Even the Strongest Were Only Research Material

Hawkins looked toward the merchant ship. Nothing seemed wrong to the naked eye, but when his Curse Power extended over, he immediately sensed an ominous aura.

Someone had used their life to activate some extraordinary power. That power was gradually extending from the Dream Realm into the real world.

Hawkins thought of a possibility and immediately leaped from the Black Knife onto the merchant ship. He stepped over one corpse after another and entered the cabin.

Inside the cabin, in a room not yet reached by the flames, Hawkins walked in and frowned slightly. Though he had witnessed countless twists of fate, reunions and partings, joy and sorrow, the sight before him still stirred a trace of sadness in him.

Before him lay a pair of corpses. They were both young, likely newlyweds. The man had died about five minutes before the woman. Her clothes had been torn open. One hand clutched her husband's corpse, while the other gripped a verdigris dagger embedded in her own abdomen.

The aura was emanating from the dagger.

"Crack!"

With a soft sound, the dagger shattered, revealing an oval ruby within.

The ruby slowly rose, releasing an eerie red glow. An arm suddenly tore through the red light, and a huge eye appeared within the narrow rift.

Hawkins met the eye's gaze. The next moment, a roar came from within the rift. The crack rapidly widened, and an arm thicker than Hawkins's entire body shot out from it. But before it could seize him, Hawkins calmly retreated.

"Is this a monster from the Dream Realm?"

Hawkins carefully observed the monster's arm and found it remarkably exquisite.

Yes, exquisite.

Though the arm was covered in thick red fur, its structure was exceptionally beautiful. Looking closely at its skin, one could see that it was made of countless tiny interlocking triangles.

Hawkins believed that if he took a punch from that arm head-on, he would definitely die cleanly.

At that moment, the rift widened considerably again. The monster's shoulder emerged from the crack, and its arm could extend much farther. Hawkins retreated once more, then opened the Eternal Sea Chart and opened a passage into Eternal Space.

When the monster's arm reached over, it passed directly through the spatial passage into Eternal Space. Hawkins then closed the passage.

In an instant, the monster's arm was severed, the cut impossibly smooth.

Taking the opportunity, Hawkins examined the cross-section and discovered bones, blood vessels, muscles, and other tissues inside the monster. This showed that the creature before him was indeed a living organism, not some kind of energy body.

Were there living creatures in the Dream Realm?

[Ultimate Treasure, Ability: Sacrifice life to summon from the Dream Realm a monster capable of fulfilling one's long-cherished wish. Curse: Guaranteed Death Curse!]

It was precisely because of the appraisal result that Hawkins could confirm the monster came from the Dream Realm.

But the existence of living creatures in the Dream Realm was itself a strange phenomenon. After all, he had just emerged from Eternal Space only to be ejected from the Dream Realm back into reality. That indicated the Dream Realm did not permit living creatures to exist there.

No!

Hawkins suddenly realized he had been drilling into a bull's horn.

Perhaps the Dream Realm did not forbid living creatures from existing there. Rather, it did not permit creatures from the real world to remain in the Dream Realm. But what if a creature had been born in the Dream Realm itself?

There had never been any rule stating that the Dream Realm forbade the birth of living creatures. After all, it was a bizarre and kaleidoscopic world where anything could happen.

That meant the hand Asmodeus had encountered back then was most likely not an energy body, but the arm of a truly living creature.

Having worked through the crux of the matter, Hawkins smiled at the monster inside the rift.

"You want to come over that badly? Then come and try!"

Hawkins stepped forward and opened a passage into Eternal Space directly against the rift. As long as the monster dared to emerge, it would enter Eternal Space.

In the real world, Hawkins might not necessarily have been a match for this monster. But in Eternal Space, he truly feared no one.

Eternal Space was equivalent to his domain. He was the only god within that domain.

So if the monster dared to enter, there would be only one outcome: it would become Hawkins's experimental material.

Hawkins closed Eternal Space, then swiftly opened it again and entered it himself.

He had not linked the passage to Replica House Town, but to an uninhabited small island. The moment he entered, he saw a fist far larger than his head.

But before that fist could land on his head, it abruptly stopped.

Everything within Eternal Space was under Hawkins's control. Likewise, "force" was under his control.

If the monster wanted to run, it had to borrow force from the ground. Yet the force it borrowed actually belonged to Eternal Space. Thus, when Hawkins withdrew that portion of force, the monster naturally could not continue its attack.

Only then did Hawkins have time to observe this monster from the Dream Realm.

The monster stood roughly eight meters tall. Its fur was fiery red, its head somewhat resembled a bull's, and it had four curved horns. Its body was somewhat like that of an ape, slightly hunched, with incredibly developed limbs and a whip-like tail.

Because Hawkins did not allow Eternal Space to lend force to the monster, it was completely unable to move at that moment.

