Chapter 151: Chapter 151
“Darling, you shouldn’t say things like that with such ease. Especially to two old ladies like us.” Hannah joked.
“Old? Who’s old? I’m just 19… centuries old, but after the first millennium, who still counts years, right? Hahahaha.” But then, shifting her gaze back to Sokram, she asked, “Explain, please.”
“Well, from the top of my head,” Sokram began, his eyes briefly losing focus. The complex equations and vast timelines of his past spun behind his gaze.
"Calculating the results we got so far. If we'd managed to concoct a pill that works on humanoids, for someone unawakened to reach awakening, 1 week to reach Tier 10 Common level.”
Sokram ignored their shocked, still expressions and continued, “But the pills’ effect will vanish the moment someone's Level of Existence advances.”
Their teacups trembled, untouched; Hannah’s lips parted slightly as if to whisper a prayer that never came.
Their gaze, fixed on him, shone with the light of hope.
A fragile, desperate hope to finally bid an eternal farewell to stagnation.
Sokram could see that and continued elaborating further:
“So for the next pill, 1 month to reach Tier 10 Uncommon level. After that, one year of isolated cultivation to reach Tier 10 True Existence. Then, it will take 5 years to reach the Tier 10 Reformed level. 10 years for Tier 10 Flawless. Fifteen years for Tier 10 Exalted. Twenty years for Tier 10 Semi-Perfect. Thirty years for Tier 10 Perfect. Forty years for Superior. Fifty years for Pre-Ascendant.”
Deep in thought, the two millennial women drinking tea with him stayed in silence for a long time, until Hannah finally asked, “That is cultivating fused energy, right? What about Chaos Energy?”
Sokram looked at Hannah, surprised, “You know they know?”
“We talked. Besides...”
Hannah frowned, remembering what he did during the battle with the orcs, and poked him with her finger at every word.
“She is old enough to know that no one can handle that many Chaos Cores without losing their minds. Your fancy runes might have fooled the others, but she is old enough to see through your smokescreen! ...Hmph! Now answer my question.”
“Alright, sorry.” Sokram flashed her a wry grin and continued explaining, “But no, not fused energy cultivation. Common single cultivation.”
“With fused energy cultivation, I believe one can reach Ascendance within a hundred years, and within twenty years with Chaos Energy Cultivation.” Sokram’s words once again stunned them into silence.
“This is bigger than Chaos Energy, darling.” Hannah finally said after a long silence.
“Yeah, I know. Nice, right?” Sokram flashed them his usual calm and confident grin.
With no sense of crisis in his demeanor or fear.
But even if this were something great, he wouldn’t sell it to the rest of the world.
Because if someone from his world Ascended before he did, they would reveal their planet’s position, but also the position of many other planets lost in the same dark zone of the galaxy.
If that happened, he would lose too many precious resources that would be useful down the road.
Although some of the planets, like Sokram’s, for example, might have fallen back to the dark ages after the great calamity, this wasn’t the case for the entire galaxy.
“But to commercialize it, we will have to dilute it greatly. People already believe that you can only reach Ascendance after twenty thousand years, and there isn’t anyone that old on this planet besides the Sacred Tree.” Sokram calmly sipped his tea, letting his words sink in.
“If we sell people a product that can speed up this process by 5 times, wouldn’t they still pay a fortune for it?” Sokram's eyes shone with a greedy glint and a mischievous grin.
Matching his grin, Hannah added, “And while we profit from them, we strengthen ourselves with the real pill.”
Kasine’s gaze shifted between the two of them and matched their grin.
She wasn’t a dragon, but her heart was certainly as greedy as theirs. And the hungry, predatory glint stole into her eyes, reflecting the gold she was already calculating, confirmed that.
“Why not recreate several versions of the same pill? And present to them over and over as if we had multiple breakthroughs studying the same formula, like, for example, once every two or three years.”
Sokram nodded, agreeing.
