VCRMM: Chapter 231

Aina sat at the console of the elemental cannon, put the goggles on her head and turned to look at Xu Sili standing next to her.

Besides the young man, in addition to the marshal whose depth couldn’t be seen, there were also members of the escort team.

They dutifully guarded the young man, but they couldn’t help staring into the distance with expressions of shock.

The elemental cannon could be fired once per minute. In less than ten minutes, all ten red-clawed beasts were killed, leaving only the last one lingering.

Such efficiency made the guards’ eyes change when looking at the elemental cannon.

They had retreated from the front line, so they knew very well how powerful such a killer weapon could be on a battlefield.

Aina saw their expressions and knew what they were thinking. This made her feel that the hard work of these two months hadn’t been in vain.

“Your Majesty, look, the effect is good, right?” She said somewhat triumphantly.

She might be an elder, but Aina didn’t look like an elder at all when they first met. Even from her appearance, it was impossible to tell that she was already over a hundred years old.

Xu Sili stared into the distance.

The red-clawed beast was considered smart. It was howling while being chased by the elemental light waves, but it knew how to dodge by turning around.

It was a pity that the light wave chased after it like it had eyes. Finally, the light wave knocked it down.

Immediately afterwards, the cheers of the players who survived the attack could be heard from afar.

Hearing Aina’s words, he couldn’t help nodding in admiration. “It is amazing. Just the fact that it can automatically track after being fired is amazing.”

Originally, he couldn’t understand what the Insight information said about a 90% chance of locking onto the target and making the other party unable to escape. Now he understood it.

It could automatically track and follow so quickly! He was afraid that even interstellar missiles couldn’t do such a complex change of direction at such a small range, right?

Aina laughed loudly after hearing this. Her invention was recognized and it was His Majesty who recognized it. For her, there was probably nothing more enjoyable in the world than this.

“Your Majesty, you can guess how this works.”

She said with a wink. Obviously, she wasn’t expecting Xu Sili to answer. She was just waiting for him to say that he didn’t know. Then she could show off her wonderful design.

Unexpectedly, Xu Sili thought for a while before raising an eyebrow. “The interstellar beast cores?”

Aina couldn’t help being stunned.

“Your Majesty, aren’t you too smart to guess this?”

Xu Sili smiled. He had relied on the information from the Insight technique. He hadn’t expected to actually be correct.

“I’m just guessing. I don’t know the specifics.”

Aina said, “This is normal. After all, you have never been exposed to alchemy knowledge before.”

“But if you can guess the core idea at once, it proves you are very talented. Why don’t you come to the academy to listen to the class when you have time? I think it is always beneficial to learn more.”

Aina said it very seriously. If it wasn’t for the young man’s status as emperor, she would’ve wanted to trick him into learning alchemy.

An elemental alchemist was a profession that required creativity and innovative thinking. This talent was undoubtedly very rare. Aina hadn’t found a good successor yet.

The braves were said to have a strong learning ability, but in her opinion, they had enough learning ability but insufficient creativity. The things they made were inevitably dull.

It was really difficult to find a good seed.

Xu Sili had no idea what Aina was planning, but he still listened to her suggestion.

Indeed, learning never ended.

So far, his understanding of elementalists couldn’t be said to be proficient. In the past, there were no conditions. Now there were five mentors in the academy who were originally high star elementalists. It would be a waste of resources if he didn’t make good use of them.

As for the card master’s legacy…

He hadn’t attended class for a long time recently. He didn’t know how Lilith was doing now. How was the teaching going?

Xu Sili was reflecting on himself. Meanwhile, Aina already continued talking.

“I conducted research on the interstellar beast cores and found that these star cores contain extremely pure energy and can be used as advanced energy stones.”

Aina said seriously, “Perhaps Your Majesty doesn’t know the meaning of high-level energy stones. Let me put it this way. Now the power source of almost all mechas in the universe is energy stones.”

“High-grade energy stones are a must-have for high-end mechas. Of course, there is also a demand in other fields.”

“According to my calculations, the energy provided by a one star beast core can sustain a high-end mecha for three months of normal activities.”

“The consumption rate will double under combat conditions, but this beast core is more energy-saving than traditional energy stones. More importantly—the volume is completely negligible.”

A one star interstellar beast core was about the size of a fingernail. It was as small as a speck of dust compared to a mecha that was tens of meters high.

Traditional energy stones were very bulky. This also restricted the size and weight of mechas.

Even after continuous upgrading, how to protect the power system from being destroyed by the enemy as much as possible was still the top priority in mecha design.

If the size of the energy stone could be reduced to the point where it was almost invisible, it would definitely trigger a huge change!

Aina could be sure that if her former colleagues knew the characteristics of the interstellar beast core, they would definitely fall into madness.

“Your Majesty, Escher Star probably possesses a treasure that no one can imagine.”

Aina said this but her expression wasn’t very excited.

It was because she clearly knew what type of price such a ‘treasure’ had made the people living on Escher Star pay.

Her teacher died due to that disaster and she had been wandering for hundreds of years. If she could, she would rather that Escher Star not have such a treasure.

Xu Sili nodded. He had actually known this for a long time. In the timeline of the Future Forum, Roland relied on these high-quality ‘energy stones’ to make a path in the interstellar world.

He didn’t want to continue that path. After all, he still had a lot of chips that would allow him more choices.

“Teacher Aina, don’t mention this matter anymore. Let’s continue talking about the elemental cannon. So what does the beast core have to do with its ability to automatically track?”

Xu Sili changed the topic.

Aina stared at him deeply. She didn’t know if the young emperor understood her words, but his indifferent attitude strangely made her feel better.

She chuckled and said, “Doesn’t every interstellar beast have a beast core?”

