207: Chapter 208 Self-Destructing Armor

[Large-scale Legendary Campaign: Doomsday Swarm] highest-level warning. Unsurprisingly, the posts on the official forum are refreshing at lightning speed, building a thousand-story thread in just a few minutes.

[Why Panic When I Have Flash]: Hahaha! Finally, some real action! My body was about to rust and fall apart! Get up! Fight! Go completely wild! Awooo!

[Captain Blood Pressure Gabriel]: You upstairs, did your mad dog disease flare up again? By the way, isn't your native NPC wife in the game about to give birth? How many months has it been? And you still have time to go crazy here?

[Why Panic When I Have Flash]: *Cough*, the due date should be soon. This is also my first time being a dad, so I have no experience and I'm freaking out. I can only kill some bugs to relieve my anxiety about becoming a father!

[Liver Emperor]: Brothers, don't derail the thread! Let's talk business! Has anyone used that new golden [Alpha Gene-Enhanced Power Armor] in the system mall? I looked at the attribute description, and I'm drooling a bit.

[Gugu Eagle]: That thing costs 100,000 points a set! The price is too noble, Gugu can't afford it at all! Waiting for a review from some rich guy.

[Use Fire Punch]: Hehe, our legion gritted our teeth and bought ten of those things in one go! Right now, I can only describe this armor in two words: badass!

[Why Panic When I Have Flash]: Holy crap! Old thief Flame Fist, get out here and explain! How is it badass?

Everyone's curiosity was instantly piqued by Flame Fist's words.

Yet, of all times, after posting this sentence, this guy went silent for a long time!

[Liver Emperor]: Damn it! Flame Fist, you bastard, hurry up and spit it out! I've already taken off my pants and this is what you show me?

[Black Tiger A-Fu]: @Use Fire Punch. Speak up! Don't play dead!

[Use Fire Punch]: Cough... Sorry, brothers, I just went to the toilet to take a dump.

[Praise Ming Shen]: What? Wait, that's not right! You finished taking a dump in just five minutes? Your bowel motility is way too fast, isn't it?

[Use Fire Punch]: My performance today was a bit poor. Normally, taking a dump only takes me three minutes.

While the players were still shocked by Flame Fist's unbelievable straight-gut anatomy,

Flame Fist finally brought the topic back on track.

[Use Fire Punch]: Alright, jokes aside, regarding that gene-enhanced Power Armor, its mechanics are extremely bizarre. Rather than calling it a defensive Power Armor, it's more like a gene burner with a built-in physical hack!

[Use Fire Punch]: You'll know the exact power once you buy and use it yourself. All I can say is, as long as you put it on and turn the enhancement power knob to the maximum, in an instant, you will feel like you've turned into a Super Saiyan!

[Why Panic When I Have Flash]: Is it really that badass? How come I see a line of red text in the product details saying that this thing overdraws the body's fundamental strength, and after using it at full power for a few minutes, your genes will collapse and you'll drop dead on the spot?

[Use Fire Punch]: Hehe, brother, if you're afraid of death, why are you playing Warhammer? Let me put it this way: if you put this on, as long as you have points in strength, you are One Punch Man!

[Use Fire Punch]: I put it on yesterday to try it out, rushed straight into our Ork farm, cranked the power to the max, and within half a minute, tore a heavily armored Orc Boss to shreds with my bare hands!

[Use Fire Punch]: And I found out that this Power Armor's boost is calculated directly by multiplying your own base attributes! The higher your level and the stronger your base stats, the greater the multiplier it gives you! This is just an unreasonable amplifier!

[Use Fire Punch]: The side effect is just character death! At worst, you just go offline, wait for the twenty-four-hour respawn timer, and revive. What is there to fear? Exchanging a one-day resurrection cooldown for a god-like experience—this deal is an absolute steal!

[Use Fire Punch]: Buy early, enjoy early! Don't you guys want to be One Punch Man for a minute? By the way, I noticed that this Power Armor's gene lock seems to have a firewall. It only works when we players wear it. When those native NPCs wear it, there's no reaction at all.

[Praise Ming Shen]: In other words, this thing is essentially an expensive, extremely powerful, human-shaped self-destruct truck?

[Use Fire Punch]: Pretty much!

[My Name is Magnetic Rod]: Oh no! Hearing Flame Fist say that, it looks like I have to buy a set even if it bankrupts me!

