In a sense, Carla's survivability is even far stronger than Simmons's transformer, as she is immune to physical attacks.
As long as the temperature of an explosion isn't high enough to evaporate the spore liquid, or freezing cold air doesn't freeze the spore liquid, Carla is invincible.
She can willfully transfer her main consciousness to any of her clones.
As long as there are enough connected clones, Carla will not die.
Moreover, the speed at which Carla expands her territory is extremely fast.
She is an infection source herself; although she is not the kind of infection source like the Beauty Beast that specializes in spraying poisonous mist, it is quite similar.
By using her spore clones to devour living things in the vicinity as nutrients, she can then create larger spore clones to spread and assimilate the area.
In a sense, Carla is more likely to rule over the entire Lanxiang City than Simmons.
After all, no matter how much Simmons eats, he can only strengthen his own power.
But Carla is different.
As a queen, she can control a great number of spore clones to serve her, while simultaneously allowing the spore clones to expand her territory.
Given enough time, Carla could have her spore clones reproduce and divide in every corner of Lanxiang City, eventually assimilating the entire city.
At that point, all living things would become "White Zetsu" spore creatures, and these things might only be destroyed by nuclear bombing.
This, in a way, fulfills Carla's desire to rule the world as a queen!
"Hehehehehehe..."
"Ada, you fake, run away to your heart's content. Burrow into the sewers like a panicked rat. As the true mistress of this place, I will treat you well."
Seemingly sensing that her spore clones had spread throughout the entire biological research Institute, Carla, who had been standing motionless in the center of the hall, suddenly let out a strange, shrill laugh that sounded incredibly eerie and unpleasant.
At the same time, Carla's appearance at this moment was truly hideous; her body had almost turned into a puddle of white sludge.
Every part of her body consisted of white spore liquid, and that viscous, corrosive face was extremely disgusting.
She had lost all of Ada's physical features; only the White Zetsu spore clones still retained those genetic characteristics.
Under her feet, like an octopus, the white spore liquid extended infinitely in all directions like a spider web.
The hall had completely become Carla's lair.
Through these white threads, Carla could slowly tighten the space Ada was fleeing through, until finally compressing it to the limit so that Ada had nowhere to run.
Right now, Carla was thoroughly enjoying the pleasure of toying with a rat—!!!
"Pitter-patter..."
"Damn it, what is going on with this biological research Institute? Has it been taken over by that crazy woman Carla?"
At this moment, sensing the changes around her, Ada, who was busy fleeing, also noticed something was wrong.
Her beautiful eyes furrowed as she muttered to herself, because she had carefully observed the differences in the surrounding environment.
In particular, the cracks in the hallway corridors seemed to have been completely infiltrated by Carla's white spore liquid.
Like small puddles on a rainy day, stepping on them made a "pitter-patter" sound.
Most importantly, since discovering these puddles of white spore liquid, the number of spore clones chasing after her had been increasing.
Besides those behind her, there were more spore clones chasing Ada from every corner.
Therefore, Ada highly suspected that the number of these spore clones had increased; after all, if it were only the previous twenty or so, they couldn't possibly have such fast reaction speeds.
"Gurgle gurgle...!!!"
"Hiss hiss hiss...!!!"
While she was pondering, the voice-activated lights in the dark corridor ahead suddenly flickered on one by one.
At the corner, another pale spore clone, nine-tenths similar in appearance to Ada herself, slowly coalesced.
The moment it saw the living Ada, it immediately opened its mouth and lunged towards her.
It was entirely white, like the white-clad nurses in Silent Hill, and its mouth was that of a slit-mouthed woman, with the corners of its mouth split all the way to its ears, filled with sharp white teeth.
Although it was just a clone formed from spore liquid, Ada dared not doubt the sharpness of those teeth; getting bitten once would be no different from having a chunk of flesh torn off by a shark.
"Damn it...!"
"Go to hell, stay away from me—!!!"
Seeing this, Ada hurriedly stopped, quickly unslung the military crossbow from her back, loaded one of her scarce explosive arrows, and immediately pulled the trigger, aiming at the spore clone lunging toward her.
"Whoosh—!!!"
"Pfft... Boom...!!!"
The arrow easily hit its target, and the explosive payload attached to it detonated successfully.
A blazing fireball suddenly exploded in the corridor, and the high temperature of the flames instantly evaporated the white spore liquid.
The spore clone was immediately blown to pieces.
With the obstruction gone, Ada hurried to break through the encirclement and continue her escape.
The spore clone that had just been blown to pieces began to coalesce again after lingering on the ground for a while, but because a portion of the spore liquid had been evaporated, the re-formed spore clone only had a lower body.
