63: Chapter 63 Laser Grenade

The entire banquet ended in this strange atmosphere.

Chu Ge felt like he hadn't come for a meal, but rather for a symposium.

Perhaps Chu Ge's speech was quite good, as long after the banquet ended, Xue Rui and the others were still pulling at his hands, unwilling to let him go.

If it weren't for Elder Meng stepping in, Chu Ge worried he would have been dragged into some dormitory tonight and subjected to a frantic "interrogation."

...

The room Chu Ge stayed in wasn't large, but it was quite well-appointed. It had everything one could need and was cleaned spotlessly, likely specifically used for hosting visitors.

He lay on the bed; the snow-white quilt felt very soft and had the scent of having been dried in the sun.

With nothing else to do, he began searching through the remaining individual soldier equipment.

Electromagnetic Kinetic Sniper Rifle, Laser Grenade, Laser Pistol, and Exoskeleton Individual Auxiliary Equipment.

As Chu Ge browsed the core components of the Electromagnetic Kinetic Sniper Rifle, he discovered that several of its parts were interchangeable with the Electromagnetic Pulse Rifle.

The high-energy batteries and pulse oscillators even shared the same part codes: HQL1-C1 High-Energy Battery and HQL2-N1 Pulse Oscillator. In other words, these individual soldier systems were part of a series.

As for the codes, they likely had a special meaning. Chu Ge had once tried to sound out System Big Brother indirectly, but according to him, he didn't even know what the codes represented.

He only said that was how they appeared in the system database, which left Chu Ge troubled for a long time, even wondering if System Big Brother had amnesia.

Returning to the Electromagnetic Kinetic Sniper Rifle, two of its core components were entirely new and required a fresh blueprint design: one was a kinetic energy storage slot coded HQL3-V1,

and the other was an Electromagnetic Rail.

The Electromagnetic Kinetic Sniper Rifle had no barrel; it fired via rails.

The Electromagnetic Rail didn't have a specific system code, which was very strange. Could there be some hidden meaning here? Chu Ge thought about this for a good twenty minutes.

His final conclusions were: first, these subsystems might be universal in many places, so they needed codes for archiving; second, System Big Brother's brain was acting up, and the data was garbled.

Chu Ge felt the first possibility was highly likely.

Just like current ammunition, a 7.62mm caliber is a standard round. Theoretically, as long as firearms from different countries use this model of bullet, they are interchangeable. The differences lie in the specifics, like a 77-model universal machine gun round versus a universal sniper rifle round.

Chu Ge stopped worrying about the Electromagnetic Kinetic Sniper Rifle and continued browsing the Laser Pistol below.

This one looked very simple. It was evident from System Big Brother's data files; while everything else had several pages of data, this one was just a single simple page.

Chu Ge skipped over it without a second thought. Small-scale melee weapons weren't very necessary right now, and they seemed simple enough. He could just toss it to Li Gang and the others later. They could probably fiddle with it and figure it out in the time it took to eat a meal or use the restroom.

Chu Ge felt he had the potential to be a capitalist; when it came to squeezing labor, he was practically a natural.

Then there was the Exoskeleton Individual Auxiliary Equipment. After browsing it, Chu Ge's head started to ache again.

This exoskeleton was quite troublesome, mainly due to material issues. He estimated that when he got back, he would have to find Academician Chen for another round of headhunting.

Chu Ge didn't worry about it for now; this couldn't be rushed. It would be soon enough to start R&D once Academician Chen recruited the right people for him.

Laser Grenade?

Chu Ge suddenly remembered that this thing seemed like it would be quite powerful.

He rolled over.

“System Big Brother, are you asleep? Come out and explain this a bit. My head hurts from reading.”

[No time!]

System Big Brother refused him curtly.

“You sleep every day and you still don't have time? Did you not sleep in your past life or something?”

...

No reply!

Chu Ge didn't call out to him again. This fellow was likely in a bad mood today, so it was best not to provoke him.

Half an hour passed. After Chu Ge finished studying the performance of the Laser Grenade, he was genuinely shocked. This thing was completely different from current grenades.

Modern grenades involve pulling a pin, a spring popping out, and striking a fuse. They either detonate on a delay or on impact (like rifle grenades), killing surrounding targets with explosive fragments or built-in steel balls and nails.

As for the power,

Chu Ge remembered it being around 10 to 20 meters; it was just okay.

Furthermore, grenade lethality has blind spots.

With a bit of luck, one might still be saved.

The Laser Grenade wasn't like that. First of all, when throwing it, there were no actions like pulling a cord or a ring; it was activated by a button.

Laser Grenade: Weight: 0.81kg. Length: 11.6cm. It looked a bit like an apple with its round structure.

Throwing distance: about 50 meters. Laser radius: 30 meters.

Not only could it wound enemies over a large area, but it could also be used to cover a retreat. There was one last very friendly feature: the Laser Grenade wouldn't harm allies. It just required a backup sensor built into any subsystem of the individual soldier system.

The method of wounding enemies was, in Chu Ge's view, quite cool.

It wasn't traditional fragmentation damage. Upon reaching the space above the target object, the Laser Grenade would have a brief hover time of about 5 seconds. Then, the body would fire laser beams 360 degrees without any blind spots. With a laser radius of 30 meters, the ultra-strong beams could easily pierce ordinary walls within 5 seconds, achieving through-the-wall kills of soft targets.

Throwing a grenade like this would take down a whole swath of people. There was nowhere to hide; if you were unlucky, you'd be shot full of holes like a sieve.

But it seemed this characteristic also meant the usage environment for this grenade was somewhat restrictive because it was easy to cause accidental injuries unless you could confirm the target area was entirely composed of enemies.

In the present day, this would definitely be a weapon of mass destruction and would likely end up on a blacklist.

Similar to the white phosphorus bombs of the past—they were impressive, but the scenes after their use caused such immense physical and psychological trauma to both sides that they were eventually abandoned by all countries.

As for the retreat function, the button needed to be switched to the second mode before throwing. After the Laser Grenade reached the target area, the hover time would increase to 20 seconds, and it would then fire laser beams in a vertical plane. The laser distance would also be extended to 50 meters.

This was equivalent to throwing a laser net behind you while retreating. Chu Ge felt he had seen this scene in some movie, but he couldn't recall which one at the moment.

This was good stuff.

If it were just the first two features, Chu Ge wouldn't have been that interested. But seeing that it could distinguish between friend and foe, similar to an IFF system, he immediately decided to develop this first.

Are you kidding? From now on, there would be no need to pull a grenade and die together with the enemy. To put it another way, one could completely play around with a 'hand-held grenade,' charging into a crowd of enemies while clutching it.

Holy crap, just thinking about it was thrilling.

It was truly the essential grenade for home travel and silencing enemies.

Chu Ge felt that although it seemingly had no place for use on Blue Star, in space, having such a flashy grenade would be useful in case of an emergency!