[Rescue!] completed. You have earned 8000 experience points.

+100 Reputation (Stardragon SDI)

¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯

“Bro Xiao, you’re the best!” Li Yao’s eyes glowed with admiration.

“Heh, you only just realized?” replied Han Xiao with a hint of smugness.

Zhang Wei, realizing that he had misjudged Han Xiao, apologized, “Sorry for doubting your ability before. Today, we only made it out alive thanks to your guidance and your equipment. Welcome to the team.”

A late welcome was better than none.

Han Xiao chuckled.

“No need to apologize over such trivial matters – I’m a gracious man.”

Zhang Wei felt a shiver down his spine. Han Xiao’s words sounded odd to him.

“Oh right,” continued Han Xiao, “who made your armored suit?”

“Oh, this is just a prototype of the [Combatant Powered Armor]. It was among the spoils of war during the battle with Theseus a few years back. Presently, it’s the only functional one we have. They tried to reverse engineer it, but as progress was too slow and maintenance proved troublesome as well, it was handed to me.”

The [Combatant Armored Suit]’s crafting prerequisite was the advanced weaponry talent [Large-scale Remodeling], which was also required to craft many other power suits, machine frames, and other larger combat machinery. If Theseus had only just created the prototype, then Stardragon would definitely be much further behind.

Han Xiao saw his chance.

“You can leave the maintenance to me.”

“Sure!” rejoiced Zhang Wei. He now trusted Han Xiao’s ability.

“Is this special bullet a new invention of yours?” interrupted Li Ya Lin excitedly.

Han Xiao proceeded to fully explain the use of the High-explosive Gunpowder.

Regular incendiary ammunition required a flammable target to work effectively, but the High-explosive Gunpowder contained a special chemical that could activate upon simply coming into contact with the air and ‘light up’ anything that it came into contact with. It’s temperature and power were comparable to a Molotov, but what made it scary was that this power could be harnessed within bullets! Everyone could see how this was a game-changer.

“Are you selling this?” asked Ma Qing Yang animatedly.

“Of course – 50 a bullet.”

Now that they had proved effective, it was a good time to release them.

“I want 200!” replied Ma Qing Yang immediately. “20 handgun bullets, 150 submachine gun bullets, and 30 sniper rifle bullets.”

“Okay,” answered Han Xiao. “You can collect them in a day.”

“You can start to collect orders,” he instructed Li Ya Lin privately. “Like before, I’ll give you a 20% discount.”

Li Ya Lin’s lips curled into a grin.

…

News of how the mission unfolded spread like wildfire in Division 13. Naturally, the incendiary bullets became the talk of the town.

“Han Xiao’s new product?”

“I heard that that’s what saved their lives!”

The Retractable Knife incident had already garnered Han Xiao a lot of attention. Upon Ma Qing Yang’s order of the bullets becoming public knowledge, many agents came forward to inquire about them. As a way of repaying Han Xiao’s team for rescuing them, Ma Qing Yang held a live demonstration in the practice field.

Everyone was stunned by the power of the incendiary bullets, and the first thing they did after the demonstration was look for Li Ya Lin to place orders. Everything was going according to Han Xiao’s plan.

It was a revolutionary invention, and this time, the top brass knew they had to make sure that things would not end up like the previous fiasco.

They even brought the Research Director in for a warning before he even did anything.

The division offered Han Xiao numerous terms to provide both field-ops and special-ops with the new bullets, and he agreed to sell them at a slightly lower price of $20,000 for 500 bullets.

In just the first day alone, Han Xiao’s stockpile of a few thousand bullets was sold out, earning him $200,000. Coupled with the $1,500,000 that he had earned from the underground network, his savings were not small.

After the class advancement, Han Xiao’s production speed was raised considerably, and he focused solely on producing the gunpowder. As a show of support, Division 13 decided to provide him with cartridges and shells, which greatly sped up the process. Each batch yielded around 300 bullets, and Han Xiao was able to produce over 10 such batches a day. Crafting a bullet gave Han Xiao 5 to 10 experience points, so he was able to earn up to 30,000 experience in just a single day.

It was probably the fastest experience growth ever by a Mechanic of his level.

…

“Not selling to me?”

Korat was fuming. Initially, he had thought that a simple apology would resolve the grudge between him and Han Xiao – after all, money was money. However, Li Ya Lin actually shut the door tight on him.

“Han Xiao said that you’re on his blacklist, and he instructed me not to take either your money nor your apology.”

The other agents who had initially thought of reporting the Retractable Knife had Korat to thank for taking the initiative back then. Or else, they would be in the same predicament as him now.

When Korat offered to buy the bullets from his colleagues at a higher price, he found out that none of them were willing to. Even when he set his price at 200 a bullet, no one agreed – not even his closest colleagues.

He was clearly being ostracized, but he could not understand why – until one of his old friends told him, “Selling to you would offend Han Xiao. No one would want to risk being blacklisted by him, seeing as to how he probably will come up with more good stuff. Who would help you at their own expense?”

His words served a wake-up call to Korat. To think that it was the complete opposite back then – for money, he chose to trample over Han Xiao.

Unfortunately, it was too late for regrets now.

…

Meanwhile, in a workroom, Luo Xuan opened up a box before him to reveal 20 incendiary bullets. He had gotten someone to help him acquire them.

Han Xiao had only blacklisted Korat and his team, not Luo Xuan. In Han Xiao’s eyes, Luo Xuan had simply been doing his job as part of the research department in trying to reverse engineer his blueprints. At the very least, he did not seem as vile to Han Xiao as Korat did. Now that the research department was being kept under watch, there was no need for Han Xiao to worry about them.

Moreover, Luo Xuan was also just support staff like him.

However, this inexplicably caused Luo Xuan to become resentful of Han Xiao.

“Damn you, Han Xiao! Do you look down on me so much that you ignore me‽”

What he did not realize was that Han Xiao did not look down on him – instead, Han Xiao had never even seen him before.

To avoid offending Han Xiao, the research director lay down an order preventing anyone from researching Han Xiao’s bullets, but Luo Xuan naturally did not care, and he still thought of himself as superior to Han Xiao, and that he could easily reproduce the bullets – like with the Retractable Knife.

“If I succeed, the higher-ups will definitely value me even more! I cannot afford to fail!” The more Luo Xuan thought about it, the more perfect his plan seemed to himself.

Taking a deep breath to prepare himself, Luo Xuan began to work at opening the bullet up. What he needed to do was examine the properties of the incendiary agent inside.

Clank!

Luo Xuan managed to extract the bullet case.

The next step would be to open it up and extract the contents with a special suction tube to prevent friction.

Carefully, he opened the bullet case.

“Success! Now I will just have to analyze-”

Suddenly, a blazing light filled up his entire vision.