The Legendary Mechanic

All of the players were gathered in the plaza with their heads bobbing up and down excitedly. Just an hour ago, the Sanctuary had announced that Black Star was about to give a lecture in the plaza. Because of this, Bennett had set up a temporary stage in the middle of the plaza.

The influence of his return was still blazing, and the response was overwhelming. All the residents in the Sanctuary had arrived, and the surrounding few streets were also completely congested with people. The area surrounding the stage that had the best view was naturally dominated by all the players.

All of them wanted to hear what Black Star had to say after returning from the galaxy.

Ta, ta, ta!

Han Xiao walked out from the core region with the mercenaries following behind him. The eyes of the crowd lit up and burnt with excitement. Wherever the group went, the crowd would open up the path, and it was like the legendary parting of the Red Sea.

Han Xiao walked up to the stage, and the mercenaries waited by the side. Han Xiao looked around him for a while only to see millions of eyes staring back at him. All of his actions were being captured by those many eyes.

Han Xiao's expression was calm. With his thick skin, he did not know what it meant to be anxious. Raising one of his hands, a compressed orb rolled out from his sleeves and landed in his palm. He then threw it out casually.

Buss!

A blue electric bolt flashed.

Under the gazes of the crowd, the compressed orb transformed rapidly and turned into a mechanical throne. He sat down on the throne slowly, which then floated into the sky, hovering ten meters in the air. Underneath the throne was the blue light being emanated by the anti-gravity stabilizers.

Following which, three identical Void Mirror Images facing different directions appeared behind him.

Up in the sky was the circular formation of the spaceship fleet, and the plaza was right in the center of the circle with Han Xiao in the middle.

His coolness factor was immediately maxed out!

"Holy sh*t! Too handsome!"

"Truly the appearance of a bigshot! I think I have seen the second Dragon Emperor!"

"He is truly too cool!"

With his gaze sweeping past the crowd, Han Xiao cleared his throat, and his voice was spread far and wide with a mini loudspeaker.

"I've returned."

Boom!

Just those simple words of his immediately attracted a large wave of cheers from the residents. As the creator of this Sanctuary, his prestige in this place was extremely high, and he was ridiculously popular. The players were also affected by the atmosphere, and Han Xiao's image was elevated a few notches.

He raised his hands to signal for the crowd to remain silent. Very quickly, the crowd fell to pin drop silence and waited for him to continue his speech.

"Two years ago, I foresaw this calamity and headed into the galaxy resolutely in search of the solution. I promised that, for my hometown, I will return to face this calamity with all of you. Today, I have fulfilled my promise.

"The galaxy is a very dangerous place, and I have only obtained this strength after going through many tribulations. You do not need to know the dangers behind it as that is a pain that I bore willingly in exchange for the ability to face this crisis with all of you…"

Han Xiao selected his words very carefully, and he very simply summarized his experience in the galaxy, looking as though he did not wish to talk more about his experiences. This immediately drew out the imagination of the residents in the Sanctuary.

However, the players began snickering in their hearts. They had already found out about Black Star's galactic experience through Bun-Hit-Dog's videos. Even if he did not want to say it, they were all extremely clear about his experience. Furthermore, they all thought that Black Star was not aware of that.

Many players began looking at each other while raising their eyebrows or winking with a 'we already know' look.

Han Xiao glanced at the players, and the corners of his lips curled up slightly.

He purposely chose to say those words to let the players have a sense of superiority because they thought that they understood him well. The moment that they had such a thought, they would have fallen into his trap. The players would not only recall the videos and have an even deeper impression of him, it would be helpful to conceal his future actions as well.

"We are all in the middle of this calamity, and no one will be able to stay out of this calamity. I am willing to share the knowledge that I have gained in the galaxy to aid everyone's growth so that we can go through this calamity together!"

The eyes of the players began glowing. After waiting for so long, they had finally waited for these words.

We can finally learn some new skills!

