The light emitted by the blue giant star shines on the ground, and many dark spots can be vaguely seen, which are projections from the asteroid belt. However, the third eye no longer appears in this half of the sky, so it is still clear. The atmosphere of Magic Star is thicker, so even on a sunny day it feels a little gloomy, but you can still tell the time.
It was already afternoon.
Lu Ning and the others sat on a high slope and ate "lunch" through the straw built into the spacesuit, which was liquid nutrients to be precise.
"It's so troublesome to not be able to remove the space suit." Spade lay on his back on the edge of a stone and complained, "Captain, do you often encounter this kind of thing?"
"It's common during marches." Lu Ning counted the harvest in his hand. In addition to the previous two, he also caught a bug that was the same as a beetle but was close to the size of an apple. There were three live samples in total. The number of organs obtained from corpses is larger, all of which have various detection and evasion effects.
There is almost no doubt that it will appear in living organisms and then retain this effect on organs, but it is not yet certain whether this is an instinctive or deliberate result. Lu Ning has not found C-level creatures so far. This is actually abnormal, because records from back then indicate that C-level creatures also existed in this mountainous area.
"This is already a long way from the outpost." Spade said, "We have to prepare to return to time, Captain."
"Using the jetpack on the return journey, our speed will be much faster." Lu Ning packed up the harvest, "But don't forget that the target number of animals coming out this time is five. We must at least complete it."
"Ah... it's cloudy." Recorder suddenly spoke, not following the topic as usual.
"The clouds and fog are thick here..." Just as Spai Tao finished speaking, he suddenly jumped down from the stone. At the same time, Lu Ning also discovered that there was a strong charge reaction on the detector in front of him!
Click!
A ball of electric sparks exploded out of thin air on the stone, even creating a crack on the surface of the stone.
"It's an attack! Pay attention to your surroundings!" Spade hid behind the stone with his gun in hand, fully alert and aiming at the surroundings, but he stood there for more than ten seconds, and nothing happened.
Lu Ning looked at the sky. It was indeed as the recorder said. It was cloudy now. Although the radiance of the stars could still be seen, the sky began to darken visibly to the naked eye. She slightly expanded the search range of some detectors, which inevitably produced errors and lost accuracy, but she did find some special reactions at longer ranges.
"They're moving away."
"Away from what?" Recorder asked.
"I don't know, but the trend is moving away. Maybe this is not a natural celestial phenomenon."
"Definitely not! I was struck by lightning!" Spade shouted, "Are there animals that can control the wind and rain?"
"Land electric eel?" Recorder interjected.
"Stop making your inappropriate jokes now!"
At this moment, Lu Ning's vision suddenly went dark. She quickly released the filter reading function of the helmet. The surface of the helmet returned to its transparent state, and natural light came in, showing the most realistic situation of the outside world.
The creature that was not shown on the detector at all, and that even the virtual imaging system failed to capture, was in the sky, between the clouds.
"Oh... I saw it." Recorder did the same thing, "What is that? A giant kite?"
There was an approximate triangle between the clouds, with the shadow of a long tail. It didn't look big, but because Lu Ning couldn't accurately judge the distance, she didn't know the true size of the creature.
"Is this guy completely invisible? Can't be seen by any detection?" Spade said in shock, "We even..."
"The more sophisticated the detection method, the easier it is to produce larger errors at long distances. We cannot deduce the distance, but just by visual inspection we should know that the creature should be at least seven or eight kilometers away from the ground."
Lu Ning was not very panicked. This creature was not targeting the three of them to attack. Otherwise, it would have taken such a long time to launch the next attack, but it still did not arrive. And the random attack range that can be generated at such a high altitude is naturally quite large. It is difficult to guarantee that the phantom beasts on the detector started to escape because they were frightened.
The helmet quickly adjusted automatically and returned to working condition. However, Lu Ning did not activate those functions again. He only retained the charge detection and magnetic field detection, and expanded the detection range as much as possible. After starting the automatic log entry, he began to slide towards Down the slope.
