Soul of Burning Steel

When he opened his eyes, what he could see was an unusually wide and bright silver-white metal hall.

In this huge space with a length and width of more than 400 meters and a height of more than 100 meters, there is nothing, nothing can be seen, except for the streamlined and flickering rune lights on the ceiling and the four walls. It was blank, not even air existed in the entire hall, it was an incomparably thin vacuum.

The size of the hall is really huge. This is a proportion and structure that ordinary humans cannot accept at all. The sense of incongruity and the illusion produced by instinct can make everyone in the hall feel as uncomfortable as entering the kingdom of giants.

And around, the bright light released from the rune is a special kind of torture. The light waves containing special energy fluctuations stimulate all the irradiated biological nerves, making them absolutely unable to sleep, and falling into crazy exhaustion—more Needless to say the vacuum, the inability to breathe is a fatal torture that most creatures cannot bear.

And in the center of this seemingly wide and bright vacuum hall, which is actually a special kind of prison, there are five translucent crystal pillars standing, and on the five crystal pillars, five human-shaped metal cans are covered by some kind of The sealing circle was suspended in mid-air, unable to move.

"...Where is this place?"

The knight Clark opened his eyes blankly. He just woke up from the shock after the failed teleportation, but when he opened his eyes, what the knight saw was not a desolate land in another world (like most of the time), but an obvious It is the hall of the creation of civilization.

Soon, the knight discovered that he was now bound by a magic circle, tied to a crystal pillar that was obviously a seal.

"You woke up, sure enough, your mental quality is the worst among the five of us."

From the communicator inside the helmet, the priest's voice with a slight electronic sound suddenly came out: "Don't do anything, keep the original posture, and pretend that you are still in a coma."

Although the knight is said to be the worst quality, but only compared to his teammates as spellcasters, he also quickly realized that something was wrong, and then he kept his body still and pretended to be sick as the priest said. in a coma.

At this time, the five of them were all wearing the "Alien Exploration Magic Armor" specially made by the Moldavian collar. This is a fully sealed and fully covered special full-body armor. The outer armor is forged from an "active metal alloy" , has certain self-healing and strong adaptability to the world, it will not melt due to overheating, nor will it become brittle due to overcooling. The inner armor is made of a special 'self-repair material' obtained by analyzing the body of the legendary demon lord. It also has unparalleled suitability. It can even temporarily assimilate with the wearer's skin, provide nerve induction, and become the wearer. part of the body.

For some reason, the magic armor of the five of them was not removed. It is precisely because of this that they can live in a vacuum environment for such a long time. The self-circulation system of the armor allows the team members to survive in the void for a period of time. Time, a mere vacuum is really nothing.

"what happened?"

The knight was in a bad mood. He knew that he and others must be involved in something bad again, so he quickly asked his teammates: "Captain, this is..."

"You'd better rest for a while, I'll ask first."

However, the mage decisively interrupted a certain crow's mouth, and he interjected directly, and said to the magic armor on the other side who was also motionless and pretending to be unconscious: "Captain, what do you mean to say, we are now being killed by a group of high-level aliens?" Intelligent beings got caught, and now they're going to torture us, ask us questions we don't even know the answers to?"

"That's right."

The mage's tone was full of resentment, but the question was clear, so Priest, who had been thinking calmly all this time, immediately replied: "That's how it is."

"At the last moment of our teleportation, an inexplicable attraction sucked us to a weird steel altar. At that time, most of you were unconscious. Although I was awake, I was also dizzy...and at that moment, I saw A very strange alien life... came to us."

When he said it was weird, Priest's tone was a little weird. He sent the image of the alien creature to the other four through the communication function of the magic armor.

This is a strangely shaped crustacean that looks more like a spider - but it is definitely not a real crustacean.

They have gray-black carapace, sharp eight legs, disc-like bodies with obvious 'visual organs', 'mouthparts' and crab-like forelimbs... In terms of this alone, no matter how you look at it, they are just Some kind of strange big crab, but the most important thing is not the body, but a mushroom-like object that 'breaks out' from the center of the disk's body.

That's a creature? Or a plant? Or, is it really some kind of fungus? No one can confirm this without touching it with their own hands. Unlike the huge body, the body of the fungus is relatively thin. If you have to compare it, it is about the same as a finger and the entire palm. Its oval-shaped canopy has an incomparable magical light flowing, and the light shines regularly, proving that this is indeed a kind of intelligent life.

"...It looks a bit like a parasitic fungus."

