The system is four years ahead of schedule, but Weird is still a cub.

“Whether that guy is gone or hiding there, this actually gives us the best opportunity. Let’s hurry up and move what we want. Hephaestus, revise the operation plan.” Shen Ge continued, pointing to the outline of the base buried in silt.

“Pull it up!”

Under Shen Ge's instructions, a brand-new work plan was quickly formulated.

After determining the exact location of the "Pioneer Base," the massive sea fortress "Iron Heart" used several ultra-high-strength alloy cables, powered directly from the "Heart of God" engine, to sink huge drill bits and claw-like "multi-functional work platforms" into the seabed.

These platforms are like the dexterous arms extending from the "Iron Heart," waiting for the high-pressure jets to break through the silt before the giant mechanical claws grab away large chunks of rock and mud, gradually lifting the upper structure of the sunken "Pioneer Base" upwards.

On the third day of the excavation, when nearly a third of the upper metal dome of the base had been exposed, Kyle, who was on guard duty, discovered something strange again.

"Brother! Hephaestus! There seems to be something down there!"

The monitoring screen in the main control room switched to the detector carried by the engineering robot. On the huge metal base shell and the surrounding cleared seabed rock walls, there were tens of thousands of fist-sized, faintly warm... "eggs"!
Like the egg cases of some kind of parasite, they enveloped the entire base. Previously, they were covered by thick silt, which blocked their energy signals, but now they have been completely exposed as the excavation progresses.

"not good!"

Hephaestus's expression changed drastically upon seeing this: "The vibrations and light from our digging are 'stimulating' them, it's very likely..."

Before the words were even finished, the internal heat reaction rate of those "eggs" that were originally only slightly glowing on the monitoring screen was rising rapidly!
"Pfft-"

"Pfft!"

Accompanied by a series of chilling cracking sounds, the egg cases were torn open from the inside, and what emerged from them were not the deep-sea monsters that everyone had imagined, but rather pale-faced, long-limbed, facialless creatures with a body shape and structure highly similar to "humans"... "humanoid monsters"!
Like a group of pale "newborns" that have just emerged from their cocoons, after a brief period of adaptation, they all turned their faces towards the engineering robots that were working and the "predator" squad that was on guard around the perimeter!
"Fire!"

This time, Shen Ge didn't even need to give the order; Kyle's command had already resounded throughout the entire communication channel.

Ten black "Raider" armored vehicles immediately formed a solid defensive line, and their "chain-cutting spears" were instantly switched to "high-voltage plasma rifle" mode.

This is the latest upgrade component that Ellie's team has tailored for the "Raiders" based on the principles of the previous "Plasma Projectiles".

"Zizzi——!"

Brilliant blue plasma beams instantly tore through the seawater and shot into the newly hatched "humanoid monster tide"!

Wherever the plasma beam passed, those humanoid monsters were completely unable to put up any effective resistance. Their seemingly tough white skin was instantly vaporized and evaporated like thin paper in the face of the high temperature and high pressure plasma!

However, there are simply too many of them!

Tens of thousands of humanoid monsters emerged from every corner of the base. They moved nimbly, using all four limbs, and traversed the steep seabed cliffs and the base's outer shell as if walking on flat ground.

Their attack method is extremely bizarre; instead of claws and teeth, they extend an extremely sharp appendage from the palm of their hand, resembling a bone whip!
"Keng! Keng! Keng!"

Dozens of bone whips lashed fiercely at the armor of a "Raider," leaving deep white marks on the "flesh-blood alloy" surface of the armor.

"Damn it! These things are at least at the fourth level of power!" came the team member's exclamation over the communication channel.

"And they seem to be 'learning' our movements!"

The people in the command center also noticed this. After the initial chaotic charge, those humanoid monsters actually began to spontaneously imitate the tactical movements of the "Raiders" squad!

