Alien Relic Hunter

"What should we do now? Leave this guy here, or take him with him?" The hound climbed up from Cao Feng's body and asked Ke Lan.

"Put it here first..." Ke Lan pointed to the two stone doors on the east and west sides that have not yet been opened. "I think there are stone chambers like this behind these two stone doors. Others are probably in here. ."

If the stone chamber where Cao Feng is located is used as the reference point, the south side is the stone chamber where Ke Lan woke up, and the north side is the direction from which the hound came. There is only one door in the stone chambers of Ke Lan and the hound, leading to Cao Feng. Lying in this room, and if you want to continue exploring this ruins, you can only walk on the east and west sides.

During the next period of time, Ke Lan and Hound walked step by step, as if they were playing some kind of chess game, exploring the surrounding stone chambers one by one - just as Ke Lan expected, in these stone chambers, they I found several other teammates and two interns from the Polaris Hunting Group.

Leiton and Zhuoligetu were in relatively good and stable condition, but the situation was completely opposite when Ivan was discovered by them - he had already rolled down from the stone platform to the floor. , his facial expression was very ferocious, his limbs kept waving wildly, and from time to time he let out a low roar of unknown meaning in his throat... Ke Lan had no choice but to inject him with Mengzao preparation and neutralizer, so that he could Fell into a deep sleep.

What surprised the hound was that Akira Asano, who was usually calm and didn't talk much, was now deeply trapped in a nightmare. Although his performance was not as crazy as Ivan's, his heart rate increased to 100% per second. More than one hundred and eighty times, he was in a very dangerous state.

"I can understand that Ivan would have nightmares... He must have dreamed that he was controlled by the Corrosion Seed and turned into that disgusting tentacle monster... But Asano Akira, I really can't figure it out. I think his psychological quality is quite good. Okay..." Hound said with some confusion.

"He must have dreamed about that experiment..." Ke Lan said thoughtfully, "That must be the biggest shadow in his heart."

"Experiment? You mean that...secret force?" Hound also heard about it, but he didn't know as much as Ke Lan, and Asano Akira didn't like to talk on weekdays, so he didn't ask for the details.

Everyone has a past that they don't want to mention, and Hound understands this very well. As long as these things will not affect the team, he will not deliberately expose people's scars.

"He told me that in the army that participated in the experiment... many people died, and many people went crazy. The closer the people are to the 'critical point', the more miserable their fate will be... and he can only be regarded as one of the many The existence of the lowest among the experimental subjects, so he only lost the ability of the visual center of the brain." Ke Lan sighed, "Although I don't know the details of the experiment, but if you think about it, you will know that that kind of experiment must be inhumane. Words."

…

In addition to the four Laytons, there are two hunters from the Polaris Hunting Group, one male and one female. From their armbands, we can tell that the male hunter is named Martin, while the female hunter is named Qin Zhao.

Including Cao Feng, these three hunters are all very young. You can tell at a glance that they are no more than twenty years old. They probably just finished the compulsory education in Ark and directly applied for the professional training class for ruin hunters. This is actually true. Exactly the same as Ke Lan back then.

It's just that Ke Lan started working alone after graduating from the training class, and they accidentally boarded a "black ship" like the Polaris Hunting Group.

Even if they don't go crazy after completing this mission, they will be regarded as "cheap consumables" by the Polaris Hunting Group and added to the advance team with the highest casualty rate... Only those who survive from the advance team will be hunted. Become a full member of the group.

Not only the Polaris Hunting Group, but also most large hunting groups with consortium backgrounds do this. They ruthlessly squeeze the value of these newcomers, even the last piece of carrion on the corpse...

Among many senior hunters, when they refer to these trainee hunters, they directly use the word "cannon fodder" to refer to them, but from another perspective, they themselves also use the word "cannon fodder" to refer to them. Only those who survive can become the true elite.