A well-informed alchemist expresses his opinion. He has dealt with all kinds of strange plant creatures and fungi all year round, so he can see the special features of this life form at a glance: "I don't know if you have seen it, but there is one A fungus can parasitize insects, control the insects' actions, and finally eat them up... This thing looks similar, and the crab below is probably just a parasitized body."

"Indeed, when they were interrogating me, they really used the fungus-like thing as the main body."

Priest took over the conversation, and he continued: "This alien life has extremely powerful spiritual power, and it tries to peep into our spiritual world while we are unconscious—but because the species gap is too great, the logic of thinking It's also completely different, it can't do this, and then when it tortured me forcibly asking me 'how to find them' through mental communication, I deliberately cut off the oxygen supply to my brain and fell into a coma."

When he said this, Priest seemed to think of something funny, he said with a smile in the communicator: "These aliens seem to think that the 'magic armor' is also a part of our body, plus the active metal alloy It's kind of biological, so they've been torturing the armor, whipping and cutting and chopping off a few of my 'fingers', but just didn't expect the armor to come off - they seem to think we're Such a species with a strong body and strong self-regeneration ability."

In this regard, even in such a serious environment, everyone couldn't help laughing—sometimes, the gap between species and civilization is indeed large enough to cause such misunderstandings.

But soon, the topic returned to seriousness.

"These extraterrestrial beings seem to call themselves 'fleet'. They should be sailing in the void, and they happened to receive our failed teleportation."

Priest concluded: "According to the known information, I can roughly infer that they should be conducting some kind of secret operation, so we are very nervous about our sudden appearance, and have been interrogating how we found them."

"What should we do next?"

The priest said succinctly.

"Wait for the opportunity, collect information, and after roughly understanding the situation, use the 'Return Beacon' to leave directly."

Priest didn't talk nonsense, he said seriously: "These alien creatures think that the armor is our body, and it is impossible to analyze the things in the inner layer of our armor in a short time, whether it is a necessary life-support organ— —Just wait until these things don't pay attention, and we can come back through the beacon at any time."

"Although it's a pity that we have to leave without completing anything, knowing the existence of such a special kind of intelligent life in another world is not considered fruitless."

The task of the External Exploration Department, in the final analysis, is to find a colonizable alien world, a world of valuable resources. At the same time, finding alien civilizations is also an important task, whether it is a primitive civilization with great potential but still weak like the dragon people in the Kronos world, or a huge and advanced alien civilization like the star sea world .

Although, Captain Kita has repeatedly reiterated that the value of the returning beacon may be greater than that of the five of their exploration team——but this is just some kind of good-natured joke, and it should be used or used. Thinking of this, Priest couldn’t help but It's a little fortunate that they happened to bring this thing this time, otherwise they would have been trapped in this weird place forever.

However, when Priest asked the players to remain silent.

hum.

A dull hum sounded from one side of the hall.

A circular 'door' was opened.

A large amount of air was injected rapidly, and the turbid gas was mixed with gray-yellow spores, releasing extremely obvious fluctuations in magic power. In just a few seconds, the huge hall that was originally empty and pale was filled with air that obviously came from another world.

And a group of eight-legged fungi just walked out of the round gate and came to the five people bound by the magic circle on the crystal pillar.

This team of eight-legged fungi has arc-like magic shields rotating around them. They are not here for interrogation, but for other purposes—everyone in the exploration team held their breath and paid attention to these alien beings nervously. When he was planning to do something, five crystal pillars rose from the ground and floated in mid-air with a wave of magic.

The canopy above the head of an eight-legged fungus flickered with magical light, which seemed to be some kind of 'gesture' for casting spells. Afterwards, five translucent energy wires were connected to the crystal pillar, and it was just like this, pulling and floating The crystal pillar, and the five people on it began to walk.

Da da da, da da da.

The conversation between the eight-legged fungi relies on some kind of weird and sharp hissing sound, maybe even some kind of ultrasonic vibration, what the human ear can hear is only a partial part, but at this time, whether it is Priest or None of the others heard the slightest neighing, and all the eight-legged fungi moved forward silently and left the hall.

'Are they trying to get rid of us? ! '

Through the communicator that comes with the magic armor, the knights sent a text message. Judging from the punctuation marks, it can be judged that he is very nervous at this time: "cut us into pieces and throw them into the trash, or even the core of the magic engine... I heard The lord threw a lot of monsters into it at the beginning, and those who died were miserable, miserable, miserable! '

'shut up! ''Shut up! ''Shut up! ’ ‘Naughty beast! ’ Everyone, including Priest, was about to be stunned: ‘You crow mouth, talk again, even if I die, I will not let you go! '

The eight-legged fungi don't know about the communication within the Expeditionary Team, but they don't need to know either.

