Chapter 22: New Species and Return
Along with the growls, small footsteps were heard from inside the cave. Rick raised his guard for a moment, but when he saw what was approaching, he could barely contain himself and started laughing.
A miniature version of the gray wolf approached him, keeping its guard up and showing its fangs, almost as if it wanted to intimidate him and tell him that it wasn’t afraid. It was at most the size of a medium-sized dog. But unlike the other mutants, it didn’t have red eyes or black saliva... Its eyes were yellow, and a black spot, shaped like a lightning bolt, covered its right eye.
Rick approached it and grabbed its scruff until it was at face level. When it was face to face with Rick, the pup stopped growling and couldn’t look him in the eye. After Rick also confirmed that it was a male, he lowered it to the ground, then took a piece of meat from his inventory, along with a level 1 crystal to feed it. While eating, Rick stroked its gray fur...
"Good boy... What should your name be?"
This young wolf was part of a new, very rare group of mammals that were born from other infected mammals... In the apocalypse, whenever one of these was found, it meant good quality food and no infection, since this little fellow was completely immune to the virus.
One of the surviving biologists called this adaptation and evolution of animals. The most fascinating thing of all was that the animal’s father or mother protected it for a long time, before finally noticing their cub as prey. It was something instinctive, dating back to the time when they were still normal animals.
The reason why mammals were the rarest of this new species was that if they couldn’t escape their parents by preying on them, they would end up becoming food while still young. That’s why they were rarer among reptiles, amphibians, birds, and fish. Most of which managed to escape before their parents devoured them.
But life wasn’t easy for any of them. As a new species immune to the ZY virus, they were also targets of all the abominations of the apocalypse. But they could also hunt them to become stronger by devouring their bodies and crystals. That’s why later, many survivors began to domesticate some of these animals in the hope of having strong and loyal companions. But due to predation by humans and mutants, they were rarely seen...
Looking again at the gray wolf that had a black spot similar to a lightning bolt in its right eye, Rick decided to call him Fulmen.