Life Game In Other World
Chapter 463: Suspicion (Seeking Monthly Tickets)

Chapter 463: Chapter 463: Suspicion (Seeking Monthly Tickets)

Mercenary Zadi had already left the Research Institute with his team.

And Kors was now seated in front of Reid.

This old professor calmly looked at Reid, "I think I am qualified to see the most precious data of the Research Institute."

At this moment, there was no longer the sound of He Ao in his earphone; after entering the vault, all signals were cut off.

But he did not panic. From the beginning, He Ao had anticipated this situation and warned him to stay calm, to stay calm no matter what happened.

Kors was not really ignorant; the old professor who only wanted to engage in research knew exactly the kind of demeanor he should maintain now.

"Of course, Professor, you are qualified to become a core member of the project, but as you know, before you have the core access, I cannot divulge those project data to you,"

Upon saying this, Reid looked at the old professor in front of him and frowned slightly, "Professor, do you seem a bit excited?"

The tone of Kors was a bit too fast. After failing to access the vault door, he should be feeling frustrated or annoyed, not with the slightly excited and rising tone he had now.

"Frustration won’t solve any problems," Kors replied without changing his expression. "Right now, I am full of drive to enter the core of the project. I assume you won’t make me wait until the day I die to let me see those key documents?"

His words now carried a threatening undertone.

"Professor, don’t get agitated," Reid said with a smile as if pondering something, and he stepped back in front of his chair, "As you know, the group won’t let down anyone who works for it."

"Reid," Kors suddenly gazed at Reid, speaking softly, "I remember the first time I saw you was at the school’s scholarship award ceremony. You received the first place scholarship. I, as a guest, was seated in the front row. You said that your dream was to change the world, to free more people from the suffering of diseases."

"Kors, which medical student hasn’t had the ideal of healing the sick and aiding the world?"

Reid leisurely picked up the coffee from the tabletop and slowly brought it to his lips, "But eventually, one must bow to reality."

He took a sip of the coffee, "Do you remember our teacher’s admonition to every new student on the first day of school, ’Keep your ideals, but respect reality?’ Although I was a graduate student when you’d already graduated for over a decade and became a professor at the school,"

His gaze settled on Kors’s cheek,

"In this world, there are diseases that human power cannot cure, and deaths that must be faced; this is reality.

"An important line of demarcation in human growth is to recognize the truth of this world, to understand that some things cannot be changed by effort, to realize that one is not the hero who changes the world in the story but rather one of the countless ordinary people numbingly walking beside the hero."

As he said this, he put down the coffee cup in his hand and gazed at Kors, "Ideals have their boundaries, my senior."

Kors fell silent.

He and Kors shared the same mentor.

"We are born with different fates; the child of the indigent remains indigent, the child of the worker returns to work, the grocer’s son inherits the grocery store, the senator’s son is a senator, the billionaire’s son is still a billionaire."

Reid stood up and leaned against his office desk, "This is the reality of this world. There are some things, if you’re not born with them, you will never have them."

He shifted his gaze towards the window; the fiery sunset was sinking into the skyline of the city, and the dusk spread across the sky,

"Ideals are like this beautiful sunshine; it’s lovely and comforting, but it can’t fill your stomach and will eventually sink into the silent night."

"I remember that you once worked as a ’medicine-bag doctor’ for a while."

Kors paused for a moment and said gently, "It was from that time that I began to pay attention to you; and it was because of that experience that I believed in you and joined this project."

The so-called medicine-bag doctor was a doctor who provided free treatment to the indigent who could not afford medical expenses.

These doctors walk through the darkest corners of the city, accompanied by the smell of disease.

Many of their ’patients’ can’t even afford to pay for medical treatment, let alone the medication, so the bag-carrying doctors often buy some herbs or raw medical materials from Wilderness Hunters and some drug dealers, and mix up some simple medicines to distribute to their patients for free.

These medicines are usually not small in size and don’t look very nice, stored by the doctors in a large bag, carried on their back or hanging around their waist as they roam the streets and alleys.

That’s the origin of the name ’bag-carrying doctor’.

"Yes, so it was ’once’," Reid smiled, seemingly recalling something, and shook his head slightly,

"And how do you know that spending money now to ’buy’ those ’patients’ lives, having them participate in experiments, isn’t a form of salvation for them? Compared to living in agony, a blissful death is also a release."

