Chapter 486 - 318: The Great Extinction, The
Chapter 486 - 318: The Great Extinction, The
Chapter 486: Chapter 318: The Great Extinction, The
Elderly Armament War Gods 2
Humans had technology, but they were short on materials and time, unable to complete the production of large quantities of equipment.
Everything was too late.
Within a short month, more than 90% of human battleships, all large space stations, and all arms factories were completely destroyed.
Half a year later, major military bases fell one after another.
The remaining fleet was virtually non-existent.
If it were not for the battleships escaping quickly into outer space, the extinct animals ultimately would not have been able to master the space survival capabilities like the Dragonfly Fighters, and humanity’s last-ditch resistance would have vanished.
The battleships were constantly on guard against powerful extinct animals that possessed the ability to fly in the air, unable to re-enter the atmosphere, and could only launch remote attacks from outer space. However, due to the distance and the attenuation after passing through the atmosphere, the results of the ship borne weapons were far from satisfactory.
Originally, large space-based weapons should have been very effective, capable of sweeping cover fire on the ground as long as the gun was aimed. However, the commanders of the extinct animals had prioritized dealing with these potential threats from the very beginning, so there was no hope left.
Afterward, the people left on the planetary surface began to face a huge crisis.
Humans had no protection from large-scale war machines.
The high-powered, high-yield weapons were almost completely destroyed in the first wave of attacks, and even suicidal measures became a luxury.
Humans could only rely on some individual equipment to barely resist, along with a few vehicle-mounted missiles and beam cannons.
It was not enough, far from enough.
The defense armies of the major cities were able to withstand the first wave of impact and briefly repel the enemy, having already reached their limit.
But this was only enough to buy them a little more time.
Most animals had one very obvious difference from humans.
Reproductive capacity.
Take rats as an example.
21 days of gestation, with each litter having at least five or six offspring, or
even more than ten.
Under extreme conditions, a pair of male and female rats could produce a huge population of 5,000 individuals in a year.
These extreme conditions were about like this: no natural enemies, abundant
food, and no plague or disease.
The current situation met two of those conditions: no natural enemies, and the infected rats would not get sick.
But one point was not met: food.
When transformed into extinct animals, rats could grow to the size of a wolf, and considering their massive base numbers, the amount of meat on Earth might not even be enough to feed them.
But this situation never happened. These extinct animals appeared to be large, but their appetite did not increase significantly. They consumed the same amount of food as before, as if the energy to support their terrifying mobility and unique attack abilities came out of thin air.
At the time, scholars were puzzled, and it was not until later that they figured
it out.
The main source of energy for animals infected with Z bacteria no longer came from their digestive system, but from the Z bacteria colonies in their brain.
As for how the Z bacteria produced energy, even as of the 31st century, humans had not fully deciphered it, and could only speculate that it may be related to antimatter.
As time went by, the number of extinct animals grew to an overwhelming majority.
Not to mention the conditions on other planets, even after a short hundred years or as long as two hundred years of transformation, the air in the wild was still thin, and inhabitants could only live normally in residential areas.
But as the oxygen content in the Earth’s atmosphere continued to decline. Earth’s residents could not leave their homes, making it difficult to move m the wild.
Plants began to grow wildly.
In 2568, ten years after the extinct animals swept across the Solar System, the oxygen content in Earth’s atmosphere dropped to 15%.
Humans’ situation became even more difficult.
On the contrary, the extinct animals thrived, adapting very well to the new low-oxygen environment.
The slaughter was still ongoing.
During this time, humans sent negotiators, hoping to reach an agreement.
But it was futile.
The extinct animals, forcefully granted logical intelligence, seemed to vent all their hatred from tens of thousands of years of enslavement and slaughter by humans since the beginning of the slave society.
Alternatively, the behavior of the extinct animals might be solely determined by the Z bacteria.
Z bacteria were not true lifeforms; they were weapons.
Weapons and their prey have no concept of coexistence.Weapons know only endless slaughter, never ceasing until death.
