Alien Relic Hunter

Chapter 263 Nine Stone Chambers (4000-word chapter)
"Then what should we do now? Leave this guy here, or take him with us?" The hound climbed up from Cao Feng's body and asked Ke Lan.

"Let's put it here first..." Ke Lan pointed to the two unopened stone gates on the east and west sides, "I think there are also such stone rooms behind these two stone gates, and other people may be inside .”

If the stone room where Cao Feng is located is used as the reference point, the south side is the stone room where Ke Lan woke up, and the north side is the direction where the hound came. Both Ke Lan and the hound's stone room have only one door, leading to Cao Feng. The room where he was lying, and if he wanted to continue exploring the ruins, he could only go through the east and west sides.

During the following period of time, Ke Lan and the hound walked step by step, exploring the surrounding stone chambers one by one as if they were playing some kind of war chess game——as Ke Lan expected, in these stone chambers, they Found several other teammates, and two interns from the Polaris Hunting Group.

Layton and Zoligetu were in relatively better condition, and their condition was relatively stable, but when Ivan was discovered by them, the situation was completely opposite—he had rolled from the stone platform to the floor at that time , his facial expression was very ferocious, his limbs kept waving wildly, and from time to time there was a deep roar of unknown meaning in his throat... Ke Lan had no choice but to inject him with Mengzao preparation and neutralizer, so that he could fell into a deep sleep.

What surprised the hound was that Akira Asano, who was always calm and quiet on weekdays, fell into a deep nightmare at this moment—although his performance was not as crazy as Ivan's, his heart rate rose to 180 per second. More than [-] times, is in a very dangerous state.

"I can understand that Ivan would have nightmares... He must have dreamed that he was controlled by the seed of erosion and turned into that disgusting tentacle monster... But Akira Asano, I really can't figure it out. I think his psychological quality is quite good. Okay..." The Hound said a little puzzled.

"He probably dreamed about that experiment..." Ke Lan said thoughtfully, "That should be the biggest shadow in his heart."

"Experiment? You mean the...secret army?" The Hound also heard about it, but he didn't know as much as Ke Lan, and Asano Akira didn't like to talk too much, so he didn't ask about the details.

Everyone has a past that they don't want to mention, and the Hound understands this very well. As long as these things don't affect the team, he will not deliberately expose people's scars.

"He told me that the army that took part in the experiment... many people died, and many people went crazy. The closer to the 'critical point', the more miserable the end...and he can only be regarded as one of the many The existence of the bottom of the experimental body, so it just lost the ability of the brain's visual center." Ke Lan sighed, "Although I don't know the details of the experiment, but thinking about it, that kind of experiment must be inhumane said."

……

In addition to the four of Layton, there were two hunters from the Polaris Hunting Group, a man and a woman. From their armbands, we could tell that the man's name was Martin, and the woman's name was Qin Zhao.

Including Cao Feng, these three hunters are very young, and they can tell at a glance that they are only 20 years old. It is estimated that they have just finished Ark's compulsory education, and they have directly applied for the professional training course for relic hunters. This is true. Exactly the same as Ke Lan back then.

It's just that Ke Lan started working alone after graduating from the training class, and they accidentally got on a "black ship" like the Polaris Hunting Group.

Even if they didn't go crazy after completing this mission, they would be regarded as "cheap consumables" by the Polaris Hunting Group and filled into the advance team with the highest casualty rate... Only when they survived the advance team would they be hunted. The group is admitted as a full member.

Not only the Polaris Hunting Group, but most of the big hunting groups with consortium backgrounds do this. They ruthlessly squeeze the value of these newcomers, even the last piece of carrion on the corpse...

Among many experienced hunters, when they mentioned these trainee hunters, they directly used the word "cannon fodder" to refer to them, but from another perspective, they themselves all started from the term "cannon fodder". Those who came over with their identities... Only those who survived can become the real elites.

