Volume 10: Ancient Battleship Chapter 496: Crystallized Lava Beetle
At the bottom of the giant pit, there were a total of thirteen hundred-meter-sized mutated lava leeches lurking - to be more precise, thirteen mutated lava leeches whose bodies had already become crystallized.
Unlike the larvae that have tiny crystals growing on their body surface and internal organs, these hundred-meter-long giants have almost completely crystallized external shells, and through these crystals, one can vaguely see their internal organs.
"No wonder Asano Akira said he heard the sound of a glass ball rolling on the ground..." Layton muttered to himself as he shared the scene he saw with everyone in the reconnaissance team.
Of course, crystallization is not the main reason why these lava leeches have lost their ability to move - because they have been stuck at the bottom of the pit by crystal pillars for a long time, their bodies have become completely deformed, and flat grooves have been squeezed out on both sides of their huge abdomens, just like Tom who was caught in the door in the classic cartoon "Tom and Jerry".
As for the limbs of these crystallized lava leeches, they have degenerated due to years of inactivity - those pairs of limbs that are only a few meters long grow on a body that is hundreds of meters long. They can't even reach the ground, and the way they flutter in vain in mid-air looks a bit funny.
Layton could almost imagine the growth process of these crystallized lava leeches - when they entered the big pit, their bodies had not yet grown to the extent that they would be stuck by the crystal pillars, but the abundant energy and huge amounts of high-level crystals in the pit were like throwing a mouse into a full rice jar... They devoured everything they saw madly and greedily... until the rice in the rice jar was completely eaten up, but at this time, the mouse could no longer reach the edge of the rice jar.
Of course, the current situation is not that the rice in the rice jar has been eaten up, but that the mouse has become fatter and fatter, and has burrowed deeper and deeper into the rice pile. In the end, it was pinned to the bottom of the pit by the heavy pile of rice and could no longer climb out.
But then again, if there really is such a rice jar that can never be emptied, most mice would be willing to stay in it for the rest of their lives...
"These bugs look like bananafish..." Ivan walked to the edge of the pit and sighed softly.
"It looks like some...some fish?" the hound looked at Ivan and asked.
"Bananafish, banana fish."
"Banana fish? What is that? A fish that looks like a banana? Is it a species that existed on Earth in the past?"
"No, this is an allusion from the novel 'A Good Day to Catch Bananafish' by the old American writer Salinger." Ke Lan's weak voice came from the team's communication channel, "The original text is 'They swam into a hole full of bananas. When they swam in, they were just ordinary fish, but once they entered the hole, they could n't stop eating until they were as fat as pigs and couldn't get out of the hole anymore'... The fictional image of the banana fish symbolizes the endless desires in the human heart."
Ke Lan paused, took a few breaths with some effort, and then continued: "Not only humans, but all living things have desires..."
Giving up freedom, humanity and even more important things for the sake of desire... For some reason, Ke Lan suddenly thought of the "prophet" of the heretical sect.
What is his desire?
Survive?
Survival and reproduction are the two most basic desires of all living things. Whether it is hunting, eating, migrating... a series of actions to seek benefits and avoid harm, they ultimately serve these two basic desires. Even these crystallized lava leeches trapped at the bottom of the pit swallow large amounts of energy crystals just to survive longer and produce more offspring.
Only humans... In Ke Lan's impression, only humans would sacrifice their lives for some superficial desires.
Of course, using the word desire may not be accurate. It can be desire, or it can be belief, idea, or something more difficult to describe.
There are too many things that humans desire but cannot obtain... power, wealth, knowledge... many people are even willing to sacrifice their lives to obtain them. In comparison, the desires of the "prophet" are purer.
He wants to become stronger and survive in this universe.
In order to achieve this goal, he can give up everything else.
"It's really like a wild beast..." Ke Lan thought silently in his heart.
His eyelids gradually became heavy, and even powerful stimulants could not suppress the sleepiness... Especially after learning that those hundred-meter-class lava leeches could not pose a threat to the team, the tension that Ke Lan had been holding tight suddenly relaxed. He didn't even have time to say a few words to Hound and the others before he lost consciousness.
…
…
When Ke Lan regained consciousness, he subconsciously reached out his hand and grabbed a slender arm. Although the arm was slender, through the anti-gravity suit fabric that fits the body lines, he could still feel the powerful muscle fibers under the clothes.
"Are you awake?" A young woman's voice came from above. Ke Lan opened his eyes and found himself lying on a flat chair. The power armor on his body had been removed, leaving only a set of close-fitting clothes. His left arm and wrist were tied to the armrest of the chair with an elastic band, and a large piece of adhesive tape was pasted on the back of his hand to fix the indwelling needle.
The beeping sound of the infusion machine continued to reach my ears, and the pungent smell of the powerful radiation-eliminating drug filled this dark and narrow space.
"Valentina?" Ke Lan looked towards the place where the voice came from - he realized that he should be lying in the cockpit of Valkyrie.
"What's going on? After I fell unconscious...what happened?"
"Asano Akira said that you were just mentally overdrawn, but there was nothing wrong with you." Valentina said. Ke Lan looked up and could see her thin chin line. Against the pale blue reflection of the monitor, it looked like metal. "But Uncle Nick said that you were exposed to a large dose of radiation and you must take six bags of Radiation Eliminator before you can move... The radiation intensity outside is still very high, so they put you here."
Nick is the hound's real name. Although he hates being called that name, Valentina is very stubborn and follows Chi Hanfeng in calling him Nick. After a long time, the hound has no choice but to follow them.
"Six bags of Radiation Elimination... Haha... According to my weight, this is already the maximum dose, right? Is this old dog trying to poison me to death?" Ke Lan complained. Only then did he realize that there was a heavy urine bag attached to his lower body...
