Chapter 886: Creating a Fool's Dream with Bloodline Inclusivity?
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 886: Creating a Fool's Dream with Bloodline Inclusivity?
After organizing the witches who had gathered to watch the spectacle, I brought out the specimen of Dream State Soul Essence.
Fortunately, I’d had the foresight to make one as a keepsake; otherwise, I wouldn’t have a finished product to show them now.
As for the next batch of Dream State Soul Essence, it would likely take some time to complete the purification. Although the process was much more efficient now that I’d moved past the trial-and-error phase, it still wasn't something that could show results in just a day or two.
"Is this the Dream State Soul Essence? It really is completely different in nature from the nightmares I’ve captured. It’s hard to imagine they were once the same thing."
"This is a specimen belonging to the dream-side, isn't it? It’s a pity it can only be viewed here. If I could take it out, I’d definitely show it off to the other witches."
"It is indeed a specimen that exists within a dream, but it doesn't require a very deep level of dreaming. It can be transferred even in a shallow dream," I said. "Were you planning to do something with it, Sister?"
"Oh! I have a Witch Academic Tea Party coming up soon. I really want to take this there to show them all!"
"I see." I nodded in understanding.
While most witch tea parties were casual social gatherings, there were special academic conferences held in the same format. These were invitation-only and had very high entry requirements.
In a way, they were a unique cultural staple of the witch race.
Furthermore, many of these high-level academic tea parties were held within the Primal Dream. After all, many witches couldn't simply drop everything to trek across the Void just for a single tea party. The Primal Dream was the perfect middle ground.
Of course, within the circle of the Main World’s Witch Academy, things were much more localized. There was no need to host them in the Primal Dream; invitations could be sent directly. Meeting in reality was, after all, far more meaningful than meeting in the Primal Dream.
"Actually, if you really want to do that, you can carry it within your Soul Dream. When you get to the venue, you can manifest a small-scale dream overlap to bring it out," I suggested.
"Uh... can the Soul Dream be used like that?"
"It can't?" I asked, somewhat puzzled. "Then what do you all usually use your Soul Dreams for?"
I genuinely didn't know. I had asked Sister Bai before, but she clearly hadn't made much use of hers either. She occasionally immersed her mind in it to practice her Witch Meditation Method so she wouldn't be disturbed by the outside world, but that was about it.
"Hmm... connecting to my personal space in the Primal Dream? That’s usually what I use it for."
"The methods for advanced Soul Dream development are very expensive and don't have much practical use, so I usually just ignore it."
"Mine is filled with mementos of my past, used to anchor my oldest memories. Its function seems to overlap a bit with the Seed of the Great Knowledge."
"I’ve cultivated the Tree of Knowledge sprouted from my Seed of the Great Knowledge inside my Soul Dream. I have to say, the feeling of watching a tree grow inside your head every day is quite nice~"
The various sisters shared their uses for the Soul Dream. To my surprise, their experiments with it were unexpectedly... ordinary?
But thinking about it, before the Fool's Dream took up residence in my Soul Dream—and without those two Great Spellbooks—I wouldn't have had many uses for it either. It was suitable for research into the dream domain, but in other fields, the Soul Dream was just a patch of illusory "fantasy dreamscape" that couldn't be used for reality simulation.
"In that case, can I borrow it? I really need to use this to give them a real shock at that tea party!"
"Um... sure, of course. Just don't break it. This is the first batch of Dream State Soul Essence I ever made, and I originally intended to keep it as a collectible. If you want to use Dream State Soul Essence for experiments... you'll have to wait a bit. The next batch should be ready for harvest soon."
"Really? That’s wonderful! Thank you, Xiao Han! Hahaha! Our field of Primitive Dream Realm research can finally stand tall!" At this moment, the witch was so excited she almost wanted to plant a couple of kisses on me, but I politely declined.
"Ah, I forgot! Xiao Han, you’re the one who proposed the concept and discovered Dream State Soul Essence! You’re the first little witch to ever prepare it. I think it’s absolutely necessary that I take you along to that tea party!"
