Leo wandered inside the metal fortress. His first step was to kill all the Cyborg to ensure they had no chance to activate the fortress. Then he would slowly search for what he wanted inside.
"They don't eat, so what's the point of preparing this food?"
This is a kitchen. Looking at the dark, unappetizing things displayed on it, they are indeed edible food.
However, these Cyborg have solid metal bodies, so they cannot eat, nor do they need to.
"These are likely intended for the Diro People; Diro People survival must be guaranteed in order to expand the scale of the metal fortress."
Leo picked up a piece of food, gently squeezed it, and crushed the dark food.
The main component of this food is starch, and surprisingly, the secondary component is soil.
"Is there any place to grow crops in this Luota world? Where did he get all this food?" Yaoyao asked doubtfully.
"It's more likely that these foods were dug up from the ground than grown."
Leo could smell the lingering stench of decay in these foods; even with extensive processing, the taste of time still lingered.
"You mean these foods are things dug up from underground that haven't rotted or calcified?" Yaoyao shivered all over. According to Leo, this kind of food was equivalent to Earth reprocessing corpses, trees, and the like from underground and then feeding them to the Diro People.
That's disgusting!
"When we examined the digestive tracts of the Diro People before, we found that while their digestive tracts had degenerated, they had also evolved powerful stomach acid, which should be to adapt to these foods. It seems that they have been eating this kind of food for many generations."
It makes perfect sense to eat this kind of thing, since the environment of the Rota World is incapable of growing any vegetation and there's not much food to eat.
During their years of digging, the Diro People unearthed previously naturally deposited vegetation or corpses that had not decomposed.
In a state of extreme hunger, it is entirely plausible to eat these foods.
Leo put down the food and continued walking towards the other rooms inside the fortress.
The passageway was brightly lit by the firelight reflecting off the furnace, but only Leo's footsteps echoed through it, making it seem somewhat eerie.
Pushing open the door to another room, I found a dented chair inside.
Needless to say, this is the room prepared for the Cyborg to control the metal giants.
They are seated in chairs, which maximizes the stability of their control.
Leo also tried sitting on these chairs, but he couldn't feel anything; they were hard and uncomfortable.
The next room was filled with a large number of ordinary metal ingots; it was a raw materials room.
continue,
This time, the room was very empty, with only a few pieces of the Diro People's body hanging on the metal walls.
Leo curiously took a piece to examine it, only to discover that these fragments of the corpse had been there for who knows how many years and had long since dried out.
What are you doing? Making yourself some cured meat?
Yaoyao stretched out her little paw and flicked it, making a banging sound.
If you add some salt on top, it becomes smoked bacon.
It took approximately 800 to 1500 years to form.
Without precise experimental equipment, Leo could only roughly estimate the time; these dried body parts were probably from a thousand years ago.
The dry environment inside the metal fortress ensured that all the moisture in the body parts evaporated, which is the main reason why these body parts were preserved.
"The fact that these body parts have been preserved so well after all this time shows how important they were to the Cyborg."
"Could these be the original bodies of those Cyborg?"
Yaoyao suddenly guessed in surprise that he was just making this up based on intuition, without any basis.
"Very likely,"
Leo ran towards the upper level of the metal fortress, carrying a piece of the corpse. He had just killed the Cyborg there.
To determine whether these body parts are from the original body of the Cyborg, a simple test and comparison is sufficient.
Similar to DNA comparison, it was very simple. Leo casually picked up several test tubes and reagents from the Shadow Space.
In a dazzling series of operations, the flesh and body parts of the Cyborg were placed into different test tubes.
After waiting for a few minutes, the two test tubes turned out to be the same color.
"It really is a body. No wonder it was placed in a separate room." Yaoyao said in surprise upon seeing the experimental results.
Leo showed no surprise at the experimental results. Instead, he looked at the shattered corpse in front of him and the other Cyborg bodies not far away, and fell into deep thought.
"I think I've discovered a bit of the secret of these Cyborg," Leo murmured after a long while.
Before Yaoyao could ask, Leo muttered to himself, "But this is just a guess right now; I need to verify it."
As he spoke, Leo moved his foot.
Shadow Walking
After a dozen or so steps, they found themselves inside another metal fortress.
This time, Leo didn't kill them immediately. Instead, he captured all the Cyborg inside the fortress and brought them to him.
With a flick of his finger, a black domain appeared beneath the feet of all the Cyborg. The moment Leo activated the domain, the Cyborg were rendered unable to move and lay sprawled on the ground.
