Since the police weren't particularly interested in pursuing the murder case, Euri naturally didn't face any obstacles in getting a release slip from the hospital after deciding that he had gotten enough rest. The head injury would keep him stuck in his home for a couple of days, but simple medication was all it required.
His pockets were emptied after buying the necessary pills and hiring a three-wheeler. Half an hour later, he was back in his home, knocking on the door repeatedly, knowing nobody was going to answer easily.
After a couple of minutes, his mother opened the door and let him in, eyes abnormally bright and black stains around her lips giving her a ghastly look. This was the usual routine for both of his parents recently.
Do your mindless factory job for nine hours straight, buy some groceries and two tubes of black foam, come home, have dinner, then stuff the drugs up your veins to feel what they called 'absolute peace'; then wake up ten hours later, just in time to head out to the factory.
Other than the fact that they were drugged out of their minds half the time he spent with them, Euri didn't have many complaints. Most of his friends, especially those in this rough neighborhood, had it far worse.
Black Foam was fairly tame and cheap among the list of the drugs available in the corners. Some doctors even prescribed it for neurotic patients in extreme cases.
As usual, he retreated into his tiny bedroom after a quick dinner. His parents didn't even ask about the bandage on his head. Absolute peace was their only area of interest, not miniscreens, news, or entertainment networks.
Reclined on the bed, Euri turned on his miniscreen and entered the game. It had been four hours since he exited the application. But there were no visible changes in it. The dog was still cultivating peacefully, the loading cycle on its stats window showing no signs of completion.
Since the well's data said it was in a depleted state for now, affecting the quality of the vitality gas coming out of the well, the dog's cultivation session should probably take a long time. He had no idea what the criteria for improving [Speed] were and how the game was going to digitize it comprehensively.
The timer for the well's depleted state still had more than seven hours left. There was nothing else to do in the game, so he could only close it and shift his focus to something else. And he did have some ideas that needed a fact check.
Entering an obscure network surfer tool, he began to collect information on several topics. First of all, he needed to understand the ins and outs of consuming beast cores.
This was a rabbithole of urban myths and shallow articles that made him scroll with intense focus for a whole hour. Although the information in the surface web was filtered by governments and stakeholder corporate giants, his prior understanding was still refreshed. The key aspects were not easy to hide.
Beast Cores had a very wide and versatile range of utility. From awakening mutant abilities to making medicine, from taming and cultivating pet beasts to running bimolecular research, the scope was only getting bigger every day.
So many different types of cores had been discovered until now that there was no way to keep track of any comprehensive classification guidelines.
Directly consuming a beast core was indeed a rather selfish thing to do, he came to learn. This ruined a majority of the core's potential utility. Any industry professional with relevant tools could extract ten times more utility from it compared to the benefits to the human body from one beast core.
On the other hand, consuming beast cores in large numbers was the only way to become a ranked superhuman. It was the main reason why only relatively rich families had been able to nurture most superhumans in these fifty years.
Several government-funded projects across the globe were claiming that they'd soon be able to develop serums from the beast cores to awaken mutant abilities in humans. This innovation could reduce the wasteful method of superhuman nurturing to a great degree.
On the topic of aftereffects of beast core consumption, Euri could not find much. Diarrhea, fever, nervous shock, and many more problematic reactions were listed among the possibilities.
If the beast core was too powerful, for example, a Rank-1 gold-grade beast core, it could even directly kill the consumer if his body was unfamiliar with beast core consumption.
The beast core that had manifested in Euri's stomach was a Rank-0 core. Rank-0 beasts had no subdivisions among them, and they weren't much different compared to ordinary beasts of the same species. For them, having a beast core was already a sign of maturity.
But statistically speaking, the chances of developing a mutant ability after consuming a Rank-0 core were almost 0%. Perhaps if he ate hundreds of them, something might click....
"Looks like there is no need to get a checkup for latent abilities. But I should get a normal one just to make sure there is no adverse affect on my body from the consumption process."
Euri spent the next half hour looking for any news article, national or international, that mentioned anything related to alien techs, or malware that might be linked to such mysterious sources. But other than urban myths and rumormongers, he found nothing reliable.
A little disheartened, he turned the miniscreen off and drifted off to sleep, anticipating the changes he'd see in the game tomorrow morning...
The next morning, the first thing he did after turning off the alarm was to click on the icon marked as [ Sacred Ground Administrator ].
Sol-wa's doll-like face greeted him as usual, this time with a comically large smile reaching both of her ears, eyes crinkled and nostrils flared. She was pointing emphatically at the well, with the text bubble beside her face showing:
[ The Sacred Ground Core is back to full power! You can commence normal operations as you like, Handsome Administrator! ]
Euri eagerly checked the data of both the well and the dog. The [ Depleted State ] notice was gone from the well's status window, and the dog's data had a new addition:
[ Cultivating Speed ]
[ Cultivation Checkpoint estimated in 1.5 hours ]