my slow journey to infinity

Chapter 138 A Glimpse of Midtown

Aqua Regia landed along with dozens of containers.

There were six awakened people with him, but they seemed to be old fools and disappeared after getting off the barge.

The system caravan's barge docked at a huge old dock.

Judging from the time, it was just night here, but the thick black clouds seemed to have been formed for a long time. The field of vision of Shui Wang was filled with fine raindrops and blurry lights that were smudged by water vapor.

The dock is running non-stop.

Large-scale structural robots and vehicles are loading and unloading various containers, and in the transfer warehouse not far away, there are still a large number of porters loading goods onto trucks.

Wang Shui felt obvious extraordinary energy fluctuations in them, but their working environment did not seem to be good.

The marina is busy but not chaotic.

In addition to the porters, there are many patrol officers here in groups. Not all of them are wearing uniforms, but their eyes are all uniformly indifferent and fierce.

Wang Shui's observation quickly attracted their attention, but before they could get close to ask, Wang Shui left here first.

After leaving the dock, Wang Shui updated the digital atlas and confirmed his location.

The old-looking broad street he was on was the main road located on the outskirts of the [Third Warehouse District].

The buildings on both sides of the road basically have the same appearance, they are old but neat.

There are many pedestrians on this street, but most of them are in a hurry. There are indeed not many entertainment shops nearby.

Wang Shui did not delay for too long. After confirming his destination, he got on a double-decker bus. This kind of wheeled vehicle is not fast, and passengers can get on the bus directly while the vehicle is moving.

In other words, this is the only way they can get on the bus.

Because these buses do not have stops along the street, they do not stop anywhere other than the terminal.

The bus has no windows and the body is just a frame welded out of metal, making it very convenient for passengers to get on and off independently.

Wang Shui did not dislike the dilapidation of this vehicle, he was still observing the city.

About ten minutes later, the bus passed a corner of the industrial area, and Wang Shui suddenly frowned.

Ever since he got off the barge, Aqua Regia has been trying to analyze the smelly air in this city. When he arrived at the intersection of the industrial area and the warehouse area, there were some new things in the turbid air.

There was only aqua regia on the second floor of the bus. He stretched out his right hand and squeezed it gently. The moist and turbid air around him immediately gathered into a small gray-black ball on his fingertips.

There is no need to guess that the air is poisonous, but the complexity of this toxicity is indeed beyond the expectations of aqua regia.

Aqua Regia can confirm that this kind of toxicity is also quite fatal to extraordinary people.

If the body is not modified and the poison filtering function of the organs is not enhanced, even for a third-level transcendent, the body will slowly collapse.

On the street next to it, among the busy people walking through the gray-white mist, only about half of them were wearing full-face gas masks and small cylinders.

The rest of the people were only wearing simple masks at most, and some even just used their sleeves to cover their mouths and noses.

This is obviously a super city with several large spaceports, but it gives Wang Shui an industrial world feel.

The atlas told Wang Shui that [Dulin] is the largest city on [Jutus Planet]. The economy here is developed and the environment is pleasant, making it very suitable for tourism and recuperation.

But, only in the inner city.

This super city has three parts: inner, middle and outer. The inner city is under a spherical crystal dome, where is paradise.

But the corner of the city that Wang Shui saw now was not the worst outer city.

This is [Midtown], a blood vessel surrounding the crystal dome. The three billion people living in Zhongcheng are the blood surging in their veins.

They are responsible for providing nutrients to the inner city and removing waste.

Wang Shui looked at the numbers on the briefing and got a rough idea of ​​the size of the city—the inner city covered by the crystal dome covers more than six million square kilometers.

This place reminded Wang Shui of the super city where the alchemy exhibition was held - [Triad].

Although both are under the same shield and occupy a huge area, they give people completely different feelings.

[Triad] was built on a planet with a harsh environment. In order to transform the planet's environment, those aristocratic investors spent a lot of money on its construction.

All urban areas there are planned in advance, so they are particularly neat and orderly.

The city [Dulin] was slowly formed on a livable planet, and the society here has become what it should be.

However, looking at the appearance of the middle city, Wang Shui had roughly guessed what the outer city looked like.

