One week later...
An afternoon of an odd day of the month...
Rex was sitting at the edge of the roof of the sixth floor of the castle which was under construction with Ria. He had his hand wrapped around her waist while she was resting her head on his shoulder.
Both of them were quietly staring at the two individuals sitting in the garden around the castle.
One of them was Mia and the other was Little Aru.
"I was wondering why this little guy hasn't been dragging me to play with him these days. To think he successfully made a new friend and that friend is none other than your sister," Rex said.
"Hmm... If you weren't that busy then you would have noticed this long ago, Mia is not that good at talking with others because she feels insecure, she thinks that she will annoy others if she can't hold a complete conversation with others.
But that little guy has a pure heart so she found it easy to talk to him. By the way, she has a bad impression of you that's why if you have time then try talking to her, she is my sister so if you want to be with me then she also needs to have a good impression of you," Ria said while waving her legs in back and forth motion.
"Haha... Little Green what do you mean by that, I can tell she is not a bad type of person but you do know that I am already spending all my free time with you. If I had time then I would definitely spend it with both Little Aru and her.
And now that they can play with each other, if I had free time I would rather play with my Little Green instead of trying to win favor, you agree right?" Rex joked but then he noticed that Ria was blinking her eyes at him with a poker face.
"Right?" Rex said with a stiff face.
Ria looked at him with a smile yet not a smile.
"Sigh... okay, I get it, if I have free time then I will try to approach her," Rex sighed. The thing he lacked most these days was time, he thought having more clones will let him work faster but what he didn't expect was the after making clones the amount of work increased by several folds too.
"If you lack time then we can stop playing for a while," Ria said with a smile.
"Huh? No, absolutely not... I just realized I did had some free time, Eh... how about it, after around this month, I would have already completed the important work and will have more free time at that time I can approach her in a better way," Rex said with his arms crossed, rejecting her proposal without hesitation.
"Hmm..." Ria thought about it a few seconds before agreeing.
'She might not show it in front of her but the love between these two sisters is really deep... love between brothers and sisters? brotherhood?' Rex thought and the image of James surfaced in his mind before he shook his head and stopped thinking about him.
Ria noticed the slight change in his expression, as an expert at faking expressions she knew the precise details about that change in expression.
"What's wrong? Remembered something bad?" Ria asked. She would have directly used the words like 'bad blood from the past?' but thinking of the promise about not sticking her nose too much in his secret she held back.
"Nothing noteworthy," Rex said with a smile.
Ria shook her head, she shifted her position then put his head on her lap. She didn't ask anything anymore, Rex didn't refuse it either and made himself comfortable.
'If I could live such a comfortable life with my new family and can live my dreams here then how good it would be?... but this is also the reason I need to get stronger to protect all this or someone stronger will snatch it from me, if not a person something else might destroy it.
Time doesn't stop for anyone if I don't continuously upgrade myself and get stronger then I will be trampled by it,' Rex thought.
Rex spent time with Ria until evening then they both of them left to do their work.
He used Instant Transmission and arrived in front of the entrance of an underground hall.
There were several halls under the castle, the reason all those halls were underground was that the things inside them weren't meant to show to the public or even the people working for the organization. With the one in center housing Core Smart Brain other hall contained the devices and instruments connected to it, there were still some free halls left that were converted into temporary labs.
The hall in front of Rex was one such lab.
There was no door in front, instead, the entrance was covered with long stripes of transparent plastic-like material that were preventing the lap from leaking any kind of gases outside.
Rex stepped into the lab, when he entered the room the sudden changed in temperature made the hair on his skin slightly tense.
The room was cold from the inside, it was similar to the storage rooms used to keep vegetables fresh.
The room was filled with big cuboid-shaped devices placed near the walls, all those cuboids were made of transparent glass-like material. One could easily see their content from the outside, they had horizontal separations in them just like bookshelves to hold the content inside.
Most of them contained different types of herbal plants grown in flower pots, different pot had a different color of soil. There were also those which had fungi and see weeds growing in them.
The cuboid like devices were just temperature regulators, a different type of plants needs different climate conditions to grow. Rex just modified different arrays as he did in the lower realm... arrays like Netherworld Freezing Array, Heaven Burning Array, and several others to achieve his purpose, next he just provided them a constant supply of Qi which' cost was almost negligible to the current him.
Rex had spent quite a sum of money to acquire all that, some of them were collected from the forest while others were brought. He collected them because he was thinking of starting to practice Gene Coding soon.
Two Clones were working in the lab, they ignored Rex and continued to do their work as ordered.
Rex walked to the corner opposite to him and bent down on his knees to check the content of the last shelve in the box.
There were several small cylindrical glass tubes arranged in a matrix formation there. All those tubes had a black color liquid in them when Rex confirmed that there was no exception and all only had the black liquid in them, he sighed deeply.
