Is Spring Coming Again for the Intelligence-Type?

Testing it on himself was out of the question. A man as cautious as Chu Guang would never use himself as a guinea pig. Without a second thought, Chu Guang summoned an Intelligence-type player and casually tossed the gadget Yin Fang had handed him over to the young man. "Put this on and give it a try." Catching the headset, Indebted Big Eye was completely baffled at first, but quickly caught on. Beaming with excitement, he hooked the earpiece over his ear. *A hidden quest!* *And it looks like the kind that rewards gear!* How could he possibly let an opportunity like this pass him by? Once he had the device securely on, he could hardly wait to ask, "Honorable Administrator, what's next? What should I do?" Chu Guang glanced toward Yin Fang. Though rather exasperated by Chu Guang's excessive caution, Yin Fang didn't complain. He turned and walked into the sanatorium, found a flat patch of ground, set the robot down, and flipped the power switch on its back. Dusting off his hands as he stood, Yin Fang made an inviting gesture and explained in what he considered the most concise manner possible. "First, turn on the headset's switch. Next, try to imagine that you are an... er, a four-legged animal. Then, use a strong mental impulse to swing your limbs forward, doing your utmost to project your consciousness onto the machine." Chu Guang: "...?" There were so many things wrong with that instruction that he didn't even know where to begin roasting him. Boss Xia was far more blunt. Hearing that, she burst out laughing, folding her arms as she teased, "Are you telling him to imagine he's a dog?" Yin Fang shrugged, entirely unfazed by the mockery. "Although I installed an adaptive gait routine in the robot, fundamental commands still rely on neural signals. Flailing your limbs mentally is the most convenient shortcut if you can't grasp the trick of pure thought-driven piloting." Xia Yan couldn't resist chiming in. "I still feel like you're overcomplicating things. It'd be way easier to just give me a tablet to steer it." Naturally, she couldn't afford equipment this expensive, but some mercenary groups in Boulder City had the means. While she had never handled one herself, she had seen others operate them, and it looked quite simple. "What do you know?" Yin Fang scoffed with a chuckle. "Once you truly master the knack of using it, the complexity of operations it can execute far exceeds your imagination!" Glancing at the eager player, Chu Guang fell silent for a moment before deciding to put it more tactfully. Straightening his expression, he adopted a grave, solemn look. "Flip the switch on the headset, and feel it with your heart." Indebted Big Eye was taken aback. *Feel it with my heart? What does that even mean?* Still, despite his confusion, he reached up, pressed the toggle on the headset, and clicked the power on. The indicator light flickered slightly, shifting from red to green. Immediately after, an incredible scene unfolded! As if jolted to life, the robot gave a violent twitch and sprang up from the ground. It stamped its four mechanical legs in place, wobbling its blocky head and body from side to side. With his right hand still clutching his ear, Big Eye was utterly dumbfounded, staring wide-eyed at the quadruped robot. "Holy crap! Holy, holy crap! What the hell is this?!" It was a miraculous sensation! It felt as though a portion of his mind had been projected onto a circuit board, which in turn converted electrical signals into neural feedback, creating a 'mirror image' inside his brain! He could perceive the robot's physical presence—he could even feel the rotation of its motors. Yet this perception was not based on touch, sight, or any conventional sensory input; it was something far closer to raw intuition! Gradually, he began to get the hang of controlling the machine, and the quadruped robot, which had been flailing about erratically, steadily settled down. Indebted Big Eye simply closed his eyes, keeping the Administrator's 'guidance' firmly in mind as he attuned himself to this unprecedented sixth sense. As he began to understand the feeling, the quadruped robot seemed to turn into his own arm, becoming flesh and blood of his very own body! The laser sensors distributed across the robot—the same type built into the VM—emitted intermittent pulses at specific frequencies to continuously map the surrounding space within a five-meter radius. It scanned everything—terrain, doors, windows, obstacles, and cover—into a three-dimensional wireframe mesh. He could see that map vividly in his mind! Though not perceived through his