The Ultimate Evolution

The Predators lived as they pleased, flying around in space, hunting and killing for sport… They were indifferent to the fact that they had reached the boundaries of the future human civilization while traveling through wormholes or flying through space.

Planet Uplos continued to be hidden among billions of stars and planets, carrying out its mission as a hunting ground in a low-profile and faithful manner.

In truth, the future humans should be really grateful that the parallel world which had gone out of control was not the Star Wars world or something similarly terrifying….

The peace was broken five years ago.

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A passing spacecraft happened to receive an SOS signal at a coordinate near Alps Base 7. The spacecraft followed the signal, only to find a ragged aircraft and a corpse. The body was identified to be Ryant, a senior explorer of the Galactic Mining Association. With his remains, a simple map showing the location of Planet Uplos was found, as well as a “Pi” ore which had a purity as high as 8.164%.

Mankind began to explore this planet with great interest and enthusiasm, but the defensive measures put in place by the Predators were proven to be very effective. The Predators were adept at using natural protective means to defend the planet, rather than using advanced weapons such as orbital cannons, laser satellites or cosmic cannons.

The frequent cosmic storms were naturally one of these methods. Another was a circle of asteroid belt created by the Predators, which turned the area around Uplos into a zone of death — this was the fundamental reason why the Kitty Hawk was afraid to move any further forward. Only a miniature scouting spacecraft like the Wasp could avoid triggering the warning alarm.

Unfortunately, the Wasp had a carrying capacity that could only be described as tragic. It was so tragic that it could not even carry an exoskeleton armour. That was a huge problem because the creatures living on Planet Uplos were extremely powerful. If the Empire sent those humans of the future there, one could imagine the devastating casualty rate.

Therefore, the real goal of Sheyan and the other contestants was:

To go to Uplos and follow the route which the geologists considered to have the highest probability of finding ore veins. The scouting, sampling and other technical works along the way could be done by the miniature semi-automatic robots or the accompanying cyborgs. When the contestants reached the marked destination, they would return. That was all.

Finally, General Mungo casually mentioned two seemingly random pieces of intel.

“According to the latest news we received, the official acquisition price of Pi ores by the Galactic Mining Association is 37 planetary units/kilogram. Planetary units are the newest universal currency, representing the wealth needed to legally purchase a planet under normal circumstances.”

(TL: I think the author meant that 1 planetary units = the amount of wealth needed to purchase 1 planet, but I’m not too sure based on the wording.)

“Apart from the natural ore brought back by Ryant, the Pi ore containing the highest purity found so far has a purity of 0.000217%.”

As soon as General Mungo finished speaking, a sudden silence befell all the people present, as if the air had been sucked out of the training ground.

General Mungo seemed rather satisfied with the reaction his speech had caused. He gave the contestants ten seconds to digest the news before he said with a wave of his hand, “The military police officers will soon take you to the hangar to choose your Wasp spacecraft. For a long time to come, the spacecraft will be your closest ally and your lover! Your puny life will depend on it! In order to avoid all kinds of conflicts and other troublesome things like the changing of spacecrafts, as soon as the key to a Wasp enters your hand, it will be bound to you! You will no longer be able to change it for another!”

After that, General Mungo stepped back, turned around and left. On the other hand, General Fiji led the team and took them to the hangar. Sheyan seemed to see a familiar figure in a group of men in civilian servant uniforms that they passed by along the way, but he could not remember who it was.

When they reached the hangar, they saw a huge black swath of brand-new Wasp spacecrafts in front of them. It was quite a spectacle. There was a serial number on the nose of each Wasp spacecraft.

When Sheyan saw this scene, he suddenly remembered who the familiar figure he saw before was. He was the Second Lieutenant who went to receive Sheyan in the spaceship.

He immediately thought of the man’s weak constitution, and the way he almost vomited to death, as well as the Arabic number “3” that he had secretly written on the bulkhead. As soon as he recalled that, Sheyan instantly made up his mind to choose Wasp No. 3.

General Fiji then stood in front of them and told them, “Choose your ride, brave soldiers! The first one to choose: Hedi Curry! Step out and receive your authority card.”

The big man stepped forward and shouted, “Yes, sir!”

“I object, sir!” A woman in a camouflage singlet with striking red hair raised her hand and said impatiently, “Why does that bastard get to pick first?”

This woman is the other MT, Azsa. She was the one who had been gathering her own allies in an attempt to fight for the leader position with Hedi Curry.

