Chapter 454 Out of Control Evolution
Chapter 454: Out of Control Evolution
Official Website of Wasteland OL.
[Beta0.4 version update! ]
[Update content:
1. Ocean trade system implementation: The trade route to Luoxia Province has been opened. Now players can trade with NPCs in the Lion Kingdom and invest in local farms or other industries. In addition, more tradeable areas have been unlocked, please explore them in the game.
2. A new “Yunting” flapping-wing aircraft training point has been added to the Northern Enterprise Aviation Base in Xizhou City. You can pay 500,000 silver coins through VM to study at your own expense. If the aircraft driving skill proficiency reaches 7 or above and the contribution points reach senior citizens, you can apply for public funding to study.
3. As a mobile base of the alliance, the Iron Heart can provide archive services, but it is not guaranteed to anchor at the location desired by the player. 4.
The floor of Shelter No. 404 is unlocked to B6. Currently, B5 is still under maintenance, so stay tuned.
5. The upper limit of the closed beta player account has been increased from 8,000 to 12,000!
6. Fixed a small number of bugs.
7. …
】
Luo Yu: “What the hell?!”
Professor Yang, the King of Lightning: “What’s wrong with you?”
Luo Yu: “Gone!!!”
Feng Qing: “0.0?”
Gui Gui: “What?”
Luo Yu: “The resurrection countdown has started again! Hahahaha! Thank you, Brother Guang! Wood!”
Ye Aonaiwohe: “Laugh, you guys keep acting, you’re acting pretty well, I’ll just watch you pretend quietly.”
Yirena: “Jealousy can really make people’s plasma membranes separate. (Funny)”
Elf King Fugui: “+1 (Funny)”
…
At the same time.
Shelter No. 404.
A group of fully armed players are standing at the entrance of the B6 floor of the shelter.
What can be confirmed now is that the entire B6 floor should be a laboratory, and it is a biological laboratory engaged in the research of mutant slime molds.
Various signs show that the research samples here are probably from the early Wasteland Era, or even the three-year war period.
From the incomplete recording, it can be clearly heard that the escaped experimental subject should not be easy to mess with, and even extremely dangerous!
Otherwise, all the guards on that floor would not have been wiped out, forcing the first-generation manager to perform “shock treatment” on the entire floor.
Chu Guang certainly would not do something like poking his face into the bushes, especially when he knew there were mines hidden in the bushes.
Moreover, he obviously had a group of fearless little players, so why did he have to do such a dangerous thing himself?
At the same time when the Beta0.4 version was officially updated, the players who were selected by Chu Guang to come here all had a line of task pop-up windows on their VMs.
[Task: Recover the B6 floor of Shelter No. 404]
[Description: The experimental body stored on the B6 floor of Shelter No. 404 went out of control, causing the floor to be infected by slime mold. ]
[Objective:
1. Search for possible mother bodies/mother nests.
2. Go to the laboratory to recover the experimental logs.
3. Go to the computer room to search for unuploaded data.
]
The light blue icon flashing on the VM screen confirmed the task just received from the manager, and Ye Shi’s eyes flashed with excitement.
”Awesome! I didn’t expect to get such a big job in the rear!”
Luoxia Province is the home of the Storm Corps and the Skeleton Corps.
The Burning Corps has fewer people and its home base is in the city, not the open plains, so the entire war was almost just a soy sauce, with no sense of participation. After
being on the official forum for so long, he finally got a chance to show off.
Following behind Kuangfeng, Quitting Smoking stared at the VM screen and suddenly had a sudden thought: “Do you think the out-of-control experimental subject is Luoyu?”
A smile squeezed out of his expressionless face, and Kuangfeng touched his nose and said.
”…It’s possible, unless there is a time machine that can take it back 100 years.”
Quitting Smoking: “Fuck! There is a time machine here?!”
Kuangfeng: “…Can you listen to what I say carefully?”
Looking at the bacterial plaques crawling all over the wall, Ye Shi couldn’t help but smack his lips.
