"So many fish!" Yang Bo exclaimed. After piloting his mecha for a while, he had stumbled upon a massive school of fish. A dense, dark mass swarmed near the surface of the lake. He didn't recognize the species, having no idea what kind of fish they were.
A quick radar scan revealed over ten thousand of them. With a wicked chuckle, Yang Bo unhitched a blue Shock Wave Bomb from his mecha's chest mount. The explosive, slung onto the mecha's exterior, was roughly the size of a five-hundred-pound aerial bomb back on Earth.
He twisted the mechanical detonator, stepped the mecha back a distance, and hurled it with all his might. Of course, compared to an eight-meter-tall mecha, the bomb was practically a pebble. The Shock Wave Bomb sailed through the air for over five hundred meters before plunging into the water.
BOOM!
In the lake, which was over a dozen meters deep, the ground trembled first. Then, a massive column of water blasted dozens of meters into the sky.
Swimming +1!
A dense stream of information surged through his mind. Back in his room, Yang Bo clearly felt a drastic transformation in his actual body. It was as if an invisible Power was erupting within him, rapidly mutating his entire physical form.
Struck by an agonizing wave of hunger, he hurriedly logged off the game. He immediately plugged himself in to charge while frantically gulping down milk.
Ten minutes later, Yang Bo stared at the battery, which was now under ten percent capacity, and the empty crate of one-liter milk cartons he had just chugged dry. He squeezed his fists, feeling as though he possessed the Power to crush solid steel.
"I need to get back into the game first," Yang Bo thought. He didn't even bother checking his Skills and hurried back online. If his mecha got damaged by some random encounter while he was away, the loss wouldn't be worth the gain.
Back in the game, the lake's surface was densely packed with fish. All of them had gone belly-up, covering an area so vast it was hard to describe. Some had even been completely pulverized by the shockwave, turning the very water of the lake into a murky mess.
"I can wait and see," Yang Bo thought, an idea striking him. "I'll use these dead fish as chum to see if they attract any other creatures."
He activated the radar alert system and then opened his profile to check his Skills.
The most massive change was in his Swimming Skill, which had reached Grandmaster (11,450/100,000).
Another major upgrade was Disguise: Advanced (142/1,000).
Yang Bo scratched his head. Just what kind of animal had he blown up? Was there some sort of camouflaged fish or creature lurking at the bottom of the lake? After half a second of pondering, he gave up; after all, this was an alien planet.
He had also gained a brand-new Skill—Slap: Intermediate (12/100).
Meanwhile, Dynamic Field of View, Flying, and Electric Energy Control had all seen slight increases, likely because there were electric eels in the lake as well.
His location happened to be right where the currents fed into the lake. The heavy stench of blood spread with the flowing water, and soon, Yang Bo spotted one massive fish after another homing in on the feast. Some of them resembled killer whales from Earth, using their powerful tails to swat competing scavengers straight into the air.
"So it's you Karamis," Yang Bo muttered. He had never seen this species before; they looked much smaller than a killer whale and somewhat resembled a Dolphin.
An hour later, Yang Bo checked his radar. It showed that tens of thousands of fish had gathered in the lake, ranging from ten-meter-long leviathans to creatures no bigger than a palm.
"It's just a game, hehe," Yang Bo chuckled. Pulling out a second Shock Wave Bomb, he hurled it far into the distance.
The ground shuddered once more, shaking the mecha itself, and another towering column of water erupted dozens of meters high.
Yang Bo was ready this time. He had purchased a larger, higher-capacity battery that could store up to fifty thousand kilowatt-hours of power, having swapped out his old one. The milk was also on standby.
As a massive burst of Power hit him, his body instantly felt completely hollowed out. Yang Bo scrambled to plug in the charger and began chugging milk like a madman.
It took ten minutes for that draining sensation of emptiness to fade. The battery had even grown hot from the sheer speed of its power discharge. He had burned through twenty-two percent of its capacity. Thankfully, it was a high-quality, name-brand battery.
