Master of the Stars

Chapter 19: Period of Withdrawal (Part 1/2)

Acumen College was located in the Pingjiang District, a core district of Xia City that was located in the outer city zone. Here there were several middle schools, high schools, and research institutions in great numbers aside from Acumen College. Together they jointly formed a near-hundred square kilometer education district. It was the number one region in Xia City for the humanities, so naturally it was the best living area in the city.

After sending Luo Nan off to school, Zhang Yingying turned the car around and arrived on a campus of a research institution located several kilometers away from Acumen College. This research institute operated under the name of the International Science Expedition Society. In reality it was a contact gathering point set up for and by the Awakened.

Since the number of Awakened in Xia City was quite sparse, this place was quite barren throughout the year. Sometimes months would go by without even a person there. However, this time when Zhang Yingying entered the campus, she saw the rarely-seen sillouhette of Aunt Susan working on duty.

“Hey! Susan! Congratulations on gaining another 5 kilograms of weight!”

Aunt Susan was half caucasian. Rumor has that she was an extremely beautiful halfie when she was young, but right now she was extremely large and heavy. This inactive middle aged woman weighed in at 120 kilograms. The biggest hobby she loved to do was staying home and playing games; she was a kindred spirit with Zhang Yingying because of this. They normally had a good relationship.

“I’ve been working overtime everyday! I’m dying!”

Susan’s thick chin trembled as she complained loudly: “You know the “Pro-Altered Humans” doctrine that was agreed upon? It hasn’t even been five years ago when they stated that Burners don’t count as Altered Humans. Ha, they sure focused on the altered made by Archetype Formatting back then. But right now they’ve changed their tunes one by one. These driveling liars have no backbone!”

Zhang Yingying was amazed: “They want to recruit Burners into the society? But the first batch of Burners still haven’t finished serving their required time yet right? I recall that their service agreement is for twenty years……”

“The thing is that there is a batch of them that was able to retire early due to injury. There’s approximately two hundred of them. Hehe. We’re going to transform into a Veteran Society pretty soon.”

“Two hundred!?” Zhang Yingying’s eyes were bulging wide open. “There’s only how many Burners in the entire world?”

“Seventeen thousand six hundred and twenty six Burners. That is the latest data.”

Although Susan looked boorish, she was extremely perceptive towards numbers. She could grasp all data and statistics of the society, making her the society’s secretary. Her authority was quite large.

“There’s no need to wait for the large wave of retired Burners in twenty years. In the next ten years, the vocal power of the society will be snatched away by the government army.”

“I’m not that pessimistic, contrary to belief.”

Zhang Yingying wasn’t ready to delve deeply into this topic. She moved closed to Susan’s side and took a look at the various data that was being casted within a large area. Susan just happened to enlarge a certain person’s profile that made Zhang Yingying quite amazed:

“He Yueyin. The leader of the 7th special combat squad of Ship Lanshan. I just got out of there a moment ago…… 20 years old? When did she undergo the alteration?”

“She was part of the first batch. Rumor has it that she was 15 years old when she got in a car accident. She was in a life threatening state, and only through altering her into a Burner could she continue living. She grew in the military from that point on, achieving an outstanding military service; her life experience is quite extraordinary. She just retired from the military today, but soon she’s going to become our big shot vice-president.”

Susan’s words were overflowing with the hint of mock and ridicule. But she still gave He Yueyin a rating of “C+” without the slightest hesitation when she was calibrating Captain He’s profile. This was the highest ranking given to entrants of the society.

As a matter of fact, these two that were present here were evaluated to have a mere rating of “C”.

Zhang Yingying clicked her tongue. When she saw that Susan was going to continue inputting data, she rushed to hold Susan’s hand back: “Susan my dear. Let me look someone up!”

Susan glared with her bloated and puffy pig eyes: “Get lost. Do you know how busy I am right now? I need to enter the data and ratings of over two hundred people’s profiles, and I need to get it done within five days! This damned job isn’t something that can be done just by tapping a few times on the keyboard!”