"Me? I think I’ll pass. Besides, I haven't completed the theoretical verification yet. I wouldn't know what to say..."
"It’s fine, it’s fine! I’ll do the talking. You just need to sit there and wait for me to point at you. Then you’ll become the center of attention and enjoy their envious gazes! That’s exactly what I’m going for!"
"Huh?" I looked at her, my face full of question marks. Had her mischievous streak really extended to formal academic tea parties?
"No, no... I don't want to be a part of your prank..."
"Is that so... what a pity..."
"It’s not a pity... Actually, I just can't go. As you all know, I’m the one maintaining the Primitive Dream Laboratory. I can't leave right now." I used this excuse to push back.
If she hadn't made it sound like a prank, I might have wanted to go in the form of a clone. After all, I hadn't attended many tea parties like that.
"Alright~ Fair enough. I was being inconsiderate. Then... let’s leave it at that." The witch sighed, not pushing any further.
Fortunately for her, she had secured what was currently the only specimen of Dream State Soul Essence in existence! Nothing was more precious than that!
"By the way, Xiao Han, can I borrow that Fool's Dream to do some research?"
"No." I shook my head, refusing decisively. When it came to the Fool's Dream, that was my bottom line. I would never hand them over to be studied like experimental subjects.
"Okay then... I’d like to ask, if I wanted to pre-order a batch of Dream State Soul Essence, what would I need to pay? I really want a sample to study!"
"Yes, yes! I want one too!"
"Um... could you describe how the purification is done? I want to try purifying a nightmare to get Dream State Soul Essence myself!"
"Hey, hey! Isn't that a bit much? You’re just asking for a technique like that out loud?"
"Ah... sorry, I got a bit too excited and lost my head."
"Listen to me," I said, following their lead. "It’s not that I don't want to teach you, but even if I did, you wouldn't be able to use it."
As soon as I said that, they understood.
There were no techniques that couldn't be learned, only those that couldn't be used once mastered. And that situation usually involved... derivative techniques of a Great Spellbook.
At this point, everyone understood and stopped mentioning the transmission of the technique. Without the necessary capital, it really was unusable. This wasn't like the Great Knowledge Sharing Spell or similar techniques; those were used with the power of the Seed of the Great Knowledge as a medium.
Once the concepts of Dream State Soul Essence were gradually accepted, I returned to my original workbench.
They were all mature academic witches. When they encountered something new, they would try to figure it out themselves, only coming over to ask for guidance when they were truly stuck.
Besides, the Dream State Soul Essence specimen I lent out only had the requirement of not being damaged. Observational data recording and experiments on natural characteristic evaporation could still be carried out.
While the other witches were busy with their own tasks, I was currently discussing a major future matter for the Fool's Dream race with the four little ones!
After all, if the Fool's Dream was to become a life form, it needed to define what kind of life it would be. Perhaps there were many lives in this world that "shouldn't" exist, but even so, they had a reason for being.
The Fool's Dream should be the same.
However, rather than discussing such abstract matters, my conversation with the Fool's Dream was more practical. For example... the racial concept above the soul essence of the Fool's Dream, and the corresponding bloodline information for a physical body.
No matter how simple a life form was, it had a racial concept and bloodline information inscribed into its very essence. Even the simplest creature, like an Abyss Worm that looked like a ball of flesh when curled up, was a life form. This proved how low the threshold for life was.
But a low threshold didn't mean that creating a new life was easy. The simpler the life form, the more likely the Void would spontaneously give birth to it, using that species as a progenitor to evolve many different racial ancestors. Such lives weren't for others to interfere with or create.
Therefore, the methods I knew for creating entirely new life were basically all based on existing species as templates, performing racial intervention to give birth to a new race.
I looked at the Fool's Dream, then looked for a cat-girl template... Borrowing from it wasn't out of the question for me.
