Chapter 209 The Mech Was Melted!

"Since you won't choose, Auntie, I'll make the decision for you."

Lin Yuan flicked his finger lightly, and the toothpick in his mouth turned into a streak of light as it flew out. Of course, the toothpick couldn't possibly hit the Zerg Queen in space; this was just a gesture.

The real "gift" was a special missile painted in colorful patterns.

It wasn't carrying a nuclear warhead, nor was it loaded with antimatter; its warhead was stuffed with a giant "cosmic amplification array" modified from a titan-class loudspeaker.

The missile plunged into the dense area of the swarm and exploded with a roar.

There was no fire, only sound waves.

"Recycling — old — home — appliances —!"

"Old — cell — phones — for — kitchen — knives — for — basins —!"

This was a classic hawking cry that had circulated on Earth for a hundred years. After a hundredfold amplification and frequency adjustments targeted at the Zerg's auditory nerves, it now rang through space like a demonic spell.

The Queen on the screen, who had previously looked so arrogant, clearly twitched.

This was no longer a provocation; this was throwing her dignity onto the ground, spitting on it, and then stepping on it twice for good measure.

"Kill them all."

The Queen's voice was no longer lazy; it was filled with a wrath that wanted to chew this blue planet to pieces. "Save that man's tongue for me; I want to make sashimi."

Boom—!

Having received the Mother Queen's order, the swarm, which had been somewhat orderly, went completely insane. If they had been beasts trying to feed just a moment ago, they were now like killer bees whose hive had been poked.

"They're coming!" Chen Weiguo roared. "Dragon Tooth Mech Division, sortie!"

Outside Earth's atmosphere, hundreds of giant ejection pods exploded simultaneously.

That was the Earth Defense Force's most elite ace unit—the "Dragon Tooth" Division. Each mech integrated the latest titan technology, and the outer armor was mixed with superalloy stripped from the Mechanical Papacy warships, claimed to be able to withstand a direct hit from a main ship cannon without being destroyed.

"Brothers, let's get to work!"

In the communication channel, Division Commander Lei Hu's voice was rough and confident. "Show these ignorant bugs what a torrent of steel looks like!"

The engines of five hundred black mechs, each twenty meters tall, roared, and the particle thrusters behind them pulled out long ribbons of light, like five hundred sharp blades, plunging fiercely into the incoming swarm.

"Go to hell!"

Lei Hu operated the Commander mech codenamed "Tyrant," sweeping with the high-frequency vibrating greatsword in his hand.

Pfft!

Three massive sickle bugs were cut in half like tofu, and the dark green plasma splashed onto the mech's pitch-black paint, instantly vaporized by the high temperature.

"Pathetic!" Lei Hu laughed. "This hardness is barely better than a soda can! All units, charge! Tear apart their formation!"

The pilots' morale instantly soared.

Although the numbers were lopsided, the technological gap gave them great confidence. The hardness of the titanium alloy allowed them to ignore most physical impacts, while the thermal fusion blades in their hands and the micro-missiles on their shoulders were simply lawnmowers.

However, this one-sided slaughter only lasted for five minutes.

"What is that..."

Lei Hu's radar suddenly sounded an alarm.

Behind the swarm, hundreds of bloated, never-before-seen bugs squeezed into the front row. They looked like giant stomachs with a few thin legs underneath, and they suddenly contracted their abdomens toward the charging mech group.

Pfft! Pfft! Pfft!

The sky full of green liquid sprayed out like high-pressure water guns.

"Dodge! It's strong acid!" Lei Hu instinctively raised his shield to block.

But he clearly underestimated the power of this stuff.

This was not ordinary acid at all.

The green liquid landed on the "Dragon Tooth" mech's pride-and-joy titanium alloy armor, and instead of flowing off, it melted right into it like hot oil poured onto ice cream.

Sizzle—!

The teeth-gritting sound of corrosion drowned out the roar of the engines.

"Ahhh! My leg! Why is my leg gone?!"

A shrill scream suddenly came through the channel.

Lei Hu turned his head abruptly, his pupils instantly shrinking to the size of pinpricks.

