BIOLOGICAL SUPERCOMPUTER SYSTEM-Chapter 1272: A wicked place (9)

The clones gave a better look at the vault door's sides, particularly in the area where the metal met the surrounding concrete walls.

"The frame's reinforced," one clone said. "There is actually no way to blast this thing off without making noise."

"Yeah," another clone said. "…but the walls themselves can be worked with…"

The walls were made of reinforced concrete. This meant that while they might find problems destroying it because of the noise, they could actually drill a hole in it without making much of it.

"That's going to make some noise, but not as much as destroy the door or taking it off its hinges."

"Yeah." A clone moved along the wall. "The concrete's old here, weakened by moisture and time. We could drill through this point."

He went in front of the area he wanted to drill into.

A large patch of dark mold stained that part, spreading like a map across the damp surface. Its edges formed fractal patterns in shades of deep green and black.

The moisture had been at work here for decades, maybe centuries, weakening the concrete's structural integrity beneath the fungal growth. There were many of such patches on the wall, but this was the largest, and this wall section was presumably the weakest.

"Who wants to do the honors?" a clone asked.

"I'll take point on this," another clone volunteered, not because he liked it, and stepped forward. His body was already being shapeshifted and reshaped into the necessary biological tools, something the clone took from some weird thaids he saw on Mur during his stay.

It was similar to a diamond drill. The creature looked like a wasp, but instead of having normal limbs, it had two of these giant drills on its topmost legs.

The clone drilled through the concrete, carefully balancing between hard drilling—which would alert the bugs with noise—and soft drilling; which would waste their limited time.

However, soon after, all the clones started working. Some actually helped the clone make a hole in the wall, while others watched for any approaching bug.

In the end, they made a small hole, barely wider than their insect bodies. Some air whispered through the opening, carrying not-so-pleasant scents and sounds.

The stench hit them as soon as the other side of the wall got pierced. It was a nauseating mix of rotting organic matter, fungal growth, and something distinctly…shitty.

"By the master," one clone gagged, "it smells like someone left a protein shake in their locker for a century."

"More like a thousand gym socks had babies with a compost heap," another said.

"Focus on the mission, guys."

Even if the clone said that, everyone could see his disgust. "But yes, this might be the worst thing I've smelled since that time the master went into the sewers back in Frant."

He was talking about the sewers where the Hinian forces threw the citizens' bodies.

"At least we don't have human noses right now," a fourth clone said. "Small mercies."

However, not all the clones were in the mood to joke. "Something's weird in there," he said. "The air... it bad… but it's not stagnant as I expected."

They immediately understood what it meant. There was mold on that wall, meaning that the place was not ventilated enough and that it was rather humid.

However, the air coming from the hole was not humid at all. It was like the reason for the mold was because there was water on the other side, but the air said there was another opening on the other side of the room.

One by one, they squeezed through the hole. The chamber beyond stretched upward into darkness, its ceiling lost in shadows. But darkness didn't reign completely.

Patches of bioluminescent fungi clung to a massive tear in the far wall, casting a blue-green glow across the area.

The faint light revealed something that made them freeze.

A colossal insectoid body dominated the chamber. Its segmented body dwarfed even the largest guard thaids they'd seen, stretching nearly thirty feet in length.

The creature had many enormous eyes, each as big as a plate, that shined under the blue-green light. While its hard outer shell showed signs of many old fights, there was one clear mark that stood out from the rest—a burn mark that someone had made on its chest. It was human made; it was clear; it was obvious, because the clones immediately recognized that brand.

"The Silver Line Corporation logo," a clone said. "They marked it like livestock."

Yet it was likely just made just to make sure everyone eventually knew it was them who made it. It was rather idiotic, truth be told, but they must have had a reason to do something like that. After all, the Silver Line Corporation was not made by idiots.

Well, perhaps to create thaids, and lose control of them, one must have been rather moronic.

Yet they still achieved something like that through bioengineering and were also the reason humanity got brain crystal powers.

They were also responsible for the deaths of billions and losing an entire continent.

The creature's abdomen pulsed as it deposited eggs into carefully prepared chambers. Each egg sac was larger than a human torso, semi-transparent, and gleaming with an inner light.

"A queen," another clone said. "Not just any queen—this is what they were working on here. Project Synthesis..."

The pieces started falling into place. The military installations, the research labs, and the security measures—they all centered around this creature.

"It broke free," a clone said. "Killed everyone, took over the facility. And now..."

"Now it's building an army," another said. The insects were behaving differently here. They were already smart as they were, but here they were likely under the influence of this creature. It gave them purpose, it gave them focus, and it made them smarter.

However, that wasn't all. This thing was a thaid progenitor, without a doubt much stronger than the human abomination Erik found in Liberty Watch.

The main concern wasn't just that it was stronger than the creatures on Mannard—it was how much more powerful it was compared to those on Mur, especially given the vast difference between the human abomination and Mannard's creatures.

If it followed the same logic, it must have been at least twice as strong as the average thaid here.

Back then, Erik could do nothing about it, and the creature was many times stronger than all the other thaids in the area, despite not having a brain crystal.

This was a thaid—one of the bio-engineered creatures that triggered the development of brain crystals in humans through the Silver Line Corporation's experiments.

Given that this… queen… was clearly an advanced prototype created by Silver Line Corporation, it almost certainly possessed a brain crystal of its own, likely even more powerful than those found in humans or regular thaids.

The problem was that without the biological supercomputer; the clones had no way to know if and what the creature had or how powerful it really was.

The source of this c𝐨ntent is freeweɓnovēl.coɱ.

The clones knew better than to assume this creature was weak just because it was one of the first thaids. On the contrary, its survival on Mur proved it possessed immense power.