Chapter 18
Expo Day 3.
As I headed to the contestants’ waiting room, Hunter Lee Yujin asked, apparently curious about how the Cultivation Division competition would proceed.
“Boss, isn’t cultivation harder to evaluate right away than design? Considering how long it takes to cultivate a magic beast, it seems like it would take far too long….”
“Hmm… Normally, yes.”
Even optimizing an F-Rank Jellykko model took forty-eight hours to cultivate stably without deformities or disabilities.
A magic beast incubator rapidly grows a seed—the initial stage of a magic beast—by injecting it with magical energy. If too much magical energy is injected over too short a period, the seed’s array can develop problems and mutations may occur. Conversely, if too little magical energy is injected, the seed may wither and die before it can grow properly due to a lack of magical energy.
But…
“If you grow the seed to the immature stage using cutting-edge rapid-cultivation technology, it’s possible to evaluate it sufficiently.”
“Rapid-cultivation technology?”
“Well, it’s still an unstable technology… Simply put, it’s a technology that rapidly injects magical energy at a level beyond that of a conventional incubator, allowing the seed to grow quickly. Naturally, that also makes it more likely for the array to become tangled, but the Cultivation Division competition uses that aspect for evaluation. The more complete a seed is, the more likely it is to withstand rapid cultivation.”
The Cultivation Division competition used special incubators equipped with a rapid-growth function rather than ordinary incubators.
If they used ordinary incubators, it would take far too long to check the results of the competition.
However, rapid cultivation had one problem.
Due to the growth structure of magic beasts, it was a technology with severely reduced stability in various respects.
To briefly explain…
A seed, the initial stage of a magic beast, grows by absorbing the magical energy supplied by the incubator. The more magical energy supplied, and the faster it is supplied, the faster the seed grows.
Magical energy is essentially a magic beast’s nourishment.
Naturally, rapid cultivation injects more magical energy than ordinary cultivation, and that is where the problem arises.
The movement of such powerful magical energy inevitably creates a powerful flow.
This flow of magical energy also affects the essence array woven around the Magic Core. If the array becomes disordered and the seed grows unstable, it may develop deformities or fatal defects that prevent it from functioning as a living creature.
In other words, a special incubator that rapidly injects more magical energy than an ordinary incubator is an unstable cradle that causes the odds of cultivation failure due to problems in the seed to rise exponentially.
That was why the development of stable special incubators had encountered so many difficulties. They needed to increase the amount of injected magical energy while maintaining stability.
“Aha! So this competition is testing how solidly you can construct an array, right? Unlike the Design Division, the Cultivation Division focuses on the ‘technique’ of stabilizing a seed rather than creativity or ideas!”
“That’s about the size of it.”
In summary, the Cultivation Division competition evaluated participants’ abilities by using rapid-growth incubators to test the stability of their seeds.
…Normally, that was.
*
The Day 3 Cultivation Division competition began.
“Move, move! Just as planned, I’ll extract only the essences from the materials, so you quickly figure out the blueprint and focus solely on tempering the seed!”
“Okay!”
The contestants quickly tempered their seeds according to the materials and blueprints provided by the organizers.
The competition lasted for two days in total.
On Day 1, they tempered the seeds and placed them in the incubators. The actual judging took place on Day 2, when the judges evaluated the completeness of the immature bodies that had grown to a certain extent inside the incubators.
While all the contestants moved busily, the judges’ attention was focused particularly on one person.
“I’m looking forward to seeing what Mr. Yoo will show us this time.”
“Hmm, I wonder…? Since it’s a different field, I doubt his cultivation skills will be quite as outstanding.”
“Well, realistically speaking, it’s best not to expect too much. With genius of that caliber, knowing only the basics of cultivation would be more than enough.”
However, there were no great expectations. Design and cultivation were fundamentally different fields.
“I had to restrain myself from ditching the competition right now to research Duality. Hahaha!”
“I feel the same. If I’d had my way, I would have holed up in my lab and tested Duality immediately, but when I heard that Mr. Yoo was participating in the Cultivation Division as well, I summoned superhuman patience and came out here.”
All the judges felt the same way.
‘Ah, I want the competition to end already so I can research Duality.’
Yet they remained out of alchemists’ solidarity, since this was a competition entered by the originator of Duality.
Honestly, there was nothing left to see in the competition, so why stay? There was a mountain of research waiting to be done right away!
The judges were forcing themselves to ignore the inspiration stirred up by Duality and remain in this place. Solely because of Yoo Hyun.
But then… Yoo Hyun suddenly began taking unexpected actions.
“……Huh?”
“What on earth is he doing?”
Yoo Hyun brought over a large amount of materials and extracted the essences from the monsters in bulk.
Then he injected them into a C-Rank Magic Core for magic beasts and constructed its magical-energy array.
The magic beast design provided by the organizers for this Cultivation Division competition was the ‘Lesser Wyvern—A03 Model.’
Under ordinary cultivation, it took about twelve days, and its essence array was fairly complex for a C-Rank model.
