The Ultimate Evolution

Seeing the shameless act of the liquid metal life-form, Sheyan could only shrug his shoulders and allow it to do as it pleased. He stole a peek at the Buffalo Criminal Boss and found that the monster was happily chewing on its Kurut ores. It was either oblivious to what had happened here or did not mind.

The liquid metal life-form did not waste too much time with the claystone. It skillfully peeled the Lacrimal Stones from the claystone and attached them to its body, then fled back into Sheyan’s personal storage. It then wrapped around and digested the Lacrimal Stones one by one, like a kid sucking on candies.

After the Buffalo Criminal Boss had eaten about half a kilogram of Kurut ores, the one remaining aneurysm on its shoulder shone with a black light. A huge rock in front of it suddenly moved to the side loudly. The monster took them down the path hidden behind the rock. The path first meandered upwards before snaking downwards, like the track of a roller coaster.

At this time, the sky was already dimly lit. Fog filled the valley and wetted their clothes. It could be vaguely seen that the plants there were strangely twisted and carried strange electromagnetic fluctuations. Their ears kept ringing when they traveled; the spaceship would obviously have a very hard time scouting this place.

After about two to three kilometres, the Buffalo Criminal Boss grabbed an inconspicuous boulder in front of them and pushed it away with great effort. A narrow passage appeared amidst the loud trembling. As they traveled down this passage, it grew wider and wider. After walking for about a hundred meters, a space as wide as a large hall appeared in front of them.

The stalagmites around glowed with a faint light, clearly illuminating the details in that place. A few pregnant Buffalo Criminals sat there with their bulging bellies. They all leaped up and roared angrily when they saw the humans, but they were suppressed by the Buffalo Criminal Boss.

All the contestants drew a sharp breath because they could clearly see that the earth here formed two distinct areas, and the area right in front of the Buffalo Criminal Boss’ large feet was a massive mineral vein of high purity Pi element that was shining with a pale silvery-grey light!!

These precious metals that were worth more than planets were casually scattered on the ground. What’s more shocking was that the pale silvery-grey glow extended to the rear as far as the eyes could see!

Sheyan took a deep breath and pulled Cyborg No. 1 close, then yelled into his eyes.

“Do you see that?” Do you see that???? This is just one vein, one of the thousands of veins on this damn planet. We’ve more than accomplished our mission, you f*cking bastards!”

***

On the Kitty Hawk base 2.7 million kilometers away.

The silvery-grey glow of the seemingly endless open-pit high-purity Pi vein shined through the big screen, illuminating the darkness. Seeing Sheyan’s expression that was distorted with excitement, Major General Mungo covered his face with his hands and burst into tears. Unrestrained tears seeped through his fingers and streaked down his palms. After a while, he lifted his head and screamed at the ceiling.

“I did it! I made the right bet! It’s my win!!”

The video of an endless open-pit high-purity Pi vein glowing in the dark was quickly processed within a minute and started to spread wildly across the Empire like a plague! The first to be infected with the “plague” was, of course, Prince Pombaru, followed by the General who had given up.

Perhaps there were some who questioned the authenticity of this video, but soon, the scene of Sheyan and the other contestants frantically extracting Pi element shut them all up! If all this was staged, the production cost must have been astronomical!

Sheyan knew well that in order to prevent the Empire from giving up on saving them, they needed to bring a large amount of high purity Pi element with them, so much so that if they were lost, the higher ups would feel like a large chunk of their meat had been cut away!

A large number of Pi ores were crushed and injected into the extractor. After a series of processes, Pi element slowly flowed out like mercury and gradually solidified into trapezoidal blocks, like gold ingots. Finally, they went into the pockets of the greedy contestants.

All this fell in the eyes of those in the Empire, giving rise to indescribable greed. This was enough wealth to buy entire planets!

The Buffalo Criminal Boss only snickered when it saw what the humans were doing. It had already investigated the Holy Vein before and found that it went so deep into the ground that it could not discover where the vein ended. How much could these guys possibly dig?

The humans mined hard until sweat covered their foreheads but could not even scrape a centimeter off the surface of the vein. Even if they dug for a whole month, they could probably make a few holes at most. Such a negligible loss simply did not matter at all to the Buffalo Criminal Boss.

