Chapter 113 Exploiting the Technological Dimension: Interstellar Boss as a Mining Slave

Less than three days after collecting the protection fee package in the Magic Era, Ghost received another cross-dimensional access request.

The source this time wasn't the Magic Era, but the tech plane, Interstellar Warframe.

The request format was identical to the invitation from the Shadow Demon Dragon, even using the same underlying code for the cross-universe channel protocol.

The only difference was the signature—it wasn't a greeting from a world boss, but an area alert automatically triggered by the official Interstellar Warframe system.

The content of the alert was just one sentence: "Abnormal energy fluctuations in the Interstellar Behemoth territory, unauthorized cross-dimensional access detected, requesting Administrator permission for verification."

When Ghost projected the original alert onto the main screen, Lin Ye had just finished showering and hadn't dried his hair yet.

He glanced at the screen, draped his towel over the back of the chair, sat down, and asked Ghost what level of monster this Interstellar Behemoth was.

Ghost pulled up the public beta database for Interstellar Warframe, found the data page for the Interstellar Behemoth, and after reading two lines, its voice paused for a rare half-second.

"The Interstellar Behemoth is currently the strongest wild world boss in Interstellar Warframe. It is set as the ultimate bio-weapon abandoned by the Interstellar Alliance. Its size is close to a medium-sized interstellar destroyer, and its shell consists of a double-layered structure of interstellar alloy and energy shields. Conventional attack methods include high-energy laser cannon arrays, missile clusters, and electromagnetic pulse shockwaves. Its territory is an abandoned interstellar mining station in low Earth orbit, surrounded by hundreds of automatic defense satellites."

Fatty Wang, who was listening nearby, gasped and said that the hardest world boss he had ever fought in the God Realm was just a fire-breathing dragon. This thing was a whole destroyer-class bio-weapon with a satellite defense system; who could possibly beat that?

Ghost added that there was a pinned post on the official Interstellar Warframe forum stating that since the server opened, no player had successfully killed the Interstellar Behemoth. The highest record was a full fleet guild that ground its HP down to 82% before being wiped out by an electromagnetic pulse shockwave, and the video of the wipe was ranked in the top three on the entire network.

Lin Ye stared at the line of area alert on the screen several times, finally noticing a detail: the time the alert was triggered wasn't now, but two hours ago.

Since then, the same alert had been triggered four more times, at half-hour intervals, as regular as some kind of automated timed request.

He asked Ghost to check if the source coordinates for these four alerts were at the same location. After zooming in, Ghost discovered that although all four requests were issued from the interstellar mining station, the specific sensor IDs were different—the four requests covered all four energy zones of the mining station, meaning something had activated all of the mining station's energy systems simultaneously two hours ago.

"The Interstellar Behemoth wouldn't start the mining station itself." Ghost zoomed in on the internal structural diagram of the mining station, pointing to the distribution of the four energy zones. "In the design blueprints of the mining station, the energy system is fully automatic, but startup authorization requires manual verification. The person who could start all four energy zones simultaneously is either the game officials themselves or an existence like the Magic Creator God who has hidden GM permissions in the background."

Lin Ye nodded and asked Ghost if it could reverse-access the cross-dimensional channel of Interstellar Warframe and enter directly without waiting for an invitation.

Ghost spent less than ten minutes opening the entrance and, while at it, attached a permission identification tag shared with the Magic Era to the access port—the tag read "God Realm Que De Studio Cross-dimensional Business Department," with a line of small print underneath: "Collecting protection fees, and also collecting ore."

After the cross-dimensional channel opened, Lin Ye didn't enter immediately.

He called Su Qinghan and Fatty Wang over, told Su Qinghan to bring the shadow crystal collected from the magic plane for energy comparison, and had Fatty Wang bring mining tools and a vacuum sealer just in case.

Fatty Wang looked confused and asked why he needed a vacuum sealer.

Lin Ye said there should be a type of rare interstellar ore called star core steel in the mining station, which was the core material for making top-tier warship armor in Interstellar Warframe. If the Interstellar Behemoth was guarding an entire mining station, the mineral deposits beneath it would definitely not be small.

Su Qinghan asked a more practical question: "If the Interstellar Behemoth's strength is similar to the Shadow Demon Dragon, then the Cross-dimensional Decay Domain should be able to suppress it. But its shell is a double-layered structure—interstellar alloy plus energy shields. The energy shield can be decayed and removed, but what about the alloy shell?"

