Shipping goods from the game to the World of Warhammer

Chapter 101 discusses the principle of fighting poison with poison, which involves using infection to combat infection.

Lillie didn't know what Rhodes was going to do, but her intuition told her that her boss was about to pull something drastic again.

That intuition came from the experience she had accumulated while following Rod. Whenever this traveling merchant calmly uttered such unusual words, it often meant that something that would make any normal person's scalp tingle was about to happen.

That's how it was in Blackwing Harbor, that's how it was with the Bloodaxe Clan, and that's probably how it is now.

Rhodes leaned against a rusted pillar on the abandoned platform, crossed his arms, glanced at Liriel, and casually tossed her a task.

"Go and find out the bottom of this nesting area for me: population distribution, route of passages, whether there are patrol routes, and get as much information as you can."

Liriel opened her mouth, as if to ask something, but Rhodes waved his hand, his expression saying: It's not your fault, go have fun.

"————Alright then."

Liriel looked down at her outfit: pajamas, barefoot, her hair a mess like a bird's nest. Walking down the streets of the Lower Nest District looking like this, her mental state was no different from that of the Lower Nest's inhabitants, but she wasn't really suited for reconnaissance.

She needs to solve her clothing problem first.

Liriel climbed down the rusted ladder on the side of the platform, her bare feet stepping on the cold, rough metal floor of the lower nest area. After walking less than thirty meters, she spotted her target at the corner of a narrow passage.

A middle-aged woman sat behind a stall made of scrap metal sheets. In front of her were several pieces of secondhand clothing that looked relatively clean and a pair of work boots with worn soles. Several scarves and a hat hung beside her. The woman had normal facial features and symmetrical facial contours, without any bony protrusions or unnatural features. She appeared to be an ordinary resident of the nest who had not yet been infected.

Liriel took a deep breath, gathered her disheveled red hair behind her head, straightened her back, and seamlessly switched her expression from relief to pitifulness within two seconds.

She ran barefoot to the stall, her eyes slightly red, her voice trembling just the right amount.

"Big sister, please help me! I came downstairs to look for someone, but I got scammed and I have nothing left!"

As she spoke, she glanced down at her silk pajamas, which were clearly not up to her budget, and quickly added a comment.

"This was a gift from the mistress of the house when I was working at the nest; she didn't want it anymore. If you don't mind—"

The middle-aged woman looked her up and down, her gaze lingering on her bare feet and disheveled hair for a few seconds, a look of sympathy for the unfortunate woman on her face.

"Sigh, how did the security situation in Xiachao become like this these days? You just wait."

The woman pulled out a dark gray hooded jacket and a pair of work pants from behind the stall, and then pushed over a pair of work boots with worn-out soles.

"Take them and wear them, it's free. If the boots are too big, just stuff them with more strips of cloth."

"Big sister, you're such a good person! May the Emperor bless you!"

Lillie took the clothes, her expression of gratitude perfectly masked. She turned and quickly changed into the silk nightgown in a corner, crumpling it into a ball and quietly slipping it into the worker's stall.

The work boots were indeed a size too big, but after stuffing them with strips of cloth, they were barely wearable, at least better than walking barefoot on this kind of ground.

She zipped up her hooded jacket, pulled the hood up over her head, covering her overly conspicuous red hair, and instantly transformed her demeanor from that of a "fallen worker" to an "ordinary worker who has been laid off."

Liriel waved to the woman, then turned and disappeared around the corner of the passage.

After Liriel left, only Rhode remained on the abandoned platform.

He straightened up from the pillar, his gaze sweeping over the figures moving back and forth in the dim light below, then closed his eyes and opened the system shop in his mind.

confirm.

A white light flashed in the shadow of the platform, and an egg much larger than any of the previous insect eggs appeared out of thin air and landed on the rusted metal ground.

The surface of the eggshell was covered with a layer of grayish-green fungal tissue, like a rock covered with moss. Something inside was throbbing violently. With each throbbing, the surface of the eggshell bulged up with irregular bumps, which then receded. Purple fluid seeped out from the cracks in the eggshell, pooling on the metal ground and making a slight corrosive sound.

