Chapter 426 Extra: Hangar Control
Deng Long finally returned to the base Hangar after the EMC crew (Engineering and Maintenance) had managed to pull his Core Unit out of the desert with the aid of multiple quad rotors helicopters and transported it back via air.
Only then did he find the group still in their Combat G suits resting and eating delicious looking Western food from one of the stalls in the Hangar's canteen. They were manned by a penguin chef too! But on closer inspection, it seemed as if that one penguin chef was manning all the stalls in the Hangar's Canteen. (They could see him running from one stall to another to cook the food and very agile at it too.)
"Ah Deng Long, I already ordered for you. Mushroom Chicken Chop Burger…ehh but your fries seem to have been seized by Furi." Se Lang informed him as Furi entered proudly behind him with a packet of fries on his paws and acknowledged the entire group's presence.
"Continue eating. It will be a casual debrief." Furi said as he shamelessly consumed Deng Long's fries. "What are you looking at Smelly?"
"Se Lang told me that packet you are holding belongs to me…?" Deng Long did not speak in an accusing manner in case Se Lang played a prank on him, but Furi who was enjoying his fries did not look pissed at all. Instead, he was delighted that Deng Long mentioned it.
"So? You want them back? Do you prefer to pay for the transport expenses for carrying your Core Unit from the desert and back to Hangar instead?" Furi threatened Deng Long with a lofty stare while the latter looked at him blankly, speechless.
"Then, you should be glad I am just taking these instead of your burger." Furi looked him dead in the eyes while grabbing more fries from the packet to stuff into his mouth.
"Nope, nope. It's my treat." Deng Long replied in an unwilling tone before he sat down with the rest of the group to enjoy his burger before Furi changed his mind. The food that the entire group received were complimentary with the ticket they had paid before entering this particular game.
After the last of the fries vanished into his mouth, Furi started to commence the debrief. At the same time, Mari came in holding a suitcase, and the Pandawans knew it had something to do with the debrief. All of them had their eyes at Furi to give him the attention he needed while munching away their food.
"All of you succeeded in completing the tutorial mission. You are now promoted to… 'Still a Smelly'."
*Cough* "What he meant to say. Every one of you has now reached the Rank of Private as accordance to Star Cross Heavy Industries standards." Mari interjected as she opened the suitcase. Inside were eight formation badge patches with a picture of half a Panda Head and half a robot head. The robot head resembled the Core Units they used.
"From this point on, all of you are official Test Pilots for the Star Cross Heavy Industries!" Furi commanded Shi Hui, who was the nearest person to him to come forward.
"Congrats." Furi shook her hand and slapped his paw on the right side of her shoulder. The Shadowy Swan cultivator gave a little groan at the pain of the slap but noticed that Furi had placed a formation badge patch on it.
"…For reaching the rank of Private. NEXT! " Furi commented and did the same for the rest of them. The other Pandas in the EMC crew and administration staff observed them for a while before continuing to return to their own business in the canteen. After the informal ceremony was done, the Pandawans continued to partake their food as Furi left Mari to explain the rest of the debrief since he had more pressing matters to attend.
"This is the most important part of the debrief, so listen carefully. You all have been rewarded Star Cross Points for the completion of your mission. While Master Jin did once say that less is more, he felt a need for this game station to have its own currencies. Previously, the Pandamonium App wallet only showed the amount of Panda Medals you had acquired, but this had changed." Mari said as she turned the suitcase she was carrying into a virtual console as picture presentation was the easiest to understand.
"We temporarily added Raid Points to retest the market's reaction to it and it returned with positive results. Therefore, we figured this is the right time to introduce currencies to the three major games that we have in WunderPanda. The Pet Card Arena, The Orc's Spinning Top Blades, and Niu Lang's Supa Robot Wars." Mari explained as the rest took their phone out to check the wallet.
As usual, with every new dungeon or service instance, there would be an upgrade to the Pandamonium App. The Pandawans knew the update for this service instance was one of the largest ones due to the update size when they were waiting for the release of WunderPanda instance. (Thank goodness for free and fast wifi in Jin's instances.)