”Oh my God… This thing has been without water, electricity and air for so long, and it can still move!”
Kuangfeng looked around and thought for a moment.
”Well, and most of the cameras and 85% of the electronic equipment in the area have been paralyzed… The situation here may be more complicated than we thought.”
”No matter how complicated it is, just do it!”
Old White, who was equipped with OD-10 “Dragoon” power armor, grinned, raised his index finger to lock the visor of the helmet, and loaded the assault rifle in his hand.
Then, he shouted in the communication channel.
”The mission has been updated in the VM. Our goal is to recapture the fallen B6 layer area!”
”Team A, follow me, search for the enemy’s ‘crystal’, inject inhibitors to contain it. Team B, follow Ye Shi, go to the sample library to search for experimental logs. Team C, follow Kuangfeng, go to the computer room, and take away the hard disk storing experimental data and information according to the task prompts.”
”After the mission is completed, we will gather at the entrance of the buffer workshop, and pay attention to ensure that the signal is unobstructed at all times. The manager is watching us!”
”Action!”
The players tacitly divided into three teams and cautiously searched forward.
As an elite team with the highest combat power in the entire server, the Burning Corps is naturally handy when performing this kind of special operations mission. No one is better at indoor close-range combat than them.
At the same time, Chu Guang, who was sitting in the B4 floor browsing room, was following his players into the out-of-control biological laboratory through the camera equipment carried by the players.
In addition to him, Yin Fang and He Ya were also invited here as “technical consultants” for this military operation, providing professional advice to players when necessary.
However, since the operation began, He Ya’s attention has been completely fascinated by this large-scale, well-equipped laboratory.
That look is more than just heartbeat.
It even reached the level of envy – even jealousy.
”I don’t understand! How much is your budget?! The sequence is obviously behind us, why… have so many good things?”
Facing that sour look, Chu Guang didn’t know how to answer, and simply pretended not to see it.
There’s no use asking him about things before the Wasteland Era.
If you want to know, ask the first generation of managers!
Staring at the computer screen, Yin Fang, who was focusing on other things, touched his chin and gave the first immature suggestion of this operation.
”… In fact, I suggest sending in a bionic human unit, so that even if something goes wrong, it won’t provide more organic matter to the organisms there.”
Chu Guang replied casually.
”I believe in my soldiers, they are much more useful than bionic people.”
He Ya and Yin Fang both looked at Chu Guang in surprise, especially when they heard the word “use”. However, the latter had an indifferent expression on his face, staring at the video screen intently.
Just when they were chatting just now, the “A Team” led by Lao Bai had already met the enemy.
And what’s interesting is that the slime mold fruiting bodies they encountered are completely different from the fruiting bodies in Qingquan City.
The skinny humanoid fruiting bodies are like the walking dead in zombie movies.
But they are different from those “zombies”.
These fruiting bodies that look like gnawers do not appear densely, but hide silently in the corners of the corridors and behind overturned display cabinets. They
may even lie on the ground and pretend to be dead.
It will not be awakened until someone approaches, and then it will suddenly attack, turning this joyful RPG game into a horror game. The
advancement speed of players’ A and C teams has obviously slowed down,
but Team B, led by Ye Shi, has predicted the hidden dangers again and again with its strong perception, and quickly advanced to the area where the experimental logs are stored.
However, although the fruiting bodies attacked unexpectedly one after another, the players did not suffer any casualties, and no one was injured.
Those skinny zombies at most scared the players. No matter
how weak the protection of the light cavalry exoskeleton is, it will not be smashed by the thin arms like reed sticks or bitten through by a few rotten teeth.
Not to mention the power armor.
In front of the battleship-level alloy steel, the weak flesh and blood is like paper.
Lao Bai didn’t even fire a gun. He pulled out the mace hanging on his armor and smashed the zombies that rushed up to him with two bangs.
In such a battle at such an extreme distance, firing rashly is likely to cause ricochets, and pulling the trigger reflexively is more likely to accidentally injure teammates. In comparison, cold weapons are more handy.
