Chapter 340
Jake spent a few more days searching for a suitable location to establish another lair, which he planned to dedicate entirely to collecting and storing biomass. Eventually, he decided to create one in a high-rise building with limited access to the upper floors.
He found a ten-story building with two empty shafts leading to the upper floors: one housed a broken elevator, and the other, once containing stairs, was now a heap of debris.
Without special equipment, humans wouldn’t be able to access the second and higher floors of this building. By that time, Jake had learned that if a building lacked access to its upper floors, survivors usually didn’t even attempt to reach them. This made sense, as climbing to the upper floors would be quite challenging without specialized tools.
Moreover, the System never spawned loot or mutants on the upper floors of buildings if those floors had no way to be accessed. By that point, most survivors must have learned this, which could explain why he never saw anyone attempt to reach the upper floors of such buildings.
So after finding such a building, Jake sought a challenge that could reward him with a mana orb upon completion. Once he found and completed the challenge, he returned to the chosen building and made his way to the top floor. Choosing a large empty room, he created a Mana Core at its center using the mana orb he had recently acquired.
Since it was his second lair, the process was familiar to him, so he no longer needed to read any tips. This allowed him to focus entirely on collecting biomass and spreading corruption throughout the room. When he finished, he realized there was no reason not to do the same in the other rooms and corridors.
Once every surface on the top floor of the building was covered in corruption, he moved on to evolving the Mana Core and growing Biomass Processors and Biomass Storages, attaching them to the walls and ceiling. While this process was relatively simple, collecting biomass and creating the structures took a considerable amount of time.
When he had a decent number of biomass storages and processors, he moved on to creating other essential structures like a Hive Nexus, Creation Chamber, and several others. He also placed various traps in strategic locations. While he knew the chances of any survivors discovering his second lair were slim to none, he still wanted to be prepared for anything.
After fully corrupting the top floor with structures and traps, along with various structures and traps, Jake began to ponder whether he should expand the corruption to the lower floors. He imagined how incredible it would be to corrupt all the floors of the building, filling each one with diverse structures, creatures, and traps. If he did that, it might as well serve as his primary operational hub.
Sure, if he went through with it, keeping his second lair hidden would be nearly impossible, even if he avoided corrupting the first floor. On the other hand, would it really matter? If he corrupted the upper nine floors, there would be little point in not doing the same with the first one. No sane survivor would venture into the building after discovering how badly it was infested.
But that was a task for another time. For now, he needed to develop a special creature capable of catching prey and bringing it to the lair for further processing. After all, that was the primary reason behind establishing the second lair.
Over the next few days, Jake focused on developing a creature capable of capturing and bringing ex-humans to the second lair. As he had noted earlier, this task was more difficult than developing the managatherer he had designed before. Collecting mana was one thing, but fetching mutants or humans, who would fight and struggle to escape, was an entirely different challenge.
Thus, the creature, which he temporarily named “Fleshcatcher”, had to be strong, large, and powerful. However, its size posed a problem, as both a Hive Nexus and a Creation Chamber permitted the creation of only small-sized creatures, roughly the size of a cat or slightly larger.
As Jake continued working on the project, he soon discovered a solution. He found that he could create additional Hive Nexuses next to an existing one, allowing them to grow all together into a single, larger entity. This greatly increased its size and enabled the creation of bigger types of creatures. The same principle applied to a Creation Chamber.
After Jake completed that, he finally began developing the Fleshcatcher. Before starting, he took some time to envision the creature’s appearance and the abilities it would need to catch mutants and successfully bring them to the lair.
With the Creation Chamber at his disposal, Jake had the power to create any creature he desired. His only limits were his imagination and the variety of genetic resources available. However, he understood that just because he could create any creature he wanted, it didn’t guarantee it would perform as effectively as he intended.
So he began developing the Fleshcatcher and eventually created the first version of the creature. It resembled an enormous dog without a head, with a massive maw in place of where its snout should be. The idea was that the Fleshcatcher would swallow a walker-sized creature whole and deliver it to the lair.
As it turned out, in practice, it wasn’t as effective as he had envisioned, so he decided against using this creature. Perhaps later, he could transform it into something more useful, but for now, he instructed the Creation Chamber to memorize the genetic code for this version of the Fleshcatcher before starting anew.
After that, he began working on a second version of the Fleshcatcher. This version resembled a Slenderman: very tall and thin, with its body and limbs made entirely of intertwining, vine-like material. It could grow numerous tentacles to catch and immobilize its prey, then pull them in, carrying the captured prey on its body.
At least, that was the idea, but the Creation Chamber failed to produce this version of the Fleshcatcher. He attempted to gather more genetic resources and make various adjustments, but the Creation Chamber still wouldn’t create what he envisioned. He was left with two choices: significantly altering the second version of the Fleshcatcher or developing an entirely different one.
After giving the matter some thought, he began working on a third version of the Fleshcatcher. This time, it was successful. Drawing on the knowledge gained from the first two versions and incorporating ideas from both, he finally created a fully functional version of the Fleshcatcher.