Chapter 228: with translation of chapter title

As the blood-red refining light dissipated, the originally huge crystal stone golem corpse had now vanished, leaving only three objects of different shapes on the ground.

One of them was a pair of huge claws.

They emitted a cold, eerie glow; simply lying flat on the ground, they easily sliced the floor, the claws sinking deep into the earth, showing how sharp they are.

【Crystal Stone Claws】

Supernatural Grade: Fourth Tier

Effect: The claws of the crystal stone golem possess terrifying sharpness, able to ignore part of the target's defense and easily slice through the opponent's corpse.

By absorbing the user's internal blood energy, the sharpness and armor-piercing effect of the crystal stone claws can be further enhanced.

The stronger the user's physique, the greater the increase in sharpness and armor-piercing effect.

Introduction: Extracted from the crystal stone golem's hands via a special method, these claws are a powerful attack weapon and also an excellent forging material.

……

This is also a supernatural weapon that can only be driven by physique, and its effect is far superior to that of ordinary crystal stone monster claws.

Ordinary crystal stone monster claws are merely slightly sharper, lacking armor-piercing effect and the ability to increase sharpness and armor-piercing by absorbing blood energy.

The only pity is that these claws are too large and not a conventional weapon shape, making them unsuitable for direct use.

Su Hao intends to use this pair of claws as synthesis material, to synthesize them.

Now that he has the Pale Bone Claw skill, the weapons he can use are no longer limited to just one or two.

As long as his mind can control it, he can completely create a King's Treasury, using a large number of powerful supernatural weapons to smash enemies to death.

However, the weapons Su Hao currently carries are not very suitable for synthesis with the crystal stone claws.

Su Hao's three strongest weapons are: first, the Blast Flame Heavy Hammer, a pure heavy weapon that needs no sharpness, making it unsuitable for synthesis with the crystal stone claws.

Second is the Divine Light Heavy Axe, also a heavy weapon; it does not need much wind force enhancement, as its sufficient weight alone can cause considerable damage, so it is likewise unsuitable for synthesizing with the crystal stone claws.

Third is the Death Scythe, which does have some sharpness requirement, but its greater function is to attack the soul; using it to synthesize crystal stone claws is not particularly necessary.

Thus, Su Hao stored this pair of crystal stone claws in his Storage Bag, planning to synthesize them later when he obtains a suitable tool.

The second item is a huge blue stone nearly five meters tall, emitting violent energy fluctuations.

【Giant Crystal Stone Core】

Supernatural Grade: Fourth Tier

Effect: Equipment forged from the Giant Crystal Stone Core gains higher hardness and stability, making it difficult for ordinary Fourth-Tier Supernatural attacks to damage it.

Moreover, the Giant Crystal Stone Core can serve as a special energy crystal, providing the target with purer energy, thereby increasing its operational speed.

When the energy within the Giant Crystal Stone Core is exhausted, it can automatically restore energy by absorbing ambient free energy or energy from other supernatural items.

Introduction: The Giant Crystal Stone Core refined from the crystal stone golem's body possesses extremely high hardness and contains tremendous energy.

……

After examining the appraisal results, Su Hao conducted a simple experiment on the Giant Crystal Stone Core.

The energy contained in one Giant Crystal Stone Core is equivalent to about ten thousand ordinary energy crystals, and its energy is purer, with a higher conversion rate.

Ordinary energy crystals lose at least fifty percent during the energy conversion process.

This is why the equipment at the T235 experimental base is equipped with an energy conversion device to reduce energy loss.

Nevertheless, even with an energy conversion device, the energy loss remains significant.

If the Giant Crystal Stone Core is used together with an energy conversion device, energy loss can certainly be further reduced.

However, the quantity of Giant Crystal Stone Cores is limited; currently there is only one, and if its energy recovery speed is not fast enough, it lacks significant practical value.

Subsequently, Su Hao depleted the energy within the Giant Crystal Stone Core, then let it naturally recover for a period, after which he recharged it using energy crystals.

