Meteor Fall Master in the 'Starry Abyss'
Chapter 276 - 096. Training the Player

Chapter 276: 096. Training the Player

Though only 31 members of the Fishmen Guild were willing to accept Li Aozi’s task, it already met the expected number. Li Aozi was quite satisfied. After awakening their Arcane Energy, he began to teach them some techniques and occupational knowledge personally.

These people would be stationed in Triangle Town for a long time, receiving training from Li Aozi. Once they completed all the training, they would receive a generous 50,000 points of experience from Li Aozi. However, this valuable experience would quickly be recovered by learning skills or renting Arcane Energy.

But Li Aozi still provided players with many ways to develop the economy. He specifically booked the duel arena in Triangle Town for players to engage in PK exchanges, also facilitating the selection for cosmic quotas. The duels attracted audiences and earned ticket money, and players could get a bit of the profit share.

In addition to this, the people of Triangle Town quite liked these diligent Sky Ring individuals. On one hand, although players had no bottom line, they would absolutely be reliable and responsible as long as they were given tasks and rewards. On the other hand, they were all robust youths who would rush to do any odd, tiring, or dangerous jobs, even for life-threatening reconnaissance missions.

"Compared to the beastly behaviors of the Sky Ring Ghosts, these players can at least be called human."

In reality, with the ’Camouflage Mode’ integrated, players did not disrupt the lives of local residents much. This caused the Lord of Oakland to give Li Aozi an admiring look, realizing that being able to manage such a large group of Transcendents likely meant Li Aozi’s status in Sky Ring had to be reevaluated.

However, soon everyone noticed something special about these ’Sky Ring People’ when they were suddenly chatting and then closed their eyes and disappeared, reappearing from who knew where, or kept feeling around under monster corpses after a fight.

Of course, the most significant feature was: these people seemed to never die, no matter how severe the fatal injury was. They could lie on the ground and shout for help from their teammates with ample energy. Their calm teammates would walk up and either give an adrenaline shot or apply a meaningless bandage to forcibly bring them back to life.

Regarding this, the Lord sent people to Li Aozi to express concerns: citizens wondered if they were some kind of biochemical experiments, as the Four Nations were infamous for such labs, leaving deep scars on the people of the Outer World.

Li Aozi did not really hide it; he simply hinted that these players were originally anomalies within the Four Nations. If you treated them well, they would work hard for you.

"You can call them—’Descenders’."

After seeing the outstanding performance and special abilities of these Descenders, the Lord of Oakland, being a warlord, immediately started having thoughts: "If we could have more warriors like this, who knows..."

"If you wish to command them to fight for you, it’s not impossible, but it’s unlikely to be as useful as you imagine. Small-scale infiltration is fine, but anything else is out of the question."

Li Aozi casually brushed it off.

The level cap for version 1.0 was only 20, and in the mere fifteen days of the beta test, these people absolutely wouldn’t reach it.

Even if they reached the Alpha Stage, reality taught everyone that the average number of bullets per soldier killed in the Four Nations was 220,000, with local battles consuming 160,000 shells and 40 drones per day. Thousands of soldiers may be invested for a single village.

You might be a legendary warrior or a martial arts prodigy, but as soon as you enter the battlefield and jump off the armored transport, a piece of reactive armor from a Mobile Armor might crush you to death.

In warfare, individual strength and numbers were merely figures; even at the Gamma Rank, if the Four Nations decided to act, they could ruthlessly use you as high-level cannon fodder.

Wealth, productivity, logistics, diplomatic influence, willpower, and correct strategic thinking—in other words, comprehensive strength—were the real deciding factors in war.

The Lord of Oakland was no fool. He put away his ambitions, though he didn’t know that in a distant future, players with an average level of 280 would act like mad dogs in the Starry Abyss, becoming a headache even for Narrative-Level Civilizations.

With some time before the Nine Dragons Gathering officially started, Li Aozi, having reached a bottleneck in his abilities, had time to teach players how to avoid pitfalls in the early stages as Mutants.

After the end of the Grante battlefield, his experience sources were almost gone, and due to experience penalties, low-level enemies and monsters were no longer rewarding. It was better to enhance players’ combat strength, preparing them for infiltrating the Houjo Group Building later.

The key issue was that several tasks Li Aozi had were too difficult and were currently stuck.

To be fair, Li Aozi could seek a breakthrough from N4 for the Settlement Condition C of "Imprint," which required uprooting the sponsor of Mingji Humanity.

But for "Frost Plated Bone White," Li Aozi had no clue.

For such high-level missions, each nation probably had its own storyline triggers at certain points.

Each of the Four Nations had its own problems, Frost Plated’s gender opposition, Red Arrow’s internal conflict, Sky Ring’s war-torn military system, and Zhengxu’s developmental stagnation—problems largely traced back to the sun’s disappearance caused by Ersha. While it was easy to say, getting the Four Nations to admit their issues linked to Ersha and work together sounded far-fetched.

Rather than pondering this, training players was easier.

Players were great at spreading techniques and information. Li Aozi already had the forum in his grasp and now had a batch of workers. Spreading intelligence on the improved Mutants via word of mouth and video explanations by some bloggers analyzing the beta test reasonably highlighted the occupational characteristics and development prospects of Mutants.

However, short-term results from players couldn’t be expected.

While teaching players, Li Aozi used channels from the Red Arrow Empire to acquire some pharmaceutical knowledge skills, learning them all and adding them to the occupation of Biochemist. Utilizing his occupational talents, he raised his Constitution attribute to avoid getting killed by true damage from enemies.

Among these skills was Li Aozi’s long-awaited "Pharmacodynamics." Upon getting it, he pushed proficiency to the Bachelor level, and after several experiments, the new DM-303 elixir had instantaneous effects upon ingestion. Li Aozi did not hesitate to scale up production, putting all production lines into making new Arcane Potions immediately.

He sent a batch to Xi Silong to expand the Transcendent ranks, sold some to players to test their luck, and kept the bulk for himself.

Over the next period, Li Aozi turned into Arno of Changshu, madly injecting himself with the latest Arcane Awakening Elixirs. Upon reaching the Beta Rank, mutations required a condition of undergoing the process every 10 levels, so Li Aozi freely used elixirs without worrying about the side effects of mutation direction.

After all, to him, the body was just a Prosthetic Mecha. If it broke down, he would simply transfer his consciousness with Arcane Energy.