Alien Relic Hunter

"Damn..." Soap cursed repeatedly and took several steps back. When he turned around, he found that there were pale roots spreading behind him.

"We can't stay here any longer!" Noir said, "We have to leave here immediately!"

"Run... run away quickly! Let's run away quickly!" Even Ulrich, who was not in his right mind, was so impatient that he kept spinning in circles.

"Then you should lead the way!" Soap glared at Urich, "Without you leading the way, if we were left to wander around in the underground maze, we would probably die faster than if we bumped into these ghosts!"

"I...I don't know where to go..." As if trying to pull the non-existent hair, Ulrich's sharp nails scratched his scalp into bloody streaks, "Nowhere is safe. The...danger...fear...it's...everywhere!"

"You mean, the entire underground maze is occupied by these roots?" Noir raised his eyebrows, "Where is the nearest exit to the ground? Take us there!"

"I don't know... I don't know!!" Ulrich roared. He seemed to have lost the ability to detect road conditions. It may also be that the extremely heavy fear has suppressed him to the point where he can't calm down and look for it. way out.

"You don't need him to lead the way." The clown suddenly said, "Haven't you noticed that since these roots invaded the underground maze, the entire maze has stopped functioning?"

"It seems like this is still the case!" Soap was startled for a moment, and then immediately said to Noir and Urich, "Why are you still standing there! Hurry up! Get to the ground first!"

…

Fortress Mukach, General Maginot's office.

"Then what should we do now? If we want to destroy this giant tree, we can only attack its root system, but its root system is hidden inside the ark and protected by an energy shield. This problem comes back... ..." Maginot said tangledly. The fat on his face had been squeezed into a ball, especially between the eyebrows. Several layers of loose skin were stacked up. Sweat slid down along the folds and dripped on his raised buttocks. Above the belly.

"To put it bluntly, our strategic goal has not changed from the beginning." Hound stared at the projection screen, flexing his fingers slightly and tapping gently on the back of the sofa rhythmically, "Whether it is to deal with the undead crew, it will And the corrosive, or blow up this damn tree, we have to break into the inside of the Ark. Ha, everything is back to square one."

"No, the situation is completely different." Levi shook his head, "Even if we successfully broke into the Ark, we still have no means to destroy this giant tree... If we follow Mr. Ke Lan's description, this kind of alien planet The vitality of plants may be far more tenacious than we imagine, and the total yield of nuclear warheads we have alone may not destroy it even if it is detonated at the root system."

"Annihilation bombs... The Alphas used annihilation bombs to destroy the Crown of Ashes back then." Hound murmured, "But we have no place to get annihilation bombs now... Wait, I have an idea!"

"What's the idea?" Maginot and Levi's attention was immediately attracted by the hound.

"Is the annihilation bomb essentially releasing the antimatter that was originally bound by the gravitational field... Anyway, I don't know much about this knowledge. You just need to tell me, if I give you enough antimatter, you Can you create an annihilation bomb? It doesn't have to be too precise, as long as it can detonate smoothly and the explosion is powerful enough!" Hound said quickly.

Ke Lan looked at Ze Luo.

The Sanwu girl nodded slightly: "Theoretically, yes. It's just that with the current technology of human civilization, it is impossible to create a container to store antimatter. Therefore, it is impossible to create a portable annihilation bomb like the Alpha civilization."

"But," Ze Luo changed the topic, "My space manipulation ability can create such a container. As long as I can find antimatter, I can bring it to the root system of the giant tree and then detonate it."

After Zeluo finished saying this, the words "human bomb" could not help but come to the minds of several of the elders present... Let such a girl who is too beautiful to be described in words act as a human bomb. Maginot and Levi couldn't help but show a trace of unbearability in their eyes. The latter's lips wriggled a few times, but after all he didn't speak.

"If you detonate those antimatter, you...you should be able to escape alive, right?" Maginot asked.

Both of them know that Ze Luo is very capable, but annihilation bombs are not ordinary things. The energy released when matter and antimatter interact can destroy almost everything... The space barrier can hold up pure antimatter, but when there is positive matter When substances are mixed into it and start to "react", even the space barrier may not be able to block it.

This is like a bottle of soda. It is very stable when placed in the bottle. The soda itself will not cause any damage to the bottle. But if you throw a few "Mentos" mints into it and shake it vigorously a few times... then the situation is completely different.

"Damn fat man, how come you still learn to worry about the safety of others? I remember that you used to be the kind of person who would do whatever it takes to achieve your goals." Hound looked at him strangely, "Do you still remember the blocking battle at Highland 963? ? At that time, you left an entire battalion of troops behind, and they fought until only the last man was left, without receiving your order to retreat. Although you were trying to ensure the safety of the baggage troops, if I did it instead You are the commander of that battalion. Even if I become a ghost, I will come back to find you and kill you."

"That's just a drill! A drill!" Maginot said angrily, "You know, before I was transferred here, I had no actual combat experience at all! The drill to me is just a game of chess. When you play chess, you will Do you give up the outcome of the entire game because you care about the life and death of individual chess pieces?"

"The current situation is not just a game of chess?" Ke Lan sighed in a low voice, "Everyone here is a chess piece in the game. No one can jump out of this chessboard... If I could, I would really like to play now. The chess player sitting next to the chessboard slapped him twice."

After Ke Lan said this, he turned to look at Ze Luo and said, "If this is the only way to break the situation, then we have no choice."

Everyone seemed to see Ze Luo smiling, but it seemed to be just an illusion. Ze Luo still maintained the expressionless iceberg look. She turned her head, looked at Ke Lan and said: "I am talking about Chinese chess in a book. I read a sentence in a book, 'A pawn crossing a river will advance but not retreat, die but not live'."

