Volume 16 Tower of Babel Chapter 951 Reunion
Asano Akira's sword was forged with pure Nino Alloy. Although Layton later melted some stalagmite fragments into it, causing the strength and toughness of the blade to decrease slightly, the proportion of Nino Alloy still remained above 90%... If you don't have a clear idea of the proportion of Nino Alloy, you can refer to the material of the bridge armor of the Ark Fleet's aircraft carrier battleships - that is the most defensive part of the entire battleship except for the engine cover, and the Nino Alloy content in the material is only 40%.
What's more, the blade in Asano Akira's hand was cracked instead of being twisted and deformed. It was hard to imagine what kind of battle he had experienced in the gray fog forest.
The last group to be teleported to the top of the Tower of Babel were Hound and his party. When they appeared, they were still in a climbing posture, and then they fell directly from mid-air, landing on their backs on the ground.
"Hey! What's going on! Ouch!" The hound's familiar curse suddenly rang out, "What happened? Why the hell is it suddenly so bright?! Where is this?"
He put one hand in front of his mask and picked up his weapon with the other hand. The four mechanical arms behind him supported the ground at the same time. He exerted force suddenly, bounced the hunter who was lying on the ground, and then straightened his body in mid-air.
The jet pack behind the Hound spewed out flames several meters long - although this power armor did not have the ability to fly, it was still able to float in the air for a short period of time.
Being at a high altitude provides a better field of vision and attack angles, but it also makes it easier for the enemy to select you as a target... When the Hound decided to "fly", he was already prepared to be targeted by unknown enemies.
As long as he could buy time for the others, he believed that with the strength of the others, even if they couldn't fight back, they could at least protect themselves in the first place. As for himself...
"Huh?" The expected fierce attack did not come. The only gunshot in this bright space was the sound of Hound pulling the trigger himself...but the bullets fired from the muzzle were all strangely frozen in mid-air, like a frozen photo.
"Time stop? No, that's not right..." The Hound found that he was not "frozen" together. His brain was still able to think normally and bullets were still pouring out of the gun barrel. However, when these bullets entered a specific area, they would suddenly stop, as if they were pinched by an invisible hand.
"Space..." The Hound only then noticed that in addition to them, there were several other familiar figures in this place.
"Ke Lan?! Ze Luo?! Uh... why are Ivan and Asano here? Why are you here?" The hound's mouth was wide open enough to fit two - no, three eggs. He was so surprised that he even forgot to release the trigger of the weapon. After all the bullets in the magazine were used up, the bolt was still making a "clicking" sound.
"Old dog, if you look back, you will find something even more shocking." Chi Hanfeng's voice came from below.
The hound twisted its stiff neck with some effort until the huge teardrop-shaped battleship came into view... "Aguna Kotor?! Is this our battleship or another one of the same model..."
"It's our Yaguna Tor. Didn't you see the remaining engineering base on the outer deck?" Chi Hanfeng said.
"This is impossible! This is definitely an illusion!" The Hound shouted in shock, "Old Chi! Valentina! You all have to be careful, that Ke Lan might be fake. Maybe the enemy has disguised himself like this to deceive us. Don't be fooled!"
"You are quite alert, old dog." Ke Lan applauded. "Just remember to hide those Playboy books under your bed better next time, don't let Ze Luo, who is looking for books everywhere, find them again."
"I just bought it to pad the bed!" The hound retorted immediately, "One of the legs of my bed was rotten and uneven. What's wrong with me using something to pad it?"
"Paper magazines are so expensive, and with your stingy character, are you willing to use them to pad the bed?" Another familiar voice appeared in his ears. Layton brought a group of people and flew over from the deck of the Yaguna Tor on a suspended platform. When Ke Lan teleported Hound and others here, he had already removed the one-way space barrier of the Yaguna Tor.
"Layton... No, this is all fake! This place is very weird. Those things can read my memory, so you can tell me all these things. So you give me the feeling that they are real..." The Hound shook his head repeatedly, "What is your purpose! Just say it straight, I have nothing to be afraid of. The worst that can happen is a fight!"
"Uh, old dog, do you really think you can beat me?" Ke Lan tilted his head and stared at the hound in the air, and laughed, "Let's not talk about Yaguna Kotor, you can't even pass Ze Luo, right?"
"Three seconds left, three..." Ze Luo also imitated Ke Lan, tilted his head and stared at the hound, stretched out three jade-like fingers, and put them down one by one.
"What are you counting--" Before the Hound could finish the word "what", the jet behind him suddenly made a slight explosion, and the tail flame that was originally several meters long instantly went out. Without thrust, he fell from the air and hit the ground heavily.
"Damn it--" The Hound struggled to get up from the ground. Fortunately, this power armor was the crystallization of the advanced technology of the Hive Civilization, and it provided adequate protection for the wearer. Otherwise, just falling from this height would be enough to break eighty or ninety bones of the Hound.
"What...what did you do to my armor?"
"I didn't do anything. This jet can only provide instantaneous explosive thrust, but it cannot maintain this output power for a long time, otherwise the safety valve will melt, causing the four energy converters to overload at the same time... But its safety measures are very good, and the explosive destructive power of the converter is controlled to the lowest level. If this is a power armor produced on the Ark, the overload of the energy converter is basically a prelude to self-destruction." Ze Luo's tone was flat. Although she spoke a long paragraph, there was no emotion in her voice, as if a robot was introducing the performance of a certain weapon to the Hound.
