Chapter 196 - 196: Plans
Plans
A Few Weeks Later
Osho stared at the 5 rows of vials in front of him with a satisfied expression.
Each row contained ten vials, and each vial was filled with a silvery liquid that resembled mercury.
After weeks of learning and trial and error, Osho finally succeeded.
'Mass-produced evolution regents.' He thought with unmistakable joy.
Despite all the hectic things that had been going on recently, Osho had never lost sight of his main goal, which was to figure out a way to evolve beasts en masse without revealing his identity.
He'd been cutting it close by doing things personally, but with this...
'Not only can beasts be evolved remotely, but I can also give them out anonymously.' He nodded to himself with some pride.
Naturally, these regents weren't as good as him using his ability directly.
Normally, he can raise the potential of a beast by one rank when he uses his ability. But with these regents, the rank of a beast can be raised by two sub-ranks at most and one at least.
Moreover, not all regents worked equally, as some only worked from the Novice to the Adept rank, and some worked at a higher level, with the higher-leveled ones costing quite a bit more to make.
Osho also created what he called Limit-Breaker Regents. Essentially, one couldn't use the normal regents alone to raise the potential of a beast to advance a whole new rank. Which is to say, if one used a regent that raises a beast's potential by two ranks when the beast was at the peak of say the Apprentice rank, it wouldn't increase their potential to the Adept rank unless they used the Limit-Breaker Regent.
One also couldn't spam the Regents, as there needed to be a buffer period between each dose taken. Otherwise, taking too many at once could lead to adverse effects.
All in all, compared to using his ability directly, the regents had a lot more constraints.
But that was fine.
This alone was enough to cause quite the stir among humanity, especially since Osho planned to release them publicly under an anonymous persona.
Maven, naturally.
As for what would happen?
Well, Osho predicted that there would be a lot of hesitation to buy the products if he put them on the market, but he didn't plan to put them on the market.
First of all, if he did, the amount of time it would take for someone to actually buy it would be too long. After all, all sorts of products that claimed to be capable of evolving beasts appeared regularly, with none ever working.
At best, they worked as tonics, and at worst, they were borderline lethal to the beast in question.
The best way to avoid that was to sell them on more official channels where items had to be vetted before they could be sold. The issue with that was that if his products were tested and actually worked, most likely, said official channel would do everything to buy all the products from him and try to monopolize the rate at which they appeared on the market.
And even if THAT didn't happen and the product managed to appear on the market successfully, it was highly likely that either very wealthy individuals or researchers would buy the products, and Osho wasn't really a fan of the 'make the rich richer and the stronger stronger' philosophy. The whole point of this was to release these products in such a way that EVERYONE could benefit, as he wanted to uplift humanity as a whole, not just the people who were already strong.
So that begged the question.
How exactly would Osho get people to believe that these regents actually worked and then release them to the public away from the grasp of those overly greedy or selfish, all while keeping his identity anonymous?
He tapped his fingers against the lab tables rhythmically, his mind sifting through numerous possibilities.
Every path he thought of either risked him exposing himself or ended with the Regents in the wrong hands. However, an idea began to form, half practicality, half audacity.
"... In that case, turn it into a miracle no one can claim." He smiled faintly at the thought.
If the world wouldn't believe a new product from an anonymous seller, then it wouldn't come from a seller at all. It would come from the wild.
He just needed to stage the discovery.
He would release the first batch secretly into well-known beast habitats and monitor them from afar. Let the beasts consume the regents naturally. Their rapid growth and sudden evolutions would create rumors, the sort of rumors that couldn't be easily suppressed, as they wouldn't even know who to trace them to.
When tamers begin to find evidence and reports of beasts breaking through limits, with ordinary creatures evolving overnight, he would move to phase two.
Distribution.
Specifically, through subtle means, like the black market.
He'd sell them in small doses under his persona and let circles known for spreading information work overtime.
By the time people started to know his name, tracing him would be borderline impossible, and at the same time, he would make the distribution of the regents very conditional.
For example, if he noticed rich people buying them en masse, he would cut down the supply drastically, perhaps flat out say why he did so.
As for whether researchers can reverse engineer the product...
Honestly? He wouldn't mind all that much. The only thing is that they would never be able to create things with the same potency as what he made. But if they could also create stable versions that could be mass-produced for the public, that's still fulfilling his goals.
Now, there was the issue of how he would even do all of this. After all, Osho was just one person, and his beasts, while strong, weren't exactly known for the subterfuge.
He could easily employ the help of the cult. Even if he was estranged, he still had a lot of authority. However. He had no intentions of doing so.
So how?
Well, as it so turns out, he recently received something from outside the Hidden Realm that belonged to a certain person he'd made a deal with some time ago.
Exhaling, Osho turned to a ring on the left side of the table and grabbed it.
It was a spatial storage.
After fiddling with it for a few seconds, a pile of items appeared on the table.
There were documents arranged neatly, recording devices, and all sorts of things.
'This is a lot...' Osho sighed.
It seems like Frederick had been busy.
Osho naturally hadn't forgotten about the Beast Tamer he'd turned into his partner and asked to make a hidden information gathering organization beneath the guild he was establishing, and from what he could see, the man had made great use of those eggs.
Naturally, their relationship was a transactional one, and Osho was meant to supply him with a batch of eggs he'd personally evolved as payment for his services.
However, that would come after.
For now, though, he had some things to look through.
Another thing Osho hadn't forgotten about was the incident related to the two corrupt creatures that had nearly taken his life twice. With this much stuff, Osho was bound to figure out more things than he already knew.
He carried a recording device and tapped it, and a holographic image of Fredrick appeared.
Compared to the last time Osho had seen him, he looked a bit more rugged, like he'd been fighting a lot, and his hair had grown longer.
However, his eyes were calm, and he carried an air of authority around him. Moreover, his attire was also interesting.
What seemed like nano armor with blue and white streaks and on his left chest was a badge that had a kraken symbol on it.
'The Hydro Guild.' Osho sighed. Sadly, he had no time to lament the naming sense as he played the video.
"Yeah, so, I'm not gonna waste time on pleasantries or asking how you've been. Knowing you, you've either caused a ruckus in that place, locked yourself in a lab, or done something stupid. Hell, it could be all three." The dryness in his tone made Osho's eye twitch.
'Hello to you too.' Osho scoffed.
"Anyway, I'll cut to the chase. Those eggs were very effective, and finding people who could handle them well wasn't as hard as I imagined, so it didn't take too long to send them out to find information on what you were looking for... and I'll be blunt. With just the initial stuff we found, it's pretty bad." As soon as he said this, Osho's face turned serious.
"You know how we kept referring to the Skyblight Harbinger as a creature that shouldn't even exist and defies nature? Well, we weren't wrong. In fact, we were spot on.
As it turns out, it was indeed an artificially created lifeform made by entities who are largely referred to the Outerplanar "