"Just like you requested," the biology director said almost proudly while we entered a large studio lab with an open floor space. "Nothing here but equipment, no cameras but the one on the X-ray machine, and I even brought this untouched or opened camping tent we can do most of the physical in."
"I see," I said stiffly, staring only at the room and not the large duffel he had been carrying since we got here. Poniard, Si-Pon, Glaive, and I were in a rented office floor that that Bureau had provided in exchange for rights to examining Poniard. Si-Pon was the only reason the government could not simply take Poniard from me and bury me so there was only so much luck I could press to begin with.
Somehow, though, both the biology director and Director Carlyle were willing to vouch that her mutations were a rare variation caused by low grade goblins eating higher grade kobolds and rodent type monsters. The rodent part was supposed to cover up for humanoid aspects even though Poniard did not have whiskers like a kobold or a rat. However, they assured me the association would hardly care as long as their future tests achieved at least similar results.
Supposedly, there were so many other creatures involved that finding the right combination would be enough to keep the Bureau and international groups busy for a long time. All they needed to do here was fake the blood and DNA tests performed here. The biology director, of course, would probably learn the truth from the tests so I went ahead and told him not only about human hearts but also all the reasons why people could not know about this.
Even Director Carlyle agreed with me in that regard after having poked one of Poniard's breasts without even asking.
His words were, "It bounced real," and I did not even have to say anything before Poniard bit the end of his finger clean off. He just shrugged and said, "Free feel," while holding his hand out to Kershaw who turned out to be a sub-mage or sub-healer by regenerating the finger. As usual, I was irritated as hell when I left.
For now, I let the biology director put the tent up before leading Poniard and I inside. Inside, Poniard stripped and was briefly poked, prodded, flashlighted, chastity checked, measured, scanned, and even run over with a sonogram. Afterward she was given a simple hospital gown to wear for the rest of the tests. These were just X-rays while walking and running or stretching followed by a drawing of blood and other bodily fluids.
The Bureau originally wanted to take things like marrow samples and cranial fluids but I told them to fuck off as far as they could. There was no way I would let them needlessly perform a spinal tap on my right hand man. Or woman. They could spend years struggling to uncover the taboo behind her evolution and then dissect their own damn goblins!
We spent an hour in that building before Poniard could finally put their normal clothes back on. Now that it had few a few days, instead of my old clothes Poniard now wore loose fitting pants and shirt under my giant secondhand hoodie. As we left the office rental building, though, she also put on a simply medical mask and sunglasses to further hide her features.
Glaive was so large and eye-catching, though, that few people actually paid attention to the smaller person with the obviously hidden face. Poniard probably looked like some kind of celebrity and we were the security team escorting her into the armored Bureau vehicle. If people actually knew about her, though, she and we really might be!
When we got to the property it was to find another construction crew with three different trucks waiting on us. Director Carlyle also happened to be there talking to the crew leaders and killing time. When we showed up he gratefully flagged us down and started up a conversation with my driver while I handled the workers.
They were here to add an outer privacy fence around the property as well as put up a massive mesh pavilion over the original two-acre property. This would protect against most aerial views as well as afford my trainees more shade. When they got to work though, the director called me a paranoid nut job because of what I was doing.
I honestly did not care and asked him if he would be willing to help Poniard feed Malco while I set the critters to patio training. Director Carlyle had no idea what I was talking about but said sure anyway while made Poniard and Si-Pon on her shoulder share a look. Then they went to fetch the old slime core box.
A few minutes later I could clearly hear the faint echoes of a grown man screaming like a young girl coming from somewhere underground. It was the most satisfying thing I had ever heard and I regretted not being there to record it on my phone. Obviously, the director was furious about this by how quickly he appeared outside the patio.
Who would I be if I was not prepared for such an occurrence? Since I was me, the patio gate was locked and the current was on full blast. The second that the director touched the gate was the second time screams could be heard from my property that day.
A few minutes later, the director, Poniard, Glaive, Si-Pon, and I were calmed down and in the greenhouse looking at the cloned portal plans I had ordered off of the internet. Most of them were basic low grade plants that could grow in most any soil on Earth and were used for medicinal alchemy but there were others of higher grades that needed more meticulous soil.
My greenhouse had six feet of D grade soil fertilized with a combination of wastes and biomass and was perpetually moist and warm from the controlled MP environment. These plants were all taking to the soil in small patches that would eventually become rows when I could clone them. Keeping them in hydrated soil and constant exposure to feeding light would help them grow quickly even without all of the mana.
"It seems like you gain about ten points a week," Director Carlyle remarks after having scanned me and now scanned Poniard. "You were over two-thirty last time so being exactly two-forty this time means the growth is slowing down. Maybe after another week or two I can put you back in the portals."
"My team is still an E grade party so maybe Lucinda will let me do more than two portals a month," I say hopefully while watching the meter read Poniard. I already knew that Poniard was now over four hundred and mid C in overall rating but I was curious about her mana pool.
"Her pool is just under B grade, which means she's catching up to herself," the director notes with what seemed like relief in his voice. "If her pool kept leaving her proper grade behind, casting magic could cause excessive mana burn and accidental explosions or just damage the mage's abilities. A and S grade mages usually have pools above their grades and need special equipment to channel their mana since the grade differences are so large."