"You..." The Hound patted his butt through the armor. Although his bones were not broken, his whole body was in pain. Although this armor had the function of automatically injecting painkillers, the Hound did not dare to use it at all. Who knew if the painkillers produced by the Hive Civilization could be used by them, the earthlings? Moreover, after so many years, even if the medicine could be used, it would have expired long ago.
"Are you really Ke Lan?" The hound's gaze stayed on Ke Lan, looking her up and down, "To be honest, I still can't believe it..."
Before the Hound could finish his words, the floating platform driven by Layton had already descended next to the altar. A moving figure jumped directly from the floating platform and threw himself into Ke Lan's arms.
"I knew you would be fine." Zofia wrapped her arms tightly around Ke Lan's neck and buried her cheek in the crook of Ke Lan's neck.
Ke Lan put his arms around the beautiful woman's slender waist. He could feel that the base of her neck seemed to be a little wet, and warm tears flowed down along his collarbone. This slight touch made him feel creepy, and an inexplicable impulse surged up from below the waist.
Ze Luo seemed to sense something. He turned his head to look at Ke Lan, then moved his gaze downward a few degrees. His expressionless face seemed to reveal some imperceptible unhappiness.
Of course, Ke Lan was not yet so obsessed with sex that he let go of Zofia after a brief moment of tenderness. He quickly walked to the hound's side, patted his mask, and said, "Why are you so cautious now?"
"Bullshit, I've always been so cautious, okay? If I wasn't, I would have died countless times." The Hound cursed, "Also, don't slap my face, I'm more than two years older than you, how can you be so disrespectful!"
"This is not a face, it's just a helmet mask." After saying that, Ke Lan smiled and flicked it again, and his nails tapped on the mask, making a crisp sound.
He was in a particularly good mood at the moment. Although there were still many troubles that had not been solved and the road ahead was still dark, the fact that everyone could get together again was something to be happy about.
"Old Dog, where did you get these armors?" Layton had been staring at the power armors on Hound and the others from the beginning. "This stuff doesn't look like the model we made... Is it a custom-made one? No, that's not right. If there is such a thing, I would definitely know it... Could it be the legacy of the Alpha civilization that you found in the underwater city?"
"To be precise, it's the Hive Civilization." The Hound rolled his eyes at Layton "habitually". "I just learned that in addition to the Alpha Civilization, there is another Hive Civilization on Alpha Star. It was this Hive Civilization that created Yaguna Kator. But for some reason, this Hive Civilization... well, I think it's probably related to that great thing, or some erosion or something like that. In short, this civilization has been destroyed. Most of their heritage was inherited by the Alpha Civilization. Even the core brain of the underwater city was dug out from the Hive... It sounds like the Alpha people did the same job as us relic hunters."
"Hive civilization..." Layton took a look at the power armors whose design styles were completely different from the Ark's standard equipment, then turned back to look at Yaguna Tor, his mouth slightly open, but he couldn't speak for a while - it's not that he couldn't think of what to ask, but there were too many things he wanted to ask, a bunch of questions collided in his head, and he had no idea which one to ask first.
"Ke Lan, looking at your expression, you don't seem surprised at all. You should have known all this, right?" Zhuo Ligetu raised his chin to Ke Lan and greeted her.
"Yes, I know everything." Ke Lan nodded.
"Let's not talk about Alpha Civilization and Hive Civilization for now. We can discuss these things later." Chi Hanfeng interrupted, "What I want to know most now is how we got to this place... Ke Lan, we should still be in that Hive now, right?"
"No, this is the top of the Tower of Babel in the center of the Gray Mist Forest." Ke Lan said, "But then again, if you consider the Nest City as part of the Tower of Babel, there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with that."
"Is the nest part of the Tower of Babel? Aren't the nests buried under the underwater city? How are the underwater city and the Gray Mist Forest connected? A space channel?" The hound raised his eyebrows and asked.
"City No. 1 and City No. 2 of the Undersea City are indeed connected by a space channel, but City No. 2, including the Hive No. 97 underneath City No. 2, is 'stored' in a man-made folded space. The precise coordinates of this folded space are in this Tower of Babel."
"I... I feel a little confused..." Ivan still covered his cyborg prosthesis with his hands, stretched out his legs, and sat on the ground. His chest was still rising and falling, but his breathing finally became smoother. "It sounds... huh... just like our Russian nesting dolls."
"That's about right. The folded spaces are nested one after another, just like a Russian nesting doll. But it's more complicated than a Russian nesting doll." Thinking back to the terrifying space fragments on the top of the cloud, Ke Lan couldn't help but feel a little scared. Fortunately, he was very lucky and only "traveled" a few times before running into the consciousness of the owner of the nest. Otherwise, who knows how many years he would have been trapped in it...
If he were to stay locked up for tens of thousands of years like the owner of the hive, then by the time he came out, everything would probably be over.
Of course, it is also possible that by the time he finds the exit, this folded space will be discovered by that existence , and then both the person and the space will be lifted up...
"By the way, that thing called Christine said that the Cloud Top of the Hive City is very dangerous. It has the residual power of some god that can turn people into monsters, so we planned to go down and rescue you...but before we passed through that passage, we were teleported here...So it seems that you have been to the Cloud Top?" asked the Hound.
"I've been there. Cloudtop is indeed very dangerous, especially for you. Fortunately, you were a step slower... If you were trapped in Cloudtop, it would not be so easy for me to get you out." Ke Lan said, "Christine has been corrupted by that god, and it is deceiving you... In fact, the key to breaking the deadlock is at Cloudtop, where I met the consciousness of the controller of the nest..."
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