Camp still capable of Battle, calmly issuing Commands.

Prepare to meet the enemy.

People startled awake from sleep, grabbing homemade Waste Guns, electric spears wrapped in cables, crude crossbows, hurriedly forming a Defensive Line behind the Camp's simple barricades.

And in this chaos, Ayla naturally took Command Authority over the entire Camp's Battle.

She was very calm, merely sweeping the scene with those amethyst-like eyes, a Gesture, a look, Mobilizing everyone to the positions they should hold.

The crowd did not know why, but this one-year-old little girl's words held a magic that made them want to believe.

The charging Tusag Hunting Dogs totaled six adults, Eleven sub-adults, and eight juveniles.

With Ayla's Combat Power, she could have easily alone dealt with this pack of Beasts, but she did not choose to display personal martial prowess.

She would use a perfect Command to let everyone witness with their own eyes what a true leader is.

That night, not a single casualty appeared in the Camp.

Ayla precisely predicted each Hunting Dog's charge momentum, directing crossbowmen to split the pack's formation, guiding electric spearmen to complete a pincer on the Ce Yu, using concentrated Waste Gun fire to kill the stragglers one by one.

25 Tusag Hunting Dogs, cleanly and neatly all slain, while the Camp side suffered not the slightest loss.

During the post-Battle tally, Ayla discovered something unusual on the Hunting Dogs' Green Skin Corpses.

In these Hunting Dogs' blood, someone had artificially injected a nerve-stimulating stimulant, which caused them to madly lunge at the human Camp.

Following the tracks, she also found a lure in the Outer Areas of the Camp that could attract Tusag Hunting Dogs closer.

Ayla instantly judged the truth.

Someone wanted to use the Tusag Hunting Dogs' hands to weaken their Camp.

This was only a beginning; next, there would be an attack from Fellow humans, lurking in the Depths of Darkness.

After that Battle, the Camp's people began subconsciously asking Ayla what they should do next.

For this result, Ayla was very satisfied, but on the Surface she maintained Composure.

She merely calmly directed everyone to disguise the Camp as a miserable scene after suffering heavy Hunting Dog injury, abandoned barricades, chaotic Footprints, scattered bloodstains all carefully arranged.

Simultaneously, deadly traps were quietly buried along the essential paths around the camp.

All Preparation complete, just waiting for those mice hiding in the dark to Hook themselves.