Chapter 105: The Planet’s Parasite
Cillin used a folding knife to pick through the fish’s stomach. By now the big fish was completely dead, and the inside of its body was undergoing a transformation.
Mm?
Cillin’s hand paused, and a black shadow shot right out of the stomach. Cillin’s other empty hand caught it like lightning.
It was a strip of something dark green in color and about the length of a finger. It was dark enough to be mistaken as black colored at first glance. A huge mouth opened from its head area, and it let out a shrill cry that caused pain to people’s ears. There were plenty of busy people whose attention was drawn by the thing in Cillin’s hand.
“Wah, what’s that? It looks like it’s pretty tasty!” The gray cat was planning to run to a side and fall asleep, but after it discovered the thing it came back eagerly to Cillin’s side.
“Find one yourself if you want to eat. There’s more inside the fish’s body.” Cillin said.
The gray cat sniffed the worm-like thing’s scent, and with a complete disregard for cleanliness, dove straight into the fish’s stomach to hunt for food.
“What’s that?” Shawton came over and asked.
“This is probably a kind of parasite. I’ve read before that some people had found parasites inside deep sea fishes. Although this fish doesn’t live beneath the sea, the right conditions are almost all there. I’ve heard that the parasites who live inside of the bodies of deep sea fishes are pretty powerful.” Cillin observed the struggling parasite in his hand and put its mouth to a rock at the side.
Pop——
A hole appeared on the rock where the parasite had bitten. Everyone who saw this sucked in a cold breath. Could something this powerful really be just a parasite? If it had lived inside a human body, then wouldn’t that person be as dead a dodo? There were no human bones tough enough to be gnawed on by it.
The parasite actually struggled for a while longer before finally coming to a stop after Cillin had cut off its head with his knife. From this, one could see exactly how tenacious the parasite was.
Cillin picked up his knife and began searching inside the fish’s stomach once more, but the parasites inside the fish had almost all been eaten by the gray cat. The fellow was a pretty fast eater.
“Hey, wait up, will you? Leave some of those things for me.” Cillin tapped the gray cat’s head with his wrist knife and said.
The gray cat that was just about to bite down on the thing inside its mouth spat, “These things are pretty tasty.”
“Of course. These parasites feed on its host’s essences.” Cillin picked out many round balls the size of mung beans and stored them inside a special container. These balls were the parasites’ eggs.
Cillin kicked the gray cat who had slipped into the fish’s stomach and made a mess of green blood all over itself into the river for a bath. He forbad it to come up shore until it had completely cleaned itself.
After he was finished with the arrangements, Shawton again took Cillin and the gray cat to the next team’s location. It was a land of snow and ice, and it was also the coldest place in the entire planet. There was ice and snow as far as the eyes could follow.
The gray cat found two types of ores in that location. One was transparent, and the other was white in color.
The transparent ice ore could be considered a special kind of ore. It wasn’t an energy ore, and it could not provide any power whatsoever. However, it was incredibly dense and was made almost completely out of H2O. It was a compressed high density water crystal that would expand to about fifty or a hundred times its current volume if it was converted into liquid form. On the other hand, if it was subjected to an ultra low temperature environment, then it would absorb the surrounding ice into itself, assimilating them and ‘growing’ bigger slowly over time. One could say that it was a fabulous crystal that could be used to store water, and it was very useful to the Squadron’s long journey.
The other white colored ore was an energy ore. It could be stimulated to let out a cold beam, and any object that was shone on by it would instantly become frozen.
Prior to the discovery, the squad had cold beam guns and airborne cold beam cannons, but no greater cold beam weapons that would fit on a starship. However, the white ores could achieve the level of lethality they were looking for, so the technical team was currently preparing to utilise them and develop a whole new freezing weapon.
Excluding these places, the ore deposits at the remaining teams’ locations were more or less the same. By the end of it, the gray cat could not be bothered to even lick those ores. It was tired of them already.
Everyone was excited now that they had learned about the ore deposits’ locations. However, Cillin did not participate in the mining, and instead returned to the starship and slept for two days straight. Absorbing the energies had caused a huge effect on the chips inside his body. While his genotype had evolved, Cillin also had to seize control and master these changes instead of letting them transform him whenever and however they wanted to. Otherwise, there’s no telling if he would transform into a monster.
Shawton had already reported the planet to the A Squadron, and the A Squadron immediately responded by sending their people to the charted coordinates Shawton gave them. What the Sixth Squadron needed to do was to keep mining while they were waiting for the A Squadron’s arrival before handing over the planet. After that, they would continue on with the mission. The plans they had for Sector Z were not done yet, and although these energy ores were enough to raise their influence within the Vanguard, it was a given to finish what needed to be finished.
It must be said that Shawton had made the right choice when he first charted their path. From the moment they began travelling until now, they had not run into anyone of the same trade except at the start of their journey when they were still around the periphery of Sector Z. Moreover, the deeper they went, the less likely it was that they would run into another Hunter regiment, and up to this point, they hadn’t run into another exploration team like theirs around this planet.
Sector Z was huge. No one could say for sure the things they would encounter, the sacrifices they had to make and the rewards there was to gain in the future. But no matter what lies ahead of them, it was the path they had chosen, and they would tread it to the end.
Meanwhile, the logistics team took advantage of the time gap to stock up on food. With energy and food supplies, the latter part of the trip would become smoother.
There were technicians who surmised a conclusion based on the variable data: Due to the effects of the energy fields on this planet, there was a limit to how much they could mine from this planet; a break-even point. If they tipped the balance, then this planet would fall into chaos, and humans would become unable to live on this planet for long. If the situation was serious, the planetary habitability of this planet might even fall from Rank B to Rank C, or worse.
After sleeping for two days, Cillin once again returned to the planet.
“Hey Cary, have you seen Cillin around?” Beaver asked. The dude who slept for two days straight had suddenly gone missing.
“That fellow’s obsessed with parasites recently. He went out to look for more of those things with Enji.” Cary could not help but shiver at the thought of those disgusting worms.
Right now, Cillin was watching Enji dissecting a crab. This crab was something they encountered by chance beside the green river. It was about five meters width, and it was covered in thick green hair. At the side, the gray cat was currently breaking open its pincer and gnawing happily at its flesh.
Enji clipped a worm hidden inside the crab’s lungs.
“Oh, I didn’t think that we would actually find one.” Enji smiled and pulled it out into the open.
“I’ve seen a parasite inside a normal crab before, but not this one. It should be almost the same, though. We can research it when there’s time. This kind of parasite has a high rate and degree of infection. It lives inside the host’s lungs, and it will stimulate and damage the host’s lung tissue, causing coughs and hemoptysis. Some would even invade the brain and cause paralysis.”
What Enji had just described was just the normal parasites. The one he’s holding right now was probably a lot more scarier.
“Normally, we would not bring a parasite inside the starship easily. It is just too risky, and if we lose control, then everyone on the ship is at risk of losing their lives. Never look down on this wee bit of thing.”
Cillin and Enji’s communicators rang in the midst of their conversation.
Cillin turned on the communicator, and Cary’s huge face filled the hologram above it, “Cillin, the A Squadron’s here!”