Volume 7: Abandoned Sandstone City Chapter 336: Misfortunes never come singly
"If it's just bat rats, we can still deal with this number..." Ke Lan said. At this time, Valentina no longer used her dagger to chop the bat rats that emerged from under the lifting platform. She directly controlled the mecha to rush up - the efficiency of crushing was much higher than slashing.
In less than ten seconds, the Valkyrie's outer armor was covered with green bat rat blood, looking like those cyberpunk-style fluorescent graffiti. But even so, countless bat rats still pounced on the body fearlessly . They stepped on the corpses of their companions and continued to climb up. Soon, Valkyrie's body was covered with layers of bat rats... They gnawed at the outer armor of the body with their sharp teeth. Even Ke Lan, who was sitting in the cockpit of another body, could hear the teeth-grinding, intensive scratching sound.
Valentina simply let the machine squat down, and then directly activated the energy shield.
A brilliant light flashed in the darkness, and a blank area with a radius of several meters was instantly cleared with Valkyrie as the center.
Including the bat rats that climbed onto Valkyrie, at least three thousand bat rats and even more corpses were vaporized in this short moment, and a disgusting burnt smell immediately filled the entire shaft.
"This is not normal... Although small rodents like bat rats are ferocious by nature, they are fundamentally different from those low-level creatures without brains, such as split-jaw worms... It is the nature of living things to seek benefits and avoid harm. If so many companions were killed, the remaining bat rats should have fled in all directions long ago..." Ke Lan thought with some confusion.
"Is it because something is driving them? A rat king that can control their minds? Or some pheromone that drives them crazy?"
"No... none of these assumptions are valid... The four-eyed, six-legged bat rat is one of the native creatures of Alpha Planet that has been studied more thoroughly by humans. There is no such thing as a rat king or frenzy pheromone..."
"Then why are they trying so hard to stop us? Could it be that... this is the nest of these bat rats?" Ke Lan's expression froze for a moment, and the corners of his mouth twitched unnaturally for a few times, "This luck... is really too bad, right?"
Bat rats belong to the bottom of the food chain of Alpha's indigenous creatures. Individually, they are very weak, and even if they appear in groups, they cannot pose much threat . It is no exaggeration to say that a Valkyrie alone, even without weapons, can easily slaughter tens of thousands of bat rats in a large nest.
but--
If there is a bat rat's nest under this shaft, it means that the underground passage that originally had only one straight road may have now become a super complex underground maze... These inconspicuous little creatures have a terrifying ability to transform the terrain. As long as they are given enough time, even an entire rock layer can be completely hollowed out.
"No, we have to go back to the ground!" Ke Lan, suddenly startled, grabbed the winch, but just as he pushed the winch in the opposite direction again, a crisp "click" sound suddenly came from the bottom of the lifting platform - Ke Lan only felt that the winch in his hand suddenly lost that unique sense of resistance, and the entire lifting platform fell rapidly to the bottom of the well.
"Fuck, what a crappy safety device. It doesn't break when it should, and breaks when it shouldn't..." Ke Lan cursed as he opened the cockpit door and shouted to Asano Akira, "Come to the cockpit! Get ready for impact!"
"What's going on? Aren't we going down?" Valentina asked in the team channel, holding on to the edge of the lift platform tightly.
"The reason why these bat rats are attacking us desperately is because their nest is right below us... The underground passage of the abandoned sandstone city has probably been riddled with holes by these guys. If we mistakenly enter it, we may not be able to get out in a short time!"
"You mean we should go back the same way?" Valentina asked loudly.
"right."
"Got it." After saying that, her body turned around and grabbed Ke Lan's body, "Hold on to me too, I'll take you up."
Ke Lan was still a blank skeleton at this time, and the output of the skeleton's built-in thrusters was not enough to support the body to fly to the wellhead, but Valkyrie was equipped with external thrusters. Although this thing was a disposable consumable and the internal fuel could not be replenished after it was used up, its output was more than ten times that of the built-in thrusters, which was enough to carry two bodies out of the well together.
With a muffled "bang" sound, a hot tail flame shot out from the thrusters. However, just after the two machines had risen several meters, the thrust suddenly changed direction, causing the two machines to crash into the wall of the well!
"What, what happened?" Ke Lan asked hurriedly. Just now, he seemed to have seen from the monitor screen that one of the two thrusters had fallen off the back of the Valkyrie and flew towards the wellhead like a launched missile...
The remaining thruster was completely out of control, and the tail flame it ejected was swinging everywhere. In this situation, even an ace pilot like Valentina could not maintain the balance of the aircraft, and Ke Lan was thrown around in the shaft.
"It seems that... the connector of the thruster... is broken... I don't know why... this happened." The continuous bumps and collisions made Valentina's speech become intermittent... As for Ke Lan, he simply let go of the joystick and closed his eyes - anyway, as long as he was not thrown out of the magnetic levitation seat by inertia, he would definitely not die from the fall.
Asano Akira also held on to the back of Ke Lan's chair tightly... His condition should be the best among the three, but the problem was that in this situation, he could not help at all.
"I... I know... It was the blood of those bat rats... that corroded the connectors of the thrusters... Then at maximum output, the corroded connectors were overwhelmed..." Ke Lan said with his eyes closed. Although he had figured out the cause, it was too late to solve the problem.
Valentina reversed the elbow joint of the mecha's right arm and cut off the connecting part of the remaining thruster with a dagger. The thruster, freed from its restraints, flew out instantly, and after colliding with the well wall several times, it exploded with a loud bang more than 20 meters above their heads.
The two machines finally landed back on the lifting platform... but before they could catch their breath, the lifting platform crashed heavily to the bottom of the shaft!
