Chapter 122: An Unexpected Delight

White Jade Seal sighed deeply, his jaws aching from gnawing on the “transparent soap.”

This method of supplementing biological energy and nutrients, while effective in suppressing cellular degradation and genetic collapse, made every day feel like living inside a medicine bottle—constantly guzzling nutrient fluids and devouring nutrient gels.

The ordeal was particularly grueling as his physiological indicators continued to climb, forcing him to increase his intake dose. White Jade Seal worried that one day, he might not die from cellular failure but be fatally overfilled instead.

Thanks to Little Blue, the team took a brief respite.

Together, they finished off the scattered mutant rats and began tidying the battlefield in preparation to leave.

In truth, there was little to clean.

All the mutant rat corpses had been incinerated to ashes under Little Blue’s overwhelming high-voltage lightning strikes.

The cavern floor was blanketed in a thick layer of black ash.

The only cleanup needed was to retrieve the iron spikes and steel beads used to set up the electric traps.

Though these were inexpensive consumables, they might prove useful later, so the group decided to collect them.

The iron spikes and steel beads had been laid out by Summer Youyou, so gathering them was straightforward.

She opened her arms wide, then with a gesture, her powerful magnetic gloves—infused with X energy—generated a magnetic force that instantly attracted the metal pieces buried beneath the ash.

The principle behind these magnetic gloves was not complicated; they merely drew inspiration from electromagnets.

The real challenge lay in employing transcendental technology and dimensional materials to realize this principle. After all, sourcing magnetic dimensional materials was no easy feat.

To help Summer Youyou craft these gloves, Su Xiaoke had painstakingly spent a fortune on the black market to acquire a rare meteorite magnet. This was then processed into two magnetic cores, making the gloves the most expensive piece of equipment among the Seventh Squad’s gear.

Of course, Summer Youyou did not disappoint the efforts of the female genius and the captain’s invested funds.

Her transcendental combat skill, which manipulated magnetic forces through “biological strong magnetic fields” and “super magnetic induction,” seemed to be unique to her alone.

Even White Jade Seal could not decipher how she controlled the iron spikes that had already been launched using magnetism.

Much like how only White Jade Seal in the Seventh Squad could wield particle bombardment, transcendental combat skills seemed to rely more on personal insight—something “felt intuitively rather than explained”—rather than sheer individual strength.

Even if the process and principles behind one’s transcendental combat skill were meticulously explained to others, it remained difficult for outsiders to truly grasp the technique from the original user’s state of mind and moment of enlightenment.

For the user, such epiphanies felt more like instinct than skill.

It was akin to how some people could flexibly wiggle their ears or curl their tongues into shapes that most could not, without any logical explanation—they simply could because they realized and tried, and thus succeeded.

“Oh?”

A mass of iron spikes and steel beads converged under the magnetic control.

Yet Summer Youyou was unexpectedly surprised, reaching out to pick up a steel bead with a puzzled expression.

She held it up to her eyes for closer inspection before exclaiming joyfully, “The conductive efficiency of these regenerated steel beads seems to have improved!”

Everyone was stunned and grabbed handfuls of beads to test.

These steel beads, mass-produced with a small amount of dimensional material, had pitifully low conductive efficiency.

They were barely capable of carrying supernatural energy sufficient to inflict minor damage on mutants shielded by super active armor—unlike native materials, which were utterly ineffective against supernatural beings.

But after White Jade Seal and Little Blue’s intense bombardment, the overload conduction of high-energy plasma and high-voltage currents had dramatically increased the X particle contamination level in the spikes and beads, forcibly enhancing their conductive efficiency!

This was a delightful surprise.

Higher conductive efficiency meant a greater upper limit for infused supernatural energy during use, resulting in more potent effects in battle.

Thus, these beads, initially only capable of harming F1-level supernatural creatures or below, had transformed into advanced consumables threatening F2, F3, and even higher-level entities!

Everyone knew that consumables were usually priced lower than common equipment.

However, their accumulated consumption made them far more costly overall.

Originally, a base quantity of 100 steel beads sold on the supernatural market for just five F1-level E crystals.

But after the modifications by White Jade Seal and the others, their price skyrocketed several to dozens of times higher!

Steel beads capable of threatening F2-level supernatural creatures could reasonably sell for 20 E crystals per base quantity.

Those threatening F3-level creatures could fetch 80 E crystals per base quantity.

And this was only calculated on conventional multiples—if faced with a transcendental warrior specializing in ranged combat, these rare and high-threat consumables could easily sell for several times that!

Summer Youyou’s treasured expression said it all.

Originally, each team member carried twelve base quantities of steel beads for consumption.

Outside the cave, except for White Jade Seal, the others had only used a couple hundred beads each, leaving nearly a thousand beads apiece—roughly ten base quantities.

Since there was no chance to use the sniper crossbow inside the cave, they handed all remaining beads to Summer Youyou to set electric traps, easing their burdens.

Now, they had amassed the equivalent of seventy base quantities of F3-level steel beads.

Even if one base quantity sold for 100 E crystals, they could gain 7,000 E crystals, fully compensating for the loss of mutant rat corpses!

But seeing Summer Youyou clutching a handful of steel beads with tearful eyes, refusing to let go, Lofi knew there was no way to pry these treasures from her.

Female genius Su Xiaoke was also astonished by this curious phenomenon of improved conductive efficiency.

Though she had heard that prolonged use of X weapons by transcendental warriors could gradually enhance conductive efficiency, that process occurred over a long period of slow infiltration.

It was impossible for such a forceful increase to happen in such a short time.

Could it be that saturating X weapons with overload energy conduction—without damaging the weapons’ own materials—accelerated the X particle contamination of transcendental weapons?

Lofi and Su Xiaoke exchanged glances, sensing they had uncovered some momentous secret!

(To be continued.)