148: Chapter 148 Ascent

It took the Shelter a full twenty days to complete the deployment of all one hundred thousand slots released in this sixth batch.

With the addition of over a hundred thousand players, the current Fire Seed Shelter was filled everywhere with a fanatical vitality that the natives found difficult to comprehend.

And among this batch of a hundred thousand newbies, quite a few players with significant backgrounds on Earth had indeed mixed in.

There were personnel from official scientific research institutions, elites from multinational monopoly conglomerates, financial analysts specifically there to collect data, and even some international gang members.

Their purposes varied.

Some were there to study the technology trees in the Warhammer world that far exceeded their era, some to collect data on the evolution of social structures, and others were purely there to experience the absolute freedom of slaughter in this lawless land.

Lin Li was well aware of this.

He didn't make a deliberate effort to stop these players with complex backgrounds from entering the server.

The The Fourth Calamity, after all, was composed of all sorts of chaotic individuals.

However, he secretly had Iron Man 73 lock onto these special IPs and strictly limited the proportion of missions they could accept at all levels to prevent any single entity from becoming too dominant.

...

To the east of the Shelter, within the massive base of the Scourge Legion.

Today, a hasty completion ceremony for their first flagship was being held here.

Inside the shipyard.

A massive spaceship—one that any player who had played StarCraft would definitely shout "awesome" upon seeing—was resting quietly on the launch pad.

Its total length exceeded 300 meters, its entire body covered in roughly polished armor plates, with a design full of the violent aesthetics of heavy industry.

Flash stood on the scaffolding, looking at this spaceship, his eyes nearly popping out of his head.

"Holy crap? Old Ming! Isn't this just a mini version of a yamato?!"

Flash pointed at that iconic hammerhead-shaped bow.

"Did you pay the copyright fees before you dared to build this? I'm telling you, Blizzard's lawyer's letter is already on its way!"

Ming Shen stood to the side with his hands behind his back, nodding with a face full of smugness:

"Screw copyright fees. This is called a tribute to the classics."

Ming Shen patted the spaceship's thick landing gear.

"The exterior is indeed a complete replica of a yamato. But the insides have been totally replaced."

"The vast majority of the life support systems, control circuits, and the gravity and magnetic field defense systems inside this ship were all salvaged and modified from those broken merchant ships in Coastal City."

Ming Shen paused, his tone becoming proud.

"But its power system and energy supply are definitely the top-tier on this planet! It's directly fitted with ten nuclear-powered engines and a micro-nuclear fusion core array newly authorized by the Shelter's arsenal!"

"As for the navigation system..."

Ming Shen scratched his head.

"It can only use the most primitive laser communication positioning. This thing can only be used as a local area network within our star system. Once it flies out of this system, it'll be completely blind."

Flash circled the spaceship and suddenly noticed a very fatal problem:

"Wait, Old Ming. This ship looks intimidating on the outside. But how come it doesn't even have a single cannon barrel? Where's the weapons system?"

"There was no choice. Time was too tight, where would we find the time to research ship-borne weapons?"

Ming Shen spread his hands and answered matter-of-factly,

"Aside from two conventional missile launchers installed in the belly, other weapons are basically zero."

"But the advantage of this ship is that it has great strength, a high thrust-to-weight ratio, and it flies incredibly fast!" Ming Shen added.

"Zero firepower? Then how are we supposed to play when we get into a fight in space later? Rely on ramming?" Flash was speechless.

At this moment, Wanna Sleep with Slaanesh, who had just finished handling daily chores, approached with a grin.

"Isn't that simple? For naval battles, of course we play the most traditional boarding tactics!"

Slaanesh patted the deep red power armor he was wearing.

"Our ship is fast and heavily armored! When we encounter an enemy, just A-move at full speed! Get right up in their face, then we'll use our power armor to cut through their deck and crawl inside! Just hijack their ship and we're done, right?"

After hearing this outrageous theory, Flash actually found it quite reasonable:

"Holy crap! That actually makes sense! Hijacking other people's ships even saves on ammo costs!"

"Alright, enough talk! The auspicious hour has arrived! Let's launch it and test the waters!" Ming Shen waved his hand grandly.

Flash froze for a moment:

"Wait? Launching it directly? Shouldn't we follow protocol and do a static fire test to check the engine data first? What if it explodes?"

Ming Shen glanced at him sideways, looking at him like he was an alien:

"Buddy, we're playing a game! Why are you doing safety tests in a game? If it blows up, it blows up; at worst, we just respawn. What's with you these past few days? Why have you become so fussy?"

Flash sighed, looked up at the sky at a forty-five-degree angle, and said deeply: "What do you know? This is called growth. It's the steadiness of being a father. You wouldn't understand."

"???"

Ming Shen and Slaanesh's faces were full of question marks.

