Chapter 128 - Lightning Slugs

*(mood song: "Electric Six - Danger! High Voltage")

They went down the stairs to the second floor, a layer of mucus covered the floor while all the wall lights were off, the only light coming from their headlights, to the sides nano alloy tables and what looked like robot arms hanging from the ceiling, different rooms and hallways extending to the sides of the enormous 50x50 meters wide room.

Erik: "I guess this used to be the research floor?"

Rose bot: *yeah, there's also a high tech assembly line, but don't get distracted, I detect thousands of life force sources in here*

Right at that moment, a dozen big tongues the size of fists came from the dark and stuck all over Erik, cyan and blue spark arching from them as they discharged huge amounts of current onto Erik's power armor, he followed the glowing tongues to their sources and saw horse sized slug monsters with lighting surrounding them and making the air vibrate around them, but... unluckily for the monsters, all the discharge was just charging the suits power core and the high tech alien upgrade core.

Erik calmly loaded normal steel bullets to his hand cannon *BANG! BANG! BANG!...* and calmly eliminated most of the slugs and grabbed the last tongue, rolling the tongue around his hand and then made the hand spin like a drill to pull the slug towards him.

*kryyyy! kryyyy!!!* the slug seemed to get scared, but couldn't release its tongue, and soon came to be standing in front of Erik and his much taller power armor.

Erik carefully examined the struggling slug, seeing its light up back with cyan lines and flipped it over seeing its light purple under belly "well, it's certainly beautiful, but... you need to die" and used his sharp fingers to cut the slug open *kryy...*, a blue blood coming out of it as it quickly seemed to be dying only for it to show quick regeneration, so Erik cut off its head and it stopped struggling, Erik then opened the incision wide and examined the insides, talking outloud as he cut he different parts and organs open "the inside seem similar to sea slugs back on Earth for reproduction... a hole in the back to take it, and their tongue has a duct... ovotestis... oviduct... yeah it all seems similar" he then observed two orange sacks near the neck area "what is this?" he opened one and the liquid inside seemed like a cyan blue honey with small dark blue orbs, he looked at Amelia and said "use the scanner to see what they contain"

Amelia nodded and extended the power armors hand, a blue light scanning the strange fluid *hmmm it seems to contain lots of metallic particles, those small balls seem to be eggs covered in metallic shells, maybe injected into prey? or maybe just nurtured with electricity as this liquid is highly conductive, and also contains nutrients and... floating DNA chains... but they are all quite different... that's strange*

Rose bot: *hoh~... I can guess what was thein plan when making these...* she looked at Erik *how do we call them?*

Erik: "...lightning slugs sounds good enough to me? or maybe chameleon slug? or-"

Rose bot: *lightning slugs it is, well what if they extract DNA of what they eat but don't absorb it and just store the different separated DNA? researchers could harvest it and just inject them on the slugs or other creatures they wanted to get desired traits easily*

Erik: "okay... but that doesn't explain why they eat electricity" he kept poking inside and found another organ near the back, layers of tissue and metallic beads inside "and see this, is it a bio battery right? if it was a natural animal it would have muscle tissue to generate the currents like electric eels back on Earth, but these seem to just have batteries it seems... that would make them dependent on researchers to feed them electricity? could that be it? I wonder how they get proteins then?"

Rose bot: *well, it could have an organ that grows using water, minerals, and electricity and then digest that, it does seem to have a simple one way stomach like jellyfish too though, I guess for extra protein, not much to eat in here though... well, we could collect them later anyway and decide, not like we can do anything for now*

Erik nodded and took off the 2 fist sized orange sacks and the basketball sized bio battery and put them on a container "I have my dinner"

Inky: "what about me?"

Erik shrugged "there's another dozen, it's fine, there's enough food in case we get stuck here, and electric organs for both of us"

Inky: "....did you forget you blew them up? there would be contamination, I don't wanna get any weird DNA"

Erik: "well, on the third floor, I will try catching some big ones if there's more, but first..." he opened one of the nearby table's drawer, finding a rusted tablet, a moldy destroyed wet book, a clock, and an electric device with rust coming from inside "well, guess batteries went to shit... still it's always good to check everywhere for resources"

Rose bot: *Nanobots are what... went to shit, this much humidity and static energy probably made them malfunction and they stopped repairing things, furniture is made of stone and metal alloy so they are highly resilient, but small gadgets got ruined, core technologies should still be in relatively good condition though, let's go*

They all nodded and got moving, descending the stairs once more.

This time though, as they got to the middle of the stairs to the third floor, they found them flooded, and just continued downwards underwater, the water was murky and they could see lots of the smaller fist sized glowing lightning slugs just swimming around, as they reached the central room they could see a big crystal in the middle, a really faint cyan glow in the middle, but at the bottom... thousands of tongues of different sizes were connected.