"But there is another old saying in China, which is 'put yourself to death and live again.'" Ke Lan said, "The choice is yours. You can go or not."

"Go." Ze Luo nodded.

"But there is still a question before us. Where are we going to find so much antimatter to make this 'annihilation bomb'?" Magino said with a frown.

"Antimatter is readily available." Hound and Ke Lan looked at each other, then snapped their fingers, "Chief of Staff, please mark all the proven and well-preserved 'death ray cannons' on the surface of Alpha Planet on the map. ."

When they came out of the glacier ruins, the battleship carrying them was hit by a death ray cannon, which Hound and the others still remember... But later they realized that it was just the "preview" mode of the death ray cannon, not a real one at all. fire.

The real power of the death ray cannon, which uses antimatter as its shell, is far greater than that one cannon.

In fact, that shot is only used to lock the target - just like the laser sight hung on the firearm. Before the gunman pulls the trigger and the bullet has not come out of the chamber, the temperature released by the laser sight has already It's like burning the target paper.

More than a dozen red dots are marked on the global map of Alpha Star. As an important part of Alpha Civilization's "planetary defense system", there are more than 600 death ray cannons installed in every corner of Alpha Star. Even Death ray cannon bases have been built on the islands and offshore platforms in the middle sea and on the ice caps of the extreme sea.

It's just that until the disappearance of Alpha Civilization, this defense system was not fully completed. Of the more than 600 bases, less than 100 were equipped with the death ray cannon body, and most of them were damaged. The well-preserved death ray cannons Of the light cannons, including the one that Ke Lan and the others had "experienced", there were only the last seventeen left.

"These death ray cannons should still be able to fire, but it's unclear how much anti-matter is stored inside..." Levi said.

If you want to measure the amount of antimatter in the death ray cannon, you must disassemble the core components of the cannon. For the Ark civilization that has not mastered space technology, this is undoubtedly a very dangerous job... No, it is dangerous to say so. To put it mildly, to be precise, this is a matter of seeking death.

There was once a research team from a research institute that tried to dismantle a death-ray cannon in the wilderness. As a result, the research team was gone, and the death-ray cannon was gone as well. In the place where the death-ray cannon was originally, there were more. A very regular hemispherical pit with a depth of two thousand meters and a radius of two thousand meters.

According to the institute's later estimates, the amount of antimatter in the death ray cannon should be very small. Otherwise, even a military base fifteen kilometers away might not be able to survive the damage.

"Now the mission is divided into two parts." Ke Lan turned around and said to everyone, "I took Ze Luo to collect the remaining antimatter from the death ray cannons in various locations, while the others tried to find ways to tear open the defense gaps in the Ark and create A passage that allows Ze Luo to enter."

This sentence may sound light and airy, but in fact everyone here knows how difficult it is... None of the reconnaissance teams sent to the Ark have returned. Not only is the energy shield outside the Ark difficult to break through, , inside the Ark, murderous intent is probably everywhere at this time.

"We will try our best." Maginot gritted his teeth and said in a deep voice, "Even if we use corpses to pave it, we must pave this passage!"

Levi wanted to say something, but something suddenly came from the headphones he was wearing, causing his expression to change several times.

"What's wrong with you, Levi?" Maginot immediately noticed the look on his very new subordinate's face and asked, "Did any bad news come back from the forward observation post?"

"I...I don't know if this news is good or bad..." Levi shook his head. He first looked at Maginot, and then focused his attention on Ke Lan. "The forward observation post closed We arrived at a piece of cipher text, which was transmitted from inside the Ark, using our internal secret frequency band."

"What is the content of the secret text?" The hound jumped up from the sofa in an instant and asked excitedly, almost rushing up to grab Levi's collar and questioning him.

"Unable...undecipherable." Levi said with a look of embarrassment, "Our intelligence department has been busy for half an hour and has not been able to decipher this cipher text... Its encryption method is not any known to us... …”

"Damn it, you mean that the forward observation post received this coded message from the Ark half an hour ago? Then why didn't you report it? If you find that you can't decipher it, you should report it immediately. Those idiots in the intelligence department don't even understand this. Don’t you understand?” The hound cursed angrily.

"Send me the secret text." Ke Lan was not as angry as a hound. He sat down on the sofa and moved the laptop on the coffee table to his knees.

The content of the cipher text was quickly sent to Ke Lan's computer. Ke Lan only hesitated for a few seconds before his fingers quickly started typing on the keyboard.

In less than five minutes, the content of the ciphertext was cracked... It was a picture, a picture filled with strange characters.

"This is...the text of Alpha Civilization?!" The hound only glanced at it and immediately whispered.

"What's the content?" Maginot stared at Ke Lan with burning eyes. Among all the people present, only Ke Lan had the ability to decipher the Alpha Civilization text.

"It's a warning, or a reminder." Ke Lan said, "Someone told me that the root system of the giant tree has begun to spread, and it will penetrate the bottom of the Ark and penetrate into the earth of Alpha Planet in twelve hours. By then, the giant tree will be integrated with the entire Alpha Star, and the only way to destroy it is to destroy the entire Alpha Star."

"What does this person mean, we only have the last twelve hours left?" Hound was stunned, then punched the sofa cushion hard, "Damn, I almost forgot, wasted by those idiots It lasted half an hour, and the time left for us now should be eleven and a half hours."

"Is this...an ultimatum?" Maginot murmured, "Is this the undead crew declaring victory to us in advance?"

"No, this news should have come from one of our own." Ke Lan shook his head, "There are also our friendly forces on the Ark."

[P.S. Thanks to book friend 20221120184734539 for the 100 starting coins. 】