Chapter 160: Probably The First AK In This World
"Motherfucker!" Looking at the things lying on the conveyor belt after the alloy door panel shook for a while, Chu Guang couldn’t help cursing.
Out of 33 elementary loot boxes, 22 lollipops appeared, which almost made him lose his mind.
Fortunately, half of those lollipops could provide buff, and his players would probably pay for them, so it was a loss but not a complete loss.
In addition, there were 3 cans, 2 buckets of instant noodles, 1 pack of compressed biscuits and other reserves, as well as 2 bottles of soy sauce and 2 bottles of vinegar.
To be honest, since the Pioneer arrived, Chu Guang had not been so interested in the food he could get from the loot box.
Was there still a need to eat canned food?
With those diligent players, he could simply tell them what he wanted to eat.
The only thing that made his eyes lit up was the palm-sized, vacuum-packed transparent bag at the back.
It looked like it contained seeds!
"What’s this?"Chu Guang picked up the bag of seeds. Just when he curiously held it in his hand for a while, a light blue label floated out from the side.
[Beta-712 Cotton Seeds: As the name suggests, these seeds produce cotton. After genetic engineering design, this variety has a larger yield per plant and a shorter growth cycle. Traditional soil planting cannot highlight the advantages of genetic improvement. It is recommended to use soilless cultivation technology for concentrated planting to ensure seed purity.]
Well, it turned out to be cotton seeds.
Although it was questionable whether it could be regarded as food, cotton seeds were still very useful for Shelter 404.
I heard that cotton can be harvested once a year, and it would take several months to mature.
Not knowing how long it would take for the seeds drawn from the loot box to mature, Chu Guang planned to find a player who loved farming to try it.
Although the outpost now had devil silk, cotton still had its irreplaceable role in terms of keeping warm and strengthening the economy.
In particular, the output of cotton was large enough and would be quite stable. In addition, it was so versatile and could be used for both weaving and as filler.
In the absence of large-scale production of man-made fibers, cotton could at least solve the clothing needs of some players.
After all, the number of blue coats was limited, and players could not always wear them.
For example, when hunting or going out for a mission, most players would change their clothes while changing their equipment.
"Speaking of which, I don’t know if this intermediate loot box would give me live animals."
After getting so many cans of pork, I wonder when I will be able to get a pig. Wouldn’t that be great?
If I really couldn’t get a pig, chickens or ducks are fine too.
Milk was something that Chu Guang was able to drink occasionally, but he hadn’t eaten eggs for a long time.
Of course, that wasn’t counting random bird eggs.
...
Around 5 p.m.
The Marines led by Lu Yang returned from the south and arrived at the outpost almost at the same time as the two light trucks transporting the machine tools.
At the same time, the good news that the fuel rod has been found also arrived.
Wearing an exoframe, Lu Yang walked up to Chu Guang. He tapped his index finger on the side of the helmet, lifted the visor, and said with a hearty smile, "... Thanks to the guide you recommended to us, we finally found the fuel rods we needed. It still has 93% energy left, which is quite a lot. It will definitely be enough for us for a long time!"
To be honest, it might be good news for Pioneer, but for Chu Guang, it wasn’t something to be happy about.
After all, for the current Shelter 404, the Pioneer was like a big coattail they could ride on, and in theory, the longer they stayed, the better it would be.
However, seeing the hearty smile on Captain Lu’s face, Chu Guang was sincerely happy for him.
"Congratulations! After searching for so long, you finally found it."
"Yeah, it’s really not easy." Lu Yang said with emotion and a complicated tone, "We thought we could find it in two or three days if everything went well. But we didn’t expect it would take so long."
About three days ago, they had already found a pre-war-era CO2 trap on the twenty-fifth floor of a hotel.
However, it was a pity that when they worked so hard to finally get there, they found that it had already been taken away by other people many years ago.
Not only were the fuel rods that were supposed to be plugged into the power generator empty, but even the recyclable material inside was taken away.
There were various indications that a group of survivors once lived there between year 0 and 10 of the Wasteland Era. They had a short stay at the hotel and had a hard time using resources such as glucose, starch, etc., produced by the CO2 traps.
After the CO2 traps stopped working because the CO2 concentration dropped under the threshold, they unplugged the fuel rods of the backup power generator to power the hotel facilities and finally left after the fuel rods were completely exhausted.
That was really normal behavior.
After all, it was now the 211th year of the Wasteland Era, and the garbage they could pick up was nothing more than what others had left, missed, or couldn’t be taken away because of various reasons.
Luck was essential if one wanted to survive in the wasteland.
It was even more so when picking up trash.
Chu Guang couldn’t help but ask, "Are you leaving?"
Lu Yang nodded and said, "Mhm, we’ve been staying here for half a month, and now the damaged equipment has been repaired, the fuel rod has been found, and the resource inventory is full... It’s time to get back on the road."
All good things would come to an end eventually. Besides, they were not here to alleviate their poverty; they had more important missions to complete.
With nuclear fuel and sufficient resources, the following journey would probably be very long.
