Chapter 205: Exploring the Shoreline

“These guys are smart!” Yang Bo, on his way back to base, saw two mechas carrying shockwave bombs, both hurriedly passing by. They briefly exchanged glances.

On the way back, Yang Bo attracted the attention of many game players. After all, the mutated beasts he caught were worth several million game currency.

Soon after, his mecha was photographed, and the picture was posted on the forum, claiming that his mecha had discovered a game bug.

Everyone knew how hard it was to capture a live mutated beast in this game. Even some teams of seven or eight people couldn’t catch just one, yet his mecha had captured four.

From the perspective of other players, if they couldn’t do it and someone else did, then it was a bug.

Actually, the officials didn’t pay much attention to the forum because they were more focused on the remote control data from the players.

As long as the remote control data was fine, and since the ‘game’ was real, how could there be bugs? Yang Bo turned in the quest and felt pleased earning 4 million credits.

“If I sell all the bombs I have, I’d make billions.”

“So, in the past two weeks, I’ve basically made over a billion a month.”

“I need to think of another way to trade. If the military finds out about this bug, as soon as my mecha interacts with a shockwave bomb, it could trigger an alarm.”

“There’s another way. I’ll let Old Third Huang handle the trade without my mecha showing up. Iron Bull will deliver the bombs, and Old Third Huang will send back the mutated beasts in return.” Yang Bo had already thought of a plan. The tens of thousands of shockwave bombs wouldn’t reappear.

In the future, there would just be more mutated beasts.

The weather was clear, but when Yang Bo opened his door, he saw that his lawn, which once looked like a grassland, was now a mess.

The situation wasn’t too bad at his place. He could see in the distance that numerous automatic robots were cleaning up trash along the coastline, with some trash piles exceeding ten meters high.

“Gotta move quickly!” Along the coastline, there were many animal corpses, some still faintly breathing. Yang Bo decided to check if any of them were mutated animals.

First, he looked at the trash on his lawn, which included some sea plants resembling cables. These plants were over a hundred meters long, with varying thicknesses, the thickest being 20 centimeters in diameter.

There were also round, oval, flat ones, and some that looked like strings of grapes, similar to seaweed.

The animals were a mixed bunch, but they were all dead on his lawn, and some were sticky and gross, things he couldn’t identify.

Yang Bo reported to the government, and in less than half a minute, a drone arrived and scanned the area he needed to clean.

“20,000 credits!” Because the amount of trash was quite a lot, especially with several ponds near Yang Bo’s house being filled with junk.

The lawn hadn’t been reorganized because there was no point during the windy season.

Yang Bo came to his spot near the coastline, where there was also a lot of trash.

Yang Bo was mostly interested in any living animals, scanning around to see if any had energy.

In theory, everything washed up on this part of the coastline, as long as it wasn’t a protected animal or plant, could be taken home by Yang Bo.

The government didn’t recommend cleaning up these areas because the creatures washed ashore would feed other animals.

But Yang Bo didn’t want to waste money.

Looking at the half-dead things on the shoreline, Yang Bo resisted the urge to kill them to see what skills they’d give.

There were some beautifully colored fish, some very ugly ones, and some that looked like slugs.

“Huh?” Yang Bo walked about one-third of his private coastline and found a small fist-sized sea creature, faintly glowing with energy.

This thing looked strange, somewhat like a tadpole from Earth, but covered in scales, with a flat tail, and four sharp fangs on its mouth, making him want to stomp it flat.

It was gasping for air, thrown onto the beach by the waves, with the sun beating down on it. It didn’t look like it had long to live.

No matter how powerful a mutated animal is, it still can’t fight nature.

For instance, even the strongest sea creatures would become a lump of rotten meat if thrown into the desert.

Conversely, land creatures tossed into the sea wouldn’t survive either.

“The energy wave is too weak.” Yang Bo scanned the creature with his wristwatch. It wasn’t a protected animal, but because it was so ugly, he didn’t want to keep it. It was also too small, even if used for experiments it wouldn’t yield much blood.

He stomped it dead instantly.

Swimming +2!

As expected, it gave that skill. But Yang Bo now confirmed it was indeed a mutated animal.

He threw its corpse back into the sea, and in seconds, a fish swallowed it whole.

Once a mutated animal dies, its body becomes a deadly attraction for other creatures.

While searching between the rocks for more mutated animals along the shore,

———————————————

In the game, the players tracking Yang Bo successfully conducted a transaction with the Mutants, despite some unexpected communication issues.

These guys were smart and built a Ninth-Generation Mech just like Yang Bo’s.

The Mutants didn’t expect the traders to show up again, so they used some mutated animals that Yang Bo had rejected for the trade.

What Yang Bo didn’t want was still good loot in the eyes of the players, who exchanged it all for shockwave bombs.

Even within each team, every player had their own ideas.

After the trade was successful, people were secretly selling the game bug at high prices.

Players couldn’t keep this secret like Yang Bo did.

As a result, the sales of shockwave bombs skyrocketed. Although they weren’t expensive in the game, not many players used them.

Before, even though Yang Bo purchased thousands of bombs a day, his overall share in the game wasn’t that large.

Now with more players, even if each person only bought 100, the surge in data was immediately reflected on the game’s backend.

In the remote control department of the military, the staff noticed the alert and frowned.

Quickly, they checked and found that over 20,000 shockwave bombs had been sold today.

They hurriedly checked the data. After a brief inspection, nothing was wrong; all of them were normal purchases.

But the number of shockwave bombs was clearly abnormal.

The department supervisor received the information, realizing something was off, and used his authority to dig deeper.

