Chapter 74: Perfect Skill, Terrible Timing

The settlement interface opened.

[Current Contribution Points: 84,500.]

[Rank 1 Rewards Claimed: 1/2.]

[Free Reward Regeneration: 1/1.] ℯℯ𝑙.

The 9,500 Contribution Points left over from the first Convergence, plus the 75,000 he had earned this time, brought his total to 84,500.

Lin Yan stared at the number, feeling strangely dazed for a moment.

Without even realizing it, he had already fought his way through more than a few life-threatening situations. He had been injured, bled plenty, and now half a hand was gone. The price he had paid was anything but small.

And yet, when he actually thought about it, he didn’t regret any of it.

If anything, he found himself enjoying that feeling of making it through one dangerous situation after another.

Lin Yan instinctively raised his left hand to scratch his head. His arm moved before he remembered that he couldn’t reach it anymore.

"...Am I a masochist?"

He decided not to think any further about that.

The three unclaimed rewards were still listed beneath the settlement interface.

[E-Grade Passive Skill: Soul Bastion]

[Forms a protective barrier around the soul, capable of resisting a certain degree of soul attacks, erosion, possession, and interference from foreign wills.]

[The barrier will recover on its own after taking damage. If an attack exceeds its defensive threshold, the barrier will temporarily shatter and reform after a period of time.]

This one was basically off the table.

The Trait Zeta had dropped was already the superior version.

[Soul Cohesion III — Blue]

[Greatly increases the cohesion, strength, and stability of the soul.]

[Provides extremely high resistance to soul erosion, possession, forced fusion, mental contamination, and interference from foreign souls.]

[After leaving the physical body, the soul will not immediately dissipate and can continue to exist independently for a limited period of time.]

The second reward was a weapon-related resource.

[E-Grade Growth Resource: Origin Armament Embryo]

[May be fused with one E-Grade or lower weapon.]

[After fusion, the weapon will become soul-bound to its user and gain self-repair, material absorption, growth, and adaptive capabilities.]

[The weapon may adjust its size, weight, and basic structure according to changes in the user’s body, and may retain a limited number of stable forms.]

After the last few battles, Lin Yan had already been thinking about getting himself a proper weapon.

The Origin Armament Embryo fit that need perfectly.

Soul-binding, self-repair, growth, and the ability to change along with his body. He wouldn’t have to keep replacing his weapon every time he got stronger.

It was already tempting enough, but compared to the final reward, it still wasn’t quite enough to make him commit on the spot.

[E-Grade Technological Artifact: Aegis-7 Adaptive Combat Suit — Lite]

[Manufacturer: Aegis Dynamics.]

[Product Series: Seventh-Generation Aegis Adaptive Infantry System.]

[Variant: Lite.]

[Manufactured by Aegis Dynamics—survival is a systems problem.]

[The suit is constructed from reconfigurable nanocomposite materials and can automatically adjust its size, structure, and coverage according to changes in the user’s body.]

[When struck, the affected area will automatically restructure itself, dynamically shifting between hardness, toughness, and impact absorption.]

[Possesses limited self-repair capabilities. Minor damage can be repaired using internal reserve materials, while severe structural damage requires additional materials.]

[The Lite variant does not include powered assistance, active camouflage, integrated weapon systems, full environmental sealing, or advanced tactical sensor modules.]

This was nothing like the obviously questionable Real Man Co. Even the name alone made Aegis Dynamics sound like a legitimate defense contractor.

Lin Yan put it at the top of his list.

Just from the description, it was obvious how advanced the technology behind this thing was. And that was exactly why he hesitated—if it was really this good, why was it only E-Grade?

His instincts told him there had to be a catch.

Especially that word, Lite.

Losing powered assistance, active camouflage, and integrated weapons was one thing, but there was no guarantee the System had listed everything that had been cut. Where did the energy come from? How long could it operate? Could the materials needed for self-repair even be found on Earth? The description said nothing about any of it.

Even stripped of those extra functions, a suit like this shouldn’t have been worth only E-Grade. Yet that was exactly where the System had placed it, which was enough to tell him something was off.

So of the three rewards, the Aegis-7 was the one he wanted most—and the one he least dared gamble on.

"Ah, I’ll use the regeneration first."

"Regenerate Soul Bastion."

[Soul Bastion selected for regeneration.]

[Free reward regeneration consumed.]

[Generating replacement reward...]

A few seconds later, a new reward appeared.

[E-Grade Skill Imprint: Fist Mastery]

[Grants the user the accumulated knowledge, techniques, combat experience, and fighting instincts of every known system of fist-based martial arts in human history.]

[All of them are fully integrated into a single body of martial skill, allowing the user to freely combine, alter, and apply any technique without restriction by style or fixed form.]

"...Holy shit. That’s fucking awesome."

[Reward selected: Fist Mastery.]

A flood of unfamiliar knowledge and experience poured into his mind.

Ancient fist-fighting traditions, traditional schools, modern boxing, military combat, competitive fighting... techniques and combat experience from different eras and different parts of the world all rushed in at once, yet none of it felt chaotic. Things that should have taken decades of training and real combat to master settled into him as though he had practiced them countless times himself, until they became something close to instinct.

The more of it settled in, the brighter Lin Yan’s eyes became.

He instinctively raised his right hand. The moment his fingers started to curl, a dull ache shot through his index and middle fingers.

His hand stopped halfway.

Those two fingers had only just been reattached. The experience now filling his mind made one thing immediately clear—there was no way he could throw a proper punch like this.

Then he remembered his left hand.

From the wrist to the palm, it was wrapped in thick bandages. Where five fingers should have been, only a thumb remained.

"..."

Fuck.

He had been so caught up in how awesome the skill was that he’d completely forgotten about that.

Two fingers on his right hand had only just been reattached.

His left hand couldn’t even form a fist.

"...How the fuck did I forget about this?"