Volume 9: Molten Mine Chapter 479 "Fruit Core"
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"So what should we do now?" The Hound said somewhat depressedly, "Even if what you said, Ke Lan, is right, we are now inside the 'Aguna Kator', but what's the use of knowing this? It is of no help at all for the current situation."
"How come this guy died suddenly after a disagreement?" The hound stepped hard on the bones on the ground, and the bones that had already been broken into small pieces suddenly turned into fine powder. "If this guy is still alive--"
"Even if he's still alive, you can't pry anything out of him." Ke Lan interrupted him and said, "This is just a substitute. The person controlling the substitute is not here... For the prophet, it's like a remote-controlled chess piece. When the chess piece falls into the hands of the enemy, he just treats it as being eaten. Why would he care whether the enemy will torture the chess piece?"
"Damn it, this is so infuriating!" said the hound and chopped the pile of bone powder twice.
"But we haven't gained nothing." Ke Lan walked to the lifeboat and stuck his head in. At this moment, the lifeboat was filled with black blood and slippery mucus. A disgusting fishy smell kept wafting out of it. The hound just took two steps closer and then immediately walked away with a frown.
"What's the catch?" he asked, pinching his nose.
"Just now, after Valentina hit the tumorous protrusion of the monster's young with a sniper rifle, did the young monster die?" Ke Lan asked again.
"Yeah, it exploded right there, and the stinking liquid splashed all over us. At that time, you suddenly disappeared, and we thought you were vaporized by some special attack."
"You said you were locked up in an abnormal space with no light and no sound, and even the speed of time was different from the normal world. Could it be related to this gunshot?" Aya asked, "The two things happened almost at the same time. It's hard for me not to connect them together."
"If you want to teleport to another space, you must pass through something like a wormhole. Whether it is to open a wormhole or maintain it, it takes a lot of energy." Ke Lan turned to look at Valkyrie, "Valentina, check the black box of the mecha. When you just blew up the tumor, did you see any abnormal energy fluctuations?"
"...Yes, the records show that when I hit the target, the radiation intensity in the environment instantly increased to more than 1,400 times its original level, but it lasted for a very short time. The whole process took less than a millisecond before the radiation intensity returned to normal."
Valentina replied in a low voice...If the sensor components of this black box were not almost the highest-end ones available on the market, if it were any other mass-produced machine, it would probably not be able to capture even this instantaneous change.
"Less than a millisecond... No wonder we didn't feel it... " Ivan said thoughtfully, holding a chainsaw in one hand and a pair of long-handled pliers in the other.
High-intensity radiation can have obvious effects on the human body, but if it is only an extremely brief moment, so short that the radiation source disappears before the radiation can penetrate the human skin, then this effect can be completely ignored.
The most a person exposed to the radiation would feel would be a little itchy on the surface of their skin, like a breeze gently blowing their hair… and at that time, Ke Lan’s disappearance had caused such a severe shock to the members of the reconnaissance team that almost no one would notice this abnormality.
"That tumor-like protrusion should be the vital part of this monster, just like the 'core' of the Seed of Erosion." Ke Lan continued, "There should be a lot of energy stored in this tumor, and this energy was released the moment the tumor was exploded, swallowing me into that abnormal space."
"To be honest, I don't quite understand..." The Hound shook his head in confusion. On the contrary, Aya looked serious, staring at Ke Lan with her bright eyes.
"But that abnormal space is different from the space we usually live in." Ke Lan stretched out his hands and gestured in front of him, "Suppose this is just an ordinary teleportation, such as teleporting us from the surface of the mining area to the interior of 'Aguna Kotor', then the energy loss that needs to be paid is from opening the wormhole to maintaining this wormhole until the end of the teleportation."
"Although this amount of energy can be considered an astronomical figure, it can only be regarded as a down payment." Ke Lan said, "But according to my speculation, the energy transmitted into that abnormal space is not enough. If you want to stuff things from the outside world into it, you need to continuously pay more energy ."
"It's like after you pay the down payment, you start paying the mortgage, right?" said the Hound.
"Almost, but I feel that this loan is much more than the down payment..." Ke Lan took over the conversation and continued, "If the energy of the monster larva is considered the down payment, then the remaining mortgage will need to be repaid by this big guy."
"I think I understand what you mean..." Aya's eyes lit up, "You mean, the monster summoned by Park Sangyou was drained of energy by the abnormal space and died? And after it died, the abnormal space lost its energy source, and you were spit out?"
"That's it." Ke Lan said, "Otherwise, there's no way to explain why we couldn't find the same tumor in the big guy's body - because it had been drained."
"No wonder this guy has to carry the life capsule on his back like a snail. The tumor is his weakness. Everything he does is to prevent us from discovering his weakness!" Layton clapped his hands.
"But doing so would only make things worse. I deduced that the tumor was its weakness based on the location of the tumor on the larva and the abnormal behavior of the mother carrying the lifeboat on her back."
"But..." The Hound's face suddenly darkened. "What's the use of this information? We have already killed this monster. It is meaningless to know what its weakness is. We still can't get out of this damn place."
"No, its weakness is the key to our leaving here... Ah, we finally found it!" Ke Lan said, and suddenly reached into the lifeboat and dug out something from a pile of snot-like mucus.
This was a completely black object with wrinkles all over its surface, like a fruit core. The hound stretched out his hand to pick it up, but found that this "fruit core" the size of a fistful actually weighed nearly half a kilogram!
"What the hell is this! It's so heavy?! Its density must be several times that of gold!" exclaimed the hound.
"This is what's inside the tumor. Even though it has shrunk to this size, the remaining energy inside should be enough to get us out of this tunnel."
