Autophagy

Aston was laying on the ground, gasping for air. Their enemies were now lying on the ground unconscious. Their swollen bodies had all shrunk back to their original sizes. Song Lei went ahead and touched their napes to see if the spiders were there, however, it didn't seem to be so. The bulge a neural spider would create was long gone.

Seeing that the spiders had been electrocuted and destroyed as Aston had said, Song Lei left their side and walked back to Aston.

"Hey. Are you okay..?" He asked nervously.

"I- I'm okay. It's been a while since I exercised this much," Aston said amidst his constant breathing. "Let's go back to the base."

"Sure. We are done for today after all," Song Lei said. He got up and pulled Aston towards himself to support him while he was walking. They had managed to find what they were searching for. Song Lei was expecting Aston to take longer to find a way to fight against neural spiders, however, that didn't seem to be the case. "Oh. Now that I think about it, how do neural spiders even get into people's bodies?"

"I haven't seen one in the process. However, I have found some weird limbs attached next to their mouths. I've never seen such things in any other animal," Aston said. He took another deep breath as his breathing pattern went back to its normal state. "I think they use them to dig a small pathway through the host's back before attaching themselves onto the host's spine."

"That sounds... Horrifying," Song Lei muttered. "Don't people realize it before the spider starts digging?"

"Hmm... I don't think so. Considering their size, it must hurt at most as much as an injection," Aston explained. He thought for a second and started walking on his own. "And after all, what would someone do once they notice it? I doubt that anyone could react in time and get themselves the necessary medical equipment before they could stop themselves from being taken over."

"That seems pretty reasonable," Song Lei said. He was about to stop talking, however, a sudden question appeared in his head. "We left those people lying around like that... What will happen once they wake up? The spider has been controlling them since who knows when. Will they remember what happened during that time?"

After hearing Song Lei's question, Aston went into deep thinking. He hadn't thought about this topic because of how tired he was.

"At first, they'll be really confused," he said. "But then, I think they'll be able to remember everything that happened during the time they were taken over by the spider. After all, the neurotoxins don't actually hurt any part of the brain. I think they are still conscious while their bodies are being used."

"God... Then what'll they do once they are awake?" Song Lei asked. He was getting worried about these poor souls.

"They'll be taken over once more I think. They don't have any way of escaping," Aston explained his thoughts.

"Isn't that really dangerous for us? What if they learn about us from the host's memories?"

"That isn't possible. Neural spiders can't take over the memories of their hosts," Aston said. "That is only possible for soul worms because they're partly higher-dimensional beings that can directly interact with the soul. On the contrary, neural spiders are physical beings. They don't have such a skill."

"Now that I think about it, it should be really hard to decipher and collect memories from a person's brain," Song Lei said. Aston nodded in answer and stopped talking. They walked back to the base without any events.

"Do you hear that?" Song Lei asked as his face soured. Aston didn't answer and just looked towards the direction that the noises came from.

"Isn't that where our base is? Something is happening," Song Lei said. He and Aston stopped walking leisurely and instead started dashing towards the noises. When they reached the opening amidst the thick forest, they finally confirmed their thoughts.

The encampment was on fire. Section A trainees, alongside Aston and his friends, had been chased to a corner and was encircled by Section C trainees that numbered more than three hundred. In comparison, Section A had no more than one hundred fifty trainees on their side.

"Shit. They must've launched a cooperative assault on our base when we least expected it," Aston muttered.

"That seems to be the case. This many trainees can't be from a single base of them," Song Lei confirmed. The main base of Section A only had about two hundred fifty trainees. Even if Section C had three hundred in theirs, they wouldn't send all of them at once.

"What should we do?" Song Lei asked. Aston scratched his cheek. Song Lei was expecting an answer, however, Aston was as clueless as him about what they had to do. From the looks of it, about fifty trainees from Section A had been dispatched, leaving them with only one hundred fifty. They were highly outnumbered, so they couldn't utilize Song Lei's tactic of forming a mobile assault team.

Seeing the undecisive state Aston was in, Song Lei sighed. 'Aren't I becoming a little bit too dependant on Aston? I have been dealing with everything by myself since I came to the New World. It's not bad to get help, however, having someone as smart as Aston by my side seems to have dimmed my thinking capabilities...' He thought.

Not knowing what to do, Song Lei started by willing up his system.

[Body]: 6 (12)

[Mind]: 4 (8)

[Soul]: 13

[Shop has been blocked]

'Just as I thought...'

Song Lei's stats and system functions had been blocked alongside his skills since he had entered the dream space. In Isabel's mansion, he had to talk with Isabel and lift the lock she had placed on her emotions to get his system functions and real body back. Although not all the dream spaces worked in the same way, he was thinking that this one had a similar mechanic to that one.

Unfortunately, he still had no idea who the person he had to talk with. Since he was in Lewis' body, he was guessing that it was Gabriela whom he had to talk with. Gabriela was a childhood friend of Lewis whom he had grown up with. Other than his little brother and Gabriela, he didn't have anyone to rely on.

Weird thing was, dream spaces were made up of people's minds. He was wondering why Lewis' mind had such bizarre events, places, and people in it. What did the soul worms mean in Lewis' mind? Who was Aston? Was he a real person? Or was he just a character that Lewis created in his mind?

For now, Song Lei had no answer to these questions. On the good side of things, every knowledge Song Lei had gained in this place would be incredibly useful to him. Because he was a middle school dropout, he lacked a lot of knowledge about all kinds of things. Although this dream space took place in a much older timeline, some of the knowledge he gathered was up to date.

And most importantly, all the CQC and firearms classes alongside the psychology, deception, impersonation, and general knowledge that a special agent would need in their life were detrimental to living in New World.

He had been very lucky since the time he had entered the New World. He had met with relatively nice people that didn't mind interacting with him even though he had harmed them. If he weren't that lucky, he might've been surrounded by people similar to Xiang Yimu or the people from the Secret Blood Order.

'I still can't rely on the system and from the looks of it, I'll be staying in this dream space for a long time. I need to make sure that I get my hands on any resources that I can and for that, I need Section A to win this war,' Song Lei thought. Whenever Song Lei was thinking, an eerie look would appear in his eyes, however, that eerie look had disappeared since he had become close friends with Aston. Right here, that eerie look had returned to his eyes.

His brain started working as if a perfectly crafted machine, giving him idea after idea about how he would solve this hurdle. As they kept coming, almost all of them were dismissed by him. Amidst these unsuccessful ones, an idea attracted Song Lei's attention the most.

"Let's go by this..." Song Lei muttered as a smirk appeared on his face. Aston was confused by Song Lei's sudden change of expression as he looked at him dumbfoundedly.

"With what?" Aston asked Song Lei.

"Just follow along," Song Lei answered. He held Aston's arm and started running towards the place their fight against three Section C trainees had taken place. It didn't take them long to reach there as they were pretty fast runners.

"Act quick. Take off their clothes...."

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