Mutants - Chapter 14
Chapter 14: Parasite King
Then he saw the muzzle of the gun. His eyes widened, revealing the savage, bloodshot whites beneath.
No!
A second gun.
Sui Xin originally had only one gun. Previously, Jenny, Ye Chen, and the others, harboring ill intentions, had kept a close eye on the weapon in her hand. Although they judged her to be completely non-combative, a gun was the kind of thing that could be fatal if it accidentally went off and hit its mark. They were on high alert, but they didn't know she had long been prepared.
When she had just swiped the button from Jenny's clothes, she had also snatched her gun.
This thing was a life-saving resource.
So she had two pistols.
Bang!
The monster was shot in the head. Its heavy, disgusting body went limp, about to collapse on top of her.
Through the mucus covering its face, one could vaguely see the distorted features of a human. If it fell on her, it would probably kiss her.
Yuck!
Sui Xin was scared to death. She rolled away desperately and clumsily… In the chaos, she knocked over a bag of chinaberry bark herbs, and the dry bark spilled all over her.
It was quiet for two seconds.
Rustle!
The chinaberry bark was pushed aside. The disheveled Sui Xin could barely move, panting heavily. At first glance, it looked as if she had also been shot, or perhaps was dying from an Ironworm infestation.
In any case, she was truly in pain and very weak, her face pale enough to play a female ghost.
She fumbled in her small backpack, both urgently and with difficulty, and pulled something out—a nutrient tube.
Like a starving infant frantically suckling milk, so did she.
Oh, she had lied.
In truth, she didn't have a low-consumption constitution. On the contrary, she had the most frustrating "voracious appetite, starvation-prone constitution."
The main reason she wasn't valued by the corporation, and why they never considered training her combat abilities, was that she had been assessed as "crippled" when she was first selected to join.
She was already physically weak with a frail constitution, and on top of that, she had a starvation-prone body. It was no different from being a third-class cripple. This type of constitution wasn't some unparalleled, unique case; it was the most despised and inferior constitution among the E-class lower-caste citizens.
A voracious appetite meant she needed to consume far more food resources than others just to survive. Being prone to hunger meant that if she ever engaged in combat, her stamina would be far lower than others.
Pausing mid-fight to suck on a nutrient tube?
What a joke.
Look at her now, she was quite the joke. She hadn't fought much, not even five rounds, and she was already paralyzed, her stomach growling, unable to even crawl.
She could have quietly replenished her energy earlier, but she was afraid of being discovered by people like Huang Ye and Ye Chen, so she had to endure it.
So, this basically made her a born-and-bred piece of trash with a combat power of five, with no prospects. If it weren't for her sharp mind and a memory that didn't quite fit the characteristics of an E-class, she wouldn't have even been selected by the consortium, let alone survived in the slums. Her only means of survival would have been the red-light district.
This information was only accessible to the corporation's top executives and the higher-ups in the Think Tank's Analysis Department. Sui Xin estimated that the despicable, parachuted-in department head had seen it, which was why he had so brazenly tried to force himself on her. He probably thought she would submit, but he never expected…
After finishing one tube, she barely managed to quell the hunger pangs cramping her stomach. She then took out the remaining nutrient tubes.
She had a total of five on hand. She consumed them all in one go, only then returning to a state of comfort.
A full stomach brings thoughts of… foul odors?
Unable to bear the ground-level view of the densely packed worms crawling around, she quickly scrambled to her feet and limped away.
Her bones were a bit brittle; she had twisted something when she was knocked down earlier.
How bitter.
Her luck was terrible, saddled with such a rotten constitution.
She deserved to be an E-class lower-caste citizen.
Jenny's chest still vibrated for a moment. Perhaps it was the Ironworms burrowing inside, or perhaps…
Her eyes were fixed on Sui Xin.
Pain contorted her face.
Only a dozen seconds had passed since she was shot, yet for the first time, she felt that death was so long.
So terrifying.
"Save…"
But…
Bang!
Sui Xin, walking past, casually put a bullet in her heart.
