An interstellar industrial ship.
It was a kind of support-type starship, and it went by another name besides: the interstellar mobile factory!
As the name suggested, an interstellar industrial ship could carry out the great majority of industrial-production work — it could even be used to produce starships.
Zhao Chen had been fretting over this whole matter of interstellar industry for some time. Without a foundation in it, then each time he wanted to produce a starship he'd have to go find a starport like this one and rent a workshop.
Inconvenient, and unsafe both.
If he could have his own interstellar industry, then all these troubles would be gone.
And now Zhao Chen had the chance to own an interstellar industrial ship!
It meant that so long as he had raw materials and technology, Zhao Chen could produce starships anytime, anywhere.
Building an interstellar fleet of his own was no longer a dream!
Iron-Hammer-class Heavy Interstellar Industrial Ship
Ship type: interstellar industrial ship
Tech tier: T2
Hull armor strength: 100 units
Cruise speed: 20 star-knots
Warp drive: grade-4 warp engine
Length: 500 meters
Mass: 200,000 tons
Crew posts: 200
Weapons: 50 light close-in gun turrets
Zhao Chen looked over the data on this T2 Iron-Hammer, its bulk a good step larger even than the T2 Queen Bee-class Heavy Carrier Starship.
The weapons it carried were pitifully few — it was no combat-type ship, after all, and had only the most basic defensive firepower.
But when he looked at its core function — the interstellar-industry side of things — Zhao Chen's mouth all but watered.
This was a semi-intelligent interstellar industrial ship: it needed only a small complement of personnel to carry out production work, and its production efficiency was extremely high!
Take the T2 Queen Bee just finished, for instance: renting Arctic Fox Starport's finest ship workshop, Zhao Chen had labored day and night for two months to build it.
But with the T2 Iron-Hammer, even were Zhao Chen not present at all — so long as the blueprint technology was fed in, the ship's system would parcel it out to the various manufacturing posts. It could, moreover, employ a secrecy-based production method, whereby the personnel at each post would know only the technical content of their own single link in the chain.
And more — the most core of the technologies could be reserved for Zhao Chen himself to handle.
This way, the workload created was cut down enormously!
And on top of that, this interstellar industrial ship could reduce the loss rate of raw materials by 20%!
Which meant that of 1,000,001 half star coins' worth of raw materials, near 300,000 could be saved.
This was, beyond any doubt, the most formidable T2 interstellar industrial ship known.
With it, Zhao Chen would be a tiger given wings.
"I have to build one! I absolutely have to!" A red glow all but kindled in Zhao Chen's eyes.
But after he'd figured out the build cost, Zhao Chen was dumbfounded.
A single unit ran 2 million star coins to build!
"The hell — this is even pricier than the T2 Queen Bee!" Zhao Chen shot a glance at his account.
He'd had 1,900,000 star coins before; and though he'd handed Charlotte some tens of thousands to buy beast-folk slaves, there was still over 1,800,000.
That was a gap of over 200,000.
And that was before reckoning in the cost of renting a starport ship workshop and the like.
Add to that the funds he'd need to keep in reserve to maintain his two ships, Blizzard Zero and the T2 Queen Bee—
—and by this reckoning, Zhao Chen hadn't the standing to build this T2 Iron-Hammer-class Heavy Interstellar Industrial Ship without a good two and a half million star coins.
"Short of money again." Zhao Chen scratched his head. Building ships was indeed a money-burning business.
Which was exactly why it was always said starships were the playthings of the rich.
"How to make up the shortfall? Go sell Li Yaqi another ship? But she's got a ship in production now; she'll have no need of a second in the short term. Find another ship dealer? And risk provoking some existence I can't afford to provoke right now — the principle that it's the jade in one's keeping that condemns a common man is something we learned back in grade school." Zhao Chen frowned.
He thought and thought — then suddenly slapped his own head.
Wasn't that money sitting right there waiting for him? How had he let this slip his mind?
Those nobles of the Owl Dragon Star System each had a fair fortune socked away. Poor the Owl Dragon Star System might be, but that was no bar to those nobles scraping and hoarding their wealth.
The corners of Zhao Chen's mouth curled up, a trace of cold cruelty showing on his face.
Besides the one ship-technology reward, Zhao Chen had received three others.
Acquired: 5 task points.
Acquired: 500 System points.
Acquired: one T1 Super-Soldier Serum.
