Published at 30th of October 2026 12:00 pm

Chapter 7609: Huge Research Potential

This chapter is updated by JustRead.pl

The artifacts of the deathborn race all promised to provide their possessers a glimpse of completely foreign paradigms.

After the Farseer introduced the modest but promising acceleration boot, she began to show off a few other low-powered trinkets.

Though their immediate value was not high, they all possessed traits that made them priceless in the hands of the right researchers!

"This is a band that somehow increases a living wearer’s health and damage resistance. We believe the deathborn handed it over to workers assigned to perform particularly dangerous and physically demanding work. I do have to warn you that it also comes with a complication that makes it difficult to remove."

When the woman carefully placed the band around Andraste’s wrist, the grade 5 deathstone item automatically shrunk until it turned into a rather thick bracer around her skin.

Strange energies began to infuse into her body. Ves initially grew alarmed, but he resisted the urge to do anything rash when he saw that those energies did not corrupt her nor inflict any harm.

Instead, the deathstone band did exactly as described. They somehow empowered his daughter’s body through completely unfamiliar means. He had never observed anything like it in the past, yet he could sense his daughter responding well to this treatment.

They conducted a few tests. Trying to prick Andraste’s skin with a needle became a lot harder than before.

The skin barrier simply refused to succumb to the sharp object for a time!

It took a lot more force than Ves thought to finally create a breach!

Even then, hardly any blood leaked from the wound. The injury did not undergo accelerated healing, but the unfamiliar body-reinforcing effect practically made it inconsequential.

Of course, the reinforcement band did not remain active for long. Once the death energy stored within its relatively small deathcrystal ran out, the band ceased to fortify his daughter’s body.

"Aw." His daughter visibly deflated as she already began to miss the sensation.

She hadn’t felt so strong and healthy before!

It was difficult for her to accept that she wouldn’t be able to enjoy this remarkable state on a permanent basis.

Though the demonstration was brief, Ves already saw many possible ways to take advantage of this deathborn artifact.

If he was able to study and deduce the working principles of this item, he could develop a crude imitation that could strengthen any organic form!

Whether it would only run on death energy or other forms of input, he didn’t think it would be difficult for him to produce a batch of reinforcement bands to be worn by other humans.

If he was able to scale up the design, then he might even be able to incorporate them into his organic products, most notably his Woodsap mechs!

That would definitely delight the Terrans!

It would also be a considerable game changer to the Terran Alliance!

Given that the deathborn had initially emerged close to the borders of this colonial alliance, the Terrans were definitely bound to face organized deathborn armies in combat.

Woodsap mechs may be one of the few mechs that could fight against this unfathomable enemy more effectively.

Environments steeped in dark miasma hindered the performance of many machines, but his Woodsap mechs instead became tougher and more resilient!

This would especially be the case if Ves and the Terrans incorporated more than the reverse-engineered version of a reinforcement band into their designs!

Other deathborn applications that relied on death energy as their power source could also end up enriching the capabilities of his Woodsap mechs.

Ves already began to form preliminary plans to design a distinct variant that was explicitly designed to counter the deathborn!

As he grew eager to discover what more nifty inventions the deathborn had brought into the Red Ocean, his daughter struggled to remove the reinforcement band.

"It isn’t coming off! I need help!"

"Andrea?"

"That is the complication that I have mentioned. The reinforcement bands are apparently designed to remain permanently affixed to their wearers. They cannot be removed unless you break them or resort to other extreme methods."

That made it sound as if the deathborn treated the reinforcement band wearers as slaves or disposable workers more than anything else. The design choice said much about their mentality and priorities.

"If that is the case, how do you plan to remove it from my daughter’s wrist?"

"We have a theory. First, you should feed it with a small amount of death energy in order to get it operational again. Then, Yaika should attempt to command the reinforcement band to detach from Andraste’s wrist."

They proceeded to do just that.

Blinky breathed a wave of death energy at the band. This caused it to make a noise and resume the process of strengthening Andraste’s physique.

Meanwhile, a smaller and younger feline companion spirit stared hard at the band. Yaika tried various different ways to persuade the band to unlock.

It worked.

Both Ves and the Farseer looked a little surprised when the reinforcement band shifted its internal mechanisms and regained its previous size.

The young girl pulled the enlarged object away from her wrist now that it was no longer pressing against her skin.

"Huh. That was easy."

Ves glanced deeper at Yaika. The intangible kitten had become a lot more useful now that the deathborn had entered the scene. The companion spirit’s strong affinity for death meant that she could impersonate the deathborn in several different cases!

Though he did not believe that Yaika could fool every automated system, she could still unlock access to a lot of simpler objects with less rigorous identity verification processes!

"What’s next?"

"I think you will be pleasantly surprised by the effects of the next trinkets."

She introduced a bizarre deathstone battleaxe that somehow struck double when Andraste only swung the weapon once.

