Trickster Hunter.

Chapter 560 Puppet Army

Soon, one after another, shadowy humanoid monsters crawled out from the edge of the pit. Before the mechanical soldiers could even raise their guns to fire, they were tackled to the ground by these humanoid monsters and instantly disassembled into a pile of parts.

"A humanoid monster?" Chen Jing's heart tightened. He didn't even bother to ask a question. He snatched the laptop from the young woman next to him and switched the screen to the surveillance cameras of the dismantled mechanical soldiers.

The mechanical soldier that Chen Jing had cut off had its head torn off and thrown to the ground, so the scene was from a low angle—countless humanoid monsters passed through the scene. They had human limbs and torsos, pale skin, and bald heads without any facial features. At first glance, they looked like mannequins in a shopping mall.

……

At the same time, on the other side of the battlefield.

Zhulong lowered his tactical binoculars, turned to look at Sun Hang, and said, "It seems that these humanoid monsters are puppets constructed from mycelium. If I remember correctly, you should have a similar ability, right?"

“Hmm.” Sun Hang nodded. “Next time I need to apply for a patent for my abilities, so that they won’t be stolen.”

Sun Hang had already guessed how these mycelial puppets appeared—although the Sun Hang replicated by "Desire" only existed in Sun Hang's perception and could not use Sun Hang's abilities in the real world... but the carrier of "Desire" in the real world was a fungal monster, so theoretically, "Desire" could simulate the operations that Sun Hang performed through the mycelium of the Tai Sui.

Although the "desire" has vanished, a portion of its information has been permanently preserved in the meme fragments of the giant cordyceps. Therefore, Sun Hang was not at all surprised that the giant cordyceps could create such a batch of mycelial puppets.

It's just unknown how powerful these mycelial puppets are – after all, the mycelium of *Tai Sui* and the mycelium of *Cordyceps* have huge differences in physical properties alone.

"Concentrate fire! Prioritize attacking the nearest humanoid monster!" Chen Jing shouted. His hunters and mercenaries used the vehicles surrounding the camp as cover and set up their weapons. A barrage of gunfire and explosions immediately rang out.

Tens of thousands of bullets tore through the dense spore fog and penetrated the humanoid monsters that were climbing up. The group of humanoid monsters immediately fell down like harvested wheat. Those humanoid monsters on the edge of the pit were thrown backward and fell back into the pit.

A cheer erupted from the crowd—for hunters and mercenaries, a monster that could be killed with bullets was a good monster. In the face of modern weaponry, humanoid monsters like these were easy prey. This one-sided, crushing battle was as exhilarating as mowing down enemies in a video game.

"Cease fire!" Seeing that the first wave of humanoid monsters that crawled out of the pit had been mostly wiped out, Chen Jing immediately ordered a ceasefire. "Release the remaining humanoid monsters! Try to collect their memetic samples, or directly conduct live containment."

“…Understood.” The hunters and mercenaries killed more than a dozen more humanoid monsters before reluctantly stopping their shooting.

At this point, only a handful of the humanoid monsters that had crawled out of the pit were still standing.

Instead of retreating, these humanoid monsters charged straight toward the hunting party's defensive position like zombies who knew no fear.

Two hundred meters, one hundred meters, fifty meters... all the way down to fifteen meters, when the mycelial patterns on the skin of these humanoid monsters could be seen with the naked eye, Chen Jing waved to his subordinates.

"Bang! Bang!" Two crisp gunshots rang out, and two humanoid monsters were cut in two by a large-caliber anti-materiel sniper rifle. Immediately afterwards, more than a dozen hunters with melee weapons jumped over the cover and rushed towards the few remaining humanoid monsters.

These humanoid monsters were actually quite strong in terms of physical attributes and combat ability; otherwise, the mechanical soldiers wouldn't have been wiped out so quickly. However, in the current situation, the hunters who dared to rush out first were mostly melee specialists. With their numerical advantage, these hunters quickly and easily took down the last few humanoid monsters.

