Chapter 272 Progress

As time passed, the interstellar society realized that the three major civilizations had not taken any substantial action. They were well aware that there was more than met the eye. Since they couldn't do anything about the Black Star Army, the heat of the public outcry gradually subsided.

Meanwhile, the Super Star Cluster Alliance, which had been watching from the sidelines, received an anonymous intelligence tip-off one day, revealing the inside story of the Feyn civilization's protection. Without a word, they released the information, creating a publicity storm that quickly skewed public opinion.

After multiple rounds of gaming, the masterminds behind the scenes basically got what they wanted and ceased their activities. Without the behind-the-scenes guidance of public opinion, only a few sporadic voices remained on the internet. The interstellar society wasn't short of news, and a new hot topic diverted the attention of interstellar citizens, opening up new disputes.

However, the impact of this incident had already settled, awakening many people from their delusion, and they quieted down a lot.

Civilizations around the galaxy adjusted their strategies, unwilling to continue delving too deeply into the conflicts between the three major civilizations and the association, and stopped some of their private interference, which reduced the resistance of various Super-A Grade forces in integrating the black market in various places.

Without the free labor of the various civilizations, the three major civilizations sent their Undying to intervene in the black market fights in various places, dealing with the Black Star Army's Undying.

The fights between the players were even more unrestrained. In the next month or so, the two sides fought inextricably, and many of the planets where the black markets were located became secret battlefields. With the technical assistance of the army, the various guilds successively took down several Calamity Grade Supers who were enemies of the army. The name of the Cosmos Cancer became even more deeply rooted in people's minds.

Han Xiao didn't pay constant attention to the hustle and bustle outside. While the men and horses on both sides were secretly fighting fiercely, he spent most of his time in the research institute this month, constantly reverse-engineering the SWY-001, while at the same time creating new Cosmic Treasures to promote the Divine Transformation.

And on this day, a breakthrough was finally made in the reverse engineering of SWY-001.

...

Inside the bright research institute, the huge body of SWY-001 was fixed in the center. Densely packed multi-functional mechanical arms were spread all over the various parts, looking like scaffolding from the outside. They were all buzzing and operating, carrying out all kinds of reverse analysis.

Mechanical assistants flew in the air, surrounding the SWY-001, occasionally transporting parts, like a swarm of bees in the sky.

Han Xiao floated in the air, his height level with the head of the SWY-001. Next to him was a synchronously suspended ring-shaped anti-gravity workbench. A large number of neatly arranged virtual screens surrounded his body, constantly displaying various parameters. He used this workbench to coordinate the research plans of different teams.

"The decryption is finally complete..."

Han Xiao let out a breath.

After more than a month of analysis, several modules of SWY-001 had been successfully parsed. Among them, the most important was naturally the memory file, which had been transcoded and exported, turning into readable data.

On the virtual screen, a large amount of information was laid out. After removing the useless redundant data, the remaining information was the essence of SWY-001.

Han Xiao browsed through it. This useful information could be mainly divided into three major parts: one part was the various technologies used by this machine, another part was the technical blueprints in the memories of these sacrificed mechanics, and the other part was their memories of that unknown civilization.

The name of this galactic civilization, which was destroyed by the World Tree, translated into Interstellar Common Language as "Karma Republic Alliance".

Different from the checks and balances of the three families in the explored universe, the Karma Republic Alliance was the only galactic civilization in its area. It dominated and annexed the other races in its area, turning them all into its affiliated civilizations. It had absolute control, and even the territory was uniformly distributed by the Karma Republic Alliance.

They established a monitoring system, set up civilization levels, and stipulated that all civilizations' scientific research achievements must be reported and a copy given to the Karma Republic Alliance. If there was a major breakthrough, they could increase "Civilization Points". If the points were sufficient, the civilization would be approved to be upgraded and obtain better treatment, and expand with their approval.

On the other hand, if a civilization had no scientific research breakthroughs for many years and failed to meet the points standard for a cycle, the civilization would be demoted, and the Karma Republic Alliance would take back all welfare, including territory.

