This Game Is Too Real
Chapter 160 This is Probably the World’s Most Expensive AK

Chapter 160: Chapter 160 This is Probably the World’s Most Expensive AK

"MMP!"

The alloy door panel shuddered, and as Chu Guang looked down at the items on the conveyor belt, he couldn’t help but curse under his breath.

Out of 33 basic Blind Boxes, 22 freaking lollipops emerged, nearly sending his nose askew with irritation.

Luckily, half of these lollipops could buff them up, so his little players would probably spend money buying them. He lost out, but not completely.

Beyond that, there were 3 cans of food, 2 buckets of instant noodles, 1 pack of compressed biscuits, and other preserved foods, along with 2 bottles of soy sauce and 2 bottles of vinegar.

Truth be told, ever since the Pioneer arrived here, Chu Guang’s interest in the food pulled from Blind Boxes had significantly diminished.

Who needs canned food when you have those sand sculpture players around? If they want something, they just need to drop a hint.

The only thing that caught his eye was a vacuum-sealed transparent pack of palm-sized seeds, placed at the very end.

They looked like seeds, right?

"What the hell is this?"

Chu Guang picked up the pack of seeds, examined it curiously, and a pale blue tag floated out from the side.

[β-712 Cotton Seed: As the name implies, these seeds can grow cotton. Thanks to genetic engineering, this variety has a larger yield per plant and a shorter growth cycle. Traditional soil planting won’t highlight its genetic improvements, so it’s recommended to use soilless cultivation techniques for focused planting to ensure seed purity.]

Okay, so they were cotton seeds.

Though it’s questionable whether they could be considered food, these cotton seeds were still quite useful for Shelter No. 404.

Cotton is said to be harvested once a year, taking several months to mature.

Chu Guang wondered how long these Blind Box seeds would take to mature and planned to find a farming-enthusiast player to try planting them.

Even though Outpost Base now had Devil Silk, cotton still had its irreplaceable role in terms of warmth and economy.

Especially with its high yield, stable production, and wide range of uses, cotton could be woven into fabric or serve as stuffing.

In the absence of large-scale synthetic fiber production, at least cotton could meet some of the players’ clothing needs.

After all, Blue Jackets were in limited supply and players couldn’t always wear them.

For activities like hunting or going out on quests, most players tended to change both their equipment and their clothes.

"Speaking of which, I have no idea if an intermediate Blind Box can produce living creatures."

After opening so many canned pork, it would be awesome if he could get a live pig.

If not, chickens and ducks would do too.

There was the occasional milk to drink, but Chu Guang hadn’t tasted eggs in a long time—excluding bird eggs, that is.

...

Around 5 PM.

Lu Yang and his marine squad returned from the south, arriving at Outpost Base almost simultaneously with the two light trucks escorting the machine tools.

At the same time, the good news that "the fuel rods have been found" also arrived.

Wearing power armor, Lu Yang approached Chu Guang, tapped the side of his helmet to release the visor, and greeted him with a hearty laugh.

"Thanks to the guide you recommended, we finally found the fuel rods we needed. The energy is still at 93%—quite substantial, enough to last a good while!"

Honestly, while that might be good news for the Pioneer, it wasn’t particularly thrilling for Chu Guang.

After all, for Shelter No. 404 at the moment, the longer the Pioneer stayed, the better for him.

But seeing the bright smile on Captain Lu’s face, Chu Guang sincerely shared in his joy.

"Congratulations! After searching for so long, you’ve finally found it."

"Yes, it certainly hasn’t been easy," Lu Yang said with a look of emotion, speaking in a complex tone, "We originally thought we could find it in just two or three days, but we didn’t expect it to drag on for so long."

Actually, about three days ago, they had already found a carbon dioxide trap dating back to the pre-war era—on the twenty-fifth floor of a hotel.

However, to their disappointment, after they had gone to great lengths to secure the objective, they discovered that it had already been claimed by others many years prior.

Not only were the fuel rods that were supposed to be plugged into the generator gone, but even the recyclable materials inside had been completely stripped away.

Various signs suggested that during the 0 to 10 years of the Wasteland Era, a group of survivors had lived there. They had made a brief stop at the hotel and used the glucose, starch, and other resources produced by the carbon dioxide trap to survive a difficult period.

After the carbon dioxide trap stopped operating due to the CO2 concentration falling below the threshold, they removed the spare fuel rods from the backup generator to power the hotel facilities and eventually departed when the fuel rods were completely exhausted, their fate unknown.

This was all quite normal.

After all, it is now the 211th year of the Wasteland Era, and the only trash they could pick up was what others had left behind, overlooked, or had not been able to take due to insufficient strength or conditions at the time.

In this world, even surviving requires a bit of luck.

Let alone scavenging for garbage.

Chu Guang: "Are you leaving now?"

