Apocalypse: I Can Upgrade Everything

Chapter 195: Power and Side Effects

Sun Qianqian eagerly ran her hands over the cold, gleaming steel of the massive sniper rifle, her eyes practically shining as the system data flooded her vision.

She could already picture it: perching on a rooftop, looking effortlessly cool, and completely dominating the battlefield from a mile away.

The weapon’s name, Fatal Sniper, was a bit clichéd, but the imposing silhouette more than made up for it.

However, its global ranking was suspiciously low. It was significantly lower than the heavy handgun Chen Ye had just snatched from her. No wonder he had looked so thoroughly disgusted when he pawned it off on her.

She read the first ability. Channel supernatural power into the weapon to synthesize a high-caliber, anti-Anomaly round. Generates one round every 24 hours. Maximum capacity: three rounds.

That was it. Just one ability.

It was a severely limited kit. Generating rounds via raw supernatural energy essentially meant using the gun as a conduit to condense her own power into physical ammunition. The agonizingly slow fire rate and pathetic magazine size were a massive drawback, but it made sense from a tactical standpoint. A sniper’s entire doctrine was built around a single, catastrophic, one-shot kill.

But what was the cost?

With a global ranking this low, the physiological toll shouldn’t be too severe.

She skimmed down the interface to the cost section.

Her face, initially flushed with excitement, slowly began to turn pink. The pink deepened to a violent, burning crimson that rapidly spread all the way down to her collarbones.

No matter how hardened she was trying to become in the apocalypse, she was still an eighteen-year-old girl.

Lifelong, incurable hemorrhoids.

No wonder Chen Ye had tossed it to her like it was a live grenade. No wonder he had looked at her with that deadpan, judging stare.

How could she, a young, dignified girl, ever…

Sun Qianqian’s head snapped up, her face burning with utter humiliation and rage as she glared daggers at Chen Ye.

But Chen Ye was already long gone. He was squatting next to Iron Lion on the other side of the fire, completely engrossed in inspecting the heavy machine gun, completely ignoring her murderous aura.

Gripping the sniper rifle tightly, the pink-haired girl took two furious steps toward him before grinding to a halt.

She couldn’t exactly confront him. It was the Artifact’s side effect, not Chen Ye’s. What was she going to say? ‘How dare you give me the hemorrhoid gun!’ Furthermore, Chen Ye hadn’t forged the weapon; he had just read the stats and noped out.

But still… it was so infuriating!

Sun Qianqian possessed all the bratty, rebellious flaws of a typical eighteen-year-old, but she was fundamentally rational. She swallowed her rage and sat back down, throwing the cursed sniper rifle onto the dirt.

Chen Ye, meanwhile, had fully anticipated her reaction and had strategically relocated the moment the heavy handgun touched his palm.

The pistol was dense, constructed from incredibly heavy, cold-forged steel. The entire frame was a matte, pitch-black metal that seemed to absorb the firelight.

When he attempted to pull up its system data, he found the weapon’s consciousness to be surprisingly stubborn—almost tsundere.

Artifacts were like supernatural pets; each possessed a distinct temperament. Some Artifacts, like the Hemorrhoid Sniper, practically threw their data at you the moment you touched them. Others required coaxing.

Chen Ye channeled a steady stream of supernatural energy from his palm directly into the black steel. Only then did the system interface yield.

[Burst Star, Number: 5829]

Chen Ye blinked in surprise. This ranking was exponentially higher than the sniper rifle. Were these really forged by the same Mechanical Sequence Beyonder?

[Ability 1: The user must actively nurture the weapon’s frame with supernatural energy daily. Doing so generates 7 ‘Burst Rounds’ every 24 hours. The weapon’s internal magazine holds a maximum of 21 Burst Rounds.]

[Ability 2: The weapon can physically transmute standard ballistic ammunition loaded into the magazine into supernatural Burst Rounds. This transmutation process requires active nurturing via supernatural energy.]

[Ability 3: Burst Round: An exclusive, highly volatile munition specifically engineered by ‘Burst Star.’ Inflicts massive, conceptual damage upon Anomalies. Upon target impact, the round triggers a devastating secondary localized explosion.]

Reading the abilities, Chen Ye instantly understood why the raider group hadn’t utilized these weapons after acquiring them from the dead Mechanic, Xia Bo.

Both the Hemorrhoid Sniper and the Burst Star required the active, daily channeling of Sequence Beyonder energy to function. The raiders were likely ordinary humans or low-tier supernaturals entirely incapable of meeting the energy demands. Furthermore, it was highly probable they lacked the standard ballistic ammunition required for Ability 2.

Securing these weapons had been a massive stroke of blind luck for the raiders, but they had essentially been sitting on useless paperweights.

Chen Ye scrolled down to the physiological cost.

[Cost: The daily nurturing process is violently unstable. As supernatural energy is channeled into the frame, the user will be subjected to intense auditory hallucinations—chaotic whispers, agonizing screams, and seductive promises of absolute slaughter. (Note: These psychic echoes originate either from the residual agony of Anomalies executed by the weapon, or from the weapon’s own dormant, psychotic sentience.)]

