Chapter 254 Emeralds of the Jade Gallery
As the most mysterious area of Runore, the Emerald Gallery is located north of the college area. Its range covers the entire Emerald Mountains. It is named because its main body is a huge, magnificent and endless gallery built along the mountain ridge.
As one of the landmark buildings of Runnore, there are all kinds of rumors about the Emerald Gallery. For example, the Emerald Gallery contains all the books that have ever existed in the history of the country; another example is that the name "gallery" is just a cover, and it is actually an evil research base that brings together all kinds of taboo research; another example is that the gallery is a signal center for communicating with aliens, and most of the research content of the institute is alien technology...
Because no one could personally go to the bookstore to verify the truth of these rumors, some of the rumors became more and more outrageous during the repeated spread, from nine true and one false to nine false and one true, and finally to hysteria with ten false and none true. The public gradually sank into the information that could not distinguish true from false, adhering to the spirit of "if it is not debunked, it is true" to entertain themselves to death, creating more rumors that should not stand up to scrutiny. And these rumors eventually turned into layers of cloaks unique to the Jade Bookstore, making it more mysterious in the eyes of the public.
The mysterious Emerald Book Gallery opened its doors to a special guest today at an unknown time.
For the people who work and live here, the real Emerald Book Gallery is actually not as mysterious as the rumors outside. It is the database of the Magic Kingdom Research Institute and a memorial hall that gathers the wisdom of countless predecessors. It is very important and sacred, but "important" and "sacred" have never described this building, but the knowledge it carries and the people gathered here.
Because of this, although ordinary people or magical girls may never have the opportunity to enter here in their lifetime, in fact, looking at the entire magical kingdom, the Emerald Book Gallery is not a closed institution. There are always guests here, even many guests, because the institute will invite all accomplished researchers to come here, and learning and knowledge are never excluded here.
In addition to the researchers, there are also many karuta magical girls who come to the institute to seek cooperation, powerful magical girls from the five major academies, and even royal nobles... These guests, no matter how powerful they are in the country, are not considered "special" to the institute.
The reason why the guests who came today made people conclude that they were "special" was very simple.
The chief of the research institute, who had been stuck in the laboratory for a month, and who even made people suspect that he had died suddenly in there, came out of the laboratory.
Those who could know the Chief's movements were the core members of the institute. For these people, what kind of dignitaries and what kind of scenes had the visiting guests not seen? But even if we go back a few decades or a hundred years, I'm afraid we can't find a few times when the Chief showed up in person.
What made people even more panic and uneasy was that their chief, Ms. Emerald, showed up in the library early this morning for the first time ever. She didn't come to conscript men to cooperate with her experiments, nor did she hug a pillow and find a place to sleep. Instead, she dressed properly in clothes suitable for going out, combed her hair, and even put on some makeup!
This made the researchers who witnessed this scene and who were well aware of how many legal red lines their chief had crossed over the years for the convenience of research even more panicked: Has the truth finally been revealed, and the royal court has sent people to investigate?
Out of simple thinking of seeking profit and avoiding harm, the frightened researchers began to make indirect inquiries about the emerald, trying to get some information out of it, but all came to nothing.
They tried to go to the entrance to see the true face of the guest, but they were disappointed because the visitor had been personally led by the library manager and entered the library through the special reception passage.
The researchers were anxious, the administrator in charge of the reception remained silent, and the core members of the institute were all worried because of the abnormal behavior of their chief. So, what was Emerald doing at this time?
"I stepped on your shadow, you are dead." Emerald squatted on the ground and pointed at Delphinium's shadow.
"What nonsense are you talking about?" Delphinium said expressionlessly.
"Shadow game, shadow game."
Emerald stood up and patted the hem of her coat. "A duel often begins only when eyes meet. You are not vigilant enough, young man."
"When did I agree to play games with you?" Delphinium felt confused.
"Isn't it? But you look so nervous that it's like you want to duel with me."
Emerald spread her hands: "In that case, I will duel with you for one round. Now I win and you lose. The game is over. Can you relax a little?"
"……Feel sorry."
Delphinium was stunned for a moment, then understood and tried to adjust her expression to look more relaxed: "Because I think this meeting is a very serious matter, so I am a little tense."
"It's okay. I think the same as you. It's just that everyone here is our own people, so there's no need to worry too much."
Emerald said this, keeping her hands spread out, and turned around on the spot: "How is it? This should be the first time you meet me in person. Do you feel honored?"
Unlike before when she always appeared as a fairy doll, this time Emerald showed her magical girl appearance in front of Delphinium for the first time.
