WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Haruto
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ I Became the EX-Rank Pet Maker Hunters Obsess Over ◈
Chapter 18: A New Cultivation Technique
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The third day of the expo.
As I headed toward the contestants’ waiting room, Hunter Lee Yujin asked about the cultivation competition, apparently curious about how it would proceed.
“Boss, wouldn’t cultivation be harder to evaluate right away than Design? Considering how long it takes to cultivate magical beasts, wouldn’t it take too long?”
“Hmm... Normally, yes.”
Even after optimizing an F-rank Jellykko model, it took forty-eight hours to cultivate it safely without deformities or defects.
An Incubator, a magical beast cultivation device, rapidly grew a magical beast by injecting mana into its initial stage, the Seed. If too much mana was injected too quickly during that process, the Seed’s array could develop problems and mutate. On the other hand, if too little mana was injected, the Seed could fail to grow properly and wither away from a lack of mana.
But...
“If you use cutting-edge high-speed cultivation technology to grow a Seed into an immature form, that’s enough to evaluate it.”
“High-speed cultivation technology?”
“It’s still unstable technology, but simply put, it rapidly grows a Seed by injecting mana at a level beyond ordinary cultivation devices. Naturally, that raises the chance of the array becoming tangled, but that’s exactly what the cultivation competition evaluates. The more complete the Seed is, the more likely it is to withstand high-speed cultivation.”
The cultivation competition used special cultivation devices with high-speed growth functions rather than ordinary ones.
Using normal cultivation devices would take far too long to determine the results.
Still, high-speed cultivation had one problem.
Due to the growth structure of magical beasts, it was an extremely unstable technique in many respects.
To explain briefly...
A Seed, the initial stage of a magical beast, grew by absorbing the mana supplied by the cultivation device. The more mana it received, and the faster it received it, the faster it grew.
Mana was essentially nourishment for magical beasts.
Naturally, high-speed cultivation injected more mana than ordinary cultivation, and that was where the problem arose.
A massive influx of mana inevitably created powerful currents.
Those currents also affected the essence arrays constructed around the mana core. If the arrays were disturbed, the destabilized Seed could become deformed or develop fatal defects, leaving it unable to function as a living creature.
In short, special cultivation devices that injected more mana into a Seed at a faster rate were unstable cradles that exponentially increased the odds of cultivation failure.
That was why developing stable special cultivation devices had been so difficult. They had to increase the amount of mana injected while maintaining stability.
“Ah! So this competition tests how sturdily someone can construct an array? Unlike the Design competition, the cultivation competition focuses less on creativity and ideas, and more on the actual technique of stabilizing a Seed!”
“That’s about right.”
To sum it up, the cultivation competition assessed contestants’ skills by testing a Seed’s stability through high-speed cultivation.
...Normally, anyway.
* * *
The third day’s cultivation division competition began.
“Move, move! I’ll extract only the essences from the materials as planned, so you quickly review the blueprint and focus on synthesizing the Seed!”
“Okay!”
The contestants quickly synthesized Seeds according to the materials and blueprints supplied by the organizers.
The competition lasted two days in total.
On the first day, contestants synthesized their Seeds and placed them in cultivation devices. The actual judging took place on the second day, when the judges assessed the completeness of the partially grown immature forms inside the devices.
While every contestant hurried about, the judges’ attention settled on one person in particular.
“I’m looking forward to seeing what Mr. Yoo shows us this time.”
“Hmm, I’m not sure... Since it’s a different field, I doubt his cultivation techniques will be that exceptional.”
“Realistically, we shouldn’t expect too much. With his level of genius, it would be enough if he only knew the basics of cultivation.”
They did not have high expectations. Design and cultivation were fundamentally different disciplines.
“I came here while barely resisting the urge to quit the competition and research Duality immediately! Hahaha!”
“Same here. I wanted to lock myself in my lab and test Duality right away, but when I heard Mr. Yoo was entering the cultivation division too, I exercised superhuman restraint and came.”
Every judge felt the same way.
‘Ah, I want this competition to end already so I can research Duality.’
They had only remained out of loyalty to a fellow alchemist because the creator of Duality had entered the competition.
Honestly, there was nothing left to see. Why stay when there was a mountain of research waiting for them?
The judges ignored the inspiration stirred by Duality and remained there for one reason only: Yoo Hyun.
Then... Yoo Hyun suddenly began doing something unexpected.
“...Huh?”
“What on earth is he doing?”
Yoo Hyun brought over a huge amount of material and extracted monster essence in bulk.
Then he injected it into a C-rank magical beast mana core and constructed a mana array.
The magical beast blueprint supplied for this cultivation competition was the “Lesser Wyvern - A03 Model.”
It took around twelve days to cultivate normally, and for a C-rank model, its essence array was quite complex.
