Chapter 62: The Great Devouring

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[Golden Pupil War, Instance Settlement]
[Loot Settlement as follows: Heart of a Next-Generation Species (Precious)]
[Unique Loot: Hybrid Identity Card (Road to Apotheosis) (Unique) (Severely Damaged)]
[Total Value Combined: 3,000,000 Credits]

With a shift in his vision, Chen Lai returned to the undersea world with its small coral warehouse.
Fushiguro Toji's spirit body appeared as well. This time, he wasn't as relaxed as before; beads of sweat seeped from his forehead, and he gritted his teeth slightly.
"This trip wasn't very easy," he said.
"It wasn't very easy indeed, but the harvest is quite good."
Chen Lai walked over to the coral warehouse and pulled out an identity card printed with his own Dragon King form. The light upon it was extremely dim, presumably due to severe damage.

Looking at the identity card with the [Unique] tag in his hand, Chen Lai finally breathed a sigh of relief.
Originally, he had worried that this identity card would completely disintegrate because the consumption of the Spiritual Word: Candle Dragon was simply too terrifying.
In the historical Tunguska explosion, someone witnessed that high-temperature expansion lasting only 0.6 seconds, with a vaporized human silhouette appearing at the center of the blast... High-risk Spiritual Words come with a cost; releasing Candle Dragon for a mere 0.6 seconds is enough to evaporate an S-grade hybrid.
As for the Candle Dragon released by Chen Lai, it lasted for nearly two seconds. Before his consciousness completely shattered, he returned to the deep-sea warehouse. Upon his return, his dragon body had been burned completely clean, having all served as fuel for the Candle Dragon.

Therefore, the identity card was naturally severely damaged.
So, how could it be repaired? After all, he intended to use the hybrid bloodline as the second-layer foundation of his system construction.
Chen Lai was pondering this problem when Zhang Long's private chat message box slammed directly into his face.
[Reincarnated Isekai Truck: Bro, your Spiritual Word is way too fierce. Where did you get it? Can you get one just by taking a booster shot?]
[Reincarnated Isekai Truck: # (Post Link) Holy crap, a nuke! # (Post Link) Whose Tsar Bomba is this?]
[Reincarnated Isekai Truck: We're all bros here, I'm begging you to tell me how to play with nukes in an instance. I want to set off fireworks too!]
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Zhang Long's private messages were as difficult to process as ever. Perhaps having stayed in the Deep Sea Game for a long time, Chen Lai was now gradually accepting this abstract style of chatting.
[Great Wei Heavenly Dragon: It's not something you just get from taking a shot. My situation is special, so the power of my Spiritual Word is a bit stronger.]
[Reincarnated Isekai Truck: There are tens of thousands of deep-sea players, how come you're the special one!]
[Great Wei Heavenly Dragon: Because I'm kind-hearted... Stop messing around, let me ask you a question. Can unique items be repaired? I want to use it to fill out my system abilities.]
[Reincarnated Isekai Truck: !!! You actually brought out another unique item? Wei Dragon, you're driving me crazy!]

At this moment, on the battlefield of the [Golden Pupil War], Zhang Long was cleaning up the battlefield. This battle had been won in a baffling manner; the commanders of the Rosa army had no idea what had happened, and only the players knew who had caused all of this.
Chen Lai was truly a miraculous deep-sea player. From the very first day he entered an instance, accidents had occurred one after another. Secrets were within easy reach for him, and every instance he entered always yielded some [Unique] items.
Building a good relationship with such a classmate was, in Zhang Long's opinion, quite necessary.
Thinking of this, he specifically found a secluded spot and earnestly answered Chen Lai's question.

[Reincarnated Isekai Truck: Wanting to repair a unique characteristic item brought out from a certain instance is actually very simple. Use rare props produced from the same instance, hand them over to Great Swallow, or give them directly to the Deep Sea Corporation—they can both help you repair it.]
[Great Wei Heavenly Dragon: Great Swallow?]
[Reincarnated Isekai Truck: A deep-sea professor at Dumpling Academy. His ability is rather strange, and nobody knows which instance he got it from, but anyway, it can remove the impurities from instance items, turn them into the most pristine energy of that world, and then repair items of the same origin.]
[Reincarnated Isekai Truck: Many people in our academy have him on their friends list. If you need it, I'll push his contact to you. He needs time to repair items, and you cover all the expenses during the process, but compared to the official price, it's much fairer.]

After reading this, Chen Lai approved of Zhang Long's statement. Civilian-operated, bizarre repair methods being cheaper than official ones somewhat matched some of his "stereotypes."
True masters are among the common people, after all!
Thus, he asked Zhang Long to introduce [Great Swallow] to him, and Zhang Long in the instance said okay.

In the undersea landscape, a flounder suddenly left its school, broke through the water veil, and crashed right in front of Chen Lai.
"...This isn't going to make me eat it just like adding a friend, is it?" Chen Lai found this a bit hard to accept.
However, that wasn't the case. The flounder suddenly and flirtatiously flipped open its belly, displaying a string of fish roe inside. This string of fish roe was as beautiful as pearls; surprisingly, there were no internal organs inside the fish's belly at all.
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Chen Lai didn't move, and the flounder grew anxious. It bounced continuously on the ground, stuffed the pearl-like fish roe into his hand, and then "returned from the dead," swimming away empty and unfettered back into the school of deep-sea fish.
"The planners at the Deep Sea Corporation still have a pretty good mental state." Chen Lai had no words for it as he crushed the pearl fish roe in his hand, finding it as stress-relieving as popping bubble wrap.
The next second, a pitch-black avatar appeared on the chat interface—pitch-black and deep, just like a genuine black hole.

Chen Lai originally intended to greet him proactively, but multiple options popped up directly on the chat interface, letting him choose at will.
[Great Swallow: For fantasy-system repairs, please press 1; for eye-system repairs, please press 2; for system repairs, please press 3; for buff-system repairs, please press 4. For other repairs (especially curse-related items, what the heck), turn left to the official flagship store.]
So, had this already become a customer-service-like business process?
Chen Lai thought for a moment and pressed 3 anyway. For a hybrid, the most important thing after all was system buffs. As for Spiritual Words, goodness knows if they would even respond in the main world!

[Great Swallow: Repair appointment time: currently two people in the queue. You are expected to make an appointment at the Earth Lobby in a week, and then settle the expenses offline.]
Chen Lai was stunned. Was there some trick to settling these expenses? Otherwise, how much better would it be to settle online—why bother meeting offline?
Thinking of this, he hurriedly asked Zhang Long to clear up the situation.
Zhang Long replied that he had never used Great Swallow's repairs either, but everyone said his expense settlement was very interesting, and it wouldn't cost too much money either, so he should just go ahead with peace of mind.

With the guarantee of "not costing much money," Chen Lai let go of his worries slightly. Aside from the hybrid identity card worth a million, he also had a Next-Generation Species Heart worth two million. Any casual sale would yield...
Suddenly, he froze. Damn it, repairing the identity card required "rare same-origin instance items," which meant this Next-Generation Species Heart would mostly be un-salleable. Bringing out all these things meant that if he wanted to strengthen his build, he would still end up completely broke!
"I really shouldn't have interacted too much with Zhou Mingrui; this guy is plagued by poverty, and now I've caught it too."
Chen Lai cursed as he shoved the identity card back into the coral... No matter what, strength was more important than money. Money could be borrowed through strength, and once he had strength, he could enter instances and gain even more power!
With such astonishing wisdom, how could he ever lack money in this lifetime?!
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