Xiao was taken back to the lab for a blood test.
Unknown environment with armed guards, it was impossible to run away with the power he possessed. Most of the guards in the corridor had [agent] as their Profession, stronger than common people.
From his memory, Haila was a commander of 'The Sprout' in the beginning of version 1.0, Class E, Her specialisation was super power, power level 500+. She could beat thousands of him.
The war of 'Stellaris Legend' was led by superpowers. There were 5 specialisations that players can choose from - super power, martial art, machinist, magic, and psychokinesis. With certain knowledge, players could enter that specialisation but they could only pick one.
Other than specialisation, there were various professions which could be obtained by special events or certain NPCs. The first challenge for players in the game was to find the knowledge of target specialisations. In the beginning, you could choose two start - One normal start: you would have shirts, shorts and shoes (naked not allowed!) choose a star and then choose a base (usually against each other on the same planet). The advantage was stable; The other random start: random everything, you could be put into other servers' dominated star and get excluded by the community. But there was a small chance of 'lucky events' - usually meant you could get some resource/talents. Only a fraction of people liked playing themselves, so most players chose the normal start and played with their friends. Xiao found what he was suffering was like a random start. What the hell...
The blood test came out.
"No anomaly?" Haila took the reports from Gramme.
"Warki solution is functioning on the brain, maybe we should cut the skull and test it." Gramme suggested.
What?! How can I survive with that? Xiao muttered.
"He is the first subject that survived, don't use a destructive way to study it." Haila denied the idea.
Maybe I can make use of this 'identity'? Xiao thought.
Gramme couldn't hide his excitement, he wanted to study every inch of Xiao's brain.
"Watch him and see how the warki solution works" Haila said, her cold eyes were sharp and scary. "Brainwash him first!"
Brainwash? Xiao was worried. Brainwashing was a normal way to control people. In the game, the successfully brainwashed player would be considered a member of the organisation immediately. But his life was real now! It was possible that his free thought would be erased! No! Xiao realised that he couldn't let it happen.
The good news was that the brainwash tech 'The Sprout' possessed was very basic - using image and sound to torture the subject and instil loyalty while it's fragile. Players could avoid brainwashing if their intellect was over 10.
Warki solution gave him 1 endurance which was great for a carbon-based human with low health. The potential of the human race in 'Stellaris Legend' was mid-level. Their 'intellect' potential was high and others were mediocre.
|Mental focus| - The speed of learning and manufacturing is increased by 10%
|Elementary mental resistance| - Grant 3 resistance when suffering from mental damage
Citizen, the only profession/specialisation Xiao had at the moment. Each level up, there was only one free attribute and one random attribute which was not enough. There must be some chance.
"Take him to brainwash" Haila ordered.
Two serious guards came forward and took Xiao in the middle and walked towards the brainwashing room. One looked like everybody owed him 3,000 pounds and another looked like he was shitting.
They entered a room full of machines. Gramme went to start the machine when the guards placed Xiao on a chair. There was a bookshelf 3 meters away from them. Xiao looked at the shelf, 'Tom's basic machine theory', 'The gene of mammal and lizard' and 'Ferroelectrics in bio-machine'.... The books were for the researchers.
Wait, there was a book for machinist specialisation! There was a way out! Xiao was so excited.
He turned back and two guards were staring at him. Both of them had a handgun attached to their belt. Obviously, there would be a bullet for him if he left the chair.
Without hesitation, Xiao stood up and slowly walked to the shelf.
'3k' and 'shitting face' pulled their gun out in 0.6 s. Pointed by the gun, Xiao continued walking. Don't shoot me, I would be dead with this low health.
"Stop, see what he is going to do!" Gramme shouted.
'3k' and 'shitting face' took the order but still held the gun pointing at Xiao's back. Feeling relieved, Xiao was satisfied with his gambling - as long as his behaviour was not aggressive, all uncommon movements would be considered as experiments. Because his identity was the first subject survived.
