Again: Read Chapter 74 and 75 before you start hating it.
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Clucky's body trembled violently, like a car running on fumes, letting out two weak, pitiful clucks before collapsing onto the deck. The poor chicken sprawled there, wings spread wide, looking defeated.
"Clucky..."
Even though nobody could understand what the chicken was trying to say, the meaning was pretty damn clear. It was completely tapped out, not a single egg left in her system.
Marcus picked up the last exploding egg, examining it thoughtfully. Then he gripped it tightly in his hand and squeezed as hard as he could.
But no matter how much pressure he applied, and he really put some muscle into it, the egg showed no signs of cracking or breaking.
Just as I thought. Still follows Minecraft rules, if you don't throw it, it won't break.
He looked over at Usopp. "Try firing one with your slingshot. But not one of those two big ones, save those for later."
Usopp didn't think much of it and took the egg, preparing to load it into his weapon.
But Marcus stopped him before he could fire. "Hold on. Pull it back to maximum tension first. Don't worry about it exploding in the slingshot, these eggs are way tougher than you think."
Usopp's nose twitched nervously. "Easy for you to say. If this thing blows up in my face, that's no joke."
"Relax, man. You're wearing my diamond armor, remember? Even if it did explode right in front of you, the armor would absorb most of the impact. Trust me on this."
Usopp considered this and realized Marcus had a point. The diamond armor had protected him from way worse things than chicken eggs
So he increased the pull force, drawing his slingshot back until the elastic was stretched to its limit. The tension was enormous, but the egg still showed no signs of cracking.
"Damn, this thing really is solid."
Finally, he released it.
He watched through his built-in telescope as it flew over a kilometer before the wind caught it and knocked it sideways into a massive tree. If not for that collision, it probably would've traveled even farther.
BOOM!
"Flew slower than I expected," he muttered, still tracking the blast site through his scope. "Must be because the egg's too big and heavy."
Just then, another explosion erupted from the impact site, this one with power close to E1 level.
"What the hell?!" Usopp stared in disbelief, adjusting his telescope for a better view.
The other crew members crowded around the railing.
Dorry and Brogy were close enough to the blast site that they walked directly over to investigate.
"I could swear I just saw a black chick running around in there," Dorry said, stroking his beard thoughtfully.
Brogy nodded in agreement. "Me too! Definitely saw something small and dark scurrying away from the explosion."
Marcus heard this exchange and froze. His brain started working overtime, connecting the dots. Then his expression shifted rapidly from confusion to shock to excitement.
"Holy shit! It actually kept the egg properties! And judging by that second explosion's power, the chick must have gotten a power boost too."
"Oh shit..." Usopp immediately realized how terrifying that was.
After being on the ship for so long, Usopp naturally understood the nature of Marcus' eggs. When they hit the ground, there was a chance they'd spawn baby chickens, anywhere from one to four.
The crew had even turned it into a gambling game called "Egg Smash" where they'd compete to see who could hatch the most chicks from three eggs. Nami usually cleaned up at that game, somehow having ridiculous luck.
So he instantly understood how absolutely horrifying this development was. If you got lucky and an E4-level exploding egg hatched four explosive baby chicks upon impact, that would be equivalent to four C4-level explosions going off simultaneously in a chain reaction. The thought alone was terrifying.
"That's incredible!" Luffy had made it back to the ship and was staring at the smoking crater in the distance.
The rest of the crew looked equally stunned.
But Usopp was hit with a crushing realization, he himself couldn't produce explosions of that magnitude.
Am I actually weaker than a fucking chicken?
The sense of defeat left him speechless. On the ship, only Nami was comparable to his strength level, and lately she'd been training seriously with Kira while he just goofed around with Luffy every day, playing stupid games and telling tall tales.
No way! I can't let myself get shown up by a chicken.
"Usopp, hand me a couple of those eggs," Marcus said suddenly.
He examined the E1 exploding egg in his hand. The EMC value read 6,400 points, which made his eyes light up.
