Volume 16 Tower of Babel Chapter 877 Rivets
The monster felt the pain and immediately jumped up from the ground, rolling sideways in the air, trying to tear off the "ribbon" wrapped around its body.
However, the flexibility of the living armor was far beyond its imagination. Not only did the rolling action fail to tear the "ribbon" apart, but it also wrapped it tightly around its body.
More liquid seeped into the gaps between the scales, and more and more scales were torn off, revealing the bloody flesh underneath.
Thirty-three didn't even need to do anything, the spikes formed by the living armor had already pierced through the monster's body - the monster's flesh was also quite tough, and when controlling the living armor spikes to drill into the flesh, Ke Lan felt as if he was stabbing dozens of layers of the highest-grade stab-proof clothing stacked together, and every inch of penetration was extremely difficult.
Even if the monster's meat is not poisonous, it is unlikely to be digested by human intestines.
Fortunately, controlling the power of the living armor is much easier than stabbing it with a weapon. Ke Lan only needs to give commands to the living armor through his consciousness, and he doesn't need to spend any effort at all.
The monster struggled frantically on the ground, but could not get rid of the living armor that was like a thorn in its bones. It dug a huge hole in the ground, with gravel, soil and torn grass scattered everywhere... But even so, the monster did not cross the boundary of the jungle hunting ground to attack Ke Lan's real body, which was less than three meters away from it.
The spikes condensed from the living armor finally entered the monster's internal organs. The moment Ke Lan noticed that the resistance at the tip of the spikes was reduced instantly, he immediately made many tiny branches grow on the side of the spikes. These branches were like clusters of crystals growing in a mine, which turned the monster's internal organs into a ball of rotten meat.
No matter how hard the scales and bones, and how tough the muscles and skin are, the internal organs are still fragile... After more than ten minutes of dying struggle, the monster finally fell silent, and curled up motionless at the bottom of the big pit it had dug.
"Dead?" Thirty-three walked forward and looked into the pit.
"It's heart has stopped beating, and I've turned its brain into a paste. If it can still survive, it only means that the biochemical technology of the Hive Civilization has reached its peak." Ke Lan took back the living armor. "I just explored the internal structure of this monster. This guy has four hearts, two working at the same time, and two in reserve. The brain capacity is about the same as that of humans, and I guess its IQ is not much lower... As for the visual organ, I haven't found it yet."
"Then how does it 'see' us?" Thirty-three was slightly startled and asked.
"We should rely on other senses." Ke Lan kicked the dirt at the edge of the pit, and the dirt mixed with gravel and rotten grass fell along the pit wall and sprinkled on the monster's corpse. "Asano Akira can't see either, but his perception of the surrounding environment is stronger than anyone else in the hunting group... Oh, except Ze Luo."
"Zeluo..." Sanshisan muttered in a low voice. After he joined the hunting group, he gradually learned about Ze Luo's origins through conversations with other people. Although other people in the hunting group have become accustomed to Ze Luo's existence, Sanshisan always feels that he cannot look at Ze Luo with the eyes of an "ordinary person".
This does not mean that he has any grudges against Ze Luo. It is just that in his opinion, Ze Luo cannot be considered a human being at all. At most, he can only be considered an "alien creature" that maintains a friendly relationship with humans...
But he was also very clear that in their daily interactions, the other members of the hunting group treated Ze Luo as their own little sister... Sanshisan's emotional intelligence was naturally not low enough to make him say something like "Is Ze Luo also a human being?"
Not only Ze Luo, but Ke Lan also gave him an unfathomable feeling...all kinds of abilities that were almost like cheating, which should not appear in a "human" at all.
Sanshisan originally thought that he was a "monster" because he could manipulate Nino Alloy, but after joining the God Hunter Group, he deeply understood what it meant to be "a dwarf compared to a giant".
Even without the help of a cheater like Ze Luo, Ke Lan still killed the unreasonably strong monster alone... If Ke Lan wanted to kill himself, it should only take a blink of an eye, right?
Weird? Why do I have such thoughts?
Thirty-three scratched his neck irritably. Faintly, he seemed to hear a voice whispering deep in his head, but when he wanted to listen carefully, the whispering disappeared without a trace.
"Ke Lan, I said--"
Thirty-three raised his head, but was stunned by the scene in front of him: Ke Lan, who was standing there, disappeared, and in his place there was a mass of rotten flesh and blood oozing with pus. Ugly tentacles covered with sharp teeth and eyeballs drilled out from every corner of the flesh and blood, wriggling towards him.
"?!" Thirty-three was so scared that he jumped back a big step, but after he blinked hard, all the strange visions disappeared. The rotten flesh, tentacles with sharp teeth and eyeballs were all gone. Ke Lan was still standing there, with his back to him, examining the corpse of the monster at the bottom of the pit.
"What's going on?" Ke Lan turned his head and looked at Thirty-three, obviously noticing the huge jump that Thirty-three had just made.
Ke Lan's appearance hadn't changed at all, except for some dried blood on his face. But for some reason, Sanshisan always felt that the dark red blood looked extremely bright...even enchanting. He always had a feeling that in the next second, the blood would spread rapidly, enveloping Ke Lan and turning him into the bloody monster he had just seen.
"I just... seemed to be hallucinating." Sanshisan thought about it and decided to tell Ke Lan what he saw.
…
"You mean, just now you saw me turn into a bloody monster covered with tentacles? And then I blinked and everything returned to normal?" Ke Lan stared into Sanshisan's eyes and confirmed with a serious face.
Thirty-three nodded solemnly , but then shook his head slightly with a hint of hesitation: "I can't be sure whether it was something I really saw or an illusion in my mind."