The cultivators noticed the three new currencies, as stated by Mari. Card Points, Spinning Points and Star Cross Points as well as a symbol next to them, which turned out to be a currency converter. For example, converting Panda Medals into a certain number of Star Cross Points. When Bu Dong tried pressing on it, he was brought into a new screen where there was something like a graphical data to show the fluctuations of the amount of conversion.
"It's a bit of a demand and supply kind of thing," Mari informed them, stating that if a lot of people tried to convert Panda Medals into Star Cross Points, the amount of Star Cross Points they get in return would be reduced drastically.
Should the masses, however, do the opposite at such a time, by converting Star Cross Points Points into Panda Medals, they would receive a significantly higher amount of Panda Medals. As if that was not enough, Jin had placed 'measures' to let the cultivators spend more money to obtain more points in the various games but never Panda Medals.
They had to earn those medals as they remained the main currency. Jin cleverly did not implement a method to convert Card Points into Spinning Points, or anything of the sort.If they want other points, they have to buy them or use Panda Medals for their source of conversion (It's all a ploy to earn more money by Jin!!)
"You all have received 10,000 Star Cross Points for completing the objectives. Jing Ru and Deng Long have received an extra 5000 Robot Points for killing the two Core Units." Mari said, and the group immediately chattered among themselves loudly.
"See! I told you they would get rewarded for destroying those two enemy core units!" Se Lang grumbled with a bit of regret in his voice. It was apparent Jia Ying and Bu Dong were also quite unsatisfied with the results.
"Yeah yeah, fine! You win your bet." Yue Wen reluctantly took out a five yuan change and slammed it on Se Lang's hand. Seeing how the commotion interrupted her debriefing, Mari cleared her throat loudly to get the attention of the rest again.
"Now, if you are done chatting, follow me. I will send you to Man Man, the Head of EMC. He will tell you more about how you can customise your Core Units." Mari said, and that immediately made Bu Dong and Deng Long extremely excited. They were the first to stand up to follow Mari and Deng Long brought his food along since there was no much time to eat.
Man Man was directing a few of his crew members at the centre of Hangar when he was interrupted by Mari and the group of newly promoted privates. He sighed momentarily before he thanked Mari for the handover.
"Alright chumps. See that central block of concrete hanging at the top of the hangar? We are going there. AND NO JUMPING!" Man Man shouted before any of them had any wise ideas to jump up to their new destination. They quietly followed Man Man up the elevator reaching the central block, which was dubbed the Hangar Control where the EMC Boss later introduced it as an area for the pilots to redesign their core units.
He booted the computers in front of them via a central terminal and the concrete walls around them retracted upwards, revealing a continuous glass panel that showed the workings of the hangar around them. It gave them a good clear view of their Core Units from Hangar Control as compared to them looking upwards from the ground up.
"The interface for reconstructing your Core Units is simple and intuitive. The AI that you encountered in the Core Unit's cockpit is the same as the one that will assist you in designing your robots." Man Man explained while giving them a short tour of the stuff they have in the Hangar Control. But both Bu Dong and Deng Long had already dashed to their individual work stations and placed their phones as instructed by the terminal workstation.
Instantly, a rotating hologram of their Core Unit was visualised in colour with various options for them to select. Since both of them were sitting side by side, Man Man used them as an example. He asked the rest to gather round and used Bu Dong's terminal as the teaching console.
"You can see here. We have a few parts for you to change into for free. Call it a free service for reaching the rank of Private. There is no way you can win any battles if you just use the Core Unit. Now that you have reached Private rank, the queuing times affect you guys as well. The previous mission was instant for you guys because it was a tutorial." Man Man said as he clicked on a console option and it revealed the parts available for them to choose.
There were only a few parts unlocked, but Man Man told them that there were daily and weekly missions which allowed the cultivators to earn more Star Cross Points as well as a chance to get new parts for free. "Call it part of the reward. You clear a mess for us, we supply a fresh new part for free." Man Man explained.
