Rust - Chapter 813



Only Krnovel

RUST [RUST]-814

“Are you going?”

“I have to go.”

Now that we’ve found the location of the guys who were hiding so tightly, we need to check it out before their traces are erased.

Who are the humans who brought the black organism? What is their relationship? What are the ants pursuing? I had to talk to the leader of the ant empire in the Room of Truth.

“What about an armistice or peace agreement?”

“It depends on how they come out.”

If you want to coexist with ants that can produce billions of dollars in a few years, it was right to check now. If you judge that coexistence is impossible, you should have pushed out and divided the ant empire when the opportunity came.

“You shouldn’t think of the agreement lightly. Humans and ants are different. Animals are different too.”

“know.”

Why was the old United States of America, called the melting pot of races, able to survive? There must have been many factors, but one of the important reasons is that judgments were made based on expressions rather than intentions.

So, let’s say the police received a report, went to the scene, and saw a woman crying and holding a dead child.

‘I killed him! I killed him!’

In the United States, this was considered a confession by the criminal and the suspect was arrested. In Korea, this would have been seen as the words of a mother crying while losing her mind over the death of her child, but the police in the United States did not do that.

That couldn’t be exactly the case.

This was because there were various cultures and races, and in order to unite them into one society, we had to judge them according to very rough standards.

Intention? That must be important.

But what was important was the confession, the scene, and the result.

A similar incident occurred when a minor attempted to commit robbery with a model gun and the police shot the minor.

Maru also knew about this special characteristic. The artificial intelligence that organized more than half of the Holy Kingdom’s judicial administration was also operating based on this.

So the method for judging the ant empire’s head was simple.

“No matter what the Ant Empire guys say, I will only look at their actions and the results.”

It was and will remain the same principle. That is how the Holy Kingdom should be.

The Holy Kingdom had some AIs that were granted certain rights, including crows, wolves, magpies, and acid gulls.

Add to this the various mutant herbivores that surrendered to the Holy Kingdom, including buffalo and moose, and the acid rats, field mice, and religious rats that were excluded due to their excessive numbers and fertility, and the Holy Kingdom can literally be called a melting pot of species.

Even if ants came in here, it wouldn’t make a difference.

It’s a misunderstanding.

Ant culture wasn’t like that.

We did that because we were insects.

No matter what they say, if the ants’ actions deviate from the standards of Maru and the Holy Kingdom, I plan to clean them up.

“Then wouldn’t it be better to wait for the nurse and Ms. Kim?”

Maru firmly shook his head at Ki-sun’s suggestion that it would be better to go and see the reaction of the ant kingdom that was given independence nearby.

“It’s late. I have to go in now while Mr. Den is raiding the ant empire.”

“Wouldn’t that be misunderstood?”

The human empire is attacking the ant empire, and the king of the sacred kingdom suddenly appears in the top secret hideout? Wouldn’t the ant empire kids misunderstand and attack?

“I’m going alone, misunderstanding? Considering their intelligence, I guess they’re just pretending to misunderstand.”

When you go near the place where the ant empire heads are huddled together, you can tell what to do by watching how they act.

“No way. So you said you only look at actions and results?”

“Yes. Now is the perfect opportunity to find out what they’re thinking.”

“New Clips? Are you going to take it? It seems quite different from before.”

“I have to take it.”

I thought it would be better to take it after figuring out its functions in a safe place. As for Maru, I was going to figure it out while using it in actual combat since I was going to use it anyway.

If we’re talking about safety, Ki-soon’s words were right, but even if it was called New Eclipse, wasn’t it just a changed Eclipse? If New Eclipse itself was dangerous, my senses would have warned me.

The absence of any peculiar ominousness or unease meant that at least nothing that went beyond the basic category of a knife would happen.

“Is that so? Since you have that sense, it shouldn’t be dangerous, but… Just in case, bring plenty of spare knives.”

“Okay. I’ll go and come back. I’ll let you know right away when Ms. Kim and the nurse report.”

Maru stood up holding the New Clips.

The technological singularity of the Holy Kingdom was truly amazing. It still is today. The creation of the Nuclipse scabbard that is constantly vibrating was a breeze.

‘This guy was definitely a difficult one.’

After becoming a new Eclipse, many problems disappeared. Eclipse was not an easy sword to handle. Sometimes, it tried to contaminate the mind of the person holding it, like a shard of an altar.

Of course, Maru would do that to him and eat a lot of meat and then tuck his tail between his legs. Of course, Maru wouldn’t just let it go just because he tucked his tail between his legs.