He saw that on his left, a light mech codenamed "Ranger" had just been hit head-on by a large mass of acid. That superalloy shell, which claimed to be "physically immune," had turned into a puddle of bubbling molten iron in just two seconds!

Even more terrifyingly, the acid continued to seep inward.

The reinforced glass of the cockpit instantly turned cloudy, softened, and collapsed.

"Save me! Save me, Commander! It's so hot! I'm melting! Ah—!"

The screaming stopped abruptly.

That mech was like a candle thrown into a furnace, and before everyone's eyes, it completely turned into a puddle of mush emitting yellow smoke, floating in the vacuum.

The entire communication channel was deathly silent.

Everyone was terrified by this horrific scene.

That was titanium alloy! A top-tier material that could withstand even a stellar flare, and it was actually melted by a glob of spit?

"Retreat! Scatter quickly!" Lei Hu roared like a madman. "Don't let that stuff touch you! That's not acid, that's..."

Pfft!

Before he could finish, another, even denser wave of acid rain slammed down on them.

This time, a dozen more mechs were hit.

There were no explosions, no fire, only the desperate "sizzle" sound and the distorted wails of pilots near death.

The originally impregnable steel defense line collapsed in an instant.

"Commander! My thruster is broken! They're surrounding me!"

"Eject! Eject quickly!"

"Ejection failed! The latch is corroded and stuck! Damn it, they're chewing on the cockpit! Help—!"

Watching his comrades being melted and devoured one by one, Lei Hu's eyes were bloodshot, but he himself was locked on by three spitting bugs, and he watched as that lethal glob of green liquid was about to smear onto his face.

It's over.

Lei Hu closed his eyes in despair.

Just then.

Hum—!

A purple-black spatial rift tore open in front of him without warning.

There was no heat, only a sense of annihilation that was cold to the bone.

The glob of acid capable of melting a warship vanished into thin air the moment it touched this purple-black rift. No, it was directly "deleted" by this small piece of space.

A slender figure stepped out from the rift.

He wasn't wearing that kind of bulky heavy mech, just a form-fitting, streamlined exoskeleton, holding a long sword that was still dripping with purple light particles.

"Bo... Boss?" Lei Hu's eyes widened.

Lin Yuan floated in the void, looking at the mech wreckage and molten iron floating around him, his face so gloomy it could drip water.

"These beasts have quite the appetite."

He raised his hand, his palm facing the group of corrosive bugs that were spitting frantically.

"Since you love spitting so much, then shut your mouths."

Void Annihilation.

In an instant, centered on the fan-shaped area in front, the space within several kilometers collapsed violently.

That wasn't gravitational collapse, but pure energy annihilation. Hundreds of spitting bugs didn't even make a sound before their bodies were like pencil drawings erased by an eraser, instantly turning into the most primitive particle dust.

This move was simply a miracle.

Those swarms that were originally going to pounce instinctively felt fear and screeched to a halt.

"What are you still staring at?" Lin Yuan looked back, glancing coldly at the dumbfounded Lei Hu. "Take the remaining people back to regroup; this is not a place for you."

"Yes... Yes!"

The surviving mech troops, as if granted amnesty, dragged their broken bodies back into the atmosphere in a sorry state.

Inside the command hall, the atmosphere was suffocating.

The battle damage statistics were out.

"Dragon Tooth Division... casualty rate 32%." When Alita reported, her voice was trembling. "In just ten minutes, our elite troops, which take three months to build, have lost a third."

This was the biggest loss suffered since Earth began its wandering.

Previously, when fighting the Mechanical Papacy, they had relied on underhanded tactics and firepower suppression; but this time, facing the Zerg, humanity's proud material science was simply a joke.

"Physical attacks are ineffective, energy shields are corroded, and alloy armor is treated as snacks."

Chen Weiguo slammed his fist on the table, putting a dent in the stainless steel surface. "How can we fight this? Our Armory is full of scrap metal!"

Lin Yuan walked out of the portal, took off his helmet, and threw it to A Ji on the side.

"It's not scrap metal."

He walked to the star map, looking at the red sea of insects that was still wriggling and probing. "Only one thing can restrain them."

"Void Energy."

