Alien Relic Hunter.

Chapter 971 Crater Theory
"A plan that has continued from Alpha civilization to the present..." The clown stopped suddenly when he said this. He looked at Soap and Noir, and found that their eyes were full of doubt and curiosity. He shook his head and said, "I can't Tell you more details... cognition is pollution, this plan involves too many dangerous things, if I leak this information to you, there is a high chance that you will suffer from corruption... and eventually become like Ro A monster like Ni. Of course, if you strongly demand to know the truth, I will respect your choice, but you must be prepared to bear the corresponding price."

"..." Noir and Soap looked at each other, but neither of them continued to ask.

The clown continued: "Although this kind of erosion is irreversible, it will not be very obvious in the early stage... When the body has mutation symptoms, it can be regarded as the 'late stage'. I can't stop the symptoms from getting worse. Speaking of which, I actually have a certain degree of selfishness, and I hope that the degree of erosion between the two of you will always be kept at a low level..."

"People with a low degree of erosion are considered 'high-quality supplements' to you, right?" Noir asked calmly, "Being 'absorbed' by you can delay more time, I'm not wrong Bar?"

"That's right." The clown didn't deny it.

"At the end of the day, you still want to eat us..." Soap complained in a low voice, "After all, we still have to die...fuck, fuck...I knew..."

Noir was not as frustrated as Soap, and he continued to ask: "I still have a question, why did Ronnie develop into a 'late stage' so quickly after coming into contact with that survivor, this rate of erosion varies from person to person. Is it different?"

"It varies from person to person, but the degree of erosion in Roni's body is already close to the dangerous value... There is no danger of contact with that survivor, and the pollution to cognition is also very slight, so basically none of you are affected, but , but it became the last straw that broke the camel's back." The clown sighed very rarely, and said with some regret, "Ronnie's occupation is destined to expose her to a large number of 'dangerous sources' that are eroded. , the heretical sect attacked the Mukakh base earlier, and a large number of soldiers were infected by the seed of erosion. Those distorted limbs and seemingly meaningless whispers before death can actually have an impact on the people around them. After a long time, The level of erosion of these medical staff will reach a very dangerous level."

"Will this level of contact be contagious..." Noir's face became very ugly, "Then if General Maginot really wants to gather troops to fight against these things occupying the ark, then during the battle, Soldiers of the troops participating in the war will inevitably be eroded, right?"

"Unavoidable," said the clown.

"Aren't we going to lose this war?!" Soap yelled, "Since you already knew all this, why didn't you just tell General Maginot? This war...we still have to fight ?"

"It's not that we have no chance of winning, it's just that the winning chip is not in the hands of Maginot."

……

Fort Mukah, General Maginot's office.

After Ke Lan finished speaking the last word, Machino dared to exhale cautiously.He stretched out his hand to the coffee cup on the table, but his fingers kept trembling, and he couldn't squeeze the ear of the coffee cup with all his strength.

After several attempts to no avail, Machino withdrew his hand, stood up with his elbows propped on the armrests of the seat, walked tremblingly to the window, and looked at the soldiers who were busy on the playground in the distance. go.

From his back at this time, he looked as if he had aged 30 years in an instant, from a rich middle-aged man to a swollen and puffy old man in a blink of an eye.

After a while, he walked back to the chair, sat down slumped, and asked, "Can you guarantee that what you said is true?"

"It's absolutely true." Ke Lan replied, "I don't need to lie to you about this kind of thing."

"Then what I'm doing now, isn't it meaningless? Even if we can take back the ark and get rid of those who have been eroded, we will lose this new home that we have finally found... What awaits us is like a lost dog. , drifting endlessly in the universe... The ultimate fate of human civilization is either to perish on its own in the interstellar drift, or to be captured by one of those 'gods' and become trivial nourishment for them..."

Magino opened the drawer of the desk, looked at the exquisitely crafted saber lying inside, and laughed at himself: "To be honest, I really want to slap my temple right now." Gun, so I'm completely free...the funny thing is, I can't even muster up the courage to kill myself."

"Fatty man, you are also a general after all, so you make me feel like a waste?" The hound stepped forward and slapped the table hard, causing the stirring spoon next to the coffee cup to jump up and hit the ground. There was a crisp sound on the plate, "What do you mean that everything we do is meaningless...Compared with us, the situation of those Alpha people is really desperate...At least, we still have a chance to escape, don't we?" ?”

"Where can we escape?" Magino stared at the hound and asked, "According to what Ke Lan said, our ultimate destiny is nothing more than passing the baton to the hands of human civilization in another time and space... Everything we do now Efforts seem to me like the death throes of a swarm of bugs."

"There is one thing I have to correct." Ke Lan said, "We don't even have the ability to hand over the baton to human civilizations in another time and space. If we give up here, then the Alpha civilization, and the one who helped them Unknown human civilizations that have broken through the difficulties of refusion technology, and other human civilizations that we do not know but have passed the 'baton'... These beliefs and heritages that have been passed on in units of civilizations will be completely broken when we come here. Lost……"

"Fatty man, it's actually not hard to understand...According to what you said, a person only lives for a few decades, and after death, everything has nothing to do with you, so what's the point of life?" The hound's tone softened slightly. "Although I am not married and have no children...but every time I see the children of my old subordinates, I feel like I see my own children. They represent the future and hope of mankind. So after retiring, I became a relic hunter, working hard to make money, just to let them get better education and living conditions. When I was young, I felt that the wishes that my parents and I could not achieve in this life can be realized by them; In a big way, they are the continuation of the fire of human civilization... When we die and our bodies are thrown into the incinerator and burned to ashes, they become us, passed on from generation to generation, to continue to do what we have done, to do Things we wanted to do but couldn't do, even things we couldn't even imagine."

