Morning research notes, logged before breakfast:
Variant 1 has reached fist-size and appears to have stopped growing. Activity core radiation from the needle proboscis is notably weak — below even the Short-sting worker ants. Artificially induced mutation appears to produce congenitally limited Activity development.
12 second-generation mutant maggots now measure approximately 10 centimeters in length and 4 centimeters in diameter. Daily consumption of rotting meat is approaching unsustainable levels. Culling 6.
He extracted six maggots, dissected one, and found no Activity core. Not surprising — flies pupated before reaching their adult form, and the core might only manifest post-metamorphosis. He noted it and set the question aside.
The remaining five maggots writhed on the dissection surface.
Supposedly high nutritional value.
He looked at them for a moment. His stomach made its position clear without being asked. Unless he was genuinely starving, this was not happening.
Use as fishing bait.
The thought arrived with the particular clarity of a genuinely good idea. The small lake he’d drawn water from the previous evening was too shallow to hide anything Dog-Croc-sized. Something had to be living in there — the Activity environment supported mutation across every biological category he’d surveyed. Mutated fish, if they existed, would be manageable in size and potentially worth eating. The maggots were large enough to be interesting to a fish. The concept was sound.
He’d need metal components — a steel-pipe rod and wire line rather than conventional gear, on the assumption that whatever was in that lake would make conventional tackle irrelevant. Material search tomorrow. For tonight, something more pressing.
He spread his Activity core collection on the floor and took inventory.
Burrower mandibles: 2 pairs. Gnawrat incisors: 1 pair. Fangwolf fangs: 3. Teddy Tyrant fangs: 4. Tumour-Pig crescent tusks: 1 pair. Queen ant chest plate: 1. Short-sting ant cores, various: numerous, low intensity. Spine-cat bone spines: 14. Three Honey Peach pits — unknown whether those qualified.
He had more cores than he had applications for at the moment. He tested one of the soldier ant mandibles in Variant 1’s enclosure, mostly out of curiosity.
The fly went at it immediately, needle proboscis working in rapid repetitive contact until the core had been fully consumed.
So it can eat Activity cores. Interesting, but not interesting enough to keep doing — these cores are worth more than feeding to a research subject that’s nearly at the end of its useful observation period.
Once the second-generation maggots pupated and emerged as adults, the comparison between first-generation induced mutation and second-generation ambient mutation would be complete. After that, the fly experiment concluded and the whole enclosure got cleared out. Keeping something that ate and defecated constantly in an enclosed living space was an ongoing assault on his tolerance for poor hygiene conditions.
The queen ant chest plate, though — that had been waiting for a specific application since he’d extracted it from the queen’s thorax.
Time to build something worth building.
He got out the drafting paper.
The Optimus 1.0 had been functional. It had also been crude — flat steel plates joined by basic steel wire at the joints, which limited range of motion and created pressure points during extended wear. Six weeks of fighting in it had taught him exactly where the design failed. The queen’s chest plate, the ant node cores, and the concept of chain mail as flexible connective tissue had been sitting in the back of his mind as a solution since he’d catalogued them.
He sketched for an hour.
Node cores — nine from worker ants, four from soldiers — could be ground into bowl-shaped cups and configured as three-piece joint covers, allowing rotation in multiple planes while maintaining Active protection at the most vulnerable points. Knees, shoulders, elbows, wrists, ankles. Chain mail rings at the waist, neck, and hip connections, replacing the rigid wire that had been causing the mobility problems.
Making chain mail from scratch required: a steel rod as a mandrel for winding, steel wire, pliers, and time. He had all of these. He wound the wire around the rod in tight coils, pulled it free, cut down the length with wire cutters, separated the rings. A pile of uniform steel hoops accumulated on the work surface.
He started weaving them together.
It was quiet, methodical work. Interlocking each ring with four others, the pattern building slowly into flexible mesh sections. He made three panels before midnight, then switched to grinding the node cores into their cup profiles — the angle grinder running through the Activity-hardened bone at a pace that would have seemed impossible on conventional material.
Past midnight, all the components were ready.
He ate two Honey Peaches and went to sleep.
August 1st. Army Day, which was irrelevant to his current situation but surfaced in his memory anyway.
He checked his status before getting out of bed.
Two peaches had delivered meaningfully more than one. His physical sense of his own capability had shifted — not a clean jump to three bulls, but close enough that the gap was more psychological than practical. Call it 2.9, or one foot across the threshold.
Vajra’s saturation: 30%. Up from 27.1%. 2.9 percentage points overnight, without sustained guidance from him. The Exchange had been running on its own while he slept, fed by whatever the peaches released through the mutual bond.
This is what twenty-seven peaches buys. This is the timeline.
He did the math. At roughly 1.5 to 2 points per peach, he had enough to push Vajra from 30% toward the mid-40s before the supply ran out — assuming diminishing returns didn’t accelerate. Every point of saturation restored was a multiple of recovery time saved.
He wasn’t going to rush it. Each peach needed time to process, and he needed functional days between transformation-sleeps.
He laid out all the components and began assembly.
The new armor went together differently than the old version. Smaller steel plate sections, each shaped to a specific body region rather than cut to rough approximation. Chain mail panels at every connection point. Node cores fitted into the joint covers with precision that his six years of metalwork made possible.
The queen ant chest plate went in the center of the torso section and immediately did something the Fangwolf fangs never had: it organized the whole armor’s Activity distribution autonomously, pulling the energy toward itself and redistributing it through the other cores without Shen Cong needing to consciously direct it. The fangs were relegated to the helmet sides — supplementary storage rather than primary distribution.
When he disconnected the assembled armor from Vajra’s Amalgamation process, the decay rate of the Active charge was visibly slower than anything the 1.0 had managed. The chest plate was sustaining the whole system, drawing in ambient Activity to compensate for losses, extending the usable window significantly.
He put it on.
The difference was immediate and physical — the joints moved with him rather than against him, the chain mail sections flexing at the waist and hip without binding, the weight distributed more evenly across the frame. He ran through a series of striking combinations, a full squat, a sprint to the far end of the cargo section. Nothing caught, nothing restricted.
This is what armor is supposed to feel like.
He spent the next thirty minutes on the mounting hardware. Left eye position on the helmet: the repaired infrared imager, hinged to raise or lower. Left shoulder: a recessed clip for the hand crossbow. Right shoulder: quiver attachment. Belt positions: fang-knives, slingshot, steel ball pouch. Thigh mounts: military spike, entrenching tool. Chest: telescope clip. Interior abdominal pocket in the chain mail: the handgun.
He stood fully assembled and took stock.
Optimus 1.0 Upgraded Active Armor. Too long. He’d been calling it the Baogai version in his head — the overhaul edition — and that was short enough to stick.
Baogai Armor. Done.
He showered, shaved his head to a fresh polish, broke the leaf wrapping off a bundle of fried ant legs and ate several standing up.
Then he loaded everything — fang javelins racked in the cargo section, Activity-infused steel balls in the sling pouch, crossbow bolts with Activity-core tips, the handgun chambered. Everything that could be Amalgamated had been. Maximum effective output across the full kit.
He walked out of Vajra into the morning sun.
The new armor caught the light differently than the old version — the ground and polished surfaces of the nodes, the interlocking chain at the joints, the chest plate’s particular sheen — the whole assembly throwing back a silver-white that was visible at distance.
He rolled his shoulders, tested the helmet visor’s range of motion, and turned to face the ruins of Yinping Township.
Time to see what was out there.
(End of Chapter 37)