[ID: Chu Guang]

[Genetic sequence: Administrator (Sixth Stage)]

[Level: LV40→LV50]

[Attributes]

[Strength: 45→60]

[Agility: 35→45]

[Constitution: 40→50]

[Perception: 39→50]

[Intelligence: 40→53]

[Wild Instinct: Wild Instinct can be awakened in an extreme state. All attributes will be increased by 10 to 15% within the duration, and the accumulation speed of fatigue value will be increased by 20 to 30%.]

[Mind Deterrence: You will be able to produce a psychic pressure effect on the weaker intelligent being, weakening their will to resist.]

[Hive Mind: Share 3% to 15% of intelligence attributes with the weaker intelligent being, enabling them to gain inspiration and thinking speed bonuses. The effect is affected by various factors such as distance, number of people, acceptance level, and more. The maximum distance is 10 meters.]

[Victory Call: Vocal cords vibrate at a special frequency, infusing shouts with courage, making those who resonate with your cause feel an invincible determination.]

[Unanalyzable: (New)]

Shelter 404, Infirmary.

Sitting on the scanner bed, Chu Guang stared at the blade he had just crushed into a spiral with his bare hands, his eyes full of disbelief.

He had returned from West Continent Municipality just last night, barely slept before falling into a vague dream, and woke up soaked in sweat.

As usual, he left the laundry to Little Seven and immediately contacted Hyrja for a check-up.

Sure enough, his genetic sequence development had broken through again.

To be honest, he knew his body was abnormal, but he never expected it to reach the point where he could twist a blade with his fingers.

The skin of his palm had a tiny cut. The blood on the blade was still wet, yet the wound had already almost vanished.

It wasn’t just strength either. From the keratin cells on his skin to the capillaries beneath his dermis, from muscle fibers to his organs and bones, every part of him was evolving beyond human limits.

Even if his outer form looked normal, it had in fact been replaced by something else entirely.

As Hyrja explained, a normal human’s DNA only expressed about 2% of its genes, already the biological limit for the species.

But his DNA, being artificially engineered, had a selective expression rate of 4% or higher across the entire genetic library.

To use a crude but vivid analogy, ordinary people were like consumer cars. They had four wheels and one engine. There might be different brands and models but all were road-worthy.

Awakened individuals were like Formula 1 racers still had four wheels and an engine, but anyone could see they were a different beast altogether. They could drive on a street, but no one would dare issue them a license.

And Chu Guang? He was an F1 car whose engine wasn’t even combustion-based anymore, his four wheels and engine had been replaced with plasma thrusters and a controlled-fusion core. While others drove on the road, he flew above it.

At that point, he could no longer be called a car at all, he was something entirely different.

Indeed, reality matched that description.

The 1.1 ton exoframe on his body felt no heavier than a padded coat.

While others relied on fusion batteries to move the armor, his muscle strength was enough to operate it freely.

He figured if he went back to the player’s Earth in his current state, they would lock him up as an alien for study, and fair enough, his status panel did look otherworldly.

An average person’s base Strength was 5, a punch had the strength of roughly 50 kilograms. His Strength was 60, 12 times that, so about 600 kilograms.

Of course, that was just raw output. Momentum calculations suggest the impact force could be one to two times for normal people, and three to five times for trained fighters.

In other words, a rough estimate meant his punch could hit with a ton of force?!

That thought sparked his curiosity, he suddenly wanted to try swinging with full power just to see.

But as soon as he made a fist, a sharp cough cut him off.

“Don’t you dare,” Hyrja warned.

Seeing her staring warily at him, Chu Guang paused and gave an embarrassed smile, loosening his fist. “I was just curious.”

“Curious how long it would take to destroy my lab?” Hyrja sighed. “I’ll save you the trouble. One punch from you is basically a truck collision. It’s not just 12 times the strength of an ordinary human. Your muscle fibers and bones have an entirely different structure. Still, I advise you not to test that against an actual truck. Even if you must, at least get titanium bones first. No matter how tough they are, they’re still bones.”

“I’m not that bored... By the way, what’s that Unanalyzable line at the bottom?” Chu Guang asked, noticing the new entry on his status panel.

Hyrja seemed to have expected the question. She pulled a chair over, sat down facing him, and projected a hologram. A double-helix DNA spiral appeared, labeled with rows of light-blue tags, expressed gene fragments, their messenger RNA transcripts, and the resulting protein chains produced in ribosomes.