The task points and System points went without saying — they'd filled Zhao Chen's need exactly.
But the third reward caught Zhao Chen's attention.
A T1 Super-Soldier Serum?
T1 Super-Soldier Serum: a serum that can remake the human body; inject directly into the body to use.
Er.
Just that one simple line?
That was as good as no description at all — the name alone told you it remade the body.
Zhao Chen was at a loss for words. But since it was something the System had given, it ought to be free of problems.
And besides, this body of his really was too weak. Over the past two months of work, he'd blacked out cold five separate times.
And that earlier business with the military hibernation pod — he'd made a proper fool of himself in front of Zhao Wan'er.
He was a man out to conquer the sea of stars; how could he be such a weakling!
Without another word, Zhao Chen drew the serum from the system warehouse.
At once a cylindrical serum tube some 20 centimeters long appeared in his hand, a pale-blue glowing liquid within.
Zhao Chen gulped, and silently prayed: System, you wouldn't do me dirty, right…
With that, up came the hand and down went the needle, straight into his arm.
In a single second, the blue liquid within the serum was all injected.
"No feeling at all?" Zhao Chen was taken aback.
But the next second, his pupils dilated; within his body it felt as though every last cell were exploding. He collapsed to the floor in agony; he wanted to cry out, only to find his throat seemingly plugged, no sound able to escape at all.
This feeling, to Zhao Chen, seemed to drag on as long as a whole century.
"Hah… hah… hah…" Zhao Chen bolted upright, gulping down great mouthfuls of air; the discomfort had left his body.
He glanced at the time. Only three minutes had passed.
He felt at his own body — and not only was there no pain of any kind, even his earlier exhaustion had wholly vanished.
Zhao Chen stood, summoned up a mirror, and looked at himself in it.
His face seemed more sharply cut than before.
He lifted his shirt: his once-flat stomach had, of all things, grown a set of abdominal muscles, and there was corded muscle on his arms now too.
Zhao Chen tried throwing a punch — he could hear the air split with it. He tried a jump — and found he could touch the ceiling with ease.
Delighted, Zhao Chen dropped into push-ups; there was no strain to it at all, and he knocked out 500 in one go without feeling the least bit tired.
"Have I turned into a superman!" Zhao Chen was overjoyed.
This T1 Super-Soldier Serum truly worked.
Wait…
If there was a T1, didn't that mean there was a T2?
As though something had struck him, Zhao Chen opened the system store.
First he searched through the T1 goods column — and, sure enough, found the very T1 Super-Soldier Serum he'd just used.
T1 Super-Soldier Serum: requires 1 task point and 30 System points.
So the system store had it all along.
It was only that when he'd browsed before, Zhao Chen had been looking at ship blueprints and hadn't noticed such things.
And at the time he'd never have spent his precious task points on this.
Zhao Chen took a look at the T2-series goods as well, and soon found his target.
T2 Super-Soldier Serum: requires 3 task points and 600 System points.
"I'm in no rush to boost my physique further for now; my present state is plenty for the situation at hand. When I'm flush someday, it won't be too late to redeem it." Seeing the price, Zhao Chen chose to set it aside for the moment.
Now that his weariness was gone, he went straight to Blizzard Zero's bridge.
"Good day, Captain." The beast-folk crewwomen on the bridge greeted him at once. One of them stole careful glances at the captain, sensing that today's captain seemed a touch different from before.
Taller and better-looking than before…
Seating himself in the captain's chair, Zhao Chen raised the T2 Queen Bee's bridge.
Zhao Wan'er and Charlotte appeared in the video window on the far side.
"How come you're not resting?" Zhao Wan'er looked at Zhao Chen.
"I'm not very tired right now," Zhao Chen said. "How are things coming with your ship?"
"About another half a day to get her fully squared away," Charlotte answered.
"Good. Charlotte, go and tally up the living supplies and military supplies we'll need. Bring it all aboard before we set out. During your shakedown run, Blizzard Zero will follow along; once the shakedown's done, we set out for the Owl Dragon Star System," Zhao Chen said.
"In such a hurry?" Zhao Wan'er was a little surprised.
Zhao Chen said with a teasing laugh, "This banquet-in-the-tiger's-den[1] has kept our hosts waiting two whole months already; any later would be downright rude."
He was, after all, in a hurry to go collect his "fortune."