“Two blue and one green. Not bad luck! (The lowest in this pool is blue...)” Feng Xue looked at the three entries, the corners of his mouth lifting slightly.
There was nothing much to say about the entry 【True Gaze】. An intelligence-type divine skill, though it had the restriction of “once per turn per card name” on the same target, that only proved how powerful it was.
In an old-school treasure-hunting novel, this one entry alone would be enough to become the protagonist’s golden finger. In a military setting, it would be more than enough to dominate the intelligence world. And it was a skill, too—it could be adapted to a single eye. If Feng Xue had the blueprint for a four-star cybernetic eye on hand, he would have wanted to swap one in on the spot!
【Output Depends on Roaring】 was also good stuff. Don’t be fooled by how abstract it sounded—this was a permanent trait! Great Strength could only be used for ten seconds every ten minutes, but this thing would remain effective as long as your voice was loud enough, and it directly increased lethality!
“I just don’t know how loud you have to be to reach its upper limit. I can test it later.”
Feng Xue muttered inwardly, not caring at all about the issue of his own voice—such a minor problem could be solved later by making a cybernetic vocal cord. How big a deal could that be?
By comparison, Feng Xue found this green 【Berserker’s Wisdom】 rather hard to judge. Its bonus had no upper limit, killing humanoid monsters could stack it, and it had no level restriction. If this were in a game and the map didn’t specifically counter it, it would absolutely be a must-have entry for physical damage teams. Not to mention it was part of a set; it was simply unreasonably strong!
But that was in a game.
Feng Xue, however, was in reality!
That intelligence wasn’t a stat number—it would genuinely lower one’s IQ. And it was a passive trait, too. What a massive pitfall, all right? The only use Feng Xue could think of for this thing was, after he became successful in the future, to raise a subordinate, install it on him, and then install a body controller on him as well.
But even then, it would still require a great deal of slaughter to stack up. In this world, where villagers did not automatically respawn, it wasn’t as if he could buy a cloning vat and put it in the basement to stockpile consumables for stacking, could he?
Mm, cloning vats. The main reason the lower classes in this world had not gone extinct yet was that as long as you paid fifty credits, you could go to a company storefront and use your own genetic information—or that of you and your spouse—to make an infant. If not for the excessive cost of memory implantation equipment, directly manufacturing adults wouldn’t be impossible either.
As for why the companies didn’t clone people themselves...
What a joke. If they cloned people themselves, they would have to spend money raising them, bear the costs of education, and shoulder accidental losses. Did you think capitalists were stupid?! (Note ①)
Thinking up to this point, Feng Xue directly opened entry ascension and placed the three fodder entries that could now be mass-produced—【Benevolent Chest】, 【Talented Shoulder】, and 【Virtuous Back】—into the material slots.
“You’re a green entry, and I just so happen to have three green fodder entries. How could there be such a coincidence?”
Feng Xue muttered as he clicked confirm, without considering the possibility of completing a set at all. After all, reality was not a game. There weren’t hordes of big shots summarizing drop rates. From the three cybernetic bodies of 【Benevolent Chest】, 【Talented Shoulder】, and 【Virtuous Back】, which had no connection besides all originating from Dayan, Feng Xue had already understood that completing sets was like fishing a needle out of the sea...
【A mutation has occurred in this ascension (green and orange ascensions are guaranteed to mutate). You have obtained the entry 【Human】.】
Entry: Human
Type: Trait
Quality: Golden Legend
Effect: Can only be granted to head cybernetic bodies/plugins. The individual equipped with this cybernetic body will have their definition changed to “human.” Their will shall not be distorted, and they are immune to mental influences.
Remark: So long as my will still exists, even if all that remains of me is brain matter floating in nutrient fluid inside a glass jar, or even if I become memory circuits within a massive computer, I will still be human—a human possessing a human soul, mindset, and will!
……
“Holy shit!” As a veteran otaku, Feng Xue naturally saw through the origin of this entry at a glance. But a berserker producing Human... Wait, that actually seemed to make sense?
For a moment, Feng Xue was even a little confused. Although there was nothing wrong with this entry being derived from a war maniac, after 【Berserker】 absorbed 【Benevolence】, 【Virtue】, and 【Talent】, it had turned into this thing. Somehow, it felt rather subtle.
Even if this word did indeed represent the solitary, lofty will of being born human.
But how should he put it...
Feng Xue shook his head, giving up on nitpicking here, and instead began considering the use of this entry.
Compared to the general applicability of “Nigerundayo,” this entry was more situational. If he used it himself, at most it would probably grant immunity to things like charm—if such things even existed in this world—or pull him back when facing troubles like zombie viruses or Zerg infection.
On the other hand, if given to an AI, it should be able to directly create artificial life. But this entry only granted the definition of human; it did not add any attributes. If the AIs Feng Xue had on hand used it, they would only go from artificial idiots to human morons.
Of course, even though he said that, Feng Xue still made up his mind to turn around and make a simple plugin for his main body to use. Even if the chance of needing something like this was tiny, he still had to install it!
Suppressing the excitement of obtaining a Golden Legend, Feng Xue turned his attention back to that chip.
He had examined it several times already. This was indeed an utterly ordinary storage chip. Then what gave it archival value was probably the data inside.
“Interesting. Is it a special virus? Or special data? It couldn’t be a cybernetic body design schematic, could it?”
Feng Xue found equipment in Old Jiang’s workshop. Although it was a computer specialized in analyzing unknown data, he still followed Old Jiang’s teachings and set up a virtual machine, locked it in read-only mode, and only then connected the chip.
“Mm, looks like it should be a storage card from a personal terminal. I can see the terminal’s built-in programs. Oh, these two videos aren’t in Old Jiang’s study materials! Wait... They’re actually new hit releases? Download price... Holy shit! Why don’t they just rob people!”
While comparing the data, Feng Xue pulled over a cable and connected to the network, estimating the prices of some content whose value he was unsure of. Judging from the read-write traces of the files, it should have been used recently. However, the personal data had been deleted rather cleanly. It was probably discarded after the chip aged and was replaced. There was basically nothing...
“Mm? This should be a civilian antivirus program... No, that’s not right. This code... Good grief, it has a counterattack-type virus embedded in it? What kind of ‘genius’ came up with this?”
Feng Xue suddenly paused. This thing did not have much technical content. It simply added a virus to the virus feedback data after the antivirus software detected a virus, thereby reverse-infecting the terminal of whoever was using the virus to steal data. Its effective range depended entirely on the antivirus software’s virus database.
This was also what left Feng Xue speechless. Those who used viruses that could be detected by antivirus software were all beginners. Most of such people acted out of interest or were simply being jerks. For people like that, releasing the virus itself was the goal. It was like how you couldn’t possibly catch some brat who smashed your window just for fun by setting a trap behind the window.
But looked at the other way, this thing at least wouldn’t really provoke any hacker big shots, so it could be considered to have some self-awareness.
After checking a few more rounds and confirming that there was nothing else special besides this, Feng Xue could not help raising an eyebrow.
“So this ‘toy’ is the entry’s true body?”
Note ①: It is not that companies do not clone people at all, but that they do not clone low-level consumables. High-end talents, including technical and combat talents, are definitely still cultivated by the companies themselves. The authorities will also, depending on circumstances, release some clones possessing basic common sense to ensure that the population of a given region remains at a normal level.
As for the relationship between memory implantation and age... If memories are not implanted, then the adults produced are nothing more than human-shaped beasts. It is better to make infants of one or two years old and pass the costs on to the lower classes.