Compared with these "cannon fodder" hired by the big hunting group, the initial stage of a lone hunter like Ke Lan is even more difficult. Although he is not under the control of the big hunting group, he also cannot obtain the resources provided by those big hunting groups. Whether it's vocational training, relic information, or various equipment and consumables, you have to find a way to solve it yourself. If you don't have some part-time jobs, your life will be even more difficult than "cannon fodder".

"These brats are really unlucky. They were sent to such a ghostly place for the first time on a mission." The hound looked at the three intern hunters lying on the ground and said sympathetically.

"They were quite lucky... I remember that there were more than a dozen people who were caught in the avalanche at that time. It is estimated that there were not even a whole body left of those people." Ke Lan said.

"Forget it, let's think about how to get out of this ghost place."

He and the hunting dog discovered a total of nine stone chambers, which were connected to each other, forming two juxtaposed cross shapes, or the prefix "艹" in Chinese characters.

Apart from the stone gates between these stone chambers, Ke Lan and the hunting dog did not find another passage—that is, these nine stone chambers are a completely enclosed space...

"I think there must be a secret passage. If it is a confined space, how did we get into it? It can't be some kind of space transmission technology?"

"That's not certain." Ke Lan said with a straight face. The weird experience of the underwater city has every reason to believe that the Alpha civilization has mastered mature space technology, but humans have not found any evidence related to it.

"If this is the case, wouldn't we be dead..." The hound glanced at the packages piled up on the ground, "The most lacking thing now is food and water, and the few of us only brought what was in the emergency kit, and These three kids only have two bags of refreshing drinks and a few energy bars on their bodies. Together, they are only enough for nine people to consume for three days... I thought about using explosives to blow the outer wall of the stone room... ...But according to the results of the drilling survey, there are at least two meters thick solid layers around the nine stone chambers, all of which are high-density magmatic rocks. The explosive equivalent required for blasting the two meters thick rock layers alone is at least It takes about a hundred units..."

"Besides, we can't confirm whether there is a passage behind the rock formation. Even if there is a passage, in which direction of the stone room..." Ke Lan continued the words of the hound, "With the resources we have, we can make up three at most. A hundred standard units of explosives come, that is to say, we only have three chances."

The hound frowned tightly, and paced back and forth in the stone room: "You are making a conservative estimate. Two meters thick is only our detection limit. Who knows how thick this rock layer is. If it is ten or eight meters thick, even Pile all the bombs in one direction and detonate, and we won't be able to get out."

"When designing these stone chambers, they probably considered the possibility that the things locked inside might escape violently... I think our thinking may be wrong." Ke Lan said after thinking for a while.

"Wrong thinking?"

"Old dog, have you ever played 'escape room' games on the ark?" Ke Lan asked suddenly.

"I haven't played it before, but I've heard people mention it. They seem to be young people who like to play this game... Wait a minute, what do you mean, these stone rooms are actually a secret room, as long as we solve the mystery left by the designer of the secret room problem, can you escape?”

"I think so." Ke Lan nodded.

"But I think it's a bit ridiculous. Are Alpha people so boring? Catch us here and let us play puzzle games?"

"This secret room is definitely not designed for us, it's just that we just fell into it... As for whether the Alphas are that boring, combined with my experience in exploring the ruins, everything they do has a Very clear purpose, but we can't understand that's all."

"Okay, let's treat it as a secret room... Then, Ke Lan, have you ever played a room escape game?"

"I haven't played the live-action version." Ke Lan shook his head, "However, I have played a lot of video games with this theme, and many of the secret rooms are designed based on the Alpha ruins that exist in reality. There are Paid resource packs can be downloaded, if you want, I can send you a few next time."

"The premise is that we can go out." The hound walked around the stone platform, "Although I have never played that kind of game, but I have never eaten pork, but I have seen pigs running. In my impression, this kind of game There should always be some mechanism in the secret room - such as a vase that can be rotated, a bookshelf that can be translated, but the problem is that the nine stone rooms are empty, and the only thing that can be regarded as a "thing" is these stone platforms It's..."

