"Cheng Qi."
"Get ready to receive the delivery."
"Based on the high-entropy alloy exchange rate."
"This time, I got you 82 failed batches of Black-Market Gene Serum."
The communicator reserved for contacting the merchant Mo crackled, carrying his voice.
Inside the docking bay, Cheng Qi's eyes suddenly lit up.
Mo sent the second batch of serum at a time like this?!
Wasn't this like swallowing explosives for kicks-a blast of pure pleasure?
82 doses!
Once again, Mo was reliable as hell!
After synthesizing all these...
Just how ridiculously powerful would I, Cheng Qi, become?!
"Cheng Qi, are you dead?"
Mo's voice was as cool and rational as ever. "If you don't answer in ten seconds, I'll assume you're dead. That'll make this deal a huge profit for me."
Cheng Qi was a little speechless.
Mo probably thought he would chug those Black-Market Gene Serums like an animal.
"Even if I die, I'll come back as a ghost to find you and collect my serum."
"Good, you're alive."
Mo's voice remained calm. "My twenty biotech crates have entered Earth's atmosphere. I only just realized there seems to be some massive storm on Earth. You'd better hurry out and collect them. My previous four shipping crates and the custom-made balance scale seem to have been lost in the storm. A devastating loss."
"Oh?"
Cheng Qi's eyes shifted. "Well, this Gray Storm really is huge. Take my advice and prepare for the worst."
After that...
Cheng Qi ended the call.
He had slept for forty-eight hours after taking the serum.
So the Gray Storm aboveground should have been in its final stages.
Though it was no longer as terrifying as at its peak, the biotech crates were still very likely to lose their way. He had to hurry.
Losing that much serum and... those crates...
That was completely unacceptable to Cheng Qi.
Xiao Qiong drifted past. "Cheng Qi, could you put some clothes on?"
"???"
Only then did Cheng Qi realize that he had just come out of the bathroom and was still naked.
"Don't worry. I've seen lots and lots of Mom's clients naked. I'm used to it."
Xiao Qiong headed off on her own. "You adults are such a handful. You even need reminders for something as simple as getting dressed."
Foolish Boy also passed by, imitating Xiao Qiong's pose with his hands behind his back. "Have you no shame?"
"..."
Cheng Qi strode over and stood directly in front of the Extreme Warrior Armor. The diamond-shaped panels on its surface flipped and shifted, enveloping his body in an instant.
The Extreme Warrior Armor's data panel suddenly reappeared automatically.
'Increase in user's genetic sequence detected.' 'Armor core performance increased by 284% overall. Approaching performance limit.'
"Good, good, good."
"Sure enough, to the strong, the whole world is gentle!"
Once the Extreme Warrior Armor had finished equipping itself, Cheng Qi put on his jet-turbine shoes.
Air spread out beneath his feet, lifting him into the air as he headed straight for the underground shelter's exit.
Creeeak-!
Creeeak-!
The shelter door's electronic control system worked normally, and the door opened slowly, though it gave off a piercing noise.
Over forty hours of the Gray Storm had warped the door, but it remained impregnable. Foolish Boy's craftsmanship was dependable after all.
The wind outside was many times weaker now, but fierce air currents still filled the surroundings.
The Extreme Warrior Armor flipped out a faceplate to protect Cheng Qi's face.
He slowly walked out of the shelter and closed the door behind him.
Gray dust filled the world aboveground. Countless metallic particles floated in the air, leaving visibility extremely low.
He could just make out changes in the surrounding mountains of garbage.
They had broken apart and shifted in all sorts of ways. Every time a Gray Storm passed, Garbage Earth's terrain changed.
For scavengers, this was a fresh opportunity gained after surviving a terrifying disaster.
Much of the valuable garbage buried underground would be churned up and see daylight again.
Cheng Qi raised his head and looked toward the murky gray northern sky.
He could see nothing with his naked eyes.
But the Extreme Warrior Armor's reconnaissance system quickly locked onto twenty points of light in the distant sky.
They flew toward the ground at tremendous speed, but fierce currents still lingered high overhead, making their flight paths crooked and erratic.
Those were Mo's shipping crates.
Cheng Qi narrowed his eyes and suddenly noticed that several of the crates had veered badly off course.
They were about to collide in midair and were very likely to crash.
Cheng Qi's expression shifted. Bending his legs slightly, he put all his strength into a sprint toward their projected landing point.
Boom!
Garbage flew backward under Cheng Qi's push-off. Amid the gray haze, his entire body seemed to become a blur.
Even Cheng Qi himself was stunned. He had never realized his speed would suddenly increase so much!
Caught unprepared, he felt a wave of dizziness from the inertia!
The Extreme Warrior Armor sounded an alert.
'User's own speed is approaching the armor's upper limit and has very likely produced an incalculable overflow.'
Cheng Qi froze.
Did that mean his speed had already exceeded the armor's limit?!
Cheng Qi recalled how he had moved from the cremation table to the floor in an instant back in the shelter.
Speed...?!
After my genetic evolution, I gained a massive boost in speed?!
And a human body could actually outrun machinery?
By now, Cheng Qi had rushed directly beneath the shipping crates. He could see with his own eyes that three of them were on the verge of falling.
Boom!
Cheng Qi bent his legs again and sprang into the sky!
Fierce air currents whipped around him. A small jolt of surprise ran through Cheng Qi again. In his haste, he had not activated his turbine-powered shoes.
But...
How high did I just jump?
It had to be twenty meters-nearly six stories!
A 284% increase in the armor's core performance really was outrageous!
But this time, the Extreme Warrior Armor did not seem to issue any "data overflow" alert.
Jumping relied on leg strength. In other words, his current jump height resulted from the combined efforts of his own legs and the Extreme Warrior Armor.
His strength hadn't overflowed.
But his speed had?!
Didn't both rely on exerting force with his legs?
Were those two things calculated separately?
As Cheng Qi sensed his body's condition, his mind felt inexplicably clear as well.
In an instant, he figured out the answer himself.
Moving at high speed depended not just on leg strength, but on coordination between muscles throughout the body. Factors such as the range of his arm swings and his posture all had a tremendous effect on speed.
Put simply...
No runner could win a championship on leg strength alone.
So strength was a single stat.
Speed, on the other hand, was a metric combining multiple stats.
Relatively speaking...
Training strength was easy, but improving speed was hard!
At that moment, Cheng Qi gradually realized...
What he had gained was an exceptionally rare boost in speed!
Before you continue