”It is estimated that the long closed period has caused the slime mold in this area to not have enough nutrients to develop stronger fruiting bodies, and there is no need for hunting… These fruiting bodies are completely produced for rotting and energy saving.” Heya touched her chin and fell into deep thought.
After getting the promise from Chu Guang to “give her the use of Floor B6”, her attention was finally focused on the slime mold in the floor.
Chu Guang thought for a moment and spoke.
”The lack of organic matter prevents the slime mold here from secreting a large number of spores… Hiss, why do I feel that this is exactly the same as the No. 7 slime mold in the Lost Valley?”
Yin Fang also nodded.
”The only difference is the degree of scarcity… Lost Valley is a desert, and this is equivalent to a space station with no supplies.”
Chu Guang suddenly looked at Heya.
”Wait, you said before… slime molds born in different evolutionary environments are incompatible with each other and will not exchange each other’s genetic information, but what if they are slime molds born in the same resource-scarce environment? In other words, can slime molds with similar evolutionary environments be compatible with each other?”
He knew that the question he described was a bit difficult to understand. After all, he was not a professional biologist, so his wording was relatively amateurish, and this idea that just popped up in his mind was also very abstract.
Heya thought seriously for a while and answered.
”In the situation you mentioned, interspecies competition and exchange of genetic information should occur at the same time… or to put it more directly, it is devouring.”
Chu Guang: “Devouring?”
”Well,” Heya nodded, “It’s just my guess. If A and B are different species that evolved in an environment of material scarcity, then A and B always have a part of each other’s genetic material that the other happens to be interested in… and at this time, that part of the genetic material will be actively or passively inherited after one of them devours the other.”
”The genetic information of slime mold is not a simple line of code, but more like a ‘library’ composed of countless lines of code.” ”
When cultivating fruiting bodies, the mother nest or mother body will select a required genetic code from this library to make the fruiting bodies it needs. Even if the gnawer and the tyrant have a different number of chromosomes, they are still part of the same collective when they are born in the same mother nest. In this case, they are not individuals in the full sense, but more like organs of a huge individual… This is what I call a hive society.”
”If you want to thoroughly understand this creature, you must get their mother and collect the original gene pool used to synthesize the fruiting body. That is the root of all fruiting bodies and the template for all evolutions.”
Just as Heya was explaining to Chu Guang, the players who went deep into the B6 floor finally encountered real trouble. A
shrill roar suddenly swept from the end of the corridor.
I saw a gray-black power armor standing at the end of the corridor.
Its body is burly, not inferior to the “Dragoon” power armor, and even better in physique. Judging from the faded paint, it should be a police model.
The moment he saw the armor, Lao Bai frowned with a warning sign in his heart.
The nail hammer in his hand was thrown out fiercely, hitting the face of the power armor like a meteor.
With the dual bonus of strength attributes and armor engine, even if a tank blocked it, it would be smashed into a dent.
However, the power armor just shook its arm and smashed the hammer flying away.
Without any pause, the power medium armor slightly bent its legs forward, and then rushed over like a cannonball.
Lao Bai raised his rifle and emptied a magazine of bullets, but did not leave a single dent on the armor.
Seeing that the 7mm bullets could not break its defense, Lao Bai simply threw away the rifle in his hand and pulled out the hot melt cutting axe hanging on his waist.
However,
the evolution was still one step faster than him.
Before the axe was raised, the shoulder armor of the evolution came into close contact with his chest armor.
”Duang——!”
The two iron lumps collided with each other, and the sound of metal collision echoed in the corridor. The distance was too close to support, and the three teammates behind could only watch the two gods fighting.
His right hand was held tightly by the left arm of the evolution. Lao Bai, who almost fell, barely stabilized his body, aimed at the gap on the side of the helmet, pulled out the combat knife with his left hand, held it in reverse, and stabbed it fiercely!
The airflow brought by the arm almost blew into the helmet, but the arm that was smashing down was held by the other arm of the evolution.
