Volume 10: Ancient Battleship Chapter 502 Extractor
Even the reconnaissance team could see the enemy below, so Ke Lan, whose mind and consciousness were completely connected to the warship, could naturally see it as well.
Not only could he see, but he could also use the battleship's own auxiliary devices to lock onto all targets at the same time - a total of 2,615 enemy units, including 1,190 humans, 1,421 "containers" and mature seeds of erosion... and four "unknown targets."
The "operation manual" of this battleship seemed to have been input into Ke Lan's mind along with the huge flow of information. Although he knew nothing about this battleship before connecting to the console, everything became easy for him when he started the actual operation.
It was as if he had been operating this battleship for many years.
It seemed not like a battleship, but a beloved car that he assembled with his own hands and drove countless times: the tightness of the accelerator and clutch, the angle and number of turns of the steering wheel, the gear of the gearbox and the speed of the engine... He did not have to think about everything deliberately, and did not even need to pay attention to the readings on the dial. He could complete a series of extremely difficult operations just by relying on muscle memory.
If the unity of man and sword is the highest realm of swordsmanship, then "the unity of man and ship" is probably the highest realm of ship operation, right?
Of course, the ship control mentioned here refers to "manipulating the warship", and it is definitely not what players in those games where the warships are simulated as humans are obsessed with.
Although Ke Lan's five senses were completely isolated from the surroundings, he could hear what Hound and others said through the observation perspective inside the battleship. If possible, he certainly wanted to annihilate these enemies in the Molten Mine Area.
There are no innocent people in the heretical sects, no matter if they join voluntarily or are forced to join under coercion or inducement. Since they have become a member of this organization, their hands are bound to be stained with the blood of their own kind. Ke Lan has seen a document in the archives of the Security Bureau: if an ordinary person wants to join a heretical sect, after passing the initial review, he must submit a "letter of surrender" before he can officially obtain the status of a "member".
The weight of this "letter of allegiance" also determines the person's high status after joining the heretical sect.
The primary way to pledge allegiance is to hunt down an exile who is unwilling to "convert" to the great god. The simplest way is to capture slaves who are out gathering food... Of course, if you have enough resources, you can even go to an exile camp and "spend money" to buy a slave, and then offer it as a "human sacrifice" to the great god.
A more advanced form of surrender is to attack the Ark's various strongholds and transit stations, and use the "kills" obtained in the battle as one's own surrender... As for the highest level of surrender, they naturally have to be those important characters lurking in the Ark's upper echelons and secretly carrying out conspiracies, but the identities of the latter are rarely made public. Even if some exposed pawns are cleared out by the Security Bureau, they will also arrange some other charges for these people.
Ke Lan would not feel the slightest bit of guilt for killing these people.
"Weapon system... poof...why is it all gray..."
When the thought of "attack" popped up in Ke Lan's mind, a densely packed list instantly appeared in front of his eyes. Although the names of the weapons on the battleship were automatically translated into human language, they were all names that Ke Lan could not understand, but just by looking at these names, he knew that these things were real "big killer weapons."
For example, the "Astral Disintegration Field Generator" ranked first and the "Gravity Distortion Anchor Point" ranked second. Although Ke Lan had no idea what the actual effects of these weapons were, when he associated these mysterious names, he instantly broke out in a cold sweat.
"Astral Disintegration Field"... It sounds like it should be used to attack planets? Then this thing should be similar to the "Star Destroyer Cannon" commonly seen in science fiction works, right?
I just don't know what level of celestial body this thing can "annihilate"...
During the trial in the bottomless pit, Ke Lan learned that the Alpha civilization possessed "star-destroyer-level weapons" - if Ke Lan's "trial mission" failed, the star-destroyer-level weapons would be activated and destroy the "Crown of Ashes" and the asteroid together.
The asteroid "Ashes" is not an ordinary asteroid. After multiple swallowings, its size and mass are already very close to the threshold of a dwarf planet. To destroy such a celestial body is as difficult as blowing off one-third of the volume of the Earth's satellite, the Moon.
(The dwarf planet data here is based on Pluto, which is one-sixth the size of the Moon and one-third the mass of the Moon.)
