Dragon's Nest, Experiments, Advancement, and Enhancement (5)

After so long without any real momentum, the research finally began in earnest.

First of all, I thought I should gather as much data on Dialugia as possible, so I kept ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠scanning her with Mind's Eye and spent the entire day wondering whether there was anything I was missing.

In the past, I had told her she needed to stay down and rest, but this was a situation where I could only hope she would move for me.

That was because I was researching not only her mobility, but also how much mana she could actually control and use.

I still couldn't properly confirm how much firepower her breath attacks had, but between her own testimony and the evidence of her mana capacity, I was able to secure a fair amount of data.

A whole city?

According to her, she could blow away a small city without much trouble.

Considering she had a mana stat of 125 and what looked like advanced mana operation knowledge, the sort only upper-tier players could possess, it didn't seem strange at all.

Of course, Mind's Eye couldn't find any trace of her having learned advanced mana operation knowledge, but signs that she possessed something similar kept surfacing one after another.

In the first place, if she hadn't learned advanced mana operation knowledge, she wouldn't have been able to use breath attacks of different kinds.

There were two types of breath, and I classified them like this.

1. A radial type with enough firepower to wipe out a city.

2. A focused type for those with high magic resistance, or for ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠strong opponents impossible to handle with sheer firepower alone.

In other words, the radial type was a breath attack made to deal with multiple enemies rather than individuals.

Its range was wide, but against beings like Cha Heera, or humans with high durability and magic resistance, the actual damage would be relatively low.

The focused breath was made precisely for those kinds of targets.

Because it condensed mana at such high density before firing, its range was narrow, but in every other respect it was superior.

I couldn't calculate exact figures, but it seemed capable of piercing the shield of a Great Mage who had completed their fifth-to-sixth class advancement.

Of course, the projectile speed was different too, which meant I doubted even those with high agility could properly evade the focused version.

Breath wasn't the only thing I focused on, either. I quickly pulled data on how much force she could produce based on her agility and strength stats, and stored every scrap of information I could find in my head.

There were a few minor margins of error, but more precise measurement would have to wait until later.

Right now, this was the time to run.

There's too much here to drill into all at once...

She was simply too big, too vast. A treasury of knowledge. A mountain range of knowledge.

Even studying her specs took an unusual amount of time.

To be honest, it wasn't something I could handle alone. I had originally thought flight would be completely impossible, so the fact that she could fly by using mana was a little surprising too. It seemed she didn't use it often because of how much mana it consumed, but the important thing was that she could do it.

Dragons really are dragons.

I had no choice but to raise my opinion of Dialugia even further.

Of course, I hadn't poured all my time and effort into simple spec calculations.

Sorting and extracting that data was only the most basic work. It was just information-gathering to make the research ahead a little smoother.

Normally, I would have had to wait for the data to accumulate, but Dialugia wasn't a dead specimen. She was a living creature.

The blood and cells I could draw from her were practically endless. A few liters of blood would restore itself in just a few hours.

There was no reason to stall progress while worrying about money and materials. Not unless the thing threatened our safety...

For now, just go for it.

A slightly dangerous experiment? Fine. I would go for that too.

Whichever way I turned, there was only one path, and there was no point leaving so much equipment idle over money worries when the facilities I had at my disposal were enormous.

Within the wide chamber, the many alchemy kits never stopped.

All kinds of materials continued through their refining processes, and the magic circles never went dark.

Of course, the one supplying mana to those circles was Jung Hayan.

Everything involving Dialugia was top secret.

Jung Hayan was the only one allowed into the lab. Honestly, I did consider whether I should also call Park Deokgu's woman, the mage scholar Hwang Jeongyeon, but in the end I judged that Jung Hayan was the only person I could truly trust, so I didn't bother.

Dialugia was the supreme treasure.

Even if we had ties... even if she was in the same guild... I simply didn't want to hand over her data carelessly. If that was my little greed, so be it.

The words my precious kept circling my mouth, so there really wasn't anything more to say.

Except for the day one accident that had gone off by pure chance, we hadn't gained anything concrete yet, but I wasn't especially impatient.

That was because I was certain progress would come.

The vast amounts of accumulating data and the kits constantly turning over had, in a way, reached the level of an automated laboratory.

Dialugia, still unable to make sense of what we were doing, kept staring at us with wide, bright eyes, but perhaps she thought lying still was a form of rest, because she occasionally drifted off to sleep.

When the external examinations failed to produce results, it was only natural that my interest turned inward.

I had no intention of dissecting lovely Dialugia, so I began by scanning her as a whole, then tried several lines of experiments at once.

One experiment in particular stood out in my memory: going directly inside her body.

It sounded insane, but Jung Hayan and I actually entered through her mouth and took a look around. With her help, we managed a surprisingly full expedition not only through the esophagus and stomach, but through other organs as well.

"Do we really have to go this far?"

"It's all for the greater advancement of alchemy. And for your sake too."