Just as the butcher’s knife has no sympathy for those who are about to become souls under its blade, so too do weapons have no understanding of human speech.
A knife doesn’t understand human language.
As the negotiators were torn apart, the possibility of peace talks vanished completely.
It was in the year 2568 that humanity, having finally abandoned the last of its illusions, found a way to win this war.
We have no battleships, no space-based weapons, no missiles, and no large beam cannons.
Our firearms are already badly damaged.
Our ammunition depots are on the verge of being emptied.
Even the machetes in our hands have become worn and broken.
Now we have only two things: our bodies and the unyielding will to never bow to fate.
With no weapons, we’ll use our bodies as weapons!
This time, Willian and Sergey Ponomarenko, two world-class geniuses who rose to prominence within just twenty years of each other, joined forces and found a way for humans to achieve the same kind of transformation as the extinct animals.
They fought fire with fire.
This move has always been Harrison Clark’s forte.
But what Clark relied on most was not his own wit, but the ability to steal, deceive, and cheat across timelines.
By contrast, Willian and Sergey relied purely on their astounding wisdom that transcended time!
Harrison Clark had often fantasized about what kind of sparks the cooperation between these two geniuses, born so close in time, would generate if they joined forces.
Now he knew.
From 2546 to 2568, Willian conducted in-depth research on Z Bacteria for a continuous 22 years.
He understood the essence of the Z Bacteria, deciphered their wisdom, and figured out their principles of modifying organisms. Moreover, he extracted a human-compatible Z Bacteria from the extinct slug species, which could coexist with the human body by evading the attack of the Human Immune
System.
Sergey designed a method to use metal tubing to mimic the circulatory system of extinct animals within the human body.
Together, these two geniuses allowed humans to also harness the terrifying combat power of the Z Bacteria.
Without armor, a person will become armor.
This plan was named the Extinction Armor. Those who used the Extinction Armor were called Armored War Gods.
After becoming an Armored War God, an individual’s power would vary. The strongest could be on par with Harrison Clark when he wore the Azure Dragon Armor, whereas ordinary Azure Dragon Soldiers would only be average. The difference in strength had little to do with age or physical strength, but rather with how well their genetic information matched that of the Z Bacteria and how much the bacteria could be tolerated by their brains.
The Extinction Armor came with severe side effects, and it was irreversible. Armored War Gods would completely lose their sanity, lose their human wisdom, become like beasts with only the hatred-driven desire to kill, and could only maintain their life form for a maximum of one month.
After the stable time limit had passed, even the strongest Armored War God would quickly disintegrate, leaving nothing behind.
Moreover, even in their stable state, Armored War Gods still experienced constant and tremendous pain, as if being continuously fried in a pan.
It was undoubtedly a desperate, last-ditch effort. As many people as took on the armor would die.
But whatever the case, humanity had no choice but to fight for its survival.
After the first elderly person took on the Extinction Armor, they disregarded the humans around them and charged out of the city’s defensive line with bloodshot eyes, slaughtering everyone in their path for a full half hour before being surrounded and ultimately torn to pieces by the extinct animals.
Willian and Sergey knew then that their plan had succeeded.
The battleship fleet in space fought off the swarming extinct animals as they descended to the surface.
The fleet, at the cost of 80% casualties, successfully transported the transformation plan, the design and manufacturing blueprints for the transformation device, and the human-compatible Z Bacteria samples extracted and artificially cultured from the extinct slugs.
The remnants of the fleet eventually delivered these vital strategic resources to every planet and settlement in the Solar System still capable of fighting. At that time, the total human population had fallen to less than 130 billion, of which 26 billion were elderly people aged one hundred or older.
One by one, the elderly bade farewell to their children and grandchildren, and entered the Extinction Armor transformation device.
It was unclear which elderly music lover began the trend, but soon many followed suit, playing their favorite songs like “The Fire,” “Self-Combustion,” “Across the Starry Sky,” and “The Invincible War God..”