"Damn it, damn it, damn it, damn it! This Ye Qiyan actually deleted me from his friends list!? And he's selling materials at even lower prices. Is he deliberately trying to make an enemy of me!?"
Li Xiaosheng's expression was extremely ugly.
Seeing the glaring notification on his friends list that he had been deleted made him feel as sick as if he had swallowed a fly.
"Since you've chosen to oppose me, just you wait. I'll teach you what regret means!"
Around him, large quantities of wood and metal occupied most of the space.
Li Xiaosheng laughed smugly.
"Just as I thought, I'm the chosen one! I can upgrade every three stations. Who could possibly keep up with me? Hahahaha!"
"Upgrade!"
Li Xiaosheng consumed the materials, raising his train to level 3.
Just as he was about to post the news in the chatroom to show off, he suddenly noticed something and frowned.
"Flame stone? Gold? Mithril? What the hell are all these?"
"Whatever. With my talent, I can find any material anyway."
"Wait, why can't I select them?"
A terrifying thought formed in Li Xiaosheng's mind.
His talent could only select basic materials, and those basic materials only included metal, wood, and Mechanical Parts.
Mithril, gold, flame stone, and the like were not among them.
That was the limit of his talent.
"Finally, I get to eat."
Six hours into the stop.
Ye Qiyan blew the wood ash off the snake meat. Even with nothing more than a basic seasoning of salt, its rich, meaty aroma made his mouth water.
Throughout this time, the monsters outside had not launched a single attack.
Even when Ye Qiyan took the initiative to shoot at them, the monsters only fled, then returned within the 150-meter security perimeter after he left.
"Are they trying to trap me here and then wait?"
Eating the snake meat, he rubbed his chin and thought for a moment.
Just then, a rustling sound came from nearby.
He looked toward the sound. The Security Sentry had not attacked whatever had made it.
WALL-E, the box-shaped robot with two caterpillar tracks, was approaching from nearby.
"Oh, you're actually back. I thought you were going to die out there."
WALL-E could not speak. He merely placed a section of tree stump before Ye Qiyan in silence.
[Level 4 treasure chest] (Can be opened)
Ye Qiyan's expression changed instantly.
"That's WALL-E for you. Well done."
He tapped WALL-E's metal head a few times. Rather than opening the Treasure Chest immediately, he tossed away the half-eaten snake meat, turned, and boarded the train.
"Still, it'd be even better if you didn't bring monsters back with you next time."
"Awoooo!!!"
A deafening wolf howl rang out from the direction WALL-E had returned from.
A white wolf as tall as an adult man appeared in that direction.
After it entered the sentry's security perimeter, a relentless hail of bullets struck its body.
Without a doubt, the sentry had judged that this white wolf was not a monster it could kill with a single bullet.
The white wolf whimpered in pain. A mass of lightning appeared around it and clung to its fur, its speed surging. In the blink of an eye, it had closed to within 50 meters of the train.
[Lightning-Fast White Wolf] (Level 4) [Talent: Lightning Attachment] [Skill: Lightning Armor]
"Overlimit Mode."
A Train Coin dissolved into flecks of golden light in Ye Qiyan's hand and merged into the sentry, doubling its rate of fire.
The five marksman rifles in the sentry's hands seemed to become a giant Gatling gun, engulfing the white wolf in a storm of bullets.
In less than three seconds, only a corpse remained on the ground.
But the sentry did not stop firing.
The monsters that had been outside moments earlier had followed the white wolf into the security perimeter. Had they been waiting for this wolf?
During the 30 seconds of Overlimit Mode, hundreds of monsters were blasted into minced flesh.
"What a waste of this pelt. It would've made really warm clothes. I wonder if it'll be in better shape after recycling."
He picked up the white wolf's corpse, riddled with bullet holes and covered in blood, dragged it back onto the train, and recycled it at the Processing Table.
[Obtained: Lightning-Fast White Wolf pelt ×1] [Obtained: Wolf bones ×10] [Obtained: Wolf fang ×1]
As expected of a level 4 monster, it yielded several more types of materials than lower-level monsters.
The only pity was that the sentry had shredded its flesh. Even if he really gathered up that heap on the ground that ought to be censored...
Forget it.
"So those monsters outside were waiting for this white wolf?"
Thinking it over carefully, the white wolf really had been formidable.
Within the 150-meter security perimeter, it had endured the sentry's attacks and forced its way forward a full 100 meters before falling to Overlimit Mode's powerful firepower.
Any other Train Conductor with only a level 3 train, even if they barely managed to evade the ordinary monsters' attacks on this platform, would have had absolutely no chance against that Wolf Demon.
Fear, despair, being torn apart and brutalized—that was what an ordinary level 3 Train Conductor should have faced at this station.
All he could say was that he was just a tiny bit stronger than most people.
He raised his eyes, looking through the train window at the sky above.
"Though I don't know who you are, if you wanted to use this platform to kill me, sorry, I'll have to disappoint you."
Time passed. When the countdown reached the final three hours, the Leave Station Privilege activation changed from gray to full color, finally putting Ye Qiyan completely at ease.
He did not choose to leave the platform immediately. Now that the white wolf was dead, the other monsters did not even dare linger outside the security perimeter.
With that being the case, of course he had to seize this opportunity to collect more resources.
Where was this? A forest in a canyon.
The one thing a forest never lacked was trees.
He had been cautious during the first few hours and had not left the platform. He could not waste the remaining three hours.
Carrying an axe over his shoulder, Ye Qiyan took down the Safety Box Shaya had given him.
If he was going to chop down trees, he also had to consider how to bring them back to the train.
The Safety Box's slots were more lenient than the Storage Carriage in what they counted as "one type."
A gun, a vehicle, or a train carriage could all count as "one type."
So, naturally, a tree could count as one as well.
Chop it down, put it in the Safety Box, bring it back to the train, recycle it.
After more than two hours, his total haul was five hundred kilograms of wood.
The final thirty minutes of the stop countdown arrived.
[VIP Leave Station Privilege activated] [Train Conductor, please start the train]
A huge button appeared before him on the light screen.
Ye Qiyan swept his gaze over the forest in the darkness one last time.
"Time to go."
He slapped the button with one hand.
The familiar distortion of the void appeared ahead of the train.
The tracks extended forward.
The train slowly accelerated.
Through the void, through the darkness, bright moonlight shone through the windows into the train.
[22:30:05]
The train's broadcast sounded the instant he returned.
[All Train Conductors have left the Sixth Station platform!]
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