The Black Trader Nepal sent a man to fetch the items Li Qingyu needed, and while he waited, Li decided to exchange a few words with him:
"Do you buy lasguns?"
Nepal, wiping some metal scrap with a rag, froze for a moment at the word "lasgun." Then he turned.
"You got a laser rifle?"
Li Qingyu stayed silent, drilling him with his gaze.
The trader hesitated, then shook his head.
"No deal. Lasguns have a gene-code on them—no one but the owner can use them."
"Just as I thought, that damned gene-code," Li Qingyu thought. "So the lasgun I worked so hard to get is just a useless chunk of metal."
"No way to crack it?"
"There is!"
Nepal nodded.
"You can find a decoder and brute-force it. But a lasgun is advanced tech—there may be a Machine Spirit living in it. A crude hack will enrage the spirit, so you'll need sacred oils and incense to appease it. Otherwise the power pack will explode after a couple of shots."
"Where do I get those?" Li Qingyu asked.
"No idea about a decoder—something like that probably only exists among the lords of the Upper Hive. As for the oil and incense—you need to get a Mid-Hive ID card, find a church, and make a donation. Priests of the Ecclesiarchy will give you what you need."
Li Qingyu filed that away. Meanwhile, Nepal's lackey hauled in the order.
He slung the stuffed rucksack over his shoulders, hefted the promethium power cell the size of a car battery, and, nodding farewell to Nepal, headed for the exit.
Watching his back, one of the goons quietly asked:
"Boss, maybe we...?"
Nepal shot the underling a glare.
"Get out of my sight, you half-wit!"
He was a black trader, which meant scamming was part of the profession. But in this business you needed instinct. A big client like Li Qingyu—capable of bringing in military rifles—had to be pampered.
His Fertilizer gang often clashed with their neighbors—the Chemical Dogs. The gang boss had tasked him with getting thirty reliable guns within a month. Looked like a big throwdown was coming.
People like Li Qingyu—who had the nerve to climb to the Surface and scavenge on battlefields—were exactly who a trader like him lived off.
He turned to a lackey.
"Go tell the gate guards not to lay a hand on my guest. Whoever disobeys—I'll personally send them to the fertilizer vats."
Li Qingyu walked back under the load. Entering the steel corridor, he nodded to the two guards.
He wasn't afraid of bandit chaos in the Underhive. "Decide to screw me over? Fine. Daddy respawns infinitely. I'll haunt you every day, die and come back, smash you again, haul guns from the Surface and return to wipe you out to the last man!"
Luckily, he'd traded with the Fertilizer gang several times already without trouble. The trader seemed like a man who understood how things worked.
In the dark corridor, Li Qingyu switched on his torch. The echo of his heavy steps boomed through the tunnel.
The promethium power cell was heavy—over thirty kilograms, digging painfully into his shoulder. Add twenty kilos of metal in the rucksack—fifty kilograms total. A yellow dumbbell icon immediately appeared in the lower-left corner of his vision: "Overloaded, speed reduced by 30%."
Good that it wasn't a red overload, or he wouldn't have moved at all.
After running back to the Hideout, Li Qingyu opened the massive iron door, stepped inside, and locked it, cutting off the outside world with all its problems.
Dropping the materials, he began arranging his nest.
First, he set the promethium power cell in the corner. Hideout power supply: Level 0 → Level 1.
Power source: Promethium power cell, durability 54%.
Only half durability. "What a shark—selling nothing but junk."
But a promethium power cell was a powerful thing. This was 41st-millennium tech: stick one of these into a 3k Era electric cart and it would go five thousand kilometers without recharging!
Power was settled. He began running lights: first he laid the cables, then connected the bulbs, hammering nails into gaps in the ceramite walls.
When the installation was finished, he flipped a switch. With a dry click, the dark room instantly filled with light.
Lighting: Level 0 → Level 1.
Li Qingyu was extremely satisfied. Finally, it was bright.
Then he looked to the workbench, dumped all remaining parts onto it, connected the power, and after some clanking and rattling the System displayed: "Workbench: Level 1 → Level 2."
The main benefit of Level 2 was the angle grinder. With it, serial numbers could be removed efficiently, and with a different disc it could cut metal.
With a better tool in hand, he got to work at once. He ground off the markings from the lasgun and the remaining three autoguns, then removed the Imperial Aquila symbols from the vest and helmet. It took less than ten minutes.
When he finished, Li Qingyu started doing push-ups, squats, and shuttle runs in place, training his body.
His physical skills were inherited from a Tarkov-style PMC System and were divided into:
Strength 11, Endurance 12, Vitality 10.
Resistance to hunger 10, thirst 10, viruses 10, radiation 10, chemical toxins 10, Warp exposure 10, psyker influence 10.
Weapon proficiency 10, psyker skills 10, throwing 10, hand-to-hand combat 10, ground vehicles 10, atmospheric aircraft 10, voidcraft 10, warships 10, power armour 10.
After a set of exercises, Li Qingyu completely exhausted his energy reserve and panted heavily, but the three main physical stats didn't even budge.
Physical training was like that—stats leveled painfully slowly, needing long practice.
Li Qingyu ate crackers, washed them down with water, restoring his strength, and crashed into sleep. He slept until the sky outside (if he could have seen it) began to darken. He was planning a raid. A night raid.
What weapons and armour to take?
What armour? Screw armour! Of course—"a knife run"! Being a loot-goblin hoarder was an inseparable part of gameplay in the "Loot-Kill-Extract" genre!
Li Qingyu took a medium hiking rucksack, a dagger, a canteen of water, and four packs of hardtack. Ready to go.
But as soon as he stepped outside, he as usual checked his contacts in the System interface. Exclamation marks hovered over both fixers' heads. Quests were available.
To accept a quest, you had to approach the fixer in person. He didn't know where to find Rudolf, but Nepal sat at the Fertilizer gang base.
He turned right, toward the gang's territory, deciding to take a quest before the raid.
At the end of the corridor, the same two thugs were on duty.
"Hold it... Oh, it's you. Go on, just no stupid tricks."
Recognizing Li Qingyu and remembering the order from above, they let him through without questions.
Li Qingyu headed to Nepal's stall. On the way, he noticed a large gathering of armed gangsters. Something serious seemed to be brewing.
Reaching the stall, he found the trader rummaging through a pile of trash—picking parts to assemble weapons.
Seeing Li Qingyu, Nepal pulled a fake smile across his grim face:
"Oh, the Emperor is witness—who has sent me my good guest at such a critical moment!"
"A critical moment?" Li Qingyu asked doubtfully.
"Alas," Nepal sighed. "My boys found a chemical reactor among construction debris in the Underhive. We were going to take control of that area and put the reactor into fertilizer production.
But the neighbors Chemical Dogs set their sights on it too. If so—let's see whose fist is stronger!
My good friend, get me ten reliable guns. I'll not only buy them at market price, I'll throw in five thousand fertilizer tokens on top. And of course—my friendship as well. Deal?"
A System notification chimed in Li Qingyu's head.
Ding! New quest!
Sell 10 autoguns or military pistols to the Black Trader.
Reward: 5000 fertilizer tokens, Reputation with the Trader: Level 0 → Level 1.