2: Chapter 2 Initial Results

As soon as the announcement was released, the chat channel was instantly filled with wails.

However, Zhou An's gaze was locked firmly onto the three words: "Resource Rain".

He immediately pulled up the helicopter's radar panel.

He was in luck; less than ten kilometers to his front right, a large, deep-blue storm cloud was churning violently.

"Go take a look!"

Zhou An pulled the joystick, turning the helicopter's nose as it sluggishly flew toward the storm clouds.

As they approached the edge of the Resource Rain, the surrounding light instantly dimmed. A gale, mixed with water vapor like hail, came whistling in.

With a muffled "bang," a hard chunk of ice slammed viciously into the windshield, instantly creating a web of cracks.

[Warning: Your vehicle has been hit by a weather attack, durability decreased by 1%!]

Zhou An held his breath, staring intensely at the cracks.

The next second, a faint golden glow emerged from beneath the helicopter's dashboard, flowing toward the windshield like a breath.

In just a few seconds, the cracks began to heal at a speed visible to the naked eye, and even the intermittent, noisy sound of the engine from the wind earlier became steady and powerful once again.

"Hextech, truly awesome!" Zhou An completely relaxed.

With the backing of [Smallest Giant], this deadly storm that everyone else avoided like the plague was nothing more than an unguarded, open-air treasury to him!

"Go for it!" A flash of madness crossed Zhou An's eyes as he pushed the throttle to the end, piloting the old helicopter headlong into the depths of the lightning-filled, gale-ravaged Resource Rain.

...

In the midst of the storm, time became blurred.

Zhou An was like a reckless scavenger in the Resource Rain, maneuvering the fuselage to weave through the gaps in the lightning, using the winch and net on the side of the cabin to frantically salvage those supply blind boxes wrapped in bubbles.

About five or six hours later.

By now, the helicopter was a pitiful sight. The tail wing was severely deformed, the left cabin door was missing, and the fuselage was pockmarked, as if it had just been pulled out of a meat grinder.

[Vehicle Damage Warning: Current integrity is 38%!]

[Note: External armor has suffered extensive damage, but core power components remain intact! Currently repairing at full capacity...]

Although the helicopter looked like it might fall apart at any moment, Zhou An's face was flushed red with excitement.

High risk brings a fortune beyond what ordinary people can imagine!

He opened the warehouse panel and tallied the fruits of his madness over the past few hours:

[Aviation Fuel x 600 units]

1 unit of high-purity fuel can support a standard vehicle for 300 kilometers of flight. With these 600 units, combined with the fuel recovery from [Smallest Giant], Zhou An's current endurance is god-tier; he doesn't have to worry about crashing for the rest of his life.

[Level 1 Steel x 200 units]

A sturdy base metal, the core material required to upgrade a vehicle from LV0 to LV1.

[Supplies: Compressed Biscuits x 50 boxes]

[Supplies: Purified Water x 30 liters]

[Supplies: Self-heating Braised Beef Rice x 15 boxes]

[Supplies: First Aid Bandages x 5 rolls]

"A fortune! A real fortune!"

Zhou An licked his dry, cracked lips.

Just as he was about to open a box of self-heating rice to reward himself, the edge of the radar suddenly flashed with blinding red light!

Zhou An turned his head sharply.

Through the rear window of the helicopter, he saw at the edge of the horizon, a wall of pitch-black mist stretching from the sky to the ground, silently crushing everything in its path.

From within the black mist, a hair-raising roar could be faintly heard, as if it could devour light and all signs of life.

[Warning: The devouring black mist is less than 20 kilometers away from you!]

"Damn it, I was circling around in the storm scavenging resources, I barely moved forward!"

Zhou An broke out in a cold sweat. His current maximum speed was only 40 kilometers per hour.

If he delayed any longer, even with [Little Giant], he couldn't escape the fate of being erased by the rules.

"Run!"

Zhou An didn't have time to eat; he slammed the throttle to the limit and fled desperately in the direction away from the black mist.

The helicopter traced a gentle trajectory above the clouds, and with a crisp click, Zhou An found a scratched toggle switch on the worn-out dashboard—autopilot.

Although this antique autopilot could only maintain basic straight-line flight, for Zhou An, whose nerves had been on edge for hours, it was a lifesaver.

He released the joystick and leaned back in his seat, letting out a long sigh. As the helicopter moved at full speed, the oppressive feeling of being watched finally eased a little. The black mist's advancement speed was 30km/h, while his top speed was 40km/h; as long as he didn't foolishly stop, the black mist couldn't catch him yet.

Zhou An summoned the system panel and glanced at the radar map in the top right corner.

The green dot representing his position was almost stuck to the far left edge of the map, while in front of him, a dense cluster of green dots had already pulled far ahead.

[System Prompt: Based on current coordinate assessment, you are behind 99% of the survivors in this region.]

"Slowness is the original sin." Zhou An curled his lips helplessly; the speed of this broken helicopter was truly despair-inducing.

He casually opened the regional chat channel; the originally noisy channel now had a bone-chilling scent of blood. The number of online users in the top right corner had become a shocking figure: [4621033 / 5000000].

In just a few short hours, nearly 400,000 people had disappeared into this sea of clouds forever.

However, among those who survived, some had already started to reap the first wave of benefits.

In the chat interface, messages of bragging and requests to buy were flooding the screen:

"Hahaha! I just risked my life to land on a miniature sky island, and there was actually a bronze treasure chest on it! I opened it and got a [Stun Gun (Green) Blueprint]!"

"Sky islands are simply treasures! I picked two edible wild fruits on the island, and eating them improves physical fitness. Who has water? I'll trade the wild fruits!"

"Big shots, does anyone have spare steel plates? I just brushed against the Resource Rain, and my hot air balloon was smashed through by hail. It's leaking air like crazy, help!"

"The Resource Rain is definitely a trap! My hang glider frame is about to fall apart from lightning strikes, don't go!"

Looking at these messages, Zhou An rubbed his chin.

"There are indeed treasures on the sky islands, but you need to stop and land to search, which takes too much time."

Zhou An pondered to himself, "With my turtle speed of 40km/h, if I really go to explore sky islands, I'll be caught and devoured by the black mist behind me at any moment. The sky island style is likely not for me."

His gaze turned to the deep-blue storm clouds—the Resource Rain—that were randomly generating and shifting on the radar.

Others fear the Resource Rain because their vehicles cannot withstand the devastation of such extreme weather.

But he is different; he has the perverted-level Hextech enhancement [Little Giant]. As long as the core components aren't instantly destroyed, that bit of damage will grow back in minutes.

"Since I can't catch up with the main force, I'll just be a scavenger!"

Zhou An immediately locked onto a medium-sized Resource Rain cloud 40 kilometers away on the radar. To ensure absolute safety, he called upon his inherited flight knowledge on the system's memo panel and listed a rigorous survival limit boundary equation.

First, calculate the time required to reach the Resource Rain.

During the flight to the target, the distance between himself and the black mist would increase. The helicopter must circle within the area, which means the forward relative displacement is almost zero.

"One and a half hours." Zhou An looked at the calculation results, a sharp glint flashing in his eyes.

1.5 hours of extreme stay time, combined with the perverted-level armor recovery and endurance backing from [Little Giant], is enough for him to scrape off a layer of loot from this storm.

"The timid starve to death, while the bold are stuffed to death."

Zhou An closed the chat channel and memo, gripped the joystick with his right hand again, and disengaged the autopilot.

The old helicopter awkwardly banked at a steep angle in mid-air and rushed toward the Resource Rain.