Volume 10: Ancient Battleship Chapter 484 "Resonance"
"Fuck, what new species is this?" the hound also complained. At this time, more than a dozen insects had already crawled out of the giant pit and were crawling towards them using their limbs to move.
"Not a new breed..." Ivan shook his head, 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 was already on the trigger. If he applied a little more force, the napalm bomb in the barrel would fall into the center of the swarm.
"These bugs are lava leeches! They are the larvae of lava leeches, and they have undergone a certain degree of mutation!" said Ivan.
"What? Lava leeches?" The hound's expression changed slightly. "Are you mistaken? Lava leeches are not social creatures!"
After hearing what Ivan said, everyone became nervous - if these bugs were really lava leeches, then what they were facing was not a group of ordinary bugs, but a bunch of bombs that could explode at any time!
The corner of Ke Lan's eye couldn't help but twitch.
Although the lava leech is rare, it is quite famous in the hunter circle - the main reason is its terrifying destructive power.
An adult lava leech can easily destroy a convoy that is not equipped with heavy weapons. For many hunters, if they find traces of lava leeches in the wild, the best option is to turn the steering wheel immediately and stay away from the area.
But lava leeches are particularly fond of devouring energy crystals and fuel. They can even follow the smell of gasoline for dozens of kilometers, and even ambush on roads where vehicles often pass by. If the Soma Consortium's convoy was not well-equipped and had firepower comparable to that of the elite squadron of the Field Corps, Ke Lan and his team would have become a delicious meal for lava leeches on the way to Leviathan.
The insects in front of us do look somewhat similar to adult lava leeches.
But the second half of the hound's sentence was not wrong. Lava leeches are indeed not social creatures.
Not only are they not social creatures, but when individuals meet, they often fight fiercely until one of them is killed by the other.
Even when two opposite-sex lava leeches mate, the male will kill and eat the female while she is weak after laying eggs - this is exactly the opposite of praying mantises on Earth.
Ultimately, it’s all about competing for “nutrients”.
Although a lava leech can lay one hundred to two hundred eggs in one nest, no more than one-third of these eggs - adult lava leeches do not prepare food for their own children, and those brothers and sisters who hatch later will naturally become the first meal for the newly hatched young.
They will first bite open the intact eggs and eat the ones that are still unable to move. When all the eggs are hatched or eaten, the remaining larvae will fight and devour each other... It's like raising a Gu. In a nest of eggs, often only one larva can survive and walk out of the cave where it was laid.
But at this time, the young must quickly escape from the place where it was born... Otherwise, after the protective pheromones it carries have disappeared, the remaining parent will also regard it as its food.
A newly hatched lava leech is only about the size of an apple. If it wants to grow into a giant several dozen meters tall, the "nutrition" 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 leech ever witnessed by humans is more than 300 meters long, and the high-temperature mucus it sprays can attack targets 2,000 meters away.
One of the limbs of this lava leech is still on display in the central exhibition tower of the Ark Biological Museum. Visitors have to take the elevator to the 26th floor of the exhibition tower so that their eyes can reach the top of the limb at level with it.
Creatures like lava leeches eat almost everything, and they especially like to devour their own kind. Although the self-explosion caused by the death of their own kind is enough to paralyze them, their own kind's bodies filled with a large amount of flammable materials are, in their eyes, the most delicious "nutrients" in the world.
It is difficult to find a second , so how could they appear in such large groups?
However, Ivan still insisted on his point of view: "It can't be wrong! Although there is a certain degree of variation, in terms of biological classification, they and the lava leeches in the wilderness are definitely closely related species of the same genus!"
Mutation? Ke Lan once again looked at the crystals covering the insects. In terms of texture, these crystals were very similar to energy crystals, but the cross-section of energy crystals was very smooth, while the crystals on these insects were very rough and had low light transmittance, just like unpolished jade.
Ke Lan thought of an arthropod that lives in the coastal areas of the Central China Sea - the salt crab. This creature, which looks like a swimming crab, feeds on plankton in the seawater by filtering it, but its filter feeding organs not only intercept plankton in the seawater, but also take in a lot of salt into its body.
When the salt content in the body fluid of the salt crab exceeds a certain proportion, the salt will precipitate from the surface of the shell to form a thin layer of salt shell.
This is how they got their name, the salt crabs.
The salt shells on the salt crabs are due to excessive salt intake, and the crystalline shells on these mutant lava leeches...
Ke Lan reacted immediately - what the hound said was right, and what Ivan said was also right, these insects were lava leeches!
Lava leeches 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 leeches living in the power room feed on crystal columns! So there is no need for them to hunt their own kind!
"Everyone, pay attention! Use conventional weapons to attack, and try not to aim at the abdomen of these insects! It is forbidden to use energy weapons, incendiary bombs and explosive weapons. Try to keep a safe distance of more than 30 meters from these insects - if they get close to you, stop immediately, and kill them after you have distanced yourself!" Ke Lan quickly gave the order.
Ivan and Zhuoligetu were the first to open fire. The two Gauss assault rifles quickly formed a crossfire, covering the dozen mutant . Like the lava leeches, these mutant larvae exploded like bombs after being killed, but they were a little different from ordinary lava leeches: ordinary lava leeches would produce a lot of heat and flames when they exploded, just like a gasoline barrel being detonated, but the effect produced by the explosion of these mutant larvae was more like the appearance of a crystal converter overloaded.
"Sure enough, the energy properties in the body will change with the type of food eaten..." Ke Lan couldn't help but sigh, "This is a bit tricky..."
He and Ivan looked at each other, both of them with worry in their eyes.
They are worried about the same problem.
If it was a group of ordinary lava leeches rushing over, Ke Lan and Ivan would not stop others from using area-killing weapons - it would be more efficient to clean up these insects by chain-detonating them.
But these mutant larvae in front of us are different.
They are like converters filled with energy crystals and on the verge of overload. If they are all blown up 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 completely new meaning——
"When a crystal converter explodes due to overload, the explosion ranges of multiple converters overlap, and they amplify each other , greatly increasing the power of the explosion. This phenomenon is called 'crystal resonance'."
Using the resonance phenomenon, the equipment development department of the research institute has also manufactured many crystal bombs. If a single crystal bomb is detonated, its power is about the same as a grenade at most. However, if ten crystal bombs are tied together and detonated, it will be enough to flatten a building!
If we could destroy all these mutant larvae at the same time...
