Sword and Magic and Taxi

Insect, come here and pass that thing to me.

A black worker bug looked at the Gardener Dragon, received the translated instructions from her, and followed them. A pair of slender tentacles picked up a shiny stone from the ground, raised it above his head, and placed it on the table in front of Father Zhao.

Since the beginning of the project in the afternoon, Zworm has maintained extremely high work efficiency. By about dusk, the old mine tunnels have been cleared, and the remaining work is sorting. Zhao Mai made a stone table for his father, equipped with chairs, a permanent lamp and other tools, so that he could have a place to check those miscellaneous things. Zhao Mai spent the rest of the time sitting next to his father, watching him focus on his work without saying a word.

Reading glasses hang loosely on the bridge of the nose, wobbling but not falling off; a pair of gloves that are always carried with me, even if I forget to bring my keys, wallet and mobile phone; a magnifying glass, although It is of little use in the current work, but as long as it is within sight, it will put Zhao Mai's father into working mode. He didn't care at all about his son's gaze. The movements of his hands were quick and precise, and he could tell what each item was used for at a glance.

Much of it is mine equipment that has been reduced to pieces by earthquakes, landslides and burials. Four of the five people who disappeared that year were found in the stone balls. However, the stone balls were far away from the mine and there was no passage in the middle. This was already very strange. But what is even weirder is the missing fifth man. The entire mine has been dug, but his remains cannot be found.

How the stone ball came to be can be put aside for a while, and the ending of the last person affects Dad Zhao's mood even more, but the current result obviously makes him unsatisfied. Keep digging down until you remove the stone ball. Can your bugs do such a job?

Of course, but after digging there, no matter what we find, we have to leave. Zhao Mai said.

Hmm... strange. Father did not agree to Zhao Mai's words, but said: Do you still remember the crystal you took from the cabinet? I remember seeing more than a few when I went down to the mine. There should be at least dozens. It's like a pound, so I just picked a very small piece of it, just enough to fit in my pocket. That kind of thing won't disappear, it will just be crushed, but what about the pieces? Your bug...

They won't miss anything. The original mines have been cleaned up, and there are terrain tomography maps on the car. Possible cracks have also been searched. Now they are digging in the direction of the stone ball. There are no crystals along the way. .”

Father Zhao shook his head slightly and fell into deep thought. He wanted to go down the well, but Zhao Mai firmly stopped him. I can provide you with as many stone samples as you want. Regarding going down the well, let the people from the relevant ministries and commissions reinforce the place. When they go down, you can just read the report. If you don't agree, I would rather completely destroy this place and kill you. Thoughts.

Destroy this, destroy that, are you a firecracker? Although Zhao Mai received a small slap on the head, he felt it was worth it.

As the excavation continued, some strange things were brought up by the Z-worms. First of all, there are some thin and long bones. In terms of composition, they should be human bones, but who can have a three-meter-long calf bone? Along the excavation route, the Z worm cleared out about sixty bones in various parts, all of which had the characteristics of longitudinal elongation. Zhao Mai put a puzzle piece together in the open space of the mine and roughly pieced together an extra-long human skeleton that was over fifteen meters tall but still less than one meter wide at the shoulders.

Look at the old scar on his ulna, it must have been caused by a fracture. The wound has also been stretched. Analyzing the stone father is a master, and analyzing biological remains is Zhao Mai's world. The callus is two fingers wide. If there had been such a big crack at that time, his arm would have been broken into two parts. The only explanation for this phenomenon is that the power of space is at work, pulling his body like ramen noodles It’s just as long.”

Father Zhao shook his head and said helplessly: The current situation cannot be explained according to my knowledge. Let me listen to your explanation first.

Actually, there is nothing to say. This is the fifth person who is missing. Zhao Mai said: The five people are ordinary miners, and their scope of activities can only be mines. The stone ball is deeper underground, and it must use some method. There is a way to suck people inside, and space teleportation is the best. Of the five people, four were sucked in, and one was lost on the road, which is the skeleton we saw. Everything about him was stretched lengthwise, that's how it came about of.

It sounds impeccable now, but where have all the crystals gone? Father Zhao is still concerned about this doubt. Zhao Mai was also helpless about this. When his father entered this state, he would always feel uncomfortable unless he found the answer. He would always think about it and not want to do anything else. My own kind of meditation that puts me in a daze (if I were not immortal, I would have died sitting down) was inherited from here.

The Z-worm dug deeper and deeper, gradually digging out more and more strange things. Various bone fragments soon filled the table. They were too old and too severely damaged for Zhao Mai to sort and repair them. From this point of view, Nexus in the stone ball still needs to eat to replenish itself, and at this time it uses some kind of spatial ability to suck the target in - but this ability is not always successful.

But this act of eating is obviously very important to it, even higher than its main purpose of hiding itself. From this point of view, eating should be at a fairly high position in Nexus's demand ranking. From the plasticine inside the stone shell to the incredible being that is larger than the galaxy, Nexus is eating it all.

Zhao Mai eats to replenish his body's material and energy consumption. But if you think about it carefully, Nekus has always been in a low-energy state, and all the free energy around it is converging on it and being swallowed up by it, so why do you still need to eat? Moreover, it eats all living things, and does not eat large amounts of stuff like soil and rocks. At this point, Zhao Mai's Z worm is completely different from Nexus. Z worms do not need to swallow other creatures into their stomachs. All they need is a basic material environment, and then they can reproduce on their own and build a suitable ecological environment. If Z-worms are builders, Nexus is the destroyer.

‘But in this case, wouldn’t it mean that Nexus is preying on Z-worms? ’ Zhao Mai looked at the corpse and thought, ‘That’s not right. Naikos eats all kinds of creatures, not just Z-worms. Living things...non-living things...could it be that Naikos eats souls or life force? I remember that in Golarion, the Temple of Naikos tried to kidnap Wadsworth, the mangrove druid! Could it be that he took a fancy to his ability to split souls? ’

The answer to this question is currently unknown, but another answer has emerged. Near the end of the excavation, the Z-worm finally found the remains of the crystal, and the amount dug out was quite astonishing, a full seven tons. Along with the crystals, there are a large number of eggshell-like fragments in various colors, almost covering the entire color spectrum. Zhao Mai picked up a piece, looked at the texture, then carefully took a bite on it with an incredulous expression, and ate it loudly.

This thing... is a dragon egg?