He always felt like he had forgotten something. There was something else he wanted to tell Ke Lan, but now he couldn't remember it at all.
"It cannot be ruled out that it is an illusion, but there is another possibility that your cognition has been interfered with by some external force." Ke Lan stretched out one of his arms, and plasma-like living armor oozed out from his pores, wrapping the entire arm in it. The wriggling, semi-liquid living armor simulated the shape and texture of rotten flesh and blood, and at the same time gave birth to several tentacles covered with thorns, swaying slightly.
"Is this scene very similar to what you saw?" Ke Lan asked.
Thirty-three's breathing became a little faster. He nodded and said, "That's about it...
"Perhaps it's because when I used the living armor to attack the monster just now, it made you have some associations, and then some unknown power in the hive interfered with your consciousness, causing the associations in your brain to be magnified several times... and then produced that kind of 'hallucination'." Ke Lan pondered.
"I... I don't know." Sanshisan's face was a little pale. "To be honest, I'm worried that if I blink, you will become that monster in my eyes again..."
"Are you afraid of me?" Ke Lan was stunned and asked.
"No... I'm not afraid of you, nor am I afraid of death... I'm just afraid of that..." Sanshisan thought for a moment before speaking word by word, "I'm afraid of that... feeling of losing my companions. Moreover, compared to the death of my companions, I'm more afraid that my companions will become something I can't understand."
"Don't worry, even if I become a monster, I still think of myself as a human." Ke Lan retracted the living armor. "If I find that my consciousness is about to go out of control, I will choose to destroy my body before that happens... I would rather die than become His puppet. What's more, my mental state is very stable now, and that day is still a long way off."
"On the contrary, you," Ke Lan continued, "I always feel that you look a little dazed right now...Are you too tired?"
"Tired... maybe?" Thirty-three took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, "After all, I haven't had a good rest along the way."
"No!" Ke Lan suddenly shuddered and spoke faster. "This has never happened before... Since you are seeing this kind of illusion now, there must be a reason... Perhaps we have triggered some kind of mechanism."
"Mechanism?" After hearing this word, Sanshisan subconsciously wanted to look up, but then he remembered the warning "Don't look up", his whole body trembled violently, and he quickly lowered his eyes.
These actions were naturally seen by Ke Lan, who immediately asked, "Did you accidentally glance at the dome above?"
"Should it be... no?" Thirty-three hesitated, "I kept my head down the whole time, so I shouldn't be able to see the dome... I only raised my head a few times when I was in the jungle just now, looking for this monster moving between the giant trees... But the sky above the jungle was blocked by the huge and dense tree canopy, so I shouldn't be able to see the dome."
Ke Lan looked back at the jungle behind him. He tried his best to control the angle of his sight so that he would not go beyond the top of the tree canopy to see the dome in the distance. Just as Sanshisan described, the tree canopy was extremely dense, with almost no gaps between leaves. Even light could not penetrate, let alone human vision being able to penetrate the tree canopy to see the dome above.
But at this moment, Ke Lan's sight was attracted by a small thing on Sanshisan's body - it was a rivet on the backpack. Although the surface of the rivet was frosted, some reflected light could still be vaguely seen. According to the angle, the turbid small blocks of color projected on the rivet were exactly the dome above -
Ke Lan only felt as if a huge bomb exploded in his mind. A large number of messy and gorgeous colors mixed together, like an overturned paint rack. Bright colorful lights intertwined, merged and entangled with each other. New colors would appear at the edges. In just one second, tens of thousands of colors were born. One second later, the camera instantly zoomed out, forming a dazzling sea of stars.
The mixed colors just now...is it the Big Bang at the beginning of the universe?
The sea of stars was still expanding. Although Ke Lan could no longer see the colors, he could clearly feel that the amount of information contained in this sea of stars was growing exponentially... But the brilliant light produced by the explosion and the celestial bodies formed by cooling and condensation did not "not exist" just because Ke Lan could not observe them. If Ke Lan's brain was compared to a computer, then this sea of stars was a real-time computing program, and the misty star clusters were not maps, but magnificent landscapes composed of hundreds of millions of stars...
Each star represents a huge amount of information, and the information contained in such a star cluster is enough to cause any of the most advanced personal computers on the Ark to crash.
Ke Lan felt as if his head was about to explode... He desperately summoned the last bit of consciousness, raised his hand, slapped himself hard, and moved his eyes away from the rivet.
"laugh……"
He seemed to hear the sound of a cluster of flames going out, the colors disappeared, the sea of stars and the star clusters disappeared, and everything that happened just now ceased to exist. Only the empty feeling in his head and the lingering bloating and pain remained... For a few brief seconds, Ke Lan even showed symptoms of amnesia - he could not remember who he was, where he was, or what he was doing.
He squatted on the ground, supporting his knees with his hands, like an ostrich burying its head in the sand when in danger, with his head lowered and breathing heavily.
It was not until the buzzing sound in his ears disappeared that he heard Thirty-three calling him urgently.
"Ke Lan?! Ke Lan!? What's wrong with you? Can you hear me calling you? Hello? Hello? How can I help you? What do you want me to do? If you can't speak, at least give me some hints with your eyes--"
"I'm fine." Ke Lan waved her hand, "At least I'm fine now."
Ke Lan calmed her breathing and stood up.
He didn't dare to look with his eyes again, but reached out and touched his body - soon, he found that he had a lot of similar "rivets" on his body.
Since these rivets were not made of mirrored metal, he had never thought at first that they could reflect the scene on the dome... But only after experiencing it personally once, he would know that these things were all...traps hidden on his body.
