A T3-grade Super-Soldier Serum, no less.
So fine a thing Zhao Chen naturally wouldn't refuse; without a word he injected himself a vial, practiced at it.
Hiss, hiss, hiss.
Zhao Chen drew a sharp cold breath; the familiar feeling of pain swept over him once more, as though every cell in his body were being torn apart.
His joints cracked and popped, for all the world as if someone were setting off firecrackers inside his body.
Thud, thud, thud, thud.
Zhao Chen's heart beat faster and faster; had a physician been on hand to monitor him, they'd surely have found in astonishment that Zhao Chen's heartbeat had exceeded a normal person's several times over!
Zhao Chen convulsed on the bed without let-up, his face contorted, blood even trickling from the corner of his mouth.
Zhao Chen's hand gripped the bed's edge.
Crack.
That was the sound of the bed's edge snapping!
"Aaaah…" Zhao Chen let out a howl of agony, and then passed out cold.
He didn't know how long had gone by; when Zhao Chen woke again, he felt as though he'd slept a century.
But his whole body was exceedingly comfortable; he opened his eyes and looked around — the surroundings hadn't changed in any way, yet Zhao Chen felt the world in his eyes seemed no longer quite the same as before.
And yet he couldn't say just where the difference lay.
He stood up and looked at his own body.
Its surface was near enough no different from before, still that golden-ratio line, that body brimming with masculine allure.
Zhao Chen raised a hand and summoned a mirror, looking at himself within it.
His gaze seemed deeper now, and his body seemed to have changed a touch — though on the surface it couldn't be seen.
But when Zhao Chen clenched his fist, he had a feeling: the strength he now held could even, with one punch, shatter the hull armor of a T1 warship.
He calmed the battle-lust in his heart.
He sat cross-legged on the bed.
Whether or not it was the doing of the Super-Soldier Serum, he felt that some matters he'd pondered before had, in his thinking now, taken on a great many changes.
First he swiftly composed a message and sent it to Li Yaqi, bidding her investigate his affairs at the Northstar Starship Military Academy no further, or bear the consequences herself.
This line to Li Yaqi could not, in Zhao Chen's planning, be exposed.
Whether the other side knew his identity didn't matter — the key was that no one could be allowed to know Li Yaqi had ties to him! So he couldn't have any contact with Li Yaqi in the flesh.
Then he sent a message to Chu Xuan.
Telling her that, on the matter of the Chu family's recruiting him, he'd already come to a notion, and to set a time this evening to meet and talk.
"I must give the Chu family an answer, else with this girl Chu Xuan following me about, there's always some unease," Zhao Chen muttered.
The Chu family's stance toward him bore on Zhao Chen's development over the coming stretch.
He had to handle it properly!
The least misstep, and it was a ten-thousand-fathom abyss.
Having sent these two messages, Zhao Chen looked again at the System reward given him a moment ago.
Host: Zhao Chen
Profession: Top-tier Starship Engineer
Special Attributes: Fleet Luck-Value Bonus, Eye of Insight
System points: 8,720
Task points: 64
Ship count: 30
Task: Annual Task (incomplete)
Warehouse: T2 Lion-King-class Heavy Interstellar Missile Ship blueprint, T2 Snow-Mastiff-class Heavy Interstellar Battleship blueprint, T2 Black-Knight-class Light Interstellar Combat-Mecha blueprint, T3 Andromeda-class Interstellar Medical Ship blueprint…
His System points and task points were more than enough to redeem a suitable T3-grade ship.
And as for the target to redeem, Zhao Chen already had his mind made up.
He turned his gaze to the two technical blueprints he'd just gotten.
The T2 Snow-Mastiff-class Heavy Interstellar Battleship and the T3 Andromeda-class Interstellar Medical Ship.
The T2 Snow-Mastiff was an interstellar battleship, of the chiefly combat series of warships.
An interstellar battleship was a warship possessed of heavy armor and heavy firepower.
Its terrifying armor-strength — leaving the matter of hull size aside — was, averaged out per unit, near enough on a par with the hull-armor strength of an escort ship.
Zhao Chen's T2 Black-Rhino was, of course, the exception.
"At present the ships I possess are the T2 Queen Bee-class Heavy Carrier Starship and the T2 Black-Rhino-class Interstellar Heavy-Assault Escort. As for blueprints, there's the T2 Lion-King-class Heavy Interstellar Missile Ship and the T2 Snow-Mastiff-class Heavy Interstellar Battleship; these two ship blueprints just so happen to complete the missing ship-type pieces of my fleet's puzzle. One is a key long-range firepower output; the other a main-force ship for charging in and grappling the enemy head-on. With these two ships added in, my fleet can truly be counted an interstellar fleet," Zhao Chen muttered.
Generally an interstellar fleet needs at least three or more ship types working in concert, and only so can the advantages of fleet combat be brought to their utmost.
Zhao Chen looked at the T3 Andromeda; this was a support-type ship — not a combat ship, but on the battlefield it was indispensable all the same.
Though to this day Zhao Chen's fleet had never yet had casualties, who knew whether there'd be some in the future?
With casualties, one would certainly need an interstellar medical ship to treat them.
If every time a soldier was hurt he had to go to a starport for treatment, that was no small outlay.
What was more, timely aid could greatly lessen a soldier's suffering and death rate.
"T2 ships are only a transition; to truly get a firm footing within the Starlight Empire, one must possess T3 ships in great number!" Zhao Chen said heavily.
By what he understood from Chu Xuan, the imperial military had already set about, for its frontline combat fleets, phasing out T2 ships in bulk and equipping across the board with T3-grade warships.
This meant the age of the T2 warship would soon, thoroughly and utterly, be phased out of the nation-grade interstellar battlefield.
By then it would be a battlefield of T3-grade and T4-grade ships.
And not the Starlight Empire alone — the other interstellar-empire powers and civilizations within the Galactic Alliance were carrying out arms plans of this kind too.
He had to step across this threshold into T3 warships as soon as he could!
……
At this moment Li Yaqi, who'd been researching Zhao Chen, received a third comm from that mysterious person.
On seeing the message's contents, Li Yaqi wore a look of some alarm, but soon calmed as well.
"My conduct has made that lordly personage uncomfortable — I've been too rash." Li Yaqi patted her head, which had been a touch impulsive this while.
Having come by those several ship technologies, she'd suddenly ceased to be content with them, and wanted a deeper cooperation with that gentleman.
But she'd forgotten — the moment he cast off cooperation with her, she'd have not even a corner to go and weep in.
The initiative in a cooperation of this kind had always been held in his hands, not in hers.
I can't go on investigating, Li Yaqi — you nearly crossed the line, do you understand, Li Yaqi cursed her own impulsiveness inwardly.
Yet one thing she could now know: this person was surely right here at the Northstar Academy — as for just who, that remained to be worked out.
At this Li Yaqi couldn't help thinking of that young man named Zhao Chen.
A great many factors pointed to this young man.
"Is it truly him?"