“Yes yes of course. I know that you have it tough, but think of our friendship! Last week I played ‘Chronicles of the Lajia War’ with you! For three days and three nights! Then I wanted you to play a few rounds of ‘Wilderness’ with me! But you just ran off on me!”

Susan felt a bit guilty: “I had to come work overtime.”

“Grievances from overtime should be settled during overtime!”

Zhang Yingying raised her flexible screen and casted an image onto the console in front of Susan’s body: “Just this one person. I need him to be entered into the database today. And I need him to have his rating evaluated. That’s all I need.”

Susan mumbled to herself. But she still paused her task-at-hand in the end, activating Zhang Yingying’s flexible screen.

“God, it’s Ten Days of the Wilderness again. You’re not sick of playing it?”

Susan found the relevant software module and accessed the large projector in front of her. Zhang Yingying had performed the preliminary work quite well, saving Susan quite a bit of effort.

“Replay.”

The game battling scene between Luo Lan and Zhang Yingying on Ship Lanshan started to replay within the projected area. It included a record of Luo Nan’s gestures that was used to control the game character. There was also the movements of the game characters, the changing variations of tactics, and etc.

Zhang Yingying wasn’t negligent even though she had already experienced things first-hand; she continued to watch the replay with great earnest, to the point that she was even more concentrated than Susan.

From the hand-control technique, one could see that Luo Nan was indeed a newbie. There were many redundant actions and many mistakes popped up here and there, leading to Luo Nan not being able to switch weapons in time, miss-syncing his weapons, and so on.

However all of this was completely meaningless from Zhang Yingying’s perspective. She wasn’t testing Luo Nan’s electronic skill level, she was testing something at a far deeper level.

For example, the lines drawn by Luo Nan’s finger to select Heiya’s ballistic trajectory. It was so precise it was as if the lines were drawn using rulers. Another example, after suffering two defeats when facing Feng Huang’s rapidly moving velocity vector, Luo Nan was able to determine the vector with such accuracy that it made Zhang Yingying grind her teeth in secret.

From this, one could tell that Luo Nan possessed some certain qualities. But these still weren’t his core qualities.

Susan began to do work right now. Her right hand pressed in the interactable region, which immediately flashed with a bright white light, causing the projected region to split to two halves.

The game scene with Luo Nan’s control replay was on one side. Corresponding real time data charts and diagrams were on the other side.

While the scene was playing back, additional regions appeared on the charts and diagram side. Digits began to pulse. Several undulating and surging trend curve lines were pulled from the data.

Half of these lines were hovering near the bottom; they were relatively smooth and unchanging. However there were three lines that had relatively large changes and variations.

Zhang Yingying displayed an even greater concentration: “His control delay ranges between 0.12 to 0.09. And he was able to keep it stable for over four hours. Tsk tsk. He has the ability to concentrate to this degree and he says he doesn’t like playing games!”

“Scope of destructive power is between 0.1% to 0.8%. It’s a little bit low. But it shouldn’t be a problem if he can increase it.”

“Character activation. Degree of personification went from 52% to 72%...... 20 percentage points! He would pass with no issues!”

Zhang Yingying let out a long hushed breath. There wasn’t a specific ability; just the basic qualities weren’t lacking in merit. It made her be far less worried.

“Yet another non-combat personnel. Your business office is also running low on people. Can you make money with this kind of target?”

Susan smirked and gave out a preliminary evaluation result using the software:

Name: Luo Nan

Age: Sixteen Years Old (Growth Stage)

Ability Orientation: Enhanced Mental Ability (Precision Side)

Determined Level: Unawakened (No Score Calculated)

Potential Standard: E+

Recommended Path: Precision Control, Maintenance and Manufacturing.

Susan entered the data with great proficiency into the society-exclusive database. Upon hitting a button, the system automatically sent out contact information to a certain hatchling located several kilometers away.