eyes, it was even sharper and more precise than actual sight! Standing aside with folded arms, Yin Fang watched the player grow steadily accustomed to the controls, an unmistakable look of intrigue dawning in his eyes. "Huh? This fellow's nervous system is remarkably active." "To be honest, this exceeded my expectations. I figured he'd have to strain with every ounce of strength just to lift one mechanical leg." Yet in less than a minute, this guy had completely mastered the trick of operating a neural interface device! It was simply incredible! So incredible, in fact, that Yin Fang found it bordering on absurd. Even in pre-war society, a talent like this would be considered a genius among geniuses! Back at the Academy, there would undoubtedly be senior figures eager to take him in as an apprentice, grooming him to become an F-rank researcher or prospector. Chu Guang smiled faintly, thinking to himself that he had at least a dozen more players just like him. Pausing briefly, he issued an order. "Try maneuvering the robot into the room." Chu Guang needed to know how effectively the robot could operate beyond line of sight. "On it!" He had been itching to try that anyway. Upon receiving the command, the eyes-closed Indebted Big Eye immediately directed the quadruped robot. With rapid pitter-patters of its four legs, it nimbly darted into the adjacent room, deftly hopped over debris on the floor, and completed a full scan of the interior. The scanned imagery would synchronize to the player's VM and be shared with nearby teammates. If within the shelter's signal coverage zone, it could even be uploaded to the shelter's server to be shared with all other players. After two minutes of testing, Chu Guang gave his internal verdict. *This thing is a god-tier scouting tool!* *It'd be even more perfect if we welded an LD-47 on top!* "That's enough. Tell him to stop. If this goes on, I'm worried his brain won't take it. Any neural connection device puts a load on the nervous system, especially external interfaces," Yin Fang said, turning to Chu Guang with a warning. Chu Guang asked, "What's the limit?" "The limit?" Yin Fang paused, hesitating for a moment before replying, "I don't recommend using it for more than sixty seconds. As for the exact limit... I can't say for sure. It varies from person to person. Some people are born with highly active nervous systems and can endure longer, but if someone has congenital neural defects, they might not even last sixty seconds." Chu Guang checked Indebted Big Eye's status panel. He was LV7, on the Intelligence sequence, with an attribute value of 10 points. According to statistical observation, across the nine level-ups from LV0 to LV9, stat distributions typically allocated five to six points to the primary attribute and three to four points across the others. Generally, once past LV6, a player's primary attribute would break past 10. This player happened to have exactly 10 points in Intelligence, making him an ideal benchmark. Chu Guang wanted to see where his breaking point lay. "No matter. I want to see how long he can hold out." Yin Fang stared at Chu Guang in astonishment, looking at him as if he were a madman. Xia Yan, on the other hand, felt nothing out of the ordinary; she had long grown used to it. Having dealt with corpses so frequently, she had picked up on subtle clues that these players might be clones or something similar. But so what if they were? Clones were hardly breaking news in the wasteland. To this day, she still believed a certain street rumor—that somewhere in the wasteland existed technology capable of synthesizing a fully formed human in a single day, and that such technology was likely hidden right inside tiny Boulder City. Otherwise, there was simply no way to explain why so many people died in the slums every year, yet the slums never ran out of people. It was far too bizarre! Regardless of what the two of them thought, Chu Guang remained perfectly calm. Not only did he know all the secrets of these players, but he also knew they felt no pain. Theoretically, their tolerance for harm was far greater than that of ordinary wastelanders. Sure enough, the young player did not let him down. He lasted a full ten minutes before a wave of dizziness began pounding against his brain. Noticing his dazed state, Chu Guang immediately ordered him to switch off the headset and sever the link with the small robot. Upon losing the connection, the quadruped robot did not power down right away. Instead, it entered standby mode, folding its fragile mechanical legs inward according to preset protocols and disguising itself as an ordinary, blocky