Star Sea Alien Race: First-Rank Psionic Shield

Star Sea Alien Race: First-Rank Psionic Shield

With control over the Myriad Heavens Market, all he needed to do was develop steadily. Taking risks had never been part of his plans.

But on second thought, while energy fluctuations of this scale far exceeded zero-rank, they were nowhere near the second rank. Moreover, this deployment was a benefit exploration, so there should not be any threats nearby that posed too great a danger to the Cangqiong.

After thinking it over, he glanced at the seven Fire Sunflower Soldiers standing rigidly beside him. Once he was certain he still had a good chance of escaping unscathed no matter what happened, Song Chi made his decision.

He turned the shuttle around and headed straight toward the area where the disturbance had occurred.

An hour later, behind a large fragment, the Cangqiong had long since shut down its engines and lay silently docked against the fragment.

The fragment was over twenty meters long and wide, perfectly concealing the Cangqiong's shuttle-like hull.

On the other side of the fragment was a vacuum region enclosed within the debris belt. Unlike a Star Sea void belt, this vacuum region was very small, no more than ten thousand meters across. At its very center lay a smooth fragment nearly a thousand meters in diameter.

Song Chi guessed that the anomaly detected earlier by the Sky-Patrol Radar had most likely originated from this fragment. Massive energy had erupted from it, shoving every other fragment thousands of meters away.

But the truth no longer mattered. What mattered was that Song Chi could be certain there was something extraordinary on that large floating continent ahead. In the dozen or so minutes he had spent observing, he had already seen no fewer than three groups of alien races with strange wings swarm onto the fragment.

More importantly, after landing on the fragment, those alien races had all begun slaughtering one another as if by unspoken agreement. Song Chi thus guessed that the item—or batch of resources—on that large fragment had to be rare enough to drive them mad. Otherwise, creatures so clearly of the same species would never have turned on each other.

As for Song Chi himself, it would have been a lie to say he was not curious, but he did not act rashly.

There were several hundred winged alien creatures on the large fragment ahead, which exceeded a thousand meters in diameter. Among them were more than a dozen first-rank beings.

He was waiting for the analysis results from the Cangqiong's semi-automatic onboard intelligent brain. Every Kindling captain exploring an alien star domain would download the publicly available basic records of all Star Sea civilizations discovered so far by Kindling Human Civilization.

However, the amount of information contained in those records was simply too vast. Even at the onboard intelligence's processing speed, verifying it would take quite some time.

Of course, this was probably also related to the fact that the intelligent brains installed on all Kindling Starships were merely the lowest-grade semi-automatic intelligent brains. But there was no helping it. Kindling Civilization had explicitly stipulated that every Kindling Starship's onboard intelligent brain could only be semi-automatic.

Kindling Human Civilization could hardly be blamed for imposing such restrictions. Too many Star Sea civilizations had been overtaken by their own intelligent brains, transforming into mechanical civilizations as a result. They had to be cautious.

Several minutes later, the onboard intelligent brain finally produced a match.

Race Name: White-Wing Clan

Description: An extremely common type of void creature in the Shattered Star Sea. They do not need to rely on floating continents for survival and can move freely through the Star Sea void.

Racial Strengths: Agile and astonishingly fast.

Racial Weaknesses: Extremely weak attack power. Against targets of the same rank, they find it difficult to break through a Kindling Starship's energy shield.

"White-Wing Clan..."

Staring at the virtual light screen projected by the onboard intelligent brain, Song Chi compared the information and confirmed that they were indeed the void creatures known as the White-Wing Clan. His thoughts stirred.

If the data provided by Kindling Civilization was correct, then a bold idea arose in his mind.

There were still 110 strands of zero-rank Floating Continent Essence and nearly two hundred zero-rank Life Cores in his Kindle Ancestral Aperture. Upgrading the Psionic Shield from lv7 to lv8 required 15 strands of Floating Continent Essence and 12 Life Cores. Upgrading it from lv8 to lv9 required 17 strands of Floating Continent Essence and 13 Life Cores. The rank advancement from lv9 to lv10 required 50 strands of Floating Continent Essence and 40 Life Cores.

By that calculation, raising the Psionic Shield to the first rank would require a total of 82 strands of Floating Continent Essence and 65 Life Cores. The emergency resources he had kept on hand were more than enough. As for Dark Energy Points, they could be replenished in just a few minutes, so they were not important.

And once the Psionic Shield was enhanced to the first rank, even the combined attacks of over a hundred White-Wing Clan members would not be able to deplete its shield value in a short time. That was because a first-rank Psionic Shield component would see its shield value soar directly to a thousand points.

With the full support of the equally first-rank Fire Sunflower Soldiers, this was entirely feasible.

After hesitating for a moment, Song Chi stopped wavering. The resources he had kept were meant for emergencies at critical moments. If not now, then when?

After several consecutive taps, the Psionic Shield component was enhanced all the way from lv7 to lv10. The price was a drastic reduction in the Cangqiong's resource reserves. Only 28 strands of zero-rank Floating Continent Essence remained, while the Life Cores had dropped to just over a hundred. Fortunately, the lv10 Psionic Shield's attributes were quite good.

Psionic Shield lv10

Quality: Colorless

Consumption: 20/s (Dark Energy Points)

Defense: 99

Shield Value: 990/990

Charge: 20s; Cooldown after overload: 40 minutes

Upgrade Requirements: 100 strands of Floating Continent Essence (zero-rank), 1600 Dark Energy Points, 50 Life Cores (zero-rank)

As a standard colorless-quality component, even after being enhanced to the first rank, the Psionic Shield component still required only zero-rank Floating Continent Essence and zero-rank Life Cores for further upgrades. This made it far more convenient than white-quality or higher exotic components. However, the Cangqiong's resources were now nearly exhausted, making further enhancement impossible.

After upgrading the Psionic Shield, Song Chi still did not make a move. Simply enhancing the Psionic Shield component was not enough to put him at ease. He first shut down the Psionic Shield, then waited until the Dark Energy Points in the Psionic Pool had fully replenished before steering the Cangqiong back along its original route.

He was not foolish enough to attack directly. Judging by the situation, the fighting among these White-Wing Clan members was unlikely to end anytime soon.

Since that was the case, he might as well return first to retrieve the Fierce Tiger Mining Vehicle, while also collecting the several worthwhile resource deposits he had already marked down. When the twenty-four-hour exploration period was about to end, he could return and look for an opportunity to strike. That way, even if things went south, it would be easier to escape.

Of course, if the battle had already ended by the time he returned and the item on the fragment had been taken away, that would only mean the unknown object was not meant for him. Song Chi would not force the matter.

More than ten hours later, Song Chi returned to the location of that small void on schedule. At this point, only half an hour remained of the twenty-four-hour limit for his first alien star domain deployment.

Looking again at the situation on the large fragment ahead, more than two hundred White-Wing Clan members still remained. Several more groups had most likely arrived after he left.

The one thing that displeased Song Chi was that after more than ten hours, not only had the number of first-rank White-Wing Clan members not decreased, it had actually increased by several. There were now nearly twenty first-rank White-Wing Clan members on that fragment.