It roared desperately, but because Hawkins did not allow the air to carry its voice, its roar was nothing more than a vibration in its throat. The vibrating force had nowhere to travel, and instead injured the creature itself.

It also continuously swung its arms and legs, yet it could not move even a single step.

Hawkins froze the space around it, walked before it, and tried throwing a punch. He then clutched his fist, somewhat helplessly discovering that it had already swollen.

This monster's body was frighteningly hard. Hawkins's strength was by no means weak, yet his attack had no effect at all. Instead, the recoil injured him.

Next, Hawkins tried electric shocks, burning flames, acid corrosion, and other attacks, but none had much effect. The best result was merely making the monster's fur curl slightly.

"It's absurdly strong. If it had appeared directly on the merchant ship back then, it probably would have killed me in an instant."

But after seeing the monster's DNA, he immediately abandoned that line of thought.

Human DNA had a double-helix structure, while this monster's DNA had a twelve-strand intersecting helix structure. Not only was it explosively complex, but many energies close to Curse Power also flowed through its DNA.

Hawkins could be certain that if such DNA were crudely installed into a human body, that person's genes would instantly collapse and kill them.

"Forget it. I'll study it slowly in the future!"

Remembering that people were still waiting for him aboard the Black Knife, Hawkins had a thought. A large number of bricks immediately rose from the ground on the island, while steel bars rapidly interwove around them. In the blink of an eye, an enclosed building was constructed.

He placed the monster inside the building, keeping it frozen, then left Eternal Space.

On the merchant ship, the blaze had already spread over. He gave the newlywed couple's corpses one last look before turning and leaving.

He returned from the merchant ship to the Black Knife, and Mark immediately asked, "Captain, are we setting sail now?"

When that ominous aura vanished, Mark knew Hawkins had already dealt with the trouble. It had never crossed his mind that Hawkins might fail to solve the problem, so he was not surprised in the slightest.

"Wait. First, move all the supplies from the Blackedge over here. Don't waste anything usable!" Hawkins had originally intended to nod, but then he remembered there should be quite a bit of wealth aboard the Blackedge, so he spoke up.

But Hawkins soon discovered that Eugene's level was about the same as the original Hawkins's, yet his ability to amass wealth was actually far worse.

The original Hawkins had been an extremely rational person who always liked leaving himself another way out. Besides hiding gold coins in his hair and beneath his bed, he had even buried treasures belonging to him on many isolated islands.

Thus, the original Hawkins had been someone who loved saving money.

Eugene, on the other hand, was exactly the opposite. He was the sort to drink today's wine today and get drunk today. Money could never stay in his hands. So after Mark and Arthur moved every valuable item from the Blackedge to the Black Knife, Hawkins took inventory and discovered the treasure was not even one-tenth of the original Hawkins's savings.

Finally, Hawkins had Mark set the Blackedge ablaze, then controlled the Black Knife to depart.

The Black Knife gradually sailed away, while the two ships slowly sank amid the flames. In the end, they vanished completely into the depths of the sea. Hawkins glanced back once, then continued looking ahead.

Everyone carried many stories in their hearts.

Let those people's stories be buried in the deep sea like this.

Hawkins instructed Mark to watch their direction and not stray from the route, then returned to Eternal Space to continue his experiments.

In truth, he could barely wait to dissect that monster from the Dream Realm.

Mark, meanwhile, tossed the task of steering to Arthur under the lofty pretext of training him, then opened the chat group to idle away the time.

[I Love My Family Group]

Mark: Hahaha, brothers and sisters, I'm back! This time, I struck it rich!

Qiao Si: Tch, you just killed a few more pirates. I'll earn it back after cleaning toilets.

Ai Miye: How many exchange points did you all get?

Mark: Hehe, I killed twelve pirates in total, so I got twenty-four exchange points altogether. That's equivalent to cleaning toilets twenty-four times.

Qiao Si: I killed eight pirates. Sixteen exchange points.

Asmodeus: I killed two pirates, four exchange points. Still, it felt far more dangerous than cleaning toilets.

Ai Miye: But it was much faster than cleaning toilets too.

Mark: Shame it was only a small pirate crew. I heard there are huge pirate crews in some seas with over tens of thousands of people. It would be great if we ran into one.

Qiao Si: You aren't talking about the Pirate Queen, are you?

Mark: What the hell is the Pirate Queen? Never heard of her.

Jennie: The Pirate Queen is the most terrifying great pirate of the Seven Seas. Her territory is on Jade Island. She has over ten thousand subordinates and seventeen warships. Even Uncle Jabus would not dare provoke her.

Mark: Then if we could wipe out the Pirate Queen in one fell swoop, wouldn't we be rich?

His eyes nearly turned into exchange point symbols. Over ten thousand pirates—if they were all killed, would that not mean more than twenty thousand exchange points? Electricity-generating cells, internal circulation organs, everything in one step!