The Buffalo Criminal Boss certainly hated these guys, but he was afraid of starting any conflict in this place because he could feel that the vigorous Holy Vein contained terrible destructive power, lacking only a way to trigger the energy and let it out. A tiny fraction of this power was enough to crush everyone here into pieces. It would not be worth it to fight with these people here, lest they accidentally triggered the energy.

After seven hours of refining, Sheyan and the rest of the group finally found their personal storages to be chucked full of purified Pi element ingots. There was almost no more space for anything else.

Aldaris sighed with regret, gritted his teeth, and discarded at least thirty Pi element ingots, letting them fall jingling onto the ground. Wealth was important, but it was fatal to fill one’s personal storage with this stuff. They needed to free up space for necessities, supplies and casting materials.

Sheyan felt his chest suddenly heating up. He found that the liquid metal life-form had finished digesting all of the astonishing amount of Lacrimal Stones. It had now curled up into a coconut-sized silvery-white sphere and seemed to be asleep in his personal storage. At the same time, a series of notifications appeared on his retina.

[ “Silver Mission Series Hidden Branch, Chapter 2: Injection” completed….. ]

[ The liquid metal enhanced life-form has consumed 58 Lacrimal Stones and various other strange metal components which will be of great help to its growth. It is now in a saturated state. ]

[ Hint: Your liquid metal enhanced life-form has grown after gaining enough nutrients. You have achieved LVL MAX mission completion rate. The liquid metal enhanced life-form will now fall into a deep sleep. Please wait patiently for its development. ]

[ Hint: Because you have fed the liquid metal enhanced life-form with enough Lacrimal Stones, it is now friendlier towards you and will continue to be strengthened. You have reached the second milestone and will receive the corresponding bonus. ]

[ ‘Suck’ – Whenever the enemy (or their weapon) came into contact with the armour/weapon the liquid metal enhanced life-form is attached to, the liquid metal enhanced life-form will analyse the enemy and commit the enemy to memory. After seven times, the liquid metal enhanced life-form will be able to calculate the trajectory of the enemy’s attack, thereby rendering the enemy’s next attack obsolete. ]

[ ‘Virtual Strengthening’ – The armour/weapon the liquid metal enhanced life-form is attached to will be considered to have gained a special effect of +6 strengthening. If a strengthening threshold (4,7,10,13) is met after ‘Virtual Strengthening’, additional bonuses can be extracted. However, the interval between each extraction of additional bonuses will be no less than one month. ]

***

[ “Silver Mission Series Hidden Branch, Chapter 3: Devour” has started….. ]

[ Mission Requirement: After your liquid metal enhanced life-form wakes up, let it devour 100 pieces of equipment. ]

[ Mission Description: The liquid metal enhanced life-form is still quite unfamiliar with the action of devouring other metals, so you must train it until the action becomes an instinct. Swallowing enough equipment to increase its proficiency is a necessary step. ]

[ Mission Hint: There are no requirements in terms of grade and type for the 100 pieces of equipment. The only condition is that they have no wear and tear on them, ie. they must have maximum durability. Nevertheless, it cannot be ruled out that devouring high-grade equipment may increase mission completion rate. ]

***

After seeing the requirement of swallowing 100 pieces of equipment, Sheyan almost coughed up blood. When he saw that the grade and type of equipment did not matter, he finally felt a bit better, but it would still impose a huge burden on his finances.

However, thinking of the newly gained ‘Virtual Strengthening’ ability, Sheyan could not help but feel that he had hit it big!

+6 additional strengthening!! Strengthening an equipment in the realms was insanely difficult – the failure rate becomes astonishingly high after +2 – but in truth, strengthening to +4 was not that hard. A virtual strengthening of +6 was almost equivalent to enjoying a special effect of +10!

One could tell how formidable a +7 weapon was from ‘+7 West’.

If the liquid metal life-form was not sleeping at the moment, Sheyan would have immediately summoned it and attach it to ‘+7 West’ to enjoy the terrifying effects of a +13 weapon! So far, Sheyan had only seen a +9 weapon before at the auction. He had no idea what a +13 weapon looked like.

“But…” Sheyan pondered quietly for a moment, then suddenly smiled. “I can probably wake it up first and attach it to ‘+7 West’ before letting it continue its slumber.”