Chapter 111: Rich, But Not Very Rich.

Colin sent out one solution after another.

Fortunately, these were conveyed through mental connection, making them efficient enough; if he had to type them all out on a keyboard, he would have likely broken his fingers.

However, the "wishes" of these special talents were truly bizarre...

【...Perhaps she desires a child of her own to fulfill her long-held wish of becoming a mother...】

"...Uh, what..."

Colin’s expression was strange. Even if he helped this survivor build a good relationship with their special talent, and even if they had reached that stage in their progress, there was no way to conceive and give birth at light speed...

Besides, he didn't even know if there was reproductive isolation between people from different worlds.

Russell, for instance, had been spending every day for the past six months with his three female servants—a "maid," a "cook," and an "assassin"—and yet there had been no sign of any offspring...

No one had studied this aspect, so it was unclear where the issue lay.

After a few seconds, Colin mused, "...Try calling her 'Mom'..."

Of course, that was just a random sarcastic thought; he hadn't actually been irresponsible enough to send that message.

After using his hints to provide a few alternative solutions involving "pets" or "dolls," Colin sent over the most extreme scenario. Regardless of whether they were willing to face it, they needed to be mentally prepared for such possibilities.

As for the final choice, that was a personal matter. As long as the situation didn't escalate to a Level 3 special talent, everything was still manageable.

Following a period of intense and concentrated thinking, Colin felt mental exhaustion for the first time...

Shana, standing nearby, wanted to offer him a massage, but she was worried about disturbing his focus, so she could only occasionally buff him with the "Wind of Revival."

He had already handled over three hundred of them...

Colin felt his brain heating up; his mental energy was severely overdrawn.

"Your boss's head is smoking..."

Nearby, Russell was whispering to Li Chou while snacking on chocolate.

Above Colin’s head, the sweat had turned into water vapor, creating a faint wisp of smoke...

Before Li Chou could answer, Russell continued: "The ability your boss possesses is quite powerful to be able to do this... And it seems he doesn't have to pay a price for it. If that's the case, it should be closer to a skill... Heh, but I've never heard of anyone having a skill that can be used infinitely... Are you still going to say your boss isn't cheating?"

Li Chou looked at him with disdain: "Do you not know that there is a type of skill called 'passive'?"

"Er..." Russell was momentarily choked.

Put that way... it actually made a forced kind of sense.

"It’s a pity. If your boss were one of our Gondor people, perhaps we wouldn't have ended up in this state."

"Keep dreaming. The Boss is an Earthling."

Amid their whispered bickering, four hours passed.

Finally, Colin stopped thinking and collapsed onto his seat, soaked in sweat, gasping for air with a look of total burnout.

Only today, through constant deliberation, did he discover that the human brain actually had its limits, especially when combined with the non-stop use of his hints, which drained his energy even faster.

Now, Colin realized with sadness that he couldn't even recite his multiplication tables...

*My brain cells haven't died, have they?* Colin thought with some fear.

Fortunately, that hadn't happened.

Under Shana’s massage, and after snatching a few pieces of high-purity dark chocolate from Russell to replenish his losses, Colin slowly recovered.

Over these few hours, he had processed over five hundred special talents and roughly cleared out his private messages. In every response, along with identifying the content of their "wish," he had provided a solution for the most extreme scenarios.

However, the most important takeaway for him now wasn't how many people he had helped or how many troubles he had avoided, but rather getting a rough estimate of how many "special talents" had been summoned.

Given his reputation, he trusted that at least a third of them would seek him out for a "diagnosis." Even if he estimated generously—tripling the count of these five hundred people and multiplying it by ten for potential numbers—it still only amounted to around ten thousand.

This number seemed large, but it was at an acceptable level; even if they all erupted, it wouldn't have too great an impact.

One had to remember that the Gondor civilization had a total population of two billion, with millions of regions, and almost every region had one or more special talents... In that situation, the collapse of large numbers of special talents creating a catastrophe was truly despair-inducing.

Furthermore, Colin’s group was generally "poorer" and had no money for upgrades, so the disaster of special talents could barely be considered something not to worry too much about.

"I suppose there are benefits to being poor..." Colin thought, his emotions complex.

If his side also had one or more special talents in every region... that would be true despair.

However, Colin was also thankful that their landing points did not overlap with the Gondor civilization. Otherwise, they would have had to face not only Lord-level aberrations upon stepping outside but also the catastrophe formed by large numbers of "special talents" above Level 3...

Following that, not knowing what he was thinking, Colin took out the parchment and sent a query to his base.

"Any progress on the new explosives?"

Whenever he remembered what Russell said, and the terrifying existence of "Great Miracles" in this world, his fear of insufficient firepower would flare up.

He needed more firepower.

"Almost there, almost there. Just the last few steps left..." A response came quickly from the other side of the parchment.

However, before Colin could ask for specifics, he saw the other party add: "Boss, regarding the research funding, we need some Mist Points to purchase system computing power optimization..."

*Hiss...*

Colin’s head swelled, throbbing with pain.

Just let me die.

Why is everyone asking for money everywhere?

He was clearly the richest person on the entire server, yet he was living even more frugally than on the first day...

...

Just as Colin was suffering from a headache, in his region, several survivors driving war vehicles finally found the only "Level 3 Territory" in the current area.

"What a huge house..."

"So many people..."

"My god, there really are ten war vehicles and over a thousand people..."

"They even have artillery..."

Aboard the vehicles, the five lords sighed with sincere emotion; the gap was simply too vast.

But at that moment, several more vehicles drove out from other directions, surrounding them completely.

"Stop immediately!" A stern voice came from one of the vehicles.

Several cannons were aimed at them; it seemed that if there was any sign of trouble, they would fire immediately.

"W-we mean no harm..." the survivors on the vehicle replied quickly.

"We are here to surrender!"