Chapter 1761 - Gross, Same Kind, and Secret Observation

Two people and one dog turned invisible and turned the autopilot function on. Selina was excited when she watched the video. "Wow, what the hell is that? It looks really gross."

Gold Nugget whined.

Selina asked, "You think so too?"

Luke: "…"

Usually, Selina could understand what the dog head was saying.

But she was reading the files and didn't pay much attention to it. She had completely misunderstood the dog head.

Gold Nugget typed resentfully into their three-person team channel: "They're… probably my kind. They're actually not that ugly."

"What?" Selina was shocked. She watched the video over and over again. "So, they're symbiotes. Hm, this black one looks a little like tar, but it does look a little like you. And this blue one… Do you know them?"

Gold Nugget: "I don't remember the blue one. I'm more familiar with the tar monster. It's called Venom."

Selina grew interested. "Venom? It sounds very strong."

Gold Nugget subconsciously retorted, "How is that possible? That guy just gets bullied everywhere."

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Selina said, "You're familiar with it, so… Haha, you bullied it a lot before?"

Gold Nugget's expression was conflicted behind its mask, but it managed to reply, "I'm one of a kind. None of them can clone themselves."

I'm not lying about that, the dog head added inwardly.

Selina was a little regretful. "Really? If they can clone themselves, we can give one to Luke to cut up for fun."

Hearing that, Gold Nugget recalled its fear of being dissected when it first joined this household.

It already knew that those words had just been used to scare it, but it was even worse when Gold Nugget understood what had been happening to superhumans in the last few years.

Those crazy humans who researched aliens definitely wouldn't stop at doing the most ordinary dissection.

So, laying low all this time had definitely been the right choice.

Now, Gold Nugget was definitely the richest symbiote in the world. It was no longer the same rank as that trash, Venom.

…

While two people and one dog made their way over, the Level 1 clone in San Francisco was observing the changes in the two people who now had symbiotes in them.

Eddie was fine. At the very least, he had his own place, and had passed out after rushing home and eating a huge meal.

As for Haley's only "home," half of the shack had been torn down by the Life Foundation, and she was still registered as "missing" in New York.

Running from the outskirts to the edge of downtown San Francisco, she could only hide in a corner outside an old factory. Hungry and unwell, she then passed out.

Clearly, like Eddie, she was experiencing physiological discomfort after the symbiosis.

Looking at the unconscious woman, Luke simply took out from his inventory the hibernation box which he hadn't used in a long time. He canceled his stealth mode and put her inside.

During this time, the blue symbiote didn't appear.

The symbiotes were highly immune to mental abilities. Luke had no way to check if the other party was conscious or not, which was why he used the hibernation box to complete the space transfer.

Haley and the symbiote were put away in Space 2, and Osiris, the medical A.I. program, immediately took over.

When Gold Nugget first formed a symbiotic relationship with Dollar and Selina, Luke's equipment and tech skills had been too poor, and his data on the initial stages of the symbiosis was incomplete.

Now that there were two ready-made products available, Luke naturally had to make up for it.

Also, if the two symbiotes turned on their hosts like Gold Nugget said they might, Luke wouldn't hesitate to use his Annihilation energy to force them out.

As long as he was fast enough, the two individuals would only suffer minor injuries at most. Healing them with Light of Life was just a matter of credit points.

As for being research subjects, Luke thought there was nothing wrong with it

He was already prepared to help them deal with the Life Foundation, so it wasn't too much for them to pay him back as research subjects.

What if the symbiosis succeeded?

It had to be pointed out that Gold Nugget had already divulged everything it knew about symbiotes to Luke.

Undergoing a symbiosis carried a certain risk, which was, at a conservative guess, over half the risk related to fatal illnesses on Earth.

Just like humans, there were good and bad symbiotes.

The symbiote needed a suitable environment to prevent it from subconsciously hurting the host, which would reduce the danger to the host.

However, it was rare for an ordinary symbiote to deliberately try and avoid hurting the host.

In the face of a nasty symbiote, it wasn't impossible for more than 90 out of 100 hosts to die.

Some of the more eccentric symbiotes simply turned the host into a puppet; after breaking one, they simply switched to another.

There were only two possibilities when a symbiote was unwilling to write off its host: Firstly, they encountered a very suitable host, or secondly, it was inconvenient to switch to another host for the time being.

But with so many people and animals on Earth, the second possibility didn't exist, while the chances of the first one happening were very low.

So… Gold Nugget was a good comrade.

This guy had never hurt any living creature on Earth.

Even the fish it had formed a symbiotic relationship with at the very beginning escaped safely, while Dollar, the old dog, regained its youth.

The drones had already infiltrated the system, and began to scan the database of the Life Foundation's research building. Sure enough, it found records of symbiote trials.

After three symbiote trials with symbiote No. 1, the tar monster "Venom," two people died and the middle-aged woman tonight was the third.

The blue symbiote, named No. 2, had also combined with three different hosts, all of whom died in a very short period of time.

Clearly, the blue symbiote had a lower moral bottom line, so it had been the right thing to do to put Haley in Space 2 and keep an eye on her.

Eddie, on the other hand, was a little interesting.

Judging from the guy's expressions, the symbiote called Venom was actually communicating with him.

The only two times they communicated were when Eddie thought he had run into a ghost or was suffering schizophrenia. He was so scared that his head hit the bathroom wall and he passed out.

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According to Gold Nugget, if the symbiote was willing to communicate with the host, that meant that the host was valuable.

It was just like how Gold Nugget had communicated with Dollar at the beginning – Dollar was the true, perfect host for it.

On the other hand, Dollar was Selina's most loyal dog. After growing up with her, obedience had become second nature to it.

In a perfect symbiosis, the symbiote and host mutually influenced each other.

As long as Gold Nugget wanted to continue possessing Dollar, it would be subtly influenced by Dollar's consciousness.

The stronger and more persistent Dollar's thoughts were, the more Gold Nugget would accept them.

Thus, it was hard for it to go against Selina's wishes.

By the same logic, nobody from the Life Foundation's six experiments had been able to communicate with these two symbiotes, which proved that they weren't good candidates as hosts.

The fact that Venom had communicated with Eddie meant that it had taken a shine to him.