But the civilization that built this ancient battleship is obviously stronger than the Alpha civilization, and their "star-destroying weapons" should not be limited to being used on asteroids or dwarf planets.
Ke Lan felt that this thing should at least be able to blow up a planet like Alpha Centauri. If it could even destroy a star, then it should be considered a strategic weapon even for the third civilization.
However, the entire list of 45 weapons is grayed out - that is, none of them are usable.
After digesting some of the information, Ke Lan had guessed why the Alpha civilization had "soaked" the battleship in the magma pool - all the weapons on the battleship required a huge amount of energy to activate, and using conventional charging methods, even if the entire civilization's assets were emptied, it would not be possible to fully charge the battleship. And the "Astral Disintegration Field Generator", which ranked first in the weapon ranking, required 90% of the energy in the fully charged state to activate it once...
So the Alpha Civilization simply sank the battleship into the magma pool and let it absorb the geothermal energy of Alpha Star on its own... But what made Ke Lan speechless was that this thing had been soaking in the magma pool for at least 10,000 years, and the charging progress was only a pitiful 6%...
Based on this efficiency, if you want to launch a "star destroyer cannon", wouldn't you have to soak in the magma pool for 150,000 years?
But then again, compared to a planet's lifespan of billions of years, 150,000 years can only be considered a flash in the pan... But for a civilization, 150,000 years is a bit too long.
At least the Alpha civilization did not wait until the battleship was fully charged.
Ke Lan glanced at the weapon with the lowest energy consumption in the list again, and it still required 10% of the energy - he always felt that even the least powerful weapon on this battleship would probably be enough to uproot the entire Molten Mine District.
"There are no usable weapons... Then we can only use the hull of the battleship as a weapon and use physical attacks... and then trigger a high-intensity earthquake, which should be able to kill all the heretical sects in the mining area... But in this way, Lao Gou and others who are not protected by the light curtain will probably be shaken to death inside the battleship..." Ke Lan thought quickly about countermeasures, "If weapons don't work, then other things..."
Ke Lan focused her attention on another "tool list" that popped up.
A name caught his attention - "biological organic matter extractor".
Although Ke Lan couldn't determine where this thing came from and what it was used for, he discovered that it could actually lock onto 2,615 targets at the same time...
If we understand it literally, it seems that we can "collect" organic matter from living organisms... Then if the collection efficiency is maximized, can we instantly suck a person into a skeleton?
Moreover, the energy consumed in starting this thing is almost negligible for the ancient warship. The only limitation is that the extractor has only three storage units. In other words, it only has three opportunities to start before the organic matter extracted last time is "digested".
"Since I have three chances, I'll just treat it as an experiment..." With this thought in mind, Ke Lan activated the extractor for the 2516 targets that were locked. As for the power of the extractor, he directly set it to the maximum for safety reasons...
In an instant, 2516 "lines" invisible to the naked eye "shot" out from the battleship , connecting all the locked targets and extractors together - the next second, these invisible dotted lines were replaced by deep red solid lines!
At that time, the extremely finely shredded flesh was transported to the storage unit along these lines, and the targeted target had no time to even let out a dying wail before all the "organic matter" in his body was drained...
Humans or "containers" would at least have a shattered skeleton full of holes, but the boneless seeds of erosion, like slugs evaporated by high temperatures, left only pools of clear liquid, which were vaporized by the scalding rocks in the blink of an eye and mixed into the rising smoke.
Although Ke Lan had been mentally prepared to a certain extent, the actual effect of the extractor still made him lose consciousness for a moment - this thing, used to deal with living things, is clearly an undefended super-killer, and those exiles wearing power armor were not spared... They were like a can that was chiseled open from the inside, and the flesh and blood pulled by an unknown force directly drilled a hole in the hard composite armor surface!
As for the rest of the reconnaissance team, they were in an incomparable state of shock. The silence lasted for two minutes before Layton asked in a difficult voice, "Did anyone see what just happened?"
"I'm not sure..." Ivan whispered, clutching the wrist of his other hand tightly with his prosthetic limb. "I seemed to see a thin red line appear on those people's bodies... Then, their skin, hair, flesh, and internal organs disappeared... Only bones were left..."