General Fiji pointed at Azsa and said coldly, “Five points of achievement points deducted for the lack of military discipline and for roaring loudly in front of me. The order of choosing the Wasp spacecraft is not determined by us, but by the comprehensive evaluation of the General Staff Headquarters according to military rank and the arrival time. Major Hedi Curry holds an official military rank of the Empire and is the second contestant to report for duty, which is why he gets to choose first. Anyone else would like to object?”

General Fiji’s remarks immediately blocked all their disagreements. Hedi Curry shrugged, flashed them a fierce grinned, then went to the spacecraft fleet. He chose the Wasp with the largest serial number: No. 999.

The second person to choose was a fellow named Pokan, who also played a support role in the team like Sheyan. He chose Wasp No. 618.

The third name to be called was Sheyan’s, but because there were already a couple of people called before him, he did not garner much attention.

Sheyan had long made up his mind to choose Wasp No. 3, but when he went to collect the authority card in front of General Fiji, he still had to whisper a few words of encouragement to himself and pray for luck, just so that others would not suspect anything.

Unexpectedly, General Fiji suddenly leaned over with a smile and whispered, “No. 55 is a good choice.”

Sheyan’s heart skipped a beat, but being Sheyan, even if there were a thousand thoughts running through his mind, none of them would show on his face. He immediately straightened up and shouted, “YES, SIR!THANK YOU, SIR”

While walking towards the spacecrafts, Sheyan quickly came to a decision without much effort. This was not a beauty contest / talent show / stock market / mentor selection, it was the selection of a spacecraft that would protect his life until his return from the target planet!

If something went wrong with the spacecraft, the problem he would face would be much more serious than just getting a flat tire. It would not matter even if he had millions of HP, he would still die!

Sheyan obviously had more faith in the little Second Lieutenant whom he saved. First, the Second Lieutenant was someone who had received Sheyan’s grace. Second, he should be very afraid of Sheyan exacting revenge when Sheyan came back from the mission. Third, he must also be eager to receive some goodwill, or more precisely, some form of return from Sheyan!

Major General Fiji did not fulfil any of the above conditions. More importantly, Sheyan knew that Fiji’s nickname was the Dark General. Although Sheyan had not found out the origin of the nickname because of the short amount of time he had spent in the base, he could see from Major Ryckley’s reaction that the nickname definitely did not mean “a kind-hearted man”.

Sheyan had very high Perceptive Sense, so he could easily observe the others’ reactions from this distance. He first went to Wasp No. 55 and inspected it carefully. After a while, he shook his head with regret. He then went directly to Wasp No. 3 and grabbed its key.

At that very moment, Sheyan noticed that there were two people whose facial muscles twitched. The first one was naturally Major General Fiji (no surprise there). The second person, though, was unexpected. He was…. a guy called Ronnie who belonged to the same Nightmare Realm as Hedi Curry. He was Hedi Curry’s right-hand man and had always been a staunch supporter of Hedi Curry.

Sheyan kept all these in mind.

Sheyan had never been a pacifist. He had not forgotten that the reward for killing contestants from other Realms was quite generous.

After that, there were basically only two things Sheyan had to do. First, he naturally had to familiarise himself with his new ride, so he had to do a test flight. He was allowed up to four hours for that. Next, he had to wait for the ground crew to fill the rear cockpit of the Wasp aircraft with supplies.

The cockpit, which only had 2.7 cubic meters of space, was stuffed with things like a high-energy proton absorption spectrometer, miniature strong electron transmission logging tools, X-ray strong diffractometer, among others.

Every one of them had to carry all these things. This way, the data could then be compared to make corrections, and if they ran into a bad situation and had to split up, each one of them could still perform data collection duty.

Everyone had about half a cubic metre of space left. For those who were greedy for achievement points, they could carry a crushing extractor. The device would allow them to extract and process high purity Pi ores on the spot if they found any. If they were lucky, they could be in for a windfall.

For those who pursued safety and comfort, they could choose to bring three cyborgs.

The cyborgs provided by the Empire were actually not much different from human beings, because they used to be humans too. The level of science and technology in the future had reached a point where, unless a person’s brain died, almost all diseases could be treated without much difficulty. The difficulty lay in the cost of those treatments.

So what would happen if an underprivileged person got seriously ill and could not afford to pay for the treatment cost, but still wanted to live? The person would have to sign an agreement to become a cyborg, and have his brain transplanted into an artificial body. In return, they would serve the Empire for the rest of their life, or until they had made enough money to pay back their debt to redeem their freedom.