The young of these new life-forms carried some memories from both parents. Those memories could be selected, and most mothers chose to pass on survival skills.
Here underground, even under the protection of massive engineering units, they could only hide in corners beyond the network's scanning range. As "anomalies," they faced extermination sweeps by the intelligent network entities in charge.
With automated engineering covering the globe, the Mechanical Monsters could never be wiped out. They could not survive within the network's surveillance.
This was also why this population had not rapidly spread across the entire planet.
When faced with hunger, the communal tribes organized expeditions to explore automated manufacturing depots and obtain energy bars made from compressed nutrients.
They had inherited some personal equipment. Although the knowledge needed to manufacture it had been lost, and the exoskeletons gradually broke down and dwindled in number with each expedition, the methods for using them had always been passed down.
Of every hundred gatherers sent out by a tribe, fifty would have no equipment. These were usually elderly or disabled individuals.
They served as bait to lure the Mechanical Monsters away. Sacrifices had to be made for the species to survive.
If half of a hundred-person team survived a single trip, the tribe already considered itself fortunate.
When asked about their genetic knowledge, not one of them knew what that was. But Researcher Luo Qi could be certain that their current state had not arisen through natural evolution.
"The fighting outside has already started." Luo Qi felt it necessary to give everyone another meal at this critical moment.
And so, "God" once again shone with dazzling radiance. This time, bread arrived through spatial transport, although the raw ingredients used to make it were underground rocks from a planet within the Giraffe Constellation.
Bread