A dozen seconds later, the eggshell cracked open from the top.

The substance squeezed out caused Rhode to experience a slight physical discomfort for the first time with the unit he had summoned.

Although it is often seen in game interfaces, it is still quite different from reality.

This is a bloated and twisted creature. The top of the front half of its torso is covered with a thick symbiotic carapace of fungi, while the rear half is a huge fleshy sac that has been stretched to the point of being translucent, with purple fluid flowing inside. Various unformed biological tissues suspended in the fluid can be vaguely seen slowly tumbling.

More than a dozen soft tentacles grow from the lower part of its head, each slowly swaying in the air, as if savoring every odor molecule in the surrounding environment.

Its most lethal weapon, a thick tail spike, is quietly hidden in the gaps of its back carapace, with only a dark purple tip showing.

Standing a full six meters tall and ten meters long, it slowly dragged its bulky body around the platform using multiple pairs of asymmetrical legs. Its tentacles stretched out towards Rhodes, as if confirming his location, before retracting.

Whether it looks good or not doesn't matter, as long as it works.

Rhodes issued the command in his mind.

Go, start from the bottom, and infect this area that has already been infiltrated by the enemy.

Upon receiving the command, the infected insect, with a swollen body and an agility completely disproportionate to its size, burrowed into the pipe mezzanine beneath the platform. Its multiple pairs of legs made a soft scraping sound against the pipe walls, and it quickly disappeared into the depths of the intricate pipe network of the lower nesting area.

The seventh floor of the Lower Nest area, near the wastewater recycling station.

A short, stocky man was leaning against a pipe on the outer wall of the recycling station, smoking a cheap cigarette that emitted a wisp of acrid smoke. He was wearing greasy overalls and appeared to be a pipe maintenance worker for the area.

If someone were to observe his face closely, they would notice that his jawbone was slightly wider than that of a normal human, and the curve of his zygomatic bone also had a slightly unnatural angle. However, under the dim light of the lower nest area, these subtle differences would go completely unnoticed by anyone.

He himself was unaware of these differences. In his mind, he was just an ordinary plumber, whose daily work consisted of repairing these perpetually leaking and dilapidated pipes. After get off work, he would buy a bowl of synthetic protein paste from a street corner stall and then return to his tiny four-square-meter cubicle to sleep.

He was unaware that his ancestors had been infected by a gene stealer seventy years ago, nor did he know that the trace of alien gene flowing in his bloodline connected his subconscious to an invisible psionic network.

Lately, he's had a vague sense of unease, as if something important is happening, but he can't quite put his finger on what it is.

He was halfway through his cigarette when he heard a sound coming from the pipes above his head.

A damp, heavy dragging sound, like some large mollusc wriggling on the inner wall of the pipe. The sound wasn't loud, but it was exceptionally clear in the relatively quiet environment of the wastewater recycling station.

He looked up and frowned. Occasionally, mutated rats or other random things would appear in the pipes of the lower nesting area, but this sounded much louder than a mutated rat.

At one of the pipe's joints, a metal cover was slowly pushed open from the inside without making much noise, as if the force pushing it had been precisely controlled.

A grayish-green tail thorn peeked out from the gap.

The surface of its tail stinger was covered with a layer of moist mucus, which gleamed dimly under the light of the chemical lamps in the lower nest area. It swayed slowly in the air a few times, like a snake savoring the air, before stretching out precisely in his direction.

The cigarette in the man's mouth fell to the ground. He tried to shout, his mouth opened, and his vocal cords tightened, but the tentacles moved faster than he could react.

The sharp end pierced the back of his neck, his eyeballs rolled upwards sharply, and his pupils rapidly dilated to almost fill the entire iris before returning to normal.

Assimilation complete.

The tentacles loosened from the back of his neck and retracted into the pipe. The man stood there stunned for a few seconds, then bent down to pick up the cigarette from the ground, put it back in his mouth, and continued smoking against the pipe as if nothing had happened.

His nervous system had been rewritten by the swarm virus; from this moment on, every thought, every breath he took...