"Only the skeletons of humans are left, and there is not even a trace of those monsters left..." Zhuo Ligetu added.
…
When Ke Lan came back to his senses from his brief trance, he couldn't help but let out a sigh - out of 2516 targets, only 2512 were eliminated, and the remaining four "unknown targets" escaped.
But even though these four unknown targets had not died, their bodies had been shattered and could no longer maintain their original form. Ke Lan noticed that among these four unknown targets, one was actually wearing the standard armor of the elite team.
Did he accidentally injure a friendly soldier? No, that's not right. It wasn't a friendly soldier. The "soldier"'s body had been cut in two, including the armor. All organic matter in the lower half of the body had disappeared, leaving only the upper half with some flesh and blood...
A normal person would have died long ago after being seriously injured like this, but the upper body of this "soldier" was still struggling and twisting, and fleshy tentacles covered in blood and filth kept growing out from the cross-section of his body, trying to fill the shocking wounds.
His upper body was like a piece of wood eaten by termites, covered with dense small holes, and the right side of his chest had collapsed completely. A large amount of blood flowed out of his broken body and then evaporated into the ground.
He was indeed one of the soldiers that Ke Lan left outside the mining area, but he was no longer human at this moment... Ke Lan's heart couldn't help but darken: It seemed that the support base should have fallen.
Just as Ke Lan focused his eyes on the mutilated body, the other person's head tilted slightly, and his eyes behind the transparent mask stared straight into Ke Lan's sight.
"Can you feel my gaze?" Ke Lan asked tentatively. You know, he is now using the warship's external observation system to spy on the entire mining area. If the other party can feel his gaze, then his consciousness should be able to communicate with it.
As expected, the "soldier" also used his consciousness to say to Ke Lan: "Why...wasn't your consciousness swallowed up by the battleship?"
"You are... the prophet?" Ke Lan felt that he had basically confirmed this guy's identity. "You are his stand-in, right? And the other three are the same... You are really willing to spend so much money. You only sent one stand-in during the trip to the sick village, but this time you actually sent out four at once."
However, the person on the other side did not pick up Ke Lan's words, but instead said, "You can't have survived... If you want to completely restart the system, even if you drain all your mental energy, it won't be enough. You should be a living dead now..."
The prophet's stand-in suddenly paused. After two seconds, he suddenly realized, "You must have integrated the complete 'holy object'. Otherwise, there is no reason for you to still have independent consciousness!"
"What exactly is the holy object?" Ke Lan asked. He didn't intend to tell the other party what happened on the Greek. Since this guy likes to guess, let him guess. He is not the kind of talkative villain in the movie who has to confess all his past before taking action - most of those people have an almost perverted desire to show off, and now, Ke Lan just wants him to die.
"Where did you find the complete holy relic? Didn't the unfinished product have been destroyed?" The substitute's consciousness was filled with anger and confusion.
Hmm...it seems that this guy's stand-in does not have the ability to share information in real time. Otherwise, before the stand-in was killed last time, the prophet should have known that the semi-finished product was still alive and above the sick village.
Of course, it is not ruled out that the special environment of the sick village, or the abilities of Chiron, Ze Luo, and the puppet individuals interfered with the information sharing ability of the stand... I should be able to find out this by asking Ze Luo after I go back.
As for the pile of rotten meat in front of me, I probably can't get any more information out of it.
For them, it was not worth wasting another opportunity to use the extractor. Ke Lan thought about it and began to slowly lower the battleship's altitude.
At the same time, he used the voice transmission device inside the battleship to remind the entire reconnaissance team to be prepared to withstand the impact.
"Ke Lan, what...what are you going to do?" the hound asked in horror.
"If it just brushed past the ground, it shouldn't cause a high-intensity earthquake, right?" Ke Lan said to the stand-in.
"Wait a minute! I want to make a deal with you. Even if you want to destroy my stand, let me say this first-"
The Prophet's stand-in didn't get to finish his words before the bottom of the battleship touched the ground.
A huge roar suddenly sounded.
