132: Chapter 133 Collecting scrap is a high-risk skill

The golden light of the system settlement interface flashed twice in the Holographic Operations Cabin before dimming.

Li Cang didn't wait for the animation to finish, reaching out to click open the details list.

Volume 1 Main Quest [Eliminate Strategic Threat: Plasma Macro-cannon] judged complete.

A victory of this level provided no physical rewards.

What the system settled were low-level permissions.

The civilization level cap broke from LV.1 (Planetary) to the edge of LV.2 (Stellar), and a large area of grey new branches appeared on the tech tree, the most prominent node being the [Orbital Dockyard Base Module].

Li Cang looked at this node, then glanced at his financial panel.

GP Balance: 2365.

Refined Adamantium: 0.

High-Energy Battery: 0.

Astartes Establishment: 0.

He was now like a gambler who had just used his property deed to mortgage everything he owned in exchange for a blueprint to build an aircraft carrier, unable to even afford a single welding rod.

Unlocking permissions was a good thing.

But he had to acquire some solid assets first, or he wouldn't even be able to sustain the current Thunder Warriors.

He typed a string of coordinates into the console.

“Hark, take your men to the Ice Sheet.”

A heavy breathing sound came from the communicator; Hark was donning the anti-radiation heavy armor just retrieved from the warehouse. The leaded insulation layer thickened the armor, making him walk like a lumbering bear.

“Copy that,” Hark’s helmet sealed, his voice turning into a muffled electronic tone, “Mission objective.”

“Body recovery.”

Li Cang sent over the geological model of the collapse zone in the Antarctic Ice Sheet.

The core of the explosion area was now like an inverted high-temperature cauldron.

The power of the nuclear reactor and plasma explosion had vaporized all the ice within several kilometers; the underlying rock and the metal structures of Facility Three had fused together, cooling into a smooth, vitrified crater.

Those fourteen Astartes had died at the bottom of this pit.

Li Cang didn't want their bodies.

Those were likely burned beyond being distinguishable from the glass.

What he wanted were the gene seeds inside them.

The Astartes' genetic glands were encased in a special biological bone shell that could withstand a nuclear blast for a few seconds; this was a fault-tolerant mechanism written into their genes from the very beginning of their design.

As long as this shell wasn't broken, the seed could be extracted.

Twenty-eight gene seeds equaled twenty-eight future Astartes; this was his entire capital for a comeback.

Two hours later.

Led by Hark, six ordinary Thunder Warriors in anti-radiation heavy armor slid down the slope melted by the high temperatures into the deep pit.

The temperature at the bottom of the pit was still over three hundred degrees.

Their tactical boots stepped onto the vitrified ground, the heat-insulating rubber of the soles emitting a pungent scorched smell.

The alarms of the Geiger counters in their helmets rang out in a continuous scream.

With this concentration of radiation, anyone other than a genetic mutant like a Thunder Warrior would have their internal organs dissolve within thirty seconds.

“Split up and search, move fast,” Hark glanced at the rapidly declining life-support power on his visor, “We can only stay here for fifteen minutes.”

Six lumbering figures dispersed into the smoking ruins.

Everywhere were melted metal lumps and charred rock pillars.

Three minutes later, Member No. 5 stopped next to a protruding piece of vitrified rock.

That wasn't rock; it was the wreckage of four power armor units welded together by the heat.

The hands of the wreckage were death-gripping a deformed metal door frame; the four charred skeletons were fused with the metal door, making it impossible to distinguish bone from iron.

These were the four recruits who had used their bodies as wedges to pry open the isolation gate.

Member No. 5 pulled out the military cutting saw at his waist.

He didn't try to pry their hands.

He directly cut the saw blade into the area below the back of the neck of one of the wrecks.

Black carbonized powder mixed with sparks sprayed out.

After cutting through the three-inch-thick bone plate, he reached in and felt a hard, walnut-sized biological sac.

He gave a sharp pull.

The moment the sac detached from the nerve bundle, the remains emitted an extremely faint sound of muscle shriveling, like a string that had been pulled taut finally snapping.

“Found four.” Member No. 5 stuffed the biological sacs, stained with black mucus, into the constant-temperature preservation box at his waist.

On the other side, Hark stood before a large hole at the deepest point of the pit.

This was the center of the cooling pump explosion.

Half of C-19’s body was embedded in the solidified metal sludge.

His master-crafted armor, once pure black, had been burned to a grayish-white, his breastplate was completely shattered, and his internal organs had been carbonized into a clump of withered, fibrous mass.

He was still death-gripping the extracted cooling seal flange, and the remains of his Chainsword had melted onto his arm guards.

Hark knelt down.

The cutting saw buzzed, slicing through C-19’s remaining back armor.

Hark extracted the two gene seeds.

As he felt for the second one, his fingers touched a hard object within the armor layers.

It was the tactical storage drive given by Corvin.

The shell had melted and deformed, but the high-density transistors inside should still be there.

Hark pried out the storage drive and stuffed it into the preservation box along with the gene seeds.

He stood up, preparing to signal his team to retreat.

Only three minutes of life-support power remained.

Just as he turned, a flash of cold light reflected from the cooled metal sludge beneath his feet.

It wasn't the reflection of vitrified rock.

It was an extremely pure metallic luster.

Hark stopped in his tracks.

He used the back of the military cutting saw to smash the surface layer of that metal sludge.

A palm-sized rectangular metal ingot was revealed.

Despite being in the core area of the reactor explosion, not even a bit of the paint finish on its shell had come off.

Hark reached down and picked it up.

Even through the gloves of his anti-radiation heavy armor, he could feel that this thing was incredibly heavy.

There was no text or description on the surface of the metal ingot.

Only an extremely intricate relief emblem of a skull interlocked with a gear.

This was the symbol of the Adeptus Mechanicus.

But Hark saw those Tech-Priests at the base every day; he recognized the patterns on them.

The gear emblems used by that lot at the base were single-layered, crude, and carried a sense of cheapness from an industrial assembly line.

The emblem on the metal ingot in his hand was triple-layered.

On every tooth of the gear, tiny binary scriptures were engraved, and in the skull's eye sockets were set with two minuscule red crystals that still emitted an eerie glow even after the nuclear explosion.

Hark didn't have time to look further.

“All units, retreat.”

He threw the metal ingot into the tactical pack on his back and led the way, climbing toward the top of the pit.

Inside the Holographic Operations Cabin.

Li Cang watched the footage sent back by Hark, his gaze locked onto the three-layered gear emblem.

Why would there be an incredibly high-level Adeptus Mechanicus storage device inside the Sun Warriors' Facility Three?

He turned his head, glancing at the contact channel in the upper right corner of the screen belonging to his own faction's Adeptus Mechanicus.

The channel's green light was on, showing the other party was online.

Li Cang suddenly felt that the group of Tech-Priests who had been helping him repair equipment and selling him medical bays these past few days...

Didn't seem quite so loyal anymore.