Although she claims to have lived for many years, Emerald seems to be just a young girl judging by her appearance. She is about half a head taller than Delphinium, with a well-proportioned but thin figure, and fair and smooth skin, showing no signs of aging.
Delphinium had seen the golden-green cat's eye, which was also a gemstone scepter. Compared with the golden-green cat's eye, which was intimidating without even getting angry and looked like a superior, Emerald's temperament was much softer. No matter her light green hair tied into a single braid and draped over her shoulders, or her pair of sleepy grass-green round eyes, neither of them gave people any feeling of dominance.
At this time, she was wearing a blue-white top that looked like a ruyi, but had no sleeves. The loose top was tied up at the waist by a wide belt, and the skirt only reached the middle of the thigh. The inside was divided into two layers, the inner part was golden, and the outer part was dark green. The outer layer of the short skirt was embroidered with cloud patterns with golden silk thread, which looked very elegant. The most impressive thing was that she was wearing it, which looked like a lan skirt at first glance, but it looked like an enlarged jacket on second thought: this jacket was very large and long, with different colored patterns on the dark green background, and the opening was wrapped with white fabric, embroidered with dark blue regular patterns. The first impression of the whole jacket was gorgeous, and Emerald spread her hands at this time, letting the hem of the jacket fall to the position of her calves, looking like a peacock with its tail spread.
A lady who is playful, lazy, and at the same time a bit gorgeous.
This is the first impression that Emerald’s outfit gives people.
Although Delphinium had roughly sensed that Emerald was not a very serious person during their past contacts, but after actually meeting him, she still felt that his real appearance was quite different from the impression in her mind.
"Hehe, before you met me, you must have thought I was the kind of unkempt, always wearing a white coat, and a crazy scientist with a bird's nest on his head, right?"
Delphinium said nothing, so Emerald took the initiative to take over the conversation, and said with a little pride: "I'm sorry, but I am a very conscious beauty. As long as I dress up carefully, I can look like a very standard beauty."
"So if you don't dress up, you're a mad scientist?" Delphinium directly found the loophole in his words.
"Keeping silent when necessary is also a social strategy, young man."
Emerald dropped her eyelids instantly, with an expression that said "I can't do anything to you". "If favorability can be expressed in numerical values, your words just now have caused the Chief's favorability towards you to drop by 5 points."
"That sounds like something a teenager would say these days," Delphinium commented.
"I'm only 17 years old this year, so I love beauty so much." Emerald spread out her coat again, just like a peacock in the breeding season always looking for an opportunity to spread its feathers: "Now if I add a sentence like 'The chief is so beautiful', I can recover the lost favorability."
"What system?" asked Delphinium.
"System? You mean the favorability?" Emerald blinked and said, "It's based on percentage."
"No, it's about age."
"Ah, age..."
Emerald looked like she wanted to say something, but after a brief pause, she smiled quietly, "Yes, you guessed it right. It is indeed a 100-digit system. As a reward for your cleverness, my favorability rating has increased."
It seems that the guess of the hundred-digit system was too low.
Delphinium couldn't help but come to this conclusion.
However, she was not going to expose even this. The questions she asked before were barely within the scope of trash talk. Continuing to inquire whether the "17" age was decimalized would become a provocation, so she ended the topic decisively.
"Thank you for taking the initiative to lighten the atmosphere. I feel much better now. So, what should we do about what we discussed before?"
After taking a deep breath, Delphinium spoke again: "Do you need me to do any preparatory work?"
"You mean healing? Well, in principle, we can do it now."
Emerald said this, and then immediately stretched out two index fingers and made a cross in front of herself: "But you also know that 'in principle' means 'not in practice'."
"Why?"
"Not enough favorability, the permissions are not available for the time being, young man."
Emerald once again imitated a peacock spreading its tail and shook her sleeves: "You need to improve the Chief's favorability to unlock related items. For example, you can compliment my coat right now."
"...Oh, your coat is so nice." Delphinium said expressionlessly.
"So perfunctory... But since you are willing to say something nice about me, I will give you 1 point of favorability." Emerald nodded: "It's not enough, is there anything else you want to say?"
"The hair accessories are beautiful." Delphinium looked a little helpless.
"Well, it's still 1 o'clock." Emerald touched the hairpin on the side of her head complacently.
"Lip balm works great."
"Speaking of my pride, 2 o'clock."
"…The hairstyle is suitable."
"1 o'clock, barely enough."
"How much is left now?" Delphinium couldn't help but ask.
"It's probably still 20 points short." Emerald folded her arms, looking quite pleased: "One hundred points, tell me more."
Delphinium was speechless. After a long while, she sighed and squinted her eyes and said, "The skirt is beautiful."
"One o'clock."
"The lines of the brow bone and nose bridge are very good."
