Before long, Hel emerged from the crystal, dragging behind her a blood-red sphere.
The orb was composed of refined crimson liquid, encased in a layer of translucent, gel-like material—the residue of the brains she had melted down.
After dissolving into the red liquid, the ashes had fused into a new substance, similar in nature to the original primordial matter, though now tinted a deep scarlet.
"Master, did you gain something new again?"
Niv gently handed Hel a towel and helped wipe the droplets from her hair, while curiously studying the crimson sphere in her hand.
She could clearly sense that the orb shared a strange connection with her.
"This," Hel said, holding it up, "is an external brain I made for you. Try linking your mind to it."
"I'll give it a try."
Niv accepted the orb and followed Hel's instructions, extending her mental power toward it.
To her surprise, the sphere resonated perfectly with her own spirit.
The moment she connected to it, her thoughts became noticeably sharper, and the strain from maintaining the citywide network eased significantly.
"T-this… Master, don't tell me you refined Edwina's entire brain into this one sphere?"
"This is only part of it," Hel replied with a faint smile. "You should be able to sense it—it actually contains the brain of a fairy."
"Hmm… but to Niv's perception, that fairy's bloodline feels similar to that of the elves."
Niv nodded, turning the sphere over in her hands with fascination.
"It has a portion of elven blood, yes," Hel explained. "But it also carries traces of dragon blood."
"No wonder," Niv murmured in realization. Then she suddenly looked up, her eyes widening slightly.
"Wait—Master, you said this is only part of it?"
"That's right. For now, this is just a prototype. I want to observe its performance first before making more."
"It's working wonderfully," Niv said, closing her eyes as she concentrated. "Niv's computational capacity has increased by approximately seventy-two percent."
She had carefully gauged the difference in processing power brought by the external brain before reporting the figure.
However, that number didn't seem to satisfy Hel.
"Only seventy-two percent? With a brain of demigod quality, I was expecting at least a full doubling of your performance."
"If we're being technical," Niv replied, "Niv's current brain is already the most efficient among all demigod-level brains.
Besides, this external brain is only linked to Niv through a spiritual connection, not a direct neural merger.
The data transmission speed hasn't reached its limit yet—hence the lower number.
Based on my calculations, once Niv reaches the Saint Rank, the improvement could exceed ninety percent."
"The Saint Rank, huh? That shouldn't take too long."
Hel smiled slightly, then suddenly remembered something.
"Oh, right—this is for you."
She reached into her pocket and took out a glowing elemental crystal, handing it to Niv.
"This is Edwina's elemental core. Replace your old one with it.
After that, use the soul energy inside the Philosopher's Stone to raise your soul quality to Tier 6.
Once that's done, you should be able to ascend to Tier 6 much faster.
Who knows—you might even reach it before I do."
"Thank you, Master!"
Overjoyed, Niv threw her arms around Hel and planted a light kiss on her cheek before taking the crystal and holding it tightly in her hands.
"All right," Hel said, chuckling. "Since this test went well, I'll start making the rest of the external brains.
Do you have any preferences for the remaining ones?"
"Master," Niv said after a moment of thought, "what if Niv made bodies for all those brains?"
"You want to make bodies for them?" Hel raised an eyebrow. "I was actually thinking of turning them into accessories—a bracelet or necklace, maybe.
But if that's what you want, we'll go with your idea."
She stroked her chin thoughtfully, considering the feasibility of Niv's proposal.
"Still, if we use only dragon blood for all of them, won't that be too monotonous? Let's see what other bloodlines I have left."
Opening her trait storage, Hel began to sort through her remaining resources.
"Huh. I still have some red-grade goblin bloodlines… but no thanks.
After meeting Edwina, my opinion of goblins has dropped into the negatives."
She kept scrolling. "I've got plenty of Beastmen traits too… but making a batch of dragon-Beastmen hybrids sounds ridiculous."
"Master, you don't have to worry so much about it," Niv said with a mysterious smile.
"Huh?"
Hel looked at her, puzzled.
Niv pressed herself closer and whispered softly, "Please wait a moment, Master. Niv will have something brought up."
"Brought up?" Hel tilted her head, confused.
Her confusion didn't last long.
Moments later, the elevator nearby rose swiftly, then descended again—with several large transparent containers now sitting atop it.
"The City of Flesh is the Empire's primary biological research center," Niv explained proudly. "So it has the most abundant biological materials among all the cities.
Unlike the B5 Laboratory, this place has a steady energy supply and much better preservation systems."
She took Hel's hand, her tone turning excited, almost childlike, as she tugged her toward the elevator.
"But unfortunately, time has taken its toll—many materials have decayed.
Niv only brought the ones that were best preserved and of the highest quality.
If Master isn't satisfied, we can go together to the main storage and look through the rest."
"Let's start with these," Hel said, taking Niv's small hand and crouching beside the containers to examine them one by one.
"More angel parts, huh?"
The first thing she saw was a pair of pristine white wings—angelic, and very familiar to her.
In fact, there were three pairs of them.
Angel wings like these were mostly useless for bloodline extraction; they contained too little genetic essence to form bloodline traits.
That's why such materials were usually repurposed for equipment crafting instead.
No research value, but still visually impressive—hence why there were so many stored here.
Fortunately, just behind the wings lay two angelic hearts.
"Now that's more like it," Hel murmured, clearly pleased.
Beyond them, she spotted a pair of bat-like wings… and a dried, withered serpent tail.