Challenge accepted!

"At least we tried…" Noah considerately patted Levi on the shoulder, "How about I come over to soothe you before bed tonight?" Seeing the hopeful gleam in the other's eyes, Noah proudly added, "That's right! My soothing is back to 100%! I am as good as new!"

Levi's tightly pressed lips relaxed into a smile, sweeping away the grumpiness in favor of blissful expectation. 'See that? Baby sending himself to my door! Hmph! I'm dying to see how you'll prevent your son from sleeping in my bed tonight, father-in-law!'

Cordia daddy, '…Challenge accepted!' (≖_≖)

And thus, the two soon-to-be-newlyweds had their breakfast in a merry mood and then, together with their bodyguard entourage, made their way to the peacekeeper station.

***

Fynn had dark circles comparable to a panda, a clear testament to how little sleep he had gotten last night. However, unlike most sleep-deprived people, he was in an excellent mood. They had picked up Druxa's S-ranked Fluxer for questioning last night, and the man was, as one would expect, very flexible. When faced with potential charges of terrorism, he was very cooperative and told them everything he knew.

Druxa, as most pharmaceutical companies, had always been interested in the creation of a drug that could be used to restore consumed mental power – a so-called "mana potion". And sometime last year, they came up with a new idea worth exploring. The idea was to see whether Fluxers, which had the ability to change the state of matter from vapor to liquid to solid and vice versa, could do the same with mental power.

After numerous trials and errors, they did manage to come up with some results. Firstly, they found out that Fluxers could indeed solidify their own mental power, but only S-ranked Fluxers could do it. Secondly, the solidified power could successfully be reabsorbed back by its owner as long as it came into direct contact with its owner. In other words, they had indeed succeeded in producing a substance that could restore mental power!

So, then… if they had succeeded in producing a "mana potion", how come Druxa wasn't world-famous by now and rolling in mountains of cash?

It was because they ran into two serious issues.

The first issue was that no matter how the S-ranked Fluxer of Druxa tried, he could not condense the mental power of others. Mental power originated from its owner and only recognized the will of its owner. Thus, even if its owner was willing, it instinctively resisted any attempts of influencing it via external means.

This proved to be a significant roadblock to commercializing their mana potion. Only S-ranked Fluxers could produce it with great difficulty, and yet instead of using all of their mental power to condense mana potions, they needed to reserve the majority of it to BE the mana potion.

Instead of producing dozens of vials, they could only make a single vial of potion each day!

However, one mana potion per day was still better than none. As long as they could hire more S-ranked Fluxers they could naturally produce more, and due to its limited availability, they could sell it for exorbitant prices.

However, the second issue that they ran into, threw that plan into chaos.

In the very first drug trial, what they thought to be a wonderous mana potion proved to actually be a vicious poison.

The Fluxer could safely reabsorb his own condensed mental power. But the same did not apply to other people.

As it turned out, when two different mental powers come into direct contact, a violent rejection is evoked. If someone other than the original owner of the mental power was injected with it, the milder effects caused include the person's power going out of control and them suffering mental damage leading to coma, while the heavier effects were a straight-out mental collapse leading to immediate death.

Alright, lesson learned! 👍 Do not inject foreign mental power into others, right? (☞ﾟ∀ﾟ)☞

Right! As if!! How would they stop this promising project just like that after a single hurdle?!

No, no, no! Their dreams of a mana potion might not come to fruition, but this catastrop–no, very informative – drug trial actually opened up two new possibilities!

First – if using this as a mana potion wasn't viable, why not explore its potential as a biological weapon? Surely there would be a market for this.

And second – the power rampage caused by the drug trial led them to remember a very special existence in the world of power users – Soothers.

Soothers were the only power users whose power was inherently capable of affecting the mental power of others. And in order to do that, their own mental power had to play nice with others. Due to this property, perhaps the mental power of Soothers wouldn't resist the solidification process?

And indeed. It didn't.

Not only did Druxa succeed in solidifying the mental power of a Soother, but they even found out that this solidified substance could be safely injected into anyone, providing the consumer with soothing effects!

Their initial goal was to produce a mana potion, but instead, they managed to produce soothing that could be sold in vials!

This could change everything, improve the daily lives of so many people! Instead of being forced to hire a severely limited number of Soothers, which could only be at a single place at a time, you could just buy a vial of their soothing for immediate consumption whenever and wherever needed!

Who didn't sometimes have trouble sleeping or concentrating? Who didn't sometimes get overly emotional? Who didn't sometimes have headaches, toothaches, or feel sore? Who never felt dispirited or tired?

This solidified soothing had the potential to be the new aspirin – something everyone needed to have at home, just in case.

So, what research direction should they pursue? On the one side, they had a potion that could turn people berserk, and on the other, they had a potion that could soothe them.

The choice was obvious.

As a result, the second research direction was temporarily put on hold, and instead, they concentrated on exploring the drug's potential usage as a bio-weapon.

Duh! They had just this one S-ranked Fluxer; how many "calming potions" could they produce? And who would buy them at such exorbitant prices when just hiring a Soother was much cheaper?!

No, the bio-weapon line of research had much more money-making potential!

Thus, Druxa's S-ranked Fluxer was ordered to produce more of those black bullets of despair, and that's what he did – made them and knew not to ask any questions about where they were going.

When asked about the two communicators with unknown numbers that had access to that lab, the Fluxer wasn't of much help either. He could only tell them the names of all the people he knew that had anything to do with the project, which included various Druxa personnel, from other researchers to his direct superior, which happened to be the next in line heir of Druxa, the CEO's son Asan.

Fynn didn't get any terrorist-related info from the man, but he did bite into the topic of those drug trials. Not only did he manage to extract incriminating information about hushed-up illegal drug trials and their unpleasant consequences, but he also managed to use the Fluxer's credentials to access the encrypted data on the computers they had managed to confiscate from the lab, securing enough evidence for a proper trial. Everyone involved would be held accountable, and Druxa would be paying heavy penalties.

There were a lot of records on those computers, and Fynn's people were still going through them. There was nothing terrorist-related yet, but they did manage to find records of the bullets that were made. Counting the mental power bullets used in the terrorist attacks and the bullets found in the small freezer that they had confiscated, there were three bullets unaccounted for.