Chapter 44: Fighting Spirit, Lv.MAX
After the fortress successfully advanced to T0 rank, four types of rewards appeared. If possible, Su Xiao would choose all of them, but unfortunately, he could only pick two.
First was the fortress's new organ, the "Hothouse." The detailed description of this option was only one sentence: it accelerated the cultivation of soldier-type units.
To put it simply, if a female pig-headed person became pregnant, a process that would normally take 10 to 11 months, being inside the "Hothouse" would allow her to complete the pregnancy in about a month.
If Su Xiao were a native of this world, this ability would be a must-pick. A stable source of population was the foundation for building a faction, but he wasn't, and moreover, he had no interest in building a faction. What he built was a legion purely for war.
Reward 2 was a 45% increase in the conversion rate of active ore in the Doom Fortress. This was tempting, but compared to Reward 3 and Reward 4, Reward 2 wasn't as appealing.
To establish a firm foothold, Reward 3 was a must-pick. Currently, the "Evolution Nest" occupied the second, third, and fourth floors of the Doom Fortress. Su Xiao's main command room was located on the fifth floor, still the topmost level, convenient for overlooking the battlefield during war.
The single-floor area of the fortress was now several times larger than before, allowing the "Evolution Nest," which occupied three entire floors of the fortress, to accommodate 5,000 pig-headed people at a time.
Each batch of pig-headed people transformed into Wild Boar Warriors took 2 hours. By choosing Reward 3, this time would be reduced to 1 hour.
With enough active ore and the ability to purchase sufficient pig-headed people, the "Evolution Nest" could transform 24 batches of pig-headed people per day, totaling 120,000 individuals, yielding 96,000 Wild Boar Warriors and 12,000 Dwarf Pig People (tunnel-digging miners).
Su Xiao chose Reward 3 and Reward 4. Although he couldn't see the specific details, a 5th-level unit was hard to refuse.
[Evolution Nest work efficiency has increased by 50%.]
[Evolution Nest has unlocked a new unit type: Heavy Tank.]
[Heavy Tank]
Unit Level: 5th.
Evolution Prerequisite: Requires one 3rd-level unit, Wild Boar Warrior.
Evolution Success Rate: 100% (This evolution is a growth-type enhancement, not a mutation type. It increases the Wild Boar Warrior's size, vitality, etc., and grants it a powerful biological armor on its body surface until it evolves into a Heavy Tank).
Evolution Cost: 5,000 points of active energy.
Heavy Tank Characteristics: Large size, strong defensive armor, vigorous life, charge, knockback resistance.
Note: After evolving into a Heavy Tank, it can still revert to its Wild Boar Warrior form (with some characteristic differences from other Wild Boar Warriors). This is an elevation in life rank, not a change or mutation in life nature.
The specific details of the Heavy Tank were still unknown. These big fellows were expensive to cultivate, costing 5,000 points of active energy each.
The evolution of a Wild Boar Warrior into a Heavy Tank was more like gaining a powerful form, somewhat similar to a transformation skill. The difference was that this was a switchable form with no time limit or the like.
After completing the fortress's advancement, Su Xiao began to contemplate development issues. The price of one pig-headed person was 2 kilograms of active ore. Adding in the channels set up by Kaisa and the bribes along the way, the cost of a pig-headed person arriving at the Doom Fortress reached 3 kilograms of active ore.
After entering the "Evolution Nest" for transformation, the active energy required per pig-headed person consumed 1 kilogram of active ore.
From purchase to transport to transformation into a Wild Boar Warrior, a single pig-headed person consumed a total of 4 kilograms of active ore.
The probability of a pig-headed person transforming into a Wild Boar Warrior was about 80%. Estimating this way, with the current 2,830 units of active ore, he could produce 56,600 Wild Boar Warriors.
This was just theoretical data. The actual situation would have slight deviations, but not by much.
With resources in hand, he could start producing troops at any time. Before that, Su Xiao still had one thing to do.
Arriving on the second floor, the scene before him was quite spectacular. The black biological structure of the Evolution Nest occupied over 90% of the space here. Thick veins covered the Evolution Nest, occasionally twitching slightly.
As the fortress evolved to its peak, so did the Evolution Nest, but it still had room for development.
