108: Chapter 108 Mass-Energy Conversion Cannon

Fifty-six thousand points, cleared to zero in an instant.

Swish—!

The familiar multicolored effects exploded on the screen. Lin Li immediately turned his head to look at the corner of the main control room, but it was empty.

"Crap, did I get shafted again?"

Lin Li hurriedly got up and ran to the B1 floor lobby, but he still didn't see any new items.

"That's not right! This was a super gacha pull where I dumped over fifty thousand points at once! I must have pulled some massive treasure; this cramped B1 floor probably can't fit it!"

Realizing this, Lin Li immediately took the elevator down to the second basement level and looked around, but there was still nothing.

He ran down to the third basement level, and still found nothing.

Until the elevator doors slowly opened on the fourth basement level.

Lin Li's eyes instantly went wide and round.

In a corner of the B4 floor's vast, hangar-like space, items were piled up into a small mountain!

Dumping fifty thousand points had yielded an incredible output.

Lin Li saw not only dozens of Blackstones but also four brand-new sets of red [Firefighter Heavy Power Armor],

a full thirty-six sets of the more flexible [Competitive Power Armor],

eight [Ultrasonic Vibration Axes], as well as piles of solid-state hydrogen batteries and other miscellaneous materials.

Any single piece of this equipment, if taken out, could trigger a bloody gang war in the wasteland.

However...

What truly captured all of Lin Li's attention was a behemoth resting next to the pile of equipment.

It was a pure silver metal creation about ten meters long with a sci-fi design.

It looked like a heavy tank turret that had been dismantled separately, but the caliber of the barrel was ridiculously large. Moreover, there was no traditional rifling inside the barrel; instead, there were rings of magnetic confinement coils emitting a faint blue glow.

"What is this thing?"

Lin Li circled around this big treasure twice.

"73! Come look at this good stuff!" Lin Li shouted through the internal channel.

A few minutes later, Iron Man 73 descended in the elevator.

As soon as it stepped out of the elevator, its optical lenses scanned the massive silver turret, and it actually emitted a series of extremely high-frequency electronic gasps uncontrollably!

"Unimaginable... it truly is a military weapon from the Golden Age!"

73's voice even carried a hint of fanaticism.

"Creator, please allow me to formally introduce this magnificent killing machine! The [C-002 Type Mass-Energy Conversion Cannon]!"

"My local database doesn't even contain its manufacturing blueprints. In fact, during the height of the Golden Age, even among the Golden Men of the High Council, only a select few possessed its core design. As one of the strongest weapons within the laws of physics, it possesses..."

"Stop right there!"

Lin Li hated long-winded manual-style speeches the most and directly raised his hand to interrupt.

"I don't want to know how it's made. I just want to know how awesome this thing is. Can we use it right now?"

Having been interrupted, 73's logic circuits seemed to glitch for a moment.

Then, it provided a hardcore explanation in the most layman's terms possible:

"Creator. This is a killing machine that weaponizes the Mass-Energy Equivalence Equation [E=mc²] to the extreme."

"This cannon does not fire physical shells, nor does it fire lasers. It fires an Antimatter Gravity Beam.

When the beam hits a target, its sole function is to forcibly break down the structure of matter,

converting one hundred percent of the target's own mass into pure destructive energy!"

73's optical lenses flickered with red light:

"It has a logical physical property: the further the distance, the more free particles the beam absorbs during flight, and the greater the power upon impact."

"To put it simply. When it hits a heavy tank from an extreme distance, it doesn't just punch through the tank. It directly turns that hundred-ton tank into a nuclear bomb of equivalent yield!"

"The thicker the enemy's armor and the greater their mass, the more terrifying the explosion!"

In summary, this Mass-Energy Conversion Cannon is undoubtedly an overpowered strike weapon in the conventional physical universe.

"As for how to use it..."

73 added,

"It has a built-in miniature nuclear power core as its firing energy source. It doesn't require a complex power supply system. You only need to weld it to a mechanical base capable of 360-degree rotation, and it can be deployed anywhere requiring fire coverage."

