Volume 7: Abandoned Sandstone City Chapter 335 Heading to Lower Town
The entire sandstone abandoned city was built around a large rift valley in the wasteland that was nearly 20 kilometers long and over 300 meters deep. Compared with the "Floating City of Deval", the ruins of this Alpha city were much larger, but there were few valuable things in it.
If the "Floating City of Deval" is the high-end residential area of the Alpha civilization, then the abandoned sandstone city is equivalent to a large slum. The living conditions here are not very good. There are no high-tech appliances like the former that can be seen everywhere. Many buildings are still built with rough stones. There is neither electricity nor water in the houses. The doors and windows are narrow and the space is cramped. The living comfort is not even as good as that of human cities on Earth a thousand years ago.
With the lip-shaped rift running from south to north in the center of the city as the dividing line, the entire city is divided into three major areas - the two upper city areas on the east and west sides of the rift, and the lower city area at the bottom of the rift.
The organizers of the event set up a super resource point in each of the three areas, but the one in the lower city had the least number of teams jumping in - one reason was that the terrain of the lower city was more complicated. In addition to the flat blocks at the bottom of the valley, there were also a large number of building debris in the vertical space. Various cableways, bridges, and aerial platforms formed an extremely dangerous three-dimensional battlefield, not to mention the large number of caves excavated in the valley walls on both sides. At a glance, there were ambushes almost everywhere.
As for the second reason, it is because the lower city area is located right in the middle of the safe zone. Even if the team that lands here fights out of the super resource point, no matter which direction they develop in, they will be attacked by multiple teams. If they stay in the distance and hang up, they will not be able to collect more supplies.
"I was observing when I was parachuting before. There are only three teams landing in the rift, and they are very close to each other. They are obviously heading for the super supply point... The lower city area is like a maze, and the battle will not end as quickly as above. Therefore, I think that the three teams that jumped into the lower city area may not have finished the battle yet... Taking this opportunity, we can first loot those high-level and intermediate resource points in the lower city area." Ke Lan said to the two.
"But... if you want to go to that rift, you have to pass through these blocks, and these places are full of people. If we go through here, we might encounter them. We don't have weapons, so our chances of winning are not very high." Valentina spoke a long string of words for the first time, which surprised Ke Lan.
It seems that this girl is still one of those completely hopeless, three-no girls, and normal communication is still possible.
"Let's go underground. There's a shaft nearby that leads directly to the downtown area." Ke Lan said.
"How do you know?" This time, it was Valentina's turn to be surprised. "Have you been here before?"
"Don't forget that our main job is to be ruins hunters." Ke Lan said with a smile - but in fact, he had never been to this ruins. The reason why he knew there was a well leading directly to the lower city nearby was because a fallen road sign next to it said...
It has to be said that being able to understand the writing of the Alpha civilization is a natural advantage in the ruins, otherwise, Layton, who was originally in the starting position, would not have become a substitute.
The three of them quickly found the entrance to the shaft. Due to years of disrepair, the anti-gravity freight elevator in the shaft could no longer be used. Fortunately, there was a purely mechanical lifting platform nearby that could be used.
The two mechas turned the huge winch together, and with the sound of the cable creaking, the lifting platform began to slowly descend.
"We have to move quickly. If the three teams in the lower city are finished fighting, it will be bad." Ke Lan said. However, this lifting platform seemed to be equipped with some kind of limiter. No matter how fast they turned the winch, the descent speed did not change.
This was originally designed for safety reasons, but at this moment Ke Lan hoped that these safety devices would be scrapped due to disrepair.
There were many traces of carving on the walls of the shaft, some of which even formed complete characters. Ke Lan tried to read them in her mind, but found that they were all fragmented words without any actual meaning and could not even form short sentences. In the language system of the Alpha civilization, a single character has no meaning. Only when the character strings are combined together to form a word or sentence, will the corresponding content be generated... This is somewhat similar to the 26 letters in English... However, the Alpha language has more than 20,000 basic characters of this type. Some characters, if taken out alone, do not even look like a word, but more like a bunch of graffiti.
"I don't know what purpose the Alphas have in carving these characters on the well wall... Could it be that there is a non-mainstream art form called 'graffiti' among them ?"
Just as Ke Lan was muttering to himself, Asano Akira, who was sitting on the shoulder of his mecha, suddenly knocked on the outer shell of the cockpit with his scabbard and whispered, "There are things under the lifting platform, at least a hundred of them, and they are approaching quickly."
"More than a hundred?" Ke Lan was stunned. Since there were so many, they definitely couldn't be from other participating teams... Could they be the indigenous creatures wandering in the sandstone ruins? Didn't the organizers of the event clear out the ruins when they dropped off the supplies?
"Asano, can you tell what kind of creatures these things are?"
"It's hard to tell, but there's the sound of membranes vibrating, and the sound of claws scraping against the rock wall... Some are flying, and some are climbing on the rock wall... They're not big in size, but they move very fast. Now they're less than 20 meters away from us."
"I heard it, too," Valentina said. "It was like a swarm of rats passing through a sewer."
"Don't worry about the winch for now, and get ready for battle." As soon as Ke Lan said this, Valentina had already drawn her dagger and stood in front of him.
"You said it yourself. We have to hurry... Leave these things to me, and you continue to turn the capstan."
"I will help you clear the surrounding area." Asano Akiya jumped off the mecha and grasped the hilt of the sword.
Two seconds later, Ke Lan finally saw the creatures that emerged from the bottom of the shaft. These indigenous creatures, covered with short gray hair, looked like a hybrid of bats and mice on Earth. They had a pair of thin wing membranes that allowed them to glide briefly in the air. The three pairs of short limbs had sharp claws at the front that could easily penetrate into the hard rock walls. Their four green bean-sized eyes emitted a bloody red light in the dark. When they moved at high speed, these four bloody red lights would drag into four streams of light.
"Four-eyed, six-legged bat rats..." Ke Lan recognized these creatures. "They are weak individually, but they live in groups. Every time they forage for food, there will be hundreds or even thousands of bat rats going out together. Their attacks are no threat to mechas, but you have to be careful with their blood. It carries a certain amount of radiation and corrosiveness. Try not to let the joints of the mechas get contaminated with their blood."
As she spoke, Valentina rushed out, swinging her two combat daggers so fiercely that she instantly cut through dozens of bat rats that pounced on her. Blood with a faint green fluorescence splattered everywhere, and suddenly the entire platform was shrouded in green light.
"There are more down there...more and more...there are far more than a hundred of them," said Asano Akira.