Soon, Wang Shui put his short thoughts behind - he had arrived at the station.

He jumped off the bus directly in front of a familiar group of buildings.

The complex block made of steel in front of him reminded Wang Shui of the most depressing six months of his life.

Yes, this place is very similar to [Tiefeng City] where Wang Shui once lived, but the street structure here is much more complicated and there are obvious signs of transformation.

Outside the street, Wang Shui saw the small shop opened by the awakened ones, but he did not go in directly. He needed to change his clothes a little.

Aqua Regia is currently using the newly repaired [Primary Color Ruby] alchemy body.

His body is cultivating in a special space that coincides with his clone. With the alchemy body as an anchor, he does not need to return to reality from time to time to "breathe."

Wang Shui only needs to allocate some thinking power to control the clone, and he can practice and move at the same time. However, in this case, the computing power he uses for thinking will be much lower.

Moreover, there is another problem with using clones to move around - the alchemy body cannot change its appearance at will.

Every detail of the body of the clone is designed through alchemy. To change the bone and muscle characteristics, it is necessary to adjust many places simultaneously, which is more troublesome than making a new body.

If you can't pinch your face casually, it does restrict aqua regia's activities.

When he was repairing the body of [Primary Color Ruby], he had already spent time transforming the body into the appearance of [Benjamin M. Russell]. He wanted to use this body to become a scholar.

Now, of course, he can't wander around in the system-controlled neighborhoods like Benjamin.

So when Shui Wang got out of the car, he didn't go particularly close to the street entrance. He walked around nearby, found an opportunity when no one was around, and sneaked into the alley next to him, and put on some disguise inside -

He changed the hooded cloak to the common local gray and black colors, and then put on a silver-gray flat metal mask.

This seemingly ordinary mask is actually quite high-tech.

The material used to make the mask is the anti-magic alloy newly formulated by Aqua Regia.

The process of shaping the mask also integrates several master-level alchemical arrays.

This allows Wang Shui to avoid most detections when wearing this mask.

Putting on the mask, covering his hood, and stooping a little more, the small adjustment made Shui Wang's whole temperament immediately change.

He went from simply staying away from strangers to becoming more naughty.

Wang Shui disappeared from the alley, circled back to the main street, and then entered the system block from the front.

Then, everything in front of Wang Shui suddenly became familiar——

The alchemy workshop, combat supplies, second-hand equipment, repair and maintenance, ability scrolls, and various small shops with the "Private Supply" brand make Wang Shui feel more friendly.

In addition to these common shops, the most common ones on the street are various fighting clubs.

In these clubs, there are various extremely realistic battle scenes for awakened people to practice their extraordinary abilities. Of course, there are also quite complete entertainment facilities.

It's just the price, it's a bit expensive.

Wang Shui has also been to a fighting club before. When he didn't know how to acquire skills, he once found a shooting club to practice shooting.

If you just exercise by yourself, the cost is not high. What is really expensive is one-on-one personal guidance and various convenient entertainment services.

I have to admit that the simulated battlefield of Battle Club is indeed much more enjoyable than the [Full Perception Virtual Game].

In addition, there are some clubs that support the certification of [Battle Master] qualifications. They have regular master exhibition matches, so they are full every day.

Not only awakened people like to come to this kind of club, but also extraordinary people outside the system like to come here to socialize and have fun.

Wang Shui walked in the drizzle on the street, and the light energy field helped him keep his body clean and dry. He did not rush to a certain store, but browsed the entire street first.

What was more surprising to Wang Shui was that there seemed to be no gangs or big hunting groups controlling the place. Not only on the streets, but even in some quite lively clubs, there were no dedicated people keeping an eye on the place.

It's strange. People here seem to follow the rules?

Moreover, everyone here is obviously having fun leisurely, but most people are covered in numbness and solemnity that are difficult to ignore. After walking around and recording the nearby space information, Wang Shui walked into a comprehensive club called [ST1001·Dreamland].

This store with the same name as the neighborhood is the mission center set here by the system. The awakened people are accustomed to directly calling this place the "Old Store".

In most system control areas, the first store is the mission center opened by the system.