Lin Ye pulled up the skill log from dealing with the Rock Giant Lord, scanned it, and said the alloy shell didn't need to be removed. Once the energy shield is broken, although its alloy shell is hard, all the internal weapon systems and drive systems are maintained by energy transmission. As long as the energy transmission path is decayed to zero, it will just be a pile of scrap metal.

When the three of them stepped into the Interstellar Warframe plane, they landed on the docking platform outside the mining station.

The platform was made of dark gray metal plates, and overhead was the pitch-black space and a dense array of automatic defense satellites.

The main structure of the mining station was suspended in low Earth orbit, looking like a giant mechanical spider crouching on the surface of an asteroid, with four mechanical arms inserted deep into the mineral layer, each joint of the mechanical arms glowing with faint blue energy indicator lights.

The Interstellar Behemoth was parked above the main energy tower in the center of the mining station, its size even larger than Ghost had described, its shell made of deep black alloy armor, with a layer of translucent blue energy shield flowing across its surface.

It had no eyes on its head, only a huge sensor array, like rows of compound eyes arranged together, each compound eye scanning in a different direction simultaneously.

As soon as the three of them stepped onto the docking platform, all the sensors on its head turned toward them at the same instant.

Fatty Wang whispered, "It discovered us."

Before his words had even faded, the armor plates on the Interstellar Behemoth's back opened simultaneously, revealing dense missile silos inside.

Dozens of small tracking missiles, trailing white exhaust flames, ejected from the silos and soared into the sky, carving arcs in the vacuum as they rushed toward the docking platform.

Lin Ye didn't move, turning the Cross-dimensional Decay Domain to its maximum range.

When the missile swarm was less than two hundred meters from the platform, they seemed to crash into an invisible wall of cotton simultaneously; their flight speed decayed sharply, the exhaust flames turned from white to dark red and then extinguished.

Dozens of missiles lost speed completely, floating silently in the vacuum like a pile of scrap metal pipes someone had casually tossed into the air.

The Interstellar Behemoth's sensor array flickered frantically. It activated all its laser cannon arrays, fully opening the armor plates on its back and sides, and hundreds of beams focused on Lin Ye simultaneously.

Lin Ye switched the energy Decay path of the Decay Domain to the high-energy laser frequency band. The moment the beams entered the range of the domain, their energy density plummeted from lethal levels to harmless levels, and when they landed on Lin Ye's shoulders, they didn't even raise the temperature of his coat by half a degree.

Su Qinghan calmly recorded data behind him: "Resistance of the energy shield to the continuous Decay Domain is zero, high-energy laser attenuation rate is over 99%, and missile kinetic energy attenuation rate is 97%."

Ghost replied in the cross-dimensional voice channel: "Received, updated the Interstellar Warframe boss skill suppression template."

Lin Ye walked forward through the laser rain, reached the console under the main energy tower of the mining station, reached out and pressed it, injecting Decay energy into the energy transmission network of the entire mining station.

The Interstellar Behemoth's energy shield extinguished the second the energy transmission was cut off, and its huge mechanical body lost its suspension power, crashing heavily from above the main energy tower onto the central platform of the mining station.

The sound of metal colliding couldn't travel in the vacuum, but the vibration of the steel plates being struck was transmitted to everyone's soles along the platform structure.

The Interstellar Behemoth struggled, trying to restart its backup energy, its back armor plates opening and closing repeatedly, but no more missiles popped out of the silos.

Its sensor array was still flickering, but the frequency was getting slower and slower, and the color changed from blue to a listless dark yellow.

Lin Ye walked to the front of its head sensor array and squatted down, tapping its alloy shell with his hand, which produced two dull echoes.

"Your energy transmission system has been locked by me. Now the only part you can move is this small bit of sensors on your head." He pulled his hand back and put it into his pocket. "I'll give you two choices. First, mine one hundred tons of star core steel every day and stack it at my coordinates on the docking platform. Second, I'll put a permanent energy leak debuff on your backup energy system, and you'll never be able to start again."

The Interstellar Behemoth's sensor array dimmed and then lit up again. A moment later, its external speakers emitted a stuttering, mechanically synthesized voice. The tone was stiff but devoid of anger, instead carrying a kind of compliance bordering on helplessness: "Human, you have violated Article 17 of the Interstellar Federal Mining Act. But I choose to mine. One hundred tons per day. Starting from tomorrow."

Fatty Wang had already inserted the sample collector into the mineral layer nearby. The star core steel detection results popping up on the instrument screen made him swallow hard on the spot.

The hardness of star core steel was four times that of the hardest known alloy on Earth, yet its density was less than one-third of that.