"Take a look, see if you can find anything?"
Leo pointed to the dozen or so Cyborg within the Gravity Domain and asked Yaoyao.
"What did you find? They don't look good?"
Yaoyao glanced tentatively at Leo, but he didn't notice anything.
Leo shook his head helplessly, feeling foolish for asking Yaoyao such a question; he shouldn't have asked him.
Leo stepped into the Gravity Domain, took out a sharp scalpel, and cleanly sliced off the flesh and limbs of several Cyborg.
Without their flesh and blood, these Cyborg instantly lost their vitality, becoming metal statues fixed in the last moment before their flesh was cut off.
Is this all you're going to show me?
Yaoyao looked at the Cyborg who had died without flesh and blood and spoke to Leo.
Leo shook his head. "No."
He really hadn't expected that these Cyborg would die directly without flesh and blood.
Seeing that these flesh and blood limbs played a far more important role than I had imagined.
Leo ignored the role and function of the flesh and blood limbs on the Cyborg, first placing the flesh and blood limbs in his hands on the ground in fixed positions, and then quickly found the dried corpse parts that had been stored for thousands of years in a room inside the fortress.
Then, after piecing them together, Yaoyao immediately understood.
"This is a complete corpse of Diro People."
Although some parts have shrunk and some parts have changed shape, it is still clear that they came from the same body, and some of the wounds at the breaks can still be healed even after a thousand years.
"Let's be more precise and conduct another experiment."
Leo took out test tubes and medicine, and extracted a small amount of tissue from each piece of corpse and put it in.
Once all the test tubes had become completely uniform in color, it could be confirmed that the flesh and blood tissue on these Cyborg also originated from the same Diro People.
Leo's gaze then fell upon the Cyborg suppressed by the Gravity Domain; their flesh and blood tissues clearly also originated from a Diro People.
"If your experiment is correct, then a metal fortress actually contains three to four Diro People, who are then divided into five groups, making fifteen to twenty Cyborg."
"But why do that?"
Yaoyao scratched her head. Why did she have to divide her body into multiple parts when she didn't have to?
"If we can figure this out, we'll probably be close to uncovering the ultimate secret."
Leo lightly snapped his fingers, and with a snap, the flesh and blood of the Cyborg trapped in the Gravity Domain exploded, while the remaining parts of their bodies solidified in the shapes they had before they died.
"I have another guess, but I need some help."
Leo vanished from the metal fortress in an instant.
Upon arriving outside the metal fortress, sensing the direction of the turbulent elemental tides in the air, they quickly returned to the battlefield by Shadow Walking.
The wizard army is carrying out the clearing of the metal fortress in an organized and planned manner.
Although these metal fortresses do not retaliate when not under attack, their counterattacks are quite formidable once attacked.
His entire body unleashed a barrage of cannon fire, and when he realized the cannons weren't powerful enough, he transformed into a metal giant.
A metal fortress in front of Leo was shaking incessantly, the metal that made up the fortress flowing like water, quickly forming a large sphere.
The slave squad tasked with attacking the fortress panicked instantly. Amidst the roar of the tie-wearing wizard, all the slaves fought desperately, trying to interrupt the metal fortress's transformation.
Seeing that they still couldn't stop the metal fortress from transforming, the team leader wizard had no choice but to report the situation.
He won't gain any merit for evolving the metal fortress to the transformation stage; instead, he'll be penalized.
Therefore, the leader wizard looked very grim upon seeing the metal fortress transforming.
Soon, a wizard specializing in handling the transformation of the metal giants arrived. His strength Level-Two Elemental Wizard was insufficient to break through the metal fortress's defenses, but he must have his own unique secret techniques to deal with these metal fortresses with their single defenses.
Hemali received orders from the command center and appeared in front of a metal fortress that was about to complete its transformation.
Looking at the metal fortress that hadn't yet completed its transformation, Hemali breathed a slight sigh of relief.
Hemali was just an ordinary Level-Two Elemental Wizard, but he had some unique insights into the magic he practiced.
I thought it would be difficult for someone with his ordinary level two strength to make any breakthroughs, but I never expected that it would come in handy during this expedition.
When he was first assigned to the command center, he was very nervous, after all, he had to deal with a metal giant with the strength of a level three.
In the very first battle, Hemali discovered that his sorcery could perfectly counter the metal fortress before it transformed, which solidified Hemali confidence.