*(something like this: https://afblobassets.blob.core.windows.net/fvckc5d761323a8d4d99bd565b7001f6afe1/4u98eqwagpul/prev/avantform-4u98eqwagpul-fvckc5d761323a8d4d99bd565b7001f6afe1-preview-stillimage_jpg.jpg)

Rose bot: *that's the power core battery... they are sucking it dry...*

Erik walked forward, getting closer to it as the medium sized slugs looked at him, seemingly reluctant to stop sucking energy "well, we just need to kill them and-" *PLAP!* but then, a three meter wide tongue struck his suits chest, making him almost fall on his butt, he saw a glow emerging in the room as from the shadows emerged a gigantic truck sized slug, a glow and faint bubbles around it "oh shit-" the tongue quickly lit up and discharged literal lightning, arcs of electricity and plasma lighting the surroundings of his armor, inside lots of red lights appeared on his vision as lots of systems suffered from emergency disconnections in a few seconds, while the power core started to overcharge, but... that's when the tongue retracted, pulling him into a giant and slimy round mouth.

Rose, Amanda, and Inky shouted at seeing that "Erik!!" and rushed to help as Erik's current power armor got halfway pulled in.

Erik was surprised as blaring alarms started happening in the cabin inside the power armor *Warning! Warning!, power core overload, a discharge is needed to avoid malfunctions in the system* making Erik quickly think of a solution as he examined his equipment, his eyes resting on the hand cannon as he chuckled "guess I know how to do this now" he started the hand cannon hydrolysis hydrogen generation but without loading a new bullet "I'm gonna make a balloon~" he was struggling to move in the squishy insides but the released oxygen and hydrogen made a bit of space but... he soon got another notification inside the cabin *no available water source, hydrolysis generators powering down* making Erik rage inside 'FUCK! I didn't think about that... well, I will just tear through then!' his hands started rotating like circular blades they strung the slimy insides of the slug, but... sticky strings lining the insides of the stomach got tangled on his hands, sticking them in place [ROSE! I MIGHT NEED SOME HELP!]

Rose: [yeah, you seem to be in quite the tight situation~ (・∀・)]

Erik: [no time for joking! the power armor is overloading!]

Rose: [...alright, wait tight!]

On the outside, the truck sized slug was thrashing around trying to hit Inky, Amanda, and Rose's bots, luckily they had seen what had happened to Erik so they avoided the tongue trashings and opened fire at it, but... different from its kids this slug had a fibrous thread like layer of natural armor under its skin, so the explosions didn't go deeper and the tissue seemed to heal quickly, there was someone inflicting it damage though.

Inky: "FREAKING BEAST! GIVE ME BACK MY WIFE!!!!" seeing Erik not come out, and having proved long range attacks not really effective, Inky had accelerated to high speeds, bouncing around as she used Erik's now improved power sword using Kraktar's stolen relic sword, the high speeds combined with the vibrating extremely sharp edge leaving huge deep gashes in the slug that cut the strings in its inner armor.

Meanwhile, Rose's bots had tied a metal conducting cable to one of them and then to the crystal power core of the base, as it got in front of the slug and shot at it to get its attention.

*BANG BOOM!*

Rose bot: *COME GET ME~!*

*SPLACK!* The enormous tongue connecting soon enough, but... it didn't go as the slug's small brain expected, the moment it discharged its electricity was like breaking open a dam, no matter how much it poured the prey seemed fine, and the prey had even stabbed its tongue not letting go, something even seemed to be moving inside its tongue.

Erik: [don't know what you are doing but keep going! I can't cut through it but the digestive fluids ain't melting the suit so I know how to get out now if the electricity decreases a bit more!]

Rose: [hehe~ leave it to me~ ┏('▀w▀')/ ] the core behind her regaining more and more glow as the slug seemed to be getting weary, meanwhile another of the bots broke inside one of the side rooms, lots of slimy eggs covering the room with a stringy substance holding them together, but the bot ripped them from a table, revealing a control panel, her hand turning into a connector that fitted into a hole in the panel.

Rose:[ done~ (≖ᴗ≖✿)]

Erik: [what is it?]

Rose: [I'm restarting the forge using that slug as a battery haha~ once energy is provided I can do... this!]

A mechanical voice then sounded inside *language uploaded, forge restarting.... diagnostic.... disconnected from the administrator, reconnecting... estimated time 6 hours..., two new researchers logged into the database, invasive lifeforms detected, researchers are under attack, deploying defense system*

At that moment, turrets emerged from the ceiling and started blasting the other slugs, decreasing the pressure.

Rose: [done, that should do it, how do you plan to get out?]

