Alien Relic Hunter

"You can run, but what about the others? Just leave them here to die?" Ke Lan asked.

"Otherwise? Do you have a better way? The original purpose of building the Ark was to preserve the fire of mankind... When we fled the solar system a thousand years ago, we already abandoned tens of billions of our compatriots. So what if we abandon them again? ?" Pan directly retorted Ke Lan's words, "If you have a better solution, you might as well say so. If it is feasible, we will consider it - by the way, let me remind you that the distance between Seraph and Seraph is out of trouble. There are still two minutes. And it will take at least a minute for you to put on that living armor and adapt to it. So, there is only the last minute left for you to make a decision."

"Can't we separate the entire module of the West Second District from the Ark like the East Nine District did, and then destroy it with powerful weapons?" Ke Lan couldn't help but speed up his speech, "You also said that Seraph's ability has its limits. , I don’t believe that if all the weapons on the Ark fire at the same time, it can block it!”

"If the place where you confront Seraph is in the biological laboratory building of the institute, we can indeed destroy it together with the entire West Second District module." Pan paused and continued, "But the problem is that the underground ice The location of the library is too deep.”

Ke Lan was stunned. He suddenly realized that the location where he and Seraph were now was no longer within the scope of the West Second District module.

The vertical secret passage connecting the fourth and fifth floors alone is more than three thousand meters deep. The entire fifth floor of the underground icehouse has sunk into the cooling pool of the Ark's main reactor, and the Ark's main reactor cannot be separated separately like those regional modules.

As for firing at the main reactor... it would be cleaner to let the reactor explode directly.

Anyway, the result is the same.

"So, I actually have no choice at all?" Ke Lan showed a helpless smile and shook his head.

"Don't be so depressed. Look at you, your smile is too forced." Pan said. Obviously, the other party can see Ke Lan's current expression through the monitor on the power armor - the authority of the Undead Crew Association is much higher than that of the Crisis Management Department.

"Okay, how to use this thing...?" Ke Lan walked to the front of the metal bucket and put his hand into the crack.

He touched the thing sealed in the metal bucket. It felt cold and smooth to the touch. He thought it was a container made of glass material, but when he took it out, he found that it was a dark red sphere.

It was an ocher red that was close to brown, like the color of condensed blood scab, but the surface was polished as smooth as pearls.

"That's it."

As soon as Pan finished speaking, the surface of the sphere suddenly "melted", and the entire sphere instantly turned into a small snake that seemed to be made of plasma, wrapping around Ke Lan's palm.

"Crack!"

A crisp sound came from Ke Lan's hand. The extremely hard composite armor was actually shredded by this "blood snake", and the broken metal pieces flew everywhere.

The blood snake transformed again and wrapped Ke Lan's entire exposed hand in the air. At this moment, Ke Lan felt as if there were countless sharp needles piercing through his skin, muscles... and even bones. !

It was difficult to describe the feeling in words. He felt that his body was tightening uncontrollably... Things like plasma were drilling into his body along the pores and swimming from the blood vessels in his palms to his limbs. Hundreds of skeletons.

"ah--"

Ke Lan couldn't help but cry out in pain. This kind of pain was completely different from the intermittent needle-pricking pain in his brain... Ke Lan even suspected that what was swimming in his blood vessels was a stream of hot and red molten iron.

He guessed right, the transplantation process of this living armor... was indeed very painful.

Ke Lan felt as if his skin had been peeled off, and his bloody muscles and bones were exposed to the extreme cold of nearly 100 degrees below zero, but there was a constant burning sensation in his body, and the outside world Against the low temperature.

He would rather his nerves be frozen or burned like this, but at least his senses can be blunted, but the sensitivity of every nerve ending seems to be stretched to the highest level, over and over again, tirelessly, like the nerves The center sends a signal of "extreme pain."