Though it was complex, tempering the seed itself should not have been difficult as long as he constructed the array in the order specified by the provided design…
But then… What on earth was he doing?
“……What is he doing to that seed?”
“Huh…!”
Just when it seemed as though he was doing well, he suddenly stacked the already complex array two or three layers deep, turning it into a complete mess.
The funny thing was that one could not simply stack arrays like Tetris just because one wanted to.
It was obviously precise control, but…
One thing was certain…
“That’s a failure.”
“……I can tell just by looking at it. That array won’t function properly. Even if a magic beast is born by some miracle, it isn’t the model provided by the competition, so it can’t be evaluated properly. Is this the arrogance of a genius…?”
“Mr. Yoo… I’m disappointed. Though the control ability required to stack arrays like that is itself unbelievable….”
“Jesus! His sense of balance is almost inhuman…! He’s built a Jenga tower out of arrays.”
Unable to watch any longer, Maximilian picked up the microphone.
He suppressed a sigh and opened his mouth.
“……Yoo Hyun, we respect you, but this Cultivation Division competition is not a place to judge creativity or originality… No matter what, shouldn’t you at least create the magic beast provided by the competition so that we can evaluate you fairly?”
Yoo Hyun looked at Maximilian and gave a short reply.
“I can see how this alone might lead to a misunderstanding. But everything has a purpose, so please watch until the end.”
Yoo Hyun quietly operated the incubator and manually entered the acceleration multiplier and environmental data.
Beep—beep—
After entering all the information, Yoo Hyun covered the incubator with the prepared tent… and finished tempering the seed for Day 1 of the Cultivation Division.
The host, who had been watching Maximilian’s reaction, turned to him and spoke.
[ Uh… That’s it…? Can we proceed like this? ]
“Haa… Well, we should at least see tomorrow’s results, so let’s proceed for now.”
Every team finished tempering its seed, placed it in an incubator, and covered it with a tent.
And so Day 1 of the Cultivation Division competition came to an end.
*
The next day
Expo Day 4
The same group gathered again to check the results of the competition.
Thanks to the rapid growth, immature bodies that had grown enough to be evaluated should be writhing inside the incubators, hidden beneath those tents.
Even more spectators had gathered than the day before.
That was because Day 2 was the highlight of the Cultivation Division competition.
[ All right, then, let’s begin the evaluation…! Let’s check the condition of the immature Lesser Wyvern body from Team 1…! ]
For the evaluation, they lifted the tents one by one.
Swish—
“Team 1… Hmm, just as we predicted yesterday, the organs formed very stably. Creating a seed that endured a 3.2x multiplier is impressive in itself.”
The seed, which had been smaller than a fist, had grown to the size of a medium-sized dog, so the judges had no trouble evaluating it.
“But the wing area seems a little unnatural…?”
“Hmm, it isn’t fatal, but there is a possibility that a slight deformity may develop.”
The judges continued evaluating the teams one by one.
Most of the other contestants had set their acceleration multipliers between 3x and 4x.
The best performance so far belonged to the Australian research team, which had grown a seed without any fatal problems even at a 4.1x multiplier.
They were the leading candidates for victory.
“Hmm, you made it very solidly, without any disorder in the array. But I don’t think this was possible simply because the array was neat?”
The Australian team’s representative smiled confidently.
“It’s the difference in the environmental data input! Since magical-energy flow is also affected by the surrounding environment, we didn’t rely on the incubator’s automatic environmental settings. Worried that conditions might vary with the time and weather, we manually scheduled the environmental data in two-hour intervals.”
The judges smiled with satisfaction.
“Exactly. It’s details like that which make the difference. You certainly know what you’re doing.”
……And finally, the judges stood before Yoo Hyun’s incubator.
The judges pressed their temples as though they already had a headache and stared at Yoo Hyun’s incubator, hidden beneath its tent.
“………Haa, I can’t even imagine what horrible thing might have happened in there…. Mr. Yoo, I acknowledge your genius. Please don’t be too disappointed even if the results aren’t good.”
The judge approached the incubator to pull down the tent, while the other judges swallowed nervously.
If an ordinary contestant had said they intended to cultivate a seed with such an absurd structure, they would undoubtedly have been disqualified on the spot.
The only reason Yoo Hyun had not been disqualified was out of respect for the genius magic beast alchemist who had created ‘Duality.’
Maximilian’s heart was pounding harder than ever.
‘I’m afraid.’
Of course, he was afraid of what was inside the tent, but even more than that, he feared that the name of this young alchemist who had presented a new paradigm in magic beast alchemy might be tarnished. A genius could fall in an instant.
Even Yoo Hyun might have difficulty escaping the ethical problems involved in playing with life.
Maximilian did not even want to imagine what horrific mass of flesh might have been created inside that tent…
‘Please let the array have completely collapsed during the early stages of cultivation, so that nothing formed at all….’
At last, the judge who had drawn the short straw pulled away the tent, and…
Swish—
Pandora’s box was opened.
