Volume 2: The Undersea City Chapter 76: Giant Nautilus
Finally, with the last bit of energy from the torpedo, Ke Lan finally rushed across the edge of the submarine plain... However, the fusion body did not give up. Its huge tentacles directly crossed the border and continued to chase him.
All the thrusters on the diving suit had been scrapped, and Ke Lan no longer had the third vortex torpedo. Having lost all power, he had no way to escape and could only watch the tentacles of the fusion body getting closer and closer...
The last trump card had been used up, but he still couldn't escape from danger.
"...It seems like we're really doomed this time." Ke Lan looked up at the sea above with some despair and made the final decision.
He let out all the air from his suit's bladders.
With the sharp drop in overall buoyancy, Ke Lan quickly sank into the deep sea - this was his only means of movement at the moment. Although it was a one-way ticket, it was better than being dragged back to the hatchery by the tentacles.
He would rather be crushed to death by the water pressure of the deep sea than become food for that monster.
Ke Lan fell straight down along the edge of the submarine plain. Looking at the cliff not far away, Ke Lan felt as if he had jumped off a cliff. In the martial arts novels of the old era, the protagonist would basically not die after jumping off a cliff. He would either be accepted as a disciple by a hermit master who lived under the cliff, or meet a beautiful girl with a good figure but a low IQ who liked to pay him back. At the very least, he could pick up a few peerless secret manuals or something like that...
But the problem is...the cliffs where the protagonists jumped off did not have water pressure thousands of times the atmospheric pressure...
There are no hermit masters, no stunning beauties, and no physical attack secrets here... There is only despair and death.
"...Still can't escape?"
The sinking speed was very fast, but it was still much slower than the tentacles of the fusion body. The distance between the two sides was getting closer and closer... Ke Lan would be captured by the tentacles before he was crushed to death by the water pressure.
At this moment, many giant creatures appeared in Ke Lan's field of vision. These creatures had spiral shells with a diameter of more than 30 meters on their backs. With dozens of strong tentacles extending from the shells, they clung to the cliffs outside the sea platform, forming an extremely spectacular scene - there were more than a hundred individuals within the reach of the searchlight alone.
"Huh... there are so many giant nautiluses here?!"
Although it was the first time Ke Lan had seen this creature, it was not unfamiliar to humans. In the past fifty years, more than one hundred ships had sunk in the Central Sea, and the culprit for more than half of these shipwrecks was this giant cephalopod that looked like an enlarged nautilus.
This creature usually lives in waters 500 to 1,000 meters deep, but sometimes goes to shallow sea areas to hunt. They are extremely ferocious and particularly like to attack human ships. They will attach themselves to the bottom of the ship to launch attacks. Unless the ship is destroyed together, most weapons are useless against them.
In human records, giant nautiluses often appear alone, but this place is home to such a large group that even Ke Lan couldn't help but exclaim in amazement...
Perhaps because the target was too small, Ke Lan did not attract the attention of the giant nautilus. Instead, the tentacles of the fusion body that broke into their habitat alarmed these creatures. They gathered together quickly and launched an almost crazy attack on the tentacles of the fusion body!
"This... this also works?" Ke Lan looked at these giant nautiluses in astonishment as they pounced forward. Their tentacles were covered with barbed spines. Every time they swung, they could tear off a large amount of flesh and blood from the fusion tentacles. In the blink of an eye, black blood mist spread in the sea.
"These giant nautiluses are actually fighting with the fusion body... It seems that I am not destined to die..." With a sigh in his heart, Ke Lan quickly took out a few spare compressed gas cylinders and connected the valves to the air bags of the diving suit - as the gas was filled in, his sinking momentum gradually stopped.
Being attacked by the giant nautilus, the fusion body naturally had no choice but to fight back. One of its tentacles directly pierced into the shell of a giant nautilus, and with a strong pull, it directly pulled the flesh of the giant nautilus out of the shell, along with many broken internal organs...
The crack at the front end of the fusion body's tentacle suddenly expanded several times, and it actually swallowed the giant nautilus's flesh whole. In less than five seconds, the originally enlarged tentacle returned to its original state, and on the surface of this tentacle, many barbed spines that were very similar to those of the giant nautilus grew...
"Swallowing... digesting... fusing the opponent's genes, mutating at an extremely fast speed... what kind of monster did the Alpha aliens create..." Ke Lan, who was hiding aside and watching the battle, couldn't help but gasp.
But these fearless giant nautiluses did not flinch at the death of their own kind. More giant nautiluses were constantly gathering from the distance. In addition to their tentacles, they also had hard and sharp beak-like mouthparts. Every attack could create shocking and horrific wounds on the tentacles of the fusion body.
"The life-and-death fight between deep-sea monsters... this scene is really rare..." Ke Lan shook her head with some regret. If the camera equipment could be used, just recording this scene would be enough to kill all the monster-themed science fiction films shot by humans.
As the battle continued, the tentacles of the fusion gradually gained the upper hand. More than fifteen giant nautilus had been killed and devoured by it in a similar way. However, the number of giant nautilus seemed endless. These behemoths occupied the entire cliff. The strong smell of blood in the sea water was constantly stimulating these carnivores with violent nature.
Ke Lan began to slowly swing his arms and swam in the opposite direction of the sea platform - there was no doubt that the final winner must be the fusion lurking in the abyss. He must escape from here before all the giant nautiluses were killed, the farther the better.
Judging from the tentacles' current killing efficiency, these giant nautiluses can at least delay Ke Lan for several hours... However, with Ke Lan's current movement speed, it is still an unknown whether he can swim to a safe area within these hours.
There are many suspicious points about this underwater plateau itself - the Pioneer has been patrolling in this sea area for at least a week, but all the detection equipment on the ship has not found the existence of the underwater plateau. This situation is too strange. Ke Lan can't find a reasonable explanation at all. He can't even be sure whether he is still in the original sea area.
If so, then the Pioneer...wouldn't it be that the fusion's attack range is always there?
