The Legendary Mechanic

Han Xiao would never make a losing deal. The price that he asked for was very high, and most players would not be able to afford his equipment. He soon thought of launching rental services for his weapons to gain a profit through low margins but high sales.

However, Han Xiao rejected this idea immediately after.

If the players damage the weapon, I will make a loss, and there might even be some players that don't return my equipment. Before ensuring that the weapon can be retrieved in perfect condition, rental service is not a good idea, Han Xiao thought.

The concentrated sound of gunfire came from the nest under the West City Area, together with explosions. The ground trembled lightly, shaking up the sand and dust on it.

While the players hunted the Shadow Stalker Vipers, the people of Dark Net were not doing nothing. They drew out the map of the underground nest from the images of the detectors and divided the nest into areas on the ground.

"Your Excellency, the habits of the Shadow Stalker Vipers are alike to ants. Their nest is very labyrinthine and complicated; it can be roughly divided into two areas—the core area and the activity area. The activity area makes up to 95% of the entire nest, and we are still looking for the core area," Huang Yu reported.

Han Xiao nodded. If his guess was correct, the Shadow Stalker Viper Beast King should be in the core area.

The Beast King should be between the level of 50 to 60 and have a BOSS panel. This difference in strength could not be filled no matter how outnumbered it was by the players at the moment. Han Xiao would have to do it himself, which he planned to do as soon as they found the core area.

The nest was the Shadow Stalker Vipers' territory. On the first day, the players split up and marched in at a very slow pace. Most of the players were completely thrashed. After all, it was the first time that these new players had faced a monster with such a high level. Thus, their weak spirit and mind were beaten.

Han Xiao did not focus on the West City Area all the time. This was just a part of the sanctuary construction, and as a responsibility of the overseer, he patrolled the other areas' construction progress and went back to building machinery.

The class advancement requirement was five purple quality equipment. He could already stably build Compounded Magnetic Chain Split Blades, Iron Fist—Mounted Heavy Mechanical Arm, and Mini Maneuvering Equipment with dark blue quality. One time of over performance was all he needed to achieve purple quality for these pieces of equipment.

The failed products—those that did not reach purple quality—filled almost half of the entire room.

Only Han Xiao, who had so many assets, could afford such expenses.

…

Some players finally came to visit during the evening.

Jade Green Sky brought a group of guild members to visit. They expressed their intention of wanting to buy equipment.

A large number of players resided in the sanctuary at the moment. Players could be seen all over the place requesting to team up and do missions. Many Mechanics opened up stalls for repairing, building, and enhancing services, and even Maple Moon would sometime open a stall to pass the time. The sanctuary did have the feeling of a main city indeed.

These Mechanics were able to gain the blueprints of various low-tier machinery through Knowledge Fusion, each having its own uniqueness, and firearms were the most common type.

The Mechanics who opened stalls demanded very low prices, so many not-so-rich players were very willing to buy from them. However, Han Xiao did not bother to do such things as it was a waste of time for him. The market that he was aiming for was high-end as his product quality was far beyond that of the players, and he had a lot of blueprints that they did not have.

He was irreplaceable—he had no competition.

"You want to buy equipment?" Han Xiao put down the parts in his hands.

Jade Green Sky nodded hastily.

Sky Territory had accepted the prize-pool mission, and they had a chance to go for a higher position, but other large guilds had arrived at the sanctuary a few days ago, and they were all strong competitors. Thus, Jade Green Sky wanted to buy Black Phantom's equipment to stay ahead.

Jade Green Sky had bought a Light Mechanical Arm when the public launch had only just begun, and it was his main weapon even now, so he was very confident in Han Xiao's products.

The Great Mechanic Han had an outrageous amount of 230,000,000 experience in his interface at the moment, so he could afford to spend some of that experience and gamble out some new blueprints, which made his inventory full of various types of equipment. To match the ever-increasing level of players, he had put in some new machinery.

After some consideration, he also added Iron Fist—Mounted Heavy Mechanical Arm and Mini Maneuvering Equipment into to his store. He had a lot of blue-quality products for these two types of machinery, which he had no use for, so this was a chance for him to get rid of them and gain some profit at the same time.

However, he did not sell Compounded Magnetic Chain Split Blades. This was almost god-tier equipment for the players in the early stage, so Han Xiao did not want to sell it to players easily.

The people of Sky Territory took a deep breath when they opened up the store. The huge variation of products had their hearts beating faster, and everyone's eyes twinkled brightly.

"God, even the lowest quality is green. There is even some blue quality equipment. I have never even seen blue equipment before!"

"All of them are so tempting!"

Jade Green Sky stared at the Heavy Mechanical Arm with excitement. This thing was stronger than the Light Mechanical Arm; it could largely increase his strength.

He looked at the price—120,000!

"So expensive!" Jade Green Sky's face twitched. Although the guild was rich, 120,000 was still a significant amount; it was the price of dozens of firearms and many boxes of gunpowder.

After some hesitation, Jade Green Sky decided to buy it. He believed that it had more worth than anything else he could buy with that money!

Large guilds were rich. They purchased many pieces of equipment that totaled to 300,000 dollars, and they were given to Core Group One for the prize-pool mission.

Han Xiao earned a fortune and offloaded some machinery that was useless to him at the same time—a very profitable deal.

He had set security measures within the machinery that he sold. The Mechanic players at the moment would only be able to pass through these measures only in their dreams, so it was impossible for the blueprint to be leaked. Therefore, Han Xiao was very confident when he sold them.

Having sole possession of the technology meant a monopoly—it was the most profitable business as there would not be another place where these products could be bought.

Du du!

Frenzied Sword and the other three returned right after Jade Green Sky left, bringing along new discoveries.

