Sky Technical Research and Development Center

Sky Technical Research and Development Center

Origin Altar.

As soon as Qi Sheng received the feedback from Guidance, he switched his view to the area where the explosion had occurred.

The explosion wasn't very powerful. It had only shattered three bluestone tiles on the ground, and repairing them had cost just 0.05 Sacrificial Power.

But he was very curious about what had caused it.

Puzzled, he asked Guidance to replay the footage seen by the Avatar.

When he saw player Qin Ye studying a level 1 spirit stone, Qi Sheng was confused. He then zoomed in on the image of the stone's interior.

"Is he rearranging the structure inside the spirit stone?"

[Boss, I extrapolated from the structure he arranged and think he might be trying to make a Spirit Energy Bomb.]

"What do you mean?"

[Simply put, he's changing the arrangement of the energy particles inside the spirit stone, turning them into a new structure that instantly triggers an energy-collapse reaction when activated by a thought. But that's only my conjecture based on extrapolation. I can't be sure it's correct.]

Guidance's answer sparked a keen interest in this player.

When he first created the Challenger System, what he valued most wasn't players' fearlessness in the face of death after gaining the ability to revive endlessly. It was their creativity and imagination.

For example, turning a war game into a farming game, or exploiting specific bugs to pull off tricks the developers had never even imagined.

Before crossing over, he'd been an avid gamer and had seen players come up with all sorts of ingenious ideas in games.

To verify his theory, he searched the memory records of this player's replicated body in Monster World.

The results were exactly as Guidance had said: this player wanted to apply Spirit Energy Bomb technology from the real world to the game.

This discovery left Qi Sheng with even greater expectations for the players' future development.

As he climbed out of the game pod, Qin Ye realized that the potential of Dark Land was far more terrifying than he'd imagined.

Perfectly simulating reality meant that many extremely dangerous experiments could be carried out in the game world, and the resulting data could directly advance real-world technology.

He went to his desk and emailed his discovery to the Sky Dome Technology Research Center.

The Sky Dome Technology Research Center was a special institution established by the Human Federation to research alien technology. Qin Ye was one of its members, assigned to manage the underground trading market.

While waiting for the revival cooldown, Qin Ye began browsing the information on aliens who had recently applied to enter the trading market.

Half an hour later, a mail notification popped up in the bottom-right corner.

He opened the email and discovered, to his surprise, that it had come from the Sky Dome Technology Research Center headquarters.

[Sender: Sky Dome Technology Research Center]

Message: Hello, D-rank Administrator of the underground trading market. Headquarters has received your proposal to test dangerous weapons in a virtual environment. After consulting with my superiors, I'm replying as follows:

1. Since Dark Land was released, Sky Dome has already been preparing to enter the game and conduct tests of dangerous weapons in a virtual environment.

2. Dark Land, developed by the Moon Eclipse Clan, uses real-name registration and purchases through the Star Network. We have no special privileges that would let us bypass the application process and enter the game directly. Unfortunately, no one at headquarters has managed to secure a game license so far.

3. Sky Dome has submitted an application to the Human Federation Council, seeking to request a batch of game licenses from the Moon Eclipse Clan that would allow direct access without having to compete for them. (The Federation Council has yet to respond.)

After reading the email, Qin Ye was speechless.

He hadn't expected that even the Sky Dome headquarters, which had top-level privileges within the Human Federation, couldn't get access to the game.

That showed just how insane the marketing strategy behind Dark Land was.

In this new era, where virtual game pods had become commonplace in homes across the land, the Human Federation had a population of two billion. Yet the Moon Eclipse Clan issued only one million game licenses to humanity each round—a drop in the bucket.

He thought of the Welfare Officer who had sent him the pirated download link, and a bold idea came to mind:

"Maybe I can send the pirated download link to Sky Dome and let them download the pirated version to get into the game."

Without hesitation, he immediately emailed the link to Sky Dome headquarters.

Four hours later.

Three deafening explosions rang out on the Ancient Battlefield outside Emperor's Tomb Village, sending flesh and blood flying in every direction.

[Challenger System Notification: Killed the evil creature: Blood Corpse. Gained 125 evolution points and 24 Sacrificial Power. Eagle Head Demon form level +1.]

[Challenger System Notification: Killed the evil creature: Blood Corpse...]

The notifications kept ringing in his mind, and Qin Ye couldn't help laughing out loud.

He hadn't expected his spur-of-the-moment idea to actually work in the game.

Just three Spirit Energy Bombs made from level 1 spirit stones were enough to kill Blood Corpses over level 10.

More importantly, Spirit Energy Bombs dealt area damage. Those three bombs had killed eight Blood Corpses in total, raising his Eagle Head Demon level to 10.

He could only imagine how powerful bombs made from level 2 or even higher-level spirit stones would be.

Making Spirit Energy Bombs came at a cost, since he had to buy spirit stones in the shop. But the gains far outweighed the expense.

This discovery gave Qin Ye a wild idea.

Perhaps he could build an Astral Vein playstyle around Spirit Energy Bombs.

With the idea in mind, Qin Ye immediately headed back to Emperor's Tomb Village and entered the Test Tower.

Over the next few hours, Qin Ye tried using different Monster Soul combinations alongside the Spirit Energy Bombs.

His first choice wasn't the Eagle Head Demon, but the Sea Stone Monster Soul.

Sea Stone's Origin Source ability allowed him to recover his mental energy continuously and rapidly, even in his normal state.

Making Spirit Energy Bombs required a great deal of mental energy. The three level 1 bombs he'd just made had drained him, leaving him unable to make more for a while.

But after socketing the Sea Stone Monster Soul, his mental energy reserves would last much longer.

For his other Monster Souls, he chose ones that increased his mental energy or helped it recover, aiming for a steady barrage of explosions.

After a simple test of his first Astral Vein combination, Qin Ye discovered a major problem.

The game had no friendly-fire immunity, so powerful Spirit Energy Bombs could easily hit him, too.

He thought of two possible ways to solve the problem.

First, find Monster Souls that could withstand the impact of the explosions and use them to boost his defense.

Second, find a Monster Soul that let him throw objects over great distances, so he could toss the Spirit Energy Bombs far enough away that the blast wouldn't reach him.

After carefully considering the two options, Qin Ye decided the second was more reliable.

There were plenty of defensive Monster Souls to choose from, but achieving the highest level of defense would require combining several of them. For example, the popular Immobile Undying Flow on the forum centered on the Stone Gargoyle and added a series of Monster Souls that boosted health regeneration and defense.

But he had few Astral Vein Slots to begin with, and increasing the bombs' power was what mattered most. Socketing multiple defensive Monster Souls didn't fit the growth path he envisioned for Spirit Energy Bombs.