Volume 9: Molten Mine Chapter 420: S-type mutant
The hound was stunned at first, then nodded in agreement: "That's true... We are not a regular army, and our mission is just reconnaissance. There is really no need to risk our lives."
"Let's go, it's time to go down. The cruiser can't fly any further." Ke Lan said.
This Molten Mining Area can be said to be one of the most deadly no-fly zones on Alpha. Except for small drones flying close to the ground, any aircraft or warships entering this area will be attacked by automatic air defense weapons. Most of the buildings in the mining area have been reduced to ruins, and these automatic defense devices are the few equipment in the ruins that are still functioning normally.
Most of them are hidden in the rocks and will only be activated when they detect an invasion by an external enemy.
A variety of high-tech camouflage methods, coupled with huge numbers and irregular distribution, make it almost impossible to eliminate these automatic defense devices. Fortunately, they only attack targets in the air and will not respond to "intruders" entering the mining area from the ground.
…
The mining area is filled with radiation and toxic gases, and the average surface temperature is between 80 and 120 degrees Celsius. Near the lava river, this number can soar to hundreds of degrees - this is just the temperature of the air, and the temperature of the newly solidified lava under your feet will only be higher.
A relic hunter once filmed a short video online. In the video, he was wearing heavy protective clothing and carefully took a metal cup out of the incubator. Then he quickly raised the cup to the height of his shoulder and poured out the water inside.
The water evaporated in mid-air before it even had time to touch the ground.
If the reconnaissance team wanted to enter the mining area, they naturally had to wear a full set of protective gear. Considering the possibility of a fight, Ke Lan simply replaced everyone's protective clothing with highly heat-resistant power armor with internal oxygen supply devices. But even so, the moment the hatch of the airdrop cabin opened, the oncoming heat wave still gave everyone a severe blow. Ke Lan felt that the tiny hairs on the surface of his skin seemed to curl up.
"Hiss...it's so hot!"
"This is just the edge of the area, the temperature is over 90 degrees Celsius?"
"You can find any stone to grill meat..."
Except for Ivan, no one in the team had ever been to the Molten Mine Area. Exclamations and complaints about the high temperatures continued to be heard in the communication channel. It was not until the temperature control system of the power armor started to work and lowered the temperature inside the armor back to 25 degrees Celsius that everyone felt a little more comfortable.
"It feels like I'm at the entrance to purgatory." The Hound took a deep breath, and a long exhalation sound came from inside the helmet. "I remember that in Chinese mythology, one of the punishments in the Eighteen Layers of Hell is to be thrown into a frying pan, right? I think this place is not much different from a frying pan of boiling oil."
"Indeed." Leighton nodded, "I just don't know if there are chopped green onions and coriander."
"You two are doing crosstalk here? One is the supporting actor and the other is the funny one. You have a good chemistry." Ke Lan complained in the communication channel. "Okay, it's time to get to work. According to the original plan, the tactical team and the brothers from the Security Bureau will camp here. Your task is to build a support base with a defense standard of level 3 or above within 12 hours. If you find any traces of heretics or exiles, immediately send an alert to me, the cruiser, and the Ark at the same time."
The third-level standard that Ke Lan mentioned refers to a strength index commonly used for strongholds and fortifications. A stronghold with a third-level defense capability is required to have the physical strength to withstand an earthquake of magnitude 5 or above and a strong wind of magnitude 12 or above. It must also be able to withstand a siege by the enemy with more than five times the combat power of the defenders and last for more than 24 hours to be considered qualified.
Most of the transit stations built in various places in the wilderness of Alpha Star are of level two standard; while the mining base on the back of Leviathan has just reached the threshold of level five standard.
If the heretic sect wants to storm a third-level standard support base in a short period of time, it will have to deploy at least ten times the combat power of the garrison troops. In addition, the garrison troops are elite field troops and security agents, and are equipped with a large number of weapons against the seeds of erosion. Conservative estimates put this multiple at least at fifteen to twenty times.
