Chapter 16: Terrifying Planet

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

The professor, who was at the forefront, was habitually clearing the bushes when he suddenly found a plump fruit on the ground. At that point, he wanted to call fatty, who was familiar with all kinds of alien plants, to identify it. But when he turned around, he suddenly realized that the person he had in mind was missing from the team.

“Where’s fatty?”

Hearing his question, everyone paused, and only then did they realize that fatty had disappeared.

The professor suddenly had a bad feeling and quickly led everyone back to look for the fatty who had fallen behind.

Not long after, they saw him sitting on the ground, trembling in fear.

Cooper quickly shouted, “Fatty! What are you doing?!”

Then, he quickly walked forward.

However, halfway through, his body froze, and his eyes revealed a look of fear.

He saw a huge “spider” standing above the treetops in the forest. Its eight limbs were deeply inserted into the soil, supporting its heavy body.

Under its bright red eyes was a mouthpart that was squirming. There was even saliva flowing out from it, dripping onto the head of the fatty who was panicking.

No one knew how fatty had provoked such a terrifying alien creature. It was the professor who reacted first and took out the laser cutter that he carried with him.

The high-energy laser used to cut through metal could also kill living creatures within a certain distance. It was one of his few weapons.

He aimed at the spider, then shouted, “What are you waiting for? Hurry up and bring fatty over!”

The others immediately came to their senses and hurriedly prepared to drag the fatty, whose legs were not listening to his command, back.

The professor opened fire at the same time, letting the green laser beam hit the spider.

However, after the high-energy laser that could easily cut through ordinary alloys hit the spider, nothing happened. The attack was like a pebble dropped into the sea.

The spider didn’t even react in anger. It only seemed to want to get fatty back after seeing him being dragged away.

The professor’s expression changed again and again. The cutter was the most powerful weapon he had, but it couldn’t do anything to the alien.

He had no choice but to run after his students while taking out his signal gun.

In his many years of space exploration, he knew that the best way to deal with giant alien creatures like this was to make them feel fear.

And light and flames were the best weapons to scare primitive creatures.

Other than emitting light, the signal flare was also a very good source of flames. If it was launched at the ground, it would form countless sparks that would quickly spread.

The forest here happened to provide fuel, so the professor aimed at a dense bush and fired the signal flare.

With that, a blinding light suddenly flashed, and even the giant spider stopped for a moment.

Then, there were the scattered combustion aids and the ignited forest.

The fire soon grew bigger and quickly formed a burning wall. The high tongues of fire seemed to reach the sky and blocked the path of the giant spider.

The professor was overjoyed and felt that he had escaped.

However, in the next moment, not only did the giant spider not retreat, but it seemed to be enraged. It swept through and broke the burning trees, then charged at them.

The thumping sounds of the giant creature moving echoed in the forest. This time, even the professor was scared out of his wits and ran for his life.

However, how could creatures with two legs outrun one with eight? The distance between them was still rapidly closing.

The young man who was second to last in the line had a cold look in his eyes. He sneaked a glance at the fatty who was running at the back in a panic.

“…This alien seems to have been provoked by fatty. If we hand him over, we might be able to escape this disaster,” Under his expressionless face was a hidden malice that no one could detect.

Seeing that no one was paying attention to him, the young man simply slowed down a little and maintained the same position as the fat man. Then, he tripped the latter.

The fatty, running away in panic, could not anticipate such change. He lost his balance and fell to the ground, rolling a few times before coming to a stop.

In his slightly dazed eyes was the scheming smile of the young man.

The others didn’t notice that someone had fallen behind, and fatty’s body abruptly stiffened, because a thick limb had been ruthlessly inserted into the soil beside him.

He trembled as he raised his head, only to see an enlarged mouthpart.

“Ah!”

Fatty’s scream pierced everyone’s ears. Cooper turned around and saw him half-eaten by the giant spider.

His heart sank, and his gaze swept across the young man who was running at the last of the team.

However, they were in the middle of their escape, so no one said anything.