lump of metal—though any discerning eye could tell it was anything but simple. "My head is spinning a bit, Administrator, sir," Indebted Big Eye said, shaking his head. Fearing he had failed the quest, he looked nervously at Chu Guang. "...I think I could hold out a little longer. Could I try one more time?" Chu Guang gave him an encouraging look. "No need. You've already done exceptionally well. Take a rest for now." "Understood." The player nodded. He truly needed a breather. Just a moment ago, he had actually lost connection and gotten kicked from the game. If he hadn't logged back in quickly enough, he would have collapsed flat on the floor by now. "Unbelievable... Ten minutes!" Yin Fang wore a look of utter disbelief. Staring at Chu Guang in shock, he couldn't help asking, "Has his pain reception been surgically severed?" When a neural link became overloaded, the initial symptom was a headache as the brain sounded alarms, followed by unbearable agony, and finally mental confusion or even a coma. Almost no one could push through to the very end; people usually ripped the headset off when the pain became intolerable. Yet that fellow had skipped the first two stages entirely! To be frank, Yin Fang didn't consider this a good thing. Losing the sensation of pain meant losing the body's warning system. Chu Guang, however, was thinking along an entirely different line. Evidently, the higher a player's Intelligence attribute, the better their control over neural interface devices and the longer they could sustain the link. In that case... Setting the minimum stat requirement for this equipment at 10 points of Intelligence seemed quite reasonable. Stroking his chin, Chu Guang offered a perfunctory answer to Yin Fang's question. "It's possible. But my guess is that he isn't incapable of feeling pain; rather, the transmission of pain signals to his consciousness is blocked, so he simply doesn't perceive the 'hurt'... Let's set that topic aside for now, though." Pausing, Chu Guang tore his gaze away from Big Eye, who was steadying himself against the wall while shaking his head, and looked back at Yin Fang. "The operating duration on this thing is a bit concerning. What can you accomplish in ten minutes? Is there any way to extend it?" Yin Fang said exasperatedly, "You get ten minutes of pseudo-sentient AI, and you're still not satisfied?" "Sentient AI?" "Singularity technology. It's complicated to explain... In short, the original purpose of a neural interface was never for you to keep it active non-stop. It's meant for critical moments, allowing a human operator to bypass the AI and execute maneuvers or judgments that artificial intelligence cannot manage." Pausing to look down at the robot on the ground, Yin Fang continued, "This is merely a prototype. Later on, I'll program a practical, rudimentary AI for it so it can recognize a few simple commands—such as retracing its path, holding position on standby, or following a target when the neural link drops. Oh, and I also plan to mount a camera on it to pair with the laser mapping." Hearing that, Chu Guang's interest was piqued. "You know how to make cameras?" Yin Fang gave him a strange look. "Of course. Is that supposed to be hard? Security cameras can be salvaged from plenty of pre-war facilities, in all sorts of models and resolutions. Some are even still functioning after two centuries... Most are broken, granted, but you just need to scrounge some spare parts to repair them. It's hardly a chore." Communication chips were easy to handle as well. The VM was essentially a microcomputer, its graphene circuit boards packed with integrated components, many of which could be repurposed with slight modifications. In fact, the processor and laser mapping system on this quadruped robot had been scavenged directly from a VM. Chu Guang stared blankly at him for several seconds before asking, "It's that simple?" Yin Fang scratched the back of his head. "Well, it requires a bit of basic knowledge, but nothing overly profound. The Academy issues every prospector a 1.2-gigabyte *Wasteland Survival Guide*. It uses diagrams and text to catalog accessible, reusable scrap across the wasteland, as well as intermediate modification know-how—like crafting basic weapons, explosives, fuels, and emergency medicines. Working with optical elements and graphene circuit boards is slightly more advanced and requires basic tools, but for any prospector E-rank or above, it's still no trouble at all." Chu Guang: "..." *Motherfucker!* *Why the hell didn't you mention you had something this good earlier?!