Volume 16 Tower of Babel Chapter 874: A Monster Evolved Over 500,000 Years
Ke Lan immediately chose to retreat quickly, creating some distance between himself and the beast, and at the same time took this opportunity to observe its weaknesses... But what made him speechless was that the beast's entire body was covered in scales that shone with the unique luster of Nino alloy, and there was no weakness at all that could be attacked.
It had no eyes and no exposed nostrils, and its big mouth remained closed... Even when it pounced on Ke Lan, it showed no sign of opening its mouth to bite.
It's like a complete iron barrel, making it impossible to get started.
Such a monster must have mutated in the next 500,000 years... otherwise, the weapons carried by the dignitaries of the Upper City who participated in the hunt would not be able to break this guy's defense.
"This guy is covered with scales!" Sanshisan on the side shot a dozen black flying blades at the monster, but failed to achieve any results.
"I want to try to lure it. If I give it a chance to attack, it might choose to open its mouth and bite me. Then I can take the opportunity to attack the inside of its mouth... This thing can't have scales all over the inside of its mouth, right?" After saying this, Ke Lan stopped and stopped retreating, and assumed a posture ready to deal with the attack.
This crocodile-like monster's limbs... no, to be precise, it should be "its sixteen limbs", which are also short like those of a crocodile. They can only be used for crawling and cannot be used as weapons. So if this monster wants to cause , it can only bite - the depth of its big mouth is about a quarter of the length of its body. Although it has never been open, Ke Lan can fully imagine the teeth inside that are as sharp as saw blades...
The crocodile's attack method is relatively simple. It relies on its huge bite force to bite its prey, and then tear the whole piece of meat off the prey's body, or shake its head to break the prey's bones in its mouth. But no matter which method it uses, when it bites its prey, it will expose the relatively soft inside of its mouth to the prey - this is the attack opportunity that Ke Lan wants to seize.
"Be careful!" Thirty-Three shouted, "I'm ready to help at any time."
"No problem." Ke Lan stretched out his right arm, and a red fluid as thick as blood plasma quickly seeped out from his pores, first accumulating into several blood-colored tentacles as thick as a fistful, and then these tentacles twisted together, instantly forming an alien limb more than one meter long.
This extended arm is the "bait" that Ke Lan uses to induce the monster in front of him to open its mouth. As long as the monster bites this arm formed by the living armor, the living armor can directly launch an attack inside the monster's mouth... Ke Lan even thought of the subsequent attack route: directly let hundreds of spikes grow on the upper part of the arm, pierce the monster's upper jaw, and reach the brain...
However, even when the extended arm of the living armor hit the monster, the monster did not open its mouth to bite... Although Ke Lan could not find the monster's eyes, he seemed to feel that the monster gave him a look of contempt and mockery...
"This guy has a high IQ! It sees through my intentions!" This was Ke Lan's first reaction, but before he could change his moves, the monster suddenly turned extremely unreasonably in mid-air, and its thick long tail hit Ke Lan's chest hard, sending Ke Lan flying like a ball.
Ke Lan could clearly hear the sound of his ribs breaking. Even with the dual protection of the living armor and Ze Luo, his chest cavity still caved in, and his internal organs ruptured under the tremendous pressure... Before he even hit the ground, dark red blood had already overflowed from all his orifices.
At this rate of momentum, Ke Lan's body flying sideways was enough to break a towering tree behind him at the waist. Fortunately, the living armor finally reacted at this time, generating a large amount of foam-like buffer layers behind Ke Lan. The edges of these buffer layers solidified into hard hooks, which tightly grasped the ground, holding Ke Lan's body like an inflatable net.
Ke Lan crashed through four buffer layers in a row, and the soil on the ground was plowed up by the grappling hook to a depth of nearly half a meter before the force was barely stopped.
"Ke Lan! Are you okay?!" Sanshisan asked anxiously.
"Cough... cough cough... it's okay... tut!" Ke Lan spat out a mouthful of blood mixed with fragments of internal organs, and crawled up from the ground with some difficulty.
This kind of injury would be absolutely unbearable for an ordinary level nine enhanced person... or rather, they would have died instantly the moment they were hit by the monster's tail. Ke Lan was able to survive thanks to the protection of his living armor and his extremely abnormal self-recovery ability.
The damaged organs were recovering quickly, and the broken bones were returning to their original positions under the push of the living armor. In less than two seconds, Ke Lan's broken body returned to normal, and even the torn flesh did not leave scars. The only difference from before was probably the torn clothes and the blood on his body and face that he had not had time to wipe off.
"I underestimated the enemy... and underestimated his strength..." Ke Lan said. This time, he did not dare to relax at all, and directly covered his whole body with living armor, and even condensed a hunting spear more than three meters long in his hand.
"Is this guy's power really that terrifying?" The thirty-three saw Ke Lan fly out immediately after fighting with the monster, and the monster just rolled in the air, adjusted its posture, offset the recoil force, and landed steadily on the ground.
Since Sanshisan met Ke Lan, this was the first time he saw Ke Lan being humiliated and looking so embarrassed.
"It's terrifying." Ke Lan nodded, "I'm glad he chose me as his target. If it was you, you would probably be dead by now."
This statement is not an exaggeration at all. If we calculate it according to the human enhancement level...
Uh, it seems that I really can’t calculate it.
The current upper limit of human enhancement is level ten. Starting from level eight, the strength increase for each level is around 50% to 120%. This value is also closely related to various factors such as the enhancer's body shape, degree of body modification, etc. It is not a fixed value like in video games.
Assuming that Ke Lan himself is used as a reference for a level nine enhanced human, the power of this tail swing just now is at least eight times more than a whip kick that Ke Lan could produce with his physical strength without the assistance of living armor and spatial force.