Even though the data was highly visualized, it was still way beyond Chu Guang’s understanding.

Realizing her boss was still an idiot with higher base stats, Hyrja kept it simple. “Unanalyzable means exactly that. Your body has started synthesizing proteins I’ve never seen before, with unknown functions. I won’t lecture you on basic genetics, just imagine the body as a construction site. You’re producing strange-shaped bricks and building something I can’t identify.”

“There’s no record of this in the shelter’s database, so I can’t predict the outcome. We’ll have to monitor you for a while.”

Chu Guang was surprised. “Even you can’t tell what this enhancement is?”

“That’s normal, I’m a researcher, not a prophet. And don’t be so sure it’s an enhancement.” Her lips curved playfully as she leaned closer. “What if it’s a genetic disease? Say, you might suddenly grow two heads on your shoulders. It’s not impossible.”

Though she was mostly teasing, the truth was his genome was clearly synthetic, designed with principles she didn’t understand.

The same was true for most shelter residents.

Their very existence was singularity-level technology. It went beyond common understanding.

Still, she was mostly trying to scare him a bit, to make him take his own safety seriously instead of acting reckless just because he was tough.

Unfortunately, he didn’t look remotely intimidated. He just smiled and replied, “If it were something like that, you wouldn’t be joking about it.”

Hyrja rolled her eyes and slumped back in her chair. “Fair. Next time I’ll practice my terminal-diagnosis tone.”

Chu Guang chuckled, “So basically, we’ll keep observing what this change is?”

Hyrja nodded. “Exactly. I recommend reducing your check-up interval from seven days to three, two if possible. Honestly, I’m very interested in your physiology. Watching the whole process of your body’s transformation would be a huge help to my research.”

Under her intense stare, Chu Guang cleared his throat and closed the hologram, buttoning up his shirt.

“Maybe after the Tide, I’ll think about it. Can’t spare that much time right now.”

As he stood up from the scanner bed, Hyrja suddenly remembered something. “Speaking of the Tide,” she said, her tone turning serious, “I need to tell you something.”

Seeing her expression, Chu Guang’s back straightened immediately. “What is it?”

“Thea.”

That strange name made him frown.

“Thea?”

Hyrja nodded grimly. “A new Mother Body has appeared in the city center. According to Little Feather’s intel, its name seems to be Thea. Our researchers took spore samples from the Clearspring City and found a mutant strain unlike any before.”

“Mutant strain?” Chu Guang blinked. “There weren’t any in previous Tides?”

“Of course there were,” Hyrja said patiently. “The Tide itself is how Mutant Slime Mold expands its population. They evolve in the process. But this year is different.”

Chu Guang fell silent, waiting for her to continue.

After a moment’s pause, Hyrja tried to explain in simpler terms he could understand... “According to the data I collected from Boulder Town, while Mutant Slime Mold do undergo collective evolution during previous Tides, those mutations usually develop toward three main traits, faster reproduction, faster regeneration, and tougher outer armor.”

Realizing something was off, Chu Guang asked cautiously, “Then what about this year?”

“This year, it’s fire resistance.”

What the hell?!

Chu Guang was stunned. “Fire resistance?!”

Seeing his shocked expression, Hyrja nodded slightly. “It sounds unbelievable, but that’s what our observations indicate.”

“Wait... are you saying there are carbon-based life forms that can’t be burned?”

“Not exactly can’t be burned,” she explained, “But the spores released by this new strain of Mutant Slime Mold exhibit biological traits we’ve never seen before. When exposed to intolerable heat, the large carbon-chain molecules inside their spore sacs rapidly bind with surrounding oxygen under the influence of biological catalysts. Their volume expands quickly until the sacs rupture, releasing massive amounts of carbon dioxide.”

“After this process, the spores die almost instantly, but in the meantime, they consume the oxygen around them at an alarming rate. Based on simulations from the Biological Research Institution, at standard atmospheric pressure, once the spore concentration index reaches 500, the oxygen content in the area can drop from 20.95% to 10.1% in just 30 seconds, at the cost of only 80% of the spores’ mass. If the index hits 800, that same process completes in 10 seconds.”

“And since most combustion processes already consume oxygen, while the new spores are released, the oxygen level in the area would keep falling, weakening or even halting oxidation-reduction reactions entirely.”

In most cases, when the oxygen content dropped below 14%, ordinary combustibles would extinguish.

