Volume 16 Tower of Babel Chapter 984: Alien Armadillo
"The minority obeys the majority. Set up camp first, and then decide on the next action plan based on the actual situation." The person who spoke was called Jonah, the last of the four rotating team leaders, and the only one with a "name" in the Fool's memory... Unfortunately, except for the name, the Fool "forgot" all the memories related to Jonah, even Jonah's personality and specialties were all erased. All that was left for Ke Lan was just this name.
No... not all of it was erased...
Ke Lan was startled. He suddenly discovered a loophole in his memory world. Although he couldn't remember anything about Jonah, if the Fool really erased everything related to Jonah except his name, then in this memory world, Jonah's presence would be even weaker than that random girl... He might even only remember that there was such a person in the advance team, but he couldn't see what this person looked like, and couldn't hear what he said...
Now that Jonah was standing there intact, with no mosaics on his face, and Ke Lan could hear everything he said, this meant that the Fool had not really forgotten this person, but had simply hidden the information about Jonah in a deeper place.
Among all the people, he was the only one with a name, and for this person with a name, all other relevant information was blank... This was very intriguing. Ke Lan couldn't help but wonder if this was a hint left by the Fool for him?
Could this Jonah be the key clue to this memory?
Ke Lan immediately decided to focus on observing Jonah and, if possible, to act with him.
"Only Jonah can control that blonde girl." Lu Dan crossed his arms, tilted his head and whispered to Ke Lan and the others, with a look of anticipation.
"Why do you say that?" If you don't understand, just ask. Since the Fool did not leave any information about Jonah in his memory, it would be better to ask the other people in his memory directly. It would be useless if he didn't ask anyway. Even if it affected the original memory process, it would be automatically corrected. Ke Lan didn't have to worry about triggering any "butterfly effect" that would change the direction of events .
"Except for the deceased commander, Jonah is the most prestigious person in the advance team... On the surface, decisions are made by voting, but in fact, as long as Jonah expresses his opinion, most people will agree with him." Lu Dan whispered to Ke Lan.
It seems that I guessed right... Ke Lan thought silently, the Fool did not forget all the information about Jonah, he just hid this information.
"To be honest, I have somewhat forgotten who this Jonah is..." Ke Lan asked tentatively. However, this time, Lu Dan seemed to have not heard his question at all and did not respond at all.
"Perhaps the necessary triggering conditions have not been met, so this part of the information cannot be unlocked?" Ke Lan muttered to himself.
In the end, the blonde's proposal was not adopted, and the advance team unanimously decided to act according to the plan set at the beginning.
The weapons box in the shuttle's cargo hold was opened, and each advance team member was assigned corresponding weapons according to his or her position - these weapons had been sealed in the box for nineteen years, but fortunately they were well maintained and basically still usable.
Unlike the large-caliber firearms replaced after the Ark landed on Alpha, these weapons were basically models handed down from the old era. During the interstellar drift, although there were small-scale conflicts within the Ark, they never evolved into war. People also knew that using high-powered weapons on the Ark was tantamount to self-destruction. It was also for this reason that firearms, a type of individual light weapon, had basically not developed in the past 900 years. Even the newly built production lines were all antiques from thousands of years ago.
In an era of extremely tight resources, people will not invest extra manpower and material resources in unnecessary projects as long as the most basic needs can be met.
Ke Lan glanced at the pile and couldn't help but sigh in his heart... People in this period had not suffered from the caliber of weapons. When the Ark landed on Alpha and humans began to have large-scale conflicts with indigenous creatures, they would find that the weapons handed down from the old era were not powerful enough to fight against most of the indigenous creatures on Alpha. Rifles that can easily penetrate bulletproof vests are not even a scratch in front of those tough skin and chitinous shells.
In the ninth year of the new era, the proposal to upgrade the universal firearms muzzle was passed. At that time, the sample gun submitted to the United Parliament Group was the "Zero Rifle". After several improvements (or various castrations to save costs), it was finally finalized as the famous "Ark-01 Automatic Rifle".
After that, the soldiers of the Field Corps - no, there was no such organization as the Field Corps at that time, it should be called "the troops performing combat missions outside the Ark" - finally had a single-soldier standard weapon that could cause fatal damage to most indigenous creatures.
The only weapons in this box that meet the requirements of this type are a few general-purpose machine guns using 7.62mm full-power bullets and an M14EBR precision marksman rifle that also uses this type of bullet.
Before the shuttle's large screen went out, Ke Lan had already looked at the map. The place where they landed was a desert area named Area B17.
If Ke Lan remembered correctly, the official name of this place was later called Xiya Desert, which is the fourth largest desert in Alpha Planet, roughly equivalent to the Taklimakan Desert on Earth. Of course, "Alpha Planet", or the Taklimakan Desert on Earth in this time and space, has long disappeared in the geological changes that lasted for tens of thousands of years. The original four oceans have also merged into the Central Sea and the Polar Sea, and the continents have been connected again to form a vast "Pan-Continent".
(In fact, plate movement is measured in billions of years, and tens of thousands of years are not enough to produce a dramatic change. Alpha Planet has become what it is now mainly because of the transformation of the planet by the Alpha Civilization - geological changes also include the interference factor of "human beings".)
The most common creature in the West Cliff Desert is a creature similar to an armadillo, but it is much larger than the armadillos on Earth, and the length of an adult is generally more than ten meters. The alien armadillo is also very aggressive and has a strong sense of territory. If someone breaks into their territory, they will secretly drill a hole and sneak under the enemy, then break through the ground to launch a surprise attack.
