Will the kemonomimi encounter Alien Ranch Story?

Cultivation Lamp: Support Operators gain +30% SP, Summon quantity +1. "A carefully upgraded cultivation lamp that can be used inside shipborne cultivation pods."

Boxed warming salad: Effective against cold terrain. "It makes you feel warm all over after eating it, but it's really hard to eat."

Demonic Spore Filter: Mental pollution levels no longer increase naturally. "It feels like something in the air has disappeared; I'm much more clear-headed."

event:

Hot Spring: The newly installed warm artificial hot spring on the ship made everyone feel much more relaxed, and the operators all hoped to enjoy it as soon as possible.

"Let everyone come and soak in it" - Global Infection - 2.

"Take a sauna while you're at it" - Target HP +2

"Selling bath tickets at exorbitant prices"—Global infection +2, granted "Advanced Personnel Supplementary Permit"

Chapter Nine Living Source Stone

Chapter nine

In the polar ice field, black ice and white snow are clearly distinct. The advance team members, wearing full-body protective suits, stand in front of the black ice field and forcefully plunge their exploration rods into the ice rock at the dividing line.

"The pollution rate is 14.853%, which is barely acceptable." The polar winds howled across the open plains. This was the last safe or relatively safe area before entering the cemetery.

The probe was quickly covered with a layer of flag-shaped icicles formed by the wind, and the sorcerer operator in charge of the probe had to use a small hammer to knock off these icicles.

The dark gray liquid flowed down the probe and dripped onto the white snowflakes, which were soon tinged with a dark gray.

"6.7 units of demonic spores. Everyone keep an eye on the status of your breathing masks," the team leader said with difficulty. The mask was very uncomfortable to wear; the heavy breathing constantly interfered with his hearing, and the mask itself, which was often covered by snowflakes and ice flowers, also obstructed his vision.

"We need to set up a small camp here. More personnel and supplies will arrive tomorrow!" The advance team's task is to survey the road conditions, find a route with relatively low levels of evil and pollution so that the Polar Beast and the main force can advance smoothly, and set up hidden supply stations and small camps along the way to carry out follow-up work.

"The wind is too strong, we can't launch the balloon!" The polar region is shrouded in cyclones of all sizes, with strong winds all year round. Ordinary weather balloons will be blown away as soon as they are launched, and the high density of Originium particles also makes the Originium devices on the balloons extremely prone to overload.

"Set up camp first!" The team members unloaded the camping equipment from the sleds, and soon four arched hard tents appeared on the snowfield. The camp was surrounded by a simple defensive line made of sleds and sensors.

This is a very dangerous job. Humans can't go without rest, but demons can. Once attacked by demons, such a small camp and team will be wiped out instantly.

On a more cynical perspective, their deaths also signaled to the following troops that a large number of wandering demons existed on this road, and that they had explored a wrong path with their lives.

The four tents served as a field science station, a large dormitory living area, a supplies depot/arms depot, and a kitchen/dining area.

With temperatures nearing -50 degrees Celsius outside and snowflakes mixed with Originium particles, it was clearly impossible to eat outdoors. Any food taken out would turn into a frozen block of ice within half a minute, and would also carry excessive Originium radiation.

"Click-click!" The accompanying guard fiddled with the heavy rifle in his hand. After checking it, he loaded an etched railgun into the chamber, turned off the safety, and put it aside. This behavior was actually quite dangerous. The safety was not omnipotent and could still fail.

However, compared to this risk, the risk of being mentally shocked and forgetting or being unable to fire when encountering evil spirits is much greater. Moreover, when facing an enemy, firing half a second earlier can mean the difference between life and death. Therefore, this risk is worth taking at this time.

"How are the readings?" The field research station was crowded with people gathered around a terminal. Inside the analysis equipment next to it, the black snowflakes in the sealed sample container were melting little by little, turning into a grayish-black viscous liquid.

"The situation is not optimistic. These snowflakes contain a large number of demonic spores, a single-celled structure with extremely complete vitality, and the cell nucleus is a small piece of Originium crystal." The situation of the contaminated snow that was occasionally discovered before was not this serious.

