Enforcer Manual
Chapter 200: I, Am the Bug Swarm_1

Chapter 200: Chapter 200: I, Am the Bug Swarm_1

In the following days, Song Lan paid no attention to anything else and focused entirely on his work.

He found that turning civilians with guns into elite machine gunners was harder than he thought as reality was not as simple as a video game. In 2166, characters didn’t just cost 50 bucks.

Even with financial assistance from the Twelfth Nation, they could only afford basic expenses. The budget was nowhere near enough for everyone to afford exoskeleton armor. He realized the sadness of not having core technology.

Price setting power was always controlled by someone else, and even if they were willing to sell you some substandard goods, there was no choice but to accept.

So, what core technology did District 17 or himself possess?

Spiritual energy.

Song Lan came to this answer almost instantly.

His recent journey made him reconsider the nature of two types of spiritual energy.

The dominance brought by interference-type psychic abilities and the annihilation caused by destruction-type abilities were not things easily experimented within the seventeenth district.

In particular the latter, using such abilities in District 17 was akin to detonating a nuclear bomb at home, they would self-destruct before anyone could attack them.

His battle with Scarecrow made him realize that the power of destruction-type psychic abilities was not inferior to the weapons of war available in the market. Therefore, the question now was how to apply psychic energy to armament manufacturing.

Although he had given up on turning Law Enforcers into psychics, if he could realize the weaponization of psychic energy, it would immensely increase the Law Enforcers’ firepower within a short time.

Lobbing a tactical nuclear bomb or lobbing a destruction-type psychic bomb, he felt, there was little difference between the two in terms of their effects.

In a way, he himself was like a psychic power plant. But now they only had a single power plant in the base, no barracks, no research institutes, so no soldiers were made, nor could they climb the technological ladder.

Therefore, Song Lan decided to consider from two different perspectives.

The CTEA-32 genetic agent developed by the Barrosa Group would render humans unconscious, turning them into tools that follow their most primitive instincts, making them similar to the Death God Crab that had gained a degree of intelligence after mutation. It was not until he seriously considered this question that he finally understood why Scarecrow was so eager to communicate with the Death God Crab.

Because it’s highly probable that this is the key to solve the problem of injectees losing consciousness due to CTEA-32, unfortunately, Scarecrow’s prejudice and resistance towards psychic abilities prevented him from pursuing this idea further.

The secret to make the Death God Crab intelligent enough to communicate with him is probably psychic abilities.

With this idea in mind, Song Lan conducted an experiment.

As a good Samaritan, of course, he wouldn’t randomly select some passersby for injection with CTEA-32, then inject psychic energy into them and observe the situation.

So he had Lu Xiang catch more than twenty Horn Bugs for his experiments.

The Horn Bug was the most common mutant creature in the seventeenth district. It was a creature resembling a cross between a mantis and a rhinoceros beetle. When fully grown, it was the size of a thumb with a black shell and a pair of sickle-like pincers, often found in the worst environments in District 17. It was always a high-priority target for pest control because it could harm humans.

The experimentation process wasn’t smooth.

The Horn Bugs possessed no spiritual energy. During the first few days after being brought back, the Horn Bugs often attacked Song Lan, even jumping into the air and pinching him when he was observing them up close.

They appeared to be quite unintelligent. The two dozen Horn Bugs acted without order or ambition, not knowing how to store food even when he deliberately gave them extra. They seemed to have a very lackadaisical attitude, as if they were waiting for everything to run out.

But after a few days of infusing the Horn Bugs with psychic energy, a clear division of labor emerged in this miniature society.

A bug that was a size larger than the others became the King Bug, and under its leadership, the twenty-odd Horn Bugs were divided into regular troops, assault squads, and transport squads.

One night, under the commands of the King Bug, the assault squad and regular troops tied down Song Lan on the frontlines while the transport squad silently infiltrated the refrigerator and stole two large servings of fried rice.

The victory of this "Fried Rice Battle" amazed Song Lan. In just a few days, this loosely socialized insect had taken a giant step forward in the chain of evolution.

But that wasn’t all. The King Bug fully utilized its charisma and attracted a steady stream of Horn Bugs to their home.

The large ecological tank that was originally used to house them had now become a fortress for the bugs, and their number had increased from the initial twenty to nearly a hundred.

This experiment was severely criticized by Lu Xiang.

Because these Horn Bugs often launched overnight attacks, raided their home, and stole her late-night snacks.

After her night snack was stolen once again, the enraged Lu Xiang yanked the King Bug out of the fortress, pointed a gun at its forehead, and warned it that if it kept stealing snacks, she’d blow its brains out.

In consideration of the fact that they were Song Lan’s research subjects, Lu Xiang spared the King Bug’s life.

What shocked Song Lan then happened.

Facing Lu Xiang’s threat, the King Bug slumped down in defeat.

Its sharp pincers drooped, it crawled on the ground, looking up at Lu Xiang with an imploring look as if begging for mercy.

And that night, the Horn Bugs changed their behavior. Each time before they planned to raid the refrigerator, the King Bug would first fly out of the ecological tank to survey the scene.

If Lu Xiang was not home, they would launch the raid. If Lu Xiang was home, they would, with her permission, transport a small amount of food back to the fortress.

Sensing the time was ripe, Song Lan moved the experiment to the next stage.

Taught them to trade and negotiate.

To exchange labor for food.

The King Bug was a quick learner. It soon established a win-win relationship with Lu Xiang through negotiation.

It dispatched its capable subordinates to crime reconnaissance missions, and once they found a criminal hideout, it could exchange this for a large amount of food as rewards.

In just a few days, the investigative capacity of the District 17 Law Enforcers took a quantum leap. Captain Doug was even clueless as to how her chief managed to locate the dens of the remaining gangs while sitting in the office every day.

With continuous enlightenment, the relationship between Song Lan and the Horn Bug army became more and more harmonious.

Song Lan was never attacked by the bugs again, and even those bugs who had not yet joined the city would flutter up to him and greet him in a friendly manner whenever they saw Song Lan.

So, a rumor circulated among the Law Enforcers.

This led to Lu Xiang having to warn Song Lan, who was engrossed in his experiments, during lunch time, "Be careful with your bug experiment. There are people behind your back talking about you in the department."

"Talking about what?"

Song Lan crossed his arms, feeling accomplished these past few days.

He could already imagine his colleagues’ reactions.

"I am the Bug Swarm,"—

When commanding the Horn Bug army, he couldn’t help think this.

Presumably, his colleagues must also be very envious of this...

However, what Lu Xiang said next shattered Song Lan’s fantasy, "They said you don’t care about personal hygiene, that you haven’t had a bath for days since you went home and now you have bugs crawling all over you."

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