It was complicated, but as long as someone constructed the array according to the supplied blueprint, synthesizing the Seed itself should not have been difficult...
But... what was that?
“...What is he doing to that Seed?”
“Good lord...!”
Just when it seemed he was doing well, he suddenly layered the already complicated arrays twofold and threefold, turning them into a complete mess.
The funny thing was, arrays could not simply be stacked like Tetris just because someone wanted to stack them.
It was undoubtedly precise control, but...
One thing was certain.
“That’s a failure.”
“...Anyone can see that the array won’t function properly. Even if a magical beast is miraculously born, it won’t be the model supplied by the competition, so it can’t be properly evaluated. Is this the arrogance of a genius...?”
“Mr. Yoo... This is disappointing. Still, the control needed to stack arrays like that is unbelievable...”
“Jesus! His sense of balance is almost inhuman! He built Jenga out of arrays.”
Unable to watch any longer, Maximilian picked up a microphone.
Holding back a sigh, he spoke.
“...Yoo Hyun, we respect you, but this cultivation competition is not about creativity or originality. No matter what, shouldn’t you at least create the magical beast supplied by the organizers for a fair evaluation?”
Yoo Hyun looked at Maximilian and gave a short answer.
“I can see why you’d misunderstand from this alone. But there’s a reason for all of it, so please watch until the end.”
Yoo Hyun quietly operated the cultivation device, manually entering the acceleration multiplier and environmental information.
Beep. Beep.
Once he had entered everything, Yoo Hyun covered the cultivation device with the prepared tarp.
And with that, he finished the first day of Seed synthesis for the cultivation division.
The host, who had been watching for cues, looked at Maximilian.
[ Uh... That’s... it? Can we... continue like this? ]
“Haah... Well, we need to see the results tomorrow, so let it proceed for now.”
Every team finished synthesizing its Seed, placed it inside a cultivation device, and covered it with a tarp.
That was how the first day of the cultivation division competition ended.
* * *
The next day.
The fourth day of the expo.
The same group from yesterday gathered again to confirm the cultivation competition results.
Thanks to the accelerated growth, immature forms developed enough to be evaluated should have been moving inside the tarp-covered cultivation devices.
More spectators had gathered than the day before.
The second day was the highlight of the cultivation division competition.
[ All right, we’ll begin the evaluations at once...! Let’s see what condition the immature form of Team One’s Lesser Wyvern model is in...! ]
For the evaluation, they lifted the tarps one at a time.
Swish.
“Team One’s specimen’s organs formed very stably, just as expected yesterday. Creating a Seed that endured a 3.2-times multiplier alone is impressive.”
The Seed, once smaller than a fist, had grown to the size of a medium-sized dog, so the judges had no difficulty evaluating it.
“But the wing area looks a little unnatural...?”
“Hmm, it isn’t fatal, but there’s a chance of some deformity.”
The judges continued evaluating the teams one after another.
Most of the other contestants had set acceleration multipliers between three and four times.
The best result so far belonged to an Australian research team that had grown a Seed at a 4.1-times multiplier without fatal problems.
They were the leading candidates to win.
“Hmm, they made it extremely sturdy without any disruption to the arrays. But it doesn’t seem like this was possible simply because their arrays were neat, does it?”
The Australian team representative smiled confidently.
“It comes down to differences in environmental information input! Mana flow is affected by the surrounding environment, so instead of relying on the cultivation device’s automatic environmental settings, we manually scheduled environmental information every two hours, anticipating changes in time and weather.”
The judges smiled in satisfaction.
“That’s right. Details like this make the difference. You understand well.”
...Then, at last, the judges stood before Yoo Hyun’s cultivation device.
Looking troubled, they rubbed their temples as they stared at Yoo Hyun’s tarp-covered device.
“...Haah, I can’t even imagine what terrible thing may have happened inside. Mr. Yoo, I acknowledge your genius. Please don’t be too disappointed if the result is poor.”
One judge approached the cultivation device to pull back the tarp, while the others nervously swallowed.
If an ordinary contestant had claimed they would cultivate a Seed with that absurd structure, they would have been disqualified on the spot.
Yoo Hyun had not been disqualified solely out of respect for the genius Magic Beast Alchemist who had created Duality.
Maximilian’s heart pounded harder than ever.
‘I’m afraid...’
Of course, he feared what was inside the tarp, but he feared even more that the name of this young alchemist, who had presented a new paradigm for magical beast alchemy, would be tarnished. The fall of a genius could happen in an instant.
Even Yoo Hyun might find it difficult to escape the ethical consequences of playing with life.
Maximilian did not even want to imagine what horrifying lump of flesh might have been created inside that tarp.
‘Please, let the arrays have completely collapsed during the initial cultivation stage, so that nothing was formed...’
At last, the judge who had taken responsibility pulled back the tarp.
