Chapter 167: Chapter 166: Live Experiment with Drugs
Inside the cabin, Richard pursed his lips as he looked at one yellow and one blue liquid. Instead of discarding the dark blue one, he used it together with the pale yellow potion to craft a finished product using a plethora of ingredients he had already acquired.
After all, the purpose of researching these potions wasn’t just to simply produce them for use. It was more about understanding some of their principles to optimize and improve them to better meet his own needs—this was the essence of science.
With this thought in mind, he looked at the two distinctly different potions—one blue, one yellow—and began to think about how to test the effects of each potion.
Testing them on his own body by drinking them would naturally be the simplest, most intuitive, and efficient method, but it carried great risks.
Before conducting such a personal experiment, it would be better to test them on other living beings first.
Richard looked up at Pandora, who was still asleep on the bunk.
Since boarding the ship, Pandora had been asleep almost every day, waking up occasionally to space out for a while before continuing to sleep, as if hibernating.
But the problem was… it was already spring.
If this was hibernation, wasn’t the response a bit slow? If it was a summer sleep, wouldn’t it be too early?
Richard could only conclude that this was a stage in the development of the Giant Dragon species. Perhaps, after a long period of sleep, Pandora would achieve some growth and become stronger, eventually becoming as powerful as Gregory once was.
But how long would this take?
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A month? Two months? Half a year? One year? Ten years?
Richard felt like he was now dealing with a sleep-loving pet. Given the extent of her sleepiness, she was no longer comparable to a cat—as cats only sleep about twelve hours a day—she was more like a sloth, sleeping 22 hours a day, and using the remaining two hours to prepare for sleep.
Considering this, what would happen if he gave her the potion while she was in this state?
Richard walked toward Pandora, but then… turned around and walked out of the cabin.
Considering Pandora’s state, Richard thought that even if he did manage to administer the potion, she might just roll over and continue sleeping, providing no value for the test.
A few minutes later, after wandering around the cabin corridor, Richard came back to the cabin holding two unlucky rats—rats were quite common on ships. Whether it was the wooden ships of the Medieval world or the modern steel warships of Earth, rats were present. They caused numerous problems, such as gnawing through food supplies, disturbing the crew’s rest, and even spreading diseases like the plague.
For Richard, these rats had their benefits, at least providing living subjects for his experiments.
Returning to the cabin with the two rats, Richard quickly began testing the potions.
He gave the larger of the two rats the yellow potion, which was the standardly produced “One-eyed Frenzy Potion.”
Then he gave the smaller rat the blue potion, created by altering the core ingredients in his own way, which could temporarily be called “Richard’s Unknown Potion.”
Having administered the potions, Richard patiently waited and then observed the reactions of the two rats.
After a moment, the two mice showed starkly different behaviors.
The larger mouse’s eyes gradually turned red, incessantly shaking its head and tail furiously, appearing very irascible, whereas the smaller mouse cowered, trembling, looking somewhat fearful.
So, could the yellow potion cause excitement, and the blue potion fear?
Richard blinked, took out a scalpel, and swiftly cut off the larger mouse’s tail from behind.
The large mouse showed no reaction, still shaking its head, evidently having lost both pain sensation and danger perception.
Richard placed the scalpel in front of the large mouse. Only then did the mouse seem to realize something and started to squeal, bitingly fiercely onto the blade of the scalpel, tearing at it desperately with its teeth.
However, considering the special material of the scalpel, the large mouse’s teeth weren’t hard enough; within moments, its teeth shattered, and blood continuously flowed from its mouth. Despite this, the mouse kept biting. When Richard pulled the scalapel away, he ended up lifting the entire mouse off the ground.
“Hmm…” Richard narrowed his eyes, muttering to himself in analysis, “Is this because using the experimental method to extract the ingredient caused too high a purity, making it even more insane? In that case, some previous ideas might be worth trying, like causing the enemy to inhale it, thereby losing their sanity.”
As Richard spoke, he suddenly flung the scalpel with great force and threw the large mouse off, which slammed into the corner of the chamber with a “bang.”
Unexpectedly, the thrown large mouse bounced back like a spring, lightning-fast, and bit towards the scalpel again.
Richard raised an eyebrow and, without hesitation, took the scalpel and stabbed, nailing the large mouse firmly to the wooden floor.
After pulling out the scalpel, Richard then turned to the trembling small mouse and proceeded with the experiment as planned.
Holding the scalpel and slowly approaching, he saw the small mouse’s trembling intensify. Richard tried cutting towards the small mouse’s tail to see whether the result would be the same as with the large mouse. However, he discovered that when the scalpel was still a few centimeters from the tail, the small mouse suddenly turned and rapidly retreated.
Richard’s eyes flashed.
Letting out a breath softly, Richard flicked the scalpel that was quickly caught by his other hand and then stabbed down. The small mouse squealed and dodged swiftly, unlike the large mouse, it wasn’t impaled.
“Hmm… this is getting interesting…”
Richard muttered to himself, holding the scalpel and continuing to stab towards the small mouse, gradually increasing his speed. The small mouse, controlled to a fixed area by the air wall, kept dodging, and after quite some time, remained completely unharmed.
“Dodging… or perhaps its reactions have become more sensitive?” Richard guessed, his eyes gleaming.
The current behavior of the small mouse could indeed be explained with physiological knowledge.
After all, based on previous speculations about the “One-eyed Frenzy Potion,” the principle of the potion’s effect should be that it acts on the nerves, through a certain component to weaken the transmission of specific pain signals, and also causes the continuous excitation of another specific signal, ultimately making the potion’s user irritable, lose pain sensation, and lose the sense of danger.
The pale yellow liquid distilled from the “Griffin Seven-colored Bird” blood performed this function, while the deep blue liquid might likely have the opposite effect: causing the potion’s user to become fearful, enhancing the transmission of pain nerve signals, and increasing the sense of danger.
Is that really the case?
Richard looked at the small mouse trapped within the air wall, extremely vigilant, and did not rush to conclusions. After all, everything now was merely conjecture, requiring further experiments to verify, at least to rule out individual randomness.
The next moment Richard stepped out of the chamber door again.