However, many of the operations inside seem to have been outsourced.

Wang Shui is not familiar with this kind of [old store], because if there are too many awakened people, this kind of old store will be upgraded to a mission square. This was the case in [Tiefeng City] where he lived before.

The old store doesn't have a big front. When Shui Wang first came in, he even felt a little crowded, but the inside of the old store gave people a deep feeling.

If you keep walking inside, you can see various expanded service areas.

Wang Shui stopped in the first area, which was the system mission area and was divided into two areas.

At a glance, there are scattered sofas in the front area. This is a social place and a place for the awakened people to form teams.

Further afield, there are semi-open private rooms, which are suitable for hunting groups of 7 to 21 people to take a temporary break and hold meetings.

To the left of the front court, the large space separated by the bar serving drinks and food is the back court.

There is a special passage in the back yard leading to the back street, where is the task settlement area.

It is very convenient here to submit some larger task items or receive rewards.

In fact, most tasks can be accepted and submitted through the Internet, but even a lone wolf will visit the old store from time to time and scan the market on site.

Not only are there on-site limited-time high-reward missions, but there is also a large amount of time-sensitive information. Even if it is just to avoid competition with some large hunting groups, it is worth a visit.

Wang Shui stayed in the front rest area for about ten minutes. He was not only checking the mission section, but also observing the awakened ones here.

Generally speaking, awakened ones will only be active on the planet where they first arrived, and only those of level five or above will be mobilized across star systems.

Therefore, there are some numb awakeners here, they are all guys who came to the front line from the beginning.

The system does not have a dedicated novice area. It only provides an awakening world. After Wang Shui reluctantly awakened, he landed directly on the war planet.

In [Gof Star], where all parties are in a stalemate, the intensity of the war has been reduced a lot, but many newcomers are still unable to directly participate in the war.

At the level of a newcomer, the risks of doing logistics are not small.

So they can only go to the fantasy world to develop slowly, or brave the dangerous environment and do tasks with low returns.

Gradually, recent newcomers are more inclined to take on [Real Frontline] missions on nearby planets. These missions are equally dangerous, but the rewards are much higher.

And this seemingly peaceful planet [Jutus] is not close to the planet [Goff] to which Aqua Regia belongs.

This is defined by the system as the execution area for punishment missions, which means that the [front line] here is far more dangerous than other front lines.

According to the updated content of mission punishment, Wang Shui has to complete twenty backlogged missions here before he can return to [Gaofu].

But when Wang Shui browsed the task list, he found that almost all tasks were inaccessible.

Because it's not a backlog of tasks?

Wang Shui arranged the task list in reverse order of release time. Sure enough, those tasks long ago were available.

These backlogged tasks all have some common characteristics - most of them have no time limit, average rewards, and the danger scale is usually "3" or even "4".

This is already the difficulty limit of regular tasks.

"Danger scale: 3" means that a complete third-level seven-man team is required to complete it relatively smoothly.

Feeling a little confused as to where to start, Wang Shui directly started searching online for strategies!

Sure enough, punishment missions are not uncommon, and there are naturally many such strategies.

It’s just that a lot of guides are mixed with a lot of disturbing information. One old man suggested buying a local and asking him to post a bunch of carrot pit tasks (such as finding a specific thing), and then wait for the tasks to enter the backlog state. You can complete it all in one go and get rid of the punishment.

In the following comments, many people were scolding them for adopting my brother's method, which resulted in the number of punishment tasks being doubled without exception.

Among them, according to the suggestions of more reliable posts, Wang Shui only needs to refresh the task list every early morning to pick up those tasks that have just entered the backlog state.

Many of these tasks are backlogged because the pay is too low, and it is easy to find low-difficulty tasks.

Generally speaking, relatively simple tasks will be slowly processed by the punished awakeners, and only the really difficult stuff will remain in the backlog until the task publisher updates the rewards.

Then, Wang Shui carefully sorted out the tasks that had recently entered the backlog state, and there were indeed some good choices.

In the backlog of tasks in the past six months, most of the danger scales are "3", and the only scale is "4", which requires the awakened ones to eliminate a "small" gang in the outer city.