After saying a few encouraging words, Han Xiao stowed his throne away as a signal that his speech was over.

The residents of the Sanctuary all dispersed, but the players charged forward to surround Han Xiao.

"It has been a long time, Inhuman warriors. I can feel that all of you are stronger than you were two years ago," Han Xiao said with a serious look, acting as though he really did not know that they were players.

Many of the players could not help but think to themselves, You are obviously the one who had the greatest change!

After saying a few words to make himself look like an NPC, Han Xiao began selling the skills. After such a long time, he could finally harvest those adorable players again, and the joy in his heart was overflowing.

After Version 1.0, the players had become extremely familiar with the interface in Han Xiao's skill shop. Now that they could see his interface again, they truly missed it.

Selling his own skills and knowledge was akin to a teacher imparting skills, and he could set his own price to obtain the player's 'tuition fees'. The skills that Han Xiao took out for sale were mainly Mechanic skills. Furthermore, they were skills that the players would be able to learn on their own as long as they reached a certain level. Since the players' levels were still low, it gave Han Xiao the opportunity to teach them those skills earlier than they should have learned them.

However, Han Xiao would not teach the players skills that were too important such as compression technology, mass production, and so on. The majority of the skills that he taught were to increase their Machinery Affinity, foundational skills, and some unimportant low-level blueprints. Blueprint skills had always been extremely popular.

As for Mechanic Knowledge, apart from the entire set of foundational knowledge—after all, the majority of players had not even learned all the foundational skills—Han Xiao also chose a few not-so-important Advanced Knowledges to teach the players. In the past, he did not wish to teach too many Advanced Knowledges, but now that they were in the new version, Han Xiao naturally did not have as many concerns.

Of course, he was not entirely conning the players by allowing them to learn their future skills early. It was a sort of win-win situation for them. After all, the earlier they learned them, the earlier they could use them. It was the same logic as using a skill first so the cooldown would end earlier…

Since the players wanted to learn something and he provided a full package service that was both cheap and convenient, was it not best for him to monopolize the entire market? There were no antitrust laws to restrict him in this world, and it was truly blissful.

"Woah, there are so many Mechanic skills that I have never seen before."

"Heavy Machine Modification, Advanced Radar technology… There is also more Advanced Knowledge than before!"

The players looked at the interface that was full of skills, and excitement could be seen spewing from their eyes.

It was the new version, and there were so many skills that they had never seen before. After Black Star made a trip to the galaxy, not only did his coolness level increase, the benefits that he provided also increased!

Because the players had reached the max level toward the end of Version 1.0, they could only increase the levels of their skills. Thus, many of them had a large amount of experience in their pockets, and Han Xiao was targeting the large savings in their hands!

With the launch of the new version, the players would not be stingy with their experience for sure, and they were all like wealthy tycoons. The Great Mechanic Han would not rest until he sucked all of their wallets dry!

After setting up shop for just a short while, the experience points on his interface swelled up rapidly with notifications popping up every second. The players began learning the new skills without any hesitation, and they spent their experience generously allowing Han Xiao to earn a hefty sum.

Looking at the experience points being constantly refreshed on his interface, Han Xiao smiled in satisfaction. After working hard for half a year, he was like a farmer who was reaping his harvest.

He had been looking forward to this moment!

The experience points brought about by the players was like an overflowing river, nourishing the dried-up land that was Han Xiao's experience. His experience, which had been less than 100,000,000, shot up rapidly as though it was on a rocket.

200,000,000… 300,000,000…

This was even more efficient than in Version 1.0!

Because of Han Xiao's hard work in Version 1.0, the proportion of Mechanic players in the Sanctuary exceeded thirty percent at the moment. This number was far greater than his previous life, and he had a huge market with powerful purchasing power. Han Xiao would not set the price of his skills and knowledge too high, but it definitely was not low either. As compared to the price in Version 1.0, which had been in the thousands, the current prices would be in the tens of thousands at least. Because he was the only 'company' in this market, there was no need for him to lower his prices and compete in the market. This was the advantage of a monopoly.