“U, uaaagh!”
The judge who lifted the cloth saw something inside, startled, and collapsed to the floor.
Thud—
‘Ah… It’s over….’
At that reaction, Maximilian lowered his head solemnly without even properly looking into the incubator.
Yoo Hyun was going to find himself in quite a troublesome situation after exposing a mass of flesh that exceeded the public’s ethical limits.
The other judges also widened their eyes in disbelief when they encountered the being inside the incubator, but…
“Gasp…!! What on earth is this!!!”
“That’s impossible…!!”
“This is possible…?”
Their reactions were different from what Maximilian had expected.
‘……What?’
Maximilian raised his head and looked inside the incubator, and…
“Oh, my God….”
Inside the incubator was a complete Lesser Wyvern.
It had even grown to the point where it could be removed from the incubator immediately…!
“H-How did this happen…? What… What on earth did you do!? I need to check it myself!”
One of the judges rushed to the incubator to check its settings and let out a disbelieving laugh.
“Ha… Haha…!! Insane…!!”
“……What?”
“What’s gotten into you?”
The judge cursed, smacked his forehead, and pointed at the incubator.
“……Can this possibly be real…? Everyone, check the multiplier.”
“……No way.”
“Holy….”
The multiplier set on the incubator was 11x.
It was the maximum multiplier that the special incubators installed here could produce.
A multiplier that would never actually be used.
Everyone in the hall looked at Yoo Hyun as though demanding an explanation.
“……To put it simply, I layered the essence array two or three times to protect the inner array from the interference of powerful magical energy.”
“N-No, that’s easier said than done….”
“How can he say something so absurd so casually….”
He meant that he had stacked multiple layers of essence arrays to use them as a buffer for magical energy in the first place.
That was impossible.
The multiple layers of essence arrays should have affected the seed and definitely caused a bug.
But… a wyvern that had grown normally was standing right before their eyes.
“……Ha, you didn’t secretly put a fully grown one inside the incubator during the night, did you?”
Yoo Hyun chuckled and replied.
“Of course not.”
Then that meant he had predicted which arrays would naturally be torn away by the flow of magical energy as he created the seed.
He had even ensured that the layers of arrays would not interfere with one another.
The judges began to understand what he had done, and goosebumps rose across their skin.
“I-Incredible… This is beyond the realm of humanity…!!!”
“……Did he perform supercomputer-level calculations instantaneously, right there on the spot…? Ha…! I can’t believe it even though I’m seeing it with my own eyes…!!”
“Is he truly a genius even when it comes to cultivation…!!”
Yet only one of the judges—Victor Kreutz… no, Louise von Bergman—calmly recalled the array of the seed Yoo Hyun had created that day and spoke.
“This isn’t an array designed specifically for wyverns, is it? It seems somewhat versatile. Hmm…?”
Louise had noticed Yoo Hyun’s intention and grinned, while Yoo Hyun smiled back at her.
“That’s right. With a few tweaks, the buffer-type array can be used for other seeds as well.”
“What…!”
“G-Gasp!! Does that mean…!!!”
Yoo Hyun looked around at the judges and spoke.
“The phenomenon of essence arrays becoming twisted due to violent magical-energy flows has been a chronic difficulty in high-rank magic beast production. But this ‘buffer-type array’ should resolve a considerable part of that problem.”
“……!!”
Not only the judges but the other alchemist contestants froze at his words.
Then, one by one, they came to their senses and began asking Yoo Hyun questions…
“Yoo Hyun!! Does that mean the buffer-type array can be used regardless of rank!?”
“Take my question as well!!!”
In the end, another symposium broke out in the middle of the competition.
At the familiar sight, the host cried out.
[ Please… Please let me continue the competition…!! Whatever you do, shouldn’t you at least finish the competition first!!! ]
“Ahem!! That sort of thing isn’t important right now!! It’s noisy, so be quiet!!”
“Tsk, tsk… You have to know when to stay out of things… Don’t you realize how great an invention this is?”
“Yoo Hyun! You said perfect application to S-Rank was difficult, so what do you think about increasing the array’s thickness!!”
[ Aaaaargh!! This is not a new-technology presentation—!!!! ]
“What are you all doing?! Drag that unreasonable man off the stage at once!!!”
[ Breaking ] ‘Double Crown’ to go down in magic beast production history… Korean alchemist sweeps the [Design·Cultivation] divisions at Germany’s Messe Expo!
[ Special ] “He mastered both theory and practice” … The first ‘Magic Beast Alchemy Double Champion’ in the history of the Magitech Expo is born
[ Issue ] “They suppressed talent like this with regulations at home?” … Representative Kim Cheong-sik’s office faces a threat of being blown up after the double victory!
[ Exclusive ] Yoo Hyun does it again! ‘Buffer-Type Array’ opens the path to high-rank magic beast production that had been blocked?
[ Global ] ‘I was right, but they kicked me out’ … Magitech Expo magic beast production competition host vents his fury