"Man-made?"

"It can be preliminarily determined that it is a man-made object of our ancestors." The researcher looked up, and the results of the investigation sent a chill down everyone's spine.

"The cell nucleus is a small crystallized source of information that records behavior and replicates. The cytoplasm is an unidentified organic substance with a thick cell wall, just like in plants. This means that cold and high temperatures have relatively low damaging effects on them, and ordinary disinfection methods are difficult to deal with."

"There are no large vacuoles, so they won't rupture due to freezing at low temperatures. There is also a membrane-like substance with an unclear mechanism of action in the inner layer of the cell wall. Basically, it is difficult to conduct further investigations with our equipment."

"I mean, can such a small device really go this far?"

“Oh, no,” the researcher shook his head. “This data was obtained through more complex methods before. We are only testing a few key indicators now. The preliminary judgment is that this construction hypothesis is correct.”

"So, we need further testing, right?"

"Yes, not only that, we're going to enter the cemetery area next, so this might be our last relatively safe period." Although there might be wandering demons, the probability is not high, but it's hard to say once we enter the cemetery area.

The black crystals and the remains of the victims form a tombstone-like structure, which is the lair of the demons. It could turn into a demon and pounce on you at any time, making it extremely dangerous to collect these crystals.

After a night of close calls, the advance team packed up their tents, buried some of their supplies, left behind locators, and mustered their courage to venture into the dark wilderness.

A few weeks later, at the polar exploration departure base, a dark gray crystal, wrapped in multiple layers of protection, was sent into the laboratory. "This is a fragment of the demon's crystal. Shall we go or shall we go?" Old Xia had already put on his protective gear, looking like a fully armored black knight, which seemed much safer than the doctor's protective suit.

How many people died?

"Two of the team returned alive, and one has gone mad," Kal'tsit said without a trace of emotion, as if it were just an insignificant number.

The doctor, who was trying to "do everything he could to save the patient," turned his attention back to the demonic crystal that was fixed inside the sealed laboratory box.

"You don't know what this is either?"

"I don't know. It's completely different from the demonic value-added mechanism I know. However, when it was designed, it was designed to perform minor self-iterative updates based on the knowledge it reads."

"You're courting death." Even Lao Xia, who was born in a society that doesn't prohibit intellectual AI, thinks that the PhD and his team are courting death. "You can give it intellect, wisdom, human rights, and even freedom, but you can't give it the self-optimization and iteration capabilities that even humans don't have."

Old Xia said, "This is not only for our own sake, but also for the good of this creation itself. Apart from nature itself, no existence can judge what 'optimization' is, including itself. Giving itself iterative upgrades is like making it its own creator. Can you imagine what it would be like if humans could arbitrarily modify any part of their limbs or even their thoughts and consciousness without the assistance of any institution or other people?"

“It’s hard to imagine, but if we hadn’t been so reckless back then, we really would have died.” The doctor replied indifferently, putting on his operating gloves. “I’ll go first. After all, I designed part of the structure and mechanism of this thing.”

"First, cut it..." The laser cutting beam moved slowly, and a small piece of the demon's core crystal was cut off. The mechanical fixture placed it under an optical microscope for preliminary observation.

Afterwards, further analysis is required using electron microscopy, mass spectrometry, and spectroscopy, as well as more complex experimental procedures. For this small piece of crystal, most of the process only allows the doctor to make a preliminary inference and judgment.

"Hmm, the cross-section is clear, and there are residual lines. Can you draw it?"

"Are you underestimating my equipment?" Old Xia had already enlarged and imprinted the pattern onto the equipment. "It seems to be some kind of circuit diagram-like structure, your earliest synthetic jade logic circuit?"

“It’s not synthetic jade, it’s something more complex, but… well, you can think of it as some kind of large-scale integrated circuit chip.” The doctor thought for a moment and decided to give up on explaining further.

“Let’s cut another piece and see…” The laser beam cut off another piece of the demonic crystal. After multiple analyses, the doctor came to a preliminary conclusion: “These crystals are the demon’s true form. Well, that’s not quite right. You can think of them as the core condensation of countless demonic spores.”

"you mean......"