The hound licked his somewhat dry lips, drank the coffee in his hand, and continued: "To be honest, I don't like to explain the truth to others, and I hate it the most... But if you If you insist on asking me what is the meaning of civilization and what is the meaning of life, then I can only tell you that this is the meaning.”

Machino raised his head, looked at the hound in disbelief, and murmured, "N...Nick, do you really think so?"

He has always hated others, especially the hound that Magino called his real name, but this time he unexpectedly did not resist. He nodded solemnly and said, "Even if we can only be dispensable in this long relay It’s great, but at least we have to do better than Alpha Civilization... Otherwise, it would be too shameful.”

Machino took a deep breath, then exhaled forcefully, turned to look at Ke Lan: "I see...then, what should I do next?"

"Continue to gather troops." Ke Lan replied, "Your original plan is fine, but our main goal is not to take back the Ark, but to get rid of those who have been severely eroded... Their existence will prematurely destroy the Ark. Exposing our civilization to that existence may even trigger a new round of 'disaster'...Once all human beings are branded, we will have no chance at all."

"What about after taking back the Ark and clearing away those invaders?" Magino asked.

"Gather supplies and survivors, open up a new home in the folding space inside Yagunaktor, and at the same time collect and digest as much as possible the legacies left by the Alpha civilization on this planet... until we have these legacies After almost digesting, take Yagunaktor to escape from Alpha Planet."

"It should take a long time... Digesting the legacy left by the Alpha civilization, I'm afraid this is not something that can be done in one generation." Magino frowned.

Since 840 in the new era, when the Ark discovered the Alpha planet, countless human scientists have devoted themselves to this cause. It has been more than a hundred years now, but in the past hundred years, this part of the "heritage" digested by humans has only accounted for a large part. A small proportion—let’s not talk about the things and technologies that are still buried deep in the ruins that have not been excavated, just talk about the technologies that have been discovered by the ruin hunters, and less than one tenth of them can be applied .

Moreover, it is just an application, not a thorough analysis... Many principles of the Alpha civilization technology are still incomprehensible to the Ark civilization, such as energy crystals and Nino alloys that can be seen everywhere, and these two things are completely integrated into the daily life of the Ark civilization. Among them, but until today, the "technical black box" that exists in it has still not been opened.

"As long as the Alpha language can be deciphered, this process can be greatly accelerated." Ke Lan said, "In my plan, this process is about 300 to 400 years... For individual human beings, this is a very long period of time." A period of time, but for the entire civilization, this period of time is not too long."

"Is there really three or four hundred years left for us?" Magino asked.

"As long as the corroders can be completely wiped out, and the 'disaster' will not break out again during this period, I think the time left for us is far more than three or four hundred years." Ke Lan said in an affirmative tone.

For that existence, for a primary civilization like human civilization, his control area is as numerous as stars, and it is impossible for him to pay attention to every weak civilization that is going to perish or is transforming into a family. The probability that the line of sight stays on the same planet repeatedly is very small.

Even if there is, the interval is probably extremely long, so long that even the word "eternal" cannot be used to describe it.

Maginot once saw a saying called "Bomb Crater Theory" in military textbooks, which means that when veterans encounter enemy artillery fire on the battlefield and cannot find a reliable bunker, they often choose to lie down in the first few rounds of shelling In the crater left behind.Because the probability of two shells falling on the same point is very low, and the crater can help soldiers avoid splashing metal fragments and shock waves, so in this case, the bomb crater that has been bombed has become a battlefield. The safest place.

This Earth, or Alpha Planet, is one such crater.

……

Yaguna Kotor, the first block of the ecological zone.

Layton and Ivan left the infirmary, and they wandered around the base a few times, and finally entered here through the teleportation passage at Layton's suggestion.

"So, the development of the first block is not bad, right?" Standing in front of the outpost, Layton said to Ivan as if showing off, "After you go to the gray fog forest, the people we left behind will start Step up the development of this area, first expel the 'indigenous creatures' here to the fringes, isolate them from our activity area with walls and deep ditches, and then start building various bases and strongholds... To be honest, it feels as if the Ark just landed on Alpha Star decades ago, and people have built up a transfer station network step by step in the wilderness."

"You said that you seemed to have experienced that era." Ivan gave Layton a white look, and complained, "In that era, you were not even born."

"Ah, I was not born, but there are many documentaries describing that era, and there are many real video materials... Tsk, let's not talk about this, let me take you in to see?"

"Okay." Ivan nodded.

The two walked into the gate of the base, and the first thing they saw was a vast area—farmland.

"After the identification of agricultural experts, the soil here is not only capable of growing plants on the earth, but also very fertile... At that time, I was a little puzzled why the Alpha people would leave such a place. Now that I think about it, it should be their special It's ready for us."

(End of this chapter)