This Spiritual Energy is Lethal!

Chapter 37: Chapter 037 Drainage

(The book has been renamed: “This Spiritual Energy is Deadly.” Fellow readers, remember the old cover and don’t delete it from your favorites! The cover will not change for the time being.) @@novelbin@@

In Raffi Road District of Opportunity City, the noon sun swept away the morning’s gloom, starkly contrasting with the desolation of Gun Tie District. Raffi Road District, the liveliest area in Opportunity City, is also home to the core business district.

Here, skyscrapers abound, and large department stores and entertainment venues crowd the streets. Not only does it host the busiest Universal Square in the city, but also Walt Avenue, named after the movie giant Walt Brothers.

When Walt Brothers release their latest film, the cinemas hosting the premieres invite the cast to watch, and after the movie ends, the entrance of the theaters is swarmed with reporters and fans.

There is also a financial street in the entire Raffi Road District, a paradise for financial industry professionals. Extending across from Financial Street, the remainder is filled with skyscrapers owned by Spiritual Enterprises.

These buildings are undoubtedly the scenic marvels of Opportunity City, as if competing in a contest of sorts. Tycoons of the Spiritual Enterprises Consortium spare no expense to customize their skyscrapers, clustering buildings from 300 to 400 meters high on the most expensive and bustling plots of land on Raffi Road.

...

At this moment, it was just past 12:02 PM.

At a roadside restaurant, Diana Prince was enjoying her lunch: two medium-rare steaks, a large glass of milk, a small bowl of spore kale, and two fried eggs.

After separating from Bader, she had sequentially visited the Spiritual Power Gun Management Department and colleagues from the autopsy department. She confirmed that the firearm model used by the deceased investigator Parker was an M1911A1.

Within the Administration Bureau, this gun model is designated as PA-1. It is the most basic issued firearm for class D members, capable of firing two types and three kinds of Spiritual Bullets: the discipline attribute Punishment and Justice bullets, and the element attribute Lightning bullets.

These three types of bullets could handle most monsters in the Spirit Explosion Space. As long as one did not enter the Great Void, there were few cases of conflicting attributes. Additionally, the PA-1 was retrofitted from the classic old gun, the M1911A1, firing .45 ACP bullets, guaranteeing power and highly suitable for newcomers.

This gun was also specifically equipped with a reader that could detect the presence of nearby monsters. Its principle involved using an internal detector to sense various spiritual energy fluctuations within a 50-meter range of the gun wielder, to judge the presence of living creatures and use a ratio of 1:10 to display values, giving the wielder a rough idea of dangerous distances.

This gun had no issues; it was manufactured in 2002 and was directly modified into a Spiritual Gun before leaving the factory, and in those over six years, it had been issued to at least ten investigators. The firing report showed that this gun had fired over 1300 rounds without a single problem.

However, its last issue date incredibly occurred in the future, half a year later; hence, she specifically sought colleagues from the Spiritual Power Gun Management Department to explore the reason, and they believed it was a case of manually erroneous input and temporarily corrected the data.

If there could be a manual error in the firearm registration date, the autopsy department’s report appeared even more bizarre. His body was changing at a normal rate on the exterior, but when various experimental devices were used for reading samples, the data was all normal…

“Are you saying that we see his body slowly withering, but under instrument monitoring, the values are like those of a normal person?”

Diana had asked this, and the forensic pathologist awkwardly nodded.

This situation was no longer explainable by simple medical terms; following the error in readings concerning Parker’s body, it had been urgently transported to the United Federation Spiritual Ability Research Institute that same evening, elevating from an “autopsy” to “spiritual research.”

Diana, not versed in medicine, found this situation hard to clearly explain even for top medical professors, but in Diana’s straightforward logic, it could be simply summarized as “like someone who shouldn’t have died at this time, but did.”

The condolence work for the family had already been handled by someone dispatched from the Administration Bureau, after all, Weber Spirit Production repeatedly stressed that Parker could not possibly be their investigator.