That’s when the problem was identified: one account had bought over 50,000 bombs in half a month.

Other accounts had also bought 100, 1,000, or 5,000 bombs, and the numbers were still growing.

“Colonel, take a look at this.” The supervisor, hearing a nearby staff member’s call, walked over to check.

“The number of mutated animals submitted from Base 16 is fluctuating wildly.” The staff member immediately pulled up the transaction data from various bases. The data from Base 16 was clearly irregular.

A massive fluctuation was shown in the data.

The Colonel studied the data carefully, then checked the specific transactions involving mutated animals at Base 16.

“So many live ones?” The Colonel instantly realized something was wrong.

“Colonel, someone on the forum revealed that you can use shockwave bombs to trade mutated animals with the Mutants.” At that moment, another staff member called out.

Upon hearing this, the Colonel slammed the table. “Damn it!”

The Colonel immediately reported the situation to his superiors.

The military quickly responded, having the remote control department block the Mutants and virtualize all shockwave bombs. This meant that when a player throws a shockwave bomb, nothing is actually released.

The feedback to the player is just special effects; if someone was there watching, they’d only see the mecha act as if it threw something, but nothing would happen.

“These guys can’t just play the game normally for once!” The Colonel found the situation problematic. The entire burden fell on the remote control department, including virtualizing the bombs and handling the special effects, greatly increasing their workload.

Players soon noticed that the Mutants they had seen earlier no longer appeared when making trades.

This was all thanks to the remote control department. As long as you had a shockwave bomb equipped, you wouldn’t see the Mutants in your player view again.

On Green Demon Planet, after making numerous trades with players, the Mutants discovered that mechas no longer carried shockwave bombs.

This was the virtualized game: while players saw their mecha equipped with shockwave bombs, the remote-controlled mecha carried nothing.

“What’s this thing?” Yang Bo spotted something strange on his beach.

It was nearly a meter long, flat, and oval, resembling seaweed. When he touched it, it felt just like kelp.

The thing emitted a faint glow of energy. Yang Bo could now see energy glows with his eyes.

He flipped it over and found it weighed more than 100 kilograms.

“Should I open it?”

“But if I open it now, will someone notice?”

“What if there’s something valuable inside?” Thinking this, Yang Bo summoned his Flying Car with his wristwatch.

It wasn’t that Yang Bo didn’t want to carry it himself, but he feared there might be danger. The Flying Car arrived, and Yang Bo placed the strange object in the trunk.

He then drove the vehicle along the coastline, patrolling back and forth, but found nothing else with energy.

Mutated animals were naturally stronger than regular creatures, so there was less chance of them being washed ashore.

“Signs of life?” Yang Bo placed the strange object in his underground bunker and used a device to scan it. It showed signs of life inside.

He didn’t dare use his superpower to inspect it recklessly. Who knew what it was and whether it posed a danger?

“Could it be an egg, or some unknown creature parasitizing the kelp?” Yang Bo couldn’t be certain.

He had originally planned to cut it open right away, but now he decided to observe it for a while longer.

He stored the object in a separate room, immersed in sea water, keeping the temperature and other conditions optimal.

When Yang Bo came back up, he saw two or three dozen devices cleaning his lawn. One type of smart device, equipped with more than 20 mechanical arms, quickly moved around, tossing all the trash into containers.

In just a few minutes, the lawn was littered with huge garbage bags. Other devices then swiftly picked up the bags, and special smart flying equipment carried them away.

Within half an hour, Yang Bo’s massive lawn was completely cleaned.

Cleaning the ponds was even easier. The smart devices sucked up water while simultaneously collecting all the trash, even grinding up larger pieces on the spot.

The ponds weren’t refilled because there was a forecast for storms in five days.

“Had I known, I wouldn’t have moved to the seaside!” Yang Bo felt frustrated about the tens of thousands of credits it cost each time. No wonder the population on this planet couldn’t grow. With these extra expenses, how many times would this happen in half a year?

Fat Boss sent a message asking if Yang Bo would be going to work tomorrow. Yang Bo confirmed that he would.

“Good for nothing!” Yang Bo muttered as he logged into the game and saw people discussing the game bug on the forum, shaking his head.

“Don’t they understand the concept of quietly getting rich?”

“I’ll check to see if the game officials have that little shame.” Yang Bo entered the game, bringing two shockwave bombs, which he placed in his mecha’s storage compartment.

He headed to the wilderness, found a lake, and dropped the bombs into it.

“Figures they’re that shameless.” Yang Bo saw the fish surface but received no feedback information, confirming the officials had taken action.

His mecha leaped up and landed, stomping two rats to death.

Dynamic Vision +1!

This time, he gained two points in Dynamic Vision. Yang Bo had a basic understanding now.

“Everything related to shockwave bombs is now just special effects.” Yang Bo glanced at the shockwave bomb in his mecha’s hand. The control department probably didn’t even register it.

The next day, Yang Bo arrived at the company and saw that it wasn’t just Fat Boss this time. There was a blonde receptionist and a black-haired administrative assistant, both tall, sweet-looking, and with beautiful, fair skin.

“Wonder if they’re men transformed?” Yang Bo had a sudden disgusting thought.

He also noticed the blonde looked like she was in Camouflage.

“Could these be some of Fat Boss’s enemies?” Yang Bo knew that Fatty’s line of work had gained many enemies, both competitors and rivals.

“Yang Bo, how’s the material purification experiment going?” Fat Boss called him into the office as soon as he arrived, asking directly.

“Boss, I failed once but succeeded twice.” Yang Bo placed the box on Fat Boss’s desk.