If those mutated spores could really bring oxygen down to 10.1%, the impact wouldn’t just neutralize incendiary bombs, even synthetic fuel engines and generators might stall out.

Fortunately, hydrogen combustion only required a minimum oxygen level of 5.9%, otherwise the New Alliance’s hydrogen-burning air batteries would be finished too. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

Chu Guang’s expression darkened.

To prepare for the Tide, the New Alliance had stockpiled nearly 1,000 tons of incendiary bombs and close to 300,000 tons of fuel for napalm production.

And now his researcher was telling him... they might not even be effective against the damn creatures?!

“The Slime Mold doesn't need to breathe?” he asked.

Hyrja’s tone grew grim. “That’s exactly what puzzles me. If they create massive anoxic zones in Clearspring City, their biological functions should also be impaired. My only hypothesis is that the new Mother Body’s spawns have a higher tolerance to anoxic environments. After all... they did come from space.”

Chu Guang was silent for a moment, pressing his fingers to his temple. “Well, it’s still good we found this out early. I refuse to believe any life form exists without weaknesses.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Hyrja said. “Maybe in practice, the incendiaries won’t perform that badly. We’re already working on alternative countermeasures... Please tell me you didn’t only prepare fire bombs?”

“Of course not,” Chu Guang sighed. “We would never pin our victory on a single weapon. Still, incendiaries play an irreplaceable role against Mutant Slime Mold, they’re the most cost-effective option and perfect for clearing corpses. If they fail, this war will be far harder than expected.”

Maybe they had used too many firebombs in the past.

Come to think of it, Boulder Town’s strategy against the Tides had always been the same. Napalm bombardments followed by mercenaries moving in to tear down some weaker nests.

Even the New Alliance had adopted that tactic, and even purchased a few enhanced models from Boulder Town itself.

Chu Guang fell into deep thought.

If the the Slime Mold kept evolving unchecked, they’d only become a bigger problem later.

“We’ll have to eliminate the threat in Clearspring City’s center once and for all.”

Then, suddenly, an idea struck him.

“What if... we let one Mother Body devour another?”

It wasn’t his own invention, he’d seen players on the forums discussing it. Some even encouraged Falling Feather to bring Little Feather to the battlefield to see if it could eat the other side.

He remembered Hyrja once mentioning that Mutant Slime Mold engaged in intraspecies conflict. Slime Mold belonging to different Hives often attacked and consumed each other to compete for sunlight, land, and organic matter.

Hyrja blinked at his question, momentarily stunned.

“Let one Mother Body devour another... that’s... actually not impossible. Theoretically, Mutant Slime Mold with large genetic differences can consume each other. It’s one of their methods of acquiring genetic information and strengthening themselves. But... a Mother Body devouring another in a large scale battle has no known precedent.”

Indeed, not just the New Alliance, even the Enterprise, whose tendrils extended across the entire eastern half of the continent, had never seen such a case.

Since the New Alliance and the Enterprise had signed a joint research agreement on Mutant Slime Mold, data from two centuries of studies conducted by them and their allies was open to the New Alliance. Yet even after reviewing everything, Hyrja found no record of such an extreme event.

And besides, Little Feather’s main body was sealed on Shelter B6. The sheer mass of it filled the entire server room. It couldn’t even fit through the door, much less the elevator.

Eventually, it might fuse completely with the entire floor.

So how could it possibly devour anything?

As for bringing Thea, the newborn Mother Body, into Shelter 404? That was out of the question. One mistake, and the shelter would suffer the same fate as B6 once did.

Seeing Hyrja fall silent, Chu Guang’s eyes flickered as he continued, “What if a shelter resident carrying a biological symbiote were to inject it directly into the Mother Body or the Hive?”

If that could destroy the Hive from within, he could even consider loading players into artillery shells, performing a surgical strike straight into the core of the Hive.

Of course, he wasn’t talking about those weak things at the periphery. He meant the central Hive in the city center!

Cruel as it sounded, after surviving winter and spawning countless new lives, the creature should be pretty drained, right?

There would never be a better opportunity!

Hyrja opened her mouth, her face twisting into an odd expression before she finally managed to speak. “This... Whose idea is that?”

Chu Guang sighed. “It won’t work?”

“No...” Hyrja shook her head, her expression complicated. “Quite the opposite. This stupid idea... might actually work.”

“?!”

Wait, seriously?!

It might actually work?!