BIOLOGICAL SUPERCOMPUTER SYSTEM

Chapter 1312: The Vermillion Lake (2)

Erik turned to Mickey and Aaron.

“You guys need to scout the place. I know you want to rest, but if we do this today, we will be able to focus on other things tomorrow. It’s useless to move without knowing how the surroundings are, so please bear with me.”

“There is no problem, Erik.”

Erik nodded. “Aaron, I want you to scout the immediate surroundings with the slimes.” Once Aaron made them, he didn’t need to inject mana into them anymore. The problem was that ego injection required a lot of mana. Aaron had to slowly build his army, which was exactly what he was doing.

“If the slimes find something, they will probably attack it. This will help us understand what’s around us and will also serve as our first line of defense in case we get attacked.”

Aaron nodded. Erik then turned to Mickey. “As for you, I want you to scout the lake and find out how the area is. Even better if you find it. I won’t be so optimistic as to say we will find the lab today, but it’s certainly a possibility.”

Mickey nodded. “My bugs can cover most of the shoreline in a couple of hours.”

Gwen leaned forward, her brows furrowed. Erik gave her a waiting look. Gwen was staring at Erik, making it clear she had some questions on her mind and was debating whether to ask.

“What do we do once we find it? We also need to know how you plan on entering it. That place might be infested with thaids.”

Though he expected Mira to ask that kind of question, it looked like Gwen beat her to it.

“It depends on the situation,” Erik said. “We need information before committing to any action. For all we know, the facility could be abandoned or overrun. In the second case, we will need to carve our way in. We can’t leave the thaids there, but if there are blackguards, we might think about stealth.”

Aaron made a handful of slime that divided into several smaller creatures. “With them, we will know if there are any thaids nearby. Don’t expect the slimes to last for long, though.”

It was true that those creatures didn’t have organs and that their flesh, or better, the slime that made up their bodies, was corrosive, but a well-placed blow could scatter the whole lump of slime. If that happened, their ego would cease to be, and the slime would just turn into regular slime.

Erik turned to the others. “You start resting, especially the clones.”

They had been carrying the group for two weeks straight, marching through difficult terrain and harsh weather. Keeping alert for thaids when Mickey and Aaron slept or trained, and even defending them when Erik couldn’t.

While the Chimaeric Demons never voiced a complaint about the strain, their bodies were reaching their limits. Erik didn’t want and couldn’t allow the clones to be tired or out of shape, as it was dangerous.

The Chimaeric Demons’s faces showed signs of fatigue, despite their stoic demeanor. However, it was clear they appreciated Erik’s words.

They stood up and made their way to the stairs leading to the upper level of their shelter.

Erik placed the sleeping quarters on the floor above. It was close enough to the ground for quick action if needed, yet high enough to provide time if something entered the shelter.

There were separate spaces for each team member. The clones’ room was the largest, furnished with simple cots arranged in neat rows. Despite the spartan conditions, it was clear that Erik had put a lot of care into the shelter’s creation.

Verdant Architect was truly a great power.

One by one, they lay down on their cots, and within minutes, they fell asleep. The situation below was similar. The group rested, each in their own way. Ben was checking his power, and, thanks to the new neural links, it now covered more of his body, and the mana consumption decreased.

“How long should we expect to stay here?” Mira asked.

“It depends on what we find,” Erik said. “If the facility has the information we need, we’ll head northwest immediately. If not, we’ll need to bring people here to extract any remaining data before we can move on.”

“Again?”

“It’s not like I have an alternative… If we don’t find the data, we will be forced to go search for the blackguards around and ask any captor about their base, but this will make us lose a lot of time because it would be like searching for a needle in a haystack with the number of clones I have.”

Martha distributed food—a mixture of plants she had grown and meat the clones hunted. “I think we must do something about that,” she said.

“We can’t rely on the hope we find working equipment or paper documents that somehow survived centuries of wear. You need to get powers that will allow you to scout around.”

[She is right,] the system said. [The clones are a powerful force, but their maturing time is a handicap. We can’t rely on them for scouting unless we have the time to make them. You should work on something that allows you to make creatures like Aaron and Mickey so that you can scout a vast area in a relatively short time. If we do this, we wouldn’t need to rely on the labs to get the information we need.]

[It can be possible, but I still wouldn’t rely on this assumption.]

<Ok, then what do you suggest?>

[Do you remember where we found the Mirror centipede that was the basis of your clone-making ability?]

<Yes, it was…>

[Yes, near a lake. We can’t modify the clones without spending large amounts of DNA points, given how powerful the ability is and how many powers we gave them. We would need to weaken them to increase the maturing speed. However, finding another mirror centipede could change the situation.]

The biological supercomputer paused. [We might get the power again, merge it with something useful, and modify it so that you would be able to make clones in a shorter amount of time. We don’t need the creatures to be strong, only for them to have abilities suited for scouting and for them to be able to report to us.]

[Exactly.]

“I have something in mind about that,” Erik said to the others. “I will go search for something tomorrow. If I’m lucky, I will be able to get a solution to our problem in a relatively short time. We would have nothing to do while Aaron and Mickey search for the lab, so I might as well do this.”

“Just make sure you know what you’re doing,” Gwen said.

The group went to sleep. It wasn’t just the clones who were tired. All of them were. Aaron and Mickey kept searching around. The slimes wouldn’t need active control or mana from Aaron, so he went to sleep. Since Mickey found nothing and night came, he did the same a couple of hours later.

Erik remained in the central space talking to the biological supercomputer, debating about what power they could merge with the Mirror Centipede’s power in case they found it.

Night fell over the forest. Behind Martha’s branch wall, thaids were hunting in the darkness. Moonlight brightened the lake, where ripples hinted at something large dwelling beneath its surface.