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Chapter 400: Researcher

Translator: imperfectluck Editor: Pranav

Make the White Dragons more like other dragons? This sounded difficult, but it wasn’t really all that hard if you heard the explanation. I didn’t even need to create a research team, write a report or scam any research funds... Hrm—it seemed quite meaningless, now, to scam research funds. I no longer had investors or higher-ups to report to.

“Are you stupid? You could write a report and ask Dragon City for funds. Aren’t they your temporary investors? They have all sorts of dragon magic and ancient secret techniques. There’s no reason not to ask!”

“...As expected of the Banshee Queen, my elder in scamming research funds.”

“Of course! Don’t you know how I did things back at the Cloud Tower? I would split a simple project that could have been dealt with only one research team into four research teams. Each team would receive funding from different mage organizations. Then, each team would have ‘breakthroughs’ with slightly different results, obtaining another four batches of research reward money. How else was I supposed to fund my research? Unlike me, Amelia was so weak at scamming research funds that others even saw through her.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re amazing. That’s why your request for funds for your research on the solidity and quality of the soul was denied. Now I am your boss. Is it really okay for you to be bragging about scamming funds in front of me?”

“Wait—that’s a real project! How am I supposed to research it if you cut off my funding? I promised to share the results with you!”

“Sure. First show me some results and I’ll fund you. Stop pretending to be pitiful and saying that you’re poor. I know very well that you have lots of money stashed away. Fund your research yourself. If you have any results, I’ll fund the rest.”

How could an ancient individual like her possibly be poor? Just a random piece of furniture from her generation would be considered a valuable antique today. Although regular antiques weren’t worth much money, it was impossible for Harloys to be poor as she had Golden Elf artwork, forgotten relics, artifacts and so on from the immemorial generation. Previously, when Harloys was out causing calamities in the world, she had never lacked money. It was already nice of me to not force her to hand all of her funds over.

After I took care of the foolish Harloys who had revealed her scamming methods, I focused my attention back on the White Dragon research project. Naturally, I had already intended to use her method of scamming others for funds and resources. Dragon City was a wealthy investor, although their generosity was questionable. But as long as I carefully scammed—er—communicated with them, I could likely obtain many benefits.

Actually, the issue of the White Dragons wasn’t that difficult to solve.

White Dragons had unbelievably slow growth periods. For a great part of their lives, they would be nothing more than bloodthirsty beasts. But the White Dragons who lived long enough to become Elder and Ancient Dragons would typically be able to obtain wisdom, making them drastically different to their brethren. However, since they had retained bestial natures for far too long, even the intelligent White Dragons were highly aggressive and threatening compared to other dragons.

If one analyzed the differences between White Dragons and other dragons, it was quite easy to tell where the problem was. Other dragons were able to inherit knowledge even while being a Dragon Egg, so Baby Dragons were born with basic common sense and intelligence. This inherited knowledge would be constantly expanded upon as the dragon grew older. Even Dragon Bloodline Warlocks were capable of obtaining knowledge through their Dragon Bloodlines. It was only the White Dragons that couldn’t do so.

This inheritance wasn’t exactly a collection of high-level knowledge or secrets. Yet memories and common sense constituted the foundation of a complete “personality.” Without these, and without anyone to teach them, the White Dragons ended up as nothing more than carnivorous wild beasts.

However, I was familiar with this concept. To use an analogy, this was like a newly-produced computer that had no problems with its hardware, but the creator had forgotten to install a basic operating system on it. This made all the common applications unusable, and the computer could only run itself automatically with zero guidance.

When you looked at it like that, the solution became evident. One simply had to install an operating system. In my case, I would either have to copy one from somewhere or write my own.

Each species of dragon had different natures and natural talents, and their inherited knowledge typically involved knowledge about their racial talents and specialty magics. Using other dragons’ inherited knowledge would be inappropriate for the White Dragons. If I tried to forcefully give the White Dragons a Red Dragon’s inherited knowledge, I would end up raising Red Dragons with the appearance of White Dragons.

However, since the older White Dragons at Ancient Dragon and above were capable of self-awakening to intelligence, I simply needed to copy a set of their knowledge. Of course, this meant I would need to dissect numerous White Dragons. Yet when considering the White Dragons’ terrible lack of popularity with the other dragons, I felt that Dragon City would agree to this requires of mine.

“Once a human’s personality is formed, it’s incredibly difficult to change it. Habits are forever hard to change. A person with set memories and knowledge can only be slowly influenced to change their way of thinking. A person accustomed to being a beast will be nothing more than an intelligent beast even after receiving memories and knowledge. That will only make the person more dangerous. Only by giving White Dragons inherited knowledge from the very beginning will it be possible to change what they are like from their very foundation.”

