Chapter 351

Chapter 351

It had been two days since Jake had given Skullface a video call, and those days had been anything but peaceful. Jake stayed incredibly busy, obliterating several secondary bases. He tore them to the ground, killing every bandit he encountered. However, he chose to spare the regular survivors, allowing them to escape and live another day.

But fighting Los Demonios wasn’t the only thing Jake had accomplished in such a short time. He also focused on his two lairs, gradually developing and improving them.

He had upgraded his first lair, located in the diner’s basement, from Rank V to Rank VII. This advancement unlocked several new structures. With the transition to Rank VI, he gained access to the Mind Control Center, Trap Constructor, and Tumor Builder. Moving up to Rank VII, he could now establish the Transfer Maw, Genome Fusion Lab, and Behemoth Cavern.

While Jake hadn’t checked all of the newly available structures yet, he continued to evolve the Mana Cores in his lairs, eager to upgrade at least one of them to the final Rank X. He knew that as soon as at least one of his lairs reached the top Rank, he would qualify to evolve to the next, fourth, stage.

He was really excited about that, wondering what new powers he would acquire after evolving into the next form. Therefore, he kept developing his lairs and eventually even upgraded the Mana Core in his second lair, located in the ten-story building, to Rank VII as well.

Over the past two days, he had corrupted five upper floors of his second lair, filling them with biomass storages, traps, and various creatures he had developed earlier. His second lair was becoming a twisted fortress, an intricate web of horrors. No sane survivor would dare to enter this maze of terror.

The walls pulsed with a life of their own, throbbing with dark energy. Mana veins ran across the Corruption covering every surface, connecting the Mana Core to each structure and nurturing it. Each floor was more treacherous than the last, filled with various types of traps as well as hidden compartments where his most lethal creations lurked, ready to spring on anyone brave, or stupid, enough to venture inside.

When he finished his second lair, it would be a truly terrifying place. Every time he returned to it, he reveled in the thought of the fear that would grip those who dared to set foot in such a wicked place. This second lair was not just a stronghold; it was a showcase of his terrifying traps and the monsters under his control. 

During the past two days, he hadn’t created any new creatures, though. This process usually required a great deal of concentration, and at the moment, he didn’t have much time for that, as his current goal was to eliminate what remained of Los Demonios’ secondary bases.

He did check out some of the new structures, though. He grew three of them: the Mind Control Center, the Tumor Builder, and the Transfer Maw. The first one was designed to develop various abilities that would allow him to exert better control over his minions. However, he hadn’t developed any such abilities yet.

But this structure had another very useful ability that became available immediately after it was built. It allowed him to manage everything in his lair even when he was outside, regardless of the distance. He could be on the other side of the city and still be able to control his lair equipped with a Mind Control Center.

So, he could simply connect to his lair and observe it from the Mana Core as if it were a 360-degree camera. Thanks to this, he could do everything in his lair that he could do when he was physically inside: control his creatures, check the stats of his structures if needed, or just observe what was happening within.

Some time ago, he had learned the ability called Corruptor’s Call

Since this ability alone made the Mind Control Center an invaluable structure, he grew one in each of his lairs. He no longer needed to return to his lairs to check on anything, grow new structures, or spawn more monsters. Instead, he could do all that, and more, from a distance now.

Another of the three new structures was the Tumor Builder. This structure allowed him to create spheroid objects of pure corruption, called tumors. A tumor was about the size of a basketball and contained a certain portion of mana inside, which allowed it to exist for about 24 hours. Unlike the Corruption in his lair, a tumor could exist even outside his lair and be transported to another location. It could be placed in his Inventory, taking up a few slots, making it easy to carry. 

After some experiments, Jake learned he could attach a tumor to any surface outside his lair. Once attached, the tumor flattened, creating a large black splotch of Corruption on the surface. Once it settled, there was no way to detach it. Thanks to this splotch of Corruption, other structures could be attached to it, as they could only be built on Corruption. However, since the splotch created by a tumor could only last for about a day, anything attached to it would die as well when the splotch ran out of mana.

Initially, Jake wasn’t sure why he was even allowed to create tumors, as he didn’t see the point in making any structures outside his lair, especially considering they could only last for twenty-four hours. Later, he learned that after a tumor turned into a splotch of Corruption, he could refill it with mana from his own reserves, though he still found little reason to create anything beyond the confines of his lairs.

At some point, he recognized that there might come a time when he would need to set a trap outside his lair, but other than that, he didn’t find much use for those outside splotches of Corruption.

It all became clear when he constructed a Transfer Maw in his second lair. This structure, the final one of the three new ones he checked out, resembled a massive round mouth filled with jagged teeth. Though it appeared to be some sort of trap, it functioned as a wormhole. After establishing one Transfer Maw in each of his two lairs, he learned he could now transport items between them.

All he needed to do was place something, such as a captured walker wrapped in a cinch net, into a Transfer Maw in one lair and choose a destination. Since he only had two Transfer Maws at that time, he could only choose the other one. As soon as the first maw swallowed his package, it was immediately expelled from the second one.

The combination of a tumor and a Transfer Maws allowed him to store something in one of his lairs without actually returning there. Since he had creatures collecting mana and biomass for his lairs, Jake mainly utilized this combination when he needed to transport a unique mutant back to his main lair to extract genetic materials from it.

He strategically positioned several tumors around the city, forming a Transfer Maw at each location. When he found a unique mutant, he captured it with a cinch net and transported it to the nearest Transfer Maw. Once the captured mutant was teleported to his main lair, he mentally connected to it and instructed one of the available arachnoxes to place the mutant into the Extractor to retrieve genetic materials, which were then automatically stored in one of the genetic material facilities.

Thanks to that, Jake had accumulated a significant amount of unique genetic materials in his main lair over the past two days. However, he didn’t have the time to experiment with them yet. His primary objective was to finish off Los Demonios. But by the time he completed that task, he would have gathered a diverse range of unique genetic materials, allowing him to develop new special abilities for his creatures to learn.

However, before delving into that, he intended to wrap up his business with Los Demonios. Having already obliterated half of their secondary bases, it was now only a matter of time before the bandit organization was completely wiped off the face of the earth.