by <unknown>
Chapter 600: The Harvest and Psionicist Level |
It was only after Olof departed the village when his dark expression faded away, replaced by a look of mockery.
"Boss."
Olof's subordinate who was driving suddenly looked into Olof's eyes through the rearview mirror and enquired, "Are we just letting them off the hook like this? They walked away scot-free with a vial of L compound, there must be consequences..."
"What's the harm?"
Olof leaned into the faux leather seat they installed into the truck and produced a cigar from his front pocket. Another subordinate seated next to him diligently produced a lighter and lit the cigar for him.
Olof took a heavy drag and spat clouds of heavy smoke then remarked with a brisk smile, "The company is setting the board for something big. As long as we do as we're told and sell the L compound, there's nothing for us to worry about."
"I wonder what the company is planning with this."
The driver expressed with vexation, "Why would they want us to funnel thousands of L compounds like this to these specific parties? This is tens of billions of dollars we're talking about… Are they sure about this?"
"It's not for you or me to speculate."
Olof said dryly, "We're just the peons in the grand scheme of things so don't ask unnecessary questions. The only thing you and I should focus on is that the L compound gets delivered into the hands of the parties on this list without the Earth Federation finding out about it."
"Boss, think about this. What if we take out a few for ourselves, then..."
The driver suddenly lowered his voice to a whisper, "There are so many L compounds anyway, nobody will find out if one or two goes..."
"Shut up!"
Before he could finish his sentence, Olof glowed with anger and shot up from his seat with a piercing glare in his eyes. "Don't you dare say something like this ever again. You know how the company operates. Even God cannot save you if you do something stupid like that!"
"Boss..."
The driver opened his mouth and seemed to have something more to say.
"Shut up, that's enough!"
Olof turned dark. "Mark my words, don't you ever dare conjure ideas like this ever again. I don't care what the others are up to, but we'll stay in line with whatever the company orders of us, understood?"
"Yes..."
The driver wiped away the look of greed in his eyes and did not dare continue his foul suggestions any longer.
Olof breathed a sigh of relief and stealthily unlatched the gun strapped to his holster. These rookie subordinates of his had only recently joined the company and were oblivious of the terror of Blackwatch.
To be exact, a whole ninety-nine percent of the population only considered Blackwatch as an exaggerated mega-corporation.
It was only members of the inner circle that fully comprehended how terrifying the company could be when it needed to be. It was an entity on a completely separate level, even surpassing the Earth Federation...
Never had there been such a company with a grand monopoly on global resources in the entire known history of mankind. Nobody could say for sure just what the full extent of the company's power was...
...
"Sir Godfather, I've received word from the L compound department that all the L compound vials have been delivered."
When Chen Chen stepped out of the Field training ground. He was immediately notified of this by Little X through the earpiece. "Of the one thousand L compounds we've dispatched, eight hundred and thirty-five of them have been delivered to the designated recipients. Thirty-six dealers have accomplished their task while thirteen dealers have taken an average of ten to thirty L compound vials for themselves.
"These L compound vials have made their way into the black market and have since gone to some problematic individuals... Humans are truly inherently greedy animals and despite us constantly advising against it, there are still many dealers who try to take advantage of us.
"I suppose it's true when they say that money makes the world go round."
Chen Chen reached for a towel to wipe off the blood from his nose and stated candidly, "Since they broke the rules, I'm sure they are ready to face the consequences. Go ahead and dispatch our B.S.S. troops to reclaim our company's property and crush all these dissidents. Make an example out of them so that in the future, the others know better than to incur our wrath and steal from us."
"Understood."
Little X answered promptly.
Just like that, the fate of dozens of dealers was decided in the span of a few minutes.
Little X moved on to the next thing to report. "We've received news from the Earth Federation as well and they traced the whereabouts of the L compound injected into the black market. They do suspect that it was us who released these vials of L compound but they don't have concrete evidence. Besides, they won't be able to figure out why we would do something seemingly so self-sabotaging like this."
Little X was right. From Earth Federation's perspective, it would not make any sense for Chen Chen to release batches of L compounds to external parties. After all, Blacklight Biotechnology had no political ambitions. There was no way the corporation could benefit from such an action and on the contrary. It would only further aggravate social unrest.
Not only will such a puzzling move cause problems in the Earth Federation, but it would also directly disrupt Blacklight Biotechnology's revenue stream.
A plausible explanation would be that injecting L compounds into the black market could inflate its price greatly, but everyone knew that Blacklight Biotechnology was not concerned with monetary benefits at this point.
Blacklight Biotechnology had accumulated enough wealth to rival several nations and had multitudes of resources to acquire funds. They would not resort to such criminal and inefficient methods to further mount their profits.