"I don't really know what my body is like either."

"If it looks dangerous, we'll pull out right away, so you don't need to worry."

"It's not that I think you might be in danger. I, uh... I just feel embarrassed."

"......"

"......"

Oddly enough, it was the first experiment Dialugia had ever resisted.

She described it as feeling like she had been stripped naked, which was funny because I hadn't expected her, of all people, to say something like that when she didn't even wear clothes in the first place.

Fortunately, neither I nor Jung Hayan ended up dissolving into her stomach acid in some tragic and heartbreaking turn of events.

Dragons digest what they eat by breaking it down into mana rather than through ordinary digestion, which meant, in other words, that Jung Hayan and I had almost been broken down into mana as well.

Because Dialugia's organs had nearly begun disintegrating us without even her knowledge, Jung Hayan's protective ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠magic proved invaluable.

That concluded the first internal expedition there and then. After we custom-built special equipment and went back in, we were finally able to examine her surroundings more safely and at our leisure.

The amusing thing we learned during the body exploration was that the structure of her organs was even more complex than a human's.

Come to think of it, that made sense.

She was a species that could plainly be called a superior life-form.

First of all, the fact that she digested food with mana was astonishing enough. I had thought it strange when I saw Ddolddol eat more than twice his own body size, but who would have guessed she had organs like that?

Like the common cliché in every fantasy novel, the mana that had been digested was sent to the heart, and from there it was supplied throughout the body together with the blood.

So that was it.

That was the reason her blood could serve as a catalyst containing mana.

People called it the Dragon Heart for a reason.

Her other organs were just as unusual. In a way, her body was one giant power plant.

She broke down what she ate into mana and circulated that mana throughout her body. Even polluted, unrefined mana wasn't simply expelled outward; it underwent purification and was reused once more.

All the energy behind her actions ultimately came down to mana.

I could only nod at the whole thing, but Jung Hayan looked fascinated by the system that allowed Dialugia's body to function and quietly analyzed the data in her own way.

She was learning something. In the end, she was wrapped in a golden light inside Dialugia's body.

She had awakened a Legendary-grade trait.

"What kind of trait is that? No, how did you even...?"

"I made another organ out of mana."

"What?"

"I thought it would be nice if I had something like this too, so... I just tried it once..."

"......"

"It seems to have worked right away. Oppa. Hehehe..."

"I see... Good job, Hayan."

"Hehehehehe..."

It was something I could tell without her going into further detail.

My eyes had been on her the whole time, after all.

I already knew she was a genius, but even so, it was almost absurd enough to leave me dumbfounded.

She couldn't break everything down into mana the way Dialugia did, but Jung Hayan was unquestionably recycling and reusing mana continuously within her own body.

She had not only created a charger that could rapidly replenish mana inside her body, but also begun refining and stacking the residue left behind after using spells.

Her mana stat hadn't increased immediately, but she had built a system that allowed her to circulate and replenish mana continuously.

From the position of someone who had been privately imagining that she might finally be catching up a little, it was a valuable reminder of why geniuses were called geniuses in the first place.

Of course, Jung Hayan's awakening gave me a fairly significant jolt too.

I wasn't exactly feeling inferior, but there was still something annoyingly unfair about it.

Not just the Legendary-grade class Dragon Alchemist. I needed to gain something else too.

Even while I continued researching the serum to strengthen Park Deokgu, I used whatever spare moments I had to approach the principle behind how she could use breath attacks.

The breath itself was simply mana stored in the Dragon Heart and then passed into a special organ in the throat before being released all at once.

Trying to take samples from an internal organ that important was, realistically, dangerous even for Dialugia.

If we made a mistake and rendered her unable to use breath at all, the loss would be enormous.

So I chose to make a small model of the organ instead. After perfectly scanning its structure with Mind's Eye, I set about figuring out the principles behind how it worked.

Dozens, then hundreds of experiments became useless, but I kept pulling out hints here and there, and in the end I made a small vial shaped exactly like the primary organ that allowed her to use breath attacks.

The grotesquely shaped glass vial had already been magically treated, and I had engraved the tiny magic ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠circles for amplification, diffusion, and control over and over again.

At the very end of the vial sat a mana catalyst made from Dialugia's blood.

When I let my own mana flow through it, the blood stored inside would fall into the small glass bottle.

Wiiiing!

The blood entered through the mouth of the distorted vial, spun furiously like a motor, and activated the magic circles.

By the time that process finished, about two seconds had passed.

At last, the little vial generated a pulse of mana and released the mana contained in the blood in all directions.

That was the principle by which dragonkind used breath.

The glass bottle, unable to withstand the mana, shattered in an instant.

Unlike Dialugia's radial and focused versions, this one was nothing more than a straight explosion... but that was enough to produce the firepower I wanted.

Kwaaaaang!!

"Explosion is art!!!"

Dragon Breath Potion MK1. That was the moment the continent first saw a combat potion.