"We have detected a very high radiation strength, almost reaching the maximum on the measuring device," Maple Moon said and passed the device back to Han Xiao.

Han Xiao was a little shocked. With such high radiation, creatures that lived near it would very likely go through mutations. Whether the mutation enhanced one's strength or the other way around depended on the species and habits of the creature. Stronger creatures that had a higher resistance would more likely have enhancing mutations.

Which means there might be elite mutated variants in this Shadow Stalker Viper herd, Han Xiao thought.

"We have also discovered the source of the mutation—it's these things," Frenzied Sword said as he took out a bag of blue crystals and laid them out on the table. The crystals were filled with mist and cracks—they looked very turbid. The blue crystals reflected a mist-like aura from the light. They looked magnificent and almost magical.

_____________________

Unknown Crystal: A crystal formed by unknown reasons. It is highly radioactive.

_____________________

The measurement on the device increased noticeably as it was moved closer to the crystal.

Han Xiao wore a pair of gloves. He held up a finger-sized crystal and looked at it carefully. "Where did you find this?"

"On the walls deep inside the nest." Hao Tian gave a very simple answer.

Frenzied Sword added, "These crystals were embedded in the wall. We wouldn't have found it either if the slime on it wasn't scraped off during the battle. Furthermore, these crystals became more concentrated as we went deeper into the nest as did the monsters. We were unable to go even deeper, so we came back early."

Han Xiao could feel the warmth from the crystal itself even with gloves, which solved one of his questions. These crystals provided the heat energy that made the Shadow Stalker Vipers build their nest here.

Han Xiao waved at Frenzied Sword.

Without a hint of hesitation, Frenzied Sword walked toward Han Xiao, who suddenly did something shocking. He grabbed Frenzied Sword's mouth and stuffed the crystal into it. Then he blocked his mouth, not letting him spit it out.

"Swallow it."

"Wuuuuuu—" Frenzied Sword's face was filled with shock. He struggled all he could, but Han Xiao's hands did not budge even an inch. Then, the crystal went down his throat. The three people watching from the side were stunned.

"Any reactions?" Han Xiao stared at him.

Frenzied Sword let out a sigh like he accepted his fate. He touched his chest and looked at his interface.

_____________________

You have swallowed a type of high radiation strength crystal (Unpurified).

Race Detected: Human

Endurance is less than 50.

No related ability gained.

You have entered the 'Radiation Damage' state!

_____________________

Radiation Damage: -33% Maximum Health, -33% Maximum Stamina, -50% across all attributes

Duration: 2 hours

Related medication can be used to recover in advance.

_____________________

Frenzied Sword described the status. Undying players were the best choice to test drugs. Han Xiao gave a large amount of experience to Frenzied Sword as a reward and said while nodding, "Well done."

Frenzied Sword felt much better when he saw the experience. He looked at the rest of the crystals on the table and pondered, Will there be more experience if I eat all of them? It actually tastes like sweets.

Han Xiao knew what Frenzied Sword was thinking from the expression on his face. He awkwardly collected all of the crystals, denying Frenzied Sword's thoughts.

From the experiment, the rough uses of the crystals could be seen—purifying this type of radiation crystals would create crystal-formed energy, which was a form of clean energy.

Han Xiao had a thought. There were a lot of such crystals in the nest. He could use [Basic Extraction] to purify them and turn them into energy storage, and these energy crystals could even be used on all kinds of machinery if he made an energy transformation device. It was a valuable discovery.

Crystal energy was most commonly used in magic civilizations, it would also appear sometimes in technological civilizations. In a more fashionable way, such clean energy crystals could also be called 'Non-Elemental Crystal' or 'Magic Crystal'. Mages would use magic techniques to harvest energy from these crystals to become their own energy or to power magic, so there were many uses for it.

The concentration level of the crystals should lead to the core of the nest, Han Xiao thought and called Huang Yu over immediately.

After describing this discovery, Huang Yu instantly marked an area on the nest map that they had drawn.

"There's a ninety percent chance that this is the core area." Huang Yu pointed at the map confidently.

"Very good." Han Xiao nodded.

Time to act!

…

At midnight, players continued to fight in the nest as they did not need to sleep.

The prize-pool mission motivated the players. Although there was no direct mission, they still received quite a lot of experience from killing the Shadow Stalker Vipers, which were a much higher level than them.

Sky Territory was at the top of the rank!

"Quickly, T3 (third tank) pull the monster. T1 (main tank) and T2 (secondary tank), come back here now!"

"Pugilists attack at close range quickly!"

"Come on Espers, last longer! Go to the side to recover if you're out of energy!"

"Mechanics don't go too close, stand further away to deal damage!"

"Those carrying eggs leave quickly, don't get hit by the fallout!"

The people of Sky Territory were surrounding a Shadow Stalker Viper and took it like a BOSS. Jade Green Sky was commanding and yelling, and they were having a very exciting time. The cooperation of Core Team One was very in sync.

The slime in the nest would lower the players' speed, but although the nest favored the Shadow Stalker Vipers, it still was a fish in a net when facing the core team of Sky Territory, which was extremely experienced in fighting BOSSES. The Shadow Stalker Viper could not break out of the net no matter how it tried, and its health was decreasing at a steady rate.

"Killing Line! Everyone, deal damage now!"

All kinds of attacks downed on Shadow Stalker Viper. Its carapace started cracking, and slime splashed all over.

Jade Green Sky charged forward. He wore a Heavy Mechanical Arm much thicker than his hands on his right arm and activated the active ability of the Heavy Mechanical Arm.

The motors made a loud noise. Heated steam shot out of its ventilation pipes, and the iron fist hit straight at Shadow Stalker Viper's head. At the same time, Jade Green Sky shouted out loud with passion!

"Haaa! Iron Fist Burst!"

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