Chapter 460
So far, heād developed only two types of combat units: crawlers and wingclaws. Sure, he had no idea how well they would perform against D, but heād used his creatures in battles against powerful elite monsters on numerous occasions, and if those battles were any indication, his creatures would have trouble defeating D.
When battling an elite monster, their sheer numbers could definitely inflict damage on the enemy and even bring it down. However, many of his creatures would fall in battle against these elite monsters. There was simply no way around it. And D was much more powerful than any elite monster.
So he knew he needed to develop some kind of creature that could be effective against Dās powerful armor. Knowing Dās resistances would definitely help in the matter, but unfortunately, the System didnāt allow him to take a glimpse at them.
While Jake and D belonged to the same kind, that didnāt necessarily mean their resistances were exactly the same. Jakeās strongest resistance was
Pierce
, standing at 75%. The
Body
attribute was the main factor that governed this resistance. Considering Dās
Body
attribute was much higher than Jakeās, his
Pierce
resistance should be even greater, which explained why he managed to shrug off most of Jakeās attacks in their previous encounter.
But what about Dās other resistances? How strong were they? At what levels? Sure enough, Jake could only speculate. He himself always carried the
Basic Elemental Shielding
artifact that increased his
Fire
,
Frost
, and
Shock
resistances by 25% each. Whether D had something similar was hard to tell.
The only way he was aware of to obtain such artifacts was in the Void Temple, which Jake had gained access to by finding a secret in the Maze of Torment. Sure enough, Jake didnāt know whether D had ever cleared any dungeons, let alone if any other dungeons even granted entry to the Void Temple.
If only Jake could see Dās resistances, it would be much easier for him to figure out what kind of creature he needed to develop and what abilities it should have to at least weaken D, if not defeat him entirely. But Jake didnāt know how he could see Dās resistances. Not yet, at least. But if he was able to get such an insight at some point, he would be able to design a creature tailored to exploit Dās weaknesses.
Of course, he already had a few ideas in mind that he could try, plans for new creatures he could try to develop, but before getting to that, a far more urgent problem demanded his attention. For now, the most important issue was not inventing a creature that could pose a more or less serious threat to D, but figuring out how to even get his creatures to Dead City in the first place.
In New Hope, he often had a group of minions following him wherever he went. Even when he didnāt have a group nearby, he could always issue a mental command to his ten-story lair to dispatch a group of creatures, and they could traverse the city to his position fairly quickly.
Here, in Dead City, he had no lair to serve as a base for deploying combat units, and pulling them in from New Hope presented its own challenges. A Transfer Maw could only be set on solid ground, and the strange, organic layer coating most of Dead Cityās surfaces wouldnāt work.
Building a lair in Dead City didnāt seem like a good idea either. First, because there werenāt many places where he could build one, and second, if D stumbled upon it, he could easily destroy it.
Also, if he created a lair in Dead City and wanted to summon creatures from his other lairs, he would need to construct either a Flesh Port or a Transfer Maw there. If D discovered the new lair, being a morphus, those structures would likely allow him to teleport straight to any of Jakeās other lairs. The thought of D gaining access to and easily destroying any of his lairs was enough to make him abandon the idea entirely.
The question remained: how could he bring his creatures from his lairs into Dead City? One possible solution was to create a Transfer Maw in any location free from Ravage Contamination, perhaps deep within the subway or inside a building the Spartans had previously cleared of that organic plague. The Commander had told him that the Spartans had cleared several nests over the past few months, so there should now be a few such buildings available.
However, locating a cleared building and creating a Transfer Maw every time he needed to summon his creatures was neither convenient nor fast. Besides, since a Transfer Maw could remain active for several hours, there was always the risk that D might stumble upon it and use it to travel to one of his lairs. And Jake needed to prevent that from happening at any cost.
He needed to find a way to deploy his monsters quickly, without having to use a Transfer Maw. But how could he achieve that? After giving the matter some thought, an idea occurred to him: what if he could develop some kind of large creature, ideally a flying one, that could serve as transport for his other creations? Basically, something like a living Dropship.
Within its body, he could install a Flesh Port, allowing him to teleport his combat units from his lairs to the Dropship whenever needed. He could keep the Dropship always flying high above the roofs of Dead Cityās buildings to prevent D from reaching it. Ideally, he could even give the Dropship a cloaking ability, so it wouldnāt be visible at all.
It seemed like a good idea, but could he actually create such a creature? Considering it would have to be big enough to accommodate a group of his crawlers and wingclaws, each of which was already quite large, the Dropship would need to be enormous. A Hive Nexus wouldnāt be able to create it, that was for sure. Only the Behemoth Cavern was large enough to produce such a massive creature.
But the Behemoth Cavern in the Apex Cavern was already developing his Kaiju, and it couldnāt work on two enormous creatures at the same time. One option was to wait for his Kaiju to finish developing and emerge from the Behemoth Cavern.
However, given how slowly the Kaiju was growing, it would take a few days for it to finally finish developing. Jake wasnāt willing to wait that long. Another option was to create a second Behemoth Cavern, especially since there was plenty of room in the Apex Hollow to build it. This approach was definitely better than waiting a few days for his Kaiju to vacate the first Behemoth Cavern.
He couldnāt shake another concern from his mind: his ten-story lair in New Hope was well known to humans and therefore was vulnerable. Sure, he would do anything he could to prevent it from being destroyed, but there was always a possibility that somebody might be able to destroy it at some point. If that ever happened, it would pose a specific problem for him.
His managatherers and arachnoxes would have to deliver mana and biomatter, respectively, directly to the Apex Hollow, which was located at a significant distance from New Hope. His arachnoxes would have a hard time navigating the Scarlands, and while managatherers could fly, it would still take them quite a bit of time to make the trip. As a result, the influx of fresh supplies to his main lair would slow down significantly.
Creating a Transfer Maw every time his creatures needed to transport collected resources to the Apex Hollow was far from convenient, as he had already concluded. However, if he developed a Dropship, the problem would be solved. All his working creatures would need to do was board the Dropship, use it to teleport to the Apex Hollow to store the collected resources, and then get back to New Hope, bypassing any obstacle altogether.
The Dropship idea had its undeniable merits, but Jake knew it wasnāt perfect. And as he mulled it over further, he was suddenly struck by a new flash of inspiration, a concept so ingenious it made his previous plan feel obsolete.
He immediately abandoned the notion of building a Dropship. Not only was this new idea far superior to the Dropship, but if he could bring it to life, it could also tackle an additional problem the Dropship could never have been able to resolve.
Jake was so excited he decided to start working on the new idea right away. Still standing on the rooftop where heād fought off D, he glanced around to get his bearings. Quickly picking a direction, he set off, eager to get started.