Alien Relic Hunter

"What kind of new breed is this?" The hound also complained. At this time, more than a dozen bugs had climbed out of the huge pit and crawled towards them with their jointed limbs.

"It's not a new breed..." Ivan shook his head, and then suddenly shouted, "Don't use incendiary bombs and flamethrowers!"

"What's wrong?" The agent holding the grenade launcher suddenly tensed up - his index finger had already tightened on the trigger. If he tightened it a little more, the napalm bomb in the barrel would fall into the gun. In the center of the swarm.

"These bugs are lava beetles! They are the larvae of lava beetles, and they have also mutated to a certain extent!" Ivan said.

"What? Lava beetles?" The hound's face changed slightly, "Are you mistaken? Lava beetles are not social creatures!"

Hearing what Ivan said, everyone became nervous - if these bugs were really lava cantharis, then what they were facing was not a group of ordinary bugs, but a bunch of bombs that could explode at any time!

Ke Lan's eyes couldn't help but jump.

Although the lava beetle is rare, it is well-known in the hunter circle - the main reason is its terrifying destructive power.

An adult lava beetle can easily destroy a convoy without heavy weapons. For many hunters, if they find traces of lava beetles in the wild, the best option is to immediately turn the steering wheel and stay away from the area.

However, lava beetles especially like to devour energy crystals and fuel. They can even chase the smell of gasoline for dozens of kilometers, and even ambush on some roads that are frequently passed by vehicles - if the Soma Consortium's fleet was not well equipped, If their firepower was comparable to the elite squad of the field corps, Ke Lan and the others had already become a meal for the lava canthaphids on their way to Leviathan.

The bugs in front of me are indeed somewhat similar in appearance to adult lava beetles.

But the second half of the hound's sentence was correct. Lava beetles are indeed not gregarious creatures.

Not only are they not gregarious creatures, but when individuals meet, they often fight fiercely until one of them is killed by the other.

Even if two lava beetles of the opposite sex mate, the male lava beetle will take advantage of the female lava beetle's weak period after she lays her eggs to kill and devour her - this is exactly the opposite of the mantises on Earth.

In the final analysis, it is to compete for "nutrients".

Although a lava beetle can lay one hundred to two hundred eggs in a clutch, no more than one-third of these eggs can successfully hatch and be born - adult lava beetles do not prepare food for their children. And those brothers and sisters who hatched later naturally became the first meal for the newly hatched larvae.

They will preferentially bite open the intact eggs and eat the inactive ones inside. After all the eggs have hatched or been eaten, the remaining larvae will fight and devour each other... Just like raising worms, in a nest of eggs, only one larvae can often come out of the nest alive. That cave.

But at this time, the larvae must quickly escape from the place of its birth... Otherwise, after the protective pheromones it carries have faded away, the remaining parent will regard it as its own. food.

A newly hatched lava larvae is about the size of an apple. If it wants to grow into a behemoth dozens of meters tall, the "nutrients" it needs will be an astronomical figure. Moreover, there seems to be no limit to the growth of this creature. According to records, the largest lava mantis ever witnessed by humans is more than three hundred meters long, and the high-temperature mucus it sprays can attack targets two thousand meters away.

One of the arthropods of this lava beetle is still on display in the central exhibition tower of the Ark Museum of Biology. Visitors have to take an elevator to the 26th floor of the exhibition tower so that the visitor's line of sight can be level with the top of this arthropod.

Creatures such as lava beetles eat almost anything, and they especially like to devour their own kind. Although the self-destruction launched by their kind when they die is enough to make them paralyzed, the bodies of their kind containing a large amount of flammable material are, in their eyes, the most powerful thing in the world. The richest "nutrient".

It is difficult to find a second creature of this kind of "father is kind and son is filial" and "brothers are harmonious" in the same area, so why do they appear in groups?

However, Ivan still insisted on his point of view: "You can't be wrong! Although there is a certain degree of variation, in terms of biological classification, they are definitely close relatives of the same 'genus' as the lava beetles in the wilderness!"

Mutations? Ke Lan looked at the crystals covered on these bugs again - in terms of texture, these crystals are very similar to energy crystals, but the energy crystals have very flat sections, while the crystals on these bugs are very rough and have poor light transmittance. It's very low, like an unpolished jade blank.

Ke Lan thought of an arthropod living in the coastal areas of the Central Sea - the salt-armored crab. This swimming crab-like creature makes a living by filtering plankton in seawater, but in addition to intercepting plankton in seawater, their filter-feeding organs also absorb large amounts of salt into the body.

When the salt content in the salt crab's body fluid exceeds a certain proportion, the salt will precipitate from the carapace surface, forming a thin layer of salt carapace.

This is where the name of their salt-armored crab comes from.

The salty carapace on the salt crab is caused by excessive salt intake, so the crystallized shell on these mutated lava beetles...

Ke Lan reacted immediately - what the hound said was right, and what Ivan said was also right. These bugs are lava cantharis!

Lava beetles cannot live in groups because of a lack of "nutrients", but in this place, their food is extremely abundant!

It is so abundant that it can even form a crystalline shell on the surface of the body!

These lava beetles living in the power room feed on crystal pillars! So there is no need for them to hunt their own kind!

"Attention everyone! Use conventional weapons to attack, and try not to aim at the abdomen of these bugs! It is prohibited to use energy weapons, incendiary bombs and explosive weapons. Try to keep a safe distance of more than thirty meters from these bugs - if you are approached If you get close to him, stop immediately, distance yourself and then kill him!" Ke Lan quickly ordered.

Ivan and Zhuoligetu were the first to open fire, and the two Gauss assault rifles quickly formed a group of crossfire, covering the dozen mutant larvae rushing at the front - just like the lava larvae, these mutant larvae were After being killed, it explodes like a bomb, but it is a little different from ordinary lava cantharis: when ordinary lava cantharis explode, it will produce a lot of heat and fire, just like a gasoline barrel being detonated, but these mutant larvae explode The effect produced is more like the effect after the crystallization converter is overloaded.

"Sure enough, the nature of the energy in the body will change with the change of the type of food..." Ke Lan couldn't help but sigh, "This is a bit tricky..."

He and Ivan looked at each other, both of their eyes filled with worry.

They are worried about the same problem.

If a group of ordinary lava beetles are rushing over, Ke Lan and Ivan will not prevent others from using area-of-effect weapons - it will be more efficient to detonate these bugs in a chain and clean them up.

But these mutated larvae in front of them are different.

They are equivalent to converters filled with energy crystals and always on the verge of overload. If one is exploded at the same time, the power of the explosion will increase exponentially——

"Resonance" is originally a concept in physics, but when this word is used in the field of energy crystallization, it will have a whole new meaning——

"When a crystalline converter explodes due to overload, the explosion ranges of multiple converters overlap and amplify each other, thus greatly increasing the power of the explosion. This phenomenon is called 'crystalline resonance'."

Using the phenomenon of resonance, the equipment development department of the institute has also produced many crystal bombs. If one of these crystal bombs is detonated individually, the power is at most about the same as a grenade, but if ten crystal bombs are bundled together and detonated, it is enough. Flatten a building!

If the group of mutant larvae in front of me were destroyed at the same time...

[P.S. Thanks to Wang Bu Chuan and Bai Piao Monster for never recharging the reward of 100 starting coins. 】