Swish.
Pandora’s box opened.
“U-Uaaah!”
The judge who pulled back the cloth saw something inside and fell backward in shock.
Thud.
‘Ah... It’s over...’
At that reaction, Maximilian solemnly lowered his head without even properly looking at the cultivation device.
A lump of flesh beyond ethical limits had been revealed to the public. Yoo Hyun would be in quite a difficult situation.
The remaining judges also faced the being inside the cultivation device and widened their eyes in disbelief.
“Gasp...!! What in the world is this?!”
“This is impossible...!!”
“That’s possible...?”
Their reactions were different from what Maximilian had expected.
‘...What?’
Maximilian raised his head and looked inside the cultivation device.
“Oh, my God...”
Inside was a fully intact Lesser Wyvern.
It had even grown enough to be taken out of the cultivation device at once!
“H-How did this happen...? What... what did he do!? I need to check it myself!”
One of the judges rushed to the cultivation device, checked the settings, and let out an incredulous laugh.
“Ha... Hahaha...!! Insane...!!”
“...What?”
“What is it?”
The judge cursed, slapped his forehead, and pointed at the cultivation device.
“...Does this make any sense? Everyone, check the multiplier.”
“...No way.”
“Holy...”
The multiplier set on the cultivation device was eleven times.
It was the maximum multiplier possible with the special cultivation devices installed here.
A multiplier that would practically never be used.
Everyone in the venue looked at Yoo Hyun as though demanding an explanation.
“To put it simply, I surrounded the essence array with two and three layers to protect the inner arrays from powerful mana interference.”
“N-No... That’s easy to say...”
“He’s saying something so absurd so casually...”
In other words, he had layered essence arrays several times from the beginning so they could act as mana buffers.
That was impossible.
The layered essence arrays should have affected the Seed and caused errors.
But... right before their eyes stood a normally grown wyvern.
“Ha, you didn’t secretly put an adult specimen into the cultivation device overnight, did you?”
Yoo Hyun snickered.
“Of course not.”
Then that man had created the Seed after predicting which arrays would naturally tear away under the mana flow.
And he had done it without causing interference between the arrays stacked twofold and threefold.
As the judges began to understand that, goosebumps rose on their skin.
“I-Insane... This is beyond the realm of humanity...!!!”
“Did he perform supercomputer-level calculations in an instant, right there on the spot...? Ha! I can’t believe it even as I see it...!!”
“Is he truly a genius even when it comes to cultivation techniques...!!”
Yet among the judges, only Victor Kreutz... no, Luise von Berg, recalled the array of the Seed Yoo Hyun had created that day and calmly spoke.
“This Buffering Array wasn’t tailored exclusively to wyverns, was it? It seems somewhat versatile. Hmm?”
Luise noticed Yoo Hyun’s intention and grinned. Yoo Hyun smiled back at her.
“That’s right. With a few adjustments, the Buffering Array can be used for other Seeds as well.”
“What...!”
“G-Gasp!! Then that means...!!!”
Yoo Hyun looked over the judges and spoke.
“The phenomenon of essence arrays warping due to violent mana flow has been a persistent problem in producing high-rank magical beasts. But this Buffering Array should resolve a significant part of that issue.”
“...!!”
At his words, not only the judges but also the other alchemist contestants froze.
Then, one by one, they came to their senses and began asking Yoo Hyun questions.
“Yoo Hyun!! Does that mean the Buffering Array can be used regardless of rank!?”
“Answer my question too!!!”
In the end, another academic conference broke out in the middle of the competition.
At the familiar sight, the host cried out in despair.
[ Please... Please let us proceed with the competition...!! Whatever you want to do, shouldn’t you at least finish the competition first?! ]
“Hey! That nonsense isn’t important right now! Be quiet!”
“Tsk, tsk... You need to know when to speak up. Don’t you understand how great this invention is?”
“Yoo Hyun! You said perfect application to S-rank was difficult, so what do you think about increasing the thickness of the array?!”
[ Aaargh!! This is not a new technology presentation!!!! ]
“What are you all doing?! Remove that uncouth person immediately!!!”
[Breaking News] A “Double Crown” that will go down in magical beast creation history... Korean alchemist sweeps the [Design and Cultivation] divisions at Germany’s Messe Expo!
[Feature] “He dominated both theory and practice”... The first-ever “magical beast alchemy double champion” in Magic Engineering Expo history
[Issue] “They suppressed a talent like this with domestic regulations?” Kim Cheongsik’s office at risk of being blown up immediately after the double victory!
[Exclusive] Yoo Hyun does it again! Could the “Buffering Array” open the way to high-rank magical beast production?
[World] “He said the right thing and got kicked out”... Magic Engineering Expo Magical Beast Creation Competition host vents frustration
Footnotes:
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