Alien Relic Hunter

"Who told you that the risk of hunting lava beetles must be greater than that of gathering gray potatoes?" The hound chuckled, "Little sister, let your uncle teach you some knowledge that is not in the textbooks."

When Aya heard the hound calling herself "little sister", Aya couldn't help but frown slightly, but she didn't say anything more, but looked at the other person with an inquiring look.

"Gray potatoes generally like to live in alkaline, dry soil, and there is another plant that also likes to live in this kind of environment - brown sunflower moss."

"Brown sunflower moss?"

"Yes, so non-artificially cultivated gray potatoes in the wilderness are often accompanied by a certain amount of brown moss. Brown moss is just like its name, it is a gray-brown moss, and it is very fine and looks like It’s like a layer of humus on the soil surface. Except for those old oils that have been wandering in the wilderness all year round, it’s hard for ordinary people to distinguish it at a glance.”

The hound continued: "The poison of this thing is not weak... It would be fine if you wore gloves when collecting gray potatoes. What if you don't wear gloves and you happen to have some minor wounds on your hands and accidentally come into contact with brown sunflower seeds?" Moss, if its toxins enter the blood..."

The hound paused for a moment, and then said in a deep voice: "It can range from vomiting and diarrhea to collapse, or it can last for forty-eight hours... Moreover, there is no specific medicine for this toxin, and all the prescribed antidotes and antivenoms are distributed. It’s useless… This is a lesson learned at the expense of human life, but that ridiculous textbook was not included…”

"Why? Logically speaking, such important information shouldn't be ignored?" Aya asked doubtfully.

She really didn't know anything about the things that Hound was talking about - although the field team of the Security Bureau often performed tasks outside the Ark, most of the time they had special planes to pick them up, and in terms of logistics, airdrops of supplies were always on call. Compared with front-line combat troops in difficult conditions, their days in the wilderness are more like "a young soldier's field outing."

The description in quotation marks came from the mouths of soldiers in the frontline combat troops. As the leader of the field agent team, Aya had certainly heard this statement before, but she didn't care at that time. In her opinion, the tasks performed by Security Bureau agents are far more important than those of regular troops, and it is natural for them to receive a tilt in resources.

But now she discovered that this title contained more "contempt" and "contempt" than what she originally thought was "envy" and "jealousy".

"The news about the brown sunflower moss will certainly not be missed, but it will be included in another independent report... Oh, in the eyes of those experts and scholars, the lowly life of the soldier is certainly not worth their paper. The signature at the end is important." Hound sneered.

"Is there such a thing? I will definitely report it truthfully when I go back -"

"Is it useful?" The hound looked at her coldly and interrupted her, "In fact, we have known about brown sunflower moss for a long time, and there is no use in revising the tutorial now. As for more similar bad things You are alone, can you handle this matter?"

"I...since you let me know, I can't ignore it." Aya said.

"A very righteous speech." Ke Lan interjected and commented, "In this regard, you are very similar to Ms. Victoria."

Aya: "..."

"Okay, let's not talk about it for now. Even if you want to enforce justice, you have to escape from this place first." Ke Lan took out a piece of "white meat" from the hound's plastic bag and stuffed it into his mouth. - The meat of the lava beetle is indeed not delicious. Even if it has been roasted, it still has a strong fishy smell. As Ke Lan chews it, it continuously penetrates into his throat and then connects to it. The nasal cavity is coming out.

"Old dog, give me some water..." Ke Lan said with a bitter face.

This was also the first time he had eaten the meat of a lava beetle. Before that, Ke Lan, as an independent hunter, would hide as far away as possible when encountering this kind of creature in the wilderness. Only field troops with strong firepower would take out this kind of creature. Creatures are hunted for food.

"Water is useless, try this." Hound smiled, poured some white powder from a small bottle, and handed it to Ke Lan.

"What is this?" Ke Lan tried to dip a little with his finger and put it in his mouth.

"Freeze-dried chili essence." Hound squinted his eyes and waited for Ke Lan's fingers to touch his tongue before he said calmly.