As long as a hundred people learned skills from him, it would be a few million experience points for him. From the roughly 200,000 Mechanics, the benefits that he could gain would definitely be far greater than Version 1.0. At the very least, it would be 1,000,000,000 experience points. However, at Han Xiao's level, his expenditure of experience points was also extremely high, and his expenditure in the future would be even greater. As such, there was no such thing as too many experience points.

Only someone like Han Xiao would be able to power level in one go. When the players reached his level, they would need to do plenty of missions before receiving enough experience to level up once. Furthermore, they would still be overjoyed because of that single level up. In his previous life, the tender and young Great Mechanic Han had also been like that. In the end, he had gradually become an old, salted fish. Alas, he had once been an energetic youth but aged as he entered the pugilistic world.

With the current speed, I should be able to obtain sufficient experience to get to level 120 by today…

Once he reached level 120, he would have another Promotion Mission to complete. Thankfully, he still had another Mission Completion Card in his hands, and if the mission was too difficult, Han Xiao was prepared to just use the Mission Completion Card. After all, he had to stay on Planet Aquamarine for the time being and did not have the time to do a mission.

He would need an enormous amount of experience to get to level 140, and harvesting once would probably not be enough. Teaching skills and knowledge was not a one-off event. If a player learned the same skill a second time, it was equivalent to finding a teacher to increase the level of the skill. Thus, Han Xiao would be able to gain benefits for the foreseeable future, and he was extremely patient.

He did not only want a single abundant harvest. He wanted a long-lasting harvest that even his children and grandchildren could enjoy.

His personal skills would naturally cater to the Mechanic players, but Han Xiao naturally would not forget about the other two classes on Planet Aquamarine. Ensuring profits from all avenues was the way to go.

…

"All the skills belong to the Mechanic class. How depressing!"

Black Star was a Mechanic teacher, and the happiest crowd was naturally the Mechanic players. Their faces flushed red from their joy, and they would burst out in chuckles randomly. The Pugilist and Esper players could only watch from the side enviously. Who told them not to choose the Mechanic class back then? How wonderful it would have been if Black Star was the teacher of their class!

Since they could not learn Black Star's skills, the players from the other two classes opened up the shop interface only to realize that they were actually able to open up the faction store of the Black Star Mercenary Group!

"Isn't this the faction store in Bun-Hit-Dog's videos? It is actually open to us too!"

"Right, I wonder if we can join the Black Star Mercenary Group and become one of them? Maybe we can even be featured in Bun-Hit-Dog's videos!"

"All of these items are grayed out. We can only see them but not buy. Oh, I understand, we can only check on the goods in the faction store but can't purchase them if we don't join."

"Wait, look at this!"

As the players viewed through the faction store carefully, they were immediately overjoyed. In the interface of the faction store, apart from the various equipment being sold, there was actually Pugilist and Esper Advanced Knowledge!

However, the faction store could only be browsed at the moment, and they could only purchase the items in the store if they joined the faction. Furthermore, the requirement for purchasing the Advanced Knowledge of these two classes was a favorability of [Friendly] with the faction. This required 1,000 points of Faction Favorability.

"Black Star, we want to join your mercenary group!"

"How can we join the group?"

The players all began to squeeze forward and bombard Han Xiao with questions. Because Han Xiao had always tried to build his image up together with the videos that Bun-Hit-Dog produced, they all had a good impression of the Black Star Mercenary Group. Seeing practical benefits being placed before their eyes, they immediately wanted to join the mercenary group and could not wait any longer.

"Want to join my mercenary group?" Han Xiao acted as though he was extremely surprised.

After 'thinking' for a moment, he said, "This isn't impossible, but… my members are all elites who have been chosen through strict screening. If your strength can meet the requirement, I welcome all of you to join."