Chapter 451
He continued to scan the area, noting the position of every human in sight. So were simply going about their business, while others kept a close watch on him. Only so of the Spartans carried powerful weapons like assault rifles or combat shotguns in their hands, but nearly all of them had a sidearm holstered at their hip.
Jake had to assu every visible weapon was energy-based, capable of punching through his armored body. If he decided to fight these humans, the battle wouldn’t be easy. Still, if he chose to, he was confident he would erge victorious.
Only did he really want to kill the Spartans?
He rembered all too well why he had chosen to refrain from killing every human he encountered in the first place. It was the quickest path to becoming a full-fledged, mindless monster. If he gave in to his dark instincts, there was no way to tell whether he could remain even partly human.
He’d managed to find a delicate balance between his human and monstrous sides, but that balance was fragile, precarious. For that reason, he had long ago decided it was best to confront only those who antagonized him, help those who needed it, and simply ignore everyone else. Acting in this way, he had managed to preserve the last shreds of his humanity.
But if he began killing humans without restraint, slaying every one he t, his monstrous side would imdiately take control. He had no wish to suffer D’s fate, assuming the Commander had told him the truth about D, of course. He hadn’t been resisting his monstrous instincts, fighting them with sheer willpower, only to give in to them in the end.
No, for the sake of keeping his humanity, he had to cooperate with humans when possible, or at the very least, with those who asked for his help.
He then glanced toward Catalina. Another thing was, the thought of betraying her felt wrong. She was the only human who had placed her trust in him, the only one who treated him well, as if he were still a normal human being. Betraying her trust would certainly feel like the worst thing he had ever done.
And there was another thing to take into consideration. His Kaiju was still growing, and it was hard to tell how many days would pass before it was ready to erge from the Behemoth Cavern. By the ti that happened, the Ravage Contamination might have already consud New Hope completely.
He was aware that his Kaiju would go through five evolution stages, gradually progressing from its initial form to its most powerful one. So he had to assu that while it might be quite strong at Stage I, it still might not be initially powerful enough to destroy the Ravage Contamination in New Hope.
So, all things considered, killing the Spartans was out of the question. He definitely needed to clear New Hope of the Ravage, as it only hindered his own developnt. But to do so, he needed the energy-based weapons the Spartans used. Ideally, he wanted the humans in New Hope to arm themselves with the sa weapons so they could all fight the Ravage together. There were quite a few humans in New Hope, so with their combined efforts, they should be able to rid the city of the contamination fairly quickly.
However, simply taking the weapons from the Spartans wasn’t an option, as they would never surrender them without a fight, and fighting them, as he had already concluded, wasn’t an option. So, whether he liked it or not, he needed to work with the Commander.
“If you’re thinking of killing us all just to strip us of our weapons, you can forget it because it wouldn’t work,” the Commander said, breaking the silence that, as Jake realized, had stretched on for so ti.
He turned his head to look at the Commander. Could this human read his mind? But he dismissed the notion almost imdiately. If the Commander could do so, he would already have known that Jake had no intentions of killing them. More likely, he’d noticed Jake studying the cavern and pieced together what must have been on his mind.
“And why exactly wouldn’t it work?” Jake asked. “Do you think I’m incapable of killing you all?”
“That’s not what I ant,” the Commander replied, drawing his sidearm again. “A regular fabricator simply doesn’t know how to manufacture this kind of weapon.”
Jake knew that a fabricator was a machine humans used to craft a variety of goods, provided they had the necessary materials. Each had a list of basic items it could produce, for example, ammunition for different weapon types.
“To build this kind of weapon, you have to provide a specific blueprint for a fabricator to use,” the Commander continued. “I learned this blueprint when I unlocked a special skill. So you can’t just give this blueprint to your fabricator to learn, because there’s simply no physical copy of it anywhere.”
“I don’t get it,” Catalina said. “How were you going to teach us to make this type of weapon then?”
The Commander tapped his temple with the muzzle of his pistol. “Like I said, the blueprint is basically a skill, so it’s stored in my head. When I access a fabricator via its console terminal, it detects which blueprints I’ve morized and can use them to create items. So all we need to do is for you to take to your base and let use your fabricator. The machine will retrieve the blueprint from my mind and store it. After that, it’ll be able to produce this type of weapon on its own, even without .”
“I see,” Catalina said.