The interstellar society of the Karma Republic Alliance was highly stratified. Although the civilization competition mechanism ensured a certain amount of vitality, the overall atmosphere of the society was still quite dull. After all, all development was under the supervision and restriction of the Karma Republic Alliance, and the ceiling could be seen at a glance. In order to maintain their level or get promoted, most civilizations had to invest most of their resources in scientific research, and their attitude towards people's livelihood issues was "good enough".

Most of the people were also just getting by. Under the high control of the Karma Republic Alliance, the cost of breaking the law was too high, and there was no hope. Superpower knowledge was also strictly restricted by the Karma Republic Alliance and could not be freely disseminated. The only way to learn was through the official channels, and after graduation, they would be assigned to serve different civilizations.

If nothing unexpected happened, the Karma Republic Alliance would continue to grow stronger as it absorbed the nutrients of so many affiliated civilizations, but unfortunately, they encountered the World Tree civilization and were ultimately wiped out.

Since superpower knowledge was not disseminated among the people, the Karma Republic Alliance controlled the size of individual civilizations well, but precisely because of this, their high-end combat power was scarce. There were fewer than twenty Super-A Grade experts, and because of the lack of conflict, there were only two peak Super-A Grades.

Both had their advantages and disadvantages. Although the three major civilizations were worried about the loss of control of individual power every day, they had accumulated several times more high-end combat power as a result. Chaos could give birth to more experts. The Karma Republic Alliance did not have this concern, but when facing foreign enemies, they did not have enough high-end combat power reserves.

Facing the World Tree civilization's overwhelming offensive, the Karma Republic Alliance's high-end combat power group almost collapsed at the first touch. In the end, they had no choice but to use a technology called "Fusion Mechanical Ascension", which was only applicable to Mechanic Supers.

By concentrating the power of a peak Super-A Grade mechanic and a large number of A-Grade and B-Grade mechanics, they helped this mechanic directly break through the boundaries, transform into a true "Mechanical God", and enter a higher level. But in the end, it failed. Although they obtained a more powerful individual, it did not produce a transformation and was surrounded and defeated by the World Tree civilization's experts in battle.

Han Xiao glanced at the technical data. The panel showed that the blueprint name was [Fusion Mechanical Ascension]. In addition to the known fusion effects, the side effect was personality change, becoming an aggregate consciousness.

"This technology does not achieve the initial design goal, but it has made some breakthroughs. It's not very useful to me, but the fused mech template is very powerful. Perhaps I can reverse-engineer it and imitate its structure to become a new form of Mechanical God Advent?"

Han Xiao's mind stirred slightly.

Although SWY-001 was a fusion of flesh and blood and mechanics, the use of flesh and blood was to provide a large number of super cells to supply mechanical force to the huge machine. He possessed the [Extreme Flow-Blood Energy Berserk], so as long as he operated it properly, it might have a similar effect.

If he successfully imitated the form of SWY-001, he felt that the Mechanical God would most likely undergo a huge change.

In addition to [Fusion Mechanical Ascension], Han Xiao also obtained a large number of blueprints from the machine's memory files, but only the memories of the peak Super-A Grade contained several golden blueprints.

Han Xiao recorded all these technologies and then glanced at the decryption interface of the memory chip program.

Now that he had finished parsing the quantum network encoding of the Karma Republic Alliance, the firewall had already been cracked, and he could rewrite SWY-001's intelligent program.

Han Xiao hesitated for a moment, but still closed the interface... He hadn't figured out the connection between SWY-001's biological consciousness and intelligent consciousness, and he didn't want to mess with it.

"Speaking of which, I wonder if researching SWY-001 has any special bonus. The trigger efficiency of the Exclusive Talent seems to be a little high."

Han Xiao opened the panel and took a look. In this month's research, he had actually triggered the Exclusive Talent progress once again, and it had now reached 75.8%.

According to the previous values, as long as he triggered it twice more, the Exclusive Talent would take shape.

However, he didn't know when those two times would come. There was only the last quarter of progress left, and Han Xiao was now a little inclined to fill it up with Awakening Points. He didn't do this before because the progress was too low, but now the gap to the full value was very small, and the cost was not high.

