Under his precise control, using the battlefield simulated by his powerful Memory, the Escort Ship used different meteors to conceal itself, silently creeping behind a meteor over four hundred meters long before turning the Warship sideways.
About a minute later, a Pirate Gunboat flew out from behind the meteor, completely unaware of the Escort Ship hiding there.
“Open fire!”
At the command, the three Railguns and two Autocannons, primed and ready, spat out shells simultaneously.
After the Railguns fired a round, the automatic loaders at the gun positions rhythmically ejected the stored metal Railgun shells from storage.
Electronic scanning confirmed the shells were fine, then a conveyor belt transported them to the gun positions, where they were scanned once more before being loaded into the shell racks, inserted into the breech, and then fired again once the target was acquired—a 25-second interval between shots.
But that was only the theoretical maximum speed.
In actual combat, not only would one’s own Warship be moving, the enemy’s Warship would be moving too, and with all the interference in an ever-changing battlefield, it was very difficult to achieve the theoretical maximum rate of fire.
The Autocannons, however, had no such problem.
Their shells were like bullets—an entire basic load of 5,000 Casing-Shedding Shells came in a single ammunition box connected directly to the Autocannon, allowing continuous firing like a machine.
The only drawback was that the rate of fire wasn’t as fast as a machine gun, roughly one shell every two seconds.
Under Li Qing’s command, after locking onto this Pirate Gunboat, the Escort Ship held on tight, keeping the distance between them at around twenty to thirty kilometers.
The two Autocannons continuously spat out Casing-Shedding Shells, hammering dent after dent into the Pirate Gunboat’s Energy Shield.
The Generation 3 Fire Rain Autocannon dealt 25-30 damage with a range of 60 kilometers, with the same modifiers as the Railgun: +25% shield damage and -50% armor damage.
With both guns concentrating fire, the Pirate Gunboat’s not-particularly-impressive Energy Shield was broken through in just over a dozen seconds.
Countless rounds slammed into the gunboat’s thick armor, sparks flying everywhere.
Although kinetic rounds suffered a 50% damage reduction against armor, the Autocannon’s rate of fire was simply too fast.
It chased the gunboat down and poured on fire relentlessly, while Li Qing still had spare attention to control the Warship, using the enemy vessel and the surrounding meteors to evade the attacks of the other Pirate Gunboat.
Although the Pirate Gunboat’s commander sensed something was wrong and tried to break away from this situation, this ordinary Wild Mob Warship was inferior to him in both configuration and commander skills.
No matter how it maneuvered, it couldn’t shake him off.
He chased it down and pounded it to pieces—the broken halves of the burning wreckage crashed into a meteor, triggering a secondary explosion.
War is the best catalyst.
In this kind of actual combat, the experience for both the Naval Command skill and the Escort Ship Operation skill rose extremely fast, far faster than usual.
Having destroyed one Pirate Gunboat, the Escort Ship still had over a thousand points of Energy Shield remaining.
With barely a pause, it turned around and charged toward the other Pirate Gunboat it had been chasing for so long.
Tanking the bombardment of the Pirate Gunboat’s five Railguns—one large and four small—its three Generation 3 Railguns and two Autocannons concentrated fire madly, until the Warship’s Energy Shield was broken and its thick alloy armor was blasted into flying debris.
At the cost of near-mutual destruction, it sank the last Pirate Gunboat.
Carefully taking stock of the Warship’s damage, Li Qing couldn’t help but curse:
“Son of a—there goes over a hundred thousand.”
If the Energy Shield is depleted, it can be restarted, but it requires one standard Energy Block to re-enable charging—that’s 100,000 Star Credits.
That’s the minimum standard.
Even a Battleship’s shield needs at least one Energy Block to restart.
If there’s plenty of time, it can be left to slowly recharge on its own, but if there’s a combat mission requiring a fast recharge, a large number of Energy Blocks must be consumed to replenish it directly.
It’s worth noting that if the Energy Shield isn’t completely destroyed—even if only a few shield points remain—it can slowly recover after battle using the Warship’s reactor, without needing extra Energy Blocks.
Only when the shield is completely destroyed does it need an Energy Block to restart charging.
In addition, the damaged armor needs repairs—alloy materials must be used to patch up each crater blasted open by Railgun shells one by one.
Labor costs don’t apply here since you have to do it yourself, but the material costs would probably run tens of thousands of Star Credits.
Beyond that, this battle consumed a total of 33 Railgun shells at 1,500 Star Credits each, totaling 49,500 Star Credits.
A total of 320 Autocannon rounds were fired, with each Casing-Shedding Shell costing 150 Star Credits, totaling 48,000 Star Credits.
The ammunition consumption was normal—not every shot hits the target, after all.