It was a floor that was rolled over and over again, using its unbreakable properties to see if it would actually break or not, and even though it was melted by the mutant’s acid, it just kept rolling.

Maru saw Eclipse start to heal on its own by eating the mutant’s blood and essence after rolling it around without mercy even though there were traces of melting here and there, and then he started to cut it to his heart’s content again.

‘Hmm. Was it a little like that?’

When I think about how he used to feed bullets to the Eclipse blade to increase its cutting power, cause it to vibrate, and block acid splashes with the blade. When it got really hot, he would feed it blood and essence to automatically recover, so I thought it was a bit much.

Maru said while quietly looking at the New Clips in its new scabbard.

“Hey. Let’s do our best.”

If it were like before, it would have at least vibrated slightly. Usually, the Nucleus doesn’t react at all like a knife.

‘Are you upset?’

Thump- Maru, who had once struck the scabbard, took steps towards the private airship.

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In Boston, the temporary capital of the empire, black smoke was rising here and there.

[Your Excellency, the defense of Boston has been successful, but the damage to the surrounding smaller cities has been severe.]

Dan Brown’s sunken eyes turned out the window. An imperial airship, created through technological exchange with the Holy Kingdom, circled silently over Boston.

Boston is no exception, with its outskirts connected by buildings to create a wall. A scene of flames burning dead ants and human corpses rising between the huge outer walls.

‘Baby ants.’

I knew that hundreds of thousands of ants were mobilized for the construction of the Holy Kingdom’s infrastructure. I also knew that ants are attracted to candy, but they are basically carnivorous.

That’s why Dan Brown was careful. Even just in the underground of New York, there were cockroach incidents and rat incidents.

The empire was on high alert for quarantine measures, as it would not have been surprising if ants had entered there.

Above all, ants were pests. Strictly speaking, termites, which are similar to cockroaches, were pests, and so were regular ants.

Since it was Dan Brown’s judgment that such ants could cause trouble at any time, he was concerned about their appearance in large cities including New York and near production bases.

But guess what? For over two years, there has been almost no damage caused by ants.

What Dan Brown and the Imperial Strategy Department could not have predicted was that the ants and bugs that failed to mutate would freeze to death after two severe cold spells.

‘It was also a problem that the Holy Kingdom mutant ants did not attack humans.’

The fact that the carnivorous mutant ants did not attack the Holy Kingdom, that there had been no casualties or damage from ants for over two years, and that the ants had not appeared on Imperial territory, made it difficult to anticipate an invasion by the ant empire.

Fortunately, the cockroach and rat incidents have led to advances in quarantine technology. The Empire has succeeded in creating new types of pesticides and poisonous gases that can eradicate the annoying cockroaches and rats.

Even if it wasn’t as good as the Holy Kingdom, the Empire also had supercomputers and artificial intelligence technology. The new poison gas, developed through numerous research labs and specialized personnel affiliated with prestigious eastern universities, was a masterpiece that succeeded in minimizing resistance and maximizing killing power.

‘I should take this opportunity to sweep away all the bugs around here.’

We had to kill all the bugs that had mutated. We even created an additional cocktail of pesticides to prepare for the emergence of resistant bugs, so we planned to kill them as soon as we saw them.

Of course, there was no small amount of opposition to it. A representative example was the opinion that all insects, called beneficial insects, would die.

‘If we continue like this, bees will also become extinct.’

‘It is dangerous to use such lethal pesticides in large quantities.’

‘We don’t know what impact this will have on the ecosystem.’

‘It’s not too late to at least request a simulation from the Holy Kingdom and report the results.’

‘The Holy Kingdom has a way to communicate with the ants, but they didn’t tell us.’

‘Yes, the Holy Kingdom is self-centered. It cannot be trusted.’

‘Why is the Holy Kingdom mentioned when we are talking about biochemical warfare? The current topic is a debate about how far pesticides should be used to subdue the ants that have attacked the empire.’

Although there was fierce debate, the Imperial Diet came to one conclusion.

‘It was ants in the hundreds of millions. This means that ants approaching 200 million attacked the empire! If there had been no hydrogen bomb, New York would have been destroyed, and other cities would have become ant lunch boxes. The empire would have been destroyed, and people would have become ant food. And yet, do you talk about the ecosystem?’

Let’s wipe out the ant empire with a new type of pesticide. The idea of ​​wiping out all the ants and spiders around, as suggested by President Dan Brown, was passed.

And that’s just what you see on the surface.

‘Your Excellency, we have confirmed that the captured spider is under control.’

‘It looks like we can use the captured ants.’