The Commander shifted his gaze to Jake. “And if you were thinking about just taking our weapons from us, it wouldn’t work either.”
“Why not?”
Without another word, the Commander held out his sidearm for Catalina to take. “Take it.”
Catalina hesitated for a second but then accepted the weapon from his grip.
“Now shoot .”
“What? Absolutely not!”
“Don’t worry. I wouldn’t suggest such a thing if I weren’t absolutely sure it was safe.”
“Even so, I’m not willing to take that kind of risk.”
“Trust , nothing bad will happen.”
“No. I’d rather not gamble with our lives.”
“Fine. Then point it at the ground and pull the trigger.”
Catalina hesitated for a mont but then did as she was told. She pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. The Commander calmly took the weapon from her, aid it at the ground, and pulled the trigger. This ti, the weapon fired. A sharp crackle split the air, and a blue energy bolt scorched a small hole into the earth.
“See what I an?” the Commander said. “These weapons bind themselves to their first user. The very first ti you pull the trigger after the weapon is manufactured, it becos yours, and yours alone. From that point onward, it refuses to let anybody else fire it. So this pistol only works in my hand.”
With that, the Commander slid the pistol back into its holster. He looked back at Jake and said, “If you choose to kill us, the blueprint will be lost, and nobody will be able to reproduce these weapons because the technology will be gone. And if you try to take weapons from us, they will be useless to you or to anyone else.”
Jake remained silent.
The Commander seed to interpret Jake’s silence as defiance because he added, “So you’d better drop the idea of confronting us, Jake, as it won’t benefit you in any way. It might be hard for you to understand, but we humans help each other. That’s how humans work. That’s our way. We don’t try to solve all our problems with violence, we try to understand one another and live together despite our differences.”
Jake said nothing.
“But for you, it might be hard to understand, with you being… what you are now,” the Commander went on.
“A monster, you an.”
“Yes. A monster.”
“But I was human once,” Jake said. “We already told you that.”
“Yes, but tell , Jake, how long ago was that? You might not even rember what it was like to be human anymore. You move differently now, act like a predator, even think differently. You kill everything that moves instead of trying to find peaceful solutions to problems and help others, the way humans do.”
Jake noticed Catalina steal a glance at him. With an incredibly wide field of vision, he could clearly see her face without needing to turn his head toward her. Since he was facing the Commander, who stood directly in front of him, Catalina didn’t realize he was studying her expression in his peripheral vision.
He could tell from the look on her face that she was silently agreeing with the Commander, and for so reason, he found it odd and slightly irritating that she sided with a human she had known for less than half an hour, rather than choosing to argue with the Commander, if for no other reason than to show him whose side she was truly on.
Not that what the Commander had said was far from the truth, though. Jake did catch himself thinking it would have been much easier if he could simply slay all the Spartans and collect their weapons.
He also noted, once again, that while the Commander didn’t know everything about creatures like Jake and D, he still got a lot of things right, especially details that weren’t imdiately obvious. He definitely seed to understand the way a morphus thought, which made Jake wonder yet again how the Commander could have learned about such things.
“I wasn’t thinking about killing you,” Jake said at last, snapping back to the mont from his reverie.
“You weren’t?” the Commander echoed, clearly not buying it.
“No.”
“And what were you thinking about then?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Jake said. “Anyway, let get this straight. I help you clear your city of the Ravage, and in return, you teach Catalina how to create the energy-based weapons your people use.”
“Yep, sounds right to ,” the Commander said. “So, deal?”
He extended his hand for Jake to shake. To do so, Jake would have to cross the short distance separating them. He stayed where he was, though.
“I don’t know how long you’ve been a mutant, Jake,” the Commander said, “but when humans make an agreent, we seal it with a handshake. Maybe you’ve forgotten that custom.”
“I haven’t.”
“So aren’t you going to shake my hand then?”
“No.”
The Commander hesitated, then lowered his hand. He stared at Jake for a mont with an unreadable expression. Whatever conclusion he ca to, he kept it to himself.
“Just proves my point, I guess,” he muttered, assuming Jake couldn’t hear him. Then, raising his voice, he said, “Alright then. Now that we have a deal…” He paused, studying him. “We have a deal, right?”
“Yes.”
“Good. In that case, let explain exactly what needs to be done to eliminate a nest.”
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