Ke Lan's word "fuck" was still lingering in his throat without saying it. A burning pain quickly swept through the entire mouth, and the tip of his tongue was instantly numb and he lost consciousness.

Ignoring the curse, Ke Lan quickly threw off his backpack, took out his water bottle, and drank most of the bottle of water in one breath.

However, the freeze-dried powder on his tongue dissolved into the water. After the brief cold touch, Ke Lan's throat, esophagus and even stomach began to burn.

"Ahem... This chili essence... ahem... is it concentrated?" He squatted on the ground, choking and crying.

"Of course, the concentration ratio is about one to thirty-six... Anyway, it only takes a few milligrams to turn a large pot of clear soup into spicy soup. The amount you just dipped your fingers into is probably less than half a gram. Well, it can probably make hundreds of bottles of chili sauce." Hound said.

It was okay that he didn't mention his fingers. When he raised his fingers, Ke Lan suddenly felt a burning pain in his fingertips. He opened his eyes and glanced, only to see that the finger that had just been in contact with the pepper essence had become red and swollen.

"Look, you can't help but feel the fishy smell now, right!" Hound patted Ke Lan on the back and gave him his bottle of water.

"You still...ahem...have the nerve to say...ahem...I was almost...scorched to death!" Ke Lan drank all the water in the pot in one breath, and then slammed the kettle at the hound.

"This is a good thing. Others want it, but I won't give it to you!" As he said this, the hound suddenly turned to Aya and the others. He was carrying a bag filled with lava leg meat in one hand and a bag of chili powder in the other. Bottle smiled, "Would you like to try it too?"

The two agents subconsciously took a step back. Only the old agent who had served in the field force stepped forward, grabbed a handful and stuffed it into his mouth without changing his expression.

"Wouldn't you like some seasoning?" The hound shook the bottle in his other hand.

"No, thank you, the fishy smell is nothing." The agent quickly swallowed the lava leg meat with water and declined the hound's kindness.

"How about it, do you want to try it?" The hound looked at Aya again.

"Are you sure that the meat quality of the mutated lava candid will not change?" Aya picked up a strip of meat about fifteen centimeters long with her slender fingers and asked worriedly.

"It has been tested. It is non-toxic and parasite-free, and the radiation content is within the safe range." said the hound. "Although the stomachs of those bugs are full of energy crystals, their legs are still clean. Those stained with I threw away the crystallized limbs, these are all carefully selected good products."

Seeing Aya stuffing the leg meat into her mouth with a tense face, the hound turned to Ke Lan and the others and said, "Do you still remember the 'Xinghai Lao' where we had dinner last time? He also has lava canthamus legs. Meat sales, there is a dish in my mind called 'Alfa Star Specialty Crab Meat Crystal Dumpling', which contains crab meat replaced by the leg meat of lava beetles. I heard that the raw materials can be sold for more than 4,000 credits per pound."

"Is this thing so expensive? I was just eating the leg of lamb that day and didn't notice these 'specialties' at all." Zhuoligetu said in surprise.

"This thing is not that easy to do. If you want to hunt lava cantharis, the cost of labor and equipment is not a small sum. In addition, after the lava cantharis self-destructs, how many limbs are left depends entirely on luck. Unlucky If you do, you might only be able to get back half of the leg, and the price will go up as the tide goes up." Hound said with his lips pursed.

"But even if only half a leg is left, there is still several thousand kilograms of meat inside. A leg of an adult lava canthus can be dozens of meters long - with any luck, the gross profit from one trip can easily exceed Eight digits." Zhuo Ligetu counted on his fingers, "A team that specializes in hunting lava canthaphias must have a way to limit the self-destruction of lava canthaphias. It can't be a guarantee."

"But there are so many fools that you can't resist! The price of this thing can be increased simply by taking advantage of the vanity and desire for novelty of the rich. To put it bluntly, it's like cutting leeks and IQ tax... Who the hell would a normal person spend so much on? Eat this kind of thing. Even if it has been processed by the restaurant and rinsed in red oil several times, the fishy smell is still there. Eating this kind of thing is simply looking for trouble. Forty yuan a pound of synthetic crab meat is... Doesn't it smell good? The price is only one percent of this stuff, and it tastes pretty good - well, sometimes I really don't understand what those 'upper class people' have in their heads." Hound complained.

