Chapter 396: The Green Tide Lord is Charging Up...

The Green Tide Lord salvaged a pod from the depths of the sea, one crafted entirely from some special kind of colloid.

It wasn't very large, just an oval-shaped pod with barely enough room for a single person.

Fortunately, having lost two-thirds of its body, it was no longer its original towering height, so getting inside was no problem.

"It's already dead. Fortunately, it's not too damaged. Taking me to the Moon shouldn't be a problem." After a quick inspection, the Green Tide Lord was far from optimistic.

This pod had once been a living creature—a special nursery-pod spacecraft created with biotechnology.

But after its death, many of its functions had disappeared, including, of course, the medical functions the Green Tide Lord needed.

It was injured, after all, and the level of technology on the Exhausted Planet was nowhere near sufficient for it to recover.

In contrast, technology from its home world could alleviate its problems.

'Damaged is damaged. I expected as much anyway.' The Green Tide Lord's expression was calm as it manually opened the pod and climbed inside.

Due to being sealed up in the deep sea, combined with the inevitable changes that came with death, the inside of the pod emitted an extremely foul stench.

The Green Tide Lord, however, appeared perfectly calm. 'This is no time to be picky.'

Following the knowledge passed down through its race, it began to manually activate the dead pod.

Electrical currents flickered across the pod's surface, as if the once-dead life-form was being reanimated.

In reality, it wasn't being reanimated, but rather something closer to decomposition.

The foul stench began to intensify, and the Green Tide Lord's expression shifted slightly.

Fortunately, like Qi Suian, it was not human, despite its humanoid appearance.

Thus, the putrid environment had little effect on it. Its skin began to breathe rhythmically, constantly purifying the noxious gases.

It was, itself, an alien Cyanobacteria-like life-form and possessed a certain degree of environmental purification ability.

The electrical currents grew stronger, and the pod began to hum loudly.

The Green Tide Lord's manipulations grew faster and faster. Using manual methods, it quickly finished rewriting the biological data and rebooting the system.

After locking onto the Moon's coordinates, the pod finally began to levitate.

'The damage is too severe.' The Green Tide Lord's expression was grim.

Too much time had passed. The extent of the pod's damage was beyond its imagination.

Forget flying to the Moon; it would be difficult for it to even levitate for half an hour.

In the end, it could only sever its own arm and use it as a repair material, merging it into the pod.

With the addition of its own genes, it finally managed to initiate the forced activation sequence.

The severed arm slowly grew back, and its expression brightened somewhat.

Although its injuries had worsened, at least the pod was now operational.

'The overall speed is still too low. Can it really evade the surveillance of that level-three life-form?' Suddenly, this thought occurred to the Green Tide Lord.

If this were the pod that had carried it to this planet all those years ago, it would have been more than enough. It could have just traversed a spatial channel directly.

But now, that function was long since defunct.

So it could only rely on physical means of travel.

Considering the other party's power, they might not be able to catch up immediately, but they definitely wouldn't lose its trail.

Its own strength was insufficient to survive for long in Outer Space, but the other being could.

It would just chase it all the way to the Moon, and it would still face certain death.

It needed time to develop and consume the entire Moon.

It wouldn't get stronger the moment it arrived on the Moon. On the contrary, it would be further weakened by its inability to adapt to the new environment in a short time.

So, from the very beginning, its plan had a massive flaw.

'Besides, even if I escape, that being's strange structure is already complete. If...' The Green Tide Lord realized there was truly only one path before it.

Kill the level-three life-form from Outer Space.

Otherwise, it would have no chance of survival.

The universe wasn't so big after all, yet it was trapped on this Exhausted Planet.

It stopped the levitating pod, a look of grim determination appearing in its eyes.

'Planets are the breeding grounds of my race.'

'If I convert this pod into battle armor, I might still have a chance of victory.'

A successful conversion would not only further enhance its own strength but also increase its efficiency at exploiting the Exhausted Planet.

Although its birth had already reduced the entire planet to mere scraps, for the Green Tide Lord now, even those scraps were very valuable.

As long as it could alter the environment of a single region, it could gain enough strength to face its enemy.

'And there's one more resource I haven't used.'

The Green Tide Lord's gaze fell upon the life on this planet.

Normally, its kind did not eat such life-forms; they fed on planets themselves.

They were neither herbivores nor carnivores—if they ran for office, they'd have a built-in advantage.

But now was no time to be a picky eater. Squeezing out a little more nourishment was better than death.

The only thing was, doing so came with many risks, such as being discovered by Qi Suian.

After all, Qi Suian had enslaved many of the people here. This action would be tantamount to exposing its own whereabouts.