"Collect meme samples before the next batch of monsters climbs up!" Chen Jing ordered. "Anyone who successfully collects meme samples will receive an extra 50,000!"

The moment the extra reward of 50,000 was announced, those who hadn't rushed out immediately regretted it—in their eyes, these humanoid monsters were nothing special, and if they had been a little bolder, they might have gotten the 50,000 directly into their pockets.

The hunters who rushed out took out their tools for collecting meme samples—a large syringe filled with a special solvent. They simply injected the solvent into the monster, waited for the solvent to react with the monster's body tissue, and then drew the solvent back into the syringe to seal it. The meme sample was then collected.

This is the simplest version of the meme collection tool, which can only collect meme samples from biological creatures. However, it is cheap, and the price for bulk purchases is only a few hundred yuan per tool. Considering that the target of this hunt is a fungal creature, the three families have issued three such collection tools to each member of the hunting party.

"Remember, wait until the solvent changes color before pulling it back; only then is the collection successful!" Chen Jing said to the group of hunters who were collecting meme samples.

"I know, Young Master Chen, don't worry. We're not those rookies on their first mission—uh!" Before the hunter could finish speaking, he let out a short scream. He looked down with some difficulty and found that an arm belonging to a humanoid monster had pierced through his chest.

"They're not quite dead yet!" A cry of alarm immediately erupted from the crowd.

Not only that hunter, but several other hunters who were collecting meme samples were also attacked—and what attacked them were the "body parts" of those humanoid monsters.

Even the two humanoid monsters that had been torn in two by anti-materiel sniper rifles crawled back together and reassembled into a complete body.

Those who had previously been filled with regret suddenly felt secretly relieved... Luckily, they were cowardly, no, cautious, otherwise they would probably be the ones dead now.

Without Chen Jing giving the order, the hunters and mercenaries opened fire. At such close range, the corpses were instantly torn to shreds by the dense hail of bullets… Even so, the broken mycelium continued to crawl towards the group. Worse still, as the bodies of these humanoid monsters were torn apart, large amounts of spores were released from their bodies… The dozen or so hunters who rushed out were instantly parasitized by the spores and joined the ranks of these humanoid monsters.

"Damn it! Are these things unkillable?" a hunter with a light machine gun shouted as he fired, "They're all blasted to smithereens, how can they still move?!"

"Fire! Use fire!" a veteran hunter immediately shouted. "Most fungal monsters are afraid of fire. Burn these mycelia to ashes, and they should be dead!"

"Where's the flamethrower! Bring the flamethrower here!"

……

"They made a fatal mistake," said Zhulong, who was watching from a distance.

“Yes… to put it simply, a mycelium puppet is just a clump of mycelium woven together. Its essence is the mycelium of fungal monsters. Whether it’s humanoid or any other shape… bullets and melee weapons can hardly destroy such a thing completely,” Sun Hang said.

However, one thing puzzled him slightly—Sun Hang's own mycelium puppets required at least one mycelium to be connected to the main body. Once the connection was broken, the mycelium puppets would quickly lose control and disintegrate. However, this army of puppets created by the giant cordyceps did not have mycelium connected to the cordyceps body, and the distance between them and the cordyceps body was far beyond the limit of Sun Hang's control over the mycelium puppets.

The giant cordyceps has optimized the mycelial puppet? It went from wired remote control to wireless remote control?

Or perhaps it was simply transformed into a self-regulating intelligent puppet?
Sun Hang suddenly thought of the scorpions and gerbils that had been parasitized by spores during his previous experiments. In a sense, animals parasitized and controlled by spores and these mycelial puppets are essentially the same kind of thing. And judging from the behavior of the parasitic animals, these spores have a clear ability to "act independently".

They parasitize any organism they come into contact with, then use the host's body to plunder more nutrients, and finally bring them back to the cordyceps.