* It wasn't as though Chu Guang hadn't thought about recovering cameras from places like the bank building; he had even tasked knowledgeable players with bringing back a couple for study. But once they cracked them open, everyone had been left completely baffled. Pre-war electronic devices had an exceptionally high adoption rate of carbon-based chips, largely replacing traditional silicon semiconductors. Moreover, those cameras used neither conventional CMOS sensors nor CCD elements. Plenty of players on the forums had discussed the problem and attempted repairs, only to conclude that the developers had either come up with an outlandish fictional design or simply written nonsense when they ran out of ideas. After all, the technological gap was right there—more than a century of difference, potentially encompassing an entire technological explosion. That was far beyond what anyone could decipher just by cracking open two salvaged parts. In the end, only the coated lenses from those cameras could be salvaged, which was how many of the optical sights in the outpost's weapons shop had been made. Having once been a mercenary, Xia Yan was remarkably skilled at making such sights, her proficiency on par with Yin Fang's expertise in analyzing pre-war archival data. Staring eagerly at Dr. Yin Fang, Chu Guang pressed on. "That skill book... I mean, do you have that *Wasteland Survival Guide* on you?" Yin Fang blinked, then nodded. "That thing? I haven't touched it since I made D-rank. I probably left it at home... But if you need it, I could compile parts of it from memory for you, though it might take some time." Chu Guang's eyes lit up. "No problem at all! I can wait!" A skill book that granted Scavenging +3—no, quite possibly +5! How could he ever let a treasure like that slip away?! Not only could the players use it as a reference, but his NPCs could also study it as a textbook. Even if they couldn't grasp the finer nuances, it didn't matter; at the very least, they would learn what junk was valuable on the wasteland and what it could be used for once hauled back. That alone was worth every bit of effort! Standing to the side, the young player watched the conversation between the Administrator and Dr. Yin Fang with an expression of total bewilderment. Without subtitles, he hadn't understood a single bit of this extended cutscene. *Wait, so did I clear the quest or what?* Unable to hold back any longer, Indebted Big Eye cleared his throat, preparing to ask. Just then, the two NPCs appeared to reach an agreement. Dr. Yin Fang picked up the robot, while the Administrator turned to face him with a solemn expression. "Thank you for your assistance!" "Thanks to your help, we now have a brand-new understanding of neural interface equipment. A new batch of gear will be hitting the shop shelves in the near future." "Your quest reward has been delivered to your VM. Have a wonderful day!" Indebted Big Eye: "???" *Wait.* *That's it?!* Seeing the Administrator take back the headset and turn to leave, Indebted Big Eye panicked. A flash of inspiration struck him, and he blurted out desperately, "Administrator, sir! I believe this equipment has a critical design flaw!" Hearing that, the Administrator indeed halted his steps, turning back to give him a quizzical look. "What design flaw?" Indebted Big Eye blurted out at once, "Disconnections! No, I mean dizziness! While operating that robot earlier, I suddenly felt an intense wave of dizziness—I nearly passed out!" *Pfft.* *I thought it was something serious.* Chu Guang smiled and said to the earnest player, "All neural interface equipment is like that. Extended use places a certain degree of strain on the brain, let alone an unfinished prototype—" "I volunteer to be the tester for this new equipment!" Before Chu Guang could finish, the young player declared with utter solemnity, "Honorable Administrator, as a member of Shelter 404, I am fully prepared to sacrifice myself for our cause! For the great revival of the Human Alliance, please grant me permission to contribute to the research and development of the shelter army's armaments!" Looking at the burning desire written across the young player's face, Chu Guang was briefly taken aback before instantly seeing through his scheme. *Well, well.* *All that grand buildup just to freeload god-tier gear!* Still... It wasn't out of the question. Chu Guang was also quite curious to see how that little fellow in Yin Fang's arms would perform on the battlefield. Since someone was volunteering to be a guinea pig, it saved him the trouble of posting a dedicated quest for it. After a moment's contemplation, Chu Guang turned to Yin Fang. "Do you need an equipment tester?"