Chapter 7: Energy Simulation
[Mission Brief: We are not conducting a mere research project. We are pressing the first critical button that will decide the fate of the entire intelligent race. Our bodies are miracles assembled by blind chance, yet they are also exquisite and fragile glass shackles that imprison our potential. They are brittle, fleeting, and helpless before disease, aging, and violence. Billions of lives are like candles trembling in the wind, extinguished by uncertainty before they can fully illuminate themselves. We refuse to accept such a fate. The Glass New Star Project is now officially launched.]
[Note: This is a chain mission. The next stage will only unlock after the previous stage is completed.]
[First Link: Complete the Awakening requested by Xavier Moore.]
[First Link Reward: 25,000 EXP]
Hodell's heartbeat skipped.
An A Level chain mission.
That was no joke.
Chain missions, or running loops as many players called them, were the kind that only revealed the next objective after the previous one had been cleared. Their rewards rose step by step, and if all stages were completed, there would usually be an additional completion reward at the end.
They were also notoriously troublesome.
In the original story, missions of B Level and above usually involved the major power structure of a planet. Han Xiao's early A Level mission had been the clash between the Six Nations and Germinal Organization, a planetary scale conflict that split players into two major camps.
And now, in this unknown corner of Liuli Star, the Erhai School had just triggered the same tier of mission.
That meant one thing.
He had underestimated them.
This was not just some hidden laboratory organization dabbling in forbidden research. Or rather, the organization's research direction was significant enough to affect the fate of the entire planet.
That alone made it terrifying.
Hodell's mind raced.
When creating a character in [Galaxy], players were asked all kinds of questions before entering the game. What sort of world did they prefer? What kind of combat style did they like? Ancient? Magical? Urban? Sci fi? The system would then use that data to send them to suitable beginner planets and starting environments.
That was one of the game's major selling points.
The universe was huge, and casual players loved drifting through it, experiencing different civilizations, different cultures, different skies.
Each novice planet would usually have one or more core storylines.
Which made Liuli Star stranger still.
Because he had never heard of it in the original novel.
Not once.
And that was not the only absurd thing.
He even remembered how some players with twisted senses of humor would intentionally answer the system survey with nonsense like horror, supernatural, haunted, cursed, or bizarre. The system, displaying the same malicious humor as a cat toying with an injured bird, would occasionally indulge them. Those players might be dropped onto a world full of undead, ghosts, and occult horrors, while lacking any proper means to deal with them.
The result was usually one of two things.
Either they deleted their account in despair.
Or they gritted their teeth and played through it while screaming the entire time.
The immersive pods for [Galaxy] had been infamous for how realistic they felt. Pain had been reduced, but everything else was nearly perfect. Even the registration agreement, which hardly anyone bothered reading, had included a predatory clause stating that the company would bear no responsibility if a player experienced discomfort or developed physiological or psychological issues during gameplay.
Thinking back on it now, Hodell still felt that clause was absurd.
Would a future society really allow such shameless terms?
That question aside, one thing was obvious.
If the Erhai School could trigger an A Level main storyline mission, then Xavier Moore and everything behind him were far more dangerous than they looked.
Across from him, Xavier was in no hurry at all.
He held the amber liquor between long fingers and savored it slowly, his eyes burning with controlled intensity. For an amnesiac, the speech he had just delivered contained far too much information. Letting the other party think was wiser than forcing an answer through intimidation.
Reflection invited investment.
Hopeless submission only produced broken tools.
Hodell chose his response carefully.
"I am just an ordinary person without an ability."
He neither accepted nor refused.
He merely presented the most practical problem.
He did not believe someone like Xavier Moore would personally say all of that without a reason.
"An ordinary person?"
Xavier repeated the words with a hint of amusement, as if tasting them.
"Eli, you still do not understand yourself. Or perhaps I should say, you do not understand what you used to be."
He set down the wine glass and brought his fingertips together beneath his chin. At once, that familiar fervor returned to his gaze.
"It is not that you never had an ability."
He spoke slowly, each word distinct.
"Before your resurrection, you possessed an extremely special power. One so special that, in practical terms, it was almost useless."
Hodell listened in silence.
"You could vaguely perceive the underlying attributes and overall integrity of another person's gene chain. Not enough to analyze a specific ability manifestation, no. Only enough to form a faint impression. Stable. Chaotic. Full of potential. Near collapse."
His eyes remained fixed on Hodell.
"You could also distinguish broad classes from one another. A Mage. An Esper. The difference was visible to you in a vague, instinctive way."
Then Xavier gave a slight shake of his head.
"It had no combat value. No healing value. No strategic explosiveness. It was so weak that conventional detection methods could barely register it at all."
Hodell's thoughts stirred.
On the surface, it did sound mediocre.
A zero combat power utility ability.
But zero combat power did not always mean worthless.
In [The Legendary Mechanic], plenty of abilities looked ordinary at first. A basic speed type could become monstrous in the hands of someone with high growth potential and enough levels, eventually evolving into something like [Godspeed]. Of course, the true exception in the original was [Ability Copy], which broke the scale entirely.
Still, for a low potential Esper with no future ceiling, an ability like Xavier described would indeed be close to useless.
"However…"
Xavier's tone shifted, and his expression took on that all seeing confidence again.
"That perception is gone now, is it not?"
Hodell said nothing.
"After your resurrection, you can no longer sense those vague genetic traits."