The trio began to giggle. And the giggle escalated to a burst of laughter, which then deepened into an evil, greedy cackle, like villains plotting world domination.
As the sunset bled across the horizon, Sokram stepped outside to buy more rats.
He was met with a startling sight: there were way more people present than usual.
Some were children from the slums.
Others were workers who would try any odd job they could find around town.
About seventy-five people had gathered, some clutching wooden boxes, others gripping rats by the tail.
Still, wanting to give everyone a chance, Sokram made it clear he would buy a single rat from each.
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from NovelHub. Please report it.
As much as he wanted and could, he knew that giving handouts would only help them today.
Only by changing their mentality and pushing their hearts toward Evolution would their situation and poverty truly change.
After storing the rats in the cages, Sokram and the two millennial grannies went at it again, testing sample after sample.
By the time they finished, they had found another five working samples.
Closing that day at a total of fourteen working formulas.
Different from the previous day, Sokram’s mood was very celebratory when he arrived home.
His mothers, grandmothers, and sister couldn’t help but notice the shift, but all Hannah and Sokram told them was that day they had some success in the trials.
That night, Sokram decided to go to the tower to continue his reading.
He still had a few books to go through from what he gained from Madalyn and the others, but especially Madalyn’s, as those books contained the foundations for Biomancy.
Sokram once again spent many hours in the first underground level, which amounted to many days of reading.
He left the tower a few hours before midday.
Once he arrived at his lab, there were a hundred people there already, as he had agreed with them the previous day.
Many of them had rats in their hands or in boxes, and some even brought their own cages, which gave Sokram an idea since this was the last day he would be buying rats for a while.
First, he made his announcement, “Guys, I thank you all for your hard work. But I have bad news, the trial I’m running will end today. So we won’t need more rats after today.”
The people's expressions, including the children, turned downcast, not hiding their disappointment.
Murmurs rippled through the crowd.
Rats wriggling nervously in rough palms as their heads bowed under invisible weight. Their shoulders slumped as the last flicker of hope dimmed from their eyes.
Sokram could see that the income they were earning was indeed helping them, so he decided to give them an incentive.
“But this is just the first of many jobs I’ll be offering in the future. But for a while, I won’t need any more rats. I don’t want you to think that we from the Dracnakrid, Dracony, and Androny are ungrateful, that we used you as cheap help, and then discarded you. So all of you will receive an extra compensation today.”
That cheered people up a little, and since Sokram was seen as a hero in the city, no one would create problems for him.
Even more so, knowing how strong he was.
Sokram lined them up beneath the pale noon light, interviewing each in turn.
Telling them that the people who were here from the start would receive preferential treatment in the future when the need for other odd jobs like these resurfaced.
He also explained that he envisioned needing personnel for various future ventures. And after each interview, Sokram gave them a generous reward.
Instead of silver, Sokram pressed the heavy gold coins into each roughened palm, the metal glinting like miniature suns.
But he also pointed them to his other business, which might need people to do other odd jobs.
After dealing with them, instructing the kids to hide the extra money he gave them, and storing the rats in their cages, he finally sat down to wait for Kasine and Hannah to arrive.
He didn’t need to wait for long, as they were watching everything from their usual spot nearby and didn't know what to think of his behavior toward the slum’s people.
For the rest of that day, they continued to test their samples.
Then something strange occurred.
Sokram had found all twenty-seven working samples he expected. Yet there were still around twenty samples to go through.
Since he was still pretending not to know what he would find, they continued the tests until the last sample.
When Sokram was testing his last one, initially, it seemed like another failure.
The energy gathering in the rat’s heart was a whirlwind: too swift, too violent. A physical tremor that caused the tiny ribcage to pulse and distort.
Faster. Far more violently than any failure before it.
He was sure the rat would explode, but it didn’t.
He even sped up the circulation of his guided cultivation, and in less than five minutes, the rat reached Tier 7. Latest content publıshed on novᴇlfire.net
Realizing what he had in his hands, instead of continuing, he forced a mistake that caused the rat to explode.