'Tom's basic machine theory', the basic knowledge book of a machinist. That was Xiao's target. He took it out of the shelf and started reading. The whole book was about mechanical theory. Paragraphs and paragraphs of theory and complicated images of machine structure were hard to understand, Xiao read it with patience.
After half a minute, there was info appeared on the panel:
[You complete a self-learning on basic machine knowledge, considering your intellect, |Elementary assemble|, learning progress 2.0% (|Mental focus| grants an extra 0.2%)]
"I knew it would work" Xiao rejoiced that the system would decide that he had learned the knowledge although he could not understand a word!
Gramme stood aside, puzzled. Was the behaviour of the subject learning? Would the warki solution improve the ability of learning? To further confirm his assumption, he didn't stop Xiao.
All you could hear was the page turning in this silent room.
[|Elementary assemble|, learning progress 15.0% (+1.5%)..... 38% (+3.8%)....]
Xiao turned the page quicker and quicker, he was fighting for his freedom!
"Zh~" The door was opened and Haila came in. She was confused "What happened?"
Gramme told her about Xiao's behaviour and his assumption quickly.
"That is to say his learning ability has improved?"
"Yeah, this is a preliminary assumption. If you allow me to cut his skull, the conclusion will be more accurate". Gramme said.
The old asshole has a kinky on brain, He must have had Hannibal's blood! Xiao thought in his head, his hand was still turning pages.
Haila waved her hand to deny Gramme's request. A stronger brain was more important than a deadpool for the organisation. They needed to brainwash him now.
"Is the brainwash machine ready?" She asked.
"Ready for sure." Gramme pointed at the machine in the corner.
Xiao now realised that this was the place for brainwashing. Damn! There was not much time left.
In the meantime, there was a new notification popped out on the panel.
[|Elementary assemble|, learning progress 90% (+10%), you learned elementary knowledge of machinist, machinist talents unlocked!]
[New specialisation obtained- |Elementary machinist|, Stamina +10, intellect +1, endurance +1, obtained 3 free attributes]
[New talents obtained - |Elementary machine affinity|, |Elementary repair|, |Elementary modification|]
Sensation of power went through the body, and Xiao felt sober. Different from the game, Xiao really mastered the knowledge in the book. He felt that the elusive theories and figures became easy to understand. They were all in his head! That never happened to players!
"Weird..." Xiao was shocked.
The panel info changed:
-------------------------------
Name: Xiao Han
Race: Carbon-based human (coloured)
Model: NPC (Counting down for version 1.0: 358 days 10 hours 11 minutes)
Level: 2
Experience: 0
Specialisation: Elementary machinist lv.1(0/200)
Profession: Citizen lv.1 (0/50)
Attribute: Strength 3, Agility 3, Endurance 5, Intellect 4, Mystery 1, Charm 2, Lucky 1.
Free Attribute: 3
Stamina: 10/10 (lv.1)
lv1(10) - Strength +1, Agility +1, Endurance +1
Power: 3 - 4
Class: F
[Dreg, Stay away from battle!]
Health: 43/50 (injured)
Special talents: Mental focus - The speed of learning and manufacturing is increased by 10%.
Elementary mental resistance - Grant 3 resistance when suffering from mental damage.
Talents: |Elementary machine affinity| lv.1 (0/4000) - Increase the understanding of machines.
|Elementary repair| lv.1 (0/400) - Elementary repair of basic machine.
|Elementary modification| lv.1 (0/600) - Modification for basic machine.
Free Talent points: 1
Legend points: 0
Equipment: N/A
-------------------------------------------
Strength decides melee attack damage and the weight of equipment one can carry. Some of the equipment is heavy.
Agility decides moving speed, attack speed and dodge ability. There is a bonus of ranged attack damage as well.
Endurance improves the health, defence and stamina recovery rate, 10 points of health per endurance. Some talents or special talents can improve that index. There is a complicated equation to calculate how defence reduces damage, Xiao was too lazy to look at it. All behaviours consume stamina: attack, running, walking, swimming…
Intellect decides the comprehension of knowledge which affects the power of the machinist and magician.
