After receiving approval from Himeko, the head of the Australian branch, Lunelle, for the time being, officially became a temporary research staff member at the Fire Moth's Australian branch.
Though on paper, Lunelle was just some temporary hire, considering Elysia had mentioned that Lunelle possessed research abilities nearly on par with that "demon" herself, Himeko went ahead and granted Lunelle first-level access to the branch's R&D department—authority second only to the head of research herself.
Still, Himeko made it clear: if this adorable little Seele couldn't produce some tangible results to prove herself within a month, then the temporary access she'd been given would be revoked.
After all, as Himeko put it, the Australian branch's financial situation wasn't exactly overflowing with research funds to waste on those "lacking capability."
Lunelle understood completely.
Back when she was slaving away for her snake-wife, Mobius—a true expert in cutting-edge research—she'd often grumble in front of Lunelle about how the Fire Moth headquarters had its fair share of "connected folks" with little real skill.
These people could hardly produce any decent research results, yet thanks to their so-called connections and backing, they naturally received higher research budgets than Dr. Mobius herself.
But for someone with genuine research talent like Lunelle, Himeko's warning was pretty much unnecessary.
The vast knowledge she'd soaked up from her snake-wife wasn't just some fake stuff for bragging rights.
So, while Himeko held little hope, Lunelle quickly picked out a small empty room in the research zone.
Drawing on her extensive experience working under Dr. Mobius, she began setting up a modest personal lab where she could truly spread her wings.
Now, it should be emphasized that Lunelle wasn't building her own lab just because she looked down on the other researchers at the Australian branch.
No, after running a few small tests, she'd clearly realized that... well, there really was a noticeable gap between a Herrscher and a regular human!
Take those knowledge points she could memorize at a glance from Dr. Mobius's materials.
Even after Lunelle summarized and simplified them as much as possible for others, finding someone with her level of photographic memory wasn't just hard—it was practically impossible.
And if memorizing was already this tough, mastering these incredibly complex concepts and putting them into practice? Forget about it.
It just goes to show that true freaks of talent like Mobius, even within her specialized field of bio-research, operated on a level most people couldn't even touch.
Heck, even Lunelle, with her near-photographic memory, took a solid ten months to reach the point where she could handle most of Dr. Mobius's workload herself.
So if she wanted to deliver results within Himeko's one-month deadline, relying on herself was pretty much the only option.
Fortunately, after getting a clear picture of the Australian branch's overall research capabilities and medical resources, Lunelle soon settled on a research direction.
That direction was one of her most proficient biological research techniques: "Serum Enhancement"!
Even back in the real Honkai world, without a proper lab, she'd managed to improve and optimize existing Schicksal serum formulations.
Now, with her own private lab in the simulation, what she'd pulled off secretly in reality should be even easier to achieve here.
Lunelle then put together a proper-looking list of resources she needed from the inventory Himeko provided.
With Elysia's help, she promptly submitted it to Himeko, the branch head.
Seeing this cute little thing make such a "lion's share" demand for resources on just the second day after setting up her little lab, Himeko suddenly felt a twinge of regret.
Had she given little Seele too much resource-allocation authority for the month?
With such an insane resource request, if she came asking for this much every day, even just for a month, Himeko worried her already resource-strapped Australian branch might plunge straight into a fiscal deficit!
But as a branch head who kept her word, Himeko knew spoken promises were like spilled water—hard to take back.
She'd personally promised the kid first-level resource access for the month.
If the child made a reasonable request within that "first-level" scope and Himeko couldn't fulfill it, where would that leave her dignity as branch head?
So, gritting her teeth, Himeko approved Lunelle's massive resource request!
She just had no idea whether, by next month, she'd be so broke she'd be eating dirt.
Yet, in her current pessimistic state, Himeko couldn't possibly have imagined that this tough, begrudging decision would later become the single most successful call she'd made in all her years as head of the Australian branch!
Once Himeko delivered all the resources on the list, Lunelle quickly got to work on enhancements that only she could pull off—something truly worthy of being called "turning trash into treasure."
As soon as Lunelle got her hands on the most commonly used serum among Australian branch fighters, she immediately analyzed it.
This "life-saving stuff" the entire branch relied on seemed to be an old-model serum with significant side effects, phased out long ago in the headquarters' database.
This old serum basically haphazardly mixed together various drugs with some anti-Honkai resistance.
But due to its crude blending process, the anti-Honkai agents within weren't utilized to their full potential.
It did have some effect in suppressing Honkai, but it wasn't strong enough.
By Lunelle's calculations, this serum would only really help delay Honkai Erosion in lightly infected soldiers.
To actually purge a Honkai infection, even a mild one would require four to five times the normal dose.
Plus, frequent use of this old serum quickly led to strong drug resistance.
So the quantities Lunelle initially estimated would likely need extra adjustment to account for this factor.
As for moderate infections, or severe ones nearing zombie transformation... the amount of serum needed was terrifying just to think about.
And the real kicker? Over eighty percent of the branch's combat personnel seemed to be using this "old stuff."