The Evolution Nest had a passive characteristic, "Instinct Grant," which was the source of the "Combat Instinct" skill possessed by the Wild Boar Warriors.
Su Xiao now had two choices. He could use transcendent creature genes to give the Evolution Nest other passive characteristics, meaning giving the 3rd-level Wild Boar Warriors more passive skills.
If he gave up on this, Su Xiao could inject insectoid combat unit genes into the Evolution Nest, allowing it to produce 4th-level units.
Simply put, it was a choice between stacking passives on the 3rd-level Wild Boar Warriors or trying to unlock an unknown 4th-level unit type.
Undeniably, the cultivation cost of 4th-level units was higher. With limited resources, trying to form a legion of 4th-level units was a pipe dream.
The total cultivation cost for a 3rd-level unit was 4 kilograms of active ore, while a 5th-level unit, the Heavy Tank, required a 3rd-level unit as a base body plus 5,000 kilograms of active ore.
Su Xiao estimated that the transformation cost for a 4th-level unit would be at least 200 kilograms of active ore each.
The number of 4th-level units wouldn't match the Wild Boar Warriors, and their combat power would be far lower than the Heavy Tanks. From this perspective, stacking passives on the Wild Boar Warriors was better. Perhaps after stacking to a certain level, the 3rd-level Wild Boar Warriors could match 4th-level units in combat power.
Thinking of this, Su Xiao took out a metal box. Opening it, cold air drifted out, revealing numerous blood collection vials, test tubes containing flesh and blood, and scales-covered beast hides. These were Su Xiao's collectibles from the many primordial worlds he had visited.
Molei, who was bored enough to count ants, had somehow appeared diagonally behind Su Xiao, craning her neck to look at the many collectibles on the rack.
"How many big bosses did you kill to get all this?"
Seeing Su Xiao's collection, Molei suddenly understood why he was so strong.
"..."
Su Xiao didn't speak. He looked at a blood collection vial containing a blackish bloodstain. The vial was about the thickness of an index finger, and the blood inside gave off an ominous feeling.
After hesitating, Su Xiao decided not to inject the Evolution Nest with the divine blood of Feather God Hegla. This was ancient god blood. If he wasn't careful, even the Doom Fortress would wither away together.
A faint golden light caught Su Xiao's attention. The light was like the sun. Su Xiao picked up a small vial of golden blood. This wasn't obtained through battle but was the Sun Warrior soul blood gained from sacrificing the [Oath Emblem: White Dragon].
Su Xiao wasn't sure of the Sun Warriors' strength, but he had encountered Sun Braves, who were one tier lower than Sun Warriors. Back then, at the Holy Land Chiriad, he had defeated the final boss Rogsh, but he dared not face more than 30 Sun Braves at once.
These items from the Sun faction generally had characteristics like melee combat, self-healing/recovery, faith in the sun, and fearlessness.
Thinking of this, an inspiration struck. In the previous world, Su Xiao had been within the Sun Church and knew it well.
Moreover, the Holy Land Chiriad, the ruins of the Sun God Clan, was also inclined toward the divine system and faith system.
Factions related to the sun would more or less have some faith characteristics, after all, the sun was above everyone, a "Supreme God" visible by looking up during the day.
The benefits of believing in the sun were too numerous. First, the sun wasn't a divine existence, so there wouldn't be miscellaneous troubles. Besides that, the sun represented light, purification, life, authority, and even freedom.
Currently, the Doom Fortress wasn't a complete mess, but it wasn't much better. Once the war started, the Wild Boar Warriors would mostly obey orders instinctively. Having fighting spirit or the like was impossible.
But if he injected the Sun Warrior's soul blood into the Evolution Nest, allowing the transformed Wild Boar Warriors to gain sun-related abilities, and then branded them with sun symbols or marks...
Finally, let them believe in the sun. This way, on the battlefield, morale and fighting spirit would never be low.
At that point, he could declare war on the enemy in the name of the sun's radiance. The Sun Church had a saying: "Child, your sins are too great to be saved. After we kill you, this small box will be your eternal home."
Not only that, Su Xiao even planned to change the fortress's name. What was the point of calling it Doom Fortress? It was unlucky. From now on, it would be called Sun Fortress.