As he processed the first batch of samples next to the vacuum sealer, he muttered: "If this stuff were used to make the shell of a game pod, not only would it not break if dropped on the ground, but it would bounce up and put a hole in the ceiling."

Lin Ye stood up, clapped the metal shavings off his hands, opened the cross-dimensional channel, and sent a message to Ghost: "Post an announcement on the global channel of Interstellar Warframe. The protection fee package of the Shadow plane has been running successfully; the Interstellar plane is now online simultaneously. Guilds that want to mine safely and farm materials near this mining station must pay an equivalent amount of interstellar ore or energy cores monthly to enjoy three privileges: the boss will not actively attack, ore drop rates will be doubled, and cross-dimensional logistics delivery. Those who don't pay can go talk to the Interstellar Behemoth themselves."

Ghost spent a few minutes translating it into the in-game announcement format of Interstellar Warframe and sent it out.

The timing of the announcement happened to be the evening peak hours for the US Server and European Server of Interstellar Warframe, and the number of online players globally was near its peak.

Less than ten minutes after the announcement was pinned to the Interstellar Warframe server-wide channel, the comment section exploded.

The first to come knocking was the Interstellar Alliance, the current number one guild in Interstellar Warframe.

The guild leader was a German player with the in-game ID Captain Valhalla. He posted a stern statement on the server-wide channel, saying that the Interstellar Behemoth's territory was a public resource, a cross-server account from the God Realm had no right to unilaterally collect any form of toll, the Interstellar Alliance would not pay even one kilogram of ore, and he called on all guilds on the server to boycott it.

Lin Ye didn't argue with him in the channel.

He woke up the Interstellar Behemoth he had just negotiated with and had it use the small amount of backup energy it had just recovered to turn on the mining station's external broadcast system, reading a minimalist announcement in a mechanically synthesized voice: "The Interstellar Behemoth territory is now under the unified management of the God Realm Que De Studio. Those who do not pay the protection fee, please bear the consequences yourself."

Captain Valhalla led the elite fleet of the Interstellar Alliance and arrived at the periphery of the mining station in less than half an hour.

A dozen fully equipped battleships lined up in battle formation outside the automatic defense satellite array, all ship-borne laser cannons fully charged, with their muzzles aimed at the central platform of the mining station.

He posted a final announcement on the server-wide channel, saying that if they didn't pay the protection fee, they would vote with cannon fire.

Lin Ye stood at the edge of the docking platform, looking at the battleships arranged in an arc, and said only two words: "Fatty, record the screen."

Then he took out an energy core he had just removed from the Interstellar Behemoth's backup energy system.

The core spun twice in his palm, and he extracted all the energy from the core and injected it into the Interstellar Behemoth's main cannon system.

The main cannon muzzle slowly rose from above the mining station, the barrel length exceeding an entire battleship, and the faint blue particle stream condensed into a dazzling blue ball of light at the muzzle.

Lin Ye pressed his hand down, and the main cannon fired.

A torrent of energy grazed less than ten meters above the bridge of the flagship at the forefront of the Interstellar Alliance fleet.

It didn't hit any warship, but the aftermath of the energy shattered the outer energy shields of a dozen battleships, and the shield generators overloaded simultaneously, spewing sparks.

The alarm in the flagship's bridge leaked out from Captain Valhalla's live streaming microphone, and players across the entire server heard it.

Lin Ye typed a line of text on the Interstellar Behemoth's main cannon control console and sent it to the server-wide channel: "The next shot won't miss. Are you paying or not?"

The Interstellar Alliance fleet maintained radio silence on the periphery of the mining station for three full minutes.

Captain Valhalla finally replied with a message on the server-wide channel: "Is there a discount for paying the protection fee by the quarter?"

Lin Ye smiled and sent a message to Ghost, saying the business in the Interstellar plane was running smoothly.

Ghost merged the business data of Interstellar Warframe into the cross-dimensional business master table in the background, filling in a line of numbers in the estimated monthly production column for star core steel—three thousand tons.

Su Qinghan discovered a new reading at the automatic defense satellite array; her portable energy detector showed that there was another unknown energy signal deep in the mineral layer under the mining station, and the signal frequency was highly close to the resonant frequency of the Chaos Core when it was activated in the Shadow plane.

Lin Ye took the detector she handed over, glanced at the reading, patted the shoulder of Fatty Wang, who was still buried in processing the star core steel samples, and said not to rush to seal the box yet.

There should be something else buried at the bottom of the mineral layer.