Alien Relic Hunter

Chapter 65 Black Skeleton
"Are you sure?" Ke Lan stared at the pile of rocks and asked in a low voice.

"...He read it right..." Caroline swallowed her saliva with some effort. "The power armor's camera captured the image of that thing... It was a human skeleton, but only the upper body."

"Skeleton?!" Ke Lan quickly searched for relevant clues in his memory... However, he couldn't find any close results...

A skeleton, how does it move?

He couldn't help but think of the corpse controlled by the parasite in the ruins of A-087, but the problem is that even in that case, the corpse must rely on the continuous contraction and relaxation of the muscles that have not decayed. Only, a single skeleton, without tissues such as muscles, fascia, and tendon sheaths, is impossible to move.

The kind of skeleton monsters that can jump and run around only exist in the magical world and supernatural works. If they want to appear in the real world, there is only one possibility: supporting the movement of the skeleton is a mechanical system that relies on external energy supply. , just like a powered exoskeleton invented by humans.

But this possibility was directly denied by Ke Lan. Even if the security bureau was not at ease with these rock specimens, they could leave a few agents to guard them, and there was no need to secretly hide such a thing in the rock pile.

"That shouldn't be a human skeleton... What you see may be its exoskeleton." Ke Lan concluded.

"I've never seen such an aboriginal creature!" Caroline's tone was filled with a hint of fear. Even the female first mate who dared to fight the deep sea giant eel to the death, when faced with the unknown, it was inevitable that she would generate some fear.

"It's not just you, we've never seen that thing." Ke Lan turned to look at Caroline, and saw that she had taken off the Gauss rifle hanging from the back of the power armor—

"First mate, are you sure... the weapon in your hand won't penetrate the sealed partition of the drainage compartment?"

"Ah... I'm sorry, I'm just, just a little nervous..." Caroline was stunned for a moment, and she hung up the Gauss rifle with some hesitation. The armor popped out.

"It's here again!" It was still Akira Asano who gave the warning in advance, but instead of facing the enemy this time, he took a quick step backward and blocked Ke Lan's body.

"Ke Lan! His target is you!" Liao Zilang shouted at the same time, but instead of throwing the shock grenade in his hand, he unfolded a folding shield to protect Ke Lan's other side.

Asano Akira held the war blade horizontally, the crisp collision sounded again, and the black shadow retreated with a single blow, but this time it did not choose to hide, but entrenched at the highest point of the stone pile, looking down at the four of them.

This time, Ke Lan finally saw what that thing looked like.

This thing... is really a broken human skeleton!
Its main body is a human vertebra that was cut off at the waist, with incomplete ribs connected on both sides. The clavicle, scapula and humerus are relatively intact, but the radius and pubis are twisted and intertwined strangely, and a pair of sharp bone claws It is three or four times as long as a normal human finger.

Looking up from the cervical vertebra, it is a half-braided skull, all parts above the cheekbones are missing, the upper and lower jaws are tightly clenched together, but the teeth are exactly the same as normal people, with incisors, canines, and front and rear molars. Arranged neatly above the gums.

"This is obviously a human skeleton!" Caroline exclaimed in a low voice.

"It's not that simple..." Ke Lan observed the "skeleton" carefully. Except for the abnormality below the elbow, the overall material of the skeleton looks very different from the human skeleton... The skeleton as a whole is gray Black, with a rough surface, and densely covered with fine holes-at first glance, it is very close to those rock samples.

Could it be that this thing is made of rock?
This is not without precedent. They have encountered strange pieces of meat that can turn into hounds and Akano Asano before. Although this part of the memory is only possessed by Ke Lan, judging from various signs, it all happened. rather than a so-called hallucination.

Those fleshy chunks that turned into human form obtained human genetic genes by absorbing human blood, and assimilated their own cells, and formed them by continuous decomposition and proliferation—however, no matter how weird the fleshy chunks are, it is also a kind of " creatures"... and as a "dead" rock, how did it change into a crippled human skeleton?

And... the skeleton with only half of the skull still seems to have complete self-awareness, and it even resorts to tactics such as ambush.

Not only that, after playing against Asano Akira for the first time and not gaining an advantage, it immediately changed its attack target - this thing not only has the ability to think, but also has a low IQ!
This just confirmed Ke Lan's judgment at the beginning: this thing is an unknown Alpha star creature with a peculiar mimetic ability, "disguising" itself as a human skeleton.

If only I could know the name of this thing... In this case, the relevant information may automatically pop up from the back of my mind like last time.

Ke Lan can roughly determine that the trigger condition for that situation is to silently recite the names of the things he sees in alpha language - it's like typing keywords into the search bar of a search engine, but the problem now is that he I don't know what this keyword is.

Black human skeleton?
Leaving aside whether this keyword is right or not, Ke Lan was surprised to find that in the language of the Alpha civilization, there is no word for human at all, and he did not know how to describe this unknown intelligent species from an unknown planet.

Black alien skeleton?

It's beyond the limit...

Like a ghost, a thought suddenly popped into Ke Lan's mind: What would happen if he tried to communicate in Alpha language facing this "creature" in front of him?
Will it understand?

(End of this chapter)