Chapter 338 - 332: The Lord’s Ledger

Chapter 338: Chapter 332: The Lord’s Ledger

This was the biological laboratory.

Thick granite walls isolated all sound.

Rows of glass jars lined the shelves, steeping tissue samples from various organisms. Some specimens were so unsettling they even made the worldly Tristan uncomfortable.

Velin deftly navigated the rows of shelves, stopping before a bookshelf in the corner.

His research logs were stacked there neatly, organized by date and project.

He took down a notebook with "Project Codename: Disaster Star" on its cover, then retrieved a clay jar sealed with a thick layer of beeswax from a sealed cabinet nearby.

"This is..." Tristan looked at the clay jar, a sense of foreboding rising in his heart.

"A sample I collected last year in Tarry Port, from a shipwreck of the Golden Sail Commerce Association." Velin placed the clay jar on the lab bench. "Larvae of the ’Disaster Star’ shipworm." 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

Tristan’s pupils contracted slightly.

As Velin’s most trusted advisor, he was well aware of how terrifying these creatures were—in just a few short days, they had completely destroyed the Third Fleet, the pride of the Golden Sail Commerce Association.

"You intend to..."

"Use them to solve our feed problem." Velin’s tone was calm, as if discussing the weather. "Efficient biomass conversion. That’s the answer."

"But, my lord," Tristan hesitated, a rare occurrence for him. "These creatures... the danger..."

"That’s why we need to experiment," Velin interrupted him. "Tristan, prepare ten large glass tanks. Fill them with seawater."

"How large do they need to be?"

"The bigger, the better. The experiment needs strict control groups. Also, bring all the scrap wood from the warehouse, all kinds of materials—pine, oak, birch, fir, whatever you can find."

Tristan looked at Velin’s focused eyes and finally nodded.

He knew that when his lord entered this state, nothing could stop him.

’And... if this crazy idea actually worked...’

Half a day later, ten huge glass tanks had been added to the laboratory.

Each tank was two meters square and filled to the brim with seawater.

Following Tristan’s instructions, workers tossed bundles of wood of various types into the tanks—ordinary pine, hard oak, and even some scrap wood that had already begun to decay.

Velin put on a pair of gloves and carefully opened the beeswax-sealed clay jar.

Inside were some white particles that looked like fine sand, almost invisible in the candlelight.

These were the larvae of those terrifying creatures.

Using a special small spoon, Velin sprinkled the larvae evenly into each tank.

"That’s it?" Tristan watched the tiny particles rapidly dissolve in the water. "Will they..."

"We wait," Velin said, removing his gloves. "Patience is the most crucial part of a biological experiment. We’ll come back tomorrow to see the results."

「Early the next morning.」

When Velin and Tristan walked into the laboratory again, the water in all ten tanks had become incredibly murky. A layer of white, cotton-like material floated on the surface.

The wood lay intact at the bottom of the tanks, showing no signs of being eaten.

"They’re all dead," Tristan stated the obvious.

Velin said nothing. He picked up a long-stemmed pipette, drew a liquid sample from one of the tanks, and placed it under the microscope for observation.

The corpses of the larvae were clearly visible under the lens—their bodies were shriveled, their tissue structures had disintegrated. They had clearly died of malnutrition.

"Not enough energy density," Velin said, stepping away from the microscope and turning toward another lab bench. "The ships they devoured back then were all made from high-grade timber. It seems ordinary wood has too little energy to support their first growth-molt. They need a higher concentration of nutrients."

He picked up his notebook, quickly leafing through his old research records.

"In Tarry Port, they fed on enchanted Dragonbone Wood—a high-grade ship-building material imbued with Magic, containing trace amounts of Magic Power." Velin’s finger slid across the page. "That’s the key. It’s not the wood itself, but the concentration of energy within it."

He looked up at Tristan.

"I need to reformulate the nutrient solution. To simulate the energetic environment of the enchanted wood."

Velin spent the entire next day holed up in the laboratory.

He placed the shipworm cadaver samples into a distillation flask, carefully heating, separating, and purifying them. Over and over, he measured and calculated, filling sheets of parchment with all sorts of chemical symbols and numbers.

Tristan stood to one side, silently handing over the required equipment and recording each data point.

As evening fell, Velin finally stopped his work.

His eyes were bloodshot, but his expression was one of extreme excitement.

"Found it."

He pointed to a formula on the parchment.

"They need high concentrations of phosphorus, potassium, trace amounts of iron and copper, and most importantly—Ether Energy. Not much, just a tiny bit is enough to kick-start their metabolism."

Velin turned and began working at the lab bench.

He ground a fluorescent fungus collected from the swamp into a fine powder—a type of fungus that glowed in the dark and contained trace amounts of Magic Power.

Then, he added bone powder from a Sea Beast—a byproduct from when they had processed food for the Leviathan.

Finally, he took out a small bottle of faintly glowing powder from the cabinet—Original Blood Crystal powder, five Golden Suns a gram.

Velin mixed these ingredients in the correct proportions, added a special solvent, then continuously stirred, heated, and cooled the mixture...

An hour later, a viscous, dark-green liquid appeared in the beaker.