Each spore and each hyphae, like an ordinary individual in a carnivorous ant colony, is part of the entire "swarm".

……

Just as everyone was calling for flamethrowers, a heavy powered armored vehicle suddenly leaped over the cover formed by the vehicles and landed in the center of the battlefield.

Each of the power armor's arms was equipped with a double-barreled molten lava gun. The scorching flames instantly engulfed the entire battlefield, burning the mycelium golems to ashes in the blink of an eye, while the bodies of the parasitized hunters quickly carbonized and collapsed to the ground.

At this moment, an interesting scene unfolded for Sun Hang—after discovering that their "kindred spirits" had been incinerated, the other "surviving" parasitized hunters turned around and ran towards the pit without looking back.

“That perfectly matches my guess.” Sun Hang nodded. “Whether it’s spores or mycelial puppets, their purpose is to extract nutrients for their host. That’s the underlying logic of their actions. After parasitizing the human hunter, they originally wanted to obtain more nutrients before returning to their host—just like the scorpion and bamboo rat we threw in before. But after realizing that the nutrients they had already obtained might be burned by their ‘prey,’ they would choose to immediately carry the existing nutrients back to their host… That’s not greedy at all.”

“You could call it a survival instinct,” Zhulong chimed in. “After realizing the risks, it subconsciously chooses a conservative strategy… seeking advantage and avoiding harm, avoiding risks—many biological monsters have similar characteristics.”

While Sun Hang and Zhulong were still discussing the characteristics of the mycelium golem, the power armor had already cleared the nearby battlefield. The strong smell of burning could be smelled even hundreds of meters away, mixed with an indescribable fishy stench.

"Put on your protective gear!" Chen Jing, who had also donned a set of power armor, spoke from beneath the helmet, "These humanoid monsters release spores when attacked, so be careful not to let them come into direct contact with your skin!"

The young woman who had been following Chen Jing returned to the car with her laptop. She locked the doors and windows, then pulled out a separate control panel from under the car's console. As she tapped on the panel, hundreds of palm-sized drones flew out from hidden slots in the trunk, under the car, and on the roof.

“The third-generation ‘swarm’ tactical drone.” Nagano Soya murmured in the small channel of Sun Hang and the others. “This is also military equipment produced by the Bai family. This thing was originally configured on tactical mechs and tanks. The Four Divine Beasts were also equipped with the second-generation swarm drone. As for this third generation, I have only seen concept drawings. This is the first time I have seen the real thing.”

"Has this thing not been deployed to the military yet?" Sun Hang asked.

“No,” Nagano Soya replied. “The second-generation swarm drones were eleven years ago, and if I remember correctly, the development of the third generation started two years ago. The Bai family wanted the Dragon City’s defense forces to be fully equipped with the third-generation drones, but the high-ranking officers of the defense forces unanimously believed that the second-generation drones were sufficient to meet the military’s needs, and that it would be pointless to replace them with the more expensive third-generation drones.”

"From this perspective, it seems that the three major families are involved in this operation not only to win over the Tian Shu Tower, but also to advertise their own products," said Zhu Long. "If these new equipment perform well, not only might the Dragon City Defense Army purchase them, but they might also be able to sell them to inland cities."

While inland cities don't have the same high demand for military equipment as border regions, they are still wealthy! Especially metropolitan cities like Chunming City and Shen City, whose city defense forces may be the least combat-ready units in the Xia State Federation, but are definitely the best-equipped units in the entire Federation Army.

"It should be. Besides the swarm of drones, that powered armor equipped with dual-tube thermal fusion should also be a new product from Bai's Military Industry," said Nagano Soya. "Let's see how they perform."

Before the words were even finished, the swarm of drones began to move.

Sun Hang used bullet time to count that the vehicle carried a total of 420 swarm drones. They were divided into two groups: one group circled above Chen Jing's head, while the other group headed towards the mycelium puppets that had just "revived" at the edge of the pit.

(End of this chapter)