If everything went smoothly, there should be no need to stop in the second half of the journey.
Hearing the expected answer, Chu Guang sighed lightly, "Although it’s only been a short period of time, I’m still quite reluctant to part with you."
"Me too." Looking at Chu Guang, Lu Yang said sincerely, "I’ve learned a lot from you, including your noble conduct, which impressed us a lot."
"Me too." Chu Guang said with a smile, "We are also impressed by your technology! Let’s leave the farewell for the day you set off. This is a day worth celebrating, let’s not ruin the atmosphere."
Lu Yang also smiled.
"By the way, the CO2 trap we found has a lot of interesting things left in it. I’ll send you the coordinates in a moment. If you are interested, you can recycle it."
Chu Guang asked subconsciously, "What’s in there?"
Lu Yang smiled mysteriously and didn’t answer the question directly. "If I told you now, wouldn’t it ruin the fun?"
Looking at Captain Lu, who was leaving him in suspense, Chu Guang had a helpless expression on his face.
Another gamble?! It’s basically another version of a loot box!
There are quite a lot of loot boxes that he opened today.
However, although Captain Lu didn’t say what was there, Chu Guang guessed a lot of information from his mysterious smile.
There should be quite a few good things left for him to find.
Captain Lu probably wanted to surprise him.
"Okay, I’ll bring two people over tomorrow to take a look."
...
The Pioneer would depart within three days.
After a few words with Chu Guang, Captain Lu took his team members back on the road and escorted the fuel rod back towards the Pioneer.
After noticing that the administrator finished talking to the people from Pioneer, Luca, who had been waiting for a long time, walked from the direction of the truck, looked at him, and said respectfully, "Sir, your goods have been delivered, where would you like to unload it?"
Chu Guang glanced around, his eyes eventually landed on the main building of the nursing home. After the renovation, the quality of the rooms inside was still quite good.
At least it was much stronger than the newly built brick house outside.
"Just put it on the first floor of the nursing home. You can find a bigger room and put it there. I’ll go and take a look later."
Luca nodded respectfully. "Yes, sir."
The machine was large and heavy.
Out of careful consideration, Luca first asked the players of the Woodworking Cabin to make a few tools for unloading and arranged four strength type players before successfully unloading it from the truck.
There was also a small incident while moving the machine tool.
Since the machine tool had already been assembled when it was delivered, the whole machine could not pass through the door of the nursing home. Chu Guang had no choice but to choose a room close to the outside and ask players to destroy the wall. Only then was he able to move the machine in.
Silver metallic paint finish, boxy, angular shell, the machine tool looked like a large freezer from a distance. However, its internal structure was far from being as simple as it looked on the surface.
Chu Guang briefly glanced at the manual.
The volume of the processing chamber was a full 1.5 cubic meters, and it could process materials with a maximum size of 1x1x1m.
Due to the particularity of magnetic confinement plasma processing, the machine tool had high requirements on the internal processing environment and required a near-vacuum internal environment. Therefore, after the material was fed into the feeding port, it would first enter the buffer chamber between the two airlocks, where the protective gas would be injected to turn the chamber to a near vacuum, and only then would the material be sent into the processing chamber.
The entire operation process was quite rigorous, even cumbersome.
However, relatively speaking, this machine tool had no requirements for its external environment. It could be used as long as it was plugged in, so there was no need for Chu Guang to get a clean room to keep it.
Looking at the high-tech machine before the broken wall, Chu Guang couldn’t help asking Little Seven to take a photo of it.
This is very wasteland punk!
The machine tool was deployed and then powered up.
Chu Guang carefully checked the power rating of the machine tool. When he saw the unit clearly, he wondered if he had read it wrong.
"Megawatts?! Whoa… Does it consume such a large amount of power?"
According to the information Chu Guang found on the Internet, the power consumption of general machine tools would only be at the kilowatt level.
However, for such a device that covered an area of less than 3 square meters, the power consumption actually reached the megawatts!
But after thinking about it, Chu Guang realized why that was the case.
No matter what, the machine operated on plasma, a type of superheated matter. Not only did it need to generate a magnetic field that constrained them, but it also needed to precisely arrange them into single-atom knives that could cut through materials.
Such terrifying control, let alone a machine tool, was enough to ignite the fusion reactor. Thinking about it that way, it could even be regarded as relatively energy-saving because it did not require gigawatts to power up.
Chu Guang even suspected that if he changed it up a little, and replaced the working gas with isotopes of helium or hydrogen, it could really be used as a nuclear reactor.
However… If he really used it like that, it would really be a waste...
Fortunately, Captain Lu had given him two cold fusion batteries earlier.
Otherwise, even if he added the wood powered generator he bought from Liszt before together with the one seized from the old leech, it wouldn’t be able to power up the device.
Chu Guang pondered for a while then found an emergency power supply socket near the wiring port, just enough to insert a general-purpose cold fusion battery.
After connecting the power, the signal lights were switched on!
Looking at the touch screen that was gradually lighting up in front of him, Chu Guang touched his chin with interest and looked at it carefully.
"Speaking of which, how do I operate this thing?"