But they couldn't be bothered to deal with this guy who had fallen into some bizarre state.

As the heavy mechanical treads turned.

This modified yamato, weighing hundreds of tons, was slowly pushed out of the assembly plant and fixed onto the open-air launch pad.

Subsequently.

Ming Shen, Flash, Liver Emperor, Miracle Walker, Slaanesh, and a group of other core high-level players from the Scourge Legion boarded the ship via the gangway and entered the crude bridge cockpit.

"Ignition countdown!"

"Three!"

"Two!"

"One! Launch!"

As the player in the pilot's seat slammed down on that red physical button.

The ten nuclear-powered engines at the rear of the ship instantly erupted with a blinding, ghostly blue high-temperature plasma flow! The terrifying thrust made the entire ground tremble violently!

"Rumble—!"

The modified yamato, like a steel beast that had broken its chains, carried a violent roar as it crashed straight through the thick cloud layers and hurtled toward the vastness of space.

The intense G-force jolts pressed everyone firmly into their anti-G suit seats.

About a few minutes later.

The violent vibrations suddenly disappeared.

The ship's gravity maintenance system took over the environment.

Everything became steady and quiet.

"Holy crap! Awesome! We're actually in space!"

Flash unbuckled his seatbelt and jumped up from his seat in excitement.

Liver Emperor's face was also flushed as he rubbed his hands and asked:

"Old Ming, what's the word now? Where should we go for a look? Didn't we plan earlier to go and occupy that Adamantine Mining Belt? Now's a good time to go see what the situation is."

"Makes sense, let's go there!"

Ming Shen turned to look at the pilot.

"Compare the coordinates with the PV star map. Course correction! Full power, full speed ahead!"

With the engines roaring once more.

This yamato, carrying the ambitions of the The Fourth Calamity, began to glide smoothly through the pitch-black deep space.

Just like Mudslide and the others when they first took a cargo ship into the sky.

These Legion big shots, who usually shouted and hollered on the wasteland, also completely lost their ability to speak upon entering this vast and boundless space for the first time.

They almost queued up, pressing their faces against the thick blast-proof glass of the bridge, staring blankly at the universe outside.

If sailing a great ship through a storm-tossed ocean felt like loneliness amidst a roar,

Then this spaceship gliding through space brought an absolute, suffocating silence.

In this vacuum world where there was no air to transmit sound, aside from the deliberately lowered voices of the players inside the ship and the extremely faint vibration of the nuclear fusion engines,

There was no sound outside.

All the stars and distant nebulae looked like massive oil paintings frozen in the long river of time.

Before such a grand scale, humans were smaller than even a grain of dust.

In the end, the players on the bridge stopped talking.

They just watched it all in quiet awe.

This reverent silence was only broken half an hour later by the voice of the player pilot.

"Boss Ming! Look at the radar! We've reached the Adamantine Mining Belt at those coordinates."

Everyone swarmed to the portholes.

They saw in the deep space ahead of the ship.

Vast, seemingly endless stretches of massive grayish-black meteorites were floating slowly along a wide orbit.

Every piece of debris here was several kilometers in diameter, their surfaces covered in impact craters and the characteristic glint of metal.

"This is the Adamantine Mining Belt?"

Wanna Sleep with Slaanesh looked at those meteorites that were like small mountain ranges and swallowed hard.

"This is way too big. Even if we brought drills, how are we supposed to mine this? It's like ants trying to eat an elephant."

Ming Shen frowned.

"In reality, our Earth currently doesn't have any systematic experience in space mining either."

Ming Shen analyzed.

"I guess we'll have to go to Coastal City later and learn from those local NPC merchant guilds to see how they used to mine."

Just then.

Ming Shen's gaze crossed the ore belt and noticed a planet emitting a yellowish light floating not far behind it.

"What's the deal with that planet over there?" Ming Shen asked, pointing out the window.

The pilot immediately pulled up star map data on the console for comparison.

"Boss, that should be the second moon of that Purple-red Gas Giant. Which means it's the sibling planet to our starting zone planet."

The pilot reported, looking at the crude data panel.

"The game's background info shows that this planet's volume is nearly double that of our Outpost Planet. But because its atmosphere is obscured year-round by an extremely thick layer of yellowish dust and mist, radar and satellites can't see the surface situation clearly."

"However, the data speculates that this moon should have undergone human habitability terraforming; there should be oxygen and gravity on it."

Hearing this simple report.

A Flash of inspiration suddenly crossed Ming Shen's mind, and a crazy idea instantly took shape!

"Brothers!"

Ming Shen spun around abruptly.

"Since we don't have the equipment to mine in space right now... what do you say... is there a possibility!"

"Doesn't our ship have great strength? Let's use the ship's built-in tractors or physical cables to drag these meteorite ores one by one! Forcibly change their orbits and let them fall into the atmosphere of that planet next door!"