[WARNING: If the wielder lacks absolute, ironclad mental fortitude, prolonged exposure to the weapon will result in catastrophic psychological collapse.]

Chen Ye stared at the glowing text in dead silence.

He honestly didn’t know how to evaluate the risk. Psychological corrosion was incredibly dangerous, but the raw firepower was undeniable.

[Comment: ‘Burst Star’ is a mid-to-late period creation by the Mechanical Sequence Beyonder, Xia Bo. This handgun was Xia Bo’s personal favorite sidearm.]

He holstered the Burst Star and turned to Iron Lion.

The weapon resting in Iron Lion’s massive hands was an absolute monstrosity. It didn’t even look like something designed for human infantry.

“Trade,” Chen Ye said, holding out his hand.

Iron Lion grunted and passed the massive gun over.

The moment the weapon left Iron Lion’s grip and settled into Chen Ye’s arms, Chen Ye’s knees buckled slightly. When he had watched the giant casually handle it, he assumed it weighed fifty or sixty pounds.

He was wrong. The weapon was a solid, unyielding block of steel that weighed well over a hundred pounds.

It was a devastating, six-barreled rotary minigun.

Extending from the rear of the heavy stock was a thick, pulsating biological tube that looked disturbingly like a human artery. The instant Chen Ye took the weapon, the fleshy tube violently writhed to life. It whipped through the air like a massive, blind leech, “sniffing” the air for a host, desperately trying to latch onto Chen Ye’s exposed arm.

Chen Ye quickly materialized a thick glove of black smoke, completely smothering the parasitic tube until it went limp.

Connected to the base of the leech-like tube was a large, circular, fleshy sac that currently hung empty and shriveled. Chen Ye correctly deduced this was the weapon’s ammunition reservoir.

[Bone-Eroding Six Eyes, Number: 6225]

[Ability 1: The biological feed-tube must physically latch onto the user’s flesh. The weapon aggressively parasitizes the host’s cellular energy and blood volume to synthesize ammunition. As long as the host possesses flesh and blood, the weapon possesses infinite ammunition.]

[Ability 2: The external biological sac can store a maximum of 300 synthesized blood-rounds.]

Chen Ye looked up from the interface, his gaze shifting to Iron Lion.

There was only one man in the entire convoy capable of surviving this weapon.

While it technically only possessed a single active combat ability, the sheer concept of infinite, high-caliber suppressive fire was enough to obliterate almost any threat.

[Cost: The weapon aggressively drains the host’s biomass to fill its ammunition sac. The sac MUST be filled to its maximum 300-round capacity in a single, uninterrupted feed. If the host lacks the physiological mass to fulfill the quota, the weapon will violently drain them into a desiccated husk.]

The cost and the ability were two sides of the exact same coin.

The weapon was essentially a death sentence for any normal Beyonder. But for Iron Lion, whose Titan Sequence granted him mythic, god-like cellular regeneration? The minigun was practically tailor-made for him.

No wonder Chu Che had waited until the entire team was gathered before revealing the armory. The scheming bastard had already earmarked this specific weapon for Iron Lion.

Chen Ye had absolutely no objections.

Whenever the situation went completely to hell, Iron Lion was always the first man to throw himself into the meat grinder. When they had faced the mist thralls, Chen Ye thought the giant had fled, only to watch him turn around and charge back into the horde just to cover Chen Ye’s flank. At the elementary school, when ordered to hold the rear, Iron Lion had held the line without a second of hesitation.

The giant had earned the firepower.

[Comment: A wildly experimental creation by the Mechanical Sequence Beyonder, Xia Bo. After its initial forging, the weapon was permanently shelved due to the lack of a biologically viable host.]

The final weapon was currently in Captain Chu Che’s hands. He was practically cradling it. When Chen Ye asked to swap, the captain looked genuinely reluctant to part with it.

It looked like a toy. It was a micro-compact pistol, barely half the size of a standard human palm.

[Silent Disappearance, Number: 6112]

[Ability 1: Requires daily nurturing via supernatural energy. Synthesizes exactly one specialized round every 12 hours. The weapon can only hold a single round in the chamber at any time.]

[Ability 2: Absolute Target Lock. Once the user locks onto a target, the fired round will actively alter its ballistic trajectory mid-flight to ensure impact.]

[Ability 3: The weapon can fire its round with absolute silence, producing no sound whatsoever.]

[Ability 4: The weapon’s global ranking and overall effectiveness increase proportionally with the ambient darkness. The darker the environment, the more powerful the weapon becomes.]

Chen Ye couldn’t help but admire the design. This was the work of a true Mechanical Sequence Beyonder. The four abilities synergized perfectly to create the ultimate assassination tool, tailor-made for ambushes and underhanded tactics.

While its global ranking wasn’t exceptionally high, its ability to strike without warning made it a terrifyingly effective weapon.

He scrolled down to the cost.

[Cost: The wielder will experience permanent, irreversible hair loss. The process begins immediately upon bonding with the weapon and continues until the user is completely bald.]

Chen Ye: “…”

[Comment: Due to this debilitating side effect, the Silent Disappearance was never once physically handled by its creator, the Mechanical Sequence Beyonder Xia Bo.]