Yang Bo's eccentric actions left many people utterly bewildered.
First were the staff at the so-called "game base." The moment Yang Bo detonated his first Shock Wave Bomb, the entire incident had been live-streamed by a certain piece of space equipment.
"Is this guy insane?" Inside the base, an observer frowned at the sea of white fish bellies floating on the lake.
"Let's just keep watching," the base administrator replied, equally perplexed.
However, Yang Bo had a track record. Earlier, an Infiltrator had somehow managed to sneak all the way into the base's innermost security perimeter under his watch. Fortunately, they had recovered the wreckage and would soon crack the enemy's secrets.
Also left dumbfounded were the Mutants. To survive, the Mutants needed food, and large-scale Hunting on the surface was unrealistic. Because of this, their primary food source was the aquatic life in the area—at the very least, no one was keeping track of the population growth of the creatures in this lake.
In the underground space, the General also furrowed his brows. Yang Bo's behavior was just too bizarre. Using a Shock Wave Bomb to blow up fish for fun? What was wrong with his brain? Did he just not get to play enough as a kid?
Yang Bo glanced at his Swimming Skill. It was just a little over thirty thousand points away from maxing out at one hundred thousand. The whole reason he was doing this was to see what kind of qualitative change would happen once the Skill hit the cap.
Meanwhile, back in the underground space, a Mutant loudly asked, "General, the scent of blood is even stronger now! Even more fish will be attracted this time. What should we do?"
"Have the Hunting Team disperse the gathering fish," the General ordered after a moment of thought.
"Understood." The subordinate immediately went to relay the command.
The Mutants possessed many unique abilities. The Hunting Team assigned to the lake could operate underwater and emit specific Sound Waves, which could be used to either gather or drive away schools of fish.
Yang Bo felt pretty pleased with himself. The game's official administration still hadn't sent him a warning email, which meant he was definitely in the clear.
"There won't be a next time, though. The most these fish give is the Swimming Skill, but what's the point of that?" he muttered. He didn't fully understand the use of the Skill, which was exactly why he wanted to max it out and see. As for grinding the other minor Skills, he felt it was just a waste of time.
Scanning the radar, he watched a fresh school of fish beginning to close in from a distance. Yang Bo decided to wait, though idling around felt like a waste of time.
In the distant bushes, a bird was hopping around. At first, Yang Bo didn't sense anything wrong with it, but a second later...
"Wait, something's not right," Yang Bo thought, feeling a sudden sense of oddity. "With all the commotion I just made, that bird is less than two hundred meters away. Is this thing practically begging for attention?"
He hadn't planned on paying it any mind, but the bird kept hopping up and down in the bushes, staring right at him. How could he tolerate being mocked like that?
His Rocket Backpack engaged instantly, launching his mecha into the air for a devastating leaping strike!
"Huh!" To his surprise, the moment he jumped, the bird suddenly took flight. Pulling off a sharp U-turn, it actually flew straight toward the spot he had just leaped from.
However, he whipped out his Shield and hurled it in a flash, instantly swatting the bird flat against the ground.
"Gotcha, you little punk!" Yang Bo smirked smugly as his mecha landed.
"Wait, why didn't my Flying Skill level up?" he wondered aloud, feeling somewhat puzzled as he went to retrieve his Shield.
Just then, he thought he heard a strange noise coming from the lake. After picking up the Shield, he checked the bird's corpse and activated the mecha's scanning system. He quickly discovered that the bird's bone density and physical structure were highly abnormal, and its composition contained a variety of unknown materials.
"Could this be a Mutant scout?" Yang Bo muttered to himself, tossing the bird's remains into the mecha's built-in loot compartment.
"What the hell? Where did all my fish go?" Turning his attention back to the lake, Yang Bo was shocked to see that the fish that had been swimming toward his chum spot were now scattering in all directions. "Are they trying to mess with a fisherman on purpose? I spent so much effort setting up that chum!"