Hearing about this was actually pretty scary, making me grateful the differences between D and C grades were only one and two hundred at any given time. If she were lower C with a mid B pool then it seemed like she would be in trouble. Thankfully, she was mid C with a below-B pool.
"What are they saying at the Bureau about her?" I ask after a few moments of listening to lightly tinkling water pumping up from the surface of the mana pond from small pumps and tubes.
"We've seen signs of more than just sentient energy beings from the portals," Director Carlyle says somewhat vaguely. "I know you've been to a place I'm talking about. A proper civilized settlement that was taken over by some goblins. Well, it's classified, but there are sentient mortal species of a few different kinds beyond the portals. We have even brought some over to our side, so the brains are thinking she's got sentience in her lineage that kobold genes probably triggered."
"How much time will that route buy us?" I ask while subconsciously reaching out to rub Poniard's head.
"Unless someone like Si-Pon steps out and says no goblin species from their side of the portals have boobs," he replies after a long and loud sigh. "We're looking at about a year until an actual cross-breeding program bears fruit so a year-and-a-half before they find out that was the wrong theory. However, the mortal races over there have tits, too, so they're probably not that worried about green boobs when they already have blue or even furry boobs."
"Beast people?!" I exclaim suddenly, accidentally hitting Poniard's head and earning a hiss for my actions. "You can't be serious. What about the blue people? I never saw any bodies but they used their skins for some stuff. I bet they're fairies."
Laughing out loud ad how excited I suddenly was, the director shakes his head and says, "You calmed down so fast it's just too much. Some of our cultures believes elves were fairies, but those are the short shits. These blue people are as tall as we are with pointy ears and big gray eyes that have these horizontal pupils like a horse or frog. Now, I can't say anything else, but I really doubt they'll put funding into goblin titties."
"That honestly makes me feel so much better," I sigh tiredly, feeling like the entire world had been lifted off of my shoulders. "I'm not going to use her as a calendar model to advertise my business but I won't feel so bad taking her places or just between portals. Speaking of which, I need to text the driver you gave me to go pick up the next batch of cores I ordered."
"You're buying cores?" Director Carlyle asks skeptically. "What on Earth do you need cores for?"
"Slime cores and for feeding the critters," I correct and inform him bluntly while texting on my phone. "Human hearts and excess hearts in general made the physiological and some magical differences in Poniard, but I gave her a decent amount of cores early on which probably caused her initial magic developments. Now, I'm feeding the kobolds and those goblins slime cores to encourage magic and evolution. Your welcome."
Rubbing his chin in a thoughtful, almost greedy, manner, the director says, "If you need cores, all you have to do is say so. I can get you everything you need, what grade do you need?"
"If I got them through you I would do it in bulk and it would be something like two hundred preserved C grade cores and five hundred D grades," I reply with a sidelong glance in his direction. "This package on a hundred D grades cost me twenty grand, so if I was buying from you I wouldn't want to pay anymore than fifty for what I need. But I would need a loan until I get rid of these goblins."
Raising a single eyebrow while lowering his head to give me that special type of incredulous look that said he was being challenged, the director says, "Who said anything about paying for them? I'm going to find you the lowest D grade kobold dungeon I can and bribe Lucinda into letting you go once you're back on active duty."
Working with a team I was familiar with who I could prepare for such a mission by using my own kobolds, I could probably capture quite a number of kobolds. However, our party build was not ready for D grade subhumans. The tankers together could probably only hold back a single kobold adult apiece without fighting back, leaving everyone with the excess to deal with.
"My party isn't ready for a mission like that and I don't want my first shift back on the clock to be with a group of randoms," I reply wistfully. "However, I am using my facilities to increase their exposure. It should not be too long before they're ready and you COULD always help that along. Maybe some hybridized citrus trees for treating my trainees or something nice and scenic like that?"
"I have one or two things that I can say for sure but it's not something as useful as magic fruit trees," he says with a dramatized rolling of his eyes. "One of them is this sculpture made from an empty B grade mana crystal. It's like one of those cheesy swan ice sculptures you see at weddings but the stagnant rating on its is still four hundred. The other might be another mana pond but you'd have to change up the area to accommodate it."
Director Carlyle did not have much business to talk about after that so he simply stayed to watch the kobolds practicing their unarmed sets now with two hundred pounds of weight and no instructions. Half an hour after that he went on about his business. Sadly, the work crews stayed pretty much all day.
The last cores the goblins and kobolds would receive until they were finally ready to leave were given to them before going back to their rooms with dinner. Then I took my familiars home after giving everyone but Si-Pon two cores to eat on the way home. These cores were obviously better for Poniard than the E grades, the lines about her exposed body would glow or crackle vaguely when taking the last few bites of a core.
At home, though, I made my familiar a special dinner by hollowing two cores apiece two stuff with some sausage and gravy before encasing in a thick pancake batter. The insides of the small melon sized cores were then mixed into a thick fruit smoothie in a large blender and divided between the three of them.
Lucinda was horrified by my portal cuisine and claimed to be buying a whole new kitchen after this.
*