Chapter 93: First Level
"But if it's a maintenance passage, there should be an exit, right?"
Behind the flood discharge outlet stood a thick metal wall. Not to mention a passage, there was not even a gap on the wall. Ke Lan tapped it twice lightly with the handle of his pistol. Judging from the sound, this metal wall was at least one meter thick and completely solid.
It seems that this "Water Reservoir No. 3" should be the end of this maintenance passage, so there is only one other direction available.
However, Ke Lan was not in a hurry to explore inside. Having finally escaped from danger, he took this opportunity to organize his equipment to avoid being in a hurry when encountering any emergency.
Many of the equipment he was wearing were washed away by the rushing water, but fortunately, his backpack and waist bag were still firmly fixed on the equipment belt.
In addition to his own self-defense pistol, he also took a lot of things from the 776 Special Forces Team. The largest of them were two "Madman" pump-action shotguns. Ke Lan also sawed off two-thirds of the barrels of the two "Madman" guns. In this way, although the shooting range became shorter, the diffusion area of the bullet would be greatly increased, and it would be almost impossible to avoid within ten meters.
During several encounters with the Seed of Erosion, Ke Lan had long realized that conventional firearms could not effectively kill it. Instead of doing this, it would be better to choose a shotgun with the greatest stopping effect as a limiting weapon - this is like an action game that Ke Lan had played before, where the character controlled by the player uses the pistol in the off-hand to knock the monster into a stiff state, and then quickly approaches and uses the sword in the main hand to kill the target.
To Ke Lan, that stalagmite was like a sword weapon with an end determination in the game.
The 776 Special Forces Team was obviously aware of this. From the recording in the black box, we can learn that they relied on the large-caliber heavy machine guns equipped by the Fearless Warriors to limit the "nearly invincible" Seeds of Erosion in the beginning. In the camp in the cave, Ke Lan also found a number of stone cones polished from stalactites, which must be the "killer moves" specifically used to deal with the Seeds of Erosion.
Ke Lan loaded the two shotguns with ammunition and inserted them horizontally into the holsters on his chest. At this position, he only needed to slightly raise his hands and turn sideways to complete a series of actions including drawing the gun, aiming, turning on the safety and shooting. All the time would not exceed half a second.
Then, he took out four pieces of C4 plastic explosives the size of compressed biscuits, put double-sided tape on one side, and installed time detonators on the other side. Like bullets, C4 explosives had little effect on the seeds of erosion, but in a critical moment, Ke Lan could tear off the double-sided tape on one side and stick the explosives to the wall of the cave, directly blowing up the cave and forming a temporary barrier.
No matter how strong the Seed of Erosion is, when faced with a tunnel blocked by rubble, it still needs time to clear out the stones.
In the pocket at the side of his body, Ke Lan stuffed several more projectiles into it, including incendiary bombs, smoke bombs, stun bombs, etc. Most of these projectiles did not have direct killing power, but in the ruins, their effects were far greater than grenades that could only explode.
After checking that his protective suit was not damaged, Ke Lan began to move forward along the tunnel... But this time he thought of a way. He stuck close to the wall on the left, holding a flashlight in his right hand and a piece of chalk for marking in his left hand. As he walked, he drew lines on the wall with chalk. In this way, if he turned back, it would be clear at a glance which section of the passage had changed.
This cave seems to be naturally formed, but in fact it has been completely transformed by the Alpha people. Ke Lan even suspects that it may have adopted a modular design like Noah's Ark. When necessary, the positions of various blocks can be moved at will... Only in this way can it explain why the road leading to the camp suddenly disappeared.
"Wait a minute..."
Thinking of this, Ke Lan suddenly shuddered, and goose bumps appeared on his back: "Since this cave can be designed like this, could it be that the stone chamber under the glacier was also like this?"
Exactly the same stone chamber...actually there are two?
At the beginning, Ke Lan and his friends encountered monsters and fought in the first stone chamber. After they left, the position of the stone chamber changed, and the second stone chamber moved to its original position. When they returned later, they actually entered the second stone chamber!
No wonder there were neither monster corpses nor signs of fighting in that stone chamber!
With the capabilities of the Alpha civilization, this design is a piece of cake.
"Hiss... Although this can explain the problem in the stone chamber, why would other people's memories be modified?" Ke Lan pondered hard. Although he knew that there were some "special" things in his head, this only happened after he came into contact with the stone tablet. When they were at Ju Men, they hadn't even seen the sarcophagus containing the stone tablet.
"There are still many doubts... Well, let's think about how to leave here first..."
As he walked, Ke Lan discovered that the condition of this maintenance passage was getting worse and worse... There were obvious signs of damage on both sides of the passage, and many irregular dents appeared on the metal plates used to reinforce the passage, as if they had been hit by many hammers of different sizes. In addition, there were many load-bearing columns that were bent and broken... There was even a small-scale landslide in one section, but fortunately there was still a small gap left, which barely allowed Ke Lan to squeeze through.
"It seems that there was an earthquake here? Hmm... or did the mechanical system used to move the modules malfunction?"
When the sixth piece of chalk was about to run out, Ke Lan finally saw a huge valve appear on the side of the cave wall. On the valve were a few big words written in Alpha: "First Level".