[Steel Prison Big]: That was one part of it. The other was that Herta, Mobius, Verity, and the others had run out of research funding, so I needed to find a way to get some more. That immediately made me think of you, who were going full throttle printing counterfeit money.
Scientific research was an outrageously expensive endeavor, and the more cutting-edge and advanced the field, the more terrifyingly fast it burned through money.
There was no need to mention equipment. A single cryo-electron microscope could cost tens of millions of Credit Points, with annual maintenance running into the millions. A large-scale imaginary hadron collider cost several billion Credit Points. And that was without even mentioning Supergravity Centrifugal Simulation and Experimental Facilities (CHIEF), which generated extreme supergravity fields to achieve "spacetime compression" and simulate the movement of matter in the universe.
Just having a pile of equipment sitting there cost money.
If it actually started operating, the materials it consumed would flow away like water. Even a tiny fingernail-sized piece of Erudition Tree Bark cost at least a million Credit Points.
Not even robbing banks could sustain that kind of expenditure.
[Roaring Moon Sea Fish Cat]: Wait! I suddenly spotted a blind spot.
[Roaring Moon Sea Fish Cat]: Qianyi, are you saying you're asking this young lady for money now so you can support other women?!!
[Roaring Moon Sea Fish Cat]: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait!!!
[Roaring Moon Sea Fish Cat]: Qianyi, you're asking this young lady for money so you can keep Herta, Mobius, Verity, and Ruan Mei as mistresses?!
Kiana had thought Qianyi was asking her for money because he had finally come around and planned to make a big score with her—short-selling a few universe-scale financial conglomerates, watching them perform aerial acrobatics, and incidentally raising funds for