Every muscle contraction was under the control of the Hive's will. He still retained his memories, skills, and behavioral patterns, and outwardly appeared no different from before the infection, but his will no longer belonged to himself, nor to the psionic network of the gene-stealers.

He belongs to the insect hive.

The infection of gene stealers is very covert, and it will take several generations to slowly infiltrate them, in order to break through the psychic and cognitive filters, for fear of being discovered by the outside world.

The infection from the parasite is as simple and brutal as a sudden, blunt blow.

It doesn't require generations, a psionic network, or a cognitive filter; it directly takes over the other person's nervous system and brings them under its control from the physical level.

The web that gene stealers spent decades weaving can be plucked from the web, node by node, and attached to the web by the infected insect in just a few seconds.

The infected parasite did not stay.

It continued to move forward from the pipe, its bloated body wriggling in the narrow pipe compartments. Each time it passed an area with human activity, the fungal symbiont on its dorsal carapace would release a clump of fungal carpet that was almost invisible to the naked eye.

Those tiny gray-green particles spread out with the already murky air in the lower nesting area, landing on the pipe surfaces, walls, puddles on the ground, and filters in the vents.

Once the spores come into contact with the metal and concrete surfaces, they begin to grow at a visible rate. Grayish-green hyphae spread outwards from the point of contact, like a slowly expanding spider web covering the building's surface. In the already dirty and damp environment of the lower nesting area, these hyphae blend almost seamlessly with the existing mold, water stains, and rust on the walls, attracting no attention whatsoever.

A porter pushing a cart in the passageway walked past a wall where mycelium had just sprouted. He took a breath and felt that the air smelled a little different than usual, but he didn't pay much attention to it. The air in the lower nest area had all kinds of smells, so it didn't matter if one was more or less.

Unbeknownst to him, the air he had just inhaled contained tens of thousands of swarm virus infection factors.

These factors will implant on his respiratory mucosa, then spread throughout his body via the circulatory system, eventually reaching his brain. The entire process will be asymptomatic, without fever, headache, or any discomfort; he will simply grow appendages and tentacles from his body at some point a few hours later.

Then his brain will tell him what he should do.

Meanwhile, the buildings themselves covered in mycelium are also undergoing subtle changes. Viruses mixed with mycelium are rewriting the molecular structure of these building materials, transforming ordinary metals and concrete into a biomass substrate capable of continuously producing mutated combatants.

In a few hours, these infected structures will begin to hatch assimilated human mutant combatants from the cracks in the walls and floors. They will carry weapons, but their eyes will be empty, and they will be completely loyal to the commands of the hive's will.

The infected worm continued to travel through the pipe network, its route covering the main areas from the seventh to the ninth layer of the lower nesting zone.

Wherever it goes, it leaves behind a new patch of mycelium. When it encounters a lone hybrid offspring infected by a gene stealer, it extends its tentacles to directly take over the nervous system.

In a residential corridor on the eighth floor, three workers chatting were simultaneously enveloped by spores drifting down from the overhead vents. They sneezed, glanced at each other, chuckled and muttered, "The air in this lousy place is getting worse and worse," before continuing their conversation.

They were unaware that they had already begun to be infected.

These hybrid offspring of gene-stealers were all silently incorporated into the Hive's control network within hours, and the weapons they possessed now belonged to the Hive as well.

On the abandoned platform, Rhodes closed his eyes and sensed the information transmitted back by the infected insects through his psionic connection.

One gray colony after another bloomed in every corner of the lower nest, like light bulbs being lit one by one on a map.

Each colony represents a complex of structures brought under the control of the insect hive, and these nodes are growing at an increasingly rapid pace.

The psionic network that the gene stealers spent decades weaving in Craigern is now being devoured from the ground up by another, more brutal and efficient network.

The rewritten links remaining in the nervous systems of the hybrid offspring infected by gene stealers have become a highway for the swarm virus to infect them, and they are infected faster than ordinary humans.

Rhodes opened his eyes, and his lips twitched slightly.

An infection outbreak comparable to that on Haven's planet is silently spreading through Craig's lower nesting zone.

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