After running for a long time and leaving the forest, they finally stopped to take a break.

At this moment, a dark cloud was hovering over everyone’s heads.

Fatty’s tragic death was still vivid in their minds. Clearly, they had been too careless before.

“…Under the long-term influence of high-tech, explorers often ignore many dangerous factors that they should have paid attention to. They are arrogant and conceited, and eventually die in the hands of the natives…” The professor recited a line with a bitter expression on his face. This was a famous quote from the popular interstellar book “Space Drift”, which stated the reasons why many explorers died in foreign lands.

When everyone heard this famous line, they also fell silent.

Although they seemed to value this place very much, deep in their hearts, they still harbored the arrogance of being an interstellar civilization.

Even if there had been a civilization here, they felt from the bottom of their hearts that “it’s just an old antique whose technology is outdated”.

Otherwise, they wouldn’t have approached the planet so rashly and lost control of the spaceship for no reason. One mistake led to another, and now, one of their companions had just died.

The planet’s rotation was still ongoing, and soon the sky turned black.

Everyone eventually fell asleep in silence, but their thoughts were all different.

….

In an artificial forest next to the administration core, Li Wenyuan’s synthetic humanoid was sitting on a tree stump and sighing.

Meanwhile, Lilian sat upright obediently, but her eyes occasionally drifted to the game console.

To teach a primitive creature how to speak, Li Wenyuan spent a lot of effort and explained his materials with the utmost eloquence.

In the end, he came to the conclusion that he was simply unsuited to be a teacher.

It wasn’t that he couldn’t teach well, but that his student was so stupid that he doubted his ability.

“…Um, Lord Administrator, can I go and play now?”

“…Go on, go on, sigh…”

Looking at how Lilian was cheering, Li Wenyuan held his forehead and played the scene from the other side of the planet.

A fat alien was wrapped in something like spider silk and hung upside down on a tree branch, unconscious.

Not far away, a giant spider was active in the background, spraying liquid from time to time to put out the fire, or using its large and powerful appendages to cut the flaming trees in half.

“Eh, the gardening robot has actually regained its activity?” Li Wenyuan was a little surprised to see the giant spider.

This giant spider-like “creature” was actually an old robot. Its model in the database was much older than the synthetic humanoids, probably a museum-level relic.

As its name suggested, it was a gardening robot responsible for trimming branches. However, the trees that it usually trimmed were towering trees that were fifty to sixty meters tall.

Its hardware was so old that it couldn’t be connected to the administration array. When Li Wenyuan found it, it had been in standby mode for an unknown time, buried deep under the soil.

Since he couldn’t find a way to wake it up, Li Wenyuan simply ignored the gardening robot.

He didn’t expect that the group of aliens had somehow activated it, and one of them had even been captured. This piques Li Wenyuan’s interest.

So, he pulled up the surveillance footage of the area.

He saw that the aliens had been walking carefully in the synthetic forest, constantly clearing the shrubs that blocked their way.

As he watched, Li Wenyuan suddenly realized how they had activated the gardening robot.

The professor at the forefront seemed to have felt that it was too troublesome to travel through the forest like this, so he simply swept his laser-cutting machine forward, cutting off a large area of shrubs and dozens of tall trees in an instant.

This would undoubtedly make it convenient for them to travel, but the gardening robot was definitely displeased upon detecting that its garden had been “destroyed”.

As such, it woke up from its standby mode to catch the “offenders”, but because of the fire started by the professor, it changed its target to put out the fire.

Fatty was just someone who had, unfortunately, been caught by the gardening robot. He was hung on a branch by the gardening robot, which was waiting for its former owner to come and check on these “offenders”.

“It’s only the first day and they’re already in such a sorry state. These aliens don’t seem to be very good…” In the virtual world, Li Wenyuan’s interest was waning.

“I should just hurry up and drive them to the ruins, lest they waste their days…”

Thinking of this, he controlled one of the synthetic humanoids and slowly approached Cooper’s camp.