Lu Yang nodded and said,

"Yes, we’ve been here for nearly half a month. Now that the damaged equipment has been repaired, the fuel rods found, and the resource storage filled... it’s time to hit the road again."

There’s no party that doesn’t come to an end. The Pioneer has traveled so far, not to provide aid, but they have a more important mission to complete.

With nuclear fuel and sufficient resources, they estimate they can travel very far this leg of the journey.

If things go well, they might not have to stop for the rest of the way.

Hearing the expected answer, Chu Guang sighed lightly.

"Although it was a brief time, I’ll really miss you guys."

"I feel the same," Lu Yang said sincerely, looking at Chu Guang, "I’ve learned a lot from you, including your noble qualities, which have been truly awe-inspiring."

"The feeling is mutual!" Chu Guang said with a smile, "Your technology has also deeply impressed us! Let’s save our goodbyes for the day you depart. On this day worth celebrating, let’s not let the atmosphere be so somber."

Lu Yang also smiled.

"Oh right, that carbon dioxide trap we found had quite a few interesting things left in it. I’ll send you the coordinates later. If you’re interested, you can go reclaim them."

Chu Guang asked instinctively,

"What’s stored there?"

Lu Yang smiled mysteriously and didn’t give a direct answer.

"If I told you, wouldn’t that spoil the fun of unboxing?"

Looking at the tantalizing Captain Lu, Chu Guang had a helpless expression.

Another blind box?

He really had opened enough blind boxes for the day.

However, although Captain Lu didn’t say what was there, Chu Guang guessed a lot of information from his mysterious smile.

There must be quite a few good things left there.

The old fellow probably wanted to give him a surprise.

"Alright, first thing tomorrow, I’ll take two people over to have a look," he said.

...

The Pioneer would set sail within three days.

After exchanging a few words with Chu Guang, Captain Lu and his marine squad set off again, escorting the fuel rods back in the direction of the Pioneer.

Old Luka, who had been waiting nearby for a long time, approached as soon as the Manager had finished his business. He walked over from the direction of the truck, looking respectfully at him and said,

"Sir, your goods have been delivered. Where would you like us to unload them?"

Chu Guang glanced left and right, his gaze finally resting on the main building of the sanatorium. After several renovations, the quality of the rooms was still quite good.

At least they were much better than the newly built brick houses outside.

"Let’s just place it on the first floor of the sanatorium for now. Find a larger room and I’ll come by to take a look later," Chu Guang said.

Old Luka nodded respectfully.

"Yes, sir."

The machine tool was large and heavy.

Out of caution, Old Luka first had the carpentry workshop’s players make a few supports for unloading, and it took four Strength-type players to successfully lower it from the truck.

A small incident occurred here.

Since the machine tool was already assembled upon delivery, it couldn’t fit through the sanatorium’s main door. Chu Guang had no choice but to choose a room close to the exterior and have half a wall dismantled, barely managing to get the machine inside.

The silver metallic paint surface looked square and sharp from a distance, resembling a large refrigerator. However, its internal structure was far from as simplistic as it appeared on the surface; it was quite another world.

Chu Guang took a quick look at the manual.

The volume of the processing chamber was a full 1.5 cubic meters, capable of processing materials up to 1X1X1m in size.

Due to the particular nature of magnetic confinement plasma processing, the device had high environmental requirements for processing, needing a near-vacuum environment. Therefore, before entering the processing chamber, the materials would first enter a buffer chamber between two airlocks where protective gas was injected to create a near-vacuum, and then they were sent to the processing chamber.

The operating procedure was very rigorous, even tedious.

However, relatively speaking, this device had no special requirements for the environment in which it was placed; it only needed to be plugged in to be used, sparing Chu Guang the trouble of setting up a dust-free workroom to accommodate it.

Looking at the high-tech machine behind the ruins, Chu Guang couldn’t resist asking Xiao Qi to take a photo of it.

This was so Wasteland!

The deployment of the device was complete, and then it was time to power it up.

Chu Guang checked the device’s rated power carefully, and when he saw the unit, he wondered if he was reading it wrong.

"Megawatts?! Fuck... Does it consume that much power?"

According to the information Chu Guang found online, the power consumption of a typical machine tool was only at the kilowatt level.

Yet, such a device that occupied less than three square meters had a power consumption reaching the megawatt level!

After some thought, Chu Guang came to terms with it.

After all, it was handling plasma at temperatures of hundreds of millions of degrees, not only requiring the generation of a magnetic field to contain them but also accurately arranging them into a single-atom blade capable of cutting materials.

Such terrifying control, not to mention its use as a machine tool, was enough to ignite a fusion reactor. Thinking this way, the fact that it didn’t reach gigawatt levels of power consumption could actually be considered energy-efficient.

Chu Guang even suspected that by making some slight modifications and switching the working gas to isotopes of helium or hydrogen, it might actually function as a nuclear reactor.

Only that would be a bit of a waste, like burning a violin to cook a crane...