The shining blades and axe blades hung on the helmet, but they could not move forward at all.
The shocking pieces of meat squirmed under the broken armor, and the unexhausted nuclear energy was transformed into the most primitive and direct power by the slime mold.
From the gap in the broken armor, Lao Bai faintly saw a scarlet light.
That was the sight of the hunter.
Behind the killing and bloodthirsty instincts, burning was an appetite that was more frightening than hatred.
It was extremely hungry…
Lao Bai, whose arms were clamped, felt a little bit of effort. While using all his strength to press down, he couldn’t help but be secretly surprised in his heart.
This guy –
is more difficult to deal with than the Decayed Knight!
”Fuck!”
The blood in his chest surged!
Lao Bai roared and activated his talent of strength. The strength of his hands instantly doubled, and the sharpness of the axe blade and dagger pressed down an inch.
The mechanical parts of the power armor on both sides made creaking sounds under the heavy load.
The evolutionary body occupying the power armor was forced to retreat half a step, and an impatient and piercing roar came out from the gap of the armor.
Taking advantage of the gap when it retreated backwards, Lao Bai suddenly kicked its knee.
Under the added power of that terrifying force, the knee that was bent outward was stepped on and folded backwards.
The evolutionary body lost its balance and fell to the side. Lao Bai immediately stabbed a dagger into its skull and twisted it violently.
However, unexpectedly, the guy whose brain was pierced seemed to be fine.
Lao Bai suddenly realized.
This guy’s nerve center is not in the head!
Maybe he doesn’t even have that thing at all!
”Keep your distance!”
Ye Shi’s voice suddenly came from the communication channel.
Lao Bai was delighted, and while the evolutionary body had not yet stabilized, he kicked it in the chest again, kicking it to stagger backwards.
The rotten and sturdy alloy arm clasped the wall on one side, and the stiff five fingers scraped against the wall, making a tooth-grinding friction sound.
At the moment when the two power armors pulled away from each other, Ye Shi, who was lying at the end of the corridor with the “Viper” Gauss rifle, had completed the aiming and pulled the trigger.
”Bang!”
The light of the arc flashed for a moment, and the mass bullet that broke out of the chamber was instantly accelerated to Mach 4.5, and the roar of the sonic boom echoed throughout the corridor.
The attack came from behind!
The target was the most vulnerable area of the power armor.
The evolution had no time to react. The durability of the armor that was neglected and maintained was already stretched to its limit. Facing the terrifying armor-piercing ability of the electromagnetic cannon, it was instantly shot through.
At the same time that the evolution was staggered forward by the kinetic energy of the mass bullet, Lao Bai, who seized the opportunity, swung the hot melt cutting axe and chopped it down.
A hot red light flashed.
The hot airflow like magma instantly cut through the armor on the left shoulder of the evolutionary body, poured in from the cracks in the armor, and instantly burned the soft tissue inside into charcoal.
The scarlet light finally faded, and the evolutionary body knelt heavily on the ground, no longer moving.
Ye Shi, who had put away his rifle, walked forward and glanced at the evolutionary body lying on the ground, exclaiming.
”Wow… Slime mold can actually drive power armor!”
Unlike the “Decay Knight”, the nuclear battery of this power armor is obviously still in working condition, but most of the electronic components inside the armor have been damaged.
”They can even drive Titans, let alone power armor…” Lao Bai walked over and patted him on the shoulder, smiling and said, “Well done! Have you guys done it?”
Ye Shi said with a grin.
”It’s done… The mother body is not in the laboratory, and there is nothing there. We took the experimental log there under the instructions of the manager, and then he ordered us to go around this corridor to support you… By the way, what about you?”
Lao Bai shook his head.
”Nothing… We have searched most of the area, and we haven’t even seen the shadow of the mother.”
Ye Shi was stunned.
”Could it be in Kuangfeng?”
Almost at the moment when the voice fell, a line of pop-up windows flashed on the VMs of the players.
Seeing the text in the pop-up window, Ye Shi’s face suddenly changed.