I wasn’t making any of this up. Except for very few exceptions, the White Dragons powerful enough to become intelligent creatures had terrible reputations. The intelligent White Dragons were infamous for being loyal to the “law of the jungle,” making them immensely disliked even by other dragons.

It was obvious to me how I should solve this problem. The critical factor of this problem wasn’t a logical one—it was more about how to give a Dragon Egg memories and knowledge without brainwashing it or making it evil. This was more of a test about one’s control over memories and the soul.

However, none of this was a problem to me as the critical factor to solve everything was right in front of me. With an expression of great displeasure, she was currently glaring at me.

“So, after all these roundabout explanations, you finally scammed me into becoming your experimental subject?”

“No, no, how could you possibly use a word like ‘scammed?’ Haven’t I explained everything clearly to you? Evelyn, you are the critical piece for solving this puzzle.”

The Evelyns, who were constantly being born, were born with their own personalities, memories and knowledge. From a certain standpoint, they possessed a more complete version of the dragons’ inheritance. And they obviously had the capability to evolve their inheritance, as all of them gained more knowledge each time a new Evelyn was born. As long as I could clearly understand the system behind how they worked, I would be able to reverse engineer the technique and relearn this knowledge I’d forgotten.

Cough—cough—I truly didn’t have any personal ideas about scamming her to become my experimental subject! I swear in the name of Harloys’ honor!

As for the side effect—this surgery would likely bring about multiple personalities—that was, in a way, a good thing. After all, I would receive an endless amount of benefits if I secretly buried a personality that was one hundred percent loyal to me deep within her soul. As for whether it was immoral to leave “backdoors” within the “operating system,” didn’t a certain major software company from my previous world forever leave backdoors in their operating system as well? Weren’t they still very popular regardless of that fact? Shame? Business morals? Was that ever important?

“Oh man, as expected of the past me. Such amazing skills. I give it thirty-two thumbs ups!”

Unfortunately, despite the fact that the deeply sleeping Copper Dragon Evelyn had agreed to be my experimental subject, Blue Dragon Evelyn was vigilantly watching my every move. She wouldn’t even let me inspect Copper Dragon Evelyn by stripping her naked. This was an insult to my medical morality!

“Medical morality? You have such a thing?”

“...Fine, I don’t have any medical morality, but I have skills! From past to present, plenty of individuals have become famous doctors even without medical morality! Who cares if I’m one of them?”

Rome wasn’t built in a day. Research results that came out too quickly wouldn’t be considered valuable. I wouldn’t even consider giving Dragon City my research results until they offered me an appropriate price. I left the scamming expert Harloys in full charge of the negotiations.

As for the White Dragon Eggs, they became my first batch of experimental subjects. Perhaps they would even soon become some backup combat strength for my side.

As for the slow growth period that White Dragons had? That was even less of a problem. Little Red had access to a secret dragon potion which could quickly make a dragon grow into an Adult Dragon. Although it had numerous negative side effects, I possessed Frigidwinter Earth, a cheat-like world where I could rewrite the natural laws. That was no problem for me. Probably.

However, if I used my authority over my world to rapidly help the White Dragons grow, these White Dragons would become considered as residents of Frigidwinter Earth. If they left Frigidwinter Earth, they would be forced to obey the natural laws of Eich, the mortal plane, which would end terribly for them. Yet while other creatures weren’t suited for living in Frigidwinter Earth to begin with, White Dragons were born with a natural affinity for ice.

“If I can’t send them out, I could still use them when I pull my enemies into Frigidwinter Earth. Also, if this plan succeeds, that limitation will be removed...”

As long as I could master Eich’s methods of giving the White Dragons rapid growth and their inheritance, I would naturally be able to use local resources to mass-produce intelligent White Dragons. I would simply have to invest more of my resources.

This was analogous to using banned technologies to make up for things when current technology and industry was insufficient. Once the theoretical technologies and industries were sufficiently complete, I could remove the portion with banned technologies and replace it with a production line capable of mass production. For Frigidwinter Earth to show its true power, I would first have to obtain numerous research accomplishments.

I had long since possessed a magical engineering research division based in Frigidwinter Earth. Many incomplete technologies had been solved by my Creator rights of “I think,” “I theorize” and “I believe” in Frigidwinter Earth. Although the research results were far from usable in practical applications, recent progress in magical engineering products was still foundationally related to the tremendous leaps made in magical engineering theory.

Of course, there were also many theories that went overboard or were about to go overboard. For instance, I recently had an outlandish idea about copying the memories and knowledge of a super warrior and then using my Creator rights to create physical bodies, with the end results being mass-produced elite warriors... Does all this sound familiar to you? Yep, I wanted to create a fantasy version of Star Wars’ Clone Army.