'I only have one chance. So I must choose an area with the largest population, or find a way to lure enough people together, then strike immediately.'

'And it has to be fast. I'm afraid I don't have much time.'

As it finished its thought, the entire pod underwent a bizarre transformation, continuously merging into its body. Then, a colloid-like substance emerged on its skin.

The colloid began to solidify, forming something resembling a keratinous layer.

A few minutes later, the Green Tide Lord's original form had completely vanished, replaced by an emerald-green Armored Man.

However, unlike Qi Suian's Tai Sui God, this one looked much bulkier.

It was converted from a pod, after all, not purpose-built as battle armor, so it naturally had its share of problems.

'Life signs detected. Position three hundred li north.' The Green Tide Lord continuously operated the armor made from the dead bio-pod, quickly locking onto a location with a high concentration of life signs.

Unfortunately, the scanner's range was limited; otherwise, the Green Tide Lord could have searched farther and found a more suitable hunting ground.

'Activating acceleration unit...'

In an instant, the armor accelerated. The bulky figure erupted forward with speed even greater than its own natural pace.

'Before that level-three life-form can react, perhaps I can obtain even more power.'

After confirming the initial data from wearing the battle armor, the Green Tide Lord had more ideas.

The higher the starting point, the greater the subsequent stat increase would be once it had sufficient nutrients.

The overall initial stats were somewhat beyond its expectations, which was what sparked these new ideas.

* * *

"Survive for seven days... How come we haven't seen any of those so-called 'Geocentric Parasites'? Don't tell me they're the ones controlling us?" Zhong Jie complained.

Back when resources were just scarce, life was hopeless and they were just getting by, but at least they didn't have to do such high-intensity labor.

Of course, what he didn't know was that what this group of people considered "high-intensity" was just a regular workload in a normal world.

It only felt like high-intensity work because they were all malnourished.

How could they have the strength to work when they were underfed and malnourished?

As a result, many people had died from what was, for them, extremely strenuous labor.

"Who knows? And even if they are, what can we do about it? Let's just focus on surviving this period first," a co-worker next to him replied casually.

No one knew if they would wake up sick the next day.

In these times, getting sick was basically a death sentence. Few people managed to pull through.

And even if they recovered from an illness, they'd be forced back to work. Already severely weakened, they would just drop dead from overexertion within a couple of days.

So for the survivors, this was undoubtedly a state of despair.

When the limited-time event first appeared, some had thought of rebelling. But then a missile descended from the sky and exploded, and everyone fell in line.

Later, after learning various things from the chat channel, any thoughts of resistance vanished completely.

"True. That's not something we should be worrying about," Zhong Jie said with a self-deprecating laugh. He then added, "The construction period should be ending soon."

"I just hope they were telling the truth, that they'll set us free once it's finished."

Things had come to this, and there was nothing they could do.

They couldn't fight back, but they didn't want to die, so they could only muddle through day by day.

As he was speaking, Zhong Jie suddenly noticed a green glow in the distance that seemed to be growing larger.

"Look, is that a meteor?" he asked, tugging on his co-worker's sleeve.

The co-worker looked up in confusion, following Zhong Jie's pointing finger with his gaze.

"It's a meteor," the co-worker nodded in agreement, then his eyes widened in sudden realization. "HOLY SHIT, RUN!!!"

After shouting, he immediately turned and ran.

The meteor's trajectory was clearly headed straight for their area.

If they were too slow, they'd probably be crushed to death.

Zhong Jie didn't realize it at first, but seeing his co-worker flee, he instinctively turned and ran with him.

BOOM!

Behind him, the meteor landed, transforming into a massive, monstrous figure.

The next moment, he scratched his skin, feeling a strange itch.

It would have been better not to scratch. The moment he did, he almost scared himself to death.

He had torn off an entire patch of his skin. It was a bloody mess, yet he felt no pain.

It wasn't just him. The co-worker running ahead of him was in the same state, only worse—he had scratched off a large chunk of flesh along with the skin.

He couldn't help but swallow hard, and the first thing he did was describe the event in the chat channel.

After sending the message, he staggered and fell to the ground.

He hadn't tripped. It was as if all the strength in his body had been drained by something.

"BLEGH~" He retched instinctively, vomiting a large mouthful of reddish-green liquid.

The red was his blood, while the green seemed to be some kind of long-extinct algae.

"What... is this..." A green film covered his retinas. He collapsed weakly to the ground as his body began to gradually decompose.

In less than a minute, all of his flesh, bones, and organs had dissolved into a puddle of writhing, alien Cyanobacteria.

It wasn't just him; everyone present met the same fate.

They didn't even know how it was happening. Most of them died without understanding a thing.