The biologists on the Ark named this creature the Alien Armadillo. The most threatening part of it is its sharp claws and scales that contain a lot of metal elements and are as hard as armor. The weapons held by the advance team can hardly penetrate this layer of armor to cause effective damage to the Alien Armadillo, but the Alien Armadillo's claws can easily tear open the protective clothing equipped by the advance team.
Ke Lan had not personally participated in the Ark's campaign to eliminate the alien armadillos, but some relevant battles were recorded - before the Type 01 rifle was equipped to the troops, the alien armadillos were generally dealt with by heavy machine guns, artillery, bombs and other powerful weapons. The only way for ordinary soldiers to hurt them with guns was to get under the belly of the alien armadillo and fire at its belly without scales.
However, the success rate of doing so is extremely low. In order to protect the weak point of its abdomen, the armadillo stays close to the ground when crawling... Even if someone can really squeeze under the belly of an armadillo and kill it, they will be crushed to death by the dead armadillo - the weight of an adult armadillo that is ten meters long is several times that of an Asian elephant in terms of flesh alone, not to mention the heavy metal scales.
The situation is not optimistic for the advance team.
The weapons were distributed. Perhaps because The Fool was a better marksman, the only M14EBR sniper rifle in the box went to Ke Lan. He also got a 9mm Glock pistol, which had basically negligible lethality to indigenous creatures.
Being able to get a precision marksman rifle naturally meant that Ke Lan and his group were assigned to the "action group." The "garrison group" stayed behind to build the camp, while the "action group" was responsible for exploring the surrounding area, collecting information and available resources... In addition, they had an additional task: hunting.
Jonah asked them to capture at least one native creature of Alpha Planet and hand it over to the biologists in the team for dissection - understanding the characteristics of this creature was secondary, the most important thing was to find out whether it... was edible.
The action team was composed of two full groups of rotators, exactly ten people, led by Lu Dan and the square-faced man. Each of them carried a 7.62mm caliber general-purpose machine gun. Including the M14EBR in Ke Lan's hand, there were only three weapons in the action team that could penetrate the armadillo's scales.
"We've walked almost three kilometers." Lu Dan looked back at the shuttle in the distance, "The surrounding situation is clearly visible, prey, resources... nothing can be seen. In my opinion, if we want to gain anything, we'll have to walk there."
Ludan pointed to the hilly area in the distance, which was the border of the Xiya Desert. It seemed not far away, but it was actually dozens of kilometers away from their current location.
The square-faced man also sighed and said, "I just had someone analyze the ingredients of those shrubs. They are all highly toxic and cannot be eaten."
The only living things that could be seen in the desert, besides themselves, were some low bushes covered with thorns. These bushes were gray-brown in color and looked as if they were dead. A member of the advance team squatted down, cut off a small branch, and put it into the reagent bottle. The reagent in the bottle immediately changed color.
Although Ke Lan didn't know what the color meant, she knew it was dangerous at first glance - the colorful and bright colors were like an art student's palette being overturned.
Ke Lan wanted to tell them that there were actually many indigenous creatures living in this desert... According to Fangzhou's statistics, between 900 and 905 of the New Era, there were at least 100,000 armadillos living in the West Cliff Desert. However, these burrowing creatures basically lived in underground caves during the day and only came out of the ground to look for food at night.
The drones sent out previously were all filming at high altitudes, and the signals were intermittent, so it was completely normal that they failed to capture any signs of activity of the armadillo.
What's more, the alien armadillos have another characteristic: they know how to bury the holes they dig and erase all traces of their movements on the ground...and because of this, the members of the advance team could never have imagined that there was an intricate network of caves under this desert.
"It's probably useless to tell them." Ke Lan thought to herself, "I don't even need to consider whether they will believe me... As long as it involves information that 'should not be known', they will probably turn a deaf ear to it... After all, I'm just a bystander and can't change this history."
The action team walked for nearly six kilometers before they encountered their first attack. An armadillo suddenly emerged from the ground, and two members of the advance team fell into the collapsed hole without even a chance to scream. Another person was torn in half by the armadillo's claws. Warm blood rained from the air, staining the white protective clothing of the people around them red.
"What is that?!" Lu Dan immediately retreated a dozen steps, picked up his machine gun and fired at the armadillo. The team doctor went around to the side and used the submachine gun in his hand to attack at close range.
The moment the armadillo emerged from the ground, there was a rare opportunity to attack its weak point in the abdomen. But just as Ke Lan raised his gun and aimed, he felt a strange dizziness in his head, and the finger on the trigger seemed to be petrified and he couldn't press it down.
By the time the dizziness disappeared and the fingers returned to normal, the armadillo that had emerged from the cave had already laid down, and Ke Lan's "delayed" shot finally hit the scales on its back.
"Fuck..." Although Ke Lan knew that this was because the Fool failed to hit the armadillo's weakness in his original memory, which led to the abnormality just now, he still couldn't help but curse.
This feeling of having power but nowhere to use it is really uncomfortable.
The two machine guns of the square-faced man and the boiled egg were at a 45-degree angle, suppressing the alien armadillo from two directions. The 7.62mm full-power bullet could indeed cause fatal damage to the alien armadillo, but it did not mean that one or two shots could kill it. They could only penetrate the scales of the alien armadillo. As for bringing down this behemoth, it would take enough damage to accumulate.
In game terms, the weapon's attack power has reached the boss's armor-piercing limit, but the boss's long health bar still has to be worn down bit by bit.