She didn't even glance at her.
Ending Jenny's lingering life wasn't the main goal; it was just a casual act, a precaution against the worms doing something with a living body. Still, she dry-heaved at the ground a couple of times.
"So disgusting! Yuck!"
"This damn Tianxi Group, which bastard planned this…"
Sui Xin wasn't surprised that the consortium would orchestrate such a bloody live broadcast just to sell a reagent, but this mushroom-man was truly bottomless.
This was the horror of human experimentation.
But capital demands returns.
If this live broadcast was a success and that reagent was sold to the public, Tianxi's business would explode this year. The annual report would certainly look very good.
Sui Xin picked up the fallen searchlight from the ground and limped back, steeling herself against the nausea, to examine the corpse's appearance.
She discovered that the plant-like fungi on this person were of two types. One belonged to the Red Corrosive Ironworms, while the other was smaller and more slender, with less mobility. The fungi were also grayish-white. The Red Corrosive Ironworms were extremely aggressive and would autonomously burst out at the smell of blood, but these other worms were not.
They were more subdued, still inside the fungi.
Sui Xin carefully poked a small piece with her knife and picked out a worm.
Sure enough, she saw the same kind of thin worm she had picked off herself earlier.
She frowned, gritted her teeth, and cut open his chest with the knife, revealing the organs inside.
Oh god, so disgusting.
There were so many worm eggs inside.
Since it was confirmed that this mission was a conspiracy, and the conspiracy itself was a live-streamed advertisement to sell medicine, all she needed to do was avoid being infested by the worms and escape this place.
That was the best course of action.
But Sui Xin also felt a bit of panic. This monster, let's just call it a Fungal-Insectoid Mutant for now, she wasn't sure if this thing was a finished product specifically created by Tianxi's labs, or a failure, just placed here to add some excitement to the live broadcast. But its very existence was hard to comprehend.
Normally, a human body parasitized by so many plants and worms, with its most vital organs in such a state, couldn't possibly survive. Even a creature with a powerful constitution like a whale would die if barnacles and other organisms parasitized its vital organs, let alone a human whose constitution couldn't compare.
So, it was a corpse, yet a corpse that could maintain the characteristic mobility and combat capability of a living creature. This was not normal. Could it be that these parasitic worms and plants had the ability to control the body's limbs?
That possibility wasn't out of the question.
If even that possibility was wrong, then Sui Xin could only conclude that the Tianxi Group had mastered a "corpse-controlling" biotechnology, capable of turning corpses into mobile, active resources—an army, a killing machine.
That would be terrifying.
Similar to the zombies and living dead mentioned in post-apocalyptic sci-fi novels, it would be a disaster for the human world.
Of course, she was more afraid that if that were the case, it would be even more impossible for her to escape this outpost.
Sui Xin's heart pounded with fear. She carefully used her knife to slice open the mushroom creature's limbs, examining the joints and the nerve pathways within.
The next second, she saw what was there, on the joints, tendons, and nerve lines—countless slender, thin worms. They were coiled around and had infiltrated them.
Sui Xin's heart leaped.
Amazing. So these worms have this kind of ability? Can they coexist with nerves?
Fortunately, it still fell within the realm of biology, not some virus-induced zombification.
However, these worms were clearly stronger and more mature than the ones outside. They already had dark black patterns. Originally, only one end was black, but now most of their length was black.
At a glance, they looked a bit like black blood vessels.
Sui Xin also noticed that upon contact with the air, they seemed to be stimulated, twisting and writhing constantly, as if they were very resistant to the external air environment. Some even actively broke out of the host's tendons and nerves, popping their heads out.
Sui Xin quickly diced them into pieces with her knife.
Her head inside the helmet was covered in sweat, but she still looked at the mushroom creature's head.
A mushroom grew here, shaped like a Ganoderma lucidum. At first glance, it looked like a celestial treasure born in a place of auspicious feng shui.
Given the activity of these worms, being re-infested would be a huge problem. Before making a move, Sui Xin checked her protective suit and helmet for damage. After confirming they were intact, she cut open the mushroom.