However, giving the Fool's Dream the cat-ear characteristics of a cat-girl was a personal preference. The Fool's Dream rarely displayed cat-like traits normally. If I truly used a cat-girl as a template, it would mean passively granting the Fool's Dream part of the cat-girl racial concept and bloodline information.
Perhaps the future Fool's Dream would develop cat-like habits, like... uh... adding "mew" to the end of their sentences?
The Fool's Dream, however, didn't care at all. For them, as long as they could become a life form, their standards could be infinitely low.
One could say that the upper limit of freedom is the upper limit of one's cognition. The Fool's Dream was no exception.
It was like a group of indigenous people wanting to enter modern society; their baseline was just to be well-fed, well-clothed, and have a place to live. If you talked to them about "blessings" or "human rights," they wouldn't understand. Only during the process of integration, after experiencing the hardships of their new life, would they understand the true meaning of freedom.
In fact, I was also envisioning a new, special race that wasn't defined by appearance, bloodline, or other factors. And the template for that was the Witch race.
Because of the Witch race's ability to convert other races, one could find many bloodline branches within them: Elf Witches, Holy Angel Witches, Succubus Witches, and so on.
Were they Elves? Were they Holy Angels? No, they were Witches. This required a race to have an extremely high level of inclusivity toward bloodlines.
I wanted to keep the cat-girl appearance of the Fool's Dream, but I also didn't want to strip them of the right to abandon that form. Even if none of the Fool's Dreams would object to their cat-girl forms now, there might be those who disliked it in the future. That wouldn't be "betrayal." Since I chose to give the Fool's Dream freedom, I naturally wouldn't expect all of them to live for me. That would be a life breaking free from the ideological shackles imposed upon them!
Theoretically, I should be happy about that.
After setting my psychological expectations and making a simple plan, the Fool's Dream and I began to enter a practical state—directly attempting to bestow a racial concept.
Once I reached this step, I found that the Soul Depiction technique seemed to struggle a bit.
After all, every technique has its specialty. Soul Depiction was more focused on the shaping of the soul, which included the process of soul essence ascending into a soul. But when it came to the carving of racial concepts and bloodline information onto the soul's essence, it lacked... precision.
To use an analogy, Soul Depiction was like a mobile phone production line. It used raw materials (soul essence) to assemble a phone (soul). But the phone's core operating system (racial concept) and chips (bloodline information) couldn't be handcrafted using those same tools.
Of course, that was just an analogy. The real situation was likely far more complex.
Faced with this, I was more inclined to create an entirely new technique specifically for this purpose.
I had made it through the transformation from Mimicry Soul to Soul Depiction, and then to the birth and perfection of Wisdom Granting. I couldn't give up now at the final hurdle, nor could I settle for "good enough."
My greed in this regard was on full display, and I did it only for the sake of what I had said: "I want to give the Fool's Dream the best!"
As for a new technique... I already had a glimmer of an idea.
If my previous conception of Soul Depiction was to "define a soul-life," then this new technique was meant to "refine the concept of life" on that foundation.
How to refine it? I would refine it the same way those entirely new races were refined.
Thus, this unborn technique had its name from the very beginning—"Life Evolution."
If one were to slowly "edit" a life from zero, they might never finish even by the end of that life's span. But when a structured system gradually "evolves" under the influence of external forces, individual will can sway that evolutionary process.
This was why I said earlier that the Fool's Dream needed an existing racial template.
When it comes to creating life, no one dares to say they can start from absolute zero. Perhaps only the Void itself has the right to do that. We living beings merely interfere with the process. Even those who claim to have created entirely new life have merely added their personal will to the Void's evolutionary process; in essence, they have simply snatched a coincidence from the Void's own evolutionary trajectory.
Of course, that view was a bit too broad. Meaning is bestowed by life; there was no need to stand from the perspective of the Void and declare everything meaningless.
Life itself is meaning. And what a new racial progenitor represents is... the first expansion of the boundaries of recognizable races within the Void.
Turning the unrecognizable into the recognizable—that is the derivative meaning of life's existence, and the ultimate pursuit that life bestows upon itself.