This showcased a hint of the exquisite E energy mastery of the deathborn race. They somehow found a way to convert pure death energy into kinetic cutting energy at a remarkably high conversion rate!

The weapon hardly generated any heat or other waste energy, which meant that this handweapon was close to perfection in this aspect alone!

The next deathstone weapon happened to light up Andraste’s eyes.

The sword may have been designed according to alien customs and aesthetics, it was still a very recognizable armament to the young swordswoman.

She wielded the slightly oversized weapon with a grip that compensated for the added weight and unwieldiness.

The girl then proceeded to swing the blade in an experimental fashion. She quickly got the hang of her new weapon and slightly adjusted her stance and grip to increase the smoothness of her sword forms.

"What is special about this sword?" She questioned as she did not sense anything special so far. "It feels as if I am swinging a regular stone blade."

"As far as we have managed to find out, this sword possesses a singular effect that does not act on its wielder. Instead, you will have to hit another subject in order to observe the consequences."

Andraste immediately turned towards her father with an anticipatory glance. "Can I...?"

Ves sighed. "Use the flat side first. Don’t cut into your father right away."

As a human phase lord, a weapon as small and trivial as this would never be able to pose a serious threat to his life.

That did not mean he was eager to serve as his daughter’s target dummy. He especially did not want to get hit on his still-injured side!

He simply held out his right hand before Andraste slapped it with the flat of the stone blade.

"Oh." Ves almost jumped in surprise. "I definitely feel something coursing through my body. The effect is too weak, though. It only carried halfway through my arm before it ran out of power."

He felt a fleeting sense of discordance in the affected limb. As he slowly swung his arm around, he felt as if his arm was no longer moving as precisely as before. It was as if it had become a little rusty.

"The effect is stronger on regular human-sized organisms." The Farseer explained. "We already hypothesized that its strength is much diminished on a subject such as yourself, but it is good to obtain confirmation. The apparent purpose of this deathstone sword is to impair the opponent’s body coordination. Any normal human-sized organism that is struck by the blade is unable to move as deftly and precise as before. It only lasts for less than half a minute, but the condition can be prolonged through repeated hits."

Andraste quickly lost interest in the deathstone sword. "This is cheating. I much prefer to beat my enemies square and fair. Anyone who wields a dishonorable sword like this can never become a true swordmaster!"

She practically threw the weapon back onto the worktable. Her disgust looked genuine. She had become far too indoctrinated in the views and principles of the Swordmaidens to treat this weapon in a positive light.

Though Ves held a very different opinion about this matter, he did not feel motivated enough to correct his daughter’s mindset.

"I see that it works surprisingly well against organic beings. What about pure machines that possess no flesh or nervous systems?"

"The deathstone sword has failed to impair their performance in any measurable way." Andrea Vos responded. "We did not test the weapon extensively, though, so do not treat my answer as an absolute truth. There may also be higher-end versions of this weapon that can debilitate a wider range of opponents. We have not been able to find any during our search of the temple ruins. For now, we only managed to recover this single specimen, so what you have witnessed is the most of what you can expect."

"It is quite an interesting effect nonetheless." He admitted. "If it works on all organisms as I suspect, then the extraordinary principles are quite profound. It is definitely worth a thorough investigation. If we are able to understand this weapon well enough, we may even be able to develop a version that is effective on inorganic machines."

This was the first effect that he had seen from a deathborn artifact that negatively affected enemies.

That was valuable in a different way from the other artifacts because it did not overload the user with an additional extraordinary influence.

Instead, it solely acted on another target!

If that target was an enemy, then Ves had much less concerns about safety and risk management!

Only a few more items were left.

The Farseer briefly showed off a circlet that bestowed its wearer an augmented view of death energy.

Though Ves and the other people inside the chamber had no need of such a gadget, that did not apply to others.

To people who lacked companion spirits and had yet to make significant attainments in qi cultivation, the ability to ’see’ the presence and flow of death energy in plain sight was very useful!

There should have been plenty of alien guest workers at the temple complex who needed this capability in order to do their jobs!

Unfortunately, this circlet also possessed the same annoying trait as the reinforcement band. It tightened up onto a wearer’s body after activation, thereby making it difficult if not impossible to remove to most individuals!

Yaika came to the rescue again. Relying on her similarity to the deathborn, she was able to command the vision circlet to unwind and become loose again.

Ves still looked appreciatively at it. "The value of this circlet is perhaps the highest out of all of the artifacts here. Systematic E energy detection has always been a headache to our scientific community. There are currently very few lab instruments that can detect and measure E energy radiation in a reliable fashion. Their costs are prohibitive and their resolution leaves much to be desired. It is rather pathetic that we have to rely more on simulation models and feedback from accomplished qi cultivators to measure this phenomenon. This vision circlet can change all of that. As long as we understand how it works, we can unlock the key to developing a proper E energy detector or meter!"

This would definitely be a massive breakthrough!

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