"Does that mean if my right arm is destroyed, I have to buy a new part again?" Deng Long asked, and Man Man laughed loudly.
"We are not that evil, we will repair the part for you for free, but should you wish to sortie out fast, you will need to either pay us Star Cross Points to expedite the repairs or use an entirely new arm as we repair that old arm." Man Man said as he leaned its body on Bu Dong's chair when he explained the intricacies of the Supa Robot Wars.
"Speaking about sortie, the AI will guide you but standard ammunition would be provided for your missions. Should you wish to purchase nonstandard ammunition like incendiary rounds, there will be cost of that too. I can only say that the higher your rank, there will be discounts for repairs, parts and anything that cost Star Cross Points." Man Man added in his explanation to show that Supa Robot Wars had many hidden mechanics to be discovered.
"Alternatively, you are allowed to sortie without the arm, but you will be impaired offensively. I am not saying you cannot do that, but it is not recommended to do that. And before any of you have that crazy thought, there are no achievements coupled with going out with less than 100%. Unless you want to brag about you being crazy and stupid enough to fight with only one arm, I guess then, by all means. Go fucking ahead." Man Man answered Deng Long and showed them that there were durability levels on each particular part.
"Let's assume that your unit got obliterated by the enemy and you're left with nothing. We can replicate the entire unit again for a fee. Consider it something like your resurrection procedure in your world and it might not be cheap depending on the type of parts you were using. Worst case, we do offer some level of …'accommodations', especially for you Pandawans."
"Can you also use a new Core Unit and start over again instead?" Bu Dong interjected his thoughts aloud and Man Man nodded his head.
"This is not a very fantasy based game like the Pet Card Arena. This is meant for serious gamers, and a certain level of realism is applied to ensure that Newtonian Physics remained relevant. Although here's a tip since you guys are cultivators. You can get out of your cockpit and make a ruckus to destroy the enemy robot. Use that information however you like. It's free of charge." Man Man chuckled with a low voice and let them be for a while.
"I guess this is not my type of game at all." Shi Hui shrugged her shoulders and sadly, Jia Ying nodded in agreement. Yue Han thought it was a lot of fun and something he could get immersed by it but lamented that the cost was immensely prohibitive.
"Ah, cost. Yes. Technically, you can play this game by just spending the ticket price with your Panda medals because you will receive a Gacha box each time you buy a ticket. That Gacha box will give you two parts of various rarity. That means you have a chance to obtain a rare part which will help you." Man Man added.
"The ticket also allows you to play three missions before you need to get another ticket to continue playing. Unless, you wish to get the premium ticket…" Man Man seemed to be whistling when he said that to attract both attention and ire from the entire group.
"And there will be limited event missions like cooperative raids and perhaps even battle royales for this. Of course, those have yet to be implemented in the game. Consider this as version 1.0 " Mari who happened to enter the Hangar Control to hand over the physical license which Bu Dong and Deng Long applied for at the start of the game.
It was a rather sleek looking green metallic card with their rank imprinted as well as the squad they were currently in.
Squad #167.
"Even if you cultivators decide never to play Supa Robot Wars ever again, the Squad number is a way to say thank you for being part of Star Cross Heavy Industries. You all will always be remembered as Squad #167." Mari smiled at them. Out of the blue, Jing Ru decided to get a physical license too, and so did Yue Han.
"I suppose you will be sponsoring some of the game tickets if you want me to carry you." Jing Ru tapped on Bu Dong's shoulder and winked at him. He sighed and smiled gently, which prompted Deng Long to look at him shamelessly.
"Dare to prey on a kid to finance your gaming addictions? You are a police officer, you should be better than that!" Se Lang folded his arms and stared at Deng Long.
"ARGGGH FINE! I guess that means more overtime!" Deng Long sighed as he pressed on a button that caused a series of glass walls to rise up, surrounding his terminal workstation. "Now Please! Excuse me! Let me enjoy my robot making!"
With that being said, Jing Ru and Yue Han joined them at the terminal workstations while the remaining four decided to leave the area and try out the other rides.