“2 o’clock!”
"Long eyelashes."
"0.5 points."
“Why only 0.5?”
"Because your eyelashes are prettier than mine, compliments like that come across as ironic."
…
The two of them chatted back and forth like they were playing a game of spot the difference, and bargained for a long time, until Delphinium thought it had found all the "good-looking" advantages of Emerald, but it was still 3 points away from the standard deviation set by Emerald.
"Do I have to get the so-called 20 points? I'm already getting tired of this boring little game."
Because she stared at him for too long, Kuei Ching had to close her eyes and said, "Rather, isn't it a bit unreasonable to set such harsh rules for people you're meeting for the first time?"
"Alas, I have already given you a hint, young man, you are really stupid. Your mind is trapped in a prison."
Emerald shook her head. "There is no other way. In order to ensure that you can successfully achieve your goal, let the Chief, the embodiment of wisdom, beauty and kindness, guide you. What does the word "favorability" mean? It means that as long as it can improve my favorability towards you, any behavior is allowed. Asking you to praise how beautiful I am today is just one of the ways."
"so?"
"Think about it carefully, young man. What can you do now to make me happier?" Emerald looked at Delphinium, her lazy and cunning expression making people think of a cat: "Let me be clear in advance, praising me for being smart, wise, and knowledgeable is useless. After all, others praise me like this every day."
...So, few people actually praise her for her good looks?
Delphinium couldn't help but think so.
"Deduct 5 points." Emerald's voice quickly turned cold.
"I clearly didn't say anything." Delphinium feigned innocence.
"My wisdom tells me that you are secretly thinking of something that will discredit the Chief's reputation." Emerald was merciless.
"Hmm."
Just because of a thought, the progress was set back. Delphinium fell into thought again. She had to think seriously, reviewing her contact with Emerald over the past few months, analyzing the underlying logic of her many behaviors, and finally deducing what exactly she needed...
Then she thought of an answer that had no basis in fact.
Although there was no basis for it, and it even sounded like she was overly self-conscious, it seemed logical. Besides, there was no cost if she was wrong anyway.
"No time for jokes, we have a lot to do, Emerald."
So she spoke, half utilitarian and half sincere: "I have chosen you, and I need your help."
Emerald's mouth curled up slightly.
"50 points. No, 100 points."
She gave a rating that made people wonder if there was something wrong with her ears: "Excellent, you are worthy of being a magical girl who almost became my colleague. Your understanding is satisfactory."
"You have chosen me."
She said this while stretching lazily. "This means we are allies. I have already offered you my highest price, so I need your approval of me."
"And you need my help."
She lowered her hands and made a motion like pushing the air behind her: "This sentence does not need any interpretation. It is enough as long as you are willing to say it to me. I only have one answer."
Click.
A door that was originally not in Delphinium's sight was opened in the void, and countless fine tubes and research instruments behind the door appeared in their eyes.
"At your service."
She half-opened her eyes and grinned under the blazing light of the laboratory: "Welcome to the marrow of the country, the heart of the institute, my true private laboratory."
"The...heart of the research institute?" Delphinium whispered.
"I'm not bragging, I'm just stating the facts. The prosperity of the institute started with me and will end with me."
Emerald walked into the door, stood inside and waved to Delphinium: "Come on, what you want is here."
Unlike the temporary research institute set up in Fangting City, this place, which Emerald called a "real private research room", did not have many experimental equipment. In fact, apart from a few incomprehensible experimental devices and some culture tanks with strange flesh and blood floating in them, the most common things here were monitoring devices shining with magical brilliance.
Rather than calling it a research room, this place is more like a monitoring room. A series of neatly arranged screens show more than ten, or even nearly twenty different perspectives from the fairy dolls.
The scenes seen by the dolls are similar, all of which are temporary research institutes filled with different experimental equipment. However, the interior furnishings of these research institutes are very different, which is enough to prove that each field of vision corresponds to an independent research institute.
Temporary research institutes were sent to various parts of the world, and Emerald controlled his clones in the institutes to complete experiments with different needs in many laboratories with different focuses. This ensured that even if there were many projects on hand, they could be processed in parallel. This was the way Emerald chose to work.
"No matter which research institute encounters an accident, I can immediately transfer the data to a nearby research institute to ensure that the experimental results will not be lost. And every additional research institute and clone is like an extra pair of hands, which can greatly increase my work efficiency."
Emerald stood under the rows of screens and said with great pride: "As long as I can complete the scheduled work at ten times the speed, I can use the remaining 90% of my time to sleep. And even if I go to bed before finishing my work, my loyal clone can still complete the meaningless repetitive work for me, so I can continue to work even if I fall asleep."