Mystery decides the perception of the psycho-world which affects the power of psychokinesis and the success rate of some magic talents.
Charm affects the favourability of NPC, sometimes the discounts on goods and special events require certain points of charm.
Luck affects the rate and quality of reward.
Free attributes were used to improve all 7 attributes.
Stamina is required for all talents and the level of stamina can offer an enhancement of attributes. For example, 10 points of stamina is lv.1; 50 points of stamina is lv.2 etc. If you consume stamina to use some talents, when it drops below the threshold, the enhancement will disappear which physically you are tired/weaken. If you run out of stamina, and you still choose to use talents. It will consume your health significantly depending on the talents power and the character can die…
Power level was defined by characters' combat power, E, D, C, B, A… The standard for class E was 100. Haila should be top tie in class E at the moment.
Class A was watershed. Upon reaching such power, one could cause disaster on any planet in the universe. Thus, Class A was also called 'Disaster class'. Xiao had several 'Disaster class' accounts in the game but it was far from what he possessed now.
Xiao obtained |Elementary machinist|, with 2 free attributes in intellect, he could add it to 6. He still needed 1 more point to avoid the effect of brainwashing! He had no choice but to level up. How could he get experience? There was no monster here for him. No task, no mission...
Suddenly there was a spark in Xiao's eyes.
He threw the books away, turned back towards the people who were watching him like monkeys in the zoo. He stared at the gun in '3k' 's hand with his poker face.
Haila frowned and stopped her order, looked at Xiao like all the others. They wanted to know his next move.
Xiao walked towards '3k' like a robot, reached out his hand as slowly as he could. He grabbed the gun. '3k' instinctively tried to pull the gun back. No matter how hard '3k' pulled, Xiao won't let go. Xiao was pulled around by 3k's strong arm. He showed no intention to fight. He acted like a kid who wanted a toy. Because of Xiao's slow movement, 3k didn't fire.
"Take out the bullets!" Haila was interested to see Xiao's intention.
3k followed the order, took out the magazine and let Xiao take the gun. Once had the gun in hand, Xiao noticed the equipment info in the panel.
[Bee 73. pistol: Quality - grey, damage 28~35, attack speed 1.1/s, damage power 13, structure: barrel, recoil spring, slide, magazine (absent)...]
|Elementary assembly| gave him loads of knowledge about the machine, he found he was familiar with Bee 73. pistol. In game, you just wait for the progress bar. Here, Xiao needed to disassemble it himself. Such facts made him sure that he was put in the game rather than just playing the game.
Xiao brought his thoughts back to the gun and started disassembling it. It seemed to the crowd that he was unfamiliar with the gun (of course, never touched a real gun in China!) The handgun was separated into parts and then he started to assemble them. |Basic assembly | was glowing along the way.
40 s, the pistol was assembled back to what it should be. It was not fast for an agent but people around him were shocked! He had never been trained! Was it because of the Warki solution??
Gramme was excited, "What a big brain! If I can cut his skull, maybe we can replicate..."
Wtf, why were you so keen on my brain?
Xiao repeated this process again and again. And the info popped out on the panel
[You finish basic machine assembly once, perfection 69%, gain experience +28]
[You finish basic machine assembly once, perfection 73%, gain experience +32]
...
In Stellaris Legend, there are miscellaneous ways to gain experience, killing monsters, fulfilling missions, etc. Assembly and repairing are important experience sources for machinists. The damage of machinists was not prominent when they were in the lower class. Thus, many machinists start with logistics.
As Xiao became more and more familiar with the process, he could shorten the time to 20s.
Haila finally understood what he was doing and ordered, "Brainwash him now!"
In the meantime, Xiao finished another time of assembly and the experience pool reached 200.
"All experience into |Elementary machinist|!"
Warm power went around his body along with a notification.
[ |Elementary machinist| level up to lv.2, stamina +10. intellect +1, endurance +1, 2 free attributes obtained]
"Great!" Xiao relived and let the guard take the gun back.