No matter what, Xu Mo was still an inexperienced young man who had never been intimate with anyone. Even though the other party was just a humanoid zombie, the sight of her bare body was still quite a visual shock for him. To avoid making any irreparable mistakes, Xu Mo found a bedsheet in the cabinet and fashioned it into a simple skirt for the female Tyrant. Then, he calmed himself down and proceeded with his next experiment.
After engaging in several interesting "interactive mini-games" with the female Tyrant, Xu Mo was finally able to roughly assess her actual combat strength.
Compared to the mature version of the female Tyrant he had encountered in the environment, this young-woman version had an overall stat reduction of about two-thirds. Her strength was only about 20% higher than his, while her neural response was half as fast. However, the original version's terrifying defense and regeneration abilities were well inherited—his full-power stab with the Spartan Shortsword could barely penetrate an inch into her skin, and the wound healed in under ten seconds. With this alone, ordinary firearms in the real world would likely be ineffective against her.
Additionally, this female Tyrant came with a very practical ability: "Tendon and Bone Control."
As the name suggests, this special ability allows her to manipulate her bones and muscles to a certain extent. With this skill activated, she could assume an additional body form, sacrificing agility in exchange for a nearly 50% boost in strength and defense.
However, in this form, her originally voluptuous and graceful figure would suddenly bulge with layers of knotted muscles, her body size increasing drastically, resembling a female bodybuilder in a muscle competition.
While this form matched the oppressive image of a Tyrant in Xu Mo's mind, objectively speaking, this extreme high-strength, high-defense form was not very practical unless in a stationary group battle. In terms of overall combat effectiveness, it was likely inferior to her base form.
Moreover, this ferocious appearance really didn't suit a female-based Tyrant. At least for now, Xu Mo found it difficult to accept such an unconventional, rugged aesthetic.
Excluding skills like "Zero Eruption," the female Tyrant's one-on-one combat power had already surpassed Xu Mo's by far. Her endurance in prolonged battles was an advantage he couldn't match—she was a true gold-tier enforcer.
However, one thing troubled Xu Mo greatly: her intelligence.
Back in the Apocalyptic Mirage, Xu Mo had already noticed that this female Tyrant seemed to have some cognitive issues. Now, after testing, he confirmed that she was the very definition of "all brawn, no brains." Her intelligence was probably even lower than that of the pervy crow. Without Xu Mo's commands, she couldn't even switch targets after her original one was completely destroyed—she was completely rigid and inflexible.
From this perspective, if she were outside Xu Mo's direct line of sight, her combat effectiveness would likely be significantly reduced.
But overall, the power she exhibited was absolutely worthy of the incredibly rare Level 2 Apocalyptic Shard that created her.
After storing the female Tyrant back into the shard space, Xu Mo originally planned to use an orange shard to further enhance "Zero Eruption." However, to his surprise, with three orange shard enhancements, "Zero Eruption" had already reached the limit for Level 1 shard upgrades. Left with no other choice, he decided to use this enhancement opportunity on "Blue Flame Phantom," which was linked to "Demon's Hand."
Then, while activating another orange Apocalyptic Shard, Xu Mo's worst fear came true—the completely random activation triggered a chain reaction with a shard he had long forgotten inside his shard space: the ice shaver machine shard!
"Dammit! How did I forget about this thing? I should've separated it beforehand! What a waste of a shard!"
Xu Mo ruffled his hair in frustration and hastily summoned the ice shaver machine in its shard form, hoping to see if he could re-fuse it or at least sell the parts separately. But the moment the shard materialized, he was dumbfounded—the green shard representing the ice shaver machine had completely fused with the orange shard, forming a mixed-color shard that could only be summoned or dismissed together. There was no longer any way to separate them.
Alarmed, Xu Mo quickly pulled out the shard for "Demon's Hand" and checked. As expected, the blue shard representing "Demon's Hand" was now contaminated with a large amount of orange shard fragments.
Now he finally understood—the chain-type orange shards were like one-time installed, irreversible plugins for other Apocalyptic Shards. Unless the owner died and the system reset, there was no way to undo the fusion.
Playing with Apocalyptic Shards was really just a game of luck.
After storing the shards back, Xu Mo summoned the ice shaver machine's physical form. He immediately noticed a significant change in its appearance after merging with the orange shard—the originally white casing had become thicker and more angular, its size had expanded several times, and the hand crank was completely gone, replaced by a finger-sized hole on the side. At first glance, it looked more like a mini refrigerator.
Cautiously, Xu Mo opened the device, unsure if he should still call it an ice shaver machine. Inside, instead of a simple empty compartment, the 40 cm² interior was now divided into dozens of equal-sized sections by what appeared to be iron racks. However, its exact function remained unclear.
Could it have turned into an oven this time? Xu Mo placed a few pieces of meat inside, but nothing happened.
Wait… could this be one of those "Production-type Life Items" that Du Zhizhang once mentioned?
The more he thought about it, the more plausible it seemed. Especially since the black hole on the side was exactly the size of an Apocalyptic Shard—it was clearly designed to use shards as raw material for creating something.
According to Du Zhizhang, Production-type Life Items had an extremely low drop rate. But what made them truly valuable wasn't just their rarity—it was their unique ability to mass-produce high-value products from Apocalyptic Shards.
With products, one could convert them into commodities for the market, allowing them to earn "Fruit Coins" faster to trade for desired shards. In essence, Production-type Life Items were money-printing hacks.
Of course, having such an item didn't guarantee success. Due to the random nature of Apocalyptic Shards, the value of the manufactured products could vary drastically.
Du Zhizhang once mentioned that in the World Fruit Trade Union, the most successful person using a Production-type Item was a clothing merchant who sold 3,000 pieces in a single day. Meanwhile, the worst case was someone producing lighters—their first batch of 1,000 units still hadn't sold out.
In other words, whether Xu Mo could make money from this device depended on whether the produced items were useful and in high demand.
Even though it was another gamble, Xu Mo decided to give it a shot. He inserted a red enhancement shard into the black hole, but nothing happened. However, when he switched to a green artifact-type shard, the white machine finally began to hum and tremble.
As it worked, large amounts of faint green mist seeped from the vent-like slits on the top and sides, rising into the air before gradually dissipating.
Five minutes later, the tremors stopped, and twenty silver-gray cubes, each the size of a matchbox, appeared inside the metal racks.
What are these? Could they really be matches? That would be even worse than lighters…
Xu Mo dumped the cubes onto the table, picked one up, and examined it closely. The hard metallic surface was seamless, making it look like a completely useless solid metal block.
After pondering for a while, he still couldn't figure out their function. Shrugging, he decided to store both the cubes and the transformed machine back into the shard space.
Looks like he'd have to wait until his trip to Nanzheng City on the sixth day of the New Year to ask around and find some answers.