Some began using rocks as cover, while others even started attempting small-scale "encirclement" and "flanking maneuvers"!
They are like blank sponges, frantically absorbing the opponent's "knowledge" at an alarming rate and immediately transforming it into their own fighting instincts!
"Hephaestus!"

Shen Ge didn't think these humanoid monsters posed any threat to the Raiders and the Iron Heart. No matter how many there were, ants were still ants and couldn't shake an elephant.

Although the raider warriors mentioned that these humanoid, bizarre powers were close to the fourth rank, Shen Ge's eerie eyes only detected third-rank eerie energy fluctuations.

Even if there are many of these level-three monsters, he can crush them with one hand.

However, these humanoid monsters reminded Shen Ge of unpleasant "memories," the "cultivated organisms" he had previously seen inside the bellies of those fusion-type monsters.

“Compare their behavior patterns with data on ‘manufactured weird samples’ of ‘weird organizations’ in the database.”

Upon hearing this, Hephaestus immediately carried out Shen Ge's order, and a few seconds later, a similarity match result of 92.7% appeared on the screen.

“As expected…” Shen Ge’s eyes darkened. Much of the research data that Hephaestus compared was brought out from the “Pioneer Base” and entered into the Iron Heart database.

In other words, even though the eerie deep-sea monster king "left," the "Pioneer Base" is still raising monsters according to its "breeding room" setting.

For some reason, the strange creature that appeared on the seabed was not one of the many kinds of strange creatures that Shen Ge had hunted on the island, but rather a humanoid strange creature.

However, in order to continue the excavation of the "Pioneer Base" and Ark Zero, these strange phenomena must be cleared away.

Shen Ge instructed Hephaestus to activate the Iron Heart's defensive weapons, cooperating with the "Raiders" team to quickly clear out the monsters.

After five days of fighting, a large number of the strange eggs were destroyed, but as the excavation continued, more "eggs" appeared.

The excavation work, which was originally expected to be completed in twenty days, took nearly two months to excavate only a small part of the "Pioneer Base".

When the massive base, covered in algae and rust but with its main structure still intact, was revealed after the collapsed sections were removed and the sticky silt was washed away, Hephaestus realized that the "technology" of the old era was still fascinating. And for Hephaestus, the "test" had only just begun.

Because this Pioneer Base contains a large amount of research data from the old era, and Shen Ge only took a small portion of it, he asked Hephaestus to excavate as many components of the Pioneer Base as possible from the seabed and then integrate them into the Iron Heart.

While expanding "Iron Heart", it also allows "Iron Heart" to skip the construction of the research center and directly utilize the pioneer base.

Hephaestus, leading his "Ark Research Society," with the powerful "Hermes" biocomputer at its core, began to dismantle, analyze, reassemble, and link the "Pioneer" base.

They connected the small, dormant "backup energy cores" inside the base in parallel with the "Iron Heart" energy network, forming a "triple-core" power system!
Then, they integrated the "Pioneer" life support systems, which have extremely high purification and filtration capabilities, into the ecological cycle of "Eden," which greatly increased their agricultural output.

After cutting and salvaging the "Pioneer Base", Kyle's exploration team quickly located the Ark Zero hidden deep inside.

Unlike the distorted and deformed Pioneer Base, even though Ark Zero had collapsed, there wasn't a single scratch on its black shell made of an unknown metal.

"It's so, so beautiful..."

Inside the command center, Hephaestus gazed at the creation that embodied the highest wisdom of the "Forerunners," his whole body trembling with excitement: "This...this is the true 'creation of the gods'!"

The salvage operation went exceptionally smoothly. After all external securing devices were removed, the Iron Heart's giant towing cable easily pulled the warship, which was even larger than the Ark One, out of the water.

In the largest room of "Iron Heart," a "Special Analysis Workshop" converted from an entire oil tanker, hundreds of engineering robots are conducting various experiments around Ark Zero.

Hephaestus personally led his team, wanting to fully analyze this "divine creation" and find a way to open and activate it.