After a series of experiments, he gained a rough understanding of the Giant Crystal Stone Core's recovery speed.

Compared to ordinary crystal stone cores, the recovery speed of the Giant Crystal Stone Core is markedly faster.

Furthermore, it can self-recharge by absorbing energy from energy crystals.

Most importantly, this energy conversion entails negligible consumption, with loss under ten percent! Moreover, the converted energy is purer; using the Giant Crystal Stone Core to charge other items reduces loss to a certain extent and increases charging efficiency.

According to Su Hao's estimate, if energy crystals are used to charge the Giant Crystal Stone Core.

Then, combining the Giant Crystal Stone Core with the energy conversion device can roughly reduce the loss rate from over fifty percent to about forty percent.

Although this only reduces energy loss by about ten percent, over time the saved energy crystals will amount to a huge sum.

The charging speed of the Giant Crystal Stone Core still seems too slow to Su Hao; having several would allow alternating use, which would be acceptable.

The problem is, he currently possesses only one Giant Crystal Stone Core, making alternating use impossible.

「emmm, if we combine ordinary Third-Tier crystal stone cores, could we synthesize a Giant Crystal Stone Core? 」

Su Hao stroked his chin, and after some thought, felt this possibility was quite strong.

Moreover, today's synthesis count had been refreshed, so he took three Third-Tier crystal stone cores and proceeded to synthesize them.

While waiting, Su Hao turned his gaze to the last item refined from the crystal stone golem.

It was a yellowed piece of cowhide paper, appearing unremarkable, bearing a special passage of text.

Although Su Hao had never seen these characters before, upon seeing them they automatically translated into Chinese.

【Monster Illustrated Fragment】

Crystal Stone Golem: mutated from ordinary crystal stone monsters, possessing a sturdy body and sharp claws; Fourth-Tier Supernatural physical attacks struggle to inflict any damage on it.

However, their mental and soul strength is not high; using attacks targeting the soul and spirit, only needing to reach Fourth-Tier Supernatural gives a chance to kill them.

Crystal Stone Golems were once favored pets of the giant race, but due to unknown reasons, they were abandoned by the giants.

……「Unknown reasons……Looking at it this way, what the Iron Goat said might not be wrong; perhaps the giant race truly suffered an aberrant invasion。」

Su Hao frowned slightly; if aberrant creatures are taken as hypothetical enemies, then the fallen giant race would certainly be a formidable foe.

One must know that giants and dragons are among the strongest races in the world today.

Under equal Supernatural Grade, giants can completely achieve fighting one against a hundred.

Moreover, giants are unlike humans and dwarves; they are born with extremely high Supernatural Grade.

Even a newborn giant can reach Third Tier Supernatural Grade.

Although Su Hao's territory already has many pale undead creatures, facing the giant race would require only a few hundred to likely rout the pale undead army.

Fortunately, the Giant Kingdom and the Dark Forest are not on the same continent but are separated by a sea, located on a landmass called Titan Continent.

Unless the Giant Kingdom crosses the sea, it is impossible to encounter many giants in a short time; at most one might meet a few scattered giants, posing no threat.

However, the problem is that, according to Su Hao's memories from his previous life, the giant race has not been afflicted by Weird Power; indeed, many races have established trade with them.

In this new world, the giant race enjoys great prestige; some relatively prosperous mid‑small races even hire giants to help defend against Weird creatures.

Yet the iron mountain goat's note warns to be careful of the giant race.

The appraisal compendium of the crystal giant monster also shows that the giant race has encountered some problem, causing them to abandon their formerly beloved pets.

This is akin to a cat lover suddenly discarding the cat they had raised for years and no longer liking cats.

This clearly indicates a drastic change in personality, which caused this shift.

If only one or two giants exhibited this change, it could be understood as those giants having suffered some great calamity, causing a sudden personality mutation.

But if the entire giant race is like this, the most likely explanation is that they have been afflicted by Weird Power, causing a change in the character of the whole race.