"The core of the demon is piled up together. As long as it comes into contact with enough external synthetic substances, it will become a new demon. After being destroyed, the demon spores will re-condense into this crystal. It may be that it replicates itself in this way. In order to avoid endless replication, it also restrains itself in this way. It is a very interesting mechanism. It should be a function that it has evolved to adapt to the environment and mission after we left."

If demons could replicate endlessly, then the entire planet Terra would be one giant demon by now. In reality, it can't, which means there's something restraining them.

In retrospect, these "tombstone"-like suspended crystals are the "nest" and "reproductive organs" of the evil spirits, and at the same time, they are also the restraints that prevent them from endlessly replicating.

“Next, let’s make a further attempt to verify my idea.” The doctor sent a small piece of fresh pork into the cabin, bringing it into contact with the demonic crystal.

Visibly, some grayish-black spots appeared on the surface of the pork. The doctor then sliced ​​the pork and sent it to the observation room for further observation of the entire process.

"It seems that the pure demonic crystals are very slow at eroding living organisms!" The demonic spores extracted from the black snow, used as a control, had almost completely eroded the same volume of pork.

"Probably because it lacks cellular structure, even invading structures that have already died of cells is very difficult. However, the demon spores have complete cellular structure and tool flagella, making this task much easier," the doctor said.

"It seems that these crystals need to first pierce the cell membrane, break themselves down into a large number of smaller particles, enter the cell through endocytosis, and then recombine. How does this viral recombination process iterate? Most importantly, how does such a small integrated circuit carry this mode of action?"

“A biomimetic structure. Perhaps after you, Terra survivors made unsuccessful attempts to tame or enhance this thing.”

"..." The doctor thought for a moment and had to nod, thinking that the possibility was not low.

"The ribosomes have disintegrated, followed by the denaturation of transport proteins. The cell nucleus is now covered by crystals, and the demonic cell is half-formed."

The already inactive muscle cells under the lens are constantly twisting and deforming from the inside out. The protruding spikes pierce into the adjacent cells, draining them clean, and then begin to absorb water and reorganize the cell structure.

The slender muscle cells became rounded, then transformed into something resembling a sea urchin. More demonic crystals were then absorbed into them, but the transformation ended there.

"It might be due to a lack of Originium particles." The doctor placed a small piece of pure Originium into the incubator and soon saw the grayish-black pork clump wriggling slightly. However, due to a lack of sufficient energy and deformation, there was no change.

When the doctor shattered the Originium block, turning it into a certain concentration of Originium dust and particulate mist inside the box, the gray spots on the surface of the pork spread wildly as if bacterial contamination had accelerated a thousand times. The outer edge was grayish-white from the destruction of normal cells, then gray from the transformation period, followed by blackish-gray, and finally the core area was a strange blackish-green color.

"Hmm, it seems I guessed right." The doctor observed that the part of the core that had been completely transformed was using a cell factory made up of completely transformed demon cells to slowly but surely transform the Originium particles into its own structure.

"Inorganic genetic transcription, our college's doctoral project, you're really something!" Old Xia was also surprised. Creating inorganic vectors that can transcribe genetic information was their college's doctoral project.

Breaking the reproductive isolation between humans and AI, or rather, synthetic beings, requires an intermediate product—an "inorganic non-biological transcription medium"—that is, using metals and other materials to form a function equivalent to the transcription and reverse transcription of genetic material and proteins, allowing inorganic non-biological particles to also transmit, self-replicate, and self-generate information.

This intermediate material is used to translate human organic genetic information into a structure similar to a microscopic storage circuit, which then interacts with the information core of the mind to store the other's system data and transcribe it into new cells.

To give an analogy, it's like turning the human genome design blueprint into a circuit design blueprint, merging it with other circuit design blueprints, and then expressing it as a new genome design blueprint.

The most straightforward example is that this technology can create things like "living metal," while the doctor and his team successfully created monsters like "living Originium."

Living metal was very common in the Covenant’s creation of combat mind carriers and implants used by natural special forces soldiers. It was even once proposed to be used in the armor structure of spaceships, but it was superseded by the deflection shield that was successfully developed at the same time.