Alita quickly pulled up the data: "Boss, your attack data from just now has been analyzed. The cellular structure of these bugs is extremely special; they can absorb thermal energy, kinetic energy, and even plasma, but they cannot parse the 'disorderliness' of Void Energy. Facing Void strikes, their regeneration ability fails."

"But the problem is, in the whole world, only you, Boss, can use Void Energy!" A Ji said with a bitter face. "You can't expect you, Boss, to go chop up hundreds of millions of bugs with a sword alone, right? That would take until the next century."

Indeed.

No matter how strong Lin Yuan is, he is just an individual combatant. Facing this kind of insect sea that covers the galaxy, he could be exhausted to death.

"Boss! Boss, look at this!"

Just then, Academician Wang rushed into the command hall like a madman, holding a petri dish still stained with green mucus, his lab coat covered in suspicious stains.

"I dissected it! The corpse of the jumping bug from just now!"

Academician Wang was so excited that the wrinkles on his face were shaking. "It's amazing! It's simply a miracle! Do you know what the gene chain of these bugs looks like?"

He shoved the petri dish in front of the big screen's camera.

The image under the microscope was magnified.

It was a string of DNA chains that were constantly breaking, recombining, and reconnecting.

"It's open-source! It's all f***ing open-source!" Academician Wang danced around. "All Earth creatures have locked genes; you reap what you sow. But these bugs, their genes are like plasticine! They are universal sockets!"

"As long as they are given enough time, they can fuse the advantages of any creature!"

"The reason our mechs were melted just now is because they secreted an enzyme specifically targeting metal bonds! This means they might have devoured similar metal creatures before!"

Lin Yuan watched the wriggling cells and suddenly narrowed his eyes.

An extremely bold, perhaps even crazy, thought popped into his head.

"Old Wang."

Lin Yuan's voice was very soft, but it carried a chill that made one's scalp tingle. "Since they are plasticine..."

"Then if we extract this kind of gene, can we... use it on humans in reverse?"

Academician Wang was stunned, then his eyes lit up like two light bulbs: "You mean... biological weapons? Human-insect fusion? This... this is too inhumane... but... it's really f***ing exciting!"

"Don't be in such a hurry to get excited."

Before Lin Yuan could explain his plan in detail, Alita, who had been monitoring the battlefield, suddenly let out a scream.

"Boss! Look outside! These bugs... what are they doing?!"

Everyone's eyes turned to the big screen instantly.

The airspace that was full of mech wreckage just now had been covered by the swarm.

Those broken mechs that had lost their masters were not thrown away as trash, but were surrounded by countless worker bugs. They secreted a kind of white silk thread, wrapping the mech wreckage and some larvae that hadn't died yet together, forming giant, metallic-lustered meat cocoons.

"Are they... digesting?" Chen Weiguo asked suspiciously.

"No." Lin Yuan stared fixedly at the cocoon forest, an extremely ominous premonition rising in his heart. "They are learning."

Crack.

Less than a minute.

The first meat cocoon cracked open.

A brand new monster crawled out from inside.

It was no longer that disgusting, purely biological appearance.

Its carapace presented a strange silver-black color, and the streamlined body structure was actually seventy percent similar to the "Dragon Tooth" mech that had just been devoured!

Even more terrifyingly, the muscles on its back bulged, and two cannon barrels that resembled biological bones but flashed with metallic cold light actually grew directly out of its shoulders!

The monster raised its head, the bone cannon barrels on its back rotated, and the muzzle lit up with a familiar ghostly blue light.

That was the charging light of the particle cannons unique to the Earth Defense Force!

"Boom!"

A shot fired.

The power was even three points stronger than the original mech!

In the command hall, there was silence.

These bugs, whatever they ate, they became.

They didn't just eat the mechs.

They had now become the mechs.

And this was a live-streamed, instant-effect version update.

Lin Yuan looked at the new type of "Mech Bug" that was showing off, and suddenly he couldn't laugh.

He rubbed his eyebrows and sighed long.

"A Ji, I take back the 'spicy' or 'garlic' suggestion from earlier."

"This is hardly takeout..."

"This is simply a bunch of cheaters who don't want their accounts banned."