With the official launch of the Interstellar Journey project, a slew of problems quickly came to light.
Silas's system, while powerful and wide-ranging in its functions, required mission points for nearly everything.
And the only way to earn mission points… was by completing missions.
The catch? Missions appeared at random.
They could be as mundane as "Buy two pounds of apples", or as extreme as "Eliminate a Evil spirit."
To make things more complicated, missions had to be triggered at close range to take effect.
Upon completion, Silas would be awarded mission points based on difficulty—anywhere from just a few points to several thousand.
At his current level of strength, Silas could handle most missions worth around 1,000 mission points solo, without assistance.
And if he mobilized his entire force and resorted to group combat, missions worth up to 5,000 mission points could usually be completed, though not without some casualties.
That level of difficulty corresponded roughly to threats ranked below Evil spirit.
But even with all that power behind him...
Faced with the astronomical cost of building an interstellar teleportation gate, which started in the eight-figure range, Silas could only stare blankly at the numbers.
No matter how hard he tried, there was no way he could come up with that amount—not even if you killed him and searched every pocket.
So he had no choice but to pivot and adopt a roundabout strategy: redeem the blueprints for the gate and build it himself.
Initially, Silas thought that with the detailed schematics in hand, even if this planet's scientists couldn't understand the advanced principles, they could at least "copy the drawing" and follow instructions, assuming they had all the materials.
Unfortunately, he had overlooked a crucial problem.
The manufacturing techniques required for the gate's components were beyond the capabilities of most interstellar civilizations, let alone this technologically backward planet.
It was the equivalent of asking a rural workshop to handcraft the microchips for a supercomputer.
In other words, to the people of this world, the designs were no different from something out of a mythical legend.
The engineers were immediately crushed by despair.
Even the formulas and symbols on the schematics had to be translated character by character before they could understand anything.
The feeling was like watching monkeys trying to build a spaceship using a Galactic Engineering Manual—and failing miserably.
At that moment, their helplessness was on full display.
"???"
Three question marks perfectly summed up the collective confusion in the room.
Faced with this unexpected situation, Silas was left with no other choice. He was forced to take drastic measures and spent a significant amount of mission points to exchange for a batch of NZT-48—a cognitive enhancer compatible with this world's physiology—and administered it on the spot to give the engineers a temporary boost in intelligence.
It was only then, with their temporarily enhanced brains, that they barely managed to understand the schematics.
What followed was a series of additional headaches: outdated equipment, missing raw materials, a severe shortage of manpower…
Silas was quickly overwhelmed.
Years of accumulated mission points were burned through in just three days.
Forced into a corner, he had no choice but to become a mission-grinding machine, completing task after task at breakneck speed.
After a period of intense effort, Silas found himself not only burdened by the teleportation gate's technical hurdles…
But also by the rising attention of various world governments.
After all, with operations on such a massive scale, it was impossible for them not to notice.
And another unavoidable issue loomed: if there wasn't full-scale international cooperation, even with Silas and his organization working around the clock, the gate probably wouldn't be built—not even twenty years from now.
The sheer amount of resources being consumed was simply unsustainable.
So, negotiations were inevitable.
After an extremely complicated round of back-and-forth...
The nations of the world finally reached a tentative agreement and began allocating resources toward the construction of the interstellar teleportation gate.
Silas had put in tremendous effort to make this happen.
He even went so far as to reveal part of his "special abilities".
He let them know that he possessed the power to exchange certain conditions for unique items, which secured his leadership role in the teleportation gate project.
As a result, he gained a sort of transcendent status, one that placed him above ordinary geopolitical constraints.
Now that the burden was being shared by multiple nations and he had freed himself from several troublesome distractions, Silas could once again focus on grinding missions and stockpiling mission points.
After all, his primary function in this entire operation was to use his system's powers to fill in the gaps that no one else could cover.
So the accumulation of mission points had become more urgent than ever.
This time, however, with the backing of national governments, his mission completion efficiency had skyrocketed.
As he strolled down the street, casually wandering—
Silas suddenly paused when he passed a little girl.
He turned his head slightly and ordered the subordinate following close behind, "Buy ten cakes for that little girl."
"Yes, sir!"
The subordinate quickly passed the command along.
Not long after Silas and his group moved on, a steam-powered car pulled up beside the girl.
The door opened with a hiss of steam, and two burly soldiers stepped out.
Under the girl's confused gaze, they respectfully handed her a still-warm strawberry cake, then lifted the remaining nine and said politely, "Miss, congratulations! You've won the Berry Delight Bakery's Special Surprise Award—your prize is ten freshly baked strawberry cakes. Would you like us to help carry them home?"
"...?"
The girl was dumbfounded—and so were the onlookers nearby.
No one could figure out what on earth was going on.
Far down the road, Silas received a notification from his system:
[Mission completed.
+20 system points]
He was quite satisfied.
It wasn't much, but it was effortless—a single sentence had done the trick.
"Buy him a pair of slippers."
"Get him a breakfast set."
"That cat over there—go smack it."
"There's a spirit in the house across the street. Handle it."
"Swap this vase with..."
By the end of the day, dozens of missions had been cleared—without Silas lifting a finger.
He had earned close to 2,000 mission points.
Such easy, no-sweat gains left him feeling extremely pleased.
At this pace, even if the engineers completely dropped the ball, he could still construct the teleportation gate via exchanges—even if it took twenty years.
Assuming the mission frequency didn't drop, of course...
As for simply asking the all-powerful system to erase all the planet's anomalies?
Silas had checked.
But that cost would be hundreds of times higher than building the teleportation gate.
Even a temporary suppression would require billions of system points.
By the time he scraped together that kind of fortune, the planet's population would likely already be extinct.
So escaping the planet remained the most straightforward and reliable option—at the very least, it gave him a solid fallback.
And besides constructing the gate, the mission points would also let him bring along as many civilians as possible when the time came to flee.
____
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