Alien Relic Hunter

Chapter 773 Finding Direction
Valentina was stunned.

She obviously only took one step back into the fog... only one step!
Why... why on earth is this?
I didn't get far from the wreckage of the "Shaojiang Kai" frigate at all, but now there is nothing around the Blasphemer mecha except for the dense fog that seems to be as real as it is.

Not even the fog roosts that can be seen everywhere in the foggy forest.

The ground of the original forest was very rough, especially near the place where the warship crashed, the soil and land that were turned over showed a wave-like shape... But now the ground under the feet of the blasphemer is solid and flat, not at all like the land that has been affected by it before. The appearance of shock.

The fear in Valentina's heart kept driving her, giving her an urge to manipulate the blasphemer to escape from this place, but her rationality firmly suppressed this urge—she knew very well , if she ran around in the dense fog because of panic, then she might never be able to join Ke Lan and the others again.

"First, you have to figure out where you are..."

Valentina made the Blasphemer Mecha kneel down on one knee, propped her arms forward on the ground, and inserted her fingers deeply into the soil, posing a posture similar to a sprinter's crouching start.

This posture allows the body to cling to the ground stably, and even if it is hit by a huge force, it is not easy to lose its balance.

"I can't escape...I have to control my emotions..." Valentina bit her lips tightly and kept saying to herself in her heart, "I can't let fear occupy my mind...I need to collect more information……"

Her hands were clenched into fists, and her nails, which had become a little long due to lack of time to trim them in the past few days, fell into the flesh of her palms through the gloves of the pilot suit... After a few seconds of silence, she resolutely opened the blasphemous The cockpit of the attacker's mecha turned over and jumped out.

The thick gray fog immediately engulfed Valentina's petite body. She supported the outer armor of the Blasphemer Mecha with one hand, and the emergency kit with the other hand. Centering on the mech, she slowly groped around. in a circle.

She could clearly feel her calves trembling, and her ankles were also a little weak... Even though the soles of her feet were on the flat ground, she always suspected that she would lose her balance and fall to the ground in the next step.

Fear mainly comes from the unknown. The dense fog makes the visibility almost infinitely close to zero. In this environment, even if something is standing beside you, you will not be aware of the other party's existence at all.

For those who have a keen sense of danger, staying in this environment is simply a torment.

Valentina, who is good at high-speed maneuvering and close combat, is such a person. Her muscles are tense, and her fighting instinct reminds her all the time, and the warning signs of danger in her mind never stop. down too.

After walking around the body, Valentina immediately squatted down. She felt that she was about to collapse. The high-frequency panting caused the white mist in the breathing mask to be covered before it completely subsided. Going up, the vital signs monitor on the wrist kept alarming—Valentina's heart rate once exceeded [-], which is extremely abnormal in the case of non-strength exercise.

"Huh...huh..."

Valentina got under the body of the Blasphemer Mech, opened the emergency kit, and took out a metal cylinder without seeing it, and fixed it on the ground.

Not long after, a little green fluorescent light lit up on the top of the metal cylinder, and the surrounding dense fog that was as thick as substance was immediately dispelled.

Even though the radius of dispersion was less than one meter, a clear area was created in the dense fog.

"SL-S1 Mist Repeller", the prefix "SL" means that the thing was found in the ruins, and it is a creation of the Alpha civilization rather than an appliance produced by the Ark. As for the "S" and "1" behind it are Stands for "small size" and "single use".

The number of this kind of mist repellent is very rare. With Ke Lan's authority, without alarming other members of the undead crew, he only made two of them. One is on 33's body, and the other is left in Valentin. Na's emergency kit.

Compared with the mist repeller made by Ark, the "SL-S1 mist repeller" has a larger dispersal radius and stronger headroom capacity... If it is used at a depth of 500 meters behind the red line, this mist repeller can even It can disperse the gray fog in an area with a diameter of 100 meters, but here, the diameter of the clear area is less than two meters.

The effect has shrunk by a full fifty times.

Not only the dispersal range, but also the duration - at a depth of 500 meters, the "SL-S1 mist repellent" can continue to operate for at least two hours... But the top of the metal cylinder in front of Valentina The faint green fluorescence is rapidly dimming. According to this speed, the fluorescence will be completely extinguished in 5 minutes at most.

The dense fog that was dispelled would immediately come back.

"Hurry up..."

Valentina immediately found a barrel shovel for soil extraction from the emergency kit and inserted it into the ground.

The prototype of this barrel shovel is the famous "Luoyang shovel" in the old era. Luoyang shovel was first used by tomb robbers to determine the location and depth of ancient tombs, but later it was more used by archaeologists for shallow drilling operations, Identify soil textures and subsurface sites.

From a certain point of view, tomb robbery and archaeology actually have a lot in common... As for the relic hunters on the Ark now, what they do is more in favor of tomb robbery than between the two.

Valentina took several tubes of soil at different locations and at different depths... Soil is the only thing she can currently collect besides "fog", and it is also the only "clue carrier" in the current environment.

These tubes of soil are very firm and show no signs of looseness at all. This can basically rule out the soil near the crash site of the warship—even if the soil turned over by the shock wave is re-compacted, it will still leave obvious marks. , and the tubes of soil in front of him obviously haven't been turned over for a long time.

When the "Shaojiang Kai" frigate crashed into the forest, there was a lot of movement, and the shock wave spread to at least 500 meters away... In other words, Valentina's current position is 500 meters away from the crash point of the battleship. .

"500 meters..."

Valentina frowned, staring at the tubes of soil in transparent polymer containers in front of her... She remembered clearly that the edge of the dense fog was only a dozen meters away from the wreckage of the battleship, and the blasphemer mech retreated The pace of a step is about six to seven meters, and the distance between her and the wreckage of the battleship should not exceed 30 meters.