He turned his gaze to Kors, "Alright, Brother Kors, the game of changing the subject and delaying time is over, I think you should rest a bit."

Reid raised his hand, and two fully-armed mercenaries quickly burst into the room,

"Take good ’care’ of Professor Kors."

The two mercenaries swiftly approached and subdued Kors, removing his bracelet.

"Let me go!"

Kors struggled fiercely, "Reid, you have no right to restrict my personal freedom."

However, at that moment, Reid had already turned and walked towards the door; he heard Kors’s shout but didn’t respond.

He rubbed his wrist and walked towards the elevator that went directly to the sixth underground level next to the office.

Kors’s reaction was a bit off; normally, Kors would never talk about those old stories.

This abnormality unsettled him, and he decided to check the ’safe’.

——

The pitch-black screen slowly lit up, displaying a simple start-up page.

Although these old-fashioned screens weren’t as cool as holographic projection screens, they had the advantage of being durable and less prone to damage.

He Ao stood in front of the screen, watching the fleeting start-up animation.

Then, a biometric verification interface appeared in his sight.

This verification also required biometric authentication and a password input.

He Ao wasn’t surprised by this interface; it was only logical for a computer storing confidential data to require identity verification before anyone could use it.

Thoughts raced through He Ao’s mind, and then he extended his hand to the edge of the screen, feeling around the perimeter.

When he touched the bottom edge of the screen, he paused for a moment, then briefly activated Super Memory, taking a quick look around.

After that, he took two steps back and turned off the computer.

As the screen gradually faded to black, He Ao’s gaze shifted to the massive supercomputer.

Storing a bit of data naturally wouldn’t require such a colossal supercomputer to provide computation power; its function, apart from data processing, was probably mostly to thwart brute force hacking attempts against the encryption system.

However, this computational power wouldn’t be difficult for Eve, who had a vast server matrix, as long as she was given enough time, she should be able to crack the computer’s security system as well.

The only problem was that there was no signal inside the safe, and He Ao couldn’t connect to Eve.

If it really came to it, He Ao would have no choice but to try moving the entire computer to a location with internet access and let Eve hack it, which would mean having to adjust the original plan.

After pondering for a moment, He Ao took two steps back, preparing to leave the computer untouched for the time being.

Then he walked over to the large refrigerator.

Different from Officer Zack, who had headed straight for the top shelf with the test tubes, He Ao first crouched down and carefully examined every shelf of test tube racks underneath.

The slots for the test tubes on these racks were very new, differing in their level of wear and tear from the racks outside.

He Ao activated Super Memory and took a glance, noticing many traces that had been created recently. This confirmed that these racks had test tubes placed in them for a long time.

Only, for some reason, these test tubes had been ’recently’ removed by someone.

Then what was inside those test tubes?

He Ao lifted his head and looked at the two types of potions on the top shelf.

On the left was a semi-transparent, milky-white liquid which, according to the patriarch of the Andavi family, should be the stable diluted solution of the Fountain of Youth, called the Life Elixir by Kors.

On the right was a red potion that shimmered faintly.

Out of these, the seven vials with the darkest color had already been taken by the officer, leaving around thirteen with a slightly lighter color.

He Ao took a pair of gloves from his pocket, put them on, and removed one of the potions.

This test tube wasn’t like the special transparent ones used for the Life Elixir but appeared to be an ordinary Mithril Test Tube.

He Ao closely observed the potion inside the tube, which gave him a very familiar feeling... It was like... the Secret Medicine from the ’warrior’ pathway.

The depth of color in this potion was nearly the same as that of a D-grade Talent Sequence ’Martial Artist’ Secret Medicine from the warrior pathway, while the seven vials taken by the officer had a color depth similar to that of the ’warrior’ Secret Medicines.

Adding to this the fact that the officer went to ’surround’ He Ao, taking seven potions with him.

He Ao roughly deduced that these red potions were the Strengthening Potions that the squad, which had previously ambushed him in the wilderness, had used to enhance their physical capabilities.

Even as the five men had surrounded He Ao, he had speculated that Reid had in his possession a Strengthening Potion capable of forcibly enhancing combat effectiveness and had based on this, devised a trap to lure Reid into opening the safe himself.