She wiped her mouth with a napkin, secured the tip under the dish.

Diana drove towards the Opportunity City branch of the Spiritual Ability Administration. She could feel faint prickling in her spine, a phenomenon of the liquefied spiritual energy undergoing rejection.

Injecting spiritual liquid to gain power also came with a price. It’s not something inherent to humans and cannot be forcefully possessed.

Every Spiritual Ability User had to overcome numerous tests to qualify for the injection, and these tests were not designed to reduce their numbers but purely to save their lives.

Not everyone could become a Spiritual Ability User. The moment the liquefied spiritual energy was injected into the spine, the process of rejection and accommodation began. After the Spiritual Ability Research Institute first discovered and mastered the technology of liquefaction extraction and injection, a series of experiments were conducted. Ultimately, it was proven that every species’ tolerance was limited, and there were significant differences between individuals of the same species.

Forced injection could kill a person. The dosage had to be increased bit by bit to determine the individual’s maximum capacity for spiritual energy.

Even at this stage, when someone successfully received the spiritual energy injection and became an investigator or Spiritual Ability User, it didn’t mean they could keep this power forever.

Depending on their physical condition, every one or two months, investigators and Spiritual Ability Users needed to go to the Administration Bureau’s Spiritual Power Hospital for “drainage.”

Successful injection of spiritual energy did not mean that rejection phenomena were nonexistent; instead, it meant that the body’s rejection cycle and reactions were not intense. How long it would take for rejection symptoms to appear depended on physical health.

If “drainage” was not performed for a long time, the liquefied spiritual energy could revert to a gaseous state within the spinal cord. The consequences of this could range from complications in the nervous system to permanent disability.

Based on the amount of injection, the Administration Bureau categorized Spiritual Ability Users into levels 1-5, with “Transcendent” being the fifth level. Most operatives of the CPA and FPI were around level 2.

Each level represented a quantum leap in capacity enhancement. The difference between levels 1 and 2 wasn’t just as significant as heaven and earth, but certainly comparable to that between plastic and steel.

The higher the level, the greater the content of spiritual energy in the body, and the more powerful the Holy Relics and Transcendent skills they could use. Spiritual Ability Users of lower levels might not have enough spiritual energy to meet the minimum consumption requirements of many Transcendent skills.

Diana was a level 2 Spiritual Ability User; she had to undergo “drainage” every one and a half months and then receive a re-injection after half a month’s recuperation. Although it didn’t take long, it was quite bothersome.

Was there anyone who didn’t find this process bothersome?

Entering the Spiritual Power Hospital for identity verification, there were quite a few colleagues who had come for drainage today.

“Miss Prince, hello,” a Caucasian who had just come out of the extraction room greeted Diana.

“Hey, Peter… Are you done? Why do you look a bit pale?” Diana smiled awkwardly.

“Today they changed to a female doctor. It feels like my body is being hollowed out… Good luck to you,” Peter shook his hand and passed by Diana.

The waiting process wasn’t long; Diana walked into the extraction room and saw a familiar figure. A woman with black short hair, dressed in a white coat, was looking at the readings by the extraction needle monitor.

It was Wang Ailin, Diana’s college roommate. They had lived together in a dormitory, and unlike Diana’s rough exterior, Wang Ailin had exhibited intelligence far beyond her peers during college.

Wang Ailin had achieved remarkable results in the field of spiritual energy research and was personally taken away by the dean of the Spiritual Ability Research Institute after only two years of college.

“Ailin? What brings you here? I never thought you would…” Diana said incredulously, but before she could finish her sentence, Wang Ailin pushed her onto a seat.

“Of course, it’s because of you. Why else would I run out of the research institute?” Wang Ailin said with a slight smile, skillfully changing the injection probe.

It was a special kind of long, thin, soft needle head that was inserted from the back of the neck and controlled externally by a machine to extract and inject the liquefied spiritual energy.

“Me?” Diana said, surprised.