However, according to Su Hao's understanding, all Weird creatures are hostile toward normal species.

If the giant race were truly affected by Weird Power, how could they possibly establish trade with normal species and help normal species attack Weird creatures? Perhaps…

The Weird affliction on the giant race is somewhat special, allowing them to retain more reason.

Do they seek to raise their own prestige so that more species become their vassals, thereby causing those species to fall into Weirdom? Or perhaps, in the previous life, the giant race indeed did not fall, but with Su Hao's rebirth, the giant race has undergone some new change?

"Forget it; soldiers will block, water will flood—thinking too much about this is useless."

With only this bit of information, it is impossible to deduce the truth, so Su Hao stops thinking about it.

He looked at the monster compendium fragment in his hand and suddenly had a special idea.

Regardless of whether the giant race has fallen under Weird Power's influence, at least through the content recorded on this monster compendium fragment, Su Hao can ascertain.

That the giant race has indeed undergone some change, and we should therefore be wary of them in the future.

If one could possess compendium fragments of all species, or have a complete monster compendium.

Perhaps one could then use the information displayed on the compendium to screen out worthy subjects for subjugation, preventing Weird minions from sneaking into the territory.

However, for unknown reasons, only a tiny fraction of corpses of the same species with the same Supernatural Grade can be refined into a monster compendium.

Therefore, Su Hao intends to synthesize the monster compendium fragments in his hand to see if he can create a relatively more complete monster compendium.

Subsequently, Su Hao took out two fragments of the highest Supernatural Grade monster compendium and applied today's second synthesis to them.

At the same time, the synthesis golden light wrapping the three Third‑Tier crystal cores began to fade, and a huge crystal about five meters tall appeared before Su Hao's eyes.

【Giant Crystal Core】

(omitted)

……

"Nice, indeed we can synthesize a Giant Crystal Core!"

Even if they look similar outwardly, they could actually be two different items.

Only after seeing the information displayed on the appraisal result did Su Hao finally let out a breath of relief, a brilliant smile spreading across his face.

If we can synthesize large quantities of Giant Crystal Cores, future consumption of energy crystals will surely decrease significantly.

If we could synthesize the Giant Crystal Core once more, perhaps the profit margin of energy would be even higher.

However, the Synthesis Heart can be used only a limited number of times per day; even batch‑synthesizing enough Giant Crystal Cores takes several days, let alone synthesizing the Giant Crystal Core again.

Not long after the Giant Crystal Core was synthesized, the two monster compendium fragments also completed this synthesis.

As the synthesis golden light faded, the original two monster compendium fragments had vanished, turning into an antiquated book that fell to the ground.

【Incomplete Monster Compendium】

Supernatural Grade: Third Tier

Effect: Consume the corresponding mental power; for any target unit with Supernatural Grade lower than Third Tier, using the Incomplete Monster Compendium yields relevant information and reveals the target's weakness.

As the Incomplete Monster Compendium records more species information, its Supernatural Grade will rise accordingly, and the number of species it can appraise will also increase.

……

"Monster…… Perhaps humans are also considered a monster in the eyes of other species; this name is quite fitting."

Su Hao gave a slight nod; from now on, even if the chance of refining monster compendium fragments is low, it doesn't matter.

Anyway, with this Incomplete Monster Compendium in hand, sooner or later we will gather information on all species worldwide, becoming an encyclopedia of the myriad races.

At that moment, a flash of inspiration struck Su Hao's mind; through this Incomplete Monster Compendium, he could obtain information about the opponent and learn their weakness.

Then, after synthesizing this compendium, would it be possible that merely recording a species in the compendium allows us to inflict extra damage upon it? Though this idea is a bit far‑fetched, Su Hao still has a few monster compendium fragments on him, and today he has three synthesis uses left.

Su Hao then took out the Blood‑Red Magic Book and performed a synthesis with it and the Incomplete Monster Compendium fragment.

(End of Chapter)