Xu Sili blinked. “You mean…”

“Yes, the elemental cannon can capture the energy released by the interstellar beast core. After these light waves are emitted, they will automatically follow the energy. This is how it works.”

Aina explained it clearly in a few words. She patted the elemental cannon and said, “It can also be set to automatic mode. Once an interstellar beast comes within range, it will take the initiative to attack.”

“But in automatic mode, the range will be much shorter.”

Xu Sili didn’t expect that this elemental cannon would have an automatic mode!

It might not be necessary during the day, but at night, this function could greatly reduce the burden on the defenders. And…

“In other words, the tracking function of this elemental cannon is mainly aimed at interstellar beasts?”

“Yes, since it originally used the tracking mode based on the interstellar beast cores. If it hits ordinary targets, it only has basic functions.”

Xu Sili nodded and couldn’t help asking, “Teacher Aina, is the production process of this elemental cannon complicated?”

The pride on Aina’s face disappeared when she spoke of this.

“It is a bit hard to say if it is complicated or not. There are too few people in the academy with an alchemy foundation. It is a bit difficult to mass-produce it in a short period of time.”

Xu Sili understood but didn’t take this problem to heart.

After all, Roland had an army of millions of players.

Not only were they the most ferocious undead army, they were also the most efficient production brigade.

As they were talking, the players from the two mercenary teams arrived not far away from them while carrying the wounded.

Perhaps they didn’t expect that the owner of the shuttle would be the leader of the faction. In addition, the marshal was here. They froze on the spot and didn’t want to step forward for a while.

Of course, they wanted to run in front of the faction leader to increase favorability and get a good deal, but after playing the game for so long, they knew how intelligent the NPCs in the game were. Often, deliberately trying to please them would have the opposite effect.

It was the NPC of the engineering team who was only slightly injured. After recognizing the bigshot who saved them, he hurriedly saluted.

The players hesitated for a moment before hurriedly following suit.

Xu Sili didn’t expect the two teams of players to be so disciplined. He looked at them a few times in surprise. Then he whispered something to the guard beside him.

The guard walked toward the players.

It could be seen that the guard thought highly of their heroic performance. There was praise and admiration in his eyes.

After Xu Sili’s hard work, the relationship between players and NPCs was now quite harmonious. It should be impossible to be like the Future Forum where a tragedy occurred from players attacking the city.

The guard didn’t say much. He just took out health medicine and magic medicine to recover the players and the wounded in the engineering team.

The potions used by the imperial guards were incomparable to those in the faction warehouse. They were all made by Mentor Bazel after improvements. Each one reached the silver quality.

The players’ eyes immediately widened when they took it.

His Majesty Snow was too generous. They weren’t seriously injured but he gave them such good medicine!

They calculated in the team voice channel that they only needed to give one to the seriously injured and dying NPC. Then they hid the rest secretly in their backpacks.

Of course, such good medicine should be reserved for critical moments!

Fortunately, the guard didn’t supervise them and returned to the team after giving the medicine. As they were communicating, Si Sheng had already turned the elemental cannon into a card and put it away. Then he got on the shuttle with Xu Sili.

The players stood there and watched them take off. They couldn’t help wondering about what the big thing was just now? Did His Majesty Snow use it to shoot down the red-clawed beasts?

“Speaking of which… do the bodies of the ten red-clawed beasts belong to us?”

Someone suddenly asked. Then it was as if they awakened from a dream.

One second, they were emotionally watching the shuttle. The next moment, they turned around and started running wildly like hungry ghosts reincarnated. This made the NPCs of the engineering team look at each other.

In the end, the elemental cannon was left to the guards of Imperial City. After Xu Sili returned to the palace, he started to make intensive arrangements.

It was time for the player production team to go online!

So when the players entered the game one after another the next day, they received a new notice.

[Announcement from Roland’s faction: The Elemental Military Factory is recruiting high-quality talents. If you are selected to enter the Elemental Military Factory, you will get a copy of the ‘elemental cannon’ production blueprint.]

After seeing the introduction of the elemental cannon, all players on the server were excited.

An equipment drawing with a maximum damage of 50,000 per second!

This looked like a weapon for defending the city! The notes also explained that it could be used against flying interstellar beasts and had special effects against interstellar beasts.

Since almost the entire server participated in the fight against the beast wave, they didn’t need to face the enemy head-on. As long as they completed the daily tasks obediently, they would have contribution points.

Basically, everyone had a piece of land that was over five square meters.

Five square meters wasn’t much but they could be combined. 20 people meant at least 100 square meters! If they built a 20 story high-rise building with one floor per person, wouldn’t it be cool?

The problem was that the land allocated to them wasn’t among the five major cities.

Although the distance wasn’t as far from the original border line as before—of course, they could go there if they had the ability. The problem was that there was no protective barrier around the land outside the main city!

The interstellar beasts on the ground had indeed been wiped out after the beast wave. Only a small group was left, which no longer posed a threat. But—

There were also interstellar beasts in the sky!

These flying interstellar beasts were unscrupulous and treated them as rations. After being captured, they would actually eat the players or do things like throwing them in lairs and having their flesh and blood eaten away at bit by bit by young beasts.

Even if the realism was adjusted to 0, it was still a nightmare experience for many people.

So what were players most worried about now?

Of course, it was how to drive away the interstellar beasts so they could build a house! Now, a great solution was in front of them.

An elemental cannon blueprint that could be used for air defense!

For this reason, the Elemental Military Factory was crowded with players who came to apply on the first day of opening. They even said they wouldn’t need wages or benefits as long as they were allowed to work in the factory.

Such enthusiasm stunned Aina and she didn’t know what to do.

Proofreader: Purichan