Kapitel 44: Chapter 44
The journey on land wasn't completely meaningless. Although there wasn't anything worth remembering on land, Lin still managed to gain some useful knowledge.
For example, air.
Lin had long since discovered that air in water would float upwards, but Lin didn't pay much attention to it until now. Why did air float upwards instead of downwards? Could it resist gravity?
That wasn't the case. It was just that air was lighter than water, so it would be pushed out by water. That was why the land at high altitudes was filled with air.
Now that Lin's carapace had reduced the Carrier's speed, it wasn't as agile as before.
But … what would happen if air was added?
Lin created an oval-shaped capsule inside the Carrier's body called an airbag, which was filled with oxygen. This structure would make the Carrier much lighter, so it shouldn't be a problem even if it was fully covered in armor.
The airbag had two small tubes, one connected to the blood vessels to fill them with oxygen, while the other extended out of a small hole in the carapace. This tube was normally closed, but when Lin floated to the surface, she could control the airbag to expand and inhale air.
Lin also created a small cell assembly called the Air Reservoir. It looked like a small airbag that swam outside the Carrier's body. The Air Reservoir relied on the small tentacles around its body to swim and use the hollow tentacles to absorb the air bubbles in the water.
The Air Reservoir also had a hard carapace outside its body and could swallow sand to balance its body weight.
After the Carrier was completely covered in a hard carapace, oxygen intake became more difficult. When the Air Reservoir was full of oxygen, it could return to the Carrier's body and release it. Additionally, it could also directly inflate the airbag when Lin didn't want to float to the surface.
However, the current situation was that although Lin added an airbag, she still didn't add a full-body carapace because the carapace was completely insufficient.
At the same time, Lin also added an airbag inside the Protector's carapace, but even so, it couldn't float, it could only 'float'.
In addition, Lin also covered the Protector's hollow tail with a large number of explosive balls and acid injectors. This originally empty spot was now used to dissolve and combine various carapaces.
The combined carapace would then be transported to the Carrier by a new type of soldier called the 'Paint Scribbler'. The Paint Scribbler could also directly apply the carapace to various places to form a carapace.
The Protector was now more like a carapace factory.
Lin was still considering using gas to attack, but she didn't have any good ideas at the moment.
The aircraft carrier slowly swam with the Protector. Lin observed her surroundings. At this depth of the water and on the beach, there were single-celled organisms everywhere, whether it was in the sand or elsewhere. The vitality of life here was a stark contrast to the barren land.
There seemed to be more single cells than before. In the past, they were not everywhere in the water. That was why there were many creatures that stayed motionless in the water, waiting for the cells to float over for them to eat.
As she thought of this, Lin saw some multicellular organisms in front of her. They looked like tubes stuck in the sand, and their tentacle-like bodies extended from the tubes to capture the single cells that floated around them.
Let's call it a 'tube worm'.
Sensing Lin's approach, its soft tentacle body instantly retracted back into the tube below. Lin knocked on the tube where the Tube Worm was hiding and found that it was hard. It was definitely made of a crustaceous substance.
The amount of crustaceous substance that Lin extracted from food was quite low. Some shell-less organisms probably only contained less than 1% or even no crustaceous substance at all. If she wanted to quickly create a suit of armor, Lin had to get the raw materials from the sand herself, or attack the shell-less organisms, and this Tube Worm was the ideal target.
In the next moment, Lin's hammer slammed into the Tube Worm's shell.
The Tube Worm was very thin and not very hard, its shell was cracked with just a single hit.
Lin didn't care if the shell was hard or not, because she could dissolve and reassemble the crustaceous substance, adjusting the shell to her ideal hardness.
Crack …
The Tube Worm's shell cracked under Lin's hammer, and the soft organs inside were exposed.
Next, it was the Devourers' job. They brought the shell fragments back to Lin, and also tore the Tube Worm's soft body into pieces to collect the nutrients and the crustaceous substance.
The Tube Worm's internal structure was quite simple, and Lin didn't even have the interest to study it.
The small fragments of the crustaceous substance were directly sent to the Protector's body to be dissolved and reassembled, while Lin's aircraft carrier turned around to attack the nearby Tube Worms.
About 10 Tube Worms were needed to create a shell that covered the entire carrier.
Lin didn't plan to cover the carrier's tentacles, as that would affect its flexibility.
When Lin attacked the next Tube Worm, the Tube Worm didn't shrink back, instead it twisted its body and sprayed out a large amount of green liquid.
The liquid was made up of countless tiny particles, and under Lin's special eyes, they were completely exposed.
… A virus?
The liquid contained a large amount of linear viruses, and a small amount of the Tube Worm's original cells.
Could this Tube Worm release a virus attack? No, this Tube Worm might have been infected with a virus.
In the current environment, viruses weren't very common. Although they could destroy cells, the cells would also kill the virus in turn. In an environment with a large number of cells, the virus would be suppressed.
Only a few multicellular organisms like this Tube Worm could cause a large scale virus outbreak. After all, they would eat anything that floated over, so it wasn't strange for them to eat viruses.
Lin's aircraft carrier didn't directly obtain nutrients, everything was transported back by other units, so there was almost no chance for the carrier to be infected by viruses. Furthermore, Lin had already thought of a good way to deal with the virus.
Lin would have the Gas Carriers take turns to move around outside to obtain oxygen, so there would always be a few Gas Carriers hovering around the carrier. Some viruses would drift into the Gas Carriers' tentacles and enter the inner layer of the tentacles' cells.
As soon as the virus entered the cell, Lin would immediately sense it, so she immediately covered the cell with a kind of rapidly hardening crustaceous substance, sealing it inside before the virus could divide.
Finally, the hardened cells would be removed, which would easily solve the problem.
Other than that, immediately killing the cell was also a good method, as the virus seemed to only be able to proliferate inside living cells.
Lin expanded the structure of the blood vessels and allowed the gland cells to swim inside, allowing them to transport the crustaceous substance to the entire body at any time, allowing the cells anywhere to quickly absorb and harden the crustaceous substance. This would effectively prevent the virus or other small organisms from invading.
Lin ignored the attack of the virus and easily destroyed the worm before retrieving it without wasting a single bit of time.
Then …
Lin was about to attack the other Tube Worms when an emergency signal entered her mind, the Protector behind the carrier was being attacked.
Lin could feel the Protector being dragged by a force far greater than its own. When the carrier turned around, all she saw was a sandpit.
Was it being dragged into the sand by some kind of organism?
Lin regretted not giving the Protector a pair of eyes, it could only accept that the Protector was being held down tightly by the force, unable to break free no matter how hard it struggled.
It should be some kind of multicellular organism that was as strong as the Round Shield Worm, or it wouldn't have been able to drag the Protector down so easily.
Should I try to dig it out?
The Protector wasn't being dragged deeper into the sand, it should still be in a very shallow position.
Lin was hesitant, no matter what, the safety of the carrier was her priority.
But … it would be a pity to lose the Protector.
In the end, Lin approached the sandpit and used the carrier's tentacles to dig at the center. After pushing aside some of the sand, Lin was able to see the Protector's body.
The lower half of the Protector's body was sandwiched between two large disc-shaped shells. Under the immense pressure, Lin could feel the Protector's body almost breaking apart.
Lin still remembered this kind of organism, there used to be a lot of them in places where the Leaf Worms appeared, and their shells were very hard, but Lin had never seen them move. Could it be that they were a very powerful predator?
…
Wöchentlicher Energiestatus
-- Power-
Rangliste 
-- Power-
Stein