They used the highest-powered "logic probe" to try to link to its host system, but the probe was burned to scrap metal the moment it touched the hull by a higher-level "information firewall".

They used a newly developed "high-frequency cutting saw" that incorporated eerie claws in an attempt to physically dismantle the ship's hull from the outside.

As a result, the blade, which was powerful enough to cut through the "flesh-and-blood alloy," failed to leave even a white mark on the black outer shell.

They even risked using the "macro cannon" at its lowest power to bombard it with energy, but the fire was completely neutralized by an automatically deployed "space polarization shield" before it even reached the hull.

This ship is like an "iron coffin" with absolute defense and does not accept any "external commands"!
This conclusion disappointed everyone. They had gone to great lengths to retrieve the largest treasure, only to find that they couldn't open the treasure chest.

Finally, Shen Ge decided to enter Ark Zero through a "backdoor" as before, but Hephaestus, though inside, couldn't even start the system and wake up the console.

The technological gap between the two eras is too great. Although the technology of "Iron Heart" is currently developing well, it is completely bizarre biological technology and is completely out of touch with the old era.

Activating Ark Zero can't be rushed, so Shen Ge could only let Hephaestus try it slowly.

Since the "Zero Ark" was temporarily unable to handle the situation, "Iron Heart" devoted all its energy to digesting and absorbing the "Pioneer Base" that had just been "transplanted".

This is also a vast treasure trove that can bring about a qualitative change in the "Iron Heart." Under the leadership of Hephaestus and Ellie, the "Ark Research Society" began to excavate this legacy of the old era.

In a materials laboratory at the base, they discovered the complete formula and production process for the "flesh-and-blood alloy".

It turns out that the "pioneers" had already begun researching "flesh-blood alloy" long ago, and they possessed the most complete research data on the fusion of fusion monsters and metal.

This is not simply a matter of melting down bizarre biological tissues and metals; it requires a "cell-level" induced fusion process in a specific "resonance laboratory"!

When Hephaestus successfully replicated the first "Resonance Laboratory" and produced the first batch of "Pioneer Standard Type II Flesh Alloy," which was five times stronger than the "makeshift" alloy they had previously developed, the entire industrial department of Ironheart was in an uproar!

This means that all their weapons and armor can undergo a complete upgrade.

Then, they made an even more astonishing discovery at the base's "energy center": apart from the backup energy core integrated into the "Iron Heart," the base's main energy system was not another "subspace engine" as they had imagined.

Instead, it's a... "geothermal energy conversion array"!
The "pioneers" actually drove thousands of "energy-absorbing piles" tens of thousands of meters deep into the earth's crust directly into this underwater volcanic zone.

By drawing on the almost inexhaustible heat energy from the Earth's core, the entire base receives a continuous supply of "free" energy!
No wonder that even after thousands of years, when Shen Ge entered the Pioneer Base, energy was still being supplied in many places.

In particular, the energy device played a crucial role in enabling the bizarre cultivation process to continue!

"Monsters! These 'pioneers' are nothing short of scientific monsters!" Hephaestus exclaimed with heartfelt awe as he looked at the energy system design blueprints that far exceeded his expectations.

The biggest surprise, however, comes from the upgrade to the "Raider" armor.

In a separately sealed arsenal, they found the wreckage of a dilapidated suit of armor, whose design concept was more than a generation ahead of Hephaestus's "Raider" generation... the "Precursor Standard Powered Assault Armor".

half a month later.

When the "Raider II" prototype rolled off the production line, with a more menacing and bulky appearance, a small "short-range space jump" thruster added to its back, and its electromagnetic cannons on its arms upgraded to "chargeable phantom beam guns," Ironheart's military power was once again upgraded!

But Shen Ge wasn't interested in any of this. Although the technology at the Pioneer Base was of great help to Iron Heart, it was of little use to him.

His only concern from beginning to end was Ark Zero, and that... hibernation pod salvaged from the main control room of the "Pioneer Base"! (End of Chapter)