‘Can be used? Does that mean I can give commands?’

‘Yes, that’s right. Ants move according to pheromone commands. If you can synthesize, extract, or combine command pheromones, you can control worker ants.’

Dan Brown closed his eyes as he watched the flames burning the body and the smoke rising.

‘Ants and spiders.’

If we could control ants and spiders, it would be a great help to the security of the empire.

‘Pheromones are needed for ant control research.’

‘Let’s try to secure it through this counterattack.’

In response to the research team’s opinion that the queen ant and other higher-ranking ants were necessary, Dan Brown gave a separate secret order to the biochemical warfare special forces: kill the ants, but secure the queen ant and other higher-ranking individuals if they were present.

[Your Excellency the President. This is a victory report. The retreating ants dug a trap, but the chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear special forces destroyed them.]

[Did you get the queen ant?]

[High-level ants said they could not confirm it.]

[Capturing him alive is the priority. If that doesn’t work, secure his body at least.]

The airship carrying Dan Brown landed quietly on its way to the Boston landing pad.

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Maru watched the Empire’s counterattack in real time from high altitude.

[It has been confirmed that the mercenaries and special forces belonging to the Empire have been lured by the ants. Should we assist?]

A scene appeared on the monitor showing a mercenary unit that appeared to be a group of power users and a special force unit completely wrapped in body armor being surrounded by ants who had fallen for the bait they had set up.

“No. It seems like all the mercenaries are capable. Let’s watch how they fight and then decide. Wait in your current location for a moment.”

[Okay. Wait at your current location.]

Maru was planning to watch for exactly 10 minutes and then either help or go on his way.

‘Hmm. But if we go this way, isn’t it the headquarters of the Ant Empire?’

If you go straight from here, you will reach the entrance where Maru and his party entered. At that moment, the ants that had occupied the advantageous terrain and surrounded the punitive force with overwhelming numbers began to die in an instant.

While the capable mercenaries build a defensive line and hold out, the special forces are seen scattering something with long pipes.

‘poison gas?’

Has the Empire developed a new type of pesticide or poison gas?

Even if it was developed, it would be dangerous to use it like this.

If you were using it in a completely closed space with the intention of killing everyone, then I don’t know, but if you spray it like that in an open space, it’s bound to produce resistant organisms.

If the number of organisms resistant to radiation, pesticides, or poison gas increases, it would be useless at unexpected times. Considering that it was not General Braun who would know that, it meant that there was some kind of countermeasure.

I don’t know what gas it was, but over ten thousand ants instantly flipped over and died.

At the same time, the footage captured the ants, who did not die as Maru had expected, breaking free of the siege and running away desperately.

The direction the ants were heading was definitely towards the entrance to the ant empire’s headquarters.

‘I guess we’ll run into the ant extermination squad.’

If we continue like this, the roads will overlap.

Tsk-

Even though I wanted to see what the ant empire was doing, I wasn’t going with the ant extermination force.

‘There might be a way… I guess. I should go and see.’

A hole drilled to bomb the center.

If it’s a 4km vertical drop hole, it probably hasn’t been filled yet.

Maru headed straight for the vertical hole he had dug to bomb. And he could see ants scurrying around in real time, blocking the hole.

‘Crazy- fuck.’

Maru cursed inwardly.

They were just crazy ants. Not only had they already plugged the part where the groundwater burst, but they had already plugged more than half of it from the inside, even though they had only dug a hole a few days ago.

Maru jumped into the hole using his jetpack. The winged creatures immediately flew up to block Maru, but they were at a loss when they detected the pheromones embedded in the stone tablet Maru was holding.

‘First of all, the agreement stone tablet is not fake.’

The densely packed wings of ants opened a path in a round donut shape. The same goes for the vertical tunnel. The ants that were densely attached to the 4km deep wall also opened a path as the agreement stone pheromone spread.

As Maru entered the center of the ant empire in an instant, he saw a huge number of ants moving towards the central entrance. This meant that the ant extermination force was approaching.

(Stop. Contractor. Visit. Reason.)

Ants with unique shells, what appeared to be guard ants, blocked the way in front of the floor.

[There’s a problem, you know. I wish I could have told the representative about peace. I came alone.]

As the pheromone translator worked, the ants’ antennae moved busily. After a while, several winged ants flew in through the vertical hole and rubbed their antennae with the guard ants.

(Alone. Check. Follow.)

Did you confirm that you came alone?

‘Where. Let’s see how precious your body is that you’re hiding so well.’

Pick- The smiling Maru followed the guard ants.