"team leader?"
"Outside the hunting range, there is no need to waste time here."
"Then where are we going now?"
"Moving against the wind, it appeared too suddenly, that is, it just took off." Recorder also understands the army's judgment thinking, so he knows Lu Ning's purpose, "We want to see if we can find out where it is suspected to stay. .”
"What?" Spades didn't understand for a moment, and just followed the two people down the slope.
Lu Ning walked against the wind, and lightning began to explode in the forest in front of her again, igniting a giant tree. The burning flames looked more dazzling under the cloudy sky, but it also made Lu Ning feel relieved - the nature of lightning strikes at high places has not changed yet.
"Captain! Something's wrong with the flames!" Spade shouted.
When Lu Ning heard this reminder, she opened her hand towards the burning tree——
A bright blue ball of light rushed out from the fingertips and submerged into the flames, blowing the tree into pieces. The crushed coke formed an unnatural airflow in the air, and followed the flames and started to turn into a virtual object again. Shadow, a flaming beast.
But before the shadow could fully gaze, it was torn apart by a string of bullets. The recorder fired at an extremely fast speed, and she had no intention of waiting for this thing to make its appearance. In the successive blows, fine electric light appeared in the air again, and then Lu Ning blasted in with another plasma cannon, completely blowing up the flames and no longer able to gather them together.
"It's okay, it's not that active... but it can't be called a living thing." Lu Ning glanced at the rapidly beating record data next to him, "I'll have work when I go back to Dragon Vein."
"Is that considered electrical control?" Recorder asked.
"It's much worse. There should be some other factor that makes the flames move. But the phantom beasts always have some tricks that we don't know about, right?"
Lu Ning quickly ran past the flames. Enough charge tracking data had been collected, and now he was able to feasibly track the movement of the creature in the sky, but the creature was not aware of it at all.
Soon, the results are output.
"One point five kilometers, heading southeast." Lu Ning adjusted the direction slightly. The surrounding magnetic field was disturbed by the electric charge, but determining the direction was no longer a single method. Spade turned over a piece of rotten wood, glanced around, and suddenly found a black figure in the dense forest, walking quickly between the trees.
"Captain! Right side! Found a human-sized creature."
"You really can always find some hidden things." Lu Ning praised him and fired a flare to illuminate the dense forest. When the other party saw the flare, he dived directly into the woods.
"Huh?" Recorder snorted, raised his gun and fired a burst of fire. Of course, nothing came out except some dead branches and leaves.
"There are quite a lot of monsters and ghosts along the way." She recharged the magazine, but Lu Ning continued to run in the direction of the target, so the recorder had no choice but to follow, "Captain, don't we take a look? That covert action is obviously..."
"I'm not prepared to deal with potentially intelligent creatures now, unless they come and attack."
"Oh, but what if it's a survivor?"
"Survivor?" Spade was surprised.
The recorder nodded: "The evasive movements just now are very standard military training. Unless the creatures here can perfectly imitate the movements of the advance team that came before, they should be humans."
"If it's a human..." Lu Ning stepped onto a three-meter-high cliff in a few steps, "Do you think that a member of the advance team, even if he has been hiding in the deep mountains and forests for more than ten years to avoid the disaster at the outpost? I tried to ask for help, but when I found the person, I didn’t even shout or identify him, and I didn’t even wear normal protective clothing—can you trust this person?”
Even at just a glance, she could see the normal outline of the creature's head, instead of being tightly wrapped in protective clothing. If that kind of disease exists on the Phantom Star, how do such people survive?
"Isn't that more dangerous? We have to deal with it, right?" Spades asked.
"It will be dealt with, but not now."
The 1.5-kilometer cross-country trip is not even a physical exercise for soldiers, it is just a warm-up level. Lu Ning quickly rushed into an area with extremely dense charge reactions. This was a cave. There were obvious reddish-brown marks on the rock surface, which was different from the rest of the rocks in the area.