"Plop!" Ke Lan suddenly knelt down, arched his body, pressed his forehead against the weight of his upper body, made fists with both hands and kept hammering the ground, making a muffled sound of "bang, bang".

This pain has long exceeded the limit that humans can bear. Logically speaking, the brain's self-protection mechanism should make him faint, but this protection mechanism seems to have been artificially shut down... Ke Lan's Not only did his consciousness not become blurry, but it became clearer.

He could clearly feel the feeling of foreign objects scurrying around in his body - they kept destroying tissues everywhere in the body, then quickly repaired and rebuilt them, and then destroyed them again...

They reveled unscrupulously, seemingly not caring that the body's self-awareness was on the verge of collapse and could lead to destruction at any time.

"Be patient, the pain is only short-lived. At least you are much better than the previous volunteers, and your fit with the living armor is almost 100% - you know, before you, a total of 67 people died of transplantation The rejection reaction at the end was the worst one, even the whole body exploded and turned into a rain of blood... Wow, that scene was spectacular."

Pan's voice rang in Ke Lan's ears, but Ke Lan had no intention of listening to what he was saying. He only felt an indescribable force pouring into his limbs - the "plasma" flowing around every time Destroy and rebuild his body, and the new parts will be strengthened by leaps and bounds... At this time, Ke Lan's body is like the ship of Theseus. From head to toe, no part of it belongs to the original one. body.

It's just that this "Ship of Theseus" has replaced all the wooden boards originally used to form the hull with Nino alloy armor plates...

His body had been destroyed more than a dozen times in just a few dozen seconds, and was also reborn a dozen times... That "living armor" had completely integrated with him.

"It actually succeeded?" Pan muttered softly, "It seems they didn't lie to me... It's really not luck that you got to this point."

Ke Lan's body stopped twitching. He slowly got up from the ground, raised his hand, and made two empty fists in a daze.

From the outside, his body didn't seem to have changed at all compared to before, but he knew better than anyone else how his body had changed in these tens of seconds.

"Does this mean... the transplant is successful?" Ke Lan asked in a low voice, "Aside from this power, what impact will it have on me?"

"No one knows," Pan replied, "because you were the first to succeed. Apart from you, only one other person has tried a transplant and survived... Of course, he didn't live long."

"And you still know this person." Pan added.

"I know? Who?"

"The last 'Pope' Chiron. One of the mistakes he made was to covet the power of this 'living armor' and fuse it with the living armor without informing other members of the crew... But unfortunately, he He failed and ended up like that, and could only spend the last days of his life in a cold space station."

"Chiron? How could he...?" Ke Lan opened his eyes slightly, his words full of shock.

"Maybe you would think that what caused Chiron's death was the puppet entity that invaded the 'Sick Village', but in fact, when he was expelled from the 'Undead Crew', his life had already entered a countdown. The erosion of the puppet entity , it just speeds up the death process." Pan said without emotion, "In my opinion, he is a complete idiot...but the candidate recommended by this idiot is a bit interesting."

The "candidate" in Pan's mouth naturally refers to Ke Lan.

"Then will I also become...like Chiron?" Ke Lan couldn't help but ask.

"Probably not." Pan said, "Chiron had a serious mutually exclusive reaction in the first step of merging with the living armor... He thought he was different from the volunteers who died tragically, but in fact, he was different from the volunteers who died tragically. The fit between those volunteers and the living armor is even lower."

"Then what?"

"Then? This idiot knew he was in trouble, so he could only send us a distress signal. We spent a lot of effort to peel the living armor out of his body, but his body has been irreversibly traumatized." As Pan was talking, he suddenly sighed for the first time, "I also know that he was too anxious, and we spent too much time on 'waiting'... Maybe he was tired of waiting, so he Make that decision.”

"Waiting? What are you waiting for?"

