Side Story: Luke’s Graduation Project

The weather in Texas was as hot as ever, but the underground base was extremely cool.

Luke cautiously completed the final assembly before he sighed in relief. “It’s finally done.”

The base doors opened with a ding, and Selina walked in with her hands in her pockets.

Following the A.I. program’s directions, she went through several hallways and came up behind Luke. Pressing against his back, she craned her neck to look at the ‘finished product’ on the table. “Is this that lousy system you created?”

Luke sighed helplessly and reached back to smack her butt. “The system is the system. Can you not add the word ‘lousy’?”

Selina didn’t care if the system was lousy or not. Luke had already described its functions to her.

What Face-slapping System, King of Fighters System, Magnate System, Entertainment System – they were all just different ‘covers’ for the core.

Except for the huge difference in the resources consumed, the system was essentially like the toys which Luke had given her.

She could also come up with one herself now, provided that she didn’t need to consider its practicality and efficiency, and got Luke to provide ‘core’ support in passing.

But that was too boring.

Wasn’t it good for Luke to spend that time on her instead?

She grabbed Luke’s disobedient hands and put them out from under her shirt before she got down to business. “Your girlfriends have been a little free recently. They’ve been playing at my place for three days. Can you go over and get rid of them?”

Luke waved his hand, and the system object on the workbench was stored in his inventory.

Then, he picked Director Selina up on his back and went to a lounge not far away and jumped into the indoor swimming pool.

Selina pressed on the side of her neck so that her clothes, which were made from nanomaterial, pulled back. Her tanned body floated in the light blue water.

Luke rolled over and let her lie comfortably on him as he swam unhurriedly in the water. “Are you sure you want to go and get rid of them?”

Director Selina moved lazily and slid down to rest her head on his chest. “Fine, you can swim with me for two hours.”

Luke dutifully obeyed.

In any case, he could swim for two hours without expending any extra effort.

The truth was that Director Selina, who had extraordinary stamina, couldn’t be that obedient.

In just two hours, she occupied higher territory many times and picked up the pace. In the end, Luke led her lazily back to the side of the pool.

Pressing herself to his chest, she finally got down to business. “Your girlfriends are still too naive. They probably won’t waste too much of your time. Of course, you’ll definitely waste some time on them, so has your chairman thought of a way to get rid of them? I heard from Angel that she’s preparing for a month’s annual leave. You’ll be busy.”

Luke’s fingers slowly slid down her back. It was extremely smooth and powerful. “Why don’t you go somewhere else to play?”

Selina enjoyed the massage after her exercise, and felt like sleeping. “Where?”

Luke said, “Find a suitable time and space, and toss it into the official version of my system?”

“Slow and gentle.” Selina gave him massage instructions, then yawned. “That’s fine. I can also take Cindy on an intergalactic trip.”

Her voice grew softer and softer. Just as she was about to fall asleep, she suddenly murmured, “What’s the name of your system?”

Luke was silent for a moment. He hadn’t really thought about it. After all, it had only just been completed, and he had only ever used simple codenames for the beta versions, like 1.0 and 2.0.

Thinking for a moment, he decided, “Let’s call it the Salvation System. After all, if the person who gets it can’t save the world, they won’t even be able to leave the novice village.”

Selina hummed vaguely and pressed herself even closer to Luke before she gradually fell asleep.

Luke wrapped one hand around her body so that she could fall asleep peacefully, then took out the round ball that was the Salvation System from his inventory.

The ball was less than five centimeters in diameter, and was covered in a hazy, translucent white light. There were faint buildings and objects inside.

If the ball expanded countless times, it would become a high-tech base.

This was the best Luke could do at the moment. No matter what, he couldn’t compare with the maker of the Super Detective System, who could compress it to the size of a speck of dust.

It wasn’t that Luke wasn’t strong enough, but that he had his own specialties.

The creator of the Super Detective System was extremely proficient in spatial abilities, which was why they could compress the system medium to such an extreme degree.

Luke’s current Mental Strength was good enough, but he didn’t have a suitable spell for it.

Magic in the Marvel universe was essentially borrowed or stolen from mysterious existences.

It was true that Luke could find a few weaklings and negotiate with them to borrow power, but that would be equivalent to letting the other party’s most essential power enter the system.

After he threw out the system, who knew if the other party would tamper with it.

