Translator: CKtalon
In the huge warehouse-like laboratory, there was a strange device placed horizontally. It looked like a rocket launcher that could be held over the shoulder.
However, this thing was just too big. It was placed horizontally, and it almost spanned across the entire laboratory. Furthermore, it looked even more high-tech. There were circles of crystal rings on it.
In short, it was a rod-shaped object that combined metal and crystal.
“Are these all made of Essence Gold? The crystals on them should be Essence Crystals, right?” Zhou Wen asked in surprise.
If this thing was really made of Essence Gold and Essence Crystals, the amount of materials needed was unimaginable. Zhou Wen had a lot of Essence Crystals, but they would only take up a small portion of the huge machine.
“59% is Essence Gold. 28% Essence Crystals. The remaining consists of supplementary materials,” An Sheng said.
“What’s this? Don’t tell me it’s a large rocket launcher?” Zhou Wen asked.
“You can view it as a super-large rocket launcher. Its effects are similar, but it’s not exactly the same. This is an Essence Energy compression accelerator,” An Sheng explained. “Its main function is to compress Essence Energy, accelerate it, and shoot it out.”
“How powerful can it be?” Zhou Wen asked curiously.
An Sheng thought for a moment and said, “This is a very complicated problem. The power depends on the amount of Essence Energy and the enhanced speed. Based on the current technology, we can only compress the Essence Energy contained in 4.5 tonnes of Essence Crystals at a time. Then, we can accelerate it to supersonic speed.”
“I don’t know about that. Is there any obvious analogy?” Zhou Wen asked.
“This is because we haven’t used that many Essence Crystals during our experiments. Therefore, the strength I’m talking about now is only in theory. According to the calculations, the might of a full-powered Essence Energy launch should be stronger than Tyrant Behemoth’s full-strength strike. Of course, this is only in theory. In fact, a launch requires a large number of Essence Crystals. Furthermore, the extraction of Essence Crystals before the launcher compresses the Essence Crystals takes a long time. Even if all the materials are prepared beforehand, the launch will still take more than ten hours to reach its maximum power.”
“It sounds troublesome,” Zhou Wen said.
“It is. That’s because we were building on very weak foundations in the beginning. Many of the technologies were figured out bit by bit. We don’t have the optimal solution yet. However, from the looks of it, the idea is right. Essence Energy can be compressed and accelerated before being shot out. The energy explosion produced is indeed very strong. Furthermore, it will deal great damage to dimensional creatures. It’s much stronger than ordinary Essence Gold bullets.”
Upon saying this, An Sheng appeared somewhat excited. “The greatest difficulty now is how to more effectively compress Essence Energy. If we can compress Essence Energy ahead of time and create compressed Essence Energy Bullets similar to ordinary bullets, then miniaturize the acceleration mechanism, we might be able to produce Essence Energy compression accelerators that can be used by a single person. However, there are many technical problems that need to be resolved. The Essence Energy compression accelerator that can be produced now is just that big.”
“It’s good, but it won’t be of any use at the moment, right?” Zhou Wen couldn’t imagine how such a huge item could be used.
If they used it to deal with Mythical creatures, the Mythical creatures were very fast. Before the accelerator could have them in the line of fire, they would probably have fled.
Unless it was a Mythical creature with a problematic intelligence, one that would only stand there and let the Essence Energy compressor hit it.
The fatal flaw was it having more than ten hours of preparation time. A fight had to be scheduled before it could happen. The restrictions were too great.
“In fact, the original goal of such a large-scale Essence Energy compression accelerator wasn’t to kill Mythical creatures in dimensional zones. It was mainly prepared for the scenario when dimensional creatures break out on a large scale in the future,” An Sheng said.
Zhou Wen immediately understood. An Tianzuo had originally carried out this research to defend Luoyang in the future. It was very useful to deal with large numbers of dimensional creatures that were attacking the city.
“However, the development direction now is still mainly miniaturization. We hope that a single launcher can be developed in the next few years, but this is very difficult. Not only are there funding and raw material problems, but there are also many technical problems that require the experts to solve. Sometimes, a small problem might take years...”
Zhou Wen could tell that An Sheng had high hopes for the launcher.
Indeed, humans were unable to advance to the Mythical stage, so they could only rely on external forces. Companion Beasts were external forces; likewise for Guardians. As for An Tianzuo and An Sheng, they clearly wanted to try taking another path.
“We are still studying Essence Energy armor. It’s still in R&D and hasn’t obtained any substantial results. In the future, if the studies on Essence Energy armor and Essence Energy launcher are successful, even a Mortal-stage human could use this equipment to fight high-level dimensional creatures or even kill Mythical creatures...”
“I hope that day comes sooner.” Zhou Wen felt that it would be great if they could succeed. This might be the bedrock for the stability of human society.
Just like in primitive societies humans slowly learned how to use tools and create cold weapons to eventually become the owners of the land. Then, they created hot weapons, cars, ships, rockets, and so on, becoming the rulers of the entire Earth.
Perhaps Essence Energy armor and Essence Energy launchers were the weapons that would allow humans to regain their rule over Earth in the future. The premise was that the research was successful.
A launcher of this size was too useless in actual combat.
“Overseer has always been looking forward to that day. He said that even if humans can’t advance to the Mythical stage and their physical strength can’t match those powerful creatures, we will definitely become the rulers of the world again,” An Sheng said.
Looking at the busy workers in the laboratory, Zhou Wen suddenly felt that there might be hope for humanity’s future.
Many people were secretly working hard to prepare for the large-scale breakouts of dimensional zones. Even if a dimensional zone broke out, humans might not be crushed.
The only thing they lacked now was time. Be it humans who were cultivating hard to advance to the Mythical stage or people who were researching new weapons, they all needed time.
Zhou Wen left all the Essence Crystals with An Sheng. He originally planned on selling only a portion, but he was ultimately persuaded by An Sheng to sell all the Essence Crystals to him. Furthermore, a portion of them were exchanged for items.
When he left, Zhou Wen realized that An Sheng had brought him to see the Essence Energy compression accelerator because he wanted those Essence Energy Crystals.