”Fuck… My crow’s mouth is blessed!”
Lao Bai didn’t waste any words, and reached out to pick up the rifle on the ground and the mace he had thrown out before.
”Go! Help him!”
…
B6 floor.
Biological laboratory computer room.
I saw rows of computer cases displayed on metal shelves, which have been completely swallowed by dark red slime mold.
In the room covering hundreds of square meters, all I could see were wriggling fungus blocks. The entire computer room seemed to have turned into an ocean of slime mold. There was no place to stand under the steps of the main entrance!
Translucent egg-shaped flesh-red membranes floated on this ocean, like cocoons woven by silk, stirring restlessly.
”It” seemed to have just woken up.
I am very excited about the sudden recovery of the “climate” and the long-lost prey in front of me!
Looking at the scene in front of me, Kuangfeng and his teammates behind him showed a trace of confusion on their faces.
Swallowing his saliva, Quitting Smoking looked at the smartest guy in the team.
”This… how to recycle it?”
Kuangfeng shook his head solemnly.
”I don’t know…”
The chassis has been completely submerged in the sea formed by slime mold. One by one, the chassis are completely stuck. Not to mention finding the hard drive hidden in a certain chassis, even how to approach the rows of chassis is a problem.
Stepping on these slime molds…
I always feel that something big will go wrong.
Kuangfeng thought for a moment and analyzed calmly.
”Anyway, we have to clean up the slime mold here first… This is probably not an ordinary slime mold nest. It might be a reduced mother nest.”
Including Quitting Smoking, the three players standing behind Kuangfeng talked in a low voice.
”If I’m not mistaken, the mission requires us to recover this thing…”
”Recover? This place has become a swimming pool… I don’t know how many inhibitors we need to use to make it unconscious, how are we going to get it out of this room?”
”I’m tired, let’s just blow it up.”
”Blowing it up is impossible… The experimental data we need to recover is still in the hard drive of one of the computer cases.”
The players who were carrying out the mission were in a dilemma.
Chu Guang, who was sitting in the viewing room and watching the battle, was in the same dilemma.
It was very simple to eliminate the mother nest there. Players were allowed to carry heavy weapons into the B6 floor, and a 155 was inserted and manually detonated.
If one shot was not enough, two shots were enough.
Detonating a heavy grenade in a closed environment, the shock wave generated by the explosion alone was enough to shock the organisms in the room to death several times.
But the trouble was that the data stored in those boxes…
Because the transmission line was destroyed, it was impossible to remotely control the data to upload to the server of the shelter, and the hard disk in the server could only be removed manually.
Not to mention that high-powered weapons could not be used.
Operations such as pouring gasoline and sulfuric acid would probably not work.
At this moment, Yin Fang suddenly had an idea.
”What if we fight poison with poison?”
Chu Guang was stunned.
”Fight poison with poison?”
Yin Fang nodded excitedly, gesturing with his index finger while describing the genius idea he had just come up with.
”For example… introduce another mother from outside, take advantage of the incompatibility of different populations of slime mold, and let the mother fight the mother!”
Chu Guang was stunned for a moment, and his eyes suddenly lit up.
Good guy, drive away the wolf and devour the tiger!
This idea…
is unexpectedly good.
Then just when he was about to speak to express his affirmation, Heya, who was standing beside him with her arms folded, sighed,
”Where are you going to get the mother? The mother closest to us is also in the city center.”
Yin Fang was stunned.
”Isn’t the nest that can produce gnawers a mother?”
”That thing is called an incubator!” Heya complained, “They don’t store the complete gene library of the entire population. At most, they can be regarded as production organs and signal repeaters for producing certain products! Without the spores of the mother or the mother nest, they will shrink in a short time. Putting that thing in will at most serve as fertilizer for the slime mold inside.”
At this point, Heya, who was still obsessed with the ruins of Oasis No. 7, added another sentence.
”However, this idea is not completely bad. I heard that there seems to be a relatively benign variant of slime mold in the Lost Valley… If we can get the mother there, we might not only be able to get rid of the slime mold on the B6 layer, but also get a group of benign bacteria!”
