Ch. 227 - Effects of the Execution Rack
“Just crystal shards?”
Yang Yi was stunned.
Until then, the Nightmare Star’s upgrades had always centred on the Nightmare side, using parts or corpses of aberrations as the key materials.
From level two to three, and three to four, the Nightmare’s abilities had grown dramatically, while the Astrologer’s abilities barely changed.
But the requirement had suddenly shifted, asking an enormous amount of crystal shards.
“Does that mean the next upgrade will greatly strengthen the Astrologer’s abilities… or maybe unlock new ones?”
Yang Yi muttered, thinking aloud.
The Astrologer’s abilities weren’t like the Nightmare’s. They were more like plug-ins, features such as map revealing and screen peeking. They didn’t boost combat power directly, but their utility was unmatched.
So if the next upgrade granted a new skill, it could be another one of those “cheat” abilities.
Yang Yi was actually looking forward to seeing the level-five Nightmare Star.
The only problem was that crystal shards were incredibly rare. So far, he’d only ever caught one while fishing, and he’d already used it. Collecting thirty thousand of them wouldn’t be something money alone could solve. It would take a long time.
Yang Yi walked along the deck, glancing occasionally at the new execution rack on top of the mast, wondering what he could hang there.
The stronger the thing, the better the effect, but he didn’t have any suitable corpses left. He had used them all in vending machine draws.
“Maybe I could hang one of Suna’s lab specimens…” he murmured to himself, without realising he’d already wandered to the bow.
The old captain had been fishing for nearly two hours by then.
Yang Yi looked into the wooden bucket and almost laughed. Inside was only one scrawny long-legged sardine, nothing else.
Around the bucket were several chunks of dried flesh that the vines had drained, leaving only a thin layer of skin.
Yang Yi scooped out the sardine and picked up a few of the dried meat pieces, then headed towards the central mast.
He wanted to test whether these things could be hung on the rack. After all, the description mentioned “trophies”, which probably included not just aberration corpses, but also ordinary plants, animals, or even living creatures.
And since trophies could be replaced at any time, he didn’t need to worry about not being able to take something down once it was hung.
He also pulled up a few weeds from the deck, a fragment of an ancient skeletal arm, and a small piece of vine to try hanging as well.
He climbed the rear mast, the taller of the two, where the inverted cross stood at the top. Gripping the vine handholds, he climbed up quickly.
The long-legged sardine was barely alive, unable to survive long out of water. Yang Yi seized the moment and hung it on the cross.
It worked.
The barbed wires coiled around the cross seemed to come alive, wrapping around the sardine. The sharp spikes pierced through it, fixing it in the centre.
【Execution Rack Activated】
A notification popped up in Yang Yi’s log. Apparently the sardine counted as a valid trophy.
He opened the ship’s interface and saw the system’s evaluation and the resulting effect:
【Evaluation: A dying long-legged sardine, clinging to life, strung up for display by some idiot. Almost no one will even notice there’s a fish here.