Chapter 64: The Risk of Failure
The mechanical girl tossed three marble-sized golden light spheres to Su Xiao. He caught them, feeling their weight—each was substantial, with the three combined weighing at least 150 kilograms.
To Su Xiao, this weight was as light as nothing, but the mechanical girl was just a worker. From her earlier movements, this 150-kilogram load was nothing to her.
"I'm going to sleep."
The mechanical girl flopped onto a small bed, with a small quantum bomb placed at the headboard. She was going to sleep cuddling the bomb.
"Oh, right, pay up."
The mechanical girl suddenly sat up like a corpse rising from the dead, reaching her hand toward Su Xiao.
"I'm short on Paradise Coins lately, so I'll use this to settle the debt."
Su Xiao pulled off the dark purple leather shoes from his feet, tossed them to the mechanical girl, and equipped the newly acquired [Kinetic Combat Boots]. This item had a mecha-like nature, but it wasn't made of metal; it was crafted from a material somewhere between metal and leather. What exactly the material was, Su Xiao didn't know, but wearing it was very comfortable.
"Do you think this is a recycling center?"
The mechanical girl glanced at the attributes of the dark purple leather shoes. The attributes were quite good, after all, it was equipment Su Xiao had replaced, worth between 150,000 to 200,000 Paradise Coins. Trading it for three Birth Sources was fair, and besides, she had no use for Birth Sources—she didn't craft equipment. The reason she melted down gold-grade equipment was mainly for other rare materials.
Su Xiao left the mechanical girl's messy "doghouse." If it weren't for her obvious female characteristics, Su Xiao would have suspected the mechanical girl was a man—slovenly, scatterbrained, informal, and never haggling with anyone.
Bang!
The iron door slammed shut. After Su Xiao left, the room fell silent. A few seconds later, a white shirt and a pair of underwear were tossed into the air. The mechanical girl lay spread-eagled on the bed, sleeping with drool dripping from her mouth.
Su Xiao walked through Reincarnation Paradise. To upgrade the quality of the Hunter Set, he could only do so within Reincarnation Paradise.
Returning to his exclusive room, Su Xiao entered the Alchemy Laboratory.
"Rent an equipment forging furnace."
As soon as Su Xiao spoke, a prompt appeared.
[Please select the forging furnace tier. S-grade forging furnace: 400,000 Paradise Coins per hour. A-grade forging furnace: 80,000 Paradise Coins per hour. B-grade forging furnace: 10,000 Paradise Coins per hour. C-grade forging furnace: 2,000 Paradise Coins per hour. D-grade forging furnace: 300 Paradise Coins per hour. E-grade furnace: 40 Paradise Coins per hour.]
If Su Xiao were a contractor specializing in forging equipment, he would need to purchase a forging furnace. The rental prices were already this high; buying one from Reincarnation Paradise would be astronomical.
Almost no one could afford an S-grade furnace, and few rented it. The same went for A-grade furnaces. In fact, a B-grade furnace could already forge Legendary-grade equipment, and buying one from Reincarnation Paradise cost a whopping 1,600,000 Paradise Coins.
Su Xiao chose to rent a B-grade forging furnace. For upgrading the Hunter Set, this quality of furnace was more than sufficient; anything higher would be a waste.
[12,000 Paradise Coins have been paid. Forging furnace mode: Simplified Operation Version.]
Space-time power surged, and a massive object was teleported into the Alchemy Laboratory.
Waves of heat spread. The B-grade forging furnace was at least five meters high and ten meters wide. It looked like a precision machine tool, with a high-temperature furnace at the center, cooling systems on both sides, and dozens of mechanical arms around it.
Hum~
The forging furnace started operating, like an activated mecha.
Su Xiao had no idea how to use this thing, so he paid an extra 2,000 Paradise Coins to rent the Simplified Operation Version.
A virtual interface appeared before Su Xiao, covered with hundreds of options. This was still the simplified version; with a normal forging furnace, the operation difficulty would be dozens of times higher.
From this forging furnace, one could see the status of workers in Reincarnation Paradise. Though they weren't good at combat, a small portion of them were skilled at using this equipment to forge high-grade gear.
Everyone had different talents. Reincarnation Paradise was cruel, no doubt, but it never buried talented people. Here, it didn't matter who you were, your background, or whether you had a rich father—only talent and courage counted.
Those with special talents became workers; those with courage fought in derivative worlds to grow stronger.
[Ding, furnace activated.]
[Mode selection complete. Assisted forging mode.]
[Forging type: Complete smelting.]
[Detected that the final purpose of this operation is to upgrade equipment quality. Mode changed. Auto-selecting.]
[Mode change complete. Current mode: Upgrade assistance mode.]
With a puff, a tray popped out from the forging furnace.
"This thing is this intelligent?"
Su Xiao felt the 2,000 Paradise Coins were well spent. He was completely clueless about how to operate this thing.
After a moment of hesitation, Su Xiao placed three pieces of equipment—[Wild Hunt's Judgment], [Proof of the Hunter], and [Hunter's Ring]—on the tray, along with five Soul Crystals (Large) and three Birth Sources.
[Confirm/Deny this upgrade. Success rate for this upgrade: 76%.]
Seeing this prompt, Su Xiao's cheek twitched. Upgrading the Hunter Set had a chance of failure, and the failure rate was not low—24%.
Su Xiao had managed to gather the Hunter Set for several reasons: first, his luck was decent; second, the set only had three pieces; third, he had risked his life multiple times to earn it. After all that effort, failure would mean everything was lost, along with five Soul Crystals (Large) and 192,000 Paradise Coins.
Currently, the dark purple Hunter Set's effects were as follows:
Set Effect 1: Hunter (Passive), Strength +15, Agility +10, Stamina +10 (Cannot boost true attributes).
Set Effect 2: Melee Expert (Passive), Melee damage +40%, Max health +20%.
Set Effect 3: Hunter's Trophy (Passive), During each battle, the battle will be judged as a hunting state. After killing an enemy, the trophy value will increase. When the trophy value reaches 100%, and...
The Hunter Set had once seemed very strong, but now, aside from the +40% melee damage and +20% max health, its attributes didn't seem that impressive.
The Hunter Set was called the dream melee set, not because of its dark purple tier attributes, but because of its attributes after being upgraded to a gold-grade set.
Before being upgraded to gold grade, the Hunter Set was at best one of the strongest among dark purple sets, not worthy of being called a dream melee set.
However, upgrading the Hunter Set to gold grade was not easy. The nearly one-third failure rate was enough to make many people back off. If the dark purple Hunter Set were sold now, it would fetch a huge fortune. Back then, three large adventure groups fought over a single Hunter's Ring, and Gulu from the Traveling Group was hunted to the point of doubting her existence.
Su Xiao stood before the forging furnace, placing one hand on the activation button. He was willing to risk his life, so why not the Hunter Set? If it failed, so what? He would just go find another, or snatch it again. A high failure rate? Don't joke—when he first inherited the Shadow of Law Destruction, the success rate wasn't high either, and back then, failure meant death.