That was the one thing they hit the mark on, that Chen Chen would not do this for any monetary gains. What they did not know was that he was doing this as a means to further develop his psionic growth...
The truth was that Chen Chen was not going to stop anyone who got their hands on these L compounds from obtaining psionic powers anyway. There were only a few ways things could go for these people.
The first possibility was that they were going to be recruited into the psionicist army formed by the four major continents.
The second option was to join the Blacklight Foundation and become one of the elite forces watching over the wellbeing of mankind.
The third and final option was to become a psionicist not bound to any forces. It was certainly possible to lead an ordinary life if they maintained a low profile and kept their powers undercover. However, the slightest slip up would result in them getting hunted down by the Earth Federation.
If the individual who obtained psionicist powers exploited it for crime, they just might draw the attention of the elite forces of the Blacklight Foundation and get assassinated!
At the end of the day, Chen Chen's best winning move was not to make one. His goal was to let these people do as they would and take their time to harness their psionic powers and get stronger until they died of natural causes and became ripe for Chen Chen to harvest.
The only problem now was logistic concerns, considering there was a limit to how much L-compound could be produced and sold to the four major continents. There was a similar limit to how many psionicist Chen Chen could secretly create. At first, he produced as many as thirty-thousand vials of L compound annually at the price of a hundred milliliters of his blood drawn every day. In time, he discovered that an extended period of drawing his blood resulted in a weakened psionic capacity that was not completely negligible. Therefore, he had to slow down his pace and only drew blood once every other day.
This essentially meant that the annual L compound output was halved to only fifteen thousand vials.
To prevent riling any unwanted speculation from the Earth Federation, it was vita
l that Chen Chen continue supplying ten thousand L compounds vials to the Earth Federation market every year. This was the perfect amount to supply to the four major continents. A higher output might decrease the value of the L compound since the scarcity of a product directly correlated to its value.
In the beginning, Chen Chen only sold the diluted versions of the L compound. The difference between the diluted version and the non-diluted version of the L compound was marked by a stark difference in success rate. The diluted version of the product yielded only a success rate of ten percent, accompanied by a mortality rate as high as thirty percent. Meanwhile, the concentrated version of the product sported a fifty percent success rate and only ten percent mortality rate.
It became quickly evident that Chen Chen was too fixated on stretching the supply and demand chain. In time, the continents were no longer willing to shell out money for this product due to the poor success rate of the product. Chen Chen had to compromise and start selling the original, concentrated version by claiming that Blacklight Biotechnology had achieved a recent technological breakthrough. With that, the market for the L compound was revived.
Then another problem arose, being that annual output of ten thousand L compound vials would only produce roughly five thousand new psionicists. Another factor considered was that a large majority of these psionicists would be inducted into governmental factions. This meant that there were hardly any deaths occurring at all due to the organized structure of governmental factions.
To simulate the growth of psionicist and raise what could be referred to as psionic turnover, Chen Chen used the surplus thousand L compound vials on warring factions. He figured that the constant wars waged between warlords had a likelier chance of killing psionicist, which in turn would allow him to absorb their powers and become stronger.
This was the reason that Chen Chen had injected the L compound vials into mercenaries and miscellaneous underground dealers.
On the same night, in the town of Kut.
It was during the height of midnight. Apart from some guards assigned to the midnight patrol shift, most of the camp was fast asleep. Suddenly, a burst of bellowing laughter ruptured from the third floor of a church located in the center of the city.
The laughter grew louder until it alerted some of the scouts. They dashed into the open field with their weapons in tow and saw a giant with his body engulfed in flames floating in the air!
"Hahaha..."
The only thing filling the night sky was the haunting, mad laughter of the giant. The brilliant flames crawling across the giant's body turned nighttime into daylight. The giant roared maddeningly, "It... It was a success!"
The vice general emerged from his tent and froze with awe when he saw the burning giant in the sky above as he exclaimed with ecstasy, "Congratulations, general! You became a full-fledged psionicist!"
"Hahaha! Injecting three L compound vials was well worth it. It d*mn near killed me but alas, I obtained two superpowers!"
The burning giant took a giant stride toward the vice general and quickly shrunk his body to regular human size. The radiant flames across his body slowly faded out as well. It was General Rocky!
"They say that consecutive injections of compound L raise the mortality rate exponentially. The first injection has a ten percent mortality rate which creeps up to thirty percent by the second injection, and up to a whopping fifty percent by the third! It's simply too risky to inject three L compound vials in one go."
The vice general was overcome with emotions. "But it seems that you've unlocked gigantification and the power to summon flames. It's clear that God is favoring you and our army!"
Another officer was just as emotional as he approached the general and declared, "Now that you've gained such tremendous powers, that b*stard Muhammad will have to surrender to you. His territory is yours now!"
"Haha, I've had enough of that old, senile fool."