Just as everyone was discussing forming a golden self-destruct squad,

[Dragon Strike]: Brothers, stop talking about the armor for a moment! Let me hijack the thread to share some big news! We made a huge breakthrough while exploring the ruins of that ancient battlefield!

[ikun True Fan]: What happened? Did another brother step on a space trap inside and get disconnected?

[Dragon Strike]: Get lost! We were extremely careful this time.

We successfully brought back a small tissue sample from that ten-meter-tall giant Ork! We gave it to the NPCs in Shelter for testing, and it has been completely confirmed to be the Orks' ancient ancestor, the Krork!

[Dragon Strike]: But unfortunately, the tissue samples of that corpse have completely crystallized. There's no way to extract active gene-seeds. Otherwise, we might have been able to breed a giant Ork to play with.

[I Think the Emperor Can Stand Up]: That's really a pity!

[Dragon Strike]: Don't rush! There's also some good news! We are trying to find a way to retrieve the glowing spear that impaled that giant! That is definitely a divine weapon! Everyone, wait for our good news!

...

The countdown to the arrival of the Swarm's main force was like an invisible whip,

lashing this group of The Fourth Calamity, forcing them to begin their war preparations.

The vast majority of players and small-to-medium legions spent all the points they had saved on heavy weapons, vehicles, and equipment to rapidly boost their combat power.

As the High Lord of the Spark Alliance, Lin Li naturally wasn't idle during this time either.

With a formidable enemy at the gates, not only did the players need to grow stronger, but his own strength also had to keep pace.

After handling the tedious administrative affairs,

Lin Li would often wear a specially made gravity suit, carrying several tons of tungsten steel weights on his back, to train his physical body in the underground training ground of Shelter.

And every day, under the almost sadistic practical guidance of Iron Man U-999, he underwent various neural response combat training sessions.

After a period of desperate and hard cultivation, Lin Li's personal level finally broke through the bottleneck, reaching Level 35!

However,

after breaking through the Level 30 threshold, Lin Li keenly discovered

that his body seemed to start undergoing some very bizarre and strange changes.

The most direct point was: he didn't get hungry easily anymore!

One had to know that whether it was the players or Lin Li,

as physical strength and muscle density increased, the biomass energy consumed by daily activities rose exponentially!

Such a change—getting stronger but consuming less energy instead—really left Lin Li dumbfounded.

Furthermore, Lin Li carefully compared himself with the veteran players who started first.

He found that his situation was completely different from theirs!

Among the players, some veteran Liver Emperors, such as Flash and Liver Emperor, had reached Level 30 or above.

Due to the clone bodies' initial underlying genetic settings, the human body structure reached its absolute physical limit for bearing power around Level 30.

Therefore, to accommodate even greater muscle power, those players above Level 30 began to involuntarily grow both horizontally and vertically, becoming extremely tall and robust!

Without exception, the twenty-odd players above Level 30 were now basically shooting up to over two meters tall, their physical dimensions visibly becoming like bears!

And they became incredibly voracious eaters! The corrosiveness of their stomach acid earned them the title of iron stomachs.

Now, even if those Level 30 players ate mutated Ork meat with severe nuclear radiation raw, they would have absolutely no issues other than diarrhea!

But Lin Li did not experience any such changes.

His height remained at a perfect 1.88 meters, his physique didn't become bloated and exaggerated like a gorilla, and his muscle lines remained symmetrical and smooth, yet the power contained within them expanded geometrically.

Thinking about it, Lin Li felt that he couldn't take this physical abnormality lightly.

He still went to find Hong, who was conducting research, preparing to give himself a deep, full-body genetic examination.

"Creator, please lie down in this advanced scanning pod."

Upon receiving Lin Li's order, Hong immediately drew a sample of his blood and put it into the analyzer, then had Lin Li lie down on the newly manufactured holographic medical scanning table.

Within a few minutes,

Stone Man Hong, whose silver eyes were always as calm as an ancient well, suddenly covered her mouth and let out an unbelievable cry of surprise:

"Oh my god..."

Lying on the scanning table, Lin Li felt a bit unnerved by her sudden dramatic reaction.

"What's wrong? Is it a terminal illness? Or gene collapse?" Lin Li quickly sat up and asked.

Hong did not answer immediately, but stared at the double-helix genetic map on the screen.