This idea is indeed good.
It would be even better if there was no Titan.
He hit the monster that can’t be killed by nuclear bombs with his head!
Pretending not to see the lively eyes, Chu Guang coughed lightly and looked at Yin Fang standing beside him.
”He Ya is right… This method is still debatable.”
He Ya: “Well, what I want to express is actually-”
Chu Guang interrupted her and continued.
”In short, before deciding what measures to take to deal with the slime mold there, we should first investigate the experimental log to see if the research results there are worth taking such a big risk.”
As he said, Chu Guang looked at Xiao Qi who was sitting at the desk and gave an order.
”Xiao Qi, let the team on the B6 layer withdraw with the experimental log.”
Xiao Qi replied playfully with his right fist on his chest.
”Received!”
…
The mission is half completed.
Chu Guang only gave half of the rewards to the players, which was also very realistic.
The memory card that saved the experimental log was inserted into the holographic computer pen, and the light blue holographic image was quickly projected in the center of the browsing room.
The first thing played was a holographic image.
In the image, there was a strange man standing, talking to someone outside the camera.
He was wearing a shelter uniform, and the label on his chest was printed with the characters [G-13], which should be his number.
From the perspective of the shooting, neither he nor the person he was talking to realized that they were being secretly photographed.
”…This planet has been polluted. In other words, it is beyond salvation.”
”This is a more cruel means of extinction than neutron killing. These slime molds designed to destroy us are more adapted to our home than we are. They will not kill us directly, but will grow wildly where we live, chasing our footprints and squeezing our living space. Our descendants can only abandon the city and migrate to the suburbs, or stay and become their fertilizer!” “The little legacy
we leave to our children will one day dry up. As the level of production continues to decline, this planet will no longer have the soil to accommodate advanced production relations. Our civilization will grow in the opposite direction, first declining to a feudal society, then a slave society, and finally a tribe… until we completely turn into beasts and are eventually replaced by more barbaric guys.”
”Yes, our black box is still working, but what about a thousand years later? What about ten thousand years later? Once the trend is formed, it will be difficult to reverse. If these problems are not solved now, the situation in the future will only get worse… By then, let alone a professional biological laboratory, our descendants may not even be able to build a microscope, so what can they use to study those things?”
”This is not alarmist. In fact, the decline of civilization has already begun before the winter is over. Look at the community we are monitoring. It is now called ‘Blood Hand’ or something… I bet that even if they survive this winter, those people will not be smarter than monkeys!”
”The seeds of barbarism have already invaded their brains. They will become the source of chaos and plunder the wealth of civilized people in the most primitive way like the ancient nomads. At least the survivors in this suburb cannot escape their clutches.”
”I don’t understand why the professor acquiesced to the guard and risked exposing the location of the shelter to help those hopeless idiots with precious radios… No matter what his purpose was, the guard committed suicide and his plan failed without a doubt, but I can’t bet on a loser!”
”But he is the manager, or do you have any better ideas?” The man standing opposite Researcher G-13 finally spoke, and the whole video was no longer a one-man show of Researcher G-13.
Perhaps seeing the excitement on the man’s face, Researcher G-13 continued to speak with a beaming face.
”Of course!”
”Slime molds are very adaptable. We will be stronger than them. It will not be us who will be devoured, but them!”
the man continued hesitantly.
”How do you plan to do it?”
”Synthesize the matrix!”
Researcher G-13 answered in a decisive voice, and his idea unexpectedly coincided with the immature idea proposed by Yin Fang before.
”We can cultivate mature somatic cells into embryonic stem cells, and we can certainly reverse mature fruiting bodies and restore them to the mother nest!”
”We will recompile the gene library of the mother nest and let them change into our shape under our interference!”
The pupils flashed with ambition.
Researcher G-13 continued in a voice that was word by word.
”They will replace the slime mold on the surface!”
”And we will control evolution!”
(End of this chapter)