[And another failure, Project Life is to be continued~]
Rex didn't say anything.
The black liquid in those tubes was the dilute poison extracted from the Zakiya's poison blood.
In fact, after Rex checked the poison thoroughly he wasn't even sure if he should call it a poison.
When a person is poisoned, the poison affects one of their important body part making the host ill or injured, that part can be anything from heart, blood, lungs, flesh, etc... A poison harms or destroys the thing it targets to disrupt the working of the whole body and kill them but that thing is usually a physical existence that exists in the body.
But the poison affected Zakiya, didn't attack her body first but Qi then it spread and attacked her whole body making her lose control over her Qi, moreover it didn't focus anything in particular but affected her whole body same way... because of these factors, the poison was never supposed to have an antidote.
That's what its maker may have also thought.
When Rex made Elixir Of Life, it wasn't supposed to fight the poison but strengthen the thing that was already fighting it.... her immunity.
Elixir Of Life strengthens the immune system of the host that took it in two ways, the first in permanent immunity boost- once it is consumed, the immune system of the host will be strengthened. Their body will develop an innate resistance to any poison that targets the host's body. The resistance depends on the endurance their host has... it's like a weaker version of Ultra-Healthy Body.
The second is temporary immunity boost- as the name suggests it's also an immunity boost but far stronger than the first one, the only problem is it's temporary and will disappear after a fixed period but that time was enough for the host's immune system to thoroughly counter the poison.
After checking the data obtained from the poison a few more times, it piqued Rex's interest. The value of poison rose in his eyes, it reached the same level as Elixir Of Life.
With the right ways, poison can not only be used as a weapon but also a lifesaver. Rex collected different types of bacteria, parasite, poisonous herbs, and fungi he then tried to strengthen them using Elixir Of Life but 9 out of 10 times the subject died just by the oversupply of energy from its overly dilute version.
After Rex collected the 1 out of 10 which managed to survive he let them grew and multiply, then used the dilute poison on them in hope of them getting immunity against the poison but they all died or withered in the end.
He kept doing it again and again..... and is even doing it now in the hope he could succeed at least one time. He would need at least one subject which could develop immunity over it or can mutate to adapt to it. Zakiya countered the poison but he could of course not use her as research material furthermore he needed the subject to be a plant, fungi, or bacteria for what he wanted to achieve.
Rex told the clones to throw the failed subject and replace it with new ones before leaving.
It was almost night so he went to his workshop and continued his research on Ancient Teleportation Portal and Teleportation Scroll until midnight then he slept there until morning and left for training.
Core Zone of the Misty Maze Forest.....
'Little Rose I want to sleep,' Rex lazily landed near Zakiya who was sitting on the red-black couch with another flashy black sports dress like usual, he wasn't even surprised anymore.
[Good to know,]
'Can we switch places? Do you have any auto-pilot function?' Rex asked in a hope-filled tone.
[Fortunately, we can't,]
Rex shook his head not caring that Zakiya was staring at him all this time.
Zakiya touched her chin as she looked at the half-asleep Rex who was rubbing his eyes.
She was about to say something but then her expression changed.
"You had a breakthrough? Wait you breakthrough thrice?" Zakiya had a strange look on her face.
She wanted to shout more but then she soon noticed that it wasn't just his Qi cultivation base those advanced.
He is the one whose sleepy but why do I feel like I'm dreaming?... she thought.
"What's there to be surprised about? Huh... is it not usual for geniuses from Higher Realm to breakthrough twice or thrice in one go? Tch Tch..." Rex said with a smug face. He didn't forget to rub salt even when he was sleepy.
At that time, a thought surface in Zakiya's mind... 'why don't I throw the couch at his face?' but fortunately for Rex she practiced a good meditation technique and could hold back her urges.
A cultivator whose body can't keep up with his cultivation speed?... even Zakiya didn't know how to reply to that.
She didn't doubt that if these words got out then Rex would get beaten day and night just to relieve the frustration felt by all those powerhouses that were stuck in a bottleneck and had to cultivate in seclusion for years to reach the next stage.
'I was thinking if the path of Blood Cultivator will be suitable for him but now it looks like I was worrying for nothing, but it's better to bring out the full potential of his constitution before letting him walk this path,' Zakiya thought.
"I don't even want to know how you did it, let's start today's training," Zakiya flickered her finger.
The ground suddenly trembled then cracks started to appear on it and a big creature with three pairs of eyes and a crocodile-like head came out of the ground.
"Hehe... so it's ground type today?" Rex smiled as he stared at the beast in eyes, he snapped his fingers and four wings appeared behind him. Rex stretched his arms and cracked his knuckles while staring at the beast with confidence filled eyes then he turned around and... fled with all his might.