Chapter 806: The Fool's Dreams I've Defined as "Intelligent Life"
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 806: The Fool's Dreams I've Defined as "Intelligent Life"
Inside the laboratory.
"Huh? Sister Belica, you're all leaving already?" I was caught off guard by the sudden news.
These Witch Mentors had been staying in the lab for quite some time now. Although they claimed they were just "mooching" off the facilities, they had actually spent most of their time helping us.
During this period, Mentor Belica and the others had provided immense support, ranging from crafting spellbooks to explaining specialized knowledge. Yi Rui and her group had even started to become a bit dependent on them.
However, that was precisely one of the reasons they chose to leave.
They didn't want their students to rely on them too much.
Of course, the bigger reason was that they had learned from me that the difficulties and thresholds regarding the "Self-Generated Mana" project were nearly resolved. Thus, they no longer had a reason to stay.
As for mooching off the lab?
A Witch could craft alchemy items by hand even while sitting in her bedroom. Was a laboratory truly necessary?
Not strictly, though having one saved a lot of trouble. But at the end of the day, this wasn't their lab.
"Yes, it's time to go. We've been thick-skinned enough, hanging around here for so long."
"Actually, Sister Belica, you could stay as long as you like."
"Xiao Han, you should know why we can't. I won't bore you with unnecessary explanations."
"Alright... but Yi Rui and the others..." I nodded in understanding. But compared to my acceptance, Yi Rui and her group seemed very reluctant to see them go.
As I finished speaking, Yi Rui and the others appeared.
I silently stepped aside to give them some space.
Even though Yi Rui and the rest were technically mature adults by age, as long as they remained at the Witch Academy, they were still students who looked to their mentors for guidance.
Furthermore, girls are naturally sentimental. Even if they knew their mentors weren't abandoning them, spending so much time together in one place had fostered a deep sense of attachment.
"Alright, alright, what's with those long faces? We're just leaving the lab, that's all."
"We're just going to miss you... If we run into another difficult problem, I'll have to travel so far just to find you, Mentor."
"When you encounter a problem, try to solve it yourself first. Do you really think I'm your personal answer key? Asking me the moment you get stuck? You all should learn to be a bit more independent, like Xiao Han. Independence is a skill that needs to be trained, so you..."
The moment Mentor Belica mentioned my name, I quietly slipped away. I hated it when people used me as a benchmark to compare with others. I knew she was trying to educate Yi Rui and the group, but they were also among the most elite students in the Witch Academy.
After putting some distance between us, I returned to my dedicated experimental booth within the lab. This area had effectively become my private workspace.
As soon as I entered, several petite figures quickly appeared before me.
The three little Fool's Dreams in front of me were Yulan, Yu Yun, and Yu Guo.
I had brought them here by having them discard their original shells through Dream Delivery.
Fool's Dreams were essentially dream creatures, so they viewed "shells" merely as physical bodies for acting in material reality. Therefore, the damage or death of a physical body didn't constitute "death" for a Fool's Dream, as they weren't even "living beings" to begin with.
"Phew~" I sighed, then randomly picked up one of the Fool's Dreams—Yulan, who was the first to run up to me. "You three shouldn't run around so excitedly in the lab. This is a formal laboratory, after all; it's not like the one back at the villa."
"Ugh... I'm sorry, Sister Xiao Han."
"I'm not blaming you. Just be more careful next time."
"Mhm, I understand."
"Sister Xiao Han, when are we going to start trying that 'Life Metamorphosis' thing?" Yu Yun asked from the side, her voice full of anticipation.
They had been here for many days, but I hadn't officially performed Soul Depiction on them yet.
One reason was that I was using my spare time to refine the technique.
The other was that I was making advance preparations.
First was the issue of raw materials—specifically Soul Essence, and in large quantities. I had to ask Millian to help prepare that.
Soul Essence was an incredibly rare transcendent material in the Main World. If the Expansion Realm hadn't been opened for development last semester, there would be no source for Soul Crystals at all.
As for killing people to collect Soul Essence, or privately mining it from the Main World's natural Ley Line Soul Essence cycle—those were strictly forbidden.