As long as this forward support base can be established, it will be equivalent to opening up a safe zone for the reconnaissance team at the edge of the mining area. If Ke Lan and his team encounter any difficult enemies in the mining area, they can retreat here at any time. With the cover of fortifications, whether they choose to counterattack or retreat, they can take the initiative.
After assigning tasks to these people, Ke Lan led a reconnaissance team of twelve people and dived deep into the mining area.
Since the topography of the Molten Mine Area has changed dramatically after the earthquake, the original map has basically become a piece of waste paper. The only thing that can still be used as a reference is probably the longitude and latitude coordinates of the original garrison base.
Even if the rock layer shifts or sinks, the general location of the base will not change much, and Ke Lan and his team are heading for the area with the original coordinates of the base as the center point.
The speed at which they were moving could be described as a snail's pace - almost none of those roads that had cost the Ark a lot of manpower and resources to repair were now passable. If these roads were compared to the meridians in a person's body, then this person was now hit hard by a master of internal strength, with all his meridians broken inch by inch, and there was almost no good place in his body.
In many places, the cracks in the ground were so large that a single person could not cross them. Ke Lan could only let Valentina drive the mecha to the other side of the crack, set up the zipline, and then the others could use the zipline to pass through the crack.
More than half of the rifts had to be passed in this way, and half of the travel time was wasted on setting up and retracting the zipline - the Hound had also suggested taking a detour at the beginning, but the result of the detour was that they encountered more and wider rifts.
"Since all the roads are destroyed, we might as well just go in a straight line and climb over any obstacles we encounter. This is the most time-saving route," said Ke Lan.
…
The reconnaissance team had entered the mining area for five hours, but they had only advanced less than 20 kilometers. They were still a full 150 kilometers away from the coordinates of the garrison base - and at this location, the surrounding temperature had exceeded 100 degrees Celsius. The rubber armband that Layton had stuck on his arm had melted into a mass of black, viscous fluid, flowing down the surface of the armor.
"Damn... I'm almost exhausted..." The Hound said while panting. Trekking in this kind of terrain was extremely demanding on his physical strength. If it weren't for the power armor supporting his body, he suspected that he would have collapsed due to exhaustion long ago.
"There's another obstacle ahead... This time it's not a chasm, it's a hill." Layton said, "Old dog, can you still hold on? How about I carry you?"
"I can still hold on, it's not a big problem." The Hound hung his head and waved his hands weakly. In this state, he didn't even have the mood to joke, and his speaking style was completely different from usual, becoming very concise and to the point.
"Hold on a little longer, climb over the ruins ahead, and then we'll rest here for fifteen minutes," Ke Lan said.
Blocking the way ahead was a collapsed building. Judging from the architectural style of the Alpha civilization, buildings of this style generally had more than a hundred floors and were at least two hundred and three meters high. However, the building that appeared before everyone had only a section of ruins about eighty meters from the top left, and the lower half, together with the foundation, sank into the magma.
The wreckage of the building lay across a 30-meter-wide crack, with slowly flowing magma below. Bright yellow light filled the space inside the crack. With every step closer, the temperature rose sharply, so much so that the scene in the distance was distorted due to the high air temperature.
"You guys wait here first. Asano Akira, come with me. Let's check the strength of the wreckage of the building first. If it is strong enough, we will climb over it. If there is a danger of disintegration, we will use the previous method and use a zipline to cross the crack." Ke Lan said.
"That's great, old dog. You can take this opportunity to rest for a while and catch your breath." Layton lifted one of the hound's arms and helped him sit down on a rock.
"Do you need our help?" Aya Breya walked up and asked.
"No need. The fewer people the better. If there is one more person, the weight of all the equipment will increase by several hundred kilograms. Even though the wreckage of the building looks stable, it may collapse if someone steps on it." Ke Lan politely declined Aya's kindness and walked quickly to the wreckage of the building with Asano Akira.
