BIOLOGICAL SUPERCOMPUTER SYSTEM-Chapter 1239 : Dark Tunnels, Darker Threats (1)

After some time, the tunnel they were in widened into a cavern; its floor was littered with the remains of thaids. They had been killed by the Chimaeric Demons, but there were not as many corpses as one would expect the Clones to have produced.

The reason was simple: thaids on Mur were too strong, and the clones struggled against these bug-like thaids when there were too many.

The group had to go through the area, avoiding the scattered bodies of the insectoid creatures as if they were on an obstacle course.

The scene gave them the creeps, but not because of the carnage, but because of the dead Thaids' bodies themselves.

Most of the fallen thaids resembled oversized beetles, with chitinous shells cracked and splintered from the clones' attacks.

Their iridescent wings lay scattered across the ground, though some of the luckier ones still had their wings attached to their dog-sized thoraxes.

Their mouths hung open, revealing rows of serrated teeth up to six centimeters long, clearly designed for tearing and shredding meat. The mandibles were reinforced with thick chitin, giving them enough bite force to crush bones.

Thaids' ones were resistant, meaning their monsters' bite force was high.

Mira paused to give a better look at a particularly well-preserved thaid's body. Its carapace bore patterns in deep purple and midnight blue, almost beautiful if not for the vicious-looking spikes protruding from its joints and all the other features the creatures had.

"They are not so different from the Thaids on Mannard," she said. Having been a mercenary, she killed many similar creatures, and more or less, they all resembled each other.

While it was true in appearance, it wasn't true in behavior or in strength.

"That's because you haven't fought them yet. While they looked similar to many of the things we all hunted in the past, they were at least ten times stronger, and their behavior was bizarre, to say the least," a clone said.

"Bizarre?"

The clone nodded. "These creatures showed signs of intelligence far beyond what we typically see in thaids. They used actual battle tactics, assigned different roles to different types of thaids, and kept formations during combat. While they weren't quite at human levels of intelligence, they came disturbingly close. We saw what we assumed were worker thaids supporting the warriors, scouts reporting back to the main group, and coordinated attacks that seemed almost planned."

Mira remained silent, knowing that the battle must have been horrific if the clone said that.

If it wasn't scary enough, the fact they were at least ten times stronger than the thaids on Mannard, the fact they were almost as smart as humans, and enough for them to coordinate for sure, turned these relatively small thaids into living nightmares. Their appearance got to a secondary level of importance at that point.

Insectoid Thaids weren't hated because of their strength, though, which they usually lacked compared to all the other thaids around, but because of their overwhelming reproductive capabilities.

The strong points of such creatures usually were their huge numbers, which made up for any lack of strength, while allowing the creatures, as an entity, to battle even groups of stronger Thaids.

When these thaids gathered in large numbers, they became nearly unstoppable. Now things were worse, because their superior numbers, combined with the intelligence the clones were talking about, immediately made their threat level jump up several folds.

They could already overwhelm even the strongest opponents through swarm attacks. Now, adding precise targeting of weak points and efficient use of their different specialized units to the fray, things were worse.

If their group encountered one of such a large swarm, even their combined fighting capabilities might not be enough to survive.

Amber sighed. "Not really my favorite type of opponent," she said, stepping over a broken mandible. "But at least they die like everything else."

"Yeah. Though I have to admit, the ones here make the bugs back home look like pets," Mira said.

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"I prefer them at scope distance."

Emily kept herself as far from the corpses as possible. Her face twisted with disgust as she passed a particularly mangled body. "Much, much farther than this."

The group then kept examining the corpses and studying the cave.

Near the center lay clusters of smaller, wasp-like thaids. Despite the cave being better suited for earth-dwelling creatures, the abundant food supply had prompted these thaids to build their nest here.

"God… They can fly too…"

"Well, it's only expected," a Chimaeric Demon said.

The Chimaeric Demons burned it down already. They needed to do it if they wanted to secure the shelter. These things might come out from their entrance at any moment, and an attack during the night would be rather problematic.

"Surprisingly, taking them down was the easiest part of our attack," a Chimaeric Demon said. "Even though these flying ones were much stronger than their crawling counterparts."

They had rather elongated bodies that stretched nearly two meters, with translucent wings that sparkled in the light from the strange fungi covering the cavern walls.

Dagger-length stingers protruded from their abdomens, and judging by the weird liquid dripping from them, they were also poisonous.

Mira nodded, but the other two didn't understand why the clone said that.

"We just needed to unleash a rain of fire on them. You know, the Starlight Fireballs…" A clone said, noticing the two's confusion.

Mira then approached the walls. "Are the fungi safe?"

"We don't know," the Chimaeric Demon said. "Since they provide natural light, we decided to leave them intact. Fighting here is already difficult due to the environment—if we'd lost our light source too, I doubt we would have survived."

Some clones were stacking the dead creatures neatly along the sides of the pathways, organizing them by species and size.

Looking at the bodies, one could tell exactly how the Chimaeric Demons killed them. Many thaids had precise puncture wounds through their vulnerable neck joints or eye sockets. Others had torn-off limbs, carapaces crushed by brute force, or bodies split apart by strikes from different angles.

The group continued through the cavern, passing more varieties of dead insectoid thaids. Some resembled praying mantises; others looked like centipedes with armored plates running the length of their bodies.

The biggest monsters lay dead at the far end of the cave. These were strange mixes of different insects—some had both scorpion tails and moth wings, while others looked like spiders but with legs like grasshoppers.

"I'm going to be sick," Emily said, turning away from the hybrid monstrosities. "I've seen plenty of thaids before, but these... these are just wrong. Like someone took the worst parts of different bugs and mashed them together."

"And you have seen nothing yet," Mira said. "When they have multiple eyes, they are even worse."

At some point, they reached what was clearly the entrance of a system of tunnels. There were three passages gaping like hungry maws, but the fungi growing on their walls still illuminated everything.

Water dripped somewhere in the distance, but aside from the sound of what was falling, the tunnels were silent.

"Three tunnels," June said. "Each could stretch for kilometers inside the mountain."

Mira ran her fingers along the rough stone wall, studying the marks left by the insectoid thaids using the caves as their nests.

"With a proper expedition team, we could split up and search them all without wasting time." She gave a look at the clones. There were few of them available right at that moment.

"But we're not a proper expedition team," she sighed. "We barely have enough people to secure one tunnel and then to pass to the others."

She wanted, but couldn't ask, the clones to go with them. They had to finish the shelter and make patrols and guards. If they didn't, their condition would only worsen.

"How long do you think it would take to find out where this tunnel leads?" Amber asked, looking at one of the Chimaeric Demons.

"It's hard to say. Each tunnel could branch into dozens more. Without additional people, a thorough exploration of the entire system would take weeks or months. Even if we're lucky, we'd need days—but given how extensive this network seems to be, it's more likely to take more."

"We don't have weeks, let alone months," Mira said, voicing what they all knew.

Another clone approached. "Let's do what we can for now. After all, finding out if this place can be used as a base is also one of the reasons we are exploring it. The presence of a Silver Line Corporation facility is just an assumption."

"Yes," Emily said. "But the point is that we need to find Erik. What if he is alone here?"

"I doubt the Master would be in trouble," a clone said. "If he keeps a low profile, he can create more clones, which will make things easier. Besides, I'm certain the Master will find a way to make his presence known."

"You are forgetting how Erik is," Amber said. "He will never stay idle, knowing that the more he does, the stronger the Blackguards get."

"All the more reason to find an easily defensible place."