That gang seemed to have some special beliefs. They had more than a hundred second-level or above thugs, and the strongest guy was already fifth-level. Wang Shui really couldn't figure out why this kind of mission was only assigned a "4".

The most terrifying thing is that the reward for this mission is only three level three mass-produced mobile armors and 300 million in cash. This is really a bit wishful thinking.

The small hunting group couldn't do it, and the big hunting group was too lazy to do it, which led to the backlog of a few tasks.

Among these tasks that had just entered the backlog, Wang Shui also discovered the existence of several dangerous scales "2" and a unique scale "1".

The mission marked "1" is an open mission for a certain comprehensive research institute to recruit "guinea pigs".

They need extraordinary individuals whose physical and spiritual age are below thirty and who have not undergone genetic modification to test some new drugs.

The institute promised that the lives of the subjects would not be in danger, and they would treat and compensate for all side effects caused by the drugs. The rewards for the entire task were also very high.

But for the awakened, they rarely have individuals who keep their genes clean. Even if they want to make this money, they don't have the conditions.

This task is indeed not difficult for Wang Shui, but he won't consider it at all. He is not so poor that he lacks such money.

And those tasks with a scale of "2" are basically [kill tasks], which are tasks to kill someone by name.

The reason why they are backlogged is naturally that the risks and rewards are not proportional.

Wang Shui scanned it back and forth several times and accepted an unlimited task first. The message in the corner reminded him that he had three more chances to give up the task.

Wang Shui's idea is very simple. He first grabs a relatively simple task, and when the system determines that he is slacking off, if there is no simpler task, he will just finish the task at hand.

After trampling on the system's territory for a while, Wang Shui quietly left here.

He first became invisible to cover up his whereabouts, and then directly boarded the automatic rail vehicle (overground light rail) heading to the inner city.

Although his behavior seemed to be a battle of wits with the air, Wang Shui just wanted to make this kind of caution become his habit.

After all, the [Russell Family] is his future, and his identity as a System Awakener is his present. If he wants to enjoy the resources on both sides, he must maintain this caution.

Now the system is not only a platform to provide Wang Shui with a fantasy world, it is also an important business channel for him.

Just yesterday, their [Yeyu Technology] mobile armor products attracted a lot of attention at the Awakener's internal exhibition, and they won a large number of orders.

This kind of market resources is unimaginable for ordinary small arms companies.

In a normal society, if it were not purchased by regular troops, private arms companies would not be able to operate high-end war weapons.

If they are smuggled to some private armed forces, they will definitely be sanctioned by the Juche regime.

Wang Shui's [Yeyu Technology] company does not have to worry about this problem at all. The system encourages awakened people to produce independently.

Due to the war mercenary nature of the system, many civilizations have imposed various trade restrictions on the system, which has resulted in the system having to rely on internal production capacity to produce some high-end equipment.

In general, it is very easy for the system to provide the top group of awakened people.

For the awakened ones at the bottom, other things are fine, but mobile armor is more troublesome. Many old arms companies can’t do it either.

The Awakeneds either choose to smuggle goods to assemble the machine, or they have to bear the monopoly price of the mobile armor company.

The [Yeyu Technology] company located inside the system control area is an emerging enterprise with mobile armor production capabilities in this environment. They can produce directly on the war planet with low cost and no license, which has brought huge profits!

However, to the outside world, the [Yeyu Technology] company named by Wang Shui is just an empty shell for sales. The real merchant and producer is an anonymous workshop.

Wang Shui once carefully consulted the senior Awakeners who specialized in making imitation products. They relied on this consignment model to avoid the attention of the system. As long as the system did not pay attention, there was no need to consider copyright issues.

Wang Shui has invested too much money and time in the business territory he is expanding, and now he also sees signs of making big profits.

So in this case, he could never be too careful.

Outside the car window, dark clouds still loomed over the city, and the dim and blurry lights did not provide effective lighting.

But Wang Shui could still clearly see the outline of Zhongcheng District.

The vehicle continued to approach, and it turned out that the edge of the crystal dome that had penetrated the clouds was emitting a faint light, reflecting the giant beast that was half submerged in the mud in the middle city.

(End of this chapter)