Again, Xavier did not need an answer.
He already believed he had one.
"Do you understand what that means, Eli?"
His voice deepened with a guided kind of fanaticism.
"It means that your body, after crossing the line between life and death, may have approached the ultimate goal of the New Human. It has spontaneously, instinctively… optimized itself."
He rose from his chair and began circling the desk like a scholar presenting a theorem that would redefine the world.
"This confirms one of the core hypotheses of the Glass New Star Project. A perfect life form is not one that blindly accumulates abilities. No. It is a life form that possesses the right to choose and the right to edit its own evolutionary direction."
His eyes shone.
"Your body, perhaps driven by instinct, judged that the old perception ability was no longer necessary. It may even have seen it as an obstacle to deeper development. So it discarded it."
He spread his hands.
"It removed redundancy."
Then he looked at Hodell as though he were staring at a masterpiece not yet unveiled.
"It left you a nearly blank canvas."
Hodell's first reaction was simple.
So all the torture today was ultimately for this.
A final confirmation of his state.
Xavier's voice echoed quietly through the study, filled with restrained excitement.
"And now," he said, "we will paint a flawless picture upon that canvas."
He gave Hodell no time to answer.
Instead, he rested one hand on the crystal sphere set at the corner of the desk, a movement so natural it almost looked decorative.
The study door opened almost immediately.
Reed stepped in and bowed.
"Dr. Moore."
"Take Mr. Eli to that laboratory," Xavier said. "It is time to begin the painting."
His gaze never left Hodell.
Expectation.
Scrutiny.
Possession.
All three were there.
Hodell understood there was no room for refusal. He silently followed Reed back out of the study and into the dark metal corridor beyond.
He could understand Xavier's enthusiasm.
Resurrection fit the New Human ideology too perfectly. A subject who crossed death and returned, apparently shedding a prior ability in the process, was exactly the sort of thing that would look like proof to people already half in love with their own theory.
But Hodell did not believe their experiment had actually succeeded.
Just like Han Xiao's rebirth in the original, his own resurrection obviously had nothing to do with the experiment itself. It had happened because of transmigration, not because of their scientific brilliance.
Of course, they had no way of knowing that.
So they would continue digging in the wrong direction, probably blaming any future failures on insufficient understanding of human fox hybrid genetics, the prior gene chain's instability, or the interference of his former ability.
In other words, they were likely about to waste enormous time and effort on a fundamentally flawed assumption.
That thought gave him a strange sense of grim comfort.
This time they headed even deeper into the base.
Finally, they stopped before an ordinary looking metal door.
No ornate carvings.
No dramatic symbols.
No overt menace.
Which somehow made it feel even more dangerous.
The door slid open soundlessly.
What lay inside startled Hodell.
The room was circular. Every wall was layered with crystal panels that flickered with flowing data streams and spreading energy ripples. In the center stood a slightly raised platform, and above it hovered countless thin tubes, needle like probes, and articulated instruments that looked precise enough to operate on atoms.
At the very center of it all was a transparent crystal hibernation chamber.
Inside floated a human body submerged in pale blue gel.
A young man.
Peaceful faced.
Still.
"Regrettably, when we found him, he was already at the edge of death," Reed said flatly from the side. "We preserved the remains so the gene chain could be maintained in perfect condition."
His tone was utterly emotionless.
He might as well have been describing a screwdriver.
Hodell stared at the corpse.
In [The Legendary Mechanic], an Esper's power was rooted in the gene chain. That was the foundation that determined how an ability developed, how much power it could bear, how much control it could achieve, and how far its application could evolve.
The original novel had used plenty of examples.
A magnetic ability might begin with controlling coins, then later influence an entire stadium, then one day develop far enough to manipulate a planet's magnetic field. Push it even further, and it could become precise enough to use human magnetic fields for large scale slaughter.
That was the real difference between abilities.
Potential.
Two people might both wield lightning, but one might only become a living battery while the other could summon storms and erase battlefields.
That was why abilities were graded.
E, D, C, B, A.
Potential was everything.
Reed gestured toward the tubes and probes surrounding the chamber.
"Once the ritual begins, we will guide…"
Then he stopped abruptly.
His eyes narrowed.
"Wait. What are you doing?"
Hodell had considered the possibility that his hidden ability might really be [Ability Copy], or something close enough to function the same way. But he had also prepared for failure.
If the interface gave no reaction, he would level up on the spot and fight his way out if necessary.
Because the truth was simple.
Once he lost his value, Moore's elegant talk about necessary cruelty would come crashing down on his head.
So instead of waiting for Reed to finish, Hodell stepped forward.
Onto the platform.
Up to the crystal chamber.
Then he placed his palm directly against the corpse inside.
The surface was cold.
The kind of cold that belonged to a body no longer claimed by life.
Strangely, he was not as nervous as he thought he would be.
A guard instantly moved.
"Lord Reed."
The implication was obvious.
One word from Reed, and he would pull Hodell away by force.
But Reed lifted a hand to stop him.
"No," he said quietly, eyes fixed on Hodell. "Let us see what he intends."
In Reed's mind, gene chain alteration and evolutionary optimization were not things that should ever be as simple as Hodell seemed to think.
And yet…
The next moment, the interface flashed before Hodell's eyes.
[You have gained an ability growth opportunity: Energy Simulation. Consume 10,000 EXP to copy?]
.....
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