265: Chapter 265: Consuming 300,000 Points! The North Star Advances to Level 5

8:00 PM on the 74th day.

Polaris was parked next to the second lv.4 wreck, and the Degradation was in progress.

The lights in the Cockpit were bright.

Since the micro-tokamak reactor came online, the entire city's power supply was no longer a bottleneck.

All lights were running at full power, all systems were fully loaded, all weapons were on hot standby, and the power generation margin exceeded sixty percent.

"The nuclear age." Zhao Tiezhu sat in front of the Fire Control Console, watching the full energy bar on the energy panel. "It used to take forty-five minutes to charge a Ray Cannon shot."

"Later, after the gas turbines came online, it was cut to eighteen minutes."

"And now?"

"Thirty seconds." Zhou Yuan recited the number for him.

"Fully charged in thirty seconds." Zhao Tiezhu rubbed his palms together. "The Ray Cannon has gone from a consumable to a standard weapon."

"Not just the Ray Cannon." Lu Chen looked up from his notebook. "The Railway Gun's reload time has been compressed from fifty-two seconds to nineteen seconds."

"The Phalanx CIWS's continuous firing time has been extended from one hundred and twenty seconds to unlimited; it won't stop as long as there's enough ammunition."

"The particle beam main gun's single-shot irradiation time has been extended from the theoretical two seconds to continuous irradiation."

"What does continuous irradiation mean?" Lin Wan asked.

"It means aiming at the armor of a lv.4 The City-State." Lu Chen replied. "Hold it down, and after ten seconds, the armor will be directly vaporized."

Lin Wan wrote this line in her notebook.

The balance on the panel continued to jump.

70921.

78345.

83012.

The second lv.4 wreck's Degradation was complete, yielding 24,800.

Balance: 95721.

Polaris moved to the third one.

The third lv.4 was destroyed from the flank by Forge's Furnace, so the wreck was preserved more completely.

Degradation started.

95721.

104567.

112345.

The third one was finished, yielding 26,100.

Balance: 121821.

The fourth lv.4.

This was the last one surrounded and annihilated by the main force of Forge; internal ammunition detonation caused the highest degree of fragmentation, so the yield would be a bit lower.

Degradation.

121821.

128976.

135432.

The fourth one was finished, yielding 15,600.

Ammunition detonation consumed a large amount of degradable material.

Balance: 137432.

All four lv.4s were finished with Degradation.

The total yield was a little over 90,000 points.

"City Lord." Zhou Yuan flipped through the records. "There are still over ten lv.3 wrecks left, and Cheng Zheng has marked all their location coordinates."

"Eat them one by one." Lu Chen stood up. "Polaris, move at full speed. Degrade one as soon as we arrive at each one."

"With the lv.4 efficiency bonus, the Degradation time for a lv.3 wreck won't exceed twenty minutes each."

Polaris began to shuttle back and forth across the battlefield.

The 1,500-meter-long steel The City-State rolled over the shattered wreck fragments on the ice field.

Every time it arrived next to a disabled lv.3 wreck, the Degradation system started, swallowing it clean at the molecular level within twenty minutes.

The first lv.3, yield 12,400.

Balance: 149832.

The second, 11,800.

161632.

The third, 13,200.

174832.

The fourth, this was the one cut in two by a Railway Gun shot; after the ammunition detonated, the wreck was severely fragmented, yield 8,700.

183532.

The fifth, 12,100.

195632.

The sixth.

The seventh.

The eighth.

11:00 PM.

The twelfth lv.3 wreck's Degradation was complete.

The balance on the panel froze.

278943.

"Twelve lv.3s, total yield 141,511." Lin Wan added all the numbers together.

Plus the 407,000 from the crusher.

Plus the 90,000 from the four lv.4s.

The total yield from the Degradation of all Iron Hoof Legion wrecks was 638,511 Truth Points.

Adding the 7,274 we already had, plus the money spent unlocking the last three nodes of lv.3 and the first twelve nodes of lv.4. The current actual balance was 278,943.

"Top Core." Lu Chen looked at the last four gray nodes on the technology tree interface.

lv.4 Top Core.

80,000 each.

Four for a total of 320,000.

Balance was 278,000.

Short 42,000.

"Not enough." Lin Wan calculated.

"It's enough." Lu Chen shook his head.

"How is it enough?"

"The small fragments thrown out when the crusher shattered are scattered on the ice within a two-kilometer radius." Lu Chen explained. "We previously degraded the three large sections and the archives, but the small fragments weren't collected."

He opened the system scanning interface.

"System, scan the total mass of all degradable metal fragments within a two-kilometer radius of the current location."

The scan results popped up.

The total mass of residual metal fragments within a two-kilometer radius was about 6,800 tons, with an estimated Degradation yield of 47,000 to 53,000 Truth Points.

"It's enough." Lu Chen ordered. "Degrade, all of them."

The system prompted that Polaris needed to travel at a low speed to cover the entire fragment scattering area to complete the Degradation.

"Full-speed patrol." Lu Chen ordered.

Polaris rolled back and forth over the crusher's wreck field, and the chassis's Degradation system swallowed every piece of metal fragment on the ice.

278943.

285432.

292876.

301234.

312567.

The balance broke through 300,000.

318432.

324876.

"City Lord." Zhao Tiezhu raised his voice. "It passed 320,000, enough to unlock one Top Core."

"Don't unlock it." Lu Chen shook his head. "Save them up to unlock all four at once, not a single one can be left out."

325678.

327890.

12:12 AM.

All scattered fragments were finished with Degradation.

The balance froze.

331872.

331,872.

Four Top Cores required 320,000.

More than enough.

"Unlock."

Power Engine lv.4 Top Core, Cold Fusion Stellar Reactor, 80,000, confirmed.

Infrastructure Armor lv.4 Top Core, Super-Giant The City-State Suspension Chassis, 80,000, confirmed.

Ecological Logistics lv.4 Top Core, Mimetic Natural Climate Chamber, 80,000, confirmed.

Armament and Weaponry lv.4 Top Core, Supercomputing Predictive Fire Control Network, 80,000, confirmed.

Balance dropped from 331,872 to 11,872.

Red text popped up on the panel.

lv.4 technology tree 16/16 nodes fully lit, upgrade conditions met.

City upgrade evolution, lv.4 to lv.5, will automatically trigger after all current physical modifications are completed.

Physical modifications for the four Top Cores started simultaneously.

Cold Fusion Stellar Reactor estimated time: one hour and twenty minutes.

The longest one.

"One hour and twenty minutes." Lin Wan noted the time. "Around 1:30 AM, all modifications will be completed."

"And then upgrade."

"And then upgrade to lv.5."

Lu Chen leaned back into the iron chair.

From lv.3 to lv.4, and then to lv.5.

Within one day.

He lowered his head and looked at the notebook in his hand.

The first page contained the records of the first day.

Minus sixty degrees.

Six low-grade sourcefire coal crystals.

Six square meters.

The water in the thermos had turned to ice.