This building uses an one-piece alloy frame, which is also the design adopted by most high-rise buildings of the Alpha civilization. This frame is a bit like the steel frame in reinforced concrete buildings on Earth, but compared to steel bars tied together with iron wire, the one-piece alloy frame made by is much stronger.
Ke Lan looked inside along the torn outer wall of the building. The internal structure of the building had been destroyed beyond recognition, but Ke Lan wanted to see whether the skeleton of the load-bearing part was broken. If the skeleton of this part of the wreckage was intact, then it would be more than enough to absorb people like them.
But at this moment, Asano Akira grabbed Ke Lan.
"What's going on?" Ke Lan turned his head and was surprised to find that Asano Akira had already drawn his sword out of its sheath.
"There is movement inside the building, and there are quite a few people involved," Asano Akira replied.
He said this in the team channel, and Hound and Aya could also hear it. This sentence immediately attracted everyone's attention.
"What? There's some movement? Have you been discovered? I'll be there right away!" Without saying a word, Layton picked up his weapon and ran towards the wreckage of the building.
"Don't come over! We don't seem to have been discovered yet!" Ke Lan quickly stopped Layton's actions.
"Are you sure what it is? Could it be some indigenous creatures that use the wreckage of the building as their nest?" Ivan couldn't help but ask.
"There are no indigenous creatures in the Molten Mine." Aya immediately denied this judgment. "Of course, I'm not saying that this environment is not suitable for indigenous creatures to survive. Even in places with worse conditions, you can more or less find traces of some creatures... But in the Molten Mine, even insects are very rare. The Alpha Civilization seems to have cleared all the creatures in this area and set up a 'barrier' that we can't detect to prevent indigenous creatures outside the mine from entering the mine."
"If it's not an indigenous creature, then it can only be a human." The Hound said in a deep voice, and stood up with his gun on the ground. "Everyone, get ready for battle. What is coming will eventually come."
The other members of the reconnaissance team cautiously approached the wreckage of the building, with more than a dozen black gun muzzles pointed at the ten-meter-long crack on the building's outer wall.
"Layton, take out the mechanical snake that you improved." Ke Lan whispered.
"Understood." Leighton nodded, and the outer armor on his arm opened. A small metal snake as thick as a little finger crawled out from the secret compartment under the outer armor and swam to the edge of the crack.
This small metal snake is actually a snake-shaped drone. The reason for its design is, firstly, for concealment, and secondly, so that it can drill into gaps and holes that conventional drones cannot enter. Mechanical snakes like this are sold in equipment malls and black markets, but the original mechanical snakes are not as flexible as this modified version, and their functions are also outnumbered by this one.
Layton changed the "Snake Eye" camera to low-light mode, shared the camera's view with everyone in the reconnaissance team, and then manipulated the mechanical snake to slide into the crack.
"The movement is in the middle of the wreckage, between the 17th and 19th floors from the top, about 45 meters away from us." Asano Akira said to Layton, guiding the mechanical snake.
Some places that are difficult for humans to reach are as easy as walking on flat ground for the mechanical snakes that can cling to the wall - it didn't take long for the small snake to reach the location where the noise was made, and the members of the reconnaissance team, with the help of its eyes, saw the things lurking in the wreckage of the building.
A total of thirty mature erosion seeds!
And it also includes three mutants that Ke Lan has never seen before!
Among the three mutants, the most conspicuous one was the one guarded by many erosion species. It was more than four meters tall and slender, with its neck alone accounting for one-third of its height. From a distance, it looked like a creature called a giraffe on Earth. On the head of this mutant, there were more than a dozen slender tentacles like flexible antennas, which moved slowly in a strange rhythm.
"It's an 'S-type mutant'... This is trouble." Aya murmured after seeing the appearance of this mutant clearly.