"Great." Delphinium clapped symbolically to express its attitude.
"There's no need to pretend to be envious. It makes me a little uncomfortable... Anyway, since I've brought you here, I won't make things difficult for a kid like you just because you often say bad things."
Emerald opened her hands: "Anyway, let's get down to business. Give me your heart gem."
"Which one?" Delphinium took out two gems from her body, one was her own heart flower, and the other was the heart bud that allowed "Gentian" to disguise itself.
"Of course it's the real thing, why would I need the fake one?"
Emerald reached out and took the Delphinium's Heart Flower, pointing to the treatment bed not far away: "Okay, just lie there before I ask you to get up. You may feel sleepy during the treatment, don't resist, just get some sleep."
"That's it?" Delphinium was a little unconvinced.
"What else can I do? I'm a researcher, not a doctor. I say 'healing injuries', but in essence I'm repairing your heart gem. Of course, I don't need to operate on your body."
Emerald held the Delphinium Heart Flower and observed it repeatedly like an expert appraiser of gemstones: "As I expected, the Heart Gem is cracked into this state. It is just a bunch of fragments barely stuck together. If someone else came here, they would have died long ago."
"But I'm not dead yet. I came here just to solve this problem." Delphinium responded seriously while standing beside the treatment bed.
"Yeah, solve the problem..."
Emerald continued to observe the gemstone: "Well, it seems that the early treatment was effective. The overflow of magic power has stopped, making the fit of your gemstone fragments a little better. Although some of the internal structures have been completely damaged, it is still within the range of repair for the time being."
"So?" Delphinium sat down on the bed.
"So there's nothing wrong, you can start treatment."
Emerald put down the gem in her hand and clapped her hands gently. A secret compartment suddenly appeared in the middle of the ground covered with pipes. She reached out and took out a key from the secret compartment, then took down one of the surveillance screens in front of her, revealing the door of a safe.
Ignoring the suspicious look of the emerald bird beside her, she opened the safe and took out a liquid-sealing device that looked like a thermos cup. Then, with dazzling speed, she set up a pure decryption formula on the surface of the device and opened the lid of the device.
"What is that?" Delphinium, who was already lying on the treatment bed, couldn't help but ask.
"The raw material used to repair the Heart Gem. No, that shouldn't be said, because it is the raw material of the Heart Gem - the source of love."
Emerald took a strange container shaped like a test tube from the side, carefully placed the device horizontally, took out the pipette, and slowly drew out a liquid that was emitting colorful light and almost white. During the whole process, she did not say another word, not even breathing, but quietly transferred the liquid into the container until it filled half of the test tube. Then she stopped everything very carefully, placed the instrument, and turned off the device.
"10 ml. Only 10 ml of it is needed to create one more Heart Seed for the country, which is also the fighting power of a magical girl. If it were to be lost outside the country, it would be the top magical material in the world. No one would not be tempted by it."
Emerald looked at the liquid in the test tube with some obsession. "Even in the kingdom, it is only allowed to appear in the Rose Palace and the garden, and in the hands of a very small number of people in charge of the Magic Affairs Institute. Its use is also strictly controlled. Even if our institute wants to apply for some as research materials, the process is extremely difficult, and it is almost impossible to have 10 milliliters."
"Just from the name, it sounds like something that is qualified to be traded with the Source of Beasts."
Delphinium looked at Emerald: "But why do you have so many on your hands?"
"A friend gave it to me." Emerald said concisely.
"Friend?" Delphinium confirmed.
"friend."
Emerald spoke confidently, and then coughed lightly: "Ahem, stop talking nonsense and pay attention. I'm going to start repairing your heart flower. Don't distract me. If you waste materials, it will be a huge loss for us."
Delphinium stared at Emerald's face relentlessly, trying to read something from her expression, but Emerald was remarkably determined and remained calm. It wasn't until she got tired of being stared at by Delphinium that she simply turned away and turned her back to Delphinium's sight.
Now, Delphinium really couldn't see anything.
Whatever.
Delphinium withdrew her gaze and looked at the ceiling, which cast a blazing white light.
Even if these things came from illegal sources, he was still a wanted criminal in the country. The so-called "Source of Love" was used on a wanted criminal. If it weren't for a daring guy like Emerald, he would never see such a scene.
She was indeed beginning to feel a little sleepy.
It's not physical or mental fatigue, but a simple feeling, as if my soul is telling me that I will feel better after a good night's sleep.
So she stopped thinking about it, closed her eyes and cleared her mind.
The only sounds in the laboratory were the hum of the instruments and the sound of Emerald fiddling with them. Then, in this white noise-like environment, Delphinium fell asleep.
(End of this chapter)
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