The reason for its elimination is that this thing is alive and has a basic instinct to seek advantage and avoid harm. When it is used as an implant, it is not enough to develop complex behavioral patterns and can be controlled by the symbiote and the neuro-enhancing system. When it is used as a combat carrier, the computing power of the mental core is enough to destroy its weak self.

Just as single cells form multicellular structures, after the brain is born, most of the body's physiological activities are coordinated by the brain.

As for the spaceship's armor, in order to control it from generating the instinct to seek advantage and avoid harm, an exceptionally large "brain" is needed. Therefore, in terms of space selection, there is only one choice between the shield and the living armor control core, and the former is superior in both weight and volume.

If no control core is placed, the armor will automatically spread out to avoid being hit when it is fired at. The purpose of the armor is to protect the contents inside, while the characteristic of the living metal is to protect itself. The final test result was that the living metal armor returned to its original condition, but the internal hull structure was completely destroyed.

The behavior pattern of living metal is to first aggregate to construct a structure resistant to killing, and then disperse when it cannot resist, ensuring that enough living metal mass exists, and then use the hull structure to replicate and re-heal the wound.

This means that in wartime, the situation would become comical: when hit by the first shot, the live metal would withstand it and begin to self-repair, seemingly able to wear down the enemy; with the second shot, it would begin to spread; with the third shot, no armor would be left, and the live metal would accumulate around the impact point, covering back up and self-repairing once the damage and high temperature subsided.

Ultimately, the armor remained almost intact, but the ship was wrecked. This bizarre outcome prompted the Navy to hastily remove the device from the next-generation defense system tender.

However, its later success in winning bids for Starship fluid self-healing systems and drone repair sprays is another story.

The fact that the demon is actually a "living source stone" really shocked Lao Xia.

Using Originium particles, new "Living Originium Cores" are synthesized. These Living Originium Cores then don the guise of organic cells, transforming into Demonic Spores. They continuously absorb Originium particles, constantly synthesizing new inorganic and polymer structures, altering the cell structure. The final product is...

"Does this sea urchin with its tree-like branches look familiar to you?"

“Bioneurial nerve cells, I know them,” the doctor observed the completely transformed demonic functional cells. In addition to the multifunctional type similar to stem cells, there was also something resembling a forked sea urchin.

"This is probably the truth about mental pollution and demonic infection." People who inhale demonic spores will generate these demonic neural structures to varying degrees in their bodies, and the demons use these structures to further read the fears and knowledge of their victims.

Conversely, this neural structure also interacts with biological nerve endings, transmitting information.

The distorted information was too much for the human brain to process, resulting in hallucinations. These hallucinations and fears were then fed back to the demon itself, which intensified the feedback—ultimately, everyone who had seen the demon went mad, and the demon grew stronger and stronger in the process.

"I even suspect that this neural structure can transmit information at close range using the Originium effect field," the doctor said, preparing to conduct a small experiment. "We did design a remote operation and feedback mechanism, but we didn't design a mechanism for operators to communicate and collaborate with each other."

Because it was impossible to awaken too many Terrans during the Frontier Era, they would be far apart, making this feature unnecessary; a radio would have been more useful.

"What's the point?"

"This means that demons can use these nodes to remotely alter the Originium particles within other people's bodies into living particles, which is essentially wireless transmission of genetic transcription..."

"Damn!" Old Xia understood what this meant, and it was precisely because he understood that he was surprised by the Terra people's reckless spirit and fearlessness.

The Covenant lacks Originium particles and this field effect, making it impossible to wirelessly transmit genetic information. In other words, it cannot transmit it directly like that. At most, it can only be translated once through an intermediate, then projected to a receiver through normal communication equipment, and then transcribed back.

"No wonder you could only let the two of us do this experiment." Because neither of them has Originium particles in their nervous systems, the demons cannot remotely contaminate them in this way.

"So it's possible that those who have seen demons and know about their messages are causing demons to corrupt more people."

"day!"

"Well, not entirely true. Anyway, we need to confirm the experimental results as soon as possible so we can consider using phase inversion to eliminate demonic contamination to a greater extent."