Compared with these "cannon fodder" hired by large hunting groups, the initial stage of a lone hunter like Ke Lan is even more difficult. Although he is not under the control of large hunting groups, he also cannot obtain the resources provided by those large hunting groups. Whether it is vocational training, ruins information or various equipment and consumables, you have to find a way to solve it yourself. If you don't have some part-time jobs, your life will be even more difficult than for "cannon fodder".

"These little bastards are really unlucky. They were sent to such a ghost place for their first mission." Hound looked at the three trainee hunters lying on the ground and said with some sympathy.

"They were lucky... I remember that there were more than a dozen people involved in the avalanche at that time. It is estimated that not even the whole bodies of those people were left," Ke Lan said.

"Forget it, let's think about how to get out of this hellish place."

He and the hounds found a total of nine stone chambers, which were connected to each other to form two parallel cross shapes, or in other words, the prefix "艹" in Chinese characters.

Apart from the stone doors between these stone chambers, Ke Lan and the hounds did not find any other passages - that is to say, these nine stone chambers are a completely sealed space...

"I think there must be a secret passage. If it's a confined space, how did we get sent here? It can't be some kind of space teleportation technology, right?"

"That's not certain." Ke Lan said with a straight face. The strange experience in the underwater city had every reason to believe that the Alpha civilization had mastered mature space technology, but humans had not found any relevant evidence yet.

"If this is really the case, wouldn't we be doomed..." The hound glanced at the packages piled on the ground, "The most lacking thing now is food and water. The few of us only brought what was in the emergency kit, and These three brats only had two bags of refreshing drinks and a few energy bars on them. Together, they were only enough for nine people for three days... I actually thought about using explosives to blow open the outer wall of the stone chamber... ... Judging from the results of the drilling survey, there is at least a two-meter-thick solid layer on the periphery of these nine stone chambers, which are all high-density magma rocks. Just the two-meter-thick rock layer alone requires an explosive equivalent of at least We need about a hundred units..."

"Moreover, we are still unable to determine whether there is a passage behind the rock formation. Even if there is a passage, in which stone chamber and in which direction..." Ke Lan continued what the hound said, "With the resources we have on hand, we can make up to three Hundreds of standard units of explosives come, which means we only have three chances."

The hound frowned and paced back and forth in the stone chamber: "You are making a conservative estimate. Two meters thick is just our detection limit. Who knows how thick this rock formation is. If it is ten to eight meters, even if If all the bombs are piled up in one direction and detonated, we won’t be able to get out.”

"When designing these stone chambers, we probably considered the possibility that things trapped inside might use violence to escape... I think our thinking may be wrong." Ke Lan thought for a while and said.

"Wrong idea?"

"Old dog, have you ever played any 'escape room' type of game on the Ark?" Ke Lan suddenly asked.

"I've never played it, but I've heard people mention it. It seems like it's all young people who like to play it... Wait, you mean, these stone chambers are actually a secret room. As long as we solve the mystery left by the designer of the secret room, Question, can you escape?"

"I think so." Ke Lan nodded.

"But I think it's a bit ridiculous. Are the Alphas that boring? Catch us here and let us play puzzle games?"

"This secret room is definitely not designed for us, it's just that we just happened to fall into it... As for whether the Alphas are that boring, based on my experience in exploring ruins, everything they do has a certain It has a very clear purpose, but we just can’t understand it.”

"Okay, just treat this as a secret room... Ke Lan, have you ever played any escape room games?"

"I have never played the real-life version." Ke Lan shook his head, "But I have played a lot of video games with this theme. Many of the secret rooms are based on the Alpha ruins that exist in reality. There are some in the forum. Paid resource packs can be downloaded. If you want them, I can send you a few next time."

"The premise is that we can go out." The hound walked around the stone platform, "Although I have never played that kind of game, but I have never eaten pork and I have seen pigs running away. In my impression, this kind of game There should always be some mechanism or something in the secret room - such as a rotating vase, a sliding bookshelf, etc. But the problem is that these nine stone rooms are empty, and the only thing that can be regarded as a 'thing' is these stone platforms. Already..."