Although Lin Li didn't fully understand the Antimatter Gravity Beam stuff, he understood at least one thing.

This thing was definitely an SSR-grade treasure for guarding the planet!

The kind that could protect a legacy for ten thousand generations with a single shot!

Even if the Imperial God-Machines—the Titans—showed up, they might not necessarily survive this 'killing me with my own mass' conversion blast!

He feared even the macro-cannons and lance batteries on Imperial warships might not match this power.

"Immediately mobilize all Ape-type Robots on the fourth basement floor! Weld a base for this thing and deploy it on the surface of Shelter, camouflaged!"

Lin Li excitedly issued the command.

"And hang a sign on the barrel! Tell those meddling players that if anyone dares to touch the buttons, I'll ban them permanently! If this thing misfires at home, the entire Shelter will go sky-high!"

"Command received," 73 took the order.

"Wait, I'm not done yet." Lin Li called out to 73, who was about to turn away.

"Put all the Power Armor and vibration axes we pulled today on the player faction store! Set the exchange points high! Let those players who struck it rich cough up their points and give them some motivation to work!"

"And!"

Lin Li pointed toward the hidden elevator leading to the fifth basement floor.

"The B5 floor has unlocked a large [Matter Recycler] and [Matter Constructor]. Go test them immediately to see what the processing precision limit of that big guy is and what good stuff it can build."

"By your command, Creator."

Watching dozens of Ape-type Robots laboriously haul away the massive silver turret, Lin Li finally returned to the primary control room with satisfaction.

"Now that the B5 floor permissions are open, there are twenty thousand new player slots. I need to prepare a new version update announcement and start screening the pre-registration files."

Lin Li leaned back in his chair.

"Hmm... once this batch of new players comes online, Shelter's population base will grow.

I should talk to the Stone Man, Hong, to see if we can use the B3 floor's gene lab to cook up some good stuff that can broadly enhance the basic combat power of players and natives.

For example, the kind of Stimulants used by Marines in StarCraft would be perfect for this bunch of fearless Fourth Calamity members."

Lin Li was buried in the system's backend, frantically tapping on the keyboard, writing the update copy.

In less than half an hour, 73's voice rang out in the control room.

"Creator, the Mass-Energy Cannon has been deployed at the camouflaged surface position."

"That fast?"

Lin Li was somewhat surprised, then asked,

"How did the testing for that large constructor on the B5 floor go?"

73's voice carried a rare hint of satisfaction:

"Reporting to the Creator, the medium-sized Matter Constructor's speed for constructing components is a full 400% faster than the small constructor on the B1 floor! More importantly, its basic construction precision has reached the perfect nanometer-level standard!"

Lin Li stopped typing and asked a logical question that had bothered him for a long time:

"I've been wondering about this. Clearly, both machines are products of the same technical standard from the Golden Age.

Why can the large one build high-precision things like nanometer-level tech, while the small one can only act like a scrap metal factory, making crude gunpowder guns and iron plates?"

"This clearly doesn't fit the logic of technological development!"

"Creator. This is because the small Matter Constructor on the B1 floor is missing its core construction plugins."

"Hardware-wise, it is certainly capable of constructing more refined high-tech creations. But due to the missing system plugins, its underlying construction logic only retains the most basic physical forging modules. That is why it appears so crude."

Lin Li had a sudden realization: "Can you complete those plugins?"

"No," 73 replied bluntly.

"Then... is the large constructor on the B5 floor also missing plugins?" Lin Li asked tentatively.

"Of course."

73's emotionless mechanical voice stated a cruel fact,

"Based on the current system integrity of this machine, the functions it can perform are not even one percent of a fully-equipped Golden Age constructor."

Lin Li was completely stunned.

This was the definition of sitting on a mountain of treasure without knowing it!

It felt like owning a Gundam at full power, but because the OS wasn't installed, he could only manually push it down the street to give people pedicures!

"Fine, one percent it is! Reaching nanometer-level precision is enough for us to walk sideways in the wasteland!"

Lin Li quickly adjusted his mindset, and his thinking instantly opened up.