All told, this battle’s ammunition alone cost 97,500 Star Credits, and with one Energy Block plus repairs of at least 150,000 or more, the total loss came to roughly 250,000+.
The battle results, however, were shockingly meager.
After sweeping the battlefield, no parts or blueprints dropped—only 7 pieces of wreckage, each selling to recyclers for a scrap price of 110 Star Credits, for a total of 770 Star Credits.
A net loss of 250,000.
Yes, this is the normal harvest of war.
If nothing like ship parts or blueprints drops, it’s nothing but a crushing loss. Visit g.com for the full chapter.
Though the fight had been intense, these two Pirate Gunboats were indeed the simplest of Wild Mobs—like running into two slimes right after leaving the starter village in a game.
Expecting a huge loot explosion from such mobs was completely unrealistic.
And this was the norm.
Constant big drops were simply impossible.
With a sigh, Li Qing consumed one standard Energy Block to restart the shield, then continued mining.
Half a day later, the Warship’s shield had slowly recovered to full on its own, and in that half day he had collected who knows how many tens of thousands of tons of ore-bearing asteroids into his Palm Universe.
Meanwhile, his Mining Ship had spent all that time slowly cutting apart asteroids, crushing them into small pieces, and storing the ore-bearing rocks in its hold—barely filling half the cargo bay.
The difference in efficiency was beyond measure.
Li Qing silently estimated that by using his Palm Universe to collect asteroids one by one, ignoring the vast amounts of useless rock within them, his collection capacity alone was over a thousand times that of the Mining Ship.
If the useless rock were stripped out, the efficiency would be roughly a hundred times that of a small Mining Ship—equivalent to having a hundred small Mining Ships mining at once.
And that wasn’t even his limit.
Because his own strength was insufficient, and he feared attracting the Wild Mobs wandering the Asteroid Belt, he hadn’t dared make too big a commotion.
According to his ideal plan, if he had a Cruiser, or a powerful Shock Bomb on hand, he could detonate one in the center of an asteroid cluster, triggering massive asteroid collisions and movement.
Then he could open Palm Universe passages everywhere to swallow up the moving asteroids—that would be the most efficient method.
Unfortunately, the Palm Universe passage could only be opened—it couldn’t generate any suction.
Otherwise, devouring everything on the spot would have been far more efficient.
Li Qing didn’t wait half a day for the Mining Ship to fill up before heading back.
He simply left the Mining Ship to keep mining on-site and piloted the Escort Ship back to base ahead of it.
Hovering above the base, he opened a black hole on the open ground beside it.
A large quantity of ore-bearing meteors—shattered mid-transit by the Palm Universe’s power into standard basin-sized chunks—flew out of the black hole.
Under the satellite’s weak gravity, they piled up at the bottom edge of the crater rim, stacking into a mountain, while vast clouds of dust rose up and blanketed the entire base.
It was a genuine mountain, too—soon exceeding the depth of the crater and spilling out beyond its rim.
He released about half of it before stopping; there was no more room to pile the rest.
Then he activated the ore-crushing, sorting, and refining equipment.
Two ten-meter-tall transport robots, converted from mining robots, carried the basin-sized meteors one by one to the crusher’s intake.
Amid rumbling crashes, the meteors were smashed to pieces and then diverted for sorting.
Rock was spat out to one side, while the sorted Raw Ore was fed onto a conveyor belt on the other side, which carried it straight to the Refining Furnace not far away.
This so-called Refining Furnace didn’t refine the Raw Ore into high-purity materials—it merely performed a preliminary purification.
For example, raw iron ore would be crushed, the iron extracted and smelted, impurities removed, and cast into pig iron ingots that still contained plenty of impurities.
That was all.
The next step—smelting it into steel, or adding other elements to produce various alloys—was the job of an alloy casting plant.
His equipment here couldn’t do that.
Still, once he had the capital, and once the interior of the Witness of the Stars Higher-Dimensional Fortress inside the Palm Universe could be partially repaired, he planned to build a base inside it with a full industrial production line dedicated to manufacturing finished industrial products.
That would earn far more than selling raw materials.
iron ore sold for 15 Star Credits per cubic unit, but after refining it could fetch 150 Star Credits per unit.
In reality, the refining process didn’t add ten times the value—but with just one extra step, the refined iron took up far less space and earned considerably more.
The only problem was low output.
Even running the entire setup at full capacity twenty-four hours a day, total production was less than ten thousand units.
Factoring in downtime for machine rest and routine maintenance, daily output would be around eight thousand units—about 240,000 units a month.
At 150 Star Credits per unit, that came to 36 million.
Of course, that assumed it was all iron ore with no other high-value minerals mixed in.