As the hound said, he suddenly stretched out his foot and kicked the stone platform.

"But there are neither clues nor mechanisms on this thing. The bottom is directly integrated with the ground, and it can't even move."

The stone room where Ke Lan and the hunting dog were located was the one where Cao Feng was first discovered. Now the other seven sleeping people have been moved to this stone room, and the stone platform in the stone room has also been moved. Ke Lan and the hound have studied it no less than ten times.

"The stone platforms in the other stone chambers are also bird-like," the hound shrugged helplessly, "I also drilled several holes, and these stone platforms are completely solid, with nothing inside except stones. "

"Maybe the focus is not on the stone platform..." Ke Lan pondered.

"Isn't it the stone platform? Where could it be? The ceiling? The floor? Or the walls?"

"The arrangement of the stone chambers... old dog, don't you think the arrangement of the nine stone chambers is very special?"

"It's true...it happens to be the beginning of the Chinese character '她' together, which fits my current mood...fucking alpha star..." Just as the Hound spit out the swear words, his expression suddenly froze. "Wait, wait, wait—"

He raised his head slowly, and looked at Ke Lan with a look of astonishment: "This prefix 良... seems to have such a character in the Alpha text! This is definitely not a coincidence! Ke Lan, this prefix 草, in the Alpha text, What means?"

"...I can't be sure." Ke Lan shook his head, "Because I can't be sure whether the nine stone chambers are written in the Alpha Civilization, so I can't understand the meaning. This is the special feature of the Alpha Civilization. If it's not placed in a special context, it's just a bunch of meaningless ghost symbols... That's why I can't teach this language to you."

"Then does such a single character have no meaning?" The hound asked a little unwillingly.

"Yes, but there are thousands of meanings...Moreover, this is not a single character, but a divisible phrase composed of three characters."

"What the hell..."

"In addition to the special arrangement of the stone chambers, I also found a problem." Ke Lan continued.

"what is the problem?"

"Six people are located in the stone room with only one stone door on the outside, and three people are located in the inter-connected stone room in the middle, and these three people happen to be the three most trapped in the dream: Cao Feng, Ivan and Asano Akira... I don't know Is this a coincidence..."

……

[PS has received a lot of comments recently, complaining about why there are traps and traps everywhere in the ruins of the Alpha civilization, and some people even said: Do the aborigines of Alpha Planet have to break through traps every day when they go to work?But I would like to ask these readers to notice one thing: that is, the relics that the protagonists have been to in the text are either A-level or S-level. These relics all have high-value loot, and the corresponding benchmarks in our real world: Places like treasuries, research institutes, secret factories, or military restricted areas, isn't it normal that there are many institutions in places like this?

Moreover, after the Alpha civilization disappears, with their technological level, shouldn't it be a basic operation for these ruins to seal themselves and automatically produce various traps and obstacles to prevent prying eyes?
As for the residential areas of ordinary people of Alpha Civilization, there are of course, but I didn’t write about it. Those ruins with C, D or even lower levels are not very dangerous, but there are too few valuable things, so The protagonist group as elite hunters no longer bothers to explore such ruins (there is one exception: the remains of Leviathan. The grade is set at C grade, except for the complex terrain, there are basically no dangerous factors.)
In addition, S-011 is suspended and made into Deval. This ruin is considered a standard alpha civilization living area, and there are not so many traps, but the reason for the danger is that the anti-gravity device at the core of the city is malfunctioning, and it will become a narrow escape. Dangerously.

Although some readers advised me not to argue with some people, it is really annoying to have too many comments of this kind, and I can’t delete comments, and I can’t keep an eye on the comment area all the time, so I can only unify here Explain, people who see it should not complain about this in the future. 】

(End of this chapter)