The green fluorescent indicator light on the top of the "SL-S1 Fog Repeller" has turned into a dim orange, and began to flash once and for all. At the same time, the surrounding gray fog began to approach again. It seemed that Valentina was about to be swallowed up again.

She hastily put away the soil samples, emergency kit, and mist repellent, and groped her way back to the cockpit of the Blasphemer.

The moment the cockpit hatch closed, Valentina couldn't help but let out a sigh of relief—for her, the mech's cockpit was her "comfort zone."

She did not choose to fully connect with the Blasphemer Mecha, but only maintained a "semi-connected" state.

The so-called semi-connection means that only half of the nerve-connecting tentacles are connected to the driver's spinal cord. In this state, the driver can send some simple instructions to the body through consciousness, and at the same time lose control of the body .

But the result of dual-purpose is that the mecha can't be manipulated well, and her own body can't be controlled well--Valentina once tried to eat in a semi-connected state, but her trembling fingers directly poked the spoon on her nose , Rice grains smeared her face, and the next second, the blasphemer who was standing up directly fell to her knees, causing her, who was already very embarrassed, to bury her head directly in the dinner plate.

Fortunately, no one saw this scene except Ke Lan and Ivan who asked Valentina to conduct a "semi-connection" test. Otherwise, it could definitely be regarded as a social death.

After that, Valentina never tried "semi-connection" again.

In order to facilitate her activities, she emptied the filling fluid in the cockpit, and then sat awkwardly sideways on the fleshy driver's seat—the feeling of "semi-connection" was weird, like a person in a half-dream and half-awake state, and the brain sent out Some of the instructions will be communicated to the driver's own body, and some will be communicated to the body connected to the driver, but in the process of transmission, confusion often occurs.

For example, the driver wants to reach out and dig his nostrils, but the driver's arm does not lift up, but the arm of the mecha directly hits the body; or the driver wants to control the mecha to shoot, But the mecha didn't move at all, only the fingers of the pilot sitting in the mecha were pulling the trigger in the void.

But if you just sit quietly, there won't be too many problems... It's just that in this way, this "semi-connected" state has almost no practical significance.

"Play back the previous battle video." Valentina ordered like a blasphemer's mecha, and soon, a battle scene with the blasphemer's mecha as the first perspective appeared on the screen, which happened to be the blasphemer's post-break , to cover the scene where Ke Lan and the others retreated into the gray mist.

Valentina's pupils shrank involuntarily.

She saw that in this picture, the land under the feet of the Blasphemer's mecha was still cracked and broken, but as the mecha retreated into the gray fog, these cracked and broken land became blurred up.

And... there is one more important point, until the Blasphemer mech retreats into the gray mist, the safety rope fastened to the back of the mech is intact.

The safety rope was cut off after entering the fog... But wouldn't those biological weapons not attack targets in the fog?

"What's going on here...could it be teleportation?"

Only teleportation can explain why I was alone and came to a place at least 500 meters away from the wreckage of the battleship.

"But if it's teleportation...why didn't Ze Luo sense the abnormal change in space? Was it the thick fog that blocked her perception, or...they were all teleported to other places?"

Valentina thought hard, but no matter what kind of speculation, there are reasonableness and corresponding doubts, and it is impossible to make a judgment.

This is a bit embarrassing for Valentina... She is just a soldier, not a decision maker. Even after joining the Hunting God Hunting Group, the most time she spends is to carry out the orders issued by Ke Lan, Instead of thinking about such things.

Her hands trembled involuntarily, and even she herself didn't know whether this was due to fear or the negative effects of the "semi-connected" state...or both.

She has tried all the communication devices in the emergency kit, and none of them can be used in this place.As for the "SL-S1 Fog Repeller", the residual energy in it can still work for about ten to fifteen seconds - Valentina regrets that when she just collected the soil samples, she should have carried out "blind sampling", The big deal is to take a few extra tubes, and you shouldn't be wasting precious mist repellent energy.

The energy of this kind of mist repellent cannot be supplemented by Ark's existing technology. It is purely a consumable, the kind that is thrown away when it is used up.

Without a fog repellent, walking in the fog can't even see your own body, let alone identify the direction and find your lost teammates.

What's more terrible is that Valentina's current position doesn't even have a fog roost that can be used as a marker. The thick fog seems to come from the void... If she advances rashly, there is a high probability that she will die. It just spins around in place.

"Dense fog... coming..."

Valentina suddenly seemed to have thought of something, struggled to sit up, and opened the cockpit cover of the Blasphemer Mech.

A dense fog of gray fog poured in immediately, occupying the cockpit that was not filled with filling fluid.

During this process, Valentina has been staring at the gray fog pouring into the cockpit—she noticed that it seems that the fog pouring in at the three o'clock direction is the fastest.

This means that the dense fog in that direction is the highest.

"At three o'clock." Valentina tore off a sticky note and pasted it in the cockpit at three o'clock.

The goose-yellow sticky note was quickly corroded by the fog and turned into ashes, leaving only a small amount of blackened non-stick glue remaining on the inner wall of the cockpit.

Although it is a joke to carve a boat and seek a sword, in some occasions, it can also play an unexpected role.

Valentina controlled the Blasphemer Mecha to inject the filling fluid, "squeezing" out the gray fog in the cockpit, and then repeated the operation of "drawing the fog into the urn" several times.

She finally pinpointed the direction in which the fog concentration was highest: about four degrees clockwise from three o'clock.

[PS Thank you for the 200 starting coins rewarded by Manxiang; thank you book friend 20220715143208521 for the 100 starting coins. 】

(End of this chapter)