In such an environment, it'd be weird if medical resources were sufficient!
Luckily, Lunelle, a true top-tier talent in biological research, quickly devised a targeted solution.
The main reason the "old stuff serum" was so inefficient was its crude internal blending process, which failed to unleash all its anti-Honkai potential.
After about five days of research, Lunelle whipped up a temporary enhancement specifically for the "old stuff serum."
So, on her sixth day in Australia, a special product formula Lunelle dubbed the "Old Stuff Serum Activator" landed on Himeko's desk.
Completely unprepared for Lunelle to submit research results on just the sixth day, Himeko got a firsthand look at what a truly monstrous research talent could do.
According to Lunelle's simple explanation, adding just one drop of this activator to the existing "old stuff serum" would reactivate some of the anti-Honkai properties previously hidden due to drug conflicts.
The practical effect would boost the serum's efficacy from a base of 1 to roughly 1.2.
But don't underestimate that jump from 1 to 1.2.
That nearly twenty percent improvement, applied to the branch's usual monthly procurement of over five thousand serum doses, would save close to a thousand doses in expenses!
Just that alone meant the value Lunelle brought to the Australian branch far outweighed the resource cost Himeko had invested in her.
Moreover, since Lunelle's breakthrough enhanced the effectiveness of each individual serum dose, it essentially improved the serum's quality.
This slight change was enough to give some frontline soldiers, previously unsavable due to drug resistance, a new chance at survival.
Once Himeko realized this and confirmed Lunelle's research was genuine, she immediately ordered her subordinates to begin mass-producing the activator based on Lunelle's formula.
Once Lunelle's activator was deployed on the front lines, the Australian branch's casualty rates dropped noticeably right away!
For the soldiers fighting desperately on the front lines, the quality of medical supplies wasn't actually the most critical issue.
The main reason for their persistently high casualty rates was simply the shortage of medical supplies themselves!
Even this "old stuff" that Lunelle deemed full of flaws and side effects wasn't something just anyone could get on the battlefield.
For instance, as a professional, Lunelle believed serum should be used promptly at the first sign of mild infection to prevent the Honkai infection from worsening.
But on the real battlefield, something like a mild Honkai infection was hardly even considered worth noting by the soldiers.
More often, these inferior serums were mixed into liquor and used as "life-extending powder" by severely infected soldiers who knew their time was short, allowing them to fight desperately to the end.
After all, in this pre-Stigma era—the Previous Era—if the Honkai resistance of modern humans modified by Stigma genes averaged 1 for men and 5 for women, then the people of the Previous Era could be seen as having those averages divided by five: 0.2 for men, 1 for women.
Even with Fire Moth protective suits, facing the endless, tide-like assaults of Honkai Beasts, over ninety percent of the suits, initially effective, had by now become little more than "practically useless" decorations.
Protective suits were even more costly resources than serum!
With the Australian branch's financial state, how could they afford to equip every soldier with a suit, let alone maintain them regularly?
And even if they had the money, the suits they could buy were almost always the rejects other branches didn't want!
As for the reason... one could refer to the capitalist rhetoric of the Fire Moth official in charge of resource allocation for the Australian branch:
"Who told the Australian branch to have such a hot-head, not knowing their place?"
Since your branch can't even manage the simplest 'showing respect,' you deserve the lowest budget and the worst resources!"
Lunelle's small display of skill, temporarily easing the Australian branch's serum crisis, was really just a preliminary result of her work.
If she hadn't been aiming for the gentlest possible activation of the serum's components to minimize side effects, she could've finished developing the activator in about two days.
After achieving this initial success, about a week later, Lunelle developed another special compound specifically designed to reduce human resistance to this "old-timer" serum.
Injecting this compound alongside the serum significantly improved the effectiveness of repeated serum use on the same individual.
For example, what Lunelle initially estimated would require four or five doses to cure a mild infection could now be done with nearly half the amount when combined with the compound.
Many of Himeko's seasoned soldiers, whose resistance had built up to severe levels from repeated serum use to stay alive, benefited from Lunelle's new compound, gaining another chance at survival through serum treatment.
This even included a grizzled female frontline commander who'd been fighting for years.
After being infected by Honkai yet again, she'd already ordered her subordinates to put a bullet in her head before she turned.
But thanks to the serum—which should have been ineffective on her by now—she was pulled back from death's door.
Waking up human once more, the commander, having narrowly survived, saw her idiot subordinates who'd stubbornly refused to shoot her, now standing around grinning and crying their eyes out.
She immediately started cursing them for wasting precious medicine on her!
Upon learning that the "precious medicine" that saved her was actually the same "cheap stuff" she'd always used, only this time combined with a mass-producible compound developed by Researcher "Seele," the commander, having survived her brush with death, felt genuine gratitude in her heart for the researcher who'd brought such incredible change to the Australian branch.
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T/N: I have a Patreon! Webnovel will get 2 Chapters Every Day, and advanced chapters will be uploaded on Patreon.
It may not seem worth it now, but maybe in the future. Who knows!
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If you guys wanna check it out.