21st Century Necromancer

Although Chen Yu had already told the Kojo family that their dojo's scrolls contained the essence of their swordsmanship, ultimately, Kojo Kanenaga insisted, and Chen Yu kept his promise, giving them parts of the Dark Warrior training methods suitable for the living to practice.

Of course, Chen Yu was not so generous as to share the aspects involving mastery of Necromantic Power or physical enhancement, but in light of Kyoko Kojo's role in the rescue of Kube Rokuro and Misumi Mikoto, he informed them that he held subsequent parts of the method, which they could obtain through helping him gather materials.

Although they only received part of the legacy, for the Kojo family, it was an enormous favor. Especially considering that Chen Yu held further parts, it was definitely great news for Muso Itto-ryu, which had previously reached a dead end.

Kojo Kanenaga even wanted to have his daughter and son serve Chen Yu as retainers, but after considering the fact that his home couldn't accommodate two more people, Chen Yu declined the offer, which was quite tempting.Nôv(el)B\\jnn

Before leaving, Chen Yu sparred with Kojo Kanenaga, which gave him a better understanding of the combat abilities of a formal Transcendent of this world. The outcome, however, was somewhat beyond his expectations.

It was not that Kojo Kanenaga's combat power was too low. Although he had rarely engaged in actual combat, and his instruction-style swordsmanship at the dojo lacked killing intent, his many years of training had created a very solid foundation. Even in a non-lethal duel, he was still a difficult opponent to deal with, but this was only in comparison to normal human standards.

Kojo Kanenaga's strength was about four times that of an average adult male. He said that his vigor had waned with age—at his peak, He could exert the strength of eight adult men if he used secret techniques, although the duration was brief.

His speed was double that of a normal person because Muso Itto-ryu doesn't focus on speed (a normal person's sprinting speed is 26-30 kilometers per hour, the fastest human, Usain Bolt, is 48 kilometers per hour).

In the age of cold weapons, a swordsman like Kojo Kanenaga, equipped with good quality swords and armor, could use his swordsmanship and additional abilities gained from sword training to single-handedly defeat a hundred or so average soldiers.

Even commanding a horse, he could crush a small troop of three to four hundred men with ease, especially considering the poor equipment and morale of ancient Japanese foot soldiers.

But in the era of firearms, such combat power, although not bad, had much less practical value because swordsmen weren't particularly well-defended. While they could become resilient to blades while their blood was aroused, this level of defense was limited; bullets could still kill them.

Although Kojo Kanenaga mentioned that breaking through to Sword Master would greatly enhance combat ability—even to the point that slicing a bullet in mid-air would be easy—such combat power would at best be equivalent to a modern day chariot in a modern war.

It's no wonder that Transcendents were gradually phased out and became invisible in modern society. Their powers might be dangerous to ordinary people, but to armies and nations, they lacked usefulness.

A Transcendent required ten to twenty years of training and reliance on talent to reach the level of a chariot, but industry could produce one in less than a week, even by manually assembling each part without an assembly line…

The cost-effectiveness gap between the two was too great. Perhaps a high-level or other combat-focused Extraordinary Class would perform differently, but generally, it still couldn't surpass the power of industry.

The Dark Warrior training method Chen Yu provided was theoretically stronger than that of the swordsman. After all, the swordsman relies on his inherent vigor to drive Supernatural Power, while the Dark Warrior harnesses Negative Energy—one stemming from consistent self-improvement, the other from the accumulation of external forces. Relatively speaking, the Dark Warrior is somewhat stronger.

As for who is stronger or weaker, only a real test would tell.

With a mix of regret and anticipation, Chen Yu did not accept Kojo Kanenaga's invitation to stay for dinner and rushed back to Tokyo overnight. He had a date to celebrate his promotion to associate professor with his girlfriend that evening.

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Having become an associate professor and acquired his own laboratory, Chen Yu naturally began building his research group. This was expected since the hospital granted him such favorable conditions with the purpose of producing research results, not just for him to perform surgeries on patients.

If it had been a typical surgeon, the research topic would require a large number of surgical cases for support, but Chen Yu's previous research involved drug development. In the lab, developing new medications and translating his findings into clinical applications was now his primary task.

To develop a new drug, the process required confirmation of drug targets, the discovery and acquisition of lead compounds, and the procurement of candidate drugs before moving into the phase of clinical trials. Only after successfully passing these trials, could one obtain marketing authorization.

For Chen Yu, his research had already completed the work up to the clinical trial phase; what he now needed was to conduct a wealth of clinical trials to acquire sufficient sample data to confirm the safety, dosing, and efficacy of the medication.

This typically involved three phases. The first phase, contrary to what most people think, is conducted on healthy volunteers to study the human body's tolerance to the drug. Through pharmacokinetic research, scientists can understand the absorption, distribution, and elimination of the drug in the body to provide a basis for designing dosing regimens and to further undertake therapeutic trials.

After the completion of the first phase, the second phase is to confirm the therapeutic effects of the drug, where clinical trials on actual patients begin.

The purpose of this phase is to preliminarily evaluate the drug's therapeutic action and safety for patients with the target condition, and it also provides the basis for designing the third phase's clinical study and dosing regimens.

The third phase is when the therapeutic action of the drug is confirmed. The goal here is to further verify the treatment effect and safety of the drug for patients with the target condition, assess the benefit-risk ratio, and ultimately provide ample evidence for the drug's registration application review.

Such work is obviously not something Chen Yu could handle alone. Each phase requires at least a hundred experimental samples, with the third phase needing more than three hundred. Additionally, because Chen Yu's developed drug targets a wide spectrum of cancers, he requires even more samples to corroborate his research.

This means that Chen Yu must recruit a group of dedicated research assistants.