The upper body had vanished from the chest area, and it would have to wait for new spore liquid to gather before it could restore its original head and shoulders.
This was the only weakness of the spore liquid—it was extremely afraid of temperature, whether high or low.
Ada had noticed this point before.
She found that whether it was the liquid nitrogen Javier mentioned or the high temperature of an explosion, both could actually cause damage to the spore clones.
Thus, Ada understood the real reason Javier wanted her to find liquid nitrogen.
As for which was better, high temperature or low temperature, it was naturally low temperature.
Because low temperature could not only destroy the spore clones but also prevent them from flowing, freezing them in place, which would make it easier to catch Carla's main body.
As for high temperature, even if the high heat of nuclear radiation from a nuclear bomb spread, it would be useless if it didn't explicitly kill Carla's main body.
Although high-temperature power was strong, it could not stop the flow of the spore liquid, easily leading to the escape of the spore queen, Carla.
Therefore, by comparison, liquid nitrogen was more useful.
However, it was a pity that even though liquid nitrogen was useful, Ada had not yet come into contact with it.
And now there was even worse news.
What was it... It was that Ada's supply of explosive arrows was running low, with only about ten left.
Previously, when encountering spore clones blocking her path, Ada had solved them with explosive arrows, but now the frequency was too high, and Ada was struggling to cope.
She had to find the liquid nitrogen, the restraining weapon, and replace it before her explosive arrows were depleted; otherwise, she would really be caught by that crazy woman Carla!
"I need to speed up..."
Realizing the gravity of the situation, Ada murmured to herself, decisively quickening her pace, and rushed toward the higher floors.
But following closely behind her were more and more spore clones.
Pale figures pursued her relentlessly in the back.
If Ada were to count carefully at this moment, she would surely discover... there were probably forty or fifty spore clones chasing her.
This was one-third more than before.
It seemed that Carla's speed of reproduction and division was truly fast.
"Taptaptap—!!!"
But Ada would not be distracted by these things and continued to focus on her escape.
Relying on the enhanced physical fitness from the T-Virus, Ada still had plenty of stamina.
However, she could clearly feel her stomach getting hungrier and hungrier.
Her body's fatigue mechanism had shifted into another mode—the engine mode.
Without considering water cooling, as long as there was fuel in the engine, it could keep running.
As long as Ada wanted to... she could keep running; her muscles would not feel any fatigue.
The only drawback was hunger.
When the energy stored in her stomach was exhausted, Ada would be taken over by the virus just like Simmons, potentially going crazy and devouring food, including living people...
Therefore, Ada only needed to consider resolving the battle before the fuel ran out.
Because of her metabolism, her limb muscles would not become sore or tired, which was actually a good thing.
"Huff, huff, huff..."
Finally, after several minutes of running and circling, Ada successfully arrived at the top floor of the biological research Institute.
She locked herself in a patient room, piling heavy objects like cabinets and bed frames against the door.
"Clang!"
Attempting to hold off the spore clones, Ada hurriedly began her preparations during the difficult window of time she had carved out.
Her plan was simple: create a huge commotion here to attract as many spore clones as possible, and then take the opportunity to escape through the window.
By creating this time difference, she could head to the basement floor to obtain the liquid nitrogen weapon.
Using what was available, Ada tore the bed sheets into several strips with her knife and tied them to the corner of the door as a fuse.
She then pulled one of her few remaining grenades from her belt and attached it.
If those spore clones dared to smash the door open and rush in, they would inevitably detonate the grenade.
The commotion would be loud enough.
Besides that, Ada also took down the curtains, took out a lighter, and set the fabric on fire.
In an instant, the entire room was engulfed in flames, and the temperature rose rapidly.
During her previous escape, Ada discovered that besides high and low temperatures having a restraining effect on the spore liquid, the spore liquid itself was extremely sensitive to temperature.
Without shared vision or consciousness, these spore clones relied on temperature for perception when hunting.
In other words, they tracked prey based on the living body temperature.
And now... the blazing fire burning in the room was enough to attract a great number of spore clones.
"Perfect..."
"I hope my guess is correct; this should attract more spore clones, otherwise it will be very troublesome. And now... it is time to head to the basement floor to obtain the liquid nitrogen weapon and launch a counterattack."
In the room engulfed in flames, Ada watched the firelight reflecting on her face and suddenly began to mutter to herself.
Then, without any hesitation, she prepared to open the window and use her Grappling Gun to descend all the way to the first-floor hall to retrieve the liquid nitrogen weapon.
"Gurgle gurgle..."
"Whoosh... Crackle—!!!"