Chapter 332
Jake approached the trapped human. She struggled against the cinch net enveloping her body but was unable to get free. She writhed on the ground violently, but the more she struggled, the tighter the cinch net became. He could see that the sharp edges of the cinch net dug deep into the exposed skin on her arms and legs in several spots, causing trickles of blood.
Leaning over, Jake grabbed the human with one hand and easily hoisted her over his shoulder. Holding her power suit in one hand and wrapping his other arm around her to prevent her from slipping off, he turned in the direction of his lair and set off. At the same time, he mentally ordered his remaining spiders to return to the lair as well.
All the way there, the human struggled desperately, driving her knees into his chest, but her feeble attempts to escape caused him no discomfort at all. She constantly hissed and cried, alternately cursing him and begging to be let free. Jake continued toward his lair, completely ignoring his captive.
Finally, he arrived home. As always, he entered from the roof and, a moment later, found himself back in the familiar environment of his lair, which was bathed in the bluish glow emanating from the Mana Core. His spiders had already returned as well.
Now that he was back in his lair, his captive went completely hysterical. She was screaming incessantly, jerking her body, and kicking him nonstop. It was starting to annoy him. Luckily, he didn’t have to put up with that for long.
Since his human prey was about the same size as a walker, he was sure he would get the same amount of biomass from her as from a walker. This was why he wasn’t going to process her in the Biomass Processor. There was a more valuable use for his captive.
He placed the power suit on the corrupted floor and then walked over to the Extractor, mentally commanding it to open. When the transparent front surface slid aside, he shoved his prey inside. There wasn’t much room, so he had to contort the human into an embryo-like position. After that, the structure sealed shut, trapping his prey inside.
Jake had long since decided he wouldn’t use humans for resources in his lair. However, he couldn’t help but wonder what kind of resources and how many could be extracted from them. Probably not much, maybe only brain matter and perhaps rigidbone as well, though he wasn’t entirely sure about the latter.
Anyway, while he had long since decided not to bring humans to his lair for resource extraction, this decision applied only to regular survivors. The members of Los Demonios
, however, were a completely different matter.They weren’t much of a threat to him, not even the nuisance they had once been. As a result, he didn’t feel much toward them, not even hatred anymore. Still, he had long since decided to deal with them all, and he was determined to see it through. Thus, the idea of bringing them to his lair for resource extraction was perfectly acceptable to him.
The inner chamber of the Extractor gradually filled with greenish fluid. The human thrashed around with great energy, but sure enough, she couldn’t do anything to save herself. A few seconds later, the chamber was completely filled with the viscous green fluid.
Watching the trapped human inside, Jake felt nothing—no sadism, no satisfaction, no sympathy, nothing at all. Only curiosity stirred within him. He knew he could extract only 30 points of Brain Matter from a walker, so he was genuinely curious about how much more of that resource could be obtained from a human being.
With a mental command, he instructed the Extractor to analyze the subject. Immediately, a system message popped up in his mind.
Subject: Human Being
Obtainable Resources:
100 Brain Matter
Extract Resources: Y/N (Cost: 1,000 MP)
He could extract more than three times the brain matter from a single human than from a walker. This was good news. If he ever needed a large supply of this resource for developing new creatures, he could just capture a few members of Los Demonios and take them to his lair instead of hunting walkers as he had done before.
No rigidbone could be harvested from the current subject, though. Apparently, this resource was only obtainable from mutants.
Jake activated the Extractor and checked its status.
Extraction in Progress
Current Status: 1% Complete
Estimated Time Remaining: 45 minutes, 58 seconds
The extraction process from a human was faster than that from a walker, probably because there were fewer resources to extract. Nevertheless, Jake decided there was no reason to stay in his lair for over forty minutes while waiting for the process to finish.
He glanced at the power suit crumpled on the ground. Before proceeding with his plan of action, he needed to take care of something else first.
He wanted to prevent anyone from stumbling upon the bodies near his home, worried they might snoop around and discover his lair. So he left his lair and spent the next half an hour carrying the bodies of the four humans he had recently killed from the street where his lair was to a part of the city that was far away from his home.
The two dead female operatives had their power suits damaged beyond repair. The male, named Ethan, only had his helmet damaged, so it could likely be repaired. After stripping the power suit from the body, Jake headed back to his lair.
After reaching the diner, he paused and looked in the direction of where the SUV the five operatives had driven in was located. After thinking about it for a second, he decided not to do anything about it. The vehicle had been heavily damaged by his spiders, so it couldn’t be driven anymore. Which was fine. The car was located at some distance from his lair, pointed in the opposite direction, so if someone located it, it wouldn’t lead them to his lair.
He made his way inside his lair. The Extractor had just finished extracting the Brain Matter from the human and dissolving the rest of her body. He had one hundred more brain matter now.
He turned away from the structure and walked to the first power suit lying on the ground, setting the damaged one beside it. Before doing what he planned with them, he decided to review the recent upgrades he had made to his lair during the past day.