2102 Preparing for War, Tool Players

This transport → hire → transport process was very redundant for Luke, but it was necessary for the Asgardians and the employees of the service factory.

Asgard was currently in a sensitive period of semi-annihilation.

They couldn’t expect outsiders to help them for free, much less did they need charity.

The supplies which Luke had salvaged belonged to Asgard in the first place, and Thor would pay him back this ‘service fee’ in the form of a personal favor.

The Asgardians and the employees of the service factory were dealing with each other in the open, so proper business deals had to be struck.

The real gains were the high-end items which the temporary camp couldn’t use. Most of them came from Odin’s treasure vault, and some were from Luke’s plunder in the last three months.

Luke wouldn’t pocket these high-end items.

As for the weird items among them, Thor definitely wouldn’t want those, and Luke would take them as the ‘compensation fee’ for the Level 3 clone that had been burned to ash.

Thor could take whatever he needed from what was left, and give the rest to Luke.

Luke estimated that at least two-thirds of these high-end items would fall into his hands in the end, and it would take him at least several centuries to study them.

These were the main gains from his trip to Asgard.

There were basically no experience and credit points. Asgardians weren’t considered human in the system, and there were no rewards for saving them.

Furthermore, Hela had an immortal body. Luke’s main mission had been to delay her, and he hadn’t really done her much damage.

It was just like how Thanos had almost cut Luke in half, but it wasn’t a victory, because Luke had recovered in seconds.

Thus, he didn’t have a list of the Goddess of Death’s abilities.

But Luke wasn’t disappointed.

He had already obtained Thor and Loki’s abilities.

Thor’s endorsement, the success of the rescue operation, and the relocation of the Asgardian people had made Heimdall very grateful to Knight.

Luke also easily obtained a list of this gatekeeper’s abilities.

As someone with eyes that could see everything and prenaturally good hearing, Heimdall knew as much as Hela did.

Tens of thousands of Asgardians who had been rescued were also immensely grateful to him, and automatically gave him numerous lists of abilities.

Although the quality of these people’s abilities wasn’t high, combining them together created an ‘encyclopedia’ of everyday life in a divine realm, which was much more than what Thor and Loki had in their heads.

This harvest of knowledge was much more important than earning some experience and credit points.

But Luke didn’t have time to study these things for now.

2018 could be a very important year.

In 2023, Thanos had started moving in 2018. In a very short period of time, he collected the six Infinity Stones and snapped his fingers to cull half the population in the galaxy.

Luke wouldn’t accept that.

Thus, he could only have Thanos die.

After many exchanges with Shuri, Tony had already come up with an improvement plan to incorporate vibranium into battleships and fighter planes, and was working overtime to produce them.

After studying samples of the Sovereign ships which Luke had gotten her, Shuri improved her VR remote control technology, which could enable ordinary people to pilot small fighter planes.

No matter where these ordinary people were, as long as they had a VR cockpit, they could participate in the battle as if they were playing a game.

A certain fighter plane game simulation, “Star Wars: Save the World,” had already become popular among players on Earth.

This game was very difficult. It was easy to die, and the player had to follow the tactical orders of the computer commander; they couldn’t kill as they pleased.

All of this couldn’t hold up to how seriously the paid media outlets took their job as they pushed out all sorts of advertising and marketing nonstop.

Many up-and-coming tech companies appeared and quickly organized a professional Star Wars league. These companies signed contracts with players who performed well in the game to form teams, and gave them very good treatment.

The daily matches in the Star Wars league were split into team and individual competitions, and took place two to three times a week.

The top prize was 10,000 dollars, but players who could enter the ranking list could also get a bonus.

The bonus for getting into the top 1,000 was 300 dollars, 500 dollars for the top 500, 1,000 dollars for the top 200, and 12,000 dollars for the top 100.

There were also various individual bonuses for ‘best hit,’ ‘most hits,’ ‘best defense,’ and ‘model of discipline.’

Even if players in the top 1,000 didn’t join a team, as long as they worked hard in the competitions, 3,000 a month was the minimum they could earn, and 5,000 was normal. They could still give it a try.

The most special thing was the bonus for ‘model of discipline.’

It wasn’t a lot, only 100 dollars.

However, as long as players obeyed the commander’s orders and completed them to a certain level, they could get it.

There was only one problem with playing this game, and that was that they had to go to specialized VR gaming halls and use the VR pods there.

Teams all over the world also had their own VR pods.

The VR gaming halls didn’t charge anything; it only said no to players who really didn’t have any talent.

With this method, Luke spent just ‘a little bit’ of money to gather thousands of pilots for the small remote controlled fighter planes.

The ‘contracted’ team members in particular were the best.

Most of them stayed at team training bases.

They had food, clothing, housing, transportation, food, and entertainment, but there were restrictions on their activities.

They couldn’t do anything like get high on weed or drink; if the addiction was too bad, the clone would treat them and plant a mental suggestion to practice hard every day.

Luke didn’t feel guilty about this at all, because… he was paying them.

It was a basic clause in the contract that players had to practice every day.

Also included were items like health and rest, not breaking the law and not indulging in things that could affect their competitive performance.

So, Luke was just making sure that they fulfilled their obligations after getting generous rewards.

In order to achieve better training results, he even used Life 1 diluted as much as possible to ensure that these pilots were healthy physically and mentally.

Players who had bad or even illegal habits unwittingly got through the withdrawal period and were reborn.

In the outside world, completing treatment in the best rehabilitation center would cost at least 100,000 or even hundreds of thousands of dollars.

This treatment couldn’t compare with the Life 1 dilution or Luke’s mental suggestions, and was far more painful.

Since Luke had chosen these people to help save the world, he would give them enough precious gifts.

At the same time, the Justice League and the PDD under it, the Avengers and New SHIELD were all preparing for battle.

The unmanned fighter planes controlled by the Star Wars players would just be cannon fodder on the battlefield.

They were just tools to prevent the superheroes from being surrounded and from being hunted down by routed troops.

It was impossible for Luke to rely on the small fighter planes to deal with Thanos.

The real deciding factor on the battlefield would still be the superheroes themselves.