Ming Shen got more excited as he spoke.

"Once the meteorites hit the ground and shatter, we can then send players to establish a fixed surface mining station on that planet! Isn't that way easier than working in a vacuum?!"

After hearing Ming Shen's heaven-defyingly outrageous theory.

The entire bridge was silent for a few seconds.

"Holy crap!"

Miracle Walker slapped his thigh.

"Don't say it! Actually, don't you dare say it! This is the brain-child of a physics genius! Man-made meteor showers!"

"But..."

Miracle Walker calmed down a bit.

"Before we drop meteorites, we should first go see what the situation is on that planet. If there are human cities on it, and we drop a bunch of meteorites, wouldn't that be an Exterminatus?"

"Makes sense."

Ming Shen immediately ordered:

"Pilot! Turn around! Approach that yellow planet! See if we can directly break into the atmosphere and land!"

Under the thrust of its attitude control jets, the modified yamato slowly turned its massive hammerhead-shaped bow and flew toward the moon wrapped in yellowish mist.

The distance grew closer and closer.

The outline of the planet's atmosphere gradually enlarged outside the porthole.

"Entering the upper atmosphere! Preparing to cross the troposphere!"

The player pilot gripped the control stick tightly, eyes fixed on the instrument panel.

As soon as the ship plunged into that thick layer of yellowish mist, the previously steady hull instantly emitted the ear-piercing sound of metal twisting under an unbearable load!

This wasn't ordinary mist; this was a global-scale super sandstorm capable of shredding armor!

The wind speed reached an incredible level.

Hard rocks the size of watermelons were whipped up by the gale, slamming into the ship's blast-proof glass and outer armor like a barrage of cannonballs.

Sparks flew everywhere, and alarms blared loudly inside the cockpit.

"Boss! We can't go down any further!"

The pilot shouted at the top of his lungs, desperately pulling up the control stick.

"The wind shear is too ridiculous! The nuclear engine intakes are about to be clogged with sand! If we sink any lower and the ship loses power, we'll be smashed into a pancake and the whole crew will be sent back to town!"

Ming Shen made a snap decision:

"Pull up! Exit the atmosphere! Park in low earth orbit!"

With a pained roar from the engines, the ship struggled to climb again, escaping that deadly sandstorm hell.

Everyone wiped away cold sweat.

"This weather is too insane. The big ship is too big a target; it can't get down there at all."

Ming Shen looked at the churning yellow clouds below and suddenly slapped his forehead.

"Right! Don't we still have that captured small Shuttle tucked in the bottom bay? That thing is small and has strong wind resistance!"

Ming Shen looked around:

"We'll send a brother in a fully enclosed power armor to fly the Shuttle down solo to scout out the path and see what the situation is down there. The rest of us will fly the big ship back and bring more manpower and equipment."

As soon as he finished speaking.

Wanna Sleep with Slaanesh's eyes immediately lit up, and he raised his right hand high.

"I'll go, I'll go! I've been bored with nothing to do these past few days, my bones are about to rust!" Slaanesh said with a face full of excitement. "Solo map exploration, this will definitely trigger a hidden lone wolf plot!"

"Fine, stay safe. If you die, remember to post the coordinates in the guild channel." Ming Shen patted his shoulder, giving his instructions very casually.

Slaanesh ran to the bottom bay and quickly donned that set of deep red Competitive Power Armor.

Then he dived into the cockpit of that old Shuttle.

"Bay doors opening! Preparing for deployment!"

As the airlock of the bottom bay opened, the Shuttle shot out like a cannonball, heading straight into that yellowish sandstorm.

As soon as it entered the atmosphere, the Shuttle was like a fallen leaf, tossed about at will by the gale.

Even though this military Shuttle's hull was sturdy and durable, it still appeared incredibly fragile before the destructive power of nature.

Within ten minutes, the engine directly stalled and was ruined after sucking in too much sand.

The powerless Shuttle could only drift aimlessly in mid-air, at the mercy of the wind.

After being tossed around by the gale for over an hour.

"Boom!"

A loud crash.

The Shuttle slammed heavily onto a hard, debris-strewn ground, sliding for over a hundred meters before barely coming to a stop.

The nose was severely deformed, and thick black smoke billowed out.

And shortly after the crash occurred, the sandstorm that had been raging for half a day actually came to a miraculous halt.

"Cough, cough, cough..."

Slaanesh kicked open the deformed hatch and crawled out of the wreckage wearing his heavy power armor.

"That was freaking intense..."

He had just steadied himself and looked up to survey his surroundings.

The next second, he froze on the spot.

On this desolate stretch of rocky beach.

At some point, over a dozen tracked off-road vehicles hung with armor plates had gathered silently!