There seemed to be an instruction manual on the screen.
Just when Chu Guang was about to open it and take a look, the voice of Little Seven suddenly came from upstairs.
"Master, if you don’t know how to use it, Little Seven can do it for you."
Chu Guang was surprised when he heard the voice from the 3rd floor. He went outside and raised his head to ask, "You know how to use this device?"
Little Seven hummed, "Theoretically, it shouldn’t be too difficult. This machine tool has a high degree of automation. You only need to fill in the preset processing parameters, and then put in the material, and then you don’t have to worry about the rest. Little Seven believes that if you read the manual, you will definitely be able to operate it. Little Seven just simplifies the process for you... By the way, Master, can you bring Little Seven down to see it first?"
"Wait, I’ll go back to the shelter to search for a few drawings first. I want you to help me try to process them."
After speaking, Chu Guang turned around and went back to the shelter without waiting for Little Seven to speak.
Occasionally, on the official website forum, some players would upload some blueprints with unknown origin onto the discussion area where players would often get into heated arguments.
Some classic firearms such as AKs, Mosin Nagant, KAR 98, SKS, and Type 56 had all kinds of blueprints from GIF animations of the internal structure to professional drawings marked with the dimensions of the parts. Although Chu Guang did not add recommended labels to the posts after seeing them, he secretly saved them.
Intuition told him that these things would eventually come in handy one day.
And now, the opportunity really came.
After picking out a design drawing of the AK-47, Chu Guang went to the warehouse to pick up a few ingots of suitable size and shape.
Although the steel produced by Steel Plant 81 was of average quality, these steel ingots were all reserves that Bull and Horse Squad found from a private shelter.
They were perfect for making gun barrels and receivers!
After the gate closed, the CNC machine began to work as the material was fed from the feed port into the buffer chamber.
In front of the hot plasma, the sturdy steel was like a piece of mud, and it was easily dismantled into eight pieces.
Chu Guang was surprised to find that this equipment could not only process multiple geometric surfaces of the same part, but also could be pre-programmed to form 8 plasma blades, which could cut different depths from multiple angles, and even cut multiple parts of different sizes and geometric shapes from the same piece of material to minimize the remaining leftovers!
Since the AK rifle did not require high precision of parts, the processing time was not too long.
Not counting the time for the machine to start, Chu Guang waited for about 10 to 20 minutes before all the processing procedures were completed.
The finished parts and the cut scraps were sent out from the discharge port together and placed separately.
Although it was processed by plasma, because there were few working fluids used for cutting, the temperature of the workpiece processed was actually not that high. It only looked like 40 or 50 degrees Celsius, which minimized the temperature change that could result in machining accuracy errors.
According to the description in the manual, if the precision of the parts was required to be on the nanometer level, the temperature of the finished workpiece could even be exactly the same as when it was fed into the feed port.
But the time consumed would increase exponentially.
Chu Guang assembled the parts according to the drawings and soon got an AK-47 without the wooden stock and handguard.
Taking into account the production power consumption, materials, and hidden costs behind the technology required to make this gun, that was probably the most expensive AK in the world.
Little Seven buzzed suddenly, "Master..."
Chu Guang, who was excited, didn’t have time to pay attention to it, and casually responded, "What’s wrong?"
Little Seven: "Little Seven feels that... This machine shouldn’t be used to produce such rough items."
Chu Guang said without hesitation, "I know, I just want to test whether this device is good or not."
If it could make guns, then it could definitely make tools for making guns.
When the entire production line was ready, all his players would have a gun in their hands.
At that time, when the production capacity of steel increased, the production capacity of rifles would also increase. Everyone would become a Marine who was worth 50 minerals, oh no, it should be a conscript that costs 100...
They would be able to respawn once every three days, but he could produce one gun a day! The bug that the weapons in the weapon store couldn’t be replenished in time would be completely fixed, and there would be no need to worry that guns were more expensive than people!
Playing with the AK in his hand, Chu Guang had an excited expression on his face.
It was a pity that there were no matching bullets. Otherwise, he really wanted to test its power.
If there is no problem with using it, I will throw it in the warehouse and sell it as a limited edition skin. After all, it is a legendary weapon in CF, so it is not too much to sell it for 500 silver coins, right?
Little Seven watched quietly, not daring to speak.
It always felt that its master was not very smart.
Luckily its master was not like that every day...
Blip’s Thoughts
[Mission: Vote for Blip in the WW yearly Reader’s Choice Translator Award]
[Details: I KNOW I TECHNICALLY we haven’t reached the part where I started to translate this novel (That would be C363 onwards) BUT!!!! Vote for me if I’m your fav translator! /-OC0rPFrtpp-9v3zQLVz - this is the same link as the announcement! :D]
[Xia Yan’s Inner Dialogue: Hmph, you know you want to! I... I... I didn’t say I wouldn’t vote for you...]
[Mosquito: MUAHAHAHAHAHA EXPLOSION! EXPLOSIONS! MORE VOTE FOR MORE EXPOSIONS!]
[Tail: (͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)]