Ke Lan looked back at Asano Akira behind him, only to see him leaning all his weight on the sword, his eyes tightly closed, his body swaying slightly, as if he was about to faint at any moment...

"The consumption of that move just now was so terrifying?"

Ke Lan thought that it would take some time for Asano Akira to recover... He turned his gaze back to the front. At this moment, the six anemone heads were less than ten meters away from him.

The energy shield's heat bar has risen above the dangerous threshold of 75%. It will last no more than 30 seconds before the shield generator enters an overheated state again.

"This time, it seems that I really have no choice but to fight hard..."

Just as Ke Lan turned off the shield and prepared to rush forward, the six sea anemone heads turned around and ran away without warning, making a piercing sound like nails scratching on a blackboard.

The three-meter-sized anemone head that was fighting with the hound and others actually gave up the attack after hearing the cry, and followed the six smaller anemone heads into the tunnel.

"What happened?" The Hound fell to the ground. His power armor was shattered. If the monster had clawed him again, he would have definitely died here today.

"Something is directing them deep in the tunnel... It's thanks to this that we are able to come back alive." Ke Lan said solemnly, looking at the direction where the monsters disappeared, "Don't let your guard down. They may come back again."

"If they come back... it doesn't matter whether we let down our guard or not. It's useless - bah!" The Hound spat out a mouthful of blood. "We can't defeat them at all, even with power armor. These things' close combat capabilities are more terrifying than acid. Their strength, speed, and reaction ability are all top-notch, and they don't feel pain... There's no way to defeat them."

"Only a pervert like Asano-kun... no, that kind of expert can deal with these monsters." Layton said, glancing at the only corpse on the ground.

"Doctor, go and see how Asano Akira is doing." The Hound pointed at Asano Akira who was in a semi-comatose state and said to Ivan.

"Yeah." Ivan nodded, walked to Asano Akira's side, and with the help of Ke Lan, he laid Asano Akira flat on the ground, and then took out the medical box.

Five minutes later... Ivan put away the instruments and nodded to Ke Lan's hound: "His condition is very similar to what Ke Lan described. His physical injuries are not serious, but his brain wave frequency is very low, less than two hertz... This kind of brain wave usually only appears in people who are in deep sleep or anesthesia."

"Is he...turning into a vegetable?" Leighton asked.

"That's not the case, but a conservative estimate is...he will be in this state for at least eight hours," Ivan said.

"Well...if those monsters hadn't attacked within eight hours, maybe we would have dug through the blocked tunnel, but is that possible?" The hound looked at the dark tunnel with sympathy and shuddered uncontrollably.

While they were chatting idly, Ke Lan had already walked to the corpse of the monster that had been beheaded by Asano Akira and squatted down.

He turned off the power of the high-frequency particle vibration dagger. Now the dagger was just an ordinary weapon. Ke Lan held the handle of the dagger and stabbed it hard at the corpse.

“Puff.”

The tip of the knife easily broke through the monster's skin, and the purple-red color did not appear. It seems that the defense mechanism of these monsters will only take effect when they are alive.

Ke Lan pulled out the dagger, and sticky blood flowed out from the wound. The blood was a deep red color that was very close to black, with a strong smell of decay, and there were some coagulated blood clots in it... It didn't look like a creature that had just been killed, but rather like a zombie that had been dead for a long time.

Ke Lan turned the body over. At this moment, a long black mark on the inside of the body's arm caught his attention...

"This is... text? Is it the characters of the Alpha civilization?"

Ke Lan grabbed the monster's arm with both hands and tried to flatten the skin with the black text printed on it, but when he saw the content of the text clearly, he couldn't help but hold his breath.

That was not the text of the Alpha civilization, but a string of cursive English, which translated meant: "My favorite girl, Bertha."

This is a tattoo, a tattoo that only appears on humans.

"Come here, all of you." Ke Lan waved to the others and said with a heavy face.

"What's wrong? Did you find anything?" Ivan was the first to run over. "Do you need me to perform an autopsy?"

"Look at this." Ke Lan pointed to the tattoo on the inside of the "monster's" arm.

"...My most beloved girl..." Before Ivan finished reading, he suddenly closed his mouth and stared at Ke Lan for two seconds.

"That's right, these monsters were once human beings." Ke Lan nodded.

"This... these are all humans?" The Hound found it hard to believe, but the English letters on the corpses forced him to face the fact.

"That should be the case. The only thing we are not sure about now is... are these monsters transformed from living people or dead people..."

"Is there any difference between the living... the dead?" Leighton asked.

"The difference is huge... Even if all the missing miners are alive, there are only 20 to 30 of them... But the number of bodies left in the tunnel by the hunters who entered the mine four times is in the three digits... And the bodies have all disappeared..." Ke Lan took a deep breath and continued, "If all these bodies have turned into something like this..."

"You mean, there may be hundreds of monsters like this deep in the mine?!" The hound was stunned for a moment, and a hint of despair flashed in his eyes - just two three-meter-class anemone heads almost wiped out them. If there were hundreds of them, there might not be enough people in the entire base for them to kill!

"This commission is beyond our capabilities. I declare the mission terminated. The only thing we have to do now is to find a way to leave here alive." Ke Lan stood up and said.

"Leave? How do we leave?" The Hound shook his head pessimistically. "The retreat route is blocked. There is only one road in front of us. If we continue to go in, isn't that courting death?"

"Dig it out." Ke Lan said.

"Dig? How long will it take?! This blocked tunnel must be at least 20 meters long, and the power armor we wear is combat-type, not engineering-type. Do you think those monsters will give us a few hours to dig the stones?"