Chapter 57 - Restoration Problems

Erik was currently wearing the power armor and inspecting the algae growing facility from the outside when the war started, they would need a place to put all prisoners, and also for keeping live specimens for experimentation, and this place was perfect since even if they escaped it was still away from the base and the city so it was fine, and in case of an accident he could flood it with poison again.

He was currently finishing unwelding the entrance, the moment he finished he made all the octopeople step back as plumes as stale water and rotten poison flowed out, he was thankful he couldn't smell the water as the octopeople around were making disgusted expressions and moving farther away. It had an easy solution though.

Erik: [Rose, what direction is the current flowing from?]

[forward from your back]

Erik: [ it will be easy then, open the vents at the other side of the building, water will get in through the door and go out there]

[okay (^o^)]

The moment she did, it could be felt as water flowed to the door like a flushed toiled, spewing all the poison and rotten floating matter through the back as it was taken away by the current.

--- 3 hours later ---

The water had cleared and he could enter the huge inside, all the previous equipment was completely ruined and covered in mud, but the fundamental exoskeleton of the building was still intact and all areas already mostly repaired. He went deeper as the dozens of scouts that had come with him started cleaning the mess, lots of mud, spines, and even octopeople skeletons were thrown around, they would all be washed and classified, and the octopeople skeletons would be taken back and buried outside their new city.

As he observed he made plans in his head he would install some aquarium containers on one side for small specimens and retention cells at the other and walls so they cant see each other, then an operation lab room with insolation. The only problem was the pumps though, the place was just designed so the pumps evacuated water from the lab room and not the entire building, and even then it was impossible as the pumps were destroyed and needed to be remade as they also needed to generate air, it was a complicated machine, so he would just drain the lab for now by filling them with air, the buildings were made of solid and heavy metals so the air wouldn't break the ceiling, so it was fine.

He would be able to fit at least 80 crab people and hundreds of specimens to test.

Erik: [can you build this?]

[well, I can make a quarter of it]

Erik: [focus on the lab and at least cells for 20 crab people]

[okay~~ (´_ゝ`) hmmm you only talk to me for giving me work]

Erik: [what else could we talk about?, you already know my entire life ¯\(°-°)/¯ ]he shrugged.

[hehe~ what if I tell you mine then? I have endless logs to share]

Erik: [and filtering out those repetitive or with pointless content?]

[well, it's important to me but that would remove millions of years from my logs as right now I can only see through you, but I've spent millions on years in total darkness and solitude...]

Erik was feeling a bit bad now.

Erik: [okey... we can talk a bit more when I'm not busy, I have to set a detection perimeter now, print me as many cameras as you can, at least 100]

[i will have to cut materials from here then]

Erik: [okey, just enough for 10 then]

--- 1 week later ---

Hidden cameras had been set up all over the border of the cliff, and inner areas, and were monitored by scout octopeople from a control room on their city, this would highly improve safety as they would detect threats early and bunker down to avoid the danger.

Days later, as Erik was watching a movie with Inky, a scout came in frantically running.

Erik: " recover your breath scout, what is it?"

Scout: "there's been a breach in the perimeter sir! it's an Abyssal!"

Erik's face became solemn.

Erik: "show it to me"

Once in the control room, he could see it, an abyssal swimming around, a spearheaded beast (like a hammerhead shark), with powerful front fins and whale-like tail in the shape of a shovelhead, and an armoured head with 6 eyes, it was swimming slowly in the direction of the greenhouse.

( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgTbQlfOSKE&t=8s )

[t-that... it's still alive? a descendant maybe? yeah... it's way smaller though...]

Erik: [...do you know that thing?]

[yes... its the reason that greenhouse was abandoned in the first place]

Erik's eyes opened wide.

Erik: [HOW THE HELL YOU FORGOT TO TELL ME SOMETHING SO IMPORTANT?!]

[ ¯\_(ಠ_ಠ)_/¯ I guessed it would be dead by now, and scaring you wouldn't help you]

Erik: [... okay, tell me asap then next time]

[okay... that's a creature that much like hammerhead sharks back on your planet, can detect the current that living beings generate by just being alive, your suit is insolated so that won't be a problem, but it also has good eyesight, powerful jaws, lots of strength and good speed, it would be really hard for you do defeat it]

Erik: [eating habits, what prey does it like? does it eat shiny unknown things?]

[ yes, and anything it can't digest is covered in a resin it produces in its stomach and then they are pooped out, it will eat anything with a charge indicating its alive]

Erik paused at that.

Erik: [wow..., killing that will be so easy...]

[how?]

Erik: [we will make it swallow a bomb inside a corpse, simple and easy, just connect a battery that releases a current in the water and the beast will gladly swallow it..., it's quite easy, were those past researchers pacifists or what?]

[... in the first place you are the weird one, and also that's just a juvenile, the adult one last time was at least 3 times that size, also they are intelligent beings so they weren't willing to hurt it]

Erik: [...okay fine, I get why they ran away but I'm no pacifist, so I will kill it and eat it, that electricity sensibility sounds really interesting, the resin generation aint that useful as I don't eat prey whole, but the improved underwater vision could help Inky evolve her vision... okay, let's go, I will do it myself since he won't detect me with the armor on]

Meanwhile, the 19 meters beast was swimming excitedly as it had detected not only a powerful electric signal, but also an enormous blood trace in the water, so he assumed that some giant beast was close to dying, if he ate it then his evolution would advance by a lot so he was really excited, when he arrived he couldn't see any carcass though, and the signal just took him to a rectangular rock that smelled bad! he was enraged! so he hit the strange rock and was about to leave, but then he detected another weaker signal and thought 'did that steal my prey? I will hunt it!'. When he arrived he just saw a 4 meters long-dead fish that appeared as alive in his sixth sense, it was suspicious but he always trusted its sixth sense as some prey just pretended to be dead he just swallowed it whole while thinking 'hehehe~ you can't trick me with petty tricks like those, mom told me to never eat dead prey as it can make you sick, if it appears as alive then all is good!' he was feeling proud of himself at avoiding that small preys tricks.

Erik was looking at all this happen from behind a bunch of rocks by the side, he felt really smug when the beast swallowed the fish whole, he had chosen one a size the beast could swallow easily after seeing the images, another reason that proves that information is power, even the small details as a bigger prey would have been split apart, because of that, he had removed the guts and added an oxygen and hydrogen air tank bomb, the fish came from the ones fished by his palangres and collecter by the camera girls so it didn't give him any regret as he didn't need to put any effort catching it, the abyssals DNA and meat would be great additions to his meat repertoire and also help with DNA evolution if he fed it to Inky.

BOOM!

ROAAAAR!!!!...

As Erik was lost in thought, the bomb inside the beast exploded, making it roar in pain, it quickly ended though as it died just like that in an instant, he then called a couple dozen octopeople to help him process and transport the meat, it was about the size of a grey whale back on earth, eating it all would take a while, he would keep the essential parts for Inky's evolution and share 80% of the meat to the octopeople, the stronger they were the better.