But now, actually coming into contact with these Strengthening Potions which seemed to violate the laws of Transcendents, He Ao couldn’t help but be slightly surprised.

All the knowledge about Transcendents in his mind, whether from Ronald the Wilderness Wanderer or from the secretive knowledge heard from Vian’s private doctor, mentioned that Talent Sequences were the only Transcendent power humans could currently control.

Of course, He Ao himself also knew of another Transcendent power called Martial Arts.

As far as He Ao knew from the Transcendents he had encountered, it seemed that everyone relied on one of these two paths.

But now, it appeared that Stars Pharma had found a third way.

He Ao held the potion in front of his eyes and gently shook it, causing the red liquid inside to swirl slightly.

It seemed that they had discovered a path that relied on potions to enhance strength.

He Ao activated Divine Sense and tentatively immersed it into the test tube.

Countless chaotic and twisted thoughts flooded his mind in an instant, and the small test tube suddenly vibrated. Within the scope of Divine Sense, strands of energy surged within the tube like breathing, seemingly ready to break free of the tube at any moment and devour everything.

In that instant, He Ao withdrew his Divine Sense.

This was not some Transcendent potion at all, but a ’stable energy’ created by forcibly mixing various chaotic powers in certain proportions with Fountain of Youth water and ’Qi’.

Even He Ao found this affair to be somewhat insane.

From the harmony and proportions of these ingredients, the principle behind the Strengthening Potion’s efficacy appeared to be the instantaneous infusion of colossal Transcendent powers directly into the human body. Then, by means of the Fountain of Youth and ’Qi,’ these powers were forcibly harmonized, allowing them to be controlled by the human body.

But the cost was exorbitant.

For accompanying the Transcendent’s powers was not only strength but also madness.

Merely by coming into contact with the potion, He Ao could sense the twisted, crazed will within. Whoever consumed this drug might maintain their sanity for a short while, but in several hours, or perhaps even less, they would completely lose their reason and transform into a grotesquely twisted monster.

This situation reminded He Ao of another method for quickly gaining Transcendent strength—’Divine Grace.’

Cultists would sacrifice and pray directly to the Divine Being for powerful strength. It was the simplest of sacrificial prayers, and the easiest to be fulfilled.

But Divine Grace was not something that just anyone could bear.

Only a few individuals might, through Divine Grace, luckily receive stable Talent Sequences. The majority would instantly burst under the overwhelming Transcendent powers granted by the Divine Being, twisting into crazed monsters in the very moment of receiving the Divine Grace.

In the wilderness, there were even legends stating: those cultists mutated by ’Divine Grace’ were the origin of certain humanoid exotic beasts.

Of course, this was only a legend, and nobody had gone to substantiate it in detail.

The Divine Beings did not care about the lives of their believers. If the believers prayed for Divine Grace, they would bestow it, even if the Grace far exceeded the believers’ capacity to endure it.

Of course, perhaps becoming twisted monsters was indeed the Divine Grace of the Divine Beings.

To those ineffable Divine Beings, viewing twisted monsters might be more pleasing than looking at rational humans.

The ’Strengthening Potion’ in He Ao’s hand worked in a mysteriously similar way to ’Divine Grace,’ except Stars Pharma had found a way to neutralize the madness and brutality, allowing these horrifying powers a brief period where they could be ’stably’ controlled.

Though eventually, it all headed towards a conclusion of madness and brutality.

The liquid in the test tube gradually stabilized.

This was not a stable path to Transcendence.

All brutal pleasures would eventually end in brutality.

He Ao put the potion back on the test tube rack.

Because the Strengthening Potion was contained in test tubes that looked similar to ordinary Mithril Test Tubes, and the entire tube was wrapped with intermittent bands of mithril, the traces left on the rack were not complete, differing from the marks left by the lower-level refrigerators.

The marks on the lower-level test tube racks were more uniform, more like the traces of Life Elixir test tubes.

That is to say,

He Ao shifted his gaze to the Life Elixirs on the left.

This refrigerator, quite possibly not long ago, was filled with ’Life Elixirs.’

Click—

Just at that moment, a soft sound came from not far beside He Ao.

He raised his head and looked toward the direction from which the sound originated.

The silver metal door slowly opened.