"Hey, it's better not to accept the mission of exploring the ruins in the future. We will hunt the indigenous creatures. Anyway, there are no official regulations on what the hunting group wants to 'hunt'. Then we will organize a few brands, what will they be like?" Stunts like "Strictly Selected by the Hunting Group" and "Exquisite Products" may be more profitable than working hard like we are now." Layton joked.

"If I could really connect with the big guys who control the supply chain, I would have been in this business a long time ago, but now the market for this stuff is saturated, and sales are shrinking every year... Although there is always a shortage of people in the world who are stupid. Guys with a lot of money, but their interests will also change. I heard that in the past two years, indigenous creature fighting performances have become popular again. It is very difficult to apply for a legal license for this thing, and it requires bringing live indigenous creatures to the ark. , that’s much harder than a dead thing.”

Hearing what Hound said, Ke Lan suddenly thought of Angelis Biotechnology Company, a subsidiary of the Morgan consortium. The company's main business is to capture living samples of indigenous organisms and then sell them to various scientific research institutions on the Ark.

However, according to the information Ke Lan had, only about one-third of the indigenous creatures they captured were actually sold to scientific research institutions for experiments, and the remaining two-thirds were all transferred to legal or In an illegal colosseum.

The "Broken Tooth Black Market", which is only half an hour away from the hunting group's headquarters, has underground beast fighting performances every Friday. Ke Lan and the others have also gone to see them once, but the performances held in this black market are very small and the indigenous people used The creatures are all small species with a body length of no more than one meter. Sometimes they are even just two bugs fighting in a bathtub-sized arena, which is really not interesting.

After Ke Lan and the others saw it once, they never went there again.

As for that kind of large-scale animal fighting performance, it is not something ordinary people can see. Whether it is a legal or illegal Colosseum, you must have a special invitation letter to enter, and the time of each performance is also confidential. If you are not in that circle, you will not be able to squeeze in. connections.

"The Soma Consortium should have access to this field." Ke Lan thought secretly, "Or go to that little fat guy Ye Yan, maybe you can get the admission qualification, but when it comes to large species..."

Ke Lan cleared his throat. Although some of the burning sensation still remained, due to his super recovery ability, he was now able to speak normally.

"There is something that I haven't had time to say yet." After seeing everyone in the reconnaissance team focusing on him, Ke Lan continued, "Since there are lava larvae here, and there are no larvae among the larvae, The phenomenon of killing each other occurs...then the adult lava canthalyths that gave birth to these larvae may also be here."

"I think so too." The hound put away his playful smile and said seriously, "So I just told them to stay away from the edge of the giant pit as much as possible, and don't get close if possible."

"There are so many crystal pillars in the giant pit, and each crystal pillar is equivalent to a pile of ninth-level energy crystals of the same mass. It is really hard to imagine what kind of behemoths can be raised with so much 'feed'..." ..." Ivan analyzed in a deep voice while chewing the leg meat of the lava beetle, "But the good news is that even though we made such a big noise just now, no more lava beetles appeared, which means - Either this giant pit is just a spawning ground for lava beetles, and they leave after laying a batch of eggs, allowing the larvae to grow here on their own. Or the movement is restricted and they cannot leave the bottom of the pit."

"I am more inclined to the first scenario." Zhuoligetu said, "If there is really a big guy at the bottom of the pit, then there is no way it will not react at all to such a big movement."

"Whether there is or not, you won't know until you take a look." Layton said, having already released a drone and flying directly over the giant crater.

[P.S. Thanks for the 200 starting coins from Hua Mei Lemon Candy. 】

[P.P.S. There will be an additional update tomorrow. The base price is about 8,000. I have saved a few drafts in the past few days. If the writing goes smoothly, there may be 10,000 updates. My health has not been very good recently, and I have been suffering from various minor problems. This is already my limit. 】