"I know that when I say this, you will be cursing in your mind, 'How come everyone in the Immortal Crew is a Riddler?' But I still have to tell you that there are some things that are not suitable for you to know now. You are a chess piece. , is a very important chess piece, and may be enough to determine the outcome of the entire game, but before that, you only need to follow the grid on the chessboard and move forward step by step."

"The pawns walking forward on the chessboard step by step." Ke Lan said.

"But when the pawn reaches the end of the chessboard, it can be 'promoted' into any chess piece except the 'king'. (For details, please refer to Baidu Chess Rules)"

"... Let's not talk about this for now. Now that you have separated this living armor from Chiron's body, can you separate it from me later?"

"No. Chiron has not been fused with the living armor. Being separated from his body is like taking out a stone that he has eaten in his stomach... And you, what you have eaten is not an indigestible stone... This armor has become a part of your body."

At this moment, Ke Lan suddenly felt a strong wind coming towards him. Before he had time to dodge, he was slammed into the wall behind him, and his entire body was embedded in the alloy wall.

The communication between him and Pan was suddenly interrupted.

Ke Lan raised his head with some effort, and saw that the light pillar shrouding the "Seraph" had completely disappeared, and the opponent's six wings were burning with extremely bright flames at the moment. Hundreds of them, including those four faces, Their eyes were all staring at Ke Lan, and Ke Lan could even see his current predicament from the other person's pupils.

"Judgment." Four mouths spoke at the same time, and six wings flapped violently - Ke Lan finally saw the move that had just slapped him away: they were six wing-shaped shadows separated from the wings, just like the main body. , these shadows are also burning with blazing flames, looking quite magnificent.

Six phantoms blasted directly into the human-shaped groove that Ke Lan smashed into the wall, and the sound of air bursting echoed throughout the underground icehouse.

But when the flames dissipated, an ocher-red figure walked out of the wall step by step.

"Have you...never heard of...the principle of 'there is no harm when there is smoke'?" The ocher-red figure...that is, Ke Lan, said slowly.

The power armor on his body had been completely shattered, but a large amount of thick "plasma" seeped out from his pores, forming a layer of "armor" similar to a blood scab on the surface of his skin.

This "armor" is covered with raised edges and thorns. Large pieces of "plate armor" cover the vital parts of the chest and back, and countless small "blood scales" cover the joints, The parts of the abdomen that need to be bent... And at the ends of Ke Lan's hands, a pair of sharp claws that are thirty to forty centimeters long extend outward along the ten fingers. On these sharp claws, which are completely condensed from plasma, there are unknown Why is it still glowing with a layer of luster unique to metal?

"These pairs of wings of yours are so ugly, so... I decided to tear them off for you."

[P.S. Regarding the depth of the underground icehouse (setting): Chapter 554 states that it took Ke Lan nearly half a minute to pass through the secret passage at "a speed not much slower than a free fall." Given that Star Alpha The acceleration of gravity is almost the same as that of the earth. Calculating the length of the secret tunnel based on a 30-second free fall is at least four thousand meters... Although this value is exaggerated, there is actually no problem.

Taking into account the friction with the channel wall and air resistance, I finally took the depth of three thousand meters.

According to the setting of this book, the Ark is a large cone-shaped interstellar colony ship with a diameter of more than 400 kilometers. The location of the West Second District is very close to the center of the cone, so it is normal for the thickness of the hull to exceed 10,000 meters at this location.

In addition, the dozens of blocks on the Ark are not located on the same plane. They are divided into many upper and lower layers. Many areas themselves span several layers... As for the settings of the Ark itself, I will probably pass it through the diagram later. I will post it in the form of an easter egg chapter after the article is merged (of course, the premise is that I can find a drafting master who can understand what I mean... I have almost forgotten all the CAD I learned in college. Book friends who have the intention and ability can join the group Come to me. It’s not free, you will be paid based on the results, and you will be given a role with a certain role in the book). 】

[P.P.S. Thanks to book friend 20210625190213650 for the 500 starting coins. 】