The former involved the wanton slaughter of life, which was morally unacceptable in the Main World; even transcendents had an agreement not to engage in mass slaughter there.
The latter... that would be damaging the Main World's global cycle, which was equally prohibited.
Even I was no exception to these rules.
So, the only current channel was the Soul Crystals stockpiled from the previous resource extraction in the Expansion Realm.
However, after speaking with Millian, I realized that even with the help of her Fan Club, it would be difficult to secure a large amount of Soul Crystals.
After all, they were scarce even in the Expansion Realm. I hadn't seen many myself, and there were countless dream creatures in the Expansion Realm that also absorbed Soul Essence. Soul Crystals were truly a rarity.
Even those who did obtain them usually chose to use them for themselves to raise their own Life Level.
Still... collecting enough Soul Crystals for an experiment was manageable.
With that, the problem of Soul Essence was mostly resolved.
Preparing the Soul Essence was already a headache, but what came next was even more troublesome.
I had to bestow "reality" upon "dream creatures" that essentially possessed nothing.
One thing was certain: dream creatures had their own consciousness, and consciousness was the only concept they truly possessed. Fool's Dreams were no exception.
According to my current definition of life, I needed to prepare many things for them.
For instance, Soul Depiction—to shape the essence of a soul-based life for the Fool's Dream.
Then there was Wisdom Granting—to create a Seed of Wisdom, using the soul as soil and consciousness and memory to build the foundation of intellect.
Furthermore, I had to create a racial concept and bloodline information for them, which were also concepts that existed atop the essence of soul-based life.
Thus, I believed Soul Depiction was the foundation of creating life.
But... it was only the foundation.
The second step, Wisdom Granting, required raw materials to create the Fool's Dream's Seed of Wisdom: "consciousness" and "memory."
Fool's Dreams lacked "memory."
Or rather, everything they remembered wasn't their own memory, but rather fragments of the Primitive Dream Realm.
As creatures of the Primitive Dream Realm, they outwardly appeared to have "disordered memories," or were simply forgetful. This applied to the Fool's Dreams as well.
However, the fact that they could live normally now spoke to their uniqueness.
In the beginning, when the Fool's Dreams were still in the Witch Secret Realm, their memories were what I called "physical memories." That is, one copy of the memory was kept in the body, while another was collected by the Primitive Dream Realm materials. Back then, if a Fool's Dream died—or rather, was dragged back into the dreamscape by their Nightmare counterpart—they would essentially lose all their original memories.
After they started following me, I used the Great Wisdom Enlightenment Art to give them a foundation, and their memories began to persist in a way I hadn't initially paid much attention to.
But now, I had deliberately preserved their memories using Great Knowledge Seeds.
Each Fool's Dream possessed a Great Knowledge Seed; this was the most basic safeguard I had given them.
Because of this, their memories technically existed. However, this memory data, stored as information, needed specialized processing before it could be converted into the "memory material" required to shape a Seed of Wisdom.
That would take a long time to work through.
As for shaping the racial concept and bloodline information of the Fool's Dreams... that was another difficult point.
Of course, it was also the simplest part: defining the Fool's Dream upon the essence of their soul-based life.
What was the definition of a Fool's Dream?
No one knew.
They were dream creatures, but if they were to undergo metamorphosis into true life, they couldn't remain meaningless dream creatures. This definition couldn't be expressed through the essence of soul-based life alone.
So, the simplest explanation was: a Fool's Dream is a Fool's Dream.
Just as a human is a human.
And bloodline information, simply put, defined the species characteristics and physical appearance of the Fool's Dream.
Therefore... what a Fool's Dream "is" wasn't a question that needed an answer; it was a choice and a will that I, as their creator, had to make.
The preliminary answer I came up with was... they are a type of "intelligent life" defined by my own understanding of wisdom.
After all, I was incorporating Wisdom Granting into them. Thus, wisdom would be the first "power" that belonged entirely to them once they achieved true life!
Helping the Fool's Dreams complete their life metamorphosis wasn't as simple as just using Soul Depiction on them.
Soul Depiction was a skill, not a spell that you could just cast once and be done with.
