Thirty-three points of Grace. It was the biggest haul Gu Hang had gotten so far.
He planned to save three points to train three more companies.
As for the remaining thirty, he considered what he could spend them on.
He opened the [Hero] interface first. His personal information panel still showed the message that he didn't have enough experience to level up.
Experience came from war. Gu Hang didn't know if there were other ways to get it—maybe handling government affairs could earn experience? He thought it probably should, but he hadn't tested it, so he wasn't sure.
In any case, the battle he'd just won wasn't enough to get him to the level-up threshold.
Instead, he spotted a new name on the interface.
[New Hero available for activation: Yan Fangxu. Activation requires 10 Grace.]
Huh?
Now Gu Hang was a little conflicted.
Should he activate Yan Fangxu as a Hero? As a Hero, he could accumulate experience, spend points to level up, and gain talents... The man didn't seem to have any talent for Psionic Power, so he'd probably just get a warrior template.
And if Gu Hang really invested in training him, then in a couple of years, when Yelicia's starship left, the navy captain Yan Fangxu would probably leave with it. All the investment in him would go down the drain.
Gu Hang didn't distrust him just because he belonged to the navy, but investing heavily in his training was another matter.
He'd leave it for later. Gu Hang opened the [Technology] panel.
He tried investing 10 points of Grace.
[Invest 10 Grace to unlock a new basic-level technology. Success chance: 70%. Confirm investment?]
No, no, no, no, no!
Gu Hang was a little surprised.
The odds could go down?
Last time, he'd spent ten Grace and gotten a basic-level technology outright. He'd assumed every ten points would get him two Black Box Fabricators. But now it was saying the success chance could drop?
A 70% chance wasn't bad, but Gu Hang couldn't help worrying that it would keep dropping!
"Does the success rate for unlocking technology decrease every time you unlock one successfully?"
Gu Hang made a guess about how the Technology System worked.
A crushing blow.
He'd thought that with such a massive cheat, he could become invincible in no time. After all, technology was the primary productive force. Even if the Empire squeezed him hard for taxes, he could just sell a Black Box Fabricator. The Imperial merchant houses, the Imperial Mechanicus, and the rest would come rushing over with money in hand. He wouldn't have to worry about taxes at all.
But the possibility of the odds dropping had knocked that idea right out of his head.
"I'll just have to take things one step at a time," Gu Hang thought helplessly.
Fortunately, he hadn't been counting on selling technology as his only lifeline. If he could solve the tax problem normally, he would. These Black Boxes, along with any more he accumulated by unlocking technology, were capital for building his power in the future.
He wasn't in the Planetary Governor's seat intending to ride out a few difficult years and then find a way to get transferred elsewhere.
The position of Planetary Governor was a very special one. No one cared much about the governor of a place like Nuxiao Planet, of course. But on a planet with top-tier productivity and military strength, the governor had enormous influence. Peidesi, the head of the Pegasus Sector, owed his secure position above all to the fact that his younger brother governed Feiyi Planet, the sector capital. Its population of tens of billions and vast, stable productivity were Peidesi's strongest backing.
Technology was the primary force behind development. Gu Hang wouldn't sell the Black Box Fabricator unless he had no other choice.
The success rate of the [Technology] function had dropped, but that was all right. A 70% chance was still pretty good. He still had over thirty Grace, so surely he could get at least one new technology out of it.
[Invest 10 Grace to unlock a new basic-level technology. Success chance: 70%. Confirm investment?]
He took a breath and selected Yes.
[Basic-level Technology: G9 Gun Family]
[Developed by the Imperial Mechanicus to fulfill Astra Militarum orders, this is a new generation of kinetic rifles. With an overall cost lower than that of the previous gun family, it further advances lightweight and modular design. Different attachments allow it to be easily modified into a machine gun, assault rifle, precision rifle, short submachine gun, and other firearms. It is also more compatible with alloy bayonets.]
A smile spread across Gu Hang's lips, and he couldn't help grinning wider and wider.
A real treasure!
He didn't know about other places, but at least in the Pegasus Sector, both the main forces of the Imperial Guard and Astra Militarum and the Navy's marine forces still mainly used G7-pattern rifles, also known as "Assaulters."
Gu Hang's memories did include reports that G8-pattern rifles were gradually being introduced, but the rearmament was still limited, and production capacity wasn't sufficient.
And now, he'd gotten something even more advanced: the G9!
Another powerful weapon.
If Gu Hang could bring the whole planet together, G9 rifle production alone could bring in a huge number of orders. The Astra Militarum and Navy forces in the Pegasus Sector, and even the local defense forces on the various planets, could skip the G8 and go straight to the G9.
Filling his Imperial tax quota with those orders alone would be more than enough.
Of course, that was just wishful thinking. First, ramping up production to that scale would be difficult. Second, if he made such a big splash, he wouldn't be able to explain where the technology had come from.
Unlike Alloy Plasteel, whose production process was genuinely fundamental and widely used, the G9 Gun Family was still rare. If he made too much noise, it wasn't other people he'd need to worry about. Wouldn't those Tech-priests from the Adeptus Mechanicus come knocking?
And if he couldn't explain where the technology came from, the Inquisition might come calling, too. Suddenly acquiring knowledge from an unknown source was a sign of Chaos corruption.
Still, Gu Hang wasn't going to let the fear of choking stop him from eating.
He'd use it where he could.
At the very least, equipping his own troops on a small scale shouldn't be a problem.
He'd been wondering what to do with the weapons and equipment seized from the mercenaries. Now, it seemed there was little need.
In high spirits, Gu Hang opened the [Technology] interface again.
[Invest 10 Grace to unlock a new basic-level technology. Success chance: 40%. Confirm investment?]
Just as expected, it had gone down again.
One successful technology unlock made the success rate drop by 30%? If he did this twice more, wouldn't it hit zero?
Ridiculous! Who'd be willing to spend points on this?
Gu Hang grumbled as he threw in another ten points.
What else could he do? The stuff this Technology System gave him was just too tempting.
[Unlock failed.]
Gu Hang's face fell. In a surge of frustration, he threw in his last ten points, too.
Yan Fangxu could wait. Drawing was more important.
[Unlock failed.]
Come on. At a 40% chance, he'd failed twice in a row. What was that supposed to mean?
Gu Hang didn't like gambling on odds. He hated failure. But right now, he could only draw at the 10-Grace tier. The next tier cost 100 Grace per draw.
Thinking about it, each tier in the [Technology] panel probably had a limited pool. The more he drew, the lower the odds became. That left him with two choices: move up a tier and draw for something better, or pay a much higher price to gamble at low odds.
With that in mind, there was probably another hidden mechanic: when the odds were high, you wanted to get the good stuff. Otherwise, if the good stuff was left until the odds were low, he'd be losing out badly.
Before you continue