"Since we can construct nanometer-precision parts, we can try to manufacture high-precision semiconductor chips and microelectronic cores!"

Lin Li slapped his thigh,

"Once we have chips, the derivative technology tree will be vast!

On a large scale, we're talking cruise missiles, carrier rockets, near-earth reconnaissance satellites, and jet fighters; on a small scale, high-definition mobile terminals, TVs, and radars—we can hand-craft them all!"

Lin Li stood up, pacing back and forth in the control room with his hands behind his back like a leader inspecting a factory.

"73! I'm giving you several key tasks, take note!"

"First! Use the fastest speed to build a few hundred miniature communication satellites and high-resolution reconnaissance satellites and send them into this planet's near-earth orbit! Build me a global GPS navigation and long-range communication network! We can't be blind anymore!"

"Second! Once we have a satellite network, those brick-like Pip-Boys on the players' wrists must get a full hardware upgrade! Make them smaller, thinner, with stronger signals and video calling capabilities!"

"Third! Since we have chips, integrate the military production lines immediately. We need to build a batch of cruise missiles with guidance systems and strike-capable drones! This is what modern interstellar warfare looks like! Next time we encounter someone using human-wave tactics, I'll just replicate a fiber-optic drone carpet bombing!"

Lin Li paused and threw out one last important and cunning decision:

"Finally! Through the system backend, fully open your blueprint design permissions to all players!"

"These players have many wild modern military ideas in their heads, but they can't draw precise blueprints that follow physical laws themselves.

From today on, as long as they propose a concept, you can use your powerful computing power to design custom blueprints for them!"

The corner of Lin Li's mouth curled into the cold smile of a profiteer,

"Of course, using AI computing power to design blueprints must cost a massive amount of points! Squeeze their wallets dry!"

"Command confirmed."

...

At the same time.

Hundreds of kilometers away from Shahe Town, at the Coastal City Governors Mansion.

This giant palace, built of pure white marble and gold, stood in sharp contrast to the filthy, crowded, corpse-ridden environment of the Hive City below.

In the open-air garden of the mansion, fountains flowed with pure, filtered water, and even luxuriously emitted the scent of synthetic roses.

The Governor, dressed in Imperial noble attire, was lying on a soft velvet lounge chair.

Two scantily clad maids were carefully feeding peeled mutant chameleon grapes into his mouth.

Opposite him stood a man in a black trench coat and a helmet bearing a white Aquila Emblem.

He was the highest-ranking officer of the Adeptus Arbites stationed in Coastal City—the Arbiter.

"Your Excellency, Governor."

The Arbiter's cold, hard voice cut through the lazy music in the garden.

"I have just received intelligence that in the fringe settlements west of Coastal City, there are suspected signs of heretical gatherings and Chaos Corruption."

"I request the mobilization of one thousand of the Governors Mansion's Personal Guards to accompany the Adeptus Arbites to the western defense zone for a thorough heretical purge!"

The Governor swallowed the grape in his mouth with difficulty and impatiently waved his fat hand, which was covered in gemstone rings.

"Absurd! This is simply preposterous!"

The Governor snorted coldly,

"Coastal City's current defense lines are strained to the limit! Those green-skinned monsters to the north are slamming into our main defenses like they've gone mad! People are dying every day!"

"In such a moment of life and death, you want me to deploy the Governors Mansion's most elite guards to the west just to deal with a few ethereal heretic lunatics? Absolutely impossible!" The Governor refused without hesitation.

"But Excellency, the speed at which Chaos Corruption spreads..." The Arbiter tried to argue his case.

"Enough! That is an order!"

The Governor interrupted him rudely, his face darkening.

"All my armed forces must remain firmly anchored to the north and the Governors Mansion! As for the west, the Adeptus Arbites can find their own way to solve it!"

A flash of disgust crossed the Arbiter's eyes, but he could only obey.

Although the Adeptus Arbites was independent, without the intervention of the Inquisition, it was still subject to the Planetary Governor's military mobilization authority.

"As you wish." The Arbiter coldly gave an Imperial salute and turned to stride away.