After leaving the vacuum-enclosed hall that seemed to be used as "isolation and confinement", the five people who had been proven to be free of infectious viruses and non-dangerous were brought into a real alien civilization environment by this team of gray-black eight-legged fungi.

Immediately, all members of the exploration team forgot to communicate, and were shocked and immersed in the scenes they saw.

The huge imprisoned hall is a rectangular metal cabin suspended in mid-air. Priest originally thought it was big enough, and it was already a huge building that humans could hardly adapt to, but what he didn't expect was that outside this hall , a building like this is not worth mentioning at all.

——What a vast world is this?

Above the hall, there is a rumbling, rumbling, constantly recombined 'metal sky'. Below the hall, there is a vast and boundless layer of 'biological continent' that will never end at a glance.

This is an artificial environment in a place with a round sky. The semi-metallic, half-living 'sky' is constantly wriggling. The fungal column-like material forms the main structure of the semicircular dome, and at the top of the dome, a huge The magic sun lamp released bright orange light, shining on the flat land.

And the earth itself is a living, wriggling column of fungi. On the ground, there are all kinds of towering biological buildings, and structures like beehives abound. Tens of thousands of eight-legged fungi come and go in and out of the beehive, carrying materials and performing work.

The imprisoned hall is a high-altitude extension facility of a super-giant central hive located in the center of the world. This group of eight-legged fungi took the crystal pillar of the sealing exploration team to sit on a cable car that looked very similar to pitcher plants, and then Just keep going with them.

There was no time to think, react or feel emotion, all the people present subconsciously turned on the camera function of the magic armor, and began to frantically record the surrounding video data.

Priest felt that his eyes were not enough at all—at this time, a group of people had been brought into the giant central beehive. The eight-legged fungi seemed to have no sense of secrecy, and let them observe the surrounding environment at will. The cable car, which goes vertically into one of the hive's entrances, goes to its very center.

And in such a short period of time, Priest observed countless extremely valuable intelligence information during the movement of the cable car.

By filling various organic substances and outputting a large amount of magic power, it should be the funnel-shaped white organ of the 'energy engine'.

Cutting, filling, and separating with magic power, there are dozens of eight-legged fungus working processing chambers.

Plant a certain kind of plant, or a production base of half plant, half biological weird things.

A translucent closed cabin soaked in a light golden liquid, one can vaguely see several eight-legged embryonic shadows floating in the cabin.

Priest even subconsciously forgot that he should hide his actions. He turned his head slightly, looked around, and looked around the moving cable car, which was a unique sight of alien civilization.

As the cable car went deeper, he saw that the internal structure of the hive became stronger and stronger, similar to metal. He saw countless prisms made of crystal-like transparent materials inserted in the bacteria pillars, as if they were controlling its growth and actions through the flow of magic power. Priest discovered that the deeper the honeycomb goes, the brighter the light becomes. The self-illumination phenomenon brought about by the high concentration of magic makes it possible to clearly see everything around here without any light source.

Not only Priest, but the five members of the exploration team saw that around the cable car, white bacteria bubbles began to appear floating in mid-air—the surface and interior of these bacteria bubbles were covered with obviously incomparable special bacteria. The runes and bacterial bubbles collide with each other and fuse with each other, forming an extremely huge bacterial bubble from time to time, and then this large bacterial bubble rapidly splits and turns into thousands of small bacterial bubbles again. They seem to be doing some kind of calculation and information exchange. Every time the vesicles fuse and split, it is equivalent to a spark of thinking and inspiration, and there will be a magical sound in midair.

It's too big.

If it is said that a giant beehive is the size of a human being, then the confinement hall, which is hundreds of meters long, wide, and 100 meters high, is only as big as a human fingernail. Going deep into the heart of the central hive, Priest felt as if he had entered an enormous biological center.

In the body of this creature, countless eight-legged fungi are moving back and forth to work, just like bees and ants, passing through one huge fungal structure after another, working hard and tirelessly.

And at the center of the hive, which was already bright enough to be as bright as noon, the eight-legged fungus and the destination of Priest and his party had already appeared. A giant hexagonal prism 'palace' at the bottom of the central hive.

'The Royal Court of the Shepherd'.

I started to let myself go