The hound said, suddenly stretched out his foot and kicked the stone platform.

"But there are no clues or mechanisms on this thing. The bottom is directly integrated with the ground, and it can't even be moved."

The stone room where Ke Lan and the hound are located is the one where Cao Feng was first found. Now the other seven sleeping people have been moved into this stone room, and the stone platform in the stone room has also been moved. Ke Lan and Hound have studied it no less than ten times.

"The stone platforms in the other stone chambers are also shaped like birds," Hound shrugged helplessly, "I also drilled several holes. These stone platforms are completely solid, with nothing inside except stones. "

"Maybe the point is not the stone platform..." Ke Lan pondered.

"Not the stone platform? Where could it be? The ceiling? The floor? Or the wall?"

"The arrangement of the stone chambers...Old dog, don't you think the arrangement of these nine stone chambers is very special?"

"Indeed... the combination of them happens to be the prefix 'fuck' in Chinese characters, which fits my current mood quite well... Fuck the fucking Alphas..." As soon as the hound's curse words came out of his mouth, his expression suddenly froze. "Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute -"

He slowly raised his head and looked at Ke Lan in astonishment: "The prefix "fuck"... seems to be such a character in Alpha script! This is definitely not a coincidence! Ke Lan, the prefix "fuck" is in Alpha script. What means?"

"...I can't be sure." Ke Lan shook his head, "Because I can't be sure whether the nine stone chambers are composed of Alpha civilization's writing, so I can't understand its meaning. This is the special thing about Alpha's writing. If it's not put in a special context, it's just a bunch of meaningless ghost symbols... This is why I can't teach you this language."

"Then such a single character has no meaning?" Hound asked reluctantly.

"Yes, but there are thousands of meanings... Moreover, this is not a single character, but a detachable phrase composed of three characters."

"What the hell..."

"In addition to the special arrangement of the stone chamber, I also discovered a problem." Ke Lan continued.

"what is the problem?"

"Six people are located in a stone chamber with only one stone door on the outside, and three people are located in a stone chamber connected to each other in the middle. And these three people happen to be the three who are trapped in the dream the most: Cao Feng, Ivan and Asano Akira... I don't know Is this a coincidence..."

…

[P.S. I have received a lot of comments recently, complaining about why the ruins of Alpha civilization are full of traps and traps. Some people even said this: Do the natives of Alpha Planet have to run into traps every day when they go to work? But I would like to ask these readers to pay attention to one thing: that is, the ruins that the protagonists have visited now are either A-level or S-level. These ruins all contain high-value trophies, which are correspondingly compared to those in our real world: Isn't it normal for places like treasury, research institute, secret factory or military restricted area to have many agencies?

Moreover, after the disappearance of the Alpha civilization, based on their technological level, shouldn't it be a basic operation to allow these ruins to seal themselves and automatically produce various traps and obstacles to prevent prying eyes?

As for the residential areas for ordinary people in the Alpha civilization, there are of course them, but I didn't write about them. Those ruins of C, D or even lower levels are not very dangerous, but there are too few valuable things, so As elite hunters, the protagonist group no longer bothers to explore such ruins (with one exception: Leviathan’s Remains. Before they realized that Leviathan was not dead and did not find those sea anemone-headed monsters, the ruins of this ruins The grade is C. There are basically no dangerous factors except for the complicated terrain.)

There is also S-011 suspended in Deval. This ruins can be regarded as a standard Alpha civilization living area, and there are not so many traps. However, the dangerous reason is that the anti-gravity device in the core of the city malfunctions, and it becomes a narrow escape. Dangerous place.

Although some readers advised me not to argue with certain people, it’s really annoying to have too many comments like this. I can’t even delete them, and I can’t keep an eye on the comment area all the time, so I can only unify them here. Explain this, and people who see it should stop complaining about this in the future. 】