78: Chapter 78 Experience Points Extraction

As the quest chain reached its fifth day, Lin Qiming sat alone in the Dispatch Room on the second floor of the Outpost. Three holographic panels floated before him—the left one scrolled with real-time quest completion logs, the center showed the breakdown of his experience point commission, and the right displayed the stc core energy reserves. The faint blue glow of the panels reflected on his face, making his youthful features look like those of a Tech-Priest who had just completed their initial mechanization. The red mark on his right thumb, burned by a plasma pistol test circuit, hadn't fully faded, but he could no longer feel the pain. His entire attention was focused on the steadily rising number in the experience pool.

Five days ago, when he typed the words "Workshop Scrap" into the quest editor interface, he had only wanted to give that group of headless flies something to do. Now, the ticking numbers on his experience point commission panel made him realize that this wasn't just "something to do"; it was a silent money-printing machine. Hephaestus had already automatically generated a summary of today's experience point income, categorized by quest type, with each item followed by a commission breakdown:

Quest "Workshop Scrap": Completed 127 times. Total experience reward: 10,160; 20% commission; 2,032 experience points credited. Quest "Source of Pure Water": Completed 43 times; total reward: 6,450; 1,290 commission points. Quest "Temporary Barrier": Equivalent to 28 completions; total reward: 5,600; 1,120 commission points. Quest "Rust Belt Patrol": Completed 89 times; average experience: 75; total reward: approximately 6,675; 1,335 commission points. Quest "Eliminating Hidden Dangers": Completed twice this week; total reward: 600; 120 commission points.

Total daily commission income: 5,897 experience points. This didn't include the extra commissions from miscellaneous kills and collection activities triggered by players exploring on their own outside of quests. Those small values hung at the end of the spreadsheet like water droplets, ranging from a dozen to several dozen points. Occasionally, a "First Discovery of a New Resource Point" reward would suddenly spike—the Necron Energy Residue Point Iron Stomach had marked deep within the ventilation shafts had contributed 120 extra experience points—before settling back into the steadily climbing curve.

Lin Qiming stared at the number, remaining silent for a long time. He was currently at the mid-stage of D-rank, and the total experience required to break through from mid-stage to upper-stage D-rank was approximately 20,000 points. In other words, today's system commission alone had already filled nearly a third of the experience needed to overcome the ceiling of the mid-stage D-rank. And he hadn't even left the Dispatch Room. The only thing he had done today was repair the fourth version of the plasma pistol's energy circuit and replace Xiao Haozi's bedding with new scraps of cloth.

"Theoretically," Hephaestus's voice cut in at the right moment, its tone as flat as ever, though its phrasing seemed to have undergone a subtle filtering, "if you maintain the current quest completion rate, the experience gap to break through from mid-stage to upper-stage D-rank will be filled within four days. If you are willing to sacrifice a bit of sleep to craft a few new pieces of equipment in the workshop, this process can be compressed to three days."

"So, after they turn in a few more rounds of quests, my rank should move."

"To be precise, you can sit here, go nowhere, and rely on them picking up trash to pick yourself into upper-stage D-rank."

Lin Qiming didn't deny it. Leaning back in his chair, he watched the slowly ticking number on the panel and suddenly remembered that afternoon when he had just transmigrated and fought desperately against a Hive Giant Rat for a few points of experience. With an Energy Level of 4.1 ona, health under twenty points, a broken left arm, and only a metal pipe salvaged from a trash heap, he had almost died against that giant rat, whose Energy Level was around five. Now, two hundred players were working for him, and he didn't even have to lift a finger.

"Is this fair?" he asked.

"You are not seeking fairness," Hephaestus's voice held no ripple of emotion. "You are seeking efficiency. Moreover, you bear risks they are unaware of—every corruption value log, every Warp contact, every drop of Chaos Pollution silently accumulating in the background is your debt. They trade their lives for experience; you trade experience for your life. That is the true consideration in your exchange."

Lin Qiming didn't argue. He opened the player management module and pulled up the overall level distribution data. The main force of upper-stage F-rank was about 140 people. The elite lower-stage E-rank was about 50 people. Over ten people had already reached mid-stage E-rank—including Iron Wall Rebirth, Dark Blade, and Warhammer Veteran, the core active players who had been intensely online since the first day of arrival, as well as Grey Mist Walker. Her combat frequency wasn't higher than anyone else's, but after her command rating was adjusted upward in the system's backend, her execution efficiency brought a higher density of quest completions. Only a few players remained who hadn't left F-rank, either due to severely insufficient online time or because they were still squatting by scrap heaps trying to build automatic rat traps with short sticks and springs, with absolutely no intention of completing formal quests.

Then his gaze swept over to the energy reserves: 89/300. This number had flashed in the corner of his vision several times today, but he hadn't had time to face it directly. Iron Stomach had died again today—four times. One of those times was while attempting to climb an Old One's Support Pillar in a cavern, where he slipped and fell onto a stalagmite. Hephaestus had named a new achievement for him called "The Man Who Fell from the Old One's Ruins."

However, the energy consumed by these four deaths, combined with the occasional deaths of other players, had pulled the reserves—which were so full five days ago that he felt he could summon a second batch of players—down to less than a third. Energy did not recover automatically. The Outpost's own energy well could provide a tiny daily supplement, but that amount was only enough to maintain basic operations, far from keeping up with the rate at which two hundred immortals consumed it every day.

Lin Qiming created a new rule in the quest commission backend. It wasn't displayed publicly, and there was no penalty label; it was just a tiny correction coefficient hidden deep within the algorithm—for players whose consecutive death count exceeded a certain threshold, the experience commission ratio would be slightly adjusted. This isn't a punishment, he told himself. It's a cold regulation valve. When a player's corruption value silently accumulates in the background, the system won't stop them from continuing to seek death, won't deduct their experience, and won't pop up a warning. That invisible line will just shift slightly. No one would be able to notice—except for Hephaestus and himself.

He saved the rule and turned off the energy monitoring. The experience points were still rising. Outside the window, Grey Mist Walker's voice drifted in faintly. She was calling roll in the tunnels—not using a megaphone or a system announcement, but just shouting out the IDs of several veterans to assign the night patrol order. The called IDs responded one by one; no one questioned what right she had. The order was executed. The logistics people were stacking the last bag of filtered drinking water for the day into the guild warehouse. Nearby, someone shouted, "Iron Stomach, stop jumping off things!"—to which Nightsong replied, "He was tied to a rope when he jumped this time."

He closed his eyes, letting those voices recede into background noise. Then, he reopened the quest editor interface and typed the initial draft keywords for the next batch of quests in the Phase 3 planning column: More Crafting Blueprints, Player-to-Player Trading, New Map Entrance.