Until I had prepared everything to what I considered perfection, I wouldn't subject the Fool's Dreams to such an irresponsible attempt—even though I had already done many irresponsible things to them in the past, like using Mimicry Soul Techniques to shape their soul essence...
After soothing the three little ones, I got back to work. Today wasn't the day Tan Han was scheduled to visit, so I needed to make the most of my time.
If I had known being busy would take up so much time, I wouldn't have changed my arrangement with Tan Han. A frequency of once every two days seemed like the optimal choice.
But... this was fine too.
I had long since grown accustomed to a packed daily schedule.
While organizing these things, I would occasionally let my mind go blank for a brief rest.
Sometimes I would sort through the information stockpiled within the Tree of Great Knowledge; other times, I would sync up with my clones to check on the situation outside the academy, viewing the Witch Academy from a different perspective.
The one I cared about most was my Player Clone.
That clone had left after tricking the people from the Hawthorne family, but she was still active within the Wizard Academy's territory.
She had personally witnessed the Hawthorne family collapse in an instant at some point during these past few days. The fall of a family pillar triggered a massive chain reaction.
In the end, when the wall started to topple, everyone was eager to give the final shove. The Hawthorne family was completely wiped out overnight.
This wasn't a story where some scion escaped to stage a comeback later; it was merely the desperate delusion of a family in its final moments.
Not to mention... I had used Wisdom Withering on all the key figures of that family. They had completely lost any possibility of a turnaround.
The fall of the Hawthorne family was just a minor interlude to me.
I was more concerned with the intelligence my Player Clone had gathered.
Something had gone wrong at the Wizard Academy.
It was a big problem—big enough to affect the relationship between Players and Wizards.
They had lost the channel of communication with the Players, to the point where [Transcendent Knowledge] might not be delivered to the Players on schedule.
Connecting the dots, I immediately thought of a certain Witch—or rather, a Rebel Witch.
Only she could pull off something like this. That time the Rebel Witch appeared at the Wizard Academy, she had completely broken the Wizards' composure. That was likely when the communication channel was destroyed.
However, this also gave me other things to think about.
Was that Rebel Witch actually helping?
This was a bit different from the code of conduct for Rebel Witches that Sister Bai had described to me...
Had I really been looking at Sheryl through tinted glasses?
Could it be that Rebel Witches were actually "good Witches," just as Dean Mei had said back then?
Then again... Dean Mei's hostile attitude toward that Rebel Witch didn't seem like an act.
As expected, the Rebel Witch collective only seemed like "good Witches" when it had nothing to do with oneself.
Perhaps it was a case of "Lord Ye's love of dragons"—loving the idea, but terrified of the reality?
While I was still busy, my booth door was pushed open.
"Sister Xiao Han... the mentors really left... Eh?"
"Remember to knock before entering next time, okay?" I ignored her words and reminded her.
"I get it... but, but these, Fool's Dreams! Sister Xiao Han, why do you have Fool's Dreams here! Oh my god! Sister Xiao Han, where did you kidnap them from?"
"Huh?" I looked at the girl in confusion. It felt like her priorities were a bit skewed, and the emotional shift was far too abrupt.
"I've seen them in the Witch Cat Café! I wanted to take one home, but they wouldn't let me. It was such a shame! Sister Xiao Han, how did you do it?"
"What's going on? Did I just hear someone mention Fool's Dreams?" At that moment, another girl who had heard the commotion walked in.
"Because they've been following me all along. In a way, they're my experimental assistants," I explained.
"Sister Xiao Han, you actually have Fool's Dreams as assistants? That's so lucky! Why haven't I seen them before?"
"I only brought them over recently. Alright... can you let go? You're scaring them," I said, reaching out to remind her.
"Sorry, sorry... I'm just so excited! There are actually Fool's Dreams in the lab! So, can they make Fool's Dream Drinks for us? I love that flavor!"
"By the way, didn't your mentors forbid you from eating or drinking in the lab?" I reminded them again.
"Ha... haha... well... so what! The mentors are already gone! The lab is our kingdom now!"
"Wait... what happened to that heartbreak you showed when you walked in because the mentors left? Was that all an act?" I couldn't help but deadpan.