"It's been thirty minutes since the last rehydration," Valentina glanced at the timer on the screen, "Do you want to drink water or get an IV drip?"
"Can you help me turn off the infusion machine?" Ke Lan gave a bitter smile.
Due to his special physique, he is not actually very afraid of radiation... Although his body will still absorb radiation from the outside, as long as he is isolated from the radiation source for a period of time, the radiation in his body will automatically dissipate, and there is no need to excrete it through radiation-eliminating drugs... The Hound was obviously frightened by the radiation dose in his body when he just fell into a coma, so he asked Ivan to prescribe a full six bags of radiation-eliminating drugs.
He could clearly feel his swollen bladder filled with liquid, and the strong urge to urinate hit his nerves - fortunately, it was only an external urine bag, not an insertable catheter. After emptying the liquid in his body, Ke Lan turned over and pulled out the indwelling needle on the back of his hand.
"What's the situation outside?" Ke Lan asked as he took the water bag handed to him by Valentina.
"Thirteen lava leeches with heavily crystallized bodies were found at the bottom of the pit. However, their movement organs have degenerated and they have lost the ability to move . They pose no threat to us. So Team Leader Breya and Uncle Nick decided to rest here first and formulate the next action plan after you wake up." Valentina replied.
"Yeah." Ke Lan nodded. He narrowed his eyes slightly and tried to recall the memory of the connection with "Aguna Tor" just now. However, to his regret, the information flows that poured into his brain were only vague shadows... Even the picture from the bird's-eye view of the giant pit could no longer be seen clearly.
His memory seemed to be covered by a thin layer of gray fog. The fog was so thin that he could see some rough outlines and blurred blocks of color through the mist, but when he wanted to reach out to spread the mist, the mist suddenly became thicker and heavier.
Those distant and unreal memories did not seem like his personal experiences, but more like he was looking back at things that happened to other people from a third-person perspective .
"Could it be that... this information is also temporarily 'sealed' like the stone tablet, and can only be activated when certain unlocking conditions are met?" Ke Lan thought to himself, "I just don't know whether this information came from the Alpha civilization, or was left behind by the civilization that built this ancient battleship."
The memory fragments from the stone tablet can be unlocked by seeing things related to them, so will this information be the same?
Ke Lan plans to give it a try.
He sat up straight and put his head in front of the console... However, what Ke Lan did not expect was that the space in the cockpit was very small. Valentina was already sticking to the cabin wall, trying to give Ke Lan as much space as possible. When Ke Lan moved, his shoulder was directly on Valentina's waist and back.
The young female pilot groaned and lost her balance, falling to one side. Fortunately, her reaction speed was much faster than that of an ordinary person. When she was about to crush Ke Lan, her right hand just managed to grab a pull ring on the top of the cockpit and suspended her body above the seat in a tilted position.
As luck would have it, Ke Lan's face was buried right in Valentina's armpit.
When she was surfing the Internet in the past, Ke Lan had heard some experienced veterans say that among human females, white people can definitely be regarded as the type that "can only be admired from a distance, not touched" - many white girls, when viewed from a distance, have fair skin and hot bodies, but when it comes to "close combat", you will find that although white people's skin looks white, it is actually very rough, with many large pores, and abundant body hair...Except for those girls who have undergone cosmetic surgery or genetic modification, the remaining natural white girls, in terms of skin alone, are enough to be completely defeated by the equally natural yellow people.
But skin quality is secondary. According to an old driver, their body odor is the most terrible - he said that he had dated 17 white girls, and 16 of them had terrible body odor, which had to be covered with strong perfume, accounting for nearly 95%...
Of course, there are also some perverts with special fetishes who are born with this taste. They even gave this smell an "elegant" name - "night jasmine"...
However, Ke Lan did not smell any unbearable strange smell. He only smelled a faint smell of sweat, mixed with the unique body fragrance of young women, which penetrated through the thin fabric of the anti-gravity suit and penetrated into his nasal cavity.
Ke Lan was stunned at first, then immediately lay back on the chair.
"Sorry, I didn't notice where you were standing." Ke Lan said somewhat embarrassedly.
"Hmm..." Valentina responded. Her tone and expression didn't seem to change much, but if it was Asano Akira who was here instead of Ke Lan, one would be able to hear Valentina's heartbeat almost twice as fast as before.
"Can you stand up?" Ke Lan asked tentatively.
"My legs... seem to be stuck." Valentina said. She straightened her upper body with some difficulty, but the part below the waist was completely unable to move.
The Valkyrie's cockpit was originally a standard single-person cockpit, and a lot of armor and electronic equipment were added during the modification, which made the already tight interior space even more crowded.
And now, the cockpit was filled with supplies from the cargo hold. Valentina's legs were pressed down by a bag of supplies that rolled down, and her instep was caught in the lower edge of the seat.
If it were any ordinary girl, she would have probably cried out in pain by now. Only Valentina, who had been tortured by old injuries and sequelae for many years, could endure such pain.
But even so, her face turned a little pale.
"How...how can I help you?" Looking at the girl whose body was tense and whose back was almost bent into a bow shape, Ke Lan was at a loss for a moment.
"Help... My waist... I can't hold on any longer..." Valentina gritted her teeth and said, "The bag pressing on my calf... I can't reach it with my hands... Please help me move it away... I should be able to move..."
"Oh oh." Ke Lan responded quickly. He held the girl's flexible waist with one hand and reached down from her side with the other hand, groping for the bag that was pressing down on her legs.
This action forced Ke Lan to press his head against Valentina's ribs. Through the material of the anti-gravity suit, he could even make out the outline of the sports bra she was wearing inside...