"Ore." Recorder took a quick look and confirmed, "And it looks like iron ore."
"Ha... don't bully me for not studying well. Ordinary iron oxide has no magnetism. No matter how strong the charge is, it will not be attracted." Spades panted slightly, not just because of running all the way, but He had been paying attention to his surroundings, spending a lot of extra energy.
"It's just that the excessive charge on the monster dissociated the iron ions in the rock, and then settled on the surface of the rock." Lu Ning knocked, "There is only a very thin layer. It seems that no one lives here. how long."
"Be careful there may be other threats inside, Captain." Spades reminded.
"I know, Recorder, guard the door, Spades and I will go in."
Lu Ning lit up the searchlight.
=
This cave is deeper than expected. The original scene inside has been destroyed by unstable electric shocks. Many rock surfaces have traces of being scorched or even cracked. However, fortunately, there is no such thing as a monster condensed by flames.
Walking all the way to the end, there is a hollow in the heart of the mountain. It is easy to see the victims there - three tiger-sized creatures that were electrocuted into charcoal.
"The rating is at least C." Lu Ning walked over and checked the body of one of the beasts. The electric charge exploded from the inside, first scorching the internal organs, and then came out and burned the outer fur. The whole thing was basically Completely carbonized.
"It's really cruel... But that's how beasts fight for territory. It's hard to tell what these three companies are." Spades also came to a tiger. He didn't have that much medical knowledge, but He was so speechless that he took out the short knife he was wearing and stabbed it, and the crispy black skin fell off layer by layer.
But soon, Spades shouted again.
"Captain! This... look at this! Is this..."
Lu Ning walked over after hearing the news and found that in the belly of the beast that Spades had poked open, there were two light blue balls the size of grapes. She squatted down and checked it with a detector. The ball contained a very strong electric charge, but there was no sign of leakage. The most important thing was that there was a life reaction inside!
"Spade."
"Huh? Captain?"
"I have to consider taking you with me every time I go out. You are so lucky."
There was no such thing in the body of the one she picked, and the same was true in the third body that was cut open later. If she was in a hurry to leave here and didn't check all the bodies, she would have really missed these two "eggs" .
The spacesuit itself has an insulating function. Lu Ning put on gloves, picked up the two eggs into the sample capsule, and put them away. Then she checked the terminal, and a statistic appeared behind her mission of collecting B-level biological samples: 1/3.
Similar items are not counted twice, but these items can be collected instead of challenging the main body. This can correspond to the difficulty of the second task. Lu Ning finally breathed a sigh of relief.
"Spade, can you find any other treasures here?"
"Captain, I'm not really a treasure hunter... You can't force luck." Spade also heard that Lu Ning was joking, "But it sounds like you are in a good mood. It seems that I have made a contribution to this discovery. Bar?"
"I will explain it to you in the report." Lu Ning was indeed in a good mood. "Now that we have these two gains, we can return today. We don't know if the creature will come back. Anyway, be careful. .”
"learn!"
Walking along the passage outside, Lu Ning was already thinking about how to deal with the remaining two B-levels. Spades' luck could also be said to be the arrangement given by the distribution center, but it might not be possible to complete the task entirely by relying on this. Contact more other outposts, maybe it's time to release some information with some reservations.
When approaching the entrance of the cave, both Lu Ning and Spai Tao heard the sounds of fighting coming from outside. There was no sound of weapons slashing, just the most primitive kind of fighting.
"Recorder? Why didn't she enter the channel to announce?" Spades was a little surprised.
"Obviously, she thinks she can beat her." Lu Ning basically understood some of this player's thoughts.
Since it was a fight, Recorder's opponent outside could also be judged. The two walked out of the cave, just in time to see Recorder knocking a ragged man against the stone with his space suit. There was a tattered hammer not far from the two of them. It seemed that the man had tried to attack the recorder before, and was then killed.