Splat.
The mushroom split open underneath, directly connected to the brain matter.
The brain matter was surprisingly intact, just filled with various worms. They had fused with the nerve fibers, interspersing and entangling the brain.
Densely packed.
At a quick glance, it looked no different from a normal human brain. A second, harder look… it was better not to look.
Splat. Upon contact with the air, the human brain, due to the worms' resistance, rapidly writhed and shrank. Then, the core area split open with a gurgle, and a black shadow shot out like an afterimage.
It went straight for Sui Xin's neck—the one spot where the helmet and protective suit weren't perfectly sealed.
Unfortunately for her, her neck was quite well-formed, long and slender. That exposed section became a prime opportunity for the black shadow's attack.
Sui Xin's movements were not very agile to begin with, but luckily her reaction time was fast, and she was prepared. The moment she saw the brain matter split, she leaned back.
Squatting, she fell and sat on the ground. The black shadow's attack missed. After landing, it twisted and slithered on the ground.
Sui Xin knew they couldn't tolerate the air. Leaving their comfort zone made them lambs to the slaughter. It had attacked her because it sensed danger and was trying to switch to a more vibrant host.
"It's so big. Is it the Parasite King?"
Sui Xin looked closely. This worm was twenty centimeters long and one centimeter in diameter, completely black, like a fat earthworm. It was several times larger than the ordinary thin worms.
She was truly curious about this kind of worm. She used the blade of her knife to press down a section of it, pinning it to the ground. Then she rummaged through her own and Jenny's backpacks, found an empty capsule vial, and picked the worm into it, sealing it shut.
She put the lid on to see if it was truly anaerobic.
If it survived, it was an anaerobic organism.
Sui Xin observed for a while and found that the thing was limp and floppy outside, but after a while in the test tube, it became active again.
Just as she thought.
Now that was interesting. Such organisms were rare, especially when combining the many characteristics of this worm. It seemed she might be able to find its original Mutant species.
Attachment and parasitism, anaerobic, insectoid body, capable of successfully parasitizing a living host and growing several dozen times in size in a short period—the worms in the nutrient solution must have been very small, otherwise they would have felt a foreign object sensation when ingesting the liquid, which would have exposed the plot. Therefore, the eukaryotic cell activity of this organism was terrifying. Moreover, it cohabited with the Ironworms in the same carrier without devouring or killing each other, indicating their feeding directions were different. The Red Corrosive Ironworms fed on blood and muscle protein, so what did this worm eat? Did it eat fat?
Actually, she could have guessed without dissecting it.
The muscle fibers of this monster were still intact, elastic, and highly mobile, which showed that neither type of worm ate meat. However!
Sui Xin carefully examined the limbs and brain matter and found that the subcutaneous fat had almost completely disappeared. Recalling the pain of that thin worm burrowing and gnawing under her skin earlier—it really was eating fat.
Another discovery was that the Ironworms didn't eat muscle either, only blood. That's why this body had no blood, only mucus. This indicated that its feeding channels were suppressed, and it also showed that the thin worms had a controlling ability over the Ironworms, likely being of a higher biological level.
The boss was this Parasite King.
Considering all these clues, Sui Xin felt that biological research must always be rooted in the ecological environment. Since they were pulling these stunts in a ruins zone full of uncertainties (like interference from those organizations), rather than broadcasting from an outside area, it meant that this place was a necessary ecosystem, an environment required by this worm.
A marine biological environment?
Putting it all together…
Sui Xin had a theory.
"Could the original species of this thing be the Salmon-Host Myxosporean?"
The Salmon-Host Myxosporean was a type of Myxozoan parasite discovered in 2020. It had no mitochondrial DNA, respired anaerobically, and consisted of only ten cells in total. It survived by using adenosine triphosphate (ATP) as its own energy source.
And ATP, also known as "bio-energy," is an energy carrier produced during cellular respiration. It plays an important role in the metabolism and synthesis of substances in living organisms. This also explained the energy source required for this "corpse" to control its muscles for movement.