Sokram took the formula logs and asked Hannah, thinking she was the one who had concocted it.
“That was something else, sample number 497, astonishing results.” Sokram raised a brow, but Hannah showed no reaction.
He continued reading the log.
“The only different components we used were the Ten Roots Extract made with Vitalia Flower Green Roots, Crimson Aura Tree Roots, and the Roots of Magnolia, right?”
“Yes, it was you who concocted it, remember? You said it was a glimpse of inspiration you got from your books.” Sokram went through his memories and found she was right.
“But seeing that the rat exploded, it didn’t work that well, right?” Hannah asked, not really paying attention to the sudden widening of his eyes and the subtle tension that locked his jaw.
Kasine, too, had just finished her last rat and wasn’t paying attention to him at all.
Sokram’s mind was reeling.
He knew that Nhiria and Mentyr most certainly saw through his attempt to hide his discovery. But the world, the galaxy, even the universe, wasn’t ready for that.
“Right, my idea, haha. Well, it might be worth looking further into it in the future.”
Sokram covertly ripped the page from the log and hid it in his Void Glove.
This time, both Kasine and Hannah noticed it but said nothing.
Sokram was entitled to having his secrets, too, they thought.
“Well, now that we’re done, we can concoct the pills to see how the goblins react to them.” Sokram nodded, satisfied with the results.
“Want to bind the goblins to the slavery contracts tonight so we can have more time tomorrow?” Hannah didn’t even try to hide her eagerness.
She leaned forward, hands clasped so tightly her knuckles whitened, her breath catching slightly as she waited for his agreement, exceedingly excited and eager to see if any of the pills would work on humanoids.
In her case, it wasn’t even just the desire for Ascension, as she decided she would follow Sokram for as long as he wanted her by his side.
But also the desire to stand at the top as the strongest powerhouse, so Sokram could grow unbothered.
“Sure, let’s do this.” Sokram agreed, already leading the way downstairs.
Kasine also followed, even if she couldn’t help with Illusion spells yet, she would at least be there as an extra safety net.
Not that any goblin could pose any threat to Sokram, but she wouldn’t stay behind.
As Sokram walked through the cages, the goblins thrashed, foam flecking their mouths as they spat curses in their native tongue, their filthy fingers clawing for a piece of his flesh, as they tried to reach for Sokram through the cages’ bars.
There was one goblin that acted differently from the others.
Sokram had noticed him before, during his feeding rounds.
That goblin only sat in his cage, quietly observing Sokram.
The hatred in his eyes was like that of every other goblin.
Through the goblin’s eyes, Sokram could see a calculating, unnerving stillness.
It was the cold light of a creature trying to calculate steps ahead, studying him as a predator studies prey.
Despite the clear signs of corruption through Chaos Energy, the goblin seemed sapient and less savage than his peers.
Sokram stopped close to the cage and smiled, looking the goblin straight in his eyes, “I see you there. I like those eyes you got there.”
“He seems quite intelligent. Has he somehow evolved out of Chaos?” Hannah inquired, while Kasine watched with curiosity from behind her.
“No, Chaos is still there. You can feel it in his hatred. But as for evolution, that could be the case.” Sokram answered, turning to Hannah and purposefully showing an opening for the goblin to attack.
Yet the goblin did not charge.
The goblin remained rigid, every muscle fiber taut, as if it could taste the danger. Its glare sharpened. It saw through the bait, too cunning to lunge.
“See, he is smart enough to distinguish bait from a real opportunity. He’s quite dangerous.”
Sokram turned to look back at the goblin with a broad grin. And the goblin looked back at him, still carrying the same hatred but also curiosity.
“So, you’re studying me as I study you, hm? I’m keeping you,” Sokram extended a finger alive with crackling lightning toward the goblin.
The creature instantly scrabbled backward, pressing its body flat against the far bars, its initial bravado shattered by primal terror.