Erik: [with boom hehe~] inside the slug Erik positioned himself at the sphincter at the end of the stomach and grabbing dozens of sodium grenades in his fist just shoved them in, taking then his fist out "oh, you are gonna regret eating me~" a couple of seconds passed, and then... *BOOOM!* the organs of the slug expanded and its intestines ripped apart, coming out its back part that exploded too in what seemed like an explosive blue fart due to all the blue blood, from the bloody cloud then came Erik, his power armor covered in the sticky blue blood.

Inky: "Erik, are you fine?"

Erik: "yep, like new... almost, anyway let's finish with this"

Rose bot: *my bots have cleared the pumps, they are still mostly broken but should be functional for some hours before breaking down completely, enough to clear all this water*

Erik: "that will be a great help thanks*

The fight continued for some hours, as the entire water got died blue in the slugs blood, with the water level decreasing little by little until the third floor was finally empty of water, slug corpses littering the entire floor, the big slug now having lost it's ability to move as it just rested on the floor, Rose had introduced a cable down its tongue and was now draining its bio batteries, leaving it really weak.

Inky: "so what now? we destroy the eggs and kill this big bastard right?" and about to take a step forward, but Erik stopped her.

Erik: "no, we will preserve as many eggs as we can and we will see if the original specimen survives, it's bio batteries seem really efficient after all, first we need to reconnect-"

Rose bot: *renonnection complete! (≖ω≖✿)*

And then, Rose's voice was heard all over the station *ahh~ finally a reconnected forge, it will take some time to fix it completely and start extracting materials, but luckily it was just the power that was disconnected, other systems seem fine~*

Erik: "we still need to deal with that slurry bastard though..."

Rose station: *kekeke~ go to the control panel, I have a surprise you will like~ (◉ω◉)*

Erik entered the ten meters wide control station and avoiding stepping on too many eggs as much as possible walked to one of Rose's bots was waving at him, and pointing at a panel, however when he reached the panel he couldn't understand it.

Erik: "what does it say?"

Rose bot: *oh, it forgot to translate this part, give me a second... now*

The letters changed on the screen as Erik read out loud "maintenance options, temperature regulation, cavern hatches... hehe~ is this what I think it is?"

Rose bot: *yeah, now with the forge on the cavern outside will start heating up way faster, there are some hatches to refresh the water and also to release the hot water, but if we close them all... that beast will cook alive as the entire lower area might end full of boiling hot water, it won't be able to hunt us at all, all while we wait here comfortably*

Erik: "seems fine by me, we have enough food to last quite some time, so what do I do now?"

Rose bot: *go to the second floor, to the manufacturing area and bring down the containers I'm printing, it's time to take all the eggs off the walls and to capture those small ones still alive, some rat traps will do, my bots are repairing the life support and the pumps, you should be able to breathe out of the suit in a couple of hours*

--- Shadow Claw Tribe ---

Meanwhile, at the shadow claw tribe, the spying veteran scouts had come back, going through some side streets once inside the tribe walls, and finally going inside a big underground room, dozens of crab men and women wearing black robes and masks to hide their identities were already there talking and sitting around a rectangular table, the moment they went in though, the room quieted down.

A crab man at one end of the table stood up and said in a solemn voice "how did it go? did you gauge any weakness we could use?"

The scouts looked at each other and shook their heads "we... would like to suggest for all of you to surrender and just accept the rule of the queen, her boss was... terrifyingly strong".

Lots of conspirators were surprised at the high evaluation "that can't be right, are you sure?"

scout 2: "...the roars of the beast he was fighting... or his roars since we aren't sure, were enough to stop us in place sir..., it was terrifying, the water itself trembled with those roars..."

All the conspirators became stirred, as they murmured against each other, the same one announcing the conclusion "we have reached a conclusion, the plan to assassinate the tyrant queen will be delayed until we have confirmed the-" *bam* but at that moment, one of the conspirators fell headfirst into the table "w-what's going on?!" *bam* more and more started falling unconscious including the scouts, until only the stronger leading conspirator remained awake, as the doors to the room started opening, he could observe as queen Erika (Rose), calmly entered the room while wearing a helmet.

Erika (Rose): "well, well, well~ if it isn't some traitors here huh? as Thucydides once said *The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools* however... you all appear to be both fools and cowards~"

The conspirator leader struggled to look up and talk "y-you... how..?"

Erika (Rose): "oh, you don't need to worry about things like that, soon we will all be friends, we will finish each other's phrases and read each other's minds jeje~"

Conspirator leader: "n-no... s-stay back!" struggling and falling from the table as his mask fell off.

Erika (Rose): "hehe~ don't worry don't worry... it will all... be... just... fine..." her words elongating in his ears as he passed out, then Rose took off their masks as some puppets came inside and started taking all the passed out people away "heh! so prime ministers and minister rats, soldiers and some sages, well they will make good puppets, but learning how to act like them will be... fun, hmmm it might be fun actually..."