Chapter 50 – Live Dissection Class
“Cough…” Professor Saul let out a dry cough as he signaled for Ma Dong to be seated before continuing, “Yes, soul beasts are a type of dimensional beast, but please pay more attention in class.”
“Yes, teacher!” Ma Dong gave a salute, before smugly sitting down while thinking about how smart and handsome he was. He was so awesome that even he himself was getting envious of himself.
Professor Saul ignored Ma Dong and continued on with his explanation. “There are two primary types of dimensional beasts. The first kind are wild-type dimensional beasts which come in different shapes and sizes; humanoid, bestial, or even plantlike. I suspect that dimensional beasts don’t actually have a fixed shape and instead change into these various appearances due to the interference from our plane of existence.
“These kinds of dimensional beasts do not have a clear point of origin. The only thing we can determine is that they can appear at any place at any time. For example, they can materialize right in the center of the Federation cities. These beasts may have connections to spatial cracks, thus explaining their random appearances as well as the time limit to their existence. Apart from being killed or encountering accidental deaths, there are times when they mysteriously disappear after a certain timeframe. This is the reason why the Federation isn’t able to acquire the bodies of wild-type dimensional beasts, resulting in our inadequate knowledge with regards to these creatures.”
“Wild-type dimensional beasts generally have strong combat characteristics. If any of you were to meet one, inform the city’s defense force immediately. Do not harbour any wishful thinking about you defeating such a creature!”
Professor Saul pushed his glasses up once again. “There is another kind of dimensional beast; the soul beasts that Student Ma Dong mentioned. When the soul sea of a heroic soul soldier manages to achieve a still-unknown criteria, the shadow of a soul beast becomes present within their soul sea. It originates from the higher dimension and the heroic soul soldier forms a connection akin to a soul contract with it. The heroic soul soldier can then summon the soul beast for a short period of time to aid them in combat. This is currently the primary channel we are utilising to study these dimensional beasts.”
Within the Federation, every single heroic soul soldier that could summon a dimensional organism was, without a doubt, a cut above the rest. These people were ranked even higher than special ability users and held a status that was of a completely different level. Research on these soul beasts have been carried out for a long time, and despite this, the enigmatic relationship between a Heroic soul soldier and soul beast are still leagues from being fully elucidated. To fully understand this requires technology that far exceeds our present scientific capabilities.
“After many years of research, we have deduced that dimensional beasts are a projection of a human’s consciousness.” Professor Saul carried on explaining, “Let us use Laura’s Explosive Bear that Ma Dong mentioned as an example. According to Laura, she has loved teddy bears since young. It would stand to reason that the silhouette of a bear would eventually appeared in her soul sea, as it now has.”
“Teacher, I’ve loved beautiful ladies with large chests since young. Do you think it’s possible for me to summon a beautiful lady as my soul beast?” Ma Dong excitedly asked.
The class instantly tittered with excitement and Professor Saul withheld the urge to strangle Ma Dong to death. “That is a good question… dimensional beasts are living organisms and are formed from a kind of energy that merges with the consciousness of humans. During our research, we have paid immense attention to a topic at hand: their intellectual capabilities.. It seems that soul beasts possess the intellectual capabilities similar to that of humans, but we consider this the Parrot Phenomenon. What this means is that while soul beasts are influenced by humans, they only mimic certain basic or primitive biological instincts and abilities. At most, they are comparable to human children that are a few years of age. This is the bottleneck we have reached after researching.”
As of now, mankind still didn’t have a clear way to deal with dimensional beasts.
Wang Zhong couldn’t help but frown. He himself had looked through quite a few research papers on this topic, but information provided was very limited.
If dimensional beasts couldn’t possess any form of higher intelligence, then what was Simba? That fellow had a brain akin to a supercomputer, and its intelligence quotient completely surpassed that of humans. He could also feel emotions like any other human being. If it knew it was now being compared to a toddler… Simba would really explode with anger.
“Teacher, what if a soul beast with high level intelligence appears?”
Professor Saul gawked before replying with some visible excitement, “A future with that possibility hasn’t been ruled out. That would be a turning point in history. I would imagine that all scientists within the Freedom Federation would gather together to research it if that were to happen!”
Causing such a stir in the entire Federation… even though he’d long considered all this, Wang Zhong couldn’t help but swallow his saliva.
Just thinking about those crazy scientists cutting him and Simba into who knows how many pieces…
“Alright, today’s discussion ends here. During our previous session, I promised everyone that I would scrape together some corpses of the Sahara Metal-eating Ants. Everyone follow me to the lab where they’re kept and try your best to dissect these mysterious living organisms!”
Professor Saul said all this with a great deal of vigour, but most of the students before him were either frowning or showing pained expressions, especially the ladies.
Any type of dissecting was the stuff of nightmares for the majority of students.
Ma Dong made a vomiting motion and said, “Corpses… such an usual word for this. It’s just a mutated bug. How could Professor Saul do this to us? I doubt we can even eat properly after this session.”
“Be content with what you have,” Wang Zhong said with a face full of anticipation. “Do you know how much effort is required to bring Sahara Metal-eating Ants into Tianjing City? Only someone like Professor Saul with his special connections with the Federation’s Biological Research Institute can achieve this. Any other typical academy will only provide pictures for you to look at.”
Ma Dong rolled his eyes and replied, “You weirdo; there’s a problem with your orientation!”
When he saw the large majority of students showing a lack of interest as they moved sluggishly, Professor Saul meaningfully said, “I forgot to inform everyone that students Scarlet , Milami and a few of the other female students from the elite class had showed extreme interest in this class and have requested to join us. They are already at the lab. You guys wouldn’t want to look bad in front of these girls, right?”
After a brief moment of silence, the group of people suddenly acted as though they were on steroids. The previously frowning and complaining Ma Dong instantly became Superman. It was as if he had instantaneously inherited the super ability genes of the Assassin clan as he rushed to the front while shouting, “What’s a few Metal-eating Ants? Your brother love to handle this!”
Seven to eight beautiful ladies were already waiting within the wide dissection room.
Waiting with them were at least a dozen Sahara Metal-eating Ants. They were around the size of a small dog and covered completely with countless dense appendages. All of them were neatly displayed on the various operating tables. Some of the appendages even twitched faintly from time to time.
Even the most low-ranking mutated organism produced dimension crystal stones within their body, the most important resource as of now. Like many rune technology devices, the only way to transport these was by armed transport railways, and the costs to do so were frightfully high. All of this could only be possible with the prestige of someone like Professor Saul.
Professor Saul nonchalantly said, “Everyone split into groups by yourselves; two people per group.”
“Classmate Scarlet, please choose me—I’m the best at dissecting!”
“Senior Milami, this brother’s nickname is Tianjing’s Dissecting Knife! Insects, birds, fishes. Choose me and this will be your most memorable dissecting class!”
While the majority of male students were desperately trying to show off, Ma Dong instead grabbed Milami’s leg and said with a face full of tears and snot, “Senior, please don’t. They’re all too cruel. Look at these pitiful and small things. Their cold bodies are pinned to the operating table, their legs still twitching faintly… Senior, I’m afraid…”
Milami stared at him with suspicion as she replied, “From what I see, you’re afraid and don’t dare to dissect it, right?”