But the difference wasn’t significant—iron ore was by far the most abundant in the asteroid belt; all other ore types combined didn’t even amount to half of it.
“So the problem now is that I have plenty of ore, but not enough processing capacity.”
“I remember a few players in this system have built bases. I’ll pay them a visit in a few days and see if I can buy one or two sets of equipment.”
Li Qing selected several of the many Skill Chips he had previously purchased and configured them into his Brain Implant: Engineering, Mechanics, Industrial Theory, Repair Systems Theory, Hull Upgrades Theory, Armor Reinforcement Theory, Energy Shield Strengthening Theory, Escort Ship Construction Research, Escort Ship Long-Distance Repair Theory, Escort Ship Modification Theory, Mining Ship Construction Research, Industrial Ship Construction Research, Transport Ship Construction Research, and Outpost Construction Theory—fourteen skills in total.
They covered everything from theory to practice in warship construction, as well as repair, maintenance, and related disciplines.
Anyway, he had plenty of Neural Slots—a full twenty.
If he wanted to learn other warship construction skills later and ran out of slots, he could simply remove the unused Skill Chips and swap them back in when needed.
Those fourteen skills were only part of the warship construction and repair system.
Ordinary players didn’t have that many Neural Slots to learn so many skills; most of them could only specialize in one area.
When it came time to actually do repairs, Li Qing learned another skill—Repair Robot Operation—since there was no other way to control the ten-meter-tall repair robots.
Repairing this Escort Ship was fairly simple.
Its armor had just been blasted with a few dents; all he had to do was melt armor material to patch the dents.
It involved welding techniques, but there was no dedicated welding skill—instead, it and a series of other minor repair skills were all included in the Hull Repair Systems Theory skill.
With the tenfold experience bonus and his extremely high Innate Attributes, he got the hang of it quickly.
One repair session was equivalent to dozens, and several skills went from level zero to level one on the spot.
Unfortunately, many theory skills required professional knowledge and couldn’t be leveled just by hands-on practice.
He would have to download more professional materials next time he returned to Jinmen and study them in his spare time.
With his current Memory attribute, he could basically read ten lines at a glance, remember everything he saw, and draw inferences from one instance—digesting knowledge would be quick.
After patching up the Escort Ship, he spent a few more days tinkering around the base, repainting the exposed outer walls, regrinding the wear marks left by the repair robots, and repainting the exterior of the ore crushing, screening, and refining equipment left outside, accumulating a small amount of experience.
“Too little.”
The base had just been completed and was still brand new—there was nothing to repair even if he wanted to.
Standing inside the base, gazing up at the Escort Ship parked overhead for a long while, he finally sighed and gave up on the idea of using the base’s Sentry Guns to attack his warship to farm experience.
“Take it slow.”
There would be plenty of opportunities to farm experience in the future.
For example, he could perform maintenance every time the Mining Ships and mining robots made a round trip.
Once he earned more money, he could buy more Mining Ships or warships, and then he could farm frequently—until he was sick of it.
The day after finishing the maintenance, Li Qing piloted the Escort Ship out of the base, flying toward another Asteroid Belt outside the system’s star, planning to search for the few player personal bases in this system.
He had already made a round through the inner Asteroid Belt earlier and found no player bases, so they were probably all in the outer ring.
The Mining Ships didn’t need attention—they just mined in the safe zones.
If they spotted enemies, they would run immediately, and once full of ore, they would haul it back themselves, or have an Industrial Ship transport it back.
The Industrial Ship is actually a comprehensive vessel combining transport, repair, towing, salvage, engineering, and other functions.
Its transport capacity can’t match a dedicated Transport Ship, but it’s stronger than a Mining Ship, and this type of ship can also tow large containers for long-distance transport, making it very useful.
The Escort Ship traveled at sub-light speed directly to the Asteroid Belt in the system’s outer ring, then contacted the player he had met before named Yang Yunbo.
Before long, the communication connected, and a young man with an honest, trustworthy face appeared on the light screen.
Seeing Li Qing, he paused for a moment, then seemed to remember and showed a look of realization, waving:
“Brother, is your base already built?”
Li Qing nodded:
“Just finished less than a week ago.”
“Where did you build it? Inner ring or outer ring?”
“Inner ring.”
“That’s pretty good. There’s plenty of iron ore over there, very stable.”
“By the way, where are you now? I’d like to come visit you.”
Yang Yunbo’s face lit up with joy, and he said:
“Welcome! Come on over here, I’ll get ready.”
Li Qing immediately received a set of coordinates.
Checking the star map, it wasn’t too far from him.
He had the Vice Captain verify the coordinates, and the Escort Ship’s Hyperspace Engine began charging, preparing to enter sub-light speed.