The players had been online for a while, and he had accumulated a lot of experience reserves. Although he was still far from advancing to Level 360, leveling up a few times was not a problem. Moreover, when he used random rewards to draw mission settlement cards, he would occasionally explode with luck and randomly roll out Awakening Points.

"Let's try. I feel like I should have a chance."

With a thought, Han Xiao invested his existing experience reserves into leveling up and stopped at Level 344 when he didn't have enough to continue.

He took out one Awakening Point and threw it into the Exclusive Talent. The prompt popped up.

[Do you want to use 1 Awakening Point to increase the Exclusive Talent progress? [Confirm/Cancel]]

[Confirmed]

[According to the level of this Exclusive Talent, 1 Awakening Point can increase the progress by 2.8%~3.2%]

[Exclusive Talent research progress +3.02%]

[Current Progress: 78.82%]

"Each point can increase it by 3% on average..."

Han Xiao's eyes lit up. This was much better than expected.

In this case, he only needed 7 or 8 more Awakening Points to obtain the Exclusive Talent.

According to the rules of Awakening Points, 100 points could activate the prototype of the Exclusive Talent, and then he could accumulate progress. Converting at the average ratio of each Awakening Point being equal to 3% progress, then the total cost of obtaining an Exclusive Talent from scratch was at least 134 Awakening Points.

He naturally activated the prototype of the Exclusive Talent and slowly accumulated the progress to about 75%, which was equivalent to saving 125 Awakening Points... Thinking about it this way, it seemed like he had made a big profit.

"At most, it's only 8 Awakening Points. I have them in my hand, so I don't even need to add skill points. The cost is within acceptable range, so I can do it."

Han Xiao rubbed his hands and, with an excited mood, turned Awakening Points into fuel, increasing the research progress of the Exclusive Talent bit by bit.

Soon, after spending enough Awakening Points, the progress finally reached 100%!

The panel shook, and a prompt immediately popped up.

[Exclusive Talent has been awakened]

[Please determine the main tendency of this talent from the following three optional directions]

[1. Basic Attributes]

[2. Special Resistance]

[3. Main Class Amplification]

"Oh? So it's this kind of form..."

Han Xiao raised his eyebrows. He thought that the ability of the Exclusive Talent was completely random, but it turned out that there was a certain amount of custom freedom when it was formed. This reminded him of the situation when he created racial talents when he advanced to Super-A Grade.

The available directions given now were not enough, so it seemed that the formed Exclusive Talent already had a foundation.

If he used Awakening Points to create a prototype from scratch, perhaps he would have the most complete custom experience.

Han Xiao hesitated for a moment and chose Main Class Amplification.

[Main Tendency has been determined]

[Please determine the secondary tendency of this talent from the following three optional directions]

[1. Mechanical Manufacturing]

[2. Virtual Technology]

[3. Mechanical Combat]

"With the two Exclusive Talents contributed by Old Man Mai, I should have enough in manufacturing and virtual technology..."

Han Xiao thought for a moment and continued to choose the third option.

[Secondary Tendency has been determined]

[Please replace one of the following three bonus effects]

[1. Ranged Firepower Strike]

[2. Mechanical Force Intensity Bonus]

[3. Mechanical Efficiency Increase]

"When it comes to the third choice, it's to replace an effect. So these three options are the bonus types provided after the talent is finally formed."

Han Xiao narrowed his eyes, pondered for a few seconds, and chose the first option. Among the three, only the first option was slightly worse.

[Replacement Complete]

[[Ranged Firepower Strike] has been randomly converted to [Class Main Attribute Bonus]]

[All Tendencies have been determined. Generating Exclusive Talent...]

[Generation Complete]

[You have obtained a new Talent [(Unnamed)-Han Xiao]!]

[(Unnamed)-Han Xiao: Intelligence +10%. During combat, your mechanical force intensity gains a 1.2x bonus coefficient, and the efficiency of mechanical creations gains a 1.3x bonus coefficient (other percentage increases and bonus coefficients are multiplicative)]

[Note: (To be filled in)]

[You have obtained your first Exclusive Talent]

[The difficulty of activating the Exclusive Talent prototype next time has increased, and the initial level of the next Exclusive Talent has increased (the amplification has increased, and it can accommodate more tendencies)]