CHAPTER 443: CHAPTER 411 THE HORDE

Li Cheng placed down the corpse of the red beetle and slowly exhaled a breath of ionized air,

then immediately squatted down without any decorum, searching the ground for his eyeball.

The battle had been extremely perilous: Liangyi Blade, Vast Sea Soul-locking Bell, Skill Mobile USB, Floating Engine, Ten-Complete Great Replenishing Pills, Qilin Blood Plasma...

He used every available equipment and tool, only barely managing to kill the opponent by trading injuries.

It was only because Li Cheng had used the [Suicide Notebook] to predict before entering the Secret Realm that he had only a thirty percent chance of dying in the basement, otherwise, he really wouldn’t have had the confidence to fight it out,

he probably would have furrowed his brows early on, shielded Jose in front of him, and decisively logged out of the killing field.

Um... Something’s not right, if the fight in the basement only had a thirty percent chance of death, wouldn’t that mean other areas in the Secret Realm are even more damn dangerous?

"The eyeball is here."

Gray Rain slipped off Li Cheng and picked up the two eyeballs that still had wisps of nerves attached, blew on them, and handed them back to Li Cheng, concernedly asking, "How’s your body holding up?"

"I can still hold on, for now."

Li Cheng rubbed his eye sockets and activated the Assembly Puppet Effect to reconnect the optic nerves and fully restore his eyesight.

Then he grabbed the red beetle’s corpse and quickly ran outside before the tunnel completely collapsed, resting against the wall for a while.

Once his breath evened out, he stood up straight and peeled off the proliferating tumors from his body, like picking grapes.

Right now, he didn’t dare release the Liangyi Blade; the effect of Qilin Blood Plasma arterial infusion was too aggressive, hastily switching back to human form might cause him to be influenced by Qilin Blood in minutes and go berserk like Nie Feng.

Rationality, you tell me what rationality.jpg

"Speaking of which,"

Gray Rain thought of something and pointed at the cartoon-style cherry tree and chili pepper tree patterns on the ruined wall, "Did we forget to ask that beetle who painted the wall?"

"We still have time to ask now."

Li Cheng first activated the Assembly Puppet Effect, crudely patched up the red beetle’s wounds to stop further blood loss,

then, using his remaining left arm, inserted it into the beetle’s body and spliced his arm with the beetle’s medulla.

He then instructed Gray Rain to open the Three-dimensional Warehouse, pull out a laptop and heaps of cables, plugging the USB card reader and data cables into various parts of the beetle’s body,

finally opening the computer and launching the diskgenius hard disk bad sector detection and repair software.

He was now in insect form, highly similar to the base genetic code of the red beetle. After using the Assembly Puppet Effect for splicing, the two can be seen as one entity.

The main brain of the red beetle was already medium rare, but fortunately, it used a distributed nervous system.

Each limb could think independently, which means each limb stored a portion of memory backup. Forced repairs could still salvage some memories.

"Select hard disk, hind limb HD1, capacity 2150TB, detecting bad blocks..."

As a Divine Calamity infectee, the red beetle had previously killed and eaten seventeen self-aware infected ’kindred.’ Inside its body, it stored vast amounts of gene data.

Li Cheng instructed Gray Rain to temporarily ignore the massive data, first sort by modification date, prioritizing the recent memories, found the answer quickly.

The red beetle’s self-identified name was [Swarm], it came to this Secret Realm about three months ago.

Like a player, it quickly realized there were lurking high-threat anomalies in the Secret Realm and potentially huge treasures hidden behind it.

To maximize benefits, it lay dormant,

On one hand, it set up teleportation traps elsewhere in the killing field to abduct extraordinary creatures from the outside.

On the other hand, using its biological modification technology, it disguised itself as a doctor in Myanmar North and disassembled these extraordinary creatures to create a powerful biological electromagnetic cannon to tackle various threats in the Secret Realm.

[Swarm] was very clear on the nature of killing field players; it waited patiently for players to come knocking, its intention was for players to lead the charge,

crack open the Secret Realm’s Mystery Lock and pull chestnuts from the fire for it, then seize the opportunity to harvest.

If players delayed coming, [Swarm] would probably consider "letting Jose go" to help lure people in.

As for the cherry tree and chili pepper tree children’s murals on the basement wall, they have existed there according to [Swarm]’s memory bank, but no idea who painted them.

"That..."

Gray Rain seriously flipping through system logs noticed something, his face slightly changed and said: "It seems this says [Swarm] isn’t a single entity."

"What?"

Li Cheng quickly leaned in to read the system logs carefully.

[Copy memory files to target backup bodies and retain metadata]

[Record number of backup bodies: 10]

[Delete backup body path and timestamp information in logs, retain backup record documents with gene restrictions]

[Set time cycle to 7 killing field weeks, if no further hibernation directive signal returned, activate backup bodies]

[Update Swarm memory library, backup complete]

Short five lines of code, but the information they revealed was astounding.

The infectee named Swarm would periodically back up its body and memory using biological modification technology and seal them somewhere in the killing field.

A total of ten backups, all in hibernation state.

Every 7 killing field weeks (equivalent to sixty days in Earth time), the Swarm entity emits a hibernation directive signaling all backups to continue sleeping.

If Swarm entity encounters an accident, unable to emit the directive, the backups will all awaken, becoming the new Swarm.

"One birthing ten, ten birthing hundreds?"

Gray Rain gasped: "Whose Australian wild rabbit is this?"

"Not ten birthing hundreds."

Li Cheng licked his tongue and pointed to the text [retain backup record documents with gene restrictions], "Each Swarm knows which generation of backup it is (this one is the twenty-first generation), and there are restrictions in its base genetic coding,

preventing indefinite replication and self-degradation.

At most, only one or two generations of Swarm are active in the killing field at any given time."

He paused and said: "These Swarms may be independent yet act as one entity. Their goal is to consume and evolve by devouring other infectee kindred of the Insect Lord Demon to become the sole Insect Master.

For this goal, they would rather not become players."

During the recent battle, Swarm could have remotely killed Jose, usurped his player status, logged out the killing field, and escaped far away.

It didn’t do that, proving two points:

First, Swarm’s backup resurrection plan was highly sophisticated; the death of a single entity didn’t mean the death of the whole. So, it didn’t fear dying.

Second, the connections between Swarm entities were very close; should one become a player, all backups would share the same status.

"...Tch."

Li Cheng pouted in displeasure. In the log files, Swarm erased path and timestamp information of the backup bodies; even it didn’t know where its backups were buried,

so other infectees couldn’t follow clues to thoroughly kill it.

No wonder the previous seventeen infectee kindred were all devoured by it. This survival capability is akin to cockroaches; even if beaten, it can survive.

"Four claiming ownership, bickering continuously; whoever survives last, holds the power of speech, becomes a revered artist."

Gray Rain muttered while scratching his head: "Does this mean our efforts were for nothing?"

"Not completely for nothing, although Swarm has a backup resurrection system, each backup contains a complete gene database to ensure generational strength doesn’t decline. That’s good enough."

Li Cheng took a deep breath, his fingertips dissolved absorbing the beetle’s blood and flesh silently, "Kekekekeke, the accumulated gene treasury over twenty-one generations, bring it all."