Furthermore, the growth rate of the Salmon-Host Myxosporean was indeed terrifying.
Of course, its characteristics and abilities must have been enhanced or even augmented through later mutations, transforming it from a tiny parasite into the large worm it was today, capable of controlling such a corpse.
It was frightening, but the changes in life seemed profound and endless.
Sui Xin felt her own insignificance and also came up with a concept for combating this creature. There were drugs to counter this parasite discovered over four hundred years ago. Although this one had mutated, perhaps those related drugs could still be somewhat effective?
Sui Xin's mood relaxed. She began to quickly gather some of the medicinal herbs here. Actually, finished reagents would be more effective, but it was unlikely Tianxi Corporation would leave them here. After all, if someone discovered they were effective against the worms, the scam of this live broadcast could be exposed by the powerful experts outside.
So she definitely wouldn't find any reagents. Finding the raw herbs for those reagents was already a great stroke of luck.
But she also tested these herbs—the Parasite King was in the test tube, and she experimented on it with various herb fragments. In the end, she confirmed that two types of herbs were effective. It detested them, becoming weak and powerless upon contact.
Sui Xin carefully wrapped the two types of herbs. The quantity was small because she couldn't carry much, and it would be easily discovered. Additionally, she decisively ate a little to retain the medicinal properties in her body.
Of course, it tasted awful, and it was uncertain if Ironworms had crawled over them before. But she had no choice. For the sake of survival, she could only endure the imagined disgust and eat a portion of the herbs.
Fortunately, this type of herb was non-toxic and had no antagonistic toxicity to the organism itself. Eating some was like eating a few vegetables.
After finishing, Sui Xin walked further inside and found some skeletal remains. A previous exploration team must have come here and many had died, leaving behind protective suits and some equipment. Sui Xin stripped the clothing from a corpse of a similar build, deliberately destroyed the identification numbers on it, and then reassembled the equipment. To her delight, including the nutrient tubes from Jenny, she now had a total of 35 nutrient tubes on hand.
Excellent.
She had never been this wealthy in her life.
Hey, you might say, isn't her salary at the P4 level? How could she have never been this wealthy?
But you don't know. The highest P4 salary was only 10,000 Alliance Credits. But with her mediocre performance, lack of favor, and being a professional slacker, she basically made six or seven thousand LB a year at most. That translated to five or six hundred LB a month. With her poor constitution, her consumption was huge. Her entire salary was basically spent on nutrient tubes. She was just a glutton who often went hungry. For this reason, she had to secretly take on part-time jobs for the black market to earn extra money, just to barely make ends meet.
Having a full stomach and over thirty nutrient tubes in reserve was truly a rare occurrence.
After carefully stowing her rations, Sui Xin finally found a dust-covered helmet.
Then, she took off several pairs of shoes.
"My god, they all have height-increasing insoles. These men are really… hmm… aren't they afraid of affecting their mobility in frontline combat?"
Sui Xin ruthlessly complained, then found a similar pair and stuffed them into a pair of shoes.
Soon, an unfamiliar frontline combatant appeared.
Sui Xin hid her own helmet and protective suit in a pile of medicinal herbs. This was a fallback plan. If she really couldn't escape, the consortium would eventually come to clean up the mess. At that time, she could pretend to be unconscious… and be rescued here. As for whether she would be killed or treated as a survivor after returning, that would depend on her future responses.
Anyway, when you're a person, you can't walk a narrow path. Even a cunning rabbit has three burrows.
Currently, Sui Xin's goal was, of course, to escape. But she found that according to the routes, she would either have to take the path by the energy weapon armory or the one by the excavation area. Both paths led to the exit outside, but both had a chance of running into Ye Chen and the others.
According to the operational habits of frontline combat personnel, even if they entered the armory, someone would definitely be left outside to keep watch.
With her unprofessional skills and techniques, she couldn't escape their surveillance.
So… what to do?
Sui Xin looked down at the time on her watch and narrowed her eyes.
Wait.
She was waiting for a specific time, a time when she could slaughter her prey.
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