Assuming that the enhancement levels above level ten are all increased by one times, then this monster has at least the strength level of a level 12 enhanced human.
This is a number that is hard to imagine... Admittedly, there are many creatures on Alpha whose power far exceeds that of a level nine enhanced human, but these creatures have one thing in common, that is, they are extremely large in size. Creatures of this size rarely possess such powerful power.
The main reason why organisms have limitations is because of the strength of muscles and bones... Excessively strong muscle strength will most likely destroy the user's body before it is even fully exerted when used - like some powered armor or exoskeletons with stronger power systems. If the user's body is relatively weak, a few violent movements will cause muscle strain or even fracture... Even large mechas or other vehicles that do not require the manipulation of limbs to participate in movement still have the problem of G-force load.
Ke Lan now strongly suspected that not only the scales on the body of this crocodile-like monster were made of Nino alloy, but even its bones were probably made of high-purity Nino alloy... As for the soft tissue between the muscles and bones, its strength must be higher than any material that humans can currently produce.
If this monster were obtained by the researchers who study bionics and materials science in the institute, they would definitely regard it as a treasure... Unfortunately, right now, Ke Lan's mind is filled with only one thing: how to kill it.
This monster cannot bite people, and its claws can hardly hurt people, but its flesh itself is its strongest weapon - just like the python, which is also a reptile. The python does not have deadly toxins, nor does it have fangs long enough to bite large prey to death, and it , but its sturdy body can easily strangle prey of similar size to itself, relying on its own powerful muscle strength.
"Don't get into close combat with this guy." Ke Lan warned Thirty-Three, "This guy's strength is almost equivalent to that of a level 12 enhanced human."
"Level 12? Isn't the highest level for enhanced humans only 10?" Thirty-three was stunned for a moment, unable to react to what Ke Lan said.
"It's equivalent to four times the maximum strength of a level 10 enhanced human, just like the one it used to knock me away." Ke Lan said.
At this moment, the monster was lying twenty meters away from Ke Lan, with its sixteen paws on the ground at the same time, its elbows slightly bent, and its abdomen pressed against the ground, confronting Ke Lan in a posture ready to pounce at any time.
Its IQ is not low, but at this moment, it seemed to be wondering why the "prey" that should have died actually crawled up from the ground as if nothing had happened.
As the overlord of this area, creatures that are dozens or even hundreds of times its size are no match for it, but the "human" in front of it makes it feel a hint of threat.
"Wow, so terrifying?" Thirty-three estimated in his mind, "Mechas of this size don't have this kind of power, right?"
"Except for disposable things that have a lot of thrusters installed." Ke Lan said, "Unless it is a pure Nino alloy frame, no body frame can withstand an impact of this intensity."
"You mean, not only the shell of this thing is made of Nino alloy, but also the bones?" Thirty-three took a breath and subconsciously took two steps back.
He knew very well that he probably couldn't intervene in the battle between Ke Lan and the monster.
"Not only its scales and bones, but also its muscles and internal organs are terrifyingly strong." Ke Lan said, "When I fight it later, I will try to remove the scales from its body. Then you can use the black flying blade to attack the exposed flesh... maybe it will have some effect."
"Understood!" Thirty-three nodded and retracted the extra black flying blades, leaving only a 30-centimeter-long armor-piercing cone with prismatic reinforcement ribs on eight sides suspended in front of his palm, ready to attack at any time.
He knew that even if those black flying blades, which were about the size of razor blades, could pierce into the monster's flesh, they would not cause any effective damage. Instead of using hundreds of black flying blades to scrape it, it would be better to concentrate all the strength on this armor-piercing cone and see if he could pierce the monster through.
The short and tense confrontation ended without any warning. Ke Lan only saw the muscles on the monster's arms contract slightly, and the monster disappeared from the spot, turning into a black shadow and rushing straight towards him - not only was the speed of this thing so fast, it even left a trace of afterimage in the dust raised behind it!
This kind of explosive acceleration is probably difficult to achieve even with a disposable vehicle strapped with rocket thrusters.
Ke Lan immediately swung the hunting spear in his hand - although he said he swung it, in fact his arm did not move at all. Instead, he relied on the changes in the living armor to extend the spear body and stabbed at the black shadow that was approaching in an instant!
Just as the hunting spear was about to touch the black shadow, the sharp spear head suddenly expanded and turned into an irregular polygonal hammer, smashing heavily at the black shadow!
Armor-piercing weapons are generally divided into two extremes: one is a short, hard, sharp armor-piercing cone, which relies on its own hardness to forcibly penetrate the enemy's armor and damage the flesh behind the armor. However, this type of armor-piercing cone has very high requirements for materials. If the enemy's armor is much harder than the armor-piercing cone, it will not have any armor-piercing effect.
The other type of armor-piercing weapon takes a completely different approach: blunt weapons. Blunt weapons completely abandon sharp blades and spikes, relying purely on weight and force to complete the attack. Even if the enemy is wearing heavy armor, the force of the blunt weapon can be transmitted through the armor itself and shatter the internal organs of the armor-piercer.
When facing a monster whose entire body was covered in Nino alloy scales, Ke Lan chose the second method of breaking the armor.
"Bang!"
There was a loud noise as the hammer head collided with the monster's body. Ke Lan and Sanshisan only felt a buzzing sound in their ears. At the same time, an extremely terrifying recoil force was transmitted along the hammer handle to Ke Lan's hand. Ke Lan's palm suddenly felt numb... If the hammer handle was not connected to the living armor, it would probably have slipped out of his hand by now.
The knuckles of Ke Lan's hands were torn apart, and the blood that flowed out was quickly absorbed by the hammer handle formed by the living armor... Although this hammer failed to cause any damage to the monster, it at least successfully blocked the opponent's offensive and smashed the flying monster into the ground.