After all, Luke himself wasn’t sure if he could control the system remotely after he threw it out.

But judging from the Super Detective System’s performance, it should be very hard to tamper with it.

That was because it had to borrow a ‘shell’ in order to function — it had used Luke, this Marvel stowaway, as cover, in order to avoid being discovered by powerful existences.

To use a business analogy, the system’s maker secretly held the majority of the original shares, while other people only saw Luke, as the ‘local’ who ran operations.

Only if the IRS paid attention to Luke and investigated him might they discover that he and the system’s maker were sharing the profits.

What was even crazier was that the Super Detective System was equivalent to an offshore company set up by some manufacturer in the Cayman Islands; there was no way to track down the manufacturer.

After Luke graduated at level 50, he didn’t immediately break away from the system. Instead, he spent hundreds of years figuring out how it worked.

He would be worried if he didn’t.

In fact, he had just peeled open the system, when it self-destructed the next day, leaving nothing behind at all.

Thankfully, Luke had long mastered the system’s module functions and made them his own.

The items and prisoners in the inventory were also transferred to a space prison which he had personally built.

The functions of this self-constructed space weren’t as exaggerated as the system’s inventory space, but it was enough for storing things and locking people up.

He gained more from going to all this trouble than he had ever imagined — he discovered the motive of the system’s maker.

Again, to use a business analogy, the maker as the owner of the ‘original shares’ would get a fixed amount of ‘profit’ from the power of faith which Luke collected.

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to 20% of the maker’s share was used to maintain the system’s storage and learning modules. The rest were the maker’s ‘gross profit.’

When the power of faith was collected and purified to an astonishing degree, the outcome was something like the ‘divine power crystals’ mentioned in online novels.

Purification removed most of the useless impurities, and packaging consumed a lot of ‘divine power.’ Therefore, the maker’s ‘net profit’ in the end was only a small portion.

The power crystals were then placed in a ‘secret box’ in an unknown dimension.

Only the maker who knew the ‘key’ could open the box and take out the divine crystals.

The ‘gross profits’ were split 70-30 or 80-20 between the maker and Luke. Taking out the consumption expenses for purification and packaging, the ‘pure profits’ might only be 50-50.

It had to be pointed out that money laundering in the ordinary world started at 70-30; it wasn’t rare for it to even be 90-10.

Luke’s system could be considered ‘time laundering.’

You could get rich from laundering money, while Luke could become a ‘god’ from ‘laundering time.’

Besides… the system was cheap.

It took a lot of time to finalize the system’s design in the initial stages. It also needed some divine power to maintain its own operations before it found a host.

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However, as long as divine power was sent over once, the maker could still make a huge profit.

In any case, the materials which the system needed to consume weren’t worth mentioning to existences at the level of the maker.

Luke recalled the Detective System — this thing didn’t even have a d*mn shop system.

He was 100% sure that this system had simply been built according to the most basic template.

What an amazing maker — they didn’t provide any sort of material items, and just transferred ‘divine power’!

Divine power wasn’t measured by how lethal it was, but by how many mystical things it could accomplish.

For example, he could only use the Kunlun Chi Refining Technique and Life 1 before to buff his family. Now, he just needed to inject them with divine power to make them stronger.

As long as he controlled the strength of each injection, there would be no danger.

He no longer needed the system as an intermediary.

Moreover, the ‘divine power’ that originated from human spirit and faith should be the ‘hard currency’ used in many universes. Otherwise, the maker of the Detective System wouldn’t have specially crossed time and space to collect it.

Therefore, Luke attached great importance to the creation of a ‘new source’ of divine power.

He played with the ‘Salvation System’ in his hand and looked at Director Selina. Before he released his first official system, Luke kissed her. “Director Selinai, bless this system with your fool’s luck!”

He had obtained a system that enabled him to protect his family, protect the world, and create a perfect ending.

Therefore, it was time to give the people of other desperate worlds hope to save their world.

He just didn’t know which lucky person would get this Salvation System to protect their family, save the world, and reach the peak of their lives. He was really looking forward to it.

…Safety first. He had to add some supplementary algorithms! It would be a joke if the system and its host were annihilated by a powerful existence after Luke threw the system out! With this thought in mind, he couldn’t help but add some more key algorithms.

A new legend was about to begin…