In any case, it was a good thing that Captain Lu had previously given him two cold fusion batteries.

Otherwise, with the 10kw wood-fired generator he bought from List, even adding the ones seized from Old Leech, they probably couldn’t power this energy-hungry device.

Chu Guang fumbled around for a while and found the emergency power socket near the terminal, perfectly fitting the standard cold fusion battery.

The power was connected.

The indicator light came on!

Watching the touch screen gradually light up in front of him, Chu Guang stroked his chin with interest, scrutinizing it carefully.

"Speaking of which, how exactly do you use this thing?"

There seemed to be a manual on the screen.

Just as Chu Guang was about to click and take a look, Xiao Qi’s voice suddenly came from upstairs.

"Master, if you don’t know how to use it, Xiao Qi can help out," Xiao Qi offered.

Hearing the voice from the third floor, Chu Guang looked surprised as he went outside and looked up to ask.

"You still know how to use this?"

Xiao Qi, "Theoretically, it shouldn’t be difficult. The automation level of this kind of machine tool is very high, and you only need to fill in the preset processing parameters, then insert the materials, and the rest can be left alone. I believe if Master had finished reading the instruction manual, you would definitely be able to operate it too. Xiao Qi is just here to simplify the process... By the way, Master, could you take Xiao Qi over to have a look first?"

"Wait a moment, I’ll go back to Shelter No. 404 to search for a few blueprints first. You try to process them for me!"

After speaking, Chu Guang didn’t wait for Xiao Qi to respond and turned around to go back inside Shelter No. 404.

Sometimes, on the official forum, there would be big shots throwing around blueprints from who knows where, vehemently arguing with others till their faces turned red.

For classic firearms like the AK, Mosin-Nagant, kar98, SKS, and Type 56, there was everything from internal structure GIFs to professional blueprints with part dimensions marked. Although Chu Guang didn’t highlight them, he had silently saved them all.

His intuition told him that these things would definitely be useful someday.

And now, that day had indeed arrived.

He picked out an AK47 design and went to the storage to fetch a few steel ingots that were of proper size and shape.

Although the steel produced by Factory No. 81 was of average quality, these ingots were reserves scavenged by the Cow and Horse Team from some private shelter.

They were perfect for machining barrels and receivers!

The door closed, and as the materials entered the buffer chamber from the feed port, the numerical control machine tool started to work.

Before the blazing plasma, sturdy steel melted away like mud, easily broken down into parts.

Chu Guang was surprised to find that this device could not only machine multiple geometric faces of the same part, but it could also use preprogrammed design to create eight plasma blades, making cuts at different depths and angles, and even cut multiple parts of various sizes and shapes from the same material, minimizing leftover scrap to the smallest amount possible!

Since the AK rifle didn’t require high precision for its parts, the machining process didn’t take very long.

Not counting the machine startup time, Chu Guang waited for about twenty minutes, and all the machining programs were completed.

The finished parts and scrap were all sent out of the discharge port and placed separately.

Although they were machined by plasma reaching billions of degrees, because the cutting medium used was minimal, the temperature of the machined workpiece didn’t increase much, only about forty or fifty degrees, greatly reducing processing precision errors due to temperature change.

According to the description in the manual, if nano-level precision was required for the parts, the temperature of the finished workpiece could even be the same as when it was fed into the inlet.

It just would take much longer.

Chu Guang assembled the parts according to the blueprints and quickly got an AK-47 without a wooden stock or handguard.

Considering the cost of electricity, materials, and the hidden costs on the technical level, this was probably the world’s most expensive AK.

Xiao Qi, "Master."

Chu Guang, who was excited at the moment, didn’t have the time to pay attention, and he replied perfunctorily.

"What is it?"

Xiao Qi, "Xiao Qi always feels... this machine tool doesn’t seem like it’s meant for producing such crude things, uh."

Chu Guang didn’t hesitate to say, "I know, I just wanted to test how well this thing works."

If it can make guns, it can also make the tools to produce guns.

Once the entire production line was replicated, wouldn’t each of his players have one in hand?

By that time, when the steel production capacity was increased, and rifle production went up as well, everyone would have 50 silver coins—oh no, that should be 100 silver coin mobilized soldiers.

Three days a life, a gun a day, the bug where the weapon shop couldn’t restock in time would be completely fixed, no longer worrying about guns being more expensive than people!

Holding the AK in his hands, Chu Guang was touching and looking at it excitedly, with a thrilled expression on his face.

Too bad there were no matching bullets.

Otherwise, he really wanted to fire a couple of shots to try it out.

If it worked well, he’d just throw it into the storage as a limited edition skin to sell, after all, it was a dream collaboration with CF, so selling it for 500 silver coins wouldn’t be too much, right?

Xiao Qi watched silently from the side, not daring to speak.

It always felt like their master wasn’t too bright.

Luckily it wasn’t like this every day...