It wasn't until Lin Li walked over impatiently and unceremoniously flicked her smooth forehead with a loud snap.

"Ouch!"

Hong covered her reddened forehead, looking at Lin Li with some dissatisfaction.

"Hurry up and speak human! What exactly is wrong with my body?" Lin Li urged.

Hong rubbed her forehead, took a deep breath, and looked at Lin Li as if looking at a monster:

"Creator, there is nothing wrong with your body. On the contrary, it is outrageously healthy!"

Hong pointed to the genetic map on the screen,

"The scan results show that your cell telomeres are currently undergoing an incredible self-optimization and adjustment at the foundational level, based on the original ancient human genetic framework!"

Seeing Lin Li's completely bewildered expression,

Hong suddenly paused and patted her head:

"Oh, I almost forgot. Creator, your biological knowledge is rather lacking, so you won't understand these technical terms."

Lin Li's face darkened.

"...Actually, you could just use a simple analogy."

Hong nodded and continued to explain:

"To put it simply, your physical strength has actually reached the absolute peak of the physical limit within the existing ancient human body framework. This is like building a house; the height that this house can be built on this foundation area has already reached its top-floor limit."

"If you want to continue adding floors and become stronger, the ordinary method is to expand outward and increase the area of the foundation, thereby improving the physical load-bearing capacity. That's why those clones who reach Level 30 or above will have their bodies uncontrollably grow taller and stouter, like rising steamed buns."

Hong looked at Lin Li with burning eyes, "But! You are different!"

"You are taking the second path—directly optimizing and reconstructing the foundational framework!"

Lin Li rubbed his chin. "So? What does this lead to in terms of concrete manifestations?"

"The concrete manifestation is that your muscle density and bone strength will continue to grow insanely stronger, and your power will keep rising. However, your outward physique will absolutely not become bloated and exaggerated like those players," Hong concluded.

"Then what about me not feeling hungry easily? What's going on with that?" Lin Li continued to press.

"That is precisely the other most miraculous point I wanted to mention next!"

A fanatical light of scientific research flashed in Hong's eyes,

"Due to the extreme enhancement of cellular activity, your internal organs are beginning to undergo an unimaginable physical structural change!"

"For example, your digestive system: because the efficiency of your stomach acid and intestines in digesting and absorbing food has increased dozens of times over, those redundant and unnecessary terminal intestines in your body are beginning to naturally atrophy and degenerate;

And as another example, due to the improvement in blood oxygen-carrying capacity and respiratory efficiency, your lungs are also adjusting their internal alveolar structure, becoming more compact."

"And the thoracic and abdominal space freed up by these atrophies and adjustments seems to be perfectly reserved for your heart and other crucial kinetic systems!"

Hong made an easy-to-understand summary:

"To put it in layman's terms, your body is like an advanced computer that is currently cleaning up its own redundant code. It is frantically performing physical simplification, discarding all useless organ structures, solely in pursuit of the ultimate efficiency!"

After listening to this explanation,

Lin Li's brow furrowed deeply.

He glanced at his own hands and asked with some lack of confidence:

"Then does this body structure of mine... still count as a fucking normal human?"

Hearing this question, Hong was taken aback for a moment, then answered decisively:

"Of course it does! In fact, more so than anyone else!"

Hong pointed to the perfect gene chain on the screen,

"Creator, your double-helix gene chain is far more pure and perfect than that of any Imperial human in the current Galaxy, even more so than those Space Marines!"

"Just intercepting a small segment from your helix chain could serve as the most perfect biology textbook to show the world how ancient, pure Homo sapiens evolved step-by-step from a single-celled organism into such an ultimate form!"

Hearing this, Lin Li finally let out a long sigh of relief and patted his chest.

"That's good, that's good! As long as I haven't turned into some non-human monster."

Just as Lin Li's hanging heart had settled,

and he was preparing to leave the infirmary and head back to the training ground to continue lifting weights and consolidating his realm,

the heavy footsteps of Iron Man 73 echoed in the corridor.

"Creator."

73 quickly walked up to Lin Li and reported,

"We have just received a private encrypted communication from Mobius Prime, sent by the former Governor Cromwell, who has already abdicated."

"He has sent you a formal private invitation, saying there is an important matter regarding House Rofis that he wishes to discuss with you in private. He also emphasized that you must personally visit his private manor located on the outskirts of the Hive City."