A single wheat seed had a sell value of 1 EMC and a purchase cost of 2 EMC in his system. Following the progression, F4-level items cost around 512 EMC, and E1 should theoretically cost around 640 EMC based on the materials invested. But this single exploding egg was worth ten times that amount!
A 1,000% profit margin! That was the kind of return on investment that would make any businessman weep with joy.
But then his expression changed, as he realized his dream of becoming an "explosion is art" fanatic, like that crazy bomber he'd always thought was hilarious, had just crumbled into dust. After all, if the selling price was 6,400 EMC, that meant the purchase cost for mass production would be 12,800 EMC per egg.
He checked the price of the E2 egg: 7,680 EMC.
Exactly as he'd estimated.
While he couldn't become a mad bomber throwing explosives around for fun, selling them for profit still wasn't a bad deal.
Next, he began considering the economics of explosive chicken breeding.
The cost was two million EMC per chicken. If Clucky could only manufacture one E4-level egg per day at maximum output, that was worth 10,240 EMC according to his calculations. Which meant it would take roughly 200 days just to break even on a single chicken.
Even if he scaled up the operation...
In the end, Marcus sighed and shook his head. There was no point. He could mine lava blocks for one day and make more than two million EMC without all the hassle. Chicken farming would require huge upfront investment with a painfully long payback period.
Plus, he wasn't even sure he could manage that many chickens properly. The most critical issue was disposal, if he wanted to clear them out and swung his sword, what if the chickens fought back by exploding?
Getting killed by his own livestock would be too embarrassing to even speak of. He could already imagine the epitaph: "Marcus, promising young pirate, killed by angry chickens in a freak farming accident."
He abandoned the idea of breeding an army of explosive chickens.
Marcus looked over at his crewmates, who were still fussing over the exhausted Clucky. The poor chicken was getting pets and treats, probably enjoying the attention.
He quietly made his way below deck to a hidden chamber he'd prepared weeks ago. This was where he planned to attempt something that had been on his mind since gaining his abilities, creating a Nether Portal.
He carefully embedded the obsidian blocks he'd been saving, arranging them in the familiar rectangular frame pattern.
"Wonder if this will actually work."
He struck his flint and steel against the obsidian frame. Instantly, he felt something explode inside his mind like a flashbang going off.
His consciousness went fuzzy. His vision faded to black as he felt his knees give out.
His consciousness blurred and his vision went dark. At the same time, the EMC stored in his transmutation table began draining away silently, pouring into the portal activation.
In the final moment before he lost consciousness completely, he heard Kira's urgent cry echoing from somewhere far away:
"Marcus! Something's wrong! Guys, come quick! Marcus collapsed!"
---
Darkness. An unknowable amount of time passed in the void.
When Marcus' consciousness finally returned, he opened his eyes groggily to find himself staring at an unfamiliar ceiling.
Something cool and hard was gently pressing a wet cloth to his forehead to bring down his fever.
Sensing his body's movement, there was a series of clattering noises followed by silence.
He turned his head toward the sound and saw a small reindeer with half its body hidden outside the doorway, staring at him.
"A raccoon?"
"I'm not a raccoon! I'm a reindeer!"
"Ah!" Realizing his mistake, the reindeer immediately panicked and ran off in a flutter.
Marcus slowly sat up, looking around the room he found himself in. Through the window, snow and wind howled across the landscape.
"What happened to me? This has to be Drum Island, right? How did I get here?" he tried to piece together his recent memories.
"I remember... I was testing the exploding eggs, and then I tried to light the Nether Portal..."
He looked down at his body and was shocked by what he saw. He'd become gaunt and withered, his lips cracked and peeling from dehydration. An IV drip in his arm was slowly feeding fluids into his system.
Even lifting his hand made it tremble from weakness.
Without thinking, he tried to open his transmutation tablet to get some food out.
But when the interface appeared, he froze.
Where was his six million EMC?
Who the hell stole his EMC?!
He checked and rechecked the display, but the EMC value remained at zero.
"No... no no no..."
He collapsed back onto the bed, his mind going completely blank.