“...Isn’t that blatantly breaking the Cycle of Reincarnation? Aren’t you afraid of the veteran True Gods visiting you for a personal chat?”

“That’s why I’ll only do this in the Dragon World. I’m not foolish enough to do such a thing in Eich, where the veteran True Gods will personally come visit me.”

“Why do I feel like you’re doing this on purpose?”

“Of course! Who would commit a crime right in front of a cop? In the world of Eich, the Gods and the two sources of Order and Chaos are watching. Going even slightly against the rules will result in major problems. I already have several hundred research plans I want to try out here in the Dragon World. We can take things slowly.”

Although the idea sounded nice, reality was forever harsh. In just two days, my Clone Army plan failed before it even began.

“It failed? Was it because the physical bodies you produced out of thin air were no good?”

“No, the physical bodies were easy. They were simply amalgamations of cells and high-growth proteins. The problem was with the soul. I’m incapable of creating souls out of thin air.”

“...Didn’t you already succeed in creating something out of nothing?”

“Normal creation and creating a soul are at completely different levels of difficulty. While I can create physical bodies, creating a soul from scratch is still impossible. Back when I created that tiny bird in the Humiliation of Soros incident, I made use of a soul from the Cycle of Reincarnation. That was something I only learned afterward. From a certain standpoint, it simply borrowed my powers to be reborn.”

“...There’s no other method to solve this problem?”

“Not for the time being. My Frigidwinter Earth is informing me that it’s absolutely impossible with my current power level. It doesn’t seem that difficult, but if it becomes possible, that means it’ll be possible to casually increase or decrease the number of souls in a world. In that case, a so-called Cycle of Reincarnation will become meaningless. It’s not so easy after all.”

I felt regretful that I was unable to overcome this problem. If I could overcome the difficult task of artificially creating souls, then the Cycle of Reincarnation would no longer be important. It would be like inventing a limitless, clean and cheap source of energy, rending the previous energy technology meaningless.

Unfortunately, if it was that easy, the two Goddesses of Order and Chaos wouldn’t have sunk into such deep hibernation to the point where they needed soul shards from the Cycle of Reincarnation to help them recover. They could have simply enjoyed a giant soul buffet. It could be deduced that even Astrya and Cynthia didn’t have the ability to create souls.

“There’s more than a ninety percent probability that the Goddesses of Order and Chaos don’t have the ability to create souls. Since the Cycle of Reincarnation has always existed, with souls constantly being reused, perhaps even Eich herself doesn’t have this power. Maybe the creation of the world was nothing more than a coincidence.”

Harloys nodded in agreement. She understood the complexity of this topic and didn’t have much hope from the beginning.

“What’s the backup plan? Don’t tell me you don’t have one.”

“Yeah, I do have one: to establish original residents of Frigidwinter Earth and increase the speed at which they multiply, and then create a new Cycle of Reincarnation in my world. But if I still utilize my super warrior Clone Army plan, that will be no different from forcefully brainwashing their souls, which is something that goes against even my moral limits. So...”

“So?”

“Let’s just leave this plan aside for the time being, although I unexpectedly received something else. And I have a few simple backup plans that still need experimenting. If they succeed, even though I still can’t create a mega Clone Army, being able to produce a few hundred super warriors should become easy. Right, let’s ask the others to catch some experimental subjects for me. It would be best if the experimental subjects have some intelligence—oh, those Tigermen would be quite nice. If they refuse to communicate with us, just send them directly to my experimental laboratory. Our time is limited, and the dragons will soon take action. I sorely lack any patience.”

“...I feel that your moral limits have become even fewer ever since you arrived here.”

“That’s not it at all; it’s that the events awaiting us in Armageddon are just that foreboding. I’ve never been afraid of dirtying my hands. As for why I didn’t do anything like this before, it was only because I was afraid of the troublesome True Gods coming for me without me receiving any results from the experiments. But now that all the conditions have been met and we’re in the Dragon World, we don’t have much time left...”

I paused for a moment before saying something I’d been thinking about for a long time.

“...Besides, I’m already an evil villain whose hands are filled with blood. What do I have to hesitate about? Does it make any difference if I enter the eighteenth or nineteenth layer of Hell?”

“...It would seem that you’ve already prepared a place for yourself in your own vision of Hell...”

“Of course. But first, we need to create this version of Hell that’s destined to contain all the villains and the dead. Hah! You’re not any better than I am. Since I’m destined to go to Hell, you’ll be right by my side.”

“Heh, should I be honored? Still, as long as you help me bring all those bastard Elven Gods to Hell, I suppose I’d be willing to accompany you...”