General Rocky bared a wolf-like smile. "Heed my orders, we'll prepare our troops over the next three days, and on the fourth day, I'll lead the army myself and we'll crush Muhammad's army until there's nothing left of it!"
"Yes, Sir!"
The troop's spirits reached an all-time high. They were ready for the battle to come.
...
Similar events occurred all across the Middle East Continent. In the short span of a month, many factions became populated with psionicists. The battle hunger in the continent had grown more fervent than ever due to this increased firepower on all sides.
However, there was not much battle between the factions. Upon word of this news, the Earth Federation promptly dispatched its forces and marched into the continent to suppress these local factions. With the four major continents leading the charge, joint alliances were formed to curb the unrest in the continent.
Battles between powerful psionicists inevitably broke out in this duration. By the end of it, even the Earth Federation's combined alliance of the four major continents had suffered significant losses. Most of the rookie psionicists could not hold their own against the high-tech weapons supplied to the Middle East local factions. The majority of psionicists were instantly wiped out by these powerful pulse rifles as soon as the battle broke out. Only a tiny portion of rookie psionicists managed to scrape by.
The war in the continent lasted close to three months and by the end of it, the Earth Federation gained a new perspective on this emerging race of psionicists. Although the psionicists in the region were not superbly powerful, the vast array of outlandish powers they displayed proved to be extremely troublesome during the war.
Psionicists were a new breed of evolved sub-human beings. To curb the influence of psionicists on the general population, the Earth Federation began enacting new sets of laws and regulations specifically targeted at psionicists.
In the midst of this regulatory process, the Earth Federation also introduced a structured system concerning psionicists. Psionicists were now divided into three psionicist classes with four categorized levels based on an individual's psionic manifestation and potency.
The established psionicist classes were the physical psionicist, the elemental psionicist, and the spiritual psionicist.
Physical psionicists were classified as psionicist with the ability to alter their bodies. This included steel body fortification, fire engulfment, spirit form, gigantification, and such. This class of psionicists was largely known for possessing superhuman bodies that could withstand the blows of most modern weapons.
The elemental class was self-explanatory and referred to the ability to manipulate natural elements. This could also come in forms such as telekinesis. A popular example of such a psionic class was the ability to manipulate metallic elements in the surrounding, just like the character Magneto in X-men.
The final class, spiritual psionicist, was the most feared of the three established classes. This was the most unpredictable class that manifested in many different forms. Some were able to control human minds and some could detonate a target's brain from a great distance. Although this class of psionicist was not known for having flashy manifestations, their threat level was the highest precisely because of the concealed nature of their psionic manifestation. This was the psionic class that the Earth Federation feared most.
Meanwhile, the psionicists power level was graded into four separate levels.
The weakest among them was the Delta level psionicists. Most of whom had just awakened their psionic potential would belong to this level. Over time, they should develop their psionic potential and advance to the next level.
The level succeeding Delta level was the Gamma level. Psonicists of this level had indubitably cemented themselves as beings surpassing common humans. They were the outliers of society and could effortlessly reap the lives of common men around them.
Further up the power ladder would be the Beta level psionicists. Only roughly ten percent of psionicist could ever ascend to this level. By this point, even a regular-sized army could not
handle them. Only an established army with qualified psionicists could handle these psionicists.
The most powerful of them all was the Alpha level. So far, there were only three people in Earth Federation's record that had reached this level. One of them was the leader of New York's Superpower Combative Police Force, John the Guardian while the other two were shrouded under the covers of the Blacklight Foundation. Their existence was a complete secret to the public.
Chapter 601: Spaceport |
Due to the existence of Blacklight Biotechnology, the world was changing with each passing day.
Some experts had shown that the growth rate of human lifespan in the past 20 years was over a hundred times higher than it was after the industrial revolution. However, just today, the official website of the Earth Federation suddenly announced shocking news —
As of 9:31 a.m. on 23 July 2040, the global population officially exceeded 10 billion, a full decade earlier than the predicted rate thirty years ago.
Thirty years ago, before the great company Blacklight Biotechnology was born, the Earth Federation had used population growth data to roughly come up with a population growth table.
Back in 1830, after the industrial revolution, the world's productivity increased dramatically, and the world's population reached 1 billion for the first time.
Then, the progress of humankind began to skyrocket. Only a century later, in 1930, the world's population officially exceeded the 2 billion mark.
After that, the population growth continued to rise. The population was 3 billion in 1960, 4 billion in 1975, 5 billion in 1987, and 6 billion in 1999!
During the time of the statistics in this table, which was in 2011, the population had reached an astonishing 7 billion.
While this table indicated the